New Threat to Frogs and Hellbenders Frogs and herons kept me up
through the night. And then the owl started screaming and I
realized camping by the creek in the summer maybe wasn’t such a
great idea. It was a year ago, but I was reminded of it when our
ombudsman, Ken Drenon, noted the past month’s wildlife
complaints. One was noisy frogs. We’re lucky to have such
problems. Frogs and other amphibians worldwide face some huge
challenges, especially in terms of habitat loss, diseases,
invasive species and contaminants. Although prairie species have
declined in Missouri, those that depend on woodlands, such as
spring peepers, still have lots of good places to live here. But
a new threat in the form of a fungus that attacks amphibians’
skin, the chytrid (kit-rid) fungus, has appeared and is most
likely spreading. The good news is that it’s killed in
temperatures over 85 and under 29 degrees. The bad news is that
we have cool, spring-fed waters in Ozark streams that could keep
the fungus thriving. While it’s not a