SCIENTISTS are airlifting dozens of one of the world’s largest frogs off Montserrat island to save them from a deadly fungus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The dense forest of this tiny British Caribbean territory is the last remaining stronghold of the critically endangered mountain chicken frog, a 0.9-kilogram, frying pan-size amphibian that got its name because locals say its meat tastes like chicken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once eaten as a delicacy, the frog, which sounds like a small howling dog when it croaks, was hunted and much of its habitat on Montserrat was destroyed by a volcano. Now experts fear a virulent fungus could decimate the few thousand frogs they estimate survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Its impact has been catastrophic,” said Andrew Cunningham, senior scientist with the Zoological Society of London. “The mountain chicken frog has been virtually wiped out.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Experts have found 300 dead frogs since the fungus surfaced in late February, said Gerardo Garcia, director of the herpetology department at the British-based Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To save the frogs, scientists are giving some of them anti-fungal baths and flying dozens at a cost of US$14,000 to zoos in Britain and Sweden. About 50 have been flown off the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Frogs should ideally be kept in their natural habitat, but flying them out was the only short-term solution, said Andrew Terry, Durrell’s conservation manager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SCIENTISTS are airlifting dozens of one of the world’s largest frogs off Montserrat island to save them from a deadly fungus. The dense forest of this tiny British Caribbean territory is the last remaining stronghold of the critically endangered mountain chicken frog, a 0.9-kilogram, frying pan-size amphibian that got its name because locals say its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4,5,6,8,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-sport","category-featured","category-lifestyle","category-media","category-social","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6141,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119\/revisions\/6141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sealnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}