On Thu, 26 May 2005 03:21:01 GMT, Rick
wrote:

In article .com,
"CinciGreg" wrote:

There are still frogs in Kentucky?

Compared with even a few decades ago, they seem to be pretty much
eradicated altogether. I don't mean this as a criticism of
frog-gigging, but something sure seems to have all but eliminated
frogs.

I can remember fishing and camping as a kid, and hearing the frogs
roar. The last time I camped along a creek in central KY, the the
complete absence of frog noise was startling. I remember that it was
Memorial Day weekend, and we speculated that perhaps it was still too
early in the year for the appearance of frogs. But their COMPLETE
absence was puzzling.

The sudden, and dramatic, loss of many amphibians is fairly old news
(dates back at least 10 years).


From: http://www.nature.com/nature/links/010405/010405-1.html
"Amphibian populations have suffered widespread declines and extinctions
in recent decades. Although climatic fluctuations, increased UV-B
radiation, and increased prevalence of disease have all been implicated
at particular localities, the importance of global environmental change
remains unclear. New data links global climate change with disease
outbreaks in populations of the western toad, Bufo boreas , a species
that has experienced severe declines in recent years."

From: http://www.amphibiaweb.org/declines/declines.html
"Globally , over 200 amphibian species have experienced recent
population declines, with reports of 32 species extinctions (Blaustein
and Wake 1990, Alford and Richards 1999, Houlahan et al. 2000)."

If you look at the map on the amphibiaweb.org site, you will notice that
the Americas are particularly hard hit. I won't speculate why as, as far
as I know, nobody has yet proven a connection between human activity and
the loss of amphibians. Considering the history of same, however, one
might suspect there is a link.

Rick

Here in the south we blame the absence of amphibians and
almost all ground nesting birds and animals to the fire ant.
They live around the edge of almost all bodies of water here
and attack in the thousands when something crawls from the
water. Birds such as quail and meadow larks have no chance
when their babies are eaten alive by the hellish little
beasts. They have even been know to full grown cattle by
swarming their mouth and nostrils.