Ecological calamity on the Caribbean island demonstrates how quickly wildlife can be destroyed, scientists say
Two decades later, the animal – one of the world’s largest species of frog – has in effect disappeared from theisland. A series of ecological disasters has reduced its former healthy, stable population of hundreds of thousands of animals to a total of 21 frogs, according to scientists’ most recent survey.
The fungus has been blamed for significant amphibian declines in many parts of the world but nowhere has its impact been so rapid and all-consuming as it has been on the island of Dominica. Within 18 months of its first appearance in 2002, it had eliminated 80% of the island’s population of mountain chicken frogs.
Worse was to follow. The mountain chicken frog was at that time found on only one other place on Earth:“These warnings failed although, in one sense, we were prepared for the worst given what had happened in Dominica,” said Andrés Valenzuela, a wildlife health expert at ZSL’s Institute of Zoology.
This has left the once numerous mountain chicken frog in a dismal situation. There are zoo collections of animals from Montserrat in Europe. Crucially, these animals are not resistant to chytrid fungus and their usefulness for reintroduction is therefore limited.that are clinging on in Dominica are resistant but exist in only two small populations on land that offers no official protection to the species.