Fifty years ago, Rachel Carson asked the world to consider a
simple question: imagine springtime without birdsong. Silent
Spring addressed an unlikely subject for what was to become a
best-selling book—the effect of DDT and other pesticides that
persist in body tissue, becoming more and more concentrated as
they move up the food chain (a process known as
biomagnification). Yet nearly everyone could easily understand
that their own quality of life would be diminished should they
step outside one sunny May morning to find the dawn chorus had
been replaced with a deafening stillness. Thanks to Carson’s
courageous stand—and the subsequent public outcry—songbirds and
other avian species dodged a bullet.* Now there’s another set of
wild voices in the spring choir who could use a hand—the
amphibians. More specifically, frogs. There are now over 1,800
threatened amphibian species. At least 168 species have gone
extinct in the last two decades due to factors such as habitat
loss, water pollution, disease, climate chan