slimvictor
Bluelight Crew
A plan to reintroduce the red-legged frog in Los Angeles County's Santa Monica Mountains has been complicated by an unforseen factor - illegal marijuana farms. Photo by USGS and Adam Backlin
It was the red-legged frog -- a fist-sized, ridge-backed, mud-colored amphibian -- that is believed to have inspired Mark Twain's 1865 classic story,"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." The story featured an athletic frog named Dan'l Webster and an opportunistic gambler who filled the frog's mouth with a handful of buckshot to win a bet, handicapping its jumping abilities and making off stealthily with $40.
Known as Mark Twain's first major success, the story harkened back to a time when the red-legged frog's range covered large swaths of California, stretching from Baja California north to the Bay Area.
But in the 1800's, the species' numbers were slashed due to a taste for frog's legs among miners in the Sierra Nevada and San Francisco. And then further devastated by habitat loss, pollution, sport fishing and predators like the larger non-native bullfrog. Since Twain's time, its range has shrunk 70 percent, and it has completely disappeared from 24 of the original 46 California counties it called home, according to Collette Adkins Giese, the amphibian and reptile staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. It was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1996.
Now, a new plan to reintroduce the frog in Los Angeles County's Santa Monica Mountains has been complicated by another factor -- illegal marijuana farms.
The frog and the pot farmer, it turns out, share an affinity for certain things -- among them, land undisturbed by humans and deep streamwater.
Katy Delaney, a wildlife ecologist with the National Park Service, has plans to relocate eggs from a rare population of red-legged frogs in the Simi Hills -- home to as many as 100 frogs -- to a site in the Santa Monica Mountains, the range that cuts through Los Angeles and runs along the Pacific Ocean. Her agency is partnering with California State Parks, USGS, the US Fish & Wildlife Service, and the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission on the project.
(...)
Delaney has been searching for the perfect site, one that lacks invasive species like crayfish and contains undercut banks, good vegetation and deep pools of year-round water.
"We're also looking for places where there's not a lot of access," Delaney said. "We don't want people going in and getting curious about our pens." After the first few months, even Delaney herself and her team will only visit occasionally to avoid disrupting the animals.
But marijuana farms have limited her choices, making otherwise appealing spots hostile to the frogs.
cont at
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/09/the-frog-and-the-pot-farmer.html
It was the red-legged frog -- a fist-sized, ridge-backed, mud-colored amphibian -- that is believed to have inspired Mark Twain's 1865 classic story,"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." The story featured an athletic frog named Dan'l Webster and an opportunistic gambler who filled the frog's mouth with a handful of buckshot to win a bet, handicapping its jumping abilities and making off stealthily with $40.
Known as Mark Twain's first major success, the story harkened back to a time when the red-legged frog's range covered large swaths of California, stretching from Baja California north to the Bay Area.
But in the 1800's, the species' numbers were slashed due to a taste for frog's legs among miners in the Sierra Nevada and San Francisco. And then further devastated by habitat loss, pollution, sport fishing and predators like the larger non-native bullfrog. Since Twain's time, its range has shrunk 70 percent, and it has completely disappeared from 24 of the original 46 California counties it called home, according to Collette Adkins Giese, the amphibian and reptile staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. It was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1996.
Now, a new plan to reintroduce the frog in Los Angeles County's Santa Monica Mountains has been complicated by another factor -- illegal marijuana farms.
The frog and the pot farmer, it turns out, share an affinity for certain things -- among them, land undisturbed by humans and deep streamwater.
Katy Delaney, a wildlife ecologist with the National Park Service, has plans to relocate eggs from a rare population of red-legged frogs in the Simi Hills -- home to as many as 100 frogs -- to a site in the Santa Monica Mountains, the range that cuts through Los Angeles and runs along the Pacific Ocean. Her agency is partnering with California State Parks, USGS, the US Fish & Wildlife Service, and the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission on the project.
(...)
Delaney has been searching for the perfect site, one that lacks invasive species like crayfish and contains undercut banks, good vegetation and deep pools of year-round water.
"We're also looking for places where there's not a lot of access," Delaney said. "We don't want people going in and getting curious about our pens." After the first few months, even Delaney herself and her team will only visit occasionally to avoid disrupting the animals.
But marijuana farms have limited her choices, making otherwise appealing spots hostile to the frogs.
cont at
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/09/the-frog-and-the-pot-farmer.html
