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Trois TerroirsWe never meant to run away from our native Québec with our young family in tow, never meant to become wine gypsies: but, by doing so, we have been blessed to live and work in three of the most beautiful cool-climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir viticultural regions in the world: Burgundy; Oregon and Niagara.For the Bachelder project, starting with the 2009 vintage, we have happily returned to all three of these regions to establish tiny craft wineries and are finally making our own Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines under our own name. Every friend that we have made and kept in our travels has inspired this 'three terroirs' series: Three regions; Three wines. The hands, techniques and the palates remain the same, only the terroirs change.Mary & Thomas Delaney-Bachelder
The Hills of OregonThomas has worked for both Ponzi Vineyards and Lemelson in Oregon, and it is from the latter that he rents cellar space to make Bachelder. Lemelson Vineyards has a state-of-the-art gravity facility, and 60 hectares of organic vineyards that are amongst the most meticulously-kept vineyards in the entire Willamette Valley.Working with fruit from both the Sandstone and Volcanic (Basaltic) strata that predominate in Oregon, Bachelder is able to capture the fruit and coax out the stunning minerality of Oregon Chardonnay in all of its lacey purity.BACHELDER OREGON 2009:"Challenges all the assumptions you may have about white wine from the West Coast – the combination of fruit sourced from both sandstone and volcanic soils has resulted in a densely textured wine that balances its acrobatics on a tightrope of an intense finish: dense fruit and minerals overlaid with an almost sea-salty tang."
The Niagara EscarpmentCanada's fruit basket – one of the southernmost parts of Canada - an idyllic little peninsula with a unique microclimate due to the ocean-like Great lakes that surround it. Dolomitic Limestone abounds here - interspersed with clay - giving the wines intense perfume; a rich mouthfeel and a defining iron grip that speaks of the Escarpment where the grapes are grown – the same Escarpment from whence tumble the world-famous 'Niagara Falls.'BACHELDER NIAGARA 2009:"A deft wine that is at once forwardly-scented, broad and lithe: despite its weight, it nonetheless retains all the classic defining minerality of Niagara's prized limestone soils."
Burgundy – 'La Bourgogne'Burgundy is Thomas' spiritual home – the sacred ground where the Chardonnay and the Pinot Noir grapes first evolved, then happily grew and acclimatized themselves.The blessed Côte d'Or (the 'Golden Hills') is a long strand of hills stretching from Dijon to Chalon is home to the region's 'sense-of-place'-defining limestone. There we work with the best organic vignerons to ensure that the grapes are grown to exacting specifications, the vineyards stretching from Nuits-St. Georges in the north, through Beaune heading south to Puligny-Montrachet.Bachelder has rented modest but deep cellars in Nuits-St. Georges: centuries old, vaulted cellars in which to make and patiently age our wine.BACHELDER BOURGOGNE 2009:"A finely-perfumed, tightly-wound wine that offers the classic refined fruit and textured minerality of the best limestone terroirs of Burgundy – a subtle yet captivating wine that cries out for food!"
Why Chardonnay?The Chardonnay grape may have evolved in Burgundy, but it is now planted all over the wine world. While many wine drinkers have tired of oaky, sweet Chardonnays from hotter climates, places like Oregon and Niagara - which are similar in climate to Burgundy - are becoming renowned for the tension and excitement that they express in their Chardonnay.Chardonnay seems finally set to once again assume its true destiny of being the 'once and forever' grape! As Chardonnay heads off into a future at once more mineral, more chic, and more suave – it will be a future where wines with texture, with 'tension,' complexity, and minerality find their true place in wine lovers' hearts.


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ArenaFPS boys are back with another Reflex cup. This time we're playing Team Deathmatch.Tournament starts at 13:00 CEST.
Prize Pool
1st: 2x ArenaFPS Hatchet (Thanks to TurboPixel)
2nd: $50 (Thanks to @LordSoth)
3rd: $20 (Thanks to FlabCaptain)
- Double Elimination
- Bo3
- Experimental rule set.
Map Info
Map Pool:
Ashur, CrazyAl's Choice (Fool's Choice), Phobos
- both players /roll 420, highest roll picks first.
- pick, pick
- All teams are required to join the ArenaFPS #events Discord channel in order to organise their games.
- Play your matches in a timely manner and report your score on the Challonge page or to an admin.
- All games must be played on Qualx servers or ArenaFPS servers.
- No unauthorized spectators will be allowed in the servers.
- Teams must check-in on the challonge site! If you don't know how to check-in, ask an admin and we will help.
- Acting like a dick will get you treated as such.
Admins: CrazyAl, Qualx
Stream: http://twitch.tv/ArenaFPS
최종 결과
|최정상 챔피언:
|2,8k Turbo Cleave
|주목 받을 강자:
|It was lag
|미래의 강자:
|Torilla Tavataan

subset: commoncrawl


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Box Score
Utica 41, Frostburg 0 - Final
Utica, NY (10/13/2012) – The Utica College football team held visiting Frostburg State to 168 yards of total offense, and posted 523 total yards of its own, en route to a convincing 41-0 victory in front of a homecoming crowd of 2,625 fans at Charles A. Gaetano Stadium on Saturday. The win, which advanced the Pioneers record to 4-2 overall and 2-1 in the Empire 8 Conference, marked UC's first shutout victory since 2003 when it topped Husson 36-0.
"I was pleased to see the defense play like we know it is capable of today," said Head Coach Blaise Faggiano. "We put together 60 good minutes of football today and we came out with a nice win in front of a great homecoming crowd. Homecoming is a special time for the entire campus and we could not thank everyone enough for the great support here at Gaetano. We have to keep this momentum rolling headed into Hartwick next week."
Frostburg (3-3, 1-2 E8) ran into a stingy Pioneer secondary which allowed just eight completions on 24 attempts and 72
Junior running back Jesse Baldassare racked up a career-high 134 yards rushing, including a 72 yard scamper, and he also punched in one touchdown. The 72 yard run marked the second longest run from scrimmage in program-history and he now has 645 career rushing yards (9th all-time). Senior wide receiver Jeremy Meier, who entered the game ranked fifth nationally in receiving yards per game, continued his banner year by catching six balls for 153 yards and two touchdowns. Senior quarterback Andrew Benkwitt, who was appearing in his 36th straight game, completed 18 passes for 333 yards and three touchdowns. Benkwitt now has 21 touchdown passes this year, breaking his own single-season record of 20, set back in 2010.
The Pioneers used consistent play on both sides of the ball all afternoon to earn the 41 point victory. UC scored 14 points in each of the first two quarters to earn a 28-0 lead at the half. Baldassare and Benkwitt each posted a touchdown run in the first quarter, while Meier and junior Joe Gerbino each caught a touchdown pass in the second quarter. Baldassare was also impressive in the receiving game, catching five balls for 80 yards.
The second half was much of the same as the Pioneers outscored the visitors 3-0 in the final 30 minutes of play. Meier opened the second half with his second touchdown grab of the day, while freshman kicker Thomas Woodburn had his coming out party, knocking down two field goals of 30 and 39 (career-long/ tied for fifth longest in school-history) yards to seal the victory for UC. Woodburn was also a perfect 5-for-5 in extra point opportunities. 11 points scored marked the most by a kicker in the program's 12 year history.
Senior defensive end Michael Herberger moved into sole possession of fourth place on the College's all-time sack list after notching two solo sacks. Herberger, who now has nine career sacks, also tied for the team lead with seven tackles on the day. Sophomore linebacker Jon Treen made the most of his appearance at linebacker, totaling seven tackles, while senior captains Genaro Scampone and Luke Manolescu each registered an interception.
Frostburg totaled 96 yards on the ground, including 80 from the legs of JD Hook on 20 carries. Antonio Wood led the Bobcats with four catches for 36 yards.
Prior to the start of the game Utica College President Dr. Todd Hutton, Athletic Director Dave Fontaine and Head Football Coach Blaise Faggiano met on the field with John and Robbie Kaczmarski, the parents of former UC football player 'Big" John Kaczmarski for a special check presentation. Their son John Kaczmarski was a proud Utica College Football student-athlete who passed away on February 10, 2008. The Kaczmarski family presented President Hutton with a $25,000 check which will go towards creating a scholarship for a Utica College student in their son John's name.
"We cannot thank the Kaczmarksi family enough for their support of the College over the years," said Faggiano. "They hold a special place in our hearts here at UC and we were excited to have them back on campus to celebrate homecoming with us."
In addition to the generous check presentation, Andrew O'Bryan, a 14 year football player from Weedsport, who plays with a prosthetic leg and is currently battling Osteosarcoma, was an honorary captain for the afternoon and walked out with the Pioneers for the coin toss before the contest. O'Bryan joined UC on the sidelines throughout the game with his mother Amy, and her sons Adam (8) and Alex (17).
UC returns to action Saturday at Hartwick. The contest is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. Frostburg returns home on Saturday for its homecoming weekend when the Bobcats will square off against Buffalo State at 1 p.m.
QUICK HITTERS: Andrew Benkwitt is on pace to break his own school record for passing yards (2,604) and through six games this year he already has 1,958 passing yards … If Benkwitt continues this pace he will become the first player in school-history to throw for more than 3,000 yards in a single season … Benkwitt broke his own single-season record of 20, as he now has 21 touchdowns this season… Meier is on pace to become the first player in school-history to record over 1,000 yards receiving in a single season … Meier currently has 813 yards receiving, with four games left to play – the current single season record is held by Cody Elliot, who totaled 868 yards in 2009 … Meier is also on pace to shatter the single season receptions mark – he currently has 47 catches and the school record is held by Elliot who tallied 65 catches in '09 … Meier needs two more touchdowns to tie Jake Scott's 2010 single-season record of 12 … Meier is the College's all-time leader with 27 career touchdowns … James Lenahan is currently tied for second on the school's single season interception list – he currently has four and needs three more to tie first place Jon Klosner's 2002 record of seven … Jesse Baldassare needs 88 rushing yards to jump three spots into sixth place on the College's all-time rushing yards list… James Lenahan needs two interceptions to tie former player and current assistant coach Lazarus Morgan for third place on the College's all-time interceptions list … Senior defensive end Michael Herberger needs 1.5 sacks to move into a tie for third place on the College's all-time sacks list – he currently has nine.
--- www.ucpioneers.com ---


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Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Are Kids at Risk When Peanuts Are Served on Airplanes?
Q&A with Wayne Shreffler, MD, PhD
Due to the significant number of children who have peanut allergies, the U.S. Department of Transportation is considering steps to help make air travel safer for people with peanut allergies. The Department is considering three alternatives:
- banning all peanuts and peanut products from airplanes
- banning all peanuts and peanut products when a passenger with a peanut allergy has requested a peanut-free flight
- requiring a peanut-free buffer zone when a passenger with a peanut allergy has requested a peanut-free flight
Wayne Shreffler, MD, PhD, is a pediatric allergist at MassGeneral Hospital for Children and director of the Food Allergy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. His research focuses on food allergy and asthma.
Q: For kids who are allergic, what's the risk in having peanuts on commercial flights and are they greater than in everyday life?
A: Children with peanut allergy and their families live with the everyday risk of an accidental exposure and most learn very well how to manage that risk by both avoidance and available treatment. Far and away, the risk of exposure that people need to mitigate against is ingestion. Contact with peanut on the skin or simply smelling peanut are not exposures that are very likely to lead to dangerous reactions. If, however, particulate matter [very small pieces] from peanuts is inhaled, it can lead to a dangerous reaction.
So, one of the concerns with peanuts on flights is that there is a plausibly increased risk of inhalation reactions due to the small space and conditions in the cabin. The other concern is that should a severe reaction occur in flight, medical attention might be delayed.
Q: What's the science behind this?
A: Studies involving the intentional exposure to highly allergic subjects have shown that the risk of life threatening reactions from skin contact or smell (the detection of very small organic molecules, not the proteins that cause allergic reactions) is very low. However, trace contamination of hands or food leading to unintentional ingestion or a curious child picking up a bit of a peanut kernel and putting it in his or her mouth are real risks.
In the National Registry of Peanut and Tree Nut Allergy, 62 of 3704 (>1.5%) participants indicated that they had experienced a reaction on a plane, and of the 48 who were directly contacted, 42 reported that the exposure occurred on the plane. Thirty-five of these reacted to peanut and 7 to tree nuts. Twenty indicated that they were exposed by ingestion, 14 by inhalation and 8 by contact. The most severe reactions were from ingestions, followed by inhalation. The large majority of reactions were from an item served by the airline.
Q: The danger of accidental consumption of whole peanuts (particularly if they're packaged) seems low compared, for example, to food that might include nuts as an ingredient or that's processed in a facility that also processes nuts. Can you comment on that?
A: That is probably true. Most unintentional ingestions are from peanut-containing foods, rather than to peanuts. However, some factors specific to air travel (e.g. the apparent increased risk of inhalation reactions) may be unique.
Q: What are the most common causes of accidental reactions to food allergens?
A: The most common reactions occur to the most common allergens: milk, egg, wheat, soy, peanut, tree nuts, shellfish and fish. Peanuts and tree nuts have been disproportionately linked to more severe allergic reactions.
Q: What about the danger of an allergic toddler picking up a nut that's fallen onto the floor or into a seat cushion?
A: For a significant proportion of individuals with peanut allergy, even a very small fragment is sufficient to provoke a major reaction.
Q: Is a total ban necessary or would a "buffer zone" work as well? Many schools have peanut-free tables in their cafeterias now.
A: A buffer zone would likely reduce the frequency of ingestion and contact reactions if the cabin was properly cleaned between flights. There may also be ways to mitigate the risk of inhalation reactions (e.g. HEPA filter of recirculating air, packages that minimize the aerosolization of particles, but given that a third of reactions were by inhalation, failing to address that would be inadequate.
Browse the Entire Newsroom Archive


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Kenneth MacMillan made Solitaire in response to a request by Ninette de Valois for a new work to substitute for a John Cranko ballet (The Angels) which had had to be postponed. Designs by Desmond Heely had already been commissioned for the Cranko ballet and MacMillan was asked to use them.
MacMillan subtitled his new work 'A kind of game for one'; he also described it as a "a divertissement ballet". Which in essence is what it was; a sequence of dances knit together by Malcolm Arnold's Eight English Dances and by the continuity provided by Margaret Hill's appearance in each one. "It is this girl", wrote JHM of The Guardian, "who provides the only obvious choreographic thread, now as soloist, now as partner in a choral dance, now merely an observer of the rest of the cast: they, it seems, are her playthings." This figure is a leitmotif in MacMillan's work: she is an outsider, an observer; she tries to join in but is always in the end alone. The other characters may exist only in her imagination
The Times critic (un-named but possibly Clive Barnes) remarked that MacMillan's eye for theatrical effect owed something to Ronald Petit, but that "he is more musical than Petit and, since his choreographic invention is stronger, he has less need to rely on dramatic assault". "The choreography takes a hint or two from English country dances", The Times continued,, and "it is never a romp; it pick up ideas from the composer's keen instrumental colour-sense and it does not go on too long."
For The Observer's Alexander Bland, Margaret Hill was 'too positive a character' to convey the ambiguity of the girl, half-in, half-out of the goings on around her. "In the beautiful pas de deux she was excellent, but it's no point her pretending to be Alice in Wonderland"
The night of the ballet's premiere was the first time that an entire evening had been devoted to the work of a choreographer from the emerging generation; the other ballets performed in the programme were Somnambulism, Danses Concertantes and House of Birds.
First Performed: 7 June 1956
Company: Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet
Music: Malcolm Arnold
Design: Desmond Heeley
Cast: Margaret Hill, Donald MacLeary, Sara Neil


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Journal Article
© Oct 2008 Volume 6 Issue 2, ICICKM 2007, Editor: Rembrandt Klopper, pp1 - 116
Look inside Download PDF (free)
This paper presents the initial findings of a case study conducted at seven Higher Education Institutions within the United Kingdom. The Case Study utilizes Stankosky's Knowledge Management (KM) pillars to enterprise learning — leadership, organization, technology and learning — as a lens to investigate and understand Knowledge Management practices and perceptions within Higher Education Institutions, looking at challenges of implementation within this sector. Higher Education Institutions within the United Kingdom are very complex institutions, with diverse backgrounds, history, culture, resources and missions. The University presents itself in today's knowledge economy with a dichotomy of priorities, one which aims to provide quality teaching and research activity, and the other, to ensure effective and efficient management and administration within an increasingly competitive market. Being a service, non‑profit organization ensures that the values of scholarship remain a very important aspect of its mission; yet, the external environment within which HEIs conduct their business today is rapidly changing, forcing HEIs to reflect on how they do 'business' given the external pressures they face. This case study uses the Grounded Theory methodology to begin to unpack the issues related to the implementation of Knowledge Management within this context. It focuses on two aspects of the case study — the characteristics of universities and academics that hinder or promote the implementation of KM, and the perceptions of Knowledge Management and its challenges for implementation within the HEI sector. Initial findings are presented.
Keywords: knowledge management, UK case study, grounded theory, higher education
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Gannett Co. GCI, -0.56% has agreed to pay $1.8 billion for the 73% stake of online ad-listings firm Cars.com that it doesn't own in a deal that could be announced as soon as Tuesday, according to people familiar with the situation.
The business was put up for sale earlier this year, with hopes of generating a sale price of as much as $3 billion. The final deal values the site at $2.5 billion.
Cars.com is owned by the Classified Ventures publishers consortium. Aside from Gannett, other investors include Dallas Morning News publisher A.H. Belo Corp. AHC, +0.24% , Miami Herald owner McClatchy Co. MNI, -0.76% , Graham Holdings Co. GHC, +0.75% , the former owner of the Washington Post, and Tribune Media Co., which until Monday was part of the same company as Los Angeles Times publisher Tribune Publishing Co.
Classified Ventures was founded in 1997 as a way for newspaper publishers to compete in the online auto and rental classifieds businesses. Earlier this year, Classified Ventures agreed to sell its other major holding, apartments.com, to CoStar Group Inc. for $585 million.
One person familiar with Cars.com earlier this year estimated that it generates about $400 million to $500 million in revenue a year.
News of the sale was earlier reported by Bloomberg.


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Are you familiar with what B.B. Barns Landscape Services has to offer?
Every Friday, come and meet with one of our CRM's (Customer Relationship Managers) at the Landscape kiosk inside the store to review your project needs.
Bring photos and questions...Let us design while you shop!
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Satyendra Nath Bose
Welcome About Contact Us
Welcome to the S N Bose Project presenting the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974) founder of Bose Statistics, the statistical mathematics underlying the group of fundamental particles known as boson, as well as the basis of the Bose-Einstein Condensation phenomenon. Here you will find interesting, and sometimes little known, information about Professor Bose, an enigmatic and unconventional figure in the history of science and the history of India.
This site is valuable to scientists, biographers, historians, and other researchers of Bose. It is also of general interest to people wanting to know about the life and lasting legacy of this remarkable man. We hope you enjoy your visit. If you have any feedback, or information about Professor Bose that you would like to share, please do email us here at the S N Bose Project.
What's New
Physicists Find Elusive Particle Seen as Key to Universe, New York Times, July 4, 2012
ASPEN, Colo. — Signaling a likely end to one of the longest, most expensive searches in the history of science, physicists said Wednesday that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that looks for all the world like the Higgs boson, a key to understanding why there is diversity and life in the universe.
Announcing the S N Bose Project Guest Contributor Series! Read about Bose from those that know!
Satyen Bose in Berlin - Dr. Purnima Sinha
Not much is known about Bose's two-year stay in Europe in 1925-6. Dr. Purnima Sinha, a student and biographer of Bose, has written many articles and books on Bose. In Satyen Bose in Berlin, Dr. Sinha interviews those what knew Bose and spent time with him in Europe. What transpires is a fascinating portrait of a man whose keen intellect, engaging personality, and unique blend of European and Indian culture won him many friends and admirers, including some of the leading intellectual and scientific figures of the day. Dr. Sinha interviewed one such famous scientist, Professor Herman Mark, the internationally renowned chemist who first met Bose in Berlin in 1926. Mark and Bose became very close. Their 50-year friendship lasted the rest of their lives.
Herman Mark: Oh!
He was very friendly. He was a real gentleman. And he would tell his
jokes to everybody and had excellent sense of humour. Ah! Wonderful! He
was very benevolent! He could only do good things! We always called him
our Buddha (laughter).
Falguni Sarkar interview
Falguni Sarkar, publisher of the S N Bose Project, was recently for Banga Sammelan - the 27th North American Bengali Conference (NABC 2007). The interview appeared in the English language brochure.
"We want people, especially young people, to know more about Satyen Bose. It is their own history, and can be a strong source of identity for them!"
(c) SN Bose Biography Project, Falguni Sarkar 2006-2012.
All rights reserved. All Bose related images, documents, and related material are the property of Falguni Sarkar. All other material is the property of their respective owners. Material may not be reproduced in electronic or printed form without written permission from Falguni Sarkar or authorized representatives. Material may be linked to from other website locations, but cannot be downloaded and posted on sites other than www.snbose.org without written permission from Falguni Sarkar or authorized representatives.


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The Woodward Method
The hallmark of Bob Woodward's best-seller brand of investigative journalism — and the bane of targets since the 1970s — is a ruthless drive to compress unruly real-world events into powerful, dramatic, marketable narratives.
His success and work ethic, combined with the fact that the major details of his reporting have proven to be mostly true, long drowned out the critics who say source material has been misquoted, miscast, misrepresented — or even made up — in the service of Woodward's relentless pursuit of a gripping yarn.
Story Continued Below
But that changed this week when Woodward's first patron and father figure Ben Bradlee, the legendary Washington Post executive editor who loosed Woodward and reporting partner Carl Bernstein on Richard Nixon in 1972, was quoted in a 1990 interview questioning dramatic elements of Woodward's Watergate reporting — especially the detail that Deep Throat spied Woodward's balcony for a potted houseplant used to signal an interview request.
"You know I have a little problem with Deep Throat. … Did that potted [plant] incident ever happen?" Bradlee asked in a 1990 interview, unearthed in New York magazine this week, referring to Woodward's cloak-and-dagger signal system with informant Mark Felt of the FBI.
The old transcript was bad enough. But Bradlee, still lucid and scratching at crosswords at 90, did nothing to stop a biographer from running with his comments. He seemed willing, even eager, to cast a pinch of doubt on the greatest coup in modern political reporting, muddy the top paragraphs of his own obituary and, possibly, dent Woodward's reputation as the only reporter in Washington nobody can afford to snub.
"And meeting in some garage. One meeting in the garage? Fifty meetings in the garage? I don't know how many meetings in the garage. … There's a residual fear in my soul that that isn't quite straight," said Bradlee, according to an excerpt of a new Bradlee biography penned by former Woodward researcher Jeff Himmelman.


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Interested in learning more about home fire sprinklers? Click here.
(WEEK) Sam and Barbara Garland's Pekin, Illinois home is now just a pile of debris.
The house caught fire early Sunday morning.
Pekin Firefighters were on the scene for 12 hours, forced to demolish the home to search for the victims buried inside.
They uncovered the bodies of the Garlands later that night.
Deputy Fire Chief Brian Cox says the amount of personal property in the house made it impossible to get inside.
"The front door was completely blocked. From what I understand the upstairs of the house was just packed to the ceiling with stuff," Cox said.
Cox says the fire originated in the basement, but the cause is unknown. All of the evidence was destroyed in the flames.
Family members mentioned Sam Garland had bought a space heater, but wasn't sure where he'd be able to plug it in.
"In digging through everything we found numerous extension cords... So if they plugged a space heater into an extension cord and it was fishing through all their stuff creating heat. Than there is a good possibility that contributed to it," Cox said.
Family members say that the couple had accumulated so many belongings that their living area was confined to the basement. Having only narrow walkways between the bathroom and the laundry room.
wcsh6.com | Tags: fire protection, residential fire protection, home fire protection, home fire sprinklers, home fire protection


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Amphibia Fading
Amphibia Fading
Why did it die out? The golden toad (Bufo periglenes) is by now perhaps the world's most famous amphibian, but it probably no longer exists. It lived only in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve in Costa Rica-a foggy tract of dense upland forest wracked by heavy winds that blow off the Caribbean. The toad's main habitat was on one cold, wet ridge called Brillante, where it emerged en masse in spring, for five to ten days at a time, to mate in rainwater that pooled against the roots of the trees.
On the somber forest floor, these mating congregations were a spectacle of intense, almost hallucinatory color. The males were an improbable flaming orange and had eyes like black beads. They were only about 5 centimeters long; they looked like Mayan treasure come to life. The females were slightly larger and colored so differently you wouldn't have thought they belonged to the same species; they were greenish-black with bright red blotches edged in yellow. Photos of the male were used in the publicity campaign to establish the reserve. Itsphotos still adorn tourist posters. Eventually, it became the "poster toad" for amphibian decline.
The last time the toads appeared en masse was in 1987. In 1988, only 10 toads were seen. A year later, scientists found just one solitary male. In 1990, they found no toads at all. Initially, it was thought that perhaps the toads were just "hiding out"-skipping a bad breeding season or two. The springs at Monteverde had been slightly warmer and drier than usual, and unfavorable spring weather is known to reduce the breeding populations of many other amphibians. But that generally does them no long-term harm: the creatures are usually back in force with the next good spring.
And over the very long term, amphibians have indeed prospered. At some 350 million years of age, Amphibia is the world's oldest terrestrial vertebrate class. (A class is a taxonomic group at the level of, for example, mammals or birds.) Scientists have thus far identified nearly 5,000 species of frogs, toads, salamanders, newts,and caecilians (legless, largely subterranean
creatures). There are more species of amphibians than there are of mammals. Amphibians' collective domain includes every continent except Antarctica, and probably most of the world's major islands. They achieve their greatest variety in tropical and warm temperate forests, but they also live in deserts, grasslands, northern bogs-even tundra, in the case of the wood frog (Rana sylvatica), one of four North American frogs that can "freeze solid" and survive-the only vertebrates known to have this ability.
Measured against the full breadth of this ancient and widespread class, the golden toad's plight didn't initially look very portentous. But it wasn't just a matter of the golden toad. By 1990, 19 other amphibian species had gone into serious decline or disappeared entirely from Monteverde. And it wasn't just a matter of Monteverde: as the 1990s wore on, reports of declines and disappearances emerged from most of the regions where amphibians were reasonably well monitored-in North America and parts of South America, in Europe and Australia.
Yet Monteverde cast a long shadow: many of these other declines unfolded in a way that bore an uncanny resemblance to events in Costa Rica. They were, in the first place, very rapid. They sometimes involved whole assemblages of species, rather than just one or two. And they were occurring not just in areas that were obviously disturbed, but in some of the world's most carefully protected parks. These were not the kinds of losses that could be readily predicted-or explained. The "Monteverde syndrome" suggested that something peculiar was happening to Amphibia-something bad enough to distinguish it from the broader tragedy we have come to know as the biodiversity crisis.
What Makes Them So Vulnerable?
"Amphibian" is a Greek construction meaning "double life"-a reference to the fact that the typical amphibian lifecycle is partly aquatic and partly terrestrial. That can make amphibians doubly vulnerable: disturbance of either water or land can affect them. In water, for example, some species have fairly narrow temperature requirements. Some do best in still water, others need flowing water. And many are particular about where they will breed. In southwestern California, the endangered arroyo toad (Bufo microscaphus californicus) does not reproduce well unless it lays its eggs on the sandy bottom of a slow-moving stream. Some frogs and salamanders will lay eggs only in the shallow "vernal pools" that appear with the spring rains and disappear with the summer heat. This is a kind of evolutionary gamble with the weather: the young are safe from predatory fish in a vernal pool, but they must reach their terrestrial phase before the pool dries.
Given such preferences, it's not surprising that a primary ingredient of amphibian decline should be that standard form of environmental corrosion: habitat degradation. Many amphibians, for example, are forest animals and the world is currently losing about 14 million hectares of natural forest each year-that's an area larger than Greece. (It's true that tree plantation cover is expanding, but plantations do not generally provide an ecological substitute for natural forest; see "Paper Forests," World Watch, March/April 1998.) Even when the result is not outright deforestation, logging can devastate amphibian populations.
Consider the logging boom in the U.S. southeast, where the forests shelter the world's richest assemblage of salamanders. About 60 percent of all salamanders belong to a lineage called the Plethodontidae, which lack lungs. These creatures breathe through their skin, which must remain moist at all times to facilitate gas exchange, or they'll suffocate. Plethodontids are consequently extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity. Even selective logging is likely to reduce a population, because it opens up the canopy and dries out the floor. Clearcutting a population's habitat is a death sentence. In the U.S. southeast, the logging of mature hardwood forest, the primary salamander habitat, is expected to overtake the hardwood growth rate by 2010. More and more of the region's rich salamander diversity is likely to end up sharing the plight of the red hills salamander (see page 18).
Deforestation-induced losses are almost certainly far greater in the tropics, although we generally know far less about them. The extreme case appears to be Sri Lanka. As recently as 1993, the island's amphibian fauna was thought to comprise only 38 species, but a recent five-year survey of the remaining rainforest turned up more than 200 additional amphibian species, which are apparently endemic to Sri Lanka (that is, they occur nowhere else). Today Sri Lanka is believed to have the world's highest amphibian diversity, in terms of the number of species per unit area. And yet that diversity is probably just a shadow of what it once was. Over the past 150 years or so, the island has lost 96 percent of its original rainforest cover. When survey researchers checked the records of naturalists who were exploring Sri Lanka before 1900, they found that more than half of the amphibians mentioned by their predecessors were no longer present. Most of Sri Lanka's surviving natural forests are legally protected, but they continue to dwindle in the face of illegal logging, primarily for fuelwood.
Habitat loss is thought to be the leading cause of amphibian decline, but it obviously cannot account for the "Monteverde syndrome." Places like Monteverde would seem to be about as close as it's possible to get to pristine-their habitats are intact. And yet the amphibians in these places are apparently reacting to dramatic changes. But these are changes that most of us either don't see, or that we just don't read as "unnatural."
Toxics are the usual suspects in cases of invisible damage, and there's no question that amphibians are highly vulnerable to them. Amphibians have thin, permeable skin that readily absorbs contaminants; their eggs lack protective shells and are highly permeable as well. So it's hardly surprising that in heavily industrialized areas, pollution is frequently invoked as a cause for local declines. In some centers of heavy industry, the pollution is so intense and pervasive that it's a wonder there are any amphibians left to study. Here, for example, are the types of pollution that appear to be injuring amphibians in Ukraine: heavy metals, pesticides, aromatic hydrocarbons, acid rain, and radioactive waste.
But pollution is taking a toll in healthy-looking landscapes as well. In Britain, the acidification of ponds is a major factor in the endangerment of the Natterjack toad (Bufo calamita). The toad is now nearly extinct in British lowland heath, a habitat that used to support about half the species' population in that country. (The toad is faring poorly in Scandinavia too, but it seems to be in better condition farther south.) California's Sierra Nevada range is losing many of its amphibians, and some recent studies suggest that pesticide contamination may be a factor. Pesticides have been detected in precipitation as high as 2,200 meters. The chemicals are presumably drifting up from the state's heavily farmed lowlands.
Pesticides have also been invoked to explain the recent rash of amphibian deformities (although there is no clear relationship between the deformities and the declines). In Minnesota and in the St. Lawrence River Valley in Quebec, researchers have turned up many frogs with missing or extra legs. Some scientists think there is a link between these malformations and certain pesticides. On the other hand, deformed frogs have been found at various California sites where there are no signs of pesticide contamination. The problem in these places appears to be infection with a kind of parasitic flatworm called a trematode. Trematodes are also being blamed for deformities elsewhere in the United States, and that invites additional questions. Is there an "epidemic" of trematode-induced deformities, or are scientists finding lots of afflicted frogs simply because they are now looking for them? If there is a trematode epidemic, is that because something has upset the relationship between the parasite and its host, or is it because the trematode is moving into new areas? The deformities may be no easier to explain than the declines.
It's not very surprising that pesticides should be implicated in both the deformities and the declines, since pesticides, after all, are designed to be toxic. But fertilizers, which are used in far greater quantities than pesticides, may be creating problems we are even less prepared to counter. Some amphibians are very sensitive to the nitrogen compounds that typically leach out of artificially fertilized fields. For example, researchers have discovered that tadpoles of the Oregon spotted frog (Rana pretiosa) are poisoned by water with nitrate and nitrite levels low enough to pass the drinking water standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (Nitrate and nitrite are compounds that soil microorganisms make from fertilizer.) Many water supplies in the United States contain levels of nitrate that violate EPA standards. If these standards aren't taken seriously as a matter of public health, it seems unlikely-to say the least-that more stringent standards will be mandated for the welfare of frogs. The Oregon spotted frog has largely disappeared from its historical range in the heavily farmed Willamette River Valley.
Pollution, like habitat loss, is clearly a major factor in amphibian decline. But even when you take both stresses into account, many declines remain unexplained. Not far from the Willamette Valley, in the Cascades Range of Oregon, the Cascades frog (Rana cascadae) and the Western toad (Bufo boreas) are disappearing, even though their habitat has not been significantly disturbed or polluted. Oregon State University biologist Andrew Blaustein has shown that these species are the victims of another stress: increased exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light, a consequence of the weakening of the ozone layer, which filters much of the UV out of incoming sunlight. UV light can damage DNA and even kill cells. Amphibians, with their naked skins and eggs, are good candidate victims. The Cascade species may be losing their eggs to the extra UV.
It's likely that increased UV levels are injuring other amphibians as well, particularly those at higher latitudes, where the ozone layer tends to be weaker. And unfortunately, the seasonal fluctuation of the layer probably increases amphibian vulnerability: in either hemisphere, the layer tends to be at its weakest during winter and spring, a period that overlaps with the egg-laying season for most species. Amphibians at higher elevations could be especially susceptible as well, since the higher you go, the less atmosphere there is to filter out the UV. But researchers have found that not all amphibians are especially sensitive to UV light, and not all are exposed to appreciable quantities of it. Tropical amphibians are living beneath a thicker ozone layer, so their UV exposure has probably not risen much. Even in the temperate zones, forest amphibians would generally be protected by the forest canopy (although a deciduous canopy wouldn't offer much protection in early spring).
Amphibians face another major pressure, which is invisible in a different way. UV light and most types of pollution cannot literally be seen. Introduced, non-native species, on the other hand, are often in plain view but because they usually look perfectly "natural," it can be hard to see them as a threat. Yet non-native species frequently prey on amphibians or out-compete them for food. In the Yosemite region of California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, for example, biologists Charles Drost and Gary Fellers argue that introduced trout have played a role in the disappearance or severe decline of five of the region's seven native amphibians. Yosemite waters above 1500 meters had no native fish, so the local amphibians were apparently not adapted to cope with big aquatic predators. Intensive stocking of trout began in the 1920s, and today, the presence of trout correlates strongly with several declines and disappearances. But the correlation is not exact, since some species did not decline until long after the trout were introduced, and some declines occurred in waters where trout were never introduced at all. Some of these cases likely involve trout plus drought: the trout reduced the amphibians' ranges to isolated patches, and that increased their vulnerability to Yosemite's 1987-1992 dry spell. The troutless cases, however, remain a mystery.
One invader that frequently injures amphibians is itself an amphibian: the bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana), native to the eastern United States. An aggressive, fast-growing species that can reach a length of 15 centimeters, the bullfrog has been introduced into many ponds and marshes around the world for food and fishbait. The bullfrog is not particular about its habitat and it has a voracious appetite. It will try to swallow almost anything it can fit in its mouth. After it was introduced into California in the early 1900s, several populations of the red-legged frog (Rana aurora) and the foothill yellow-legged frog (R. boylii) vanished. Perhaps the bullfrog out-competed them for prey; perhaps it swallowed them. In South Korea, where it was imported for food in the early 1970s, the consequent loss of native frogs and other small creatures inspired an official anti-bullfrog campaign, with hunting contests and bounty prizes.
Epidemic Losses
There's another organism that is lurking in many forests and swamps, and that may be killing far more amphibians than bullfrogs and trout. In 1992, Karen Lips, a herpetologist then working in Las Tablas, Costa Rica, discovered several dead and dying frogs at her research site-a rare find, since dead frogs are usually snapped up quickly by scavengers, but the significance only emerged in retrospect.
Over the next four years, Lips documented population collapses in five species formerly abundant at Las Tablas. Then in 1996 and 1997, she was surveying in the Reserva Forestal Fortuna in Panama, an area she had studied several years earlier. Five of the seven streams she checked were frogless; the other two contained only half the species encountered in her earlier visits. And at Fortuna, she found dead frogs too:
"I found most dead and dying animals 'frozen' in their normal calling positions, so it appeared as if they came to the stream the previous night and died in place. Many of the casualties still had a very life-like appearance; most were found during morning surveys, still sitting in a perched position. Dying individuals were lethargic, had no righting response and exhibited convulsions and trembling of the limbs and head."
An amphibian epidemic was apparently moving through central America. That reminded scientists of an earlier series of extinctions along the east coast of Australia. In the area from Brisbane to the Cape York Peninsula, at least 14 rainforest frogs had gone extinct or declined by more than 90 percent since the late 1970s. In both regions, the victims were stream dwellers and had succumbed rapidly-traits suggestive of a virulent, waterborne pathogen. Researchers comparing skin samples from Panamanian and Australian victims found them infected by the same type of organism: one or more fungi of the phylum Chytridiomycota. Chytrid fungi are common pathogens of plants and insects but had never before been known to attack vertebrates.
At the same time the Australia/Panama research team was closing in on the chytrid, other scientists were finding it in the United States. Don Nichols, a pathologist at the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., first noticed the disease in 1991, when it started killing captive arroyo toads in California, but it wasn't until 1996 that the toads' disease was identified as the chytrid fungus. The fungus has since been found in the wild in various places around the country. In Illinois and Maryland, it is an apparently benign infection of some frog populations: the infected animals seem perfectly healthy. But last year, wildlife officials found it in lowland leopard frogs (Rana yavapaiensis) outside the city of Phoenix, Arizona, and in boreal toads (Bufo boreas boreas) near Denver, Colorado. In both cases, officials encountered large numbers of dead and dying animals. Both species have been in sharp decline, and the fungus is now a prime suspect in these casualties as well.
Scientists are now wondering how many other declines the fungus has caused. Could it have been behind some of the older die-offs-events later marshaled as evidence for global amphibian decline? Did it, for instance, cause the massive declines of leopard frogs in the Colorado Rockies in 1974? Cynthia Carey, a biologist at the University of Colorado, and D. Earl Green, a pathologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, began opening up specimen bottles from the 1970s, and found the chytrid in some preserved leopard frogs from Colorado. So the leopard frogs may also have been victims of the chytrid. The fungus is now being investigated as a possible agent for many declines in the western United States.
A similar investigation is going on in Australia, where the chytrid is continuing to expand its range. By the summer of 1998, it had traveled some 6,000 kilometers from the northeast coast to the southwest coast, where it was discovered in a frog population near Perth. It has now been detected in 24 Australian species and linked directly to 11 declines. And Australian researchers have been opening their old specimen bottles too. A dainty tree frog (Litoria gracilenta) collected in southern Queensland in 1978 is the oldest infected specimen found thus far.
The fungus has now been isolated from one type of frog and given a name: Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. But that doesn't make it much more of a known quantity. Scientists don't yet know whether there are other species of the pathogen, or just this one. Nor do they know how it kills its victims. It may suffocate them by causing their skin to thicken (many frogs breathe partly through their skin), or it may produce toxins. And there are plenty of other questions as well. Where, for instance, did it come from? One theory holds that until the 1970s or thereabouts, the chytrid had a much more restricted range somewhere in the northern latitudes, presumably in North America. That might explain the unaffected populations in the U.S. east coast and midwest, since long exposure could have given them a chance to develop resistance. From there, perhaps, it was only recently introduced into other regions, where its victims would not have been adapted to it.
So perhaps the chytrid is a recent invader of Central America and Australia. That possibility raises an issue of special urgency: what might be moving it around? Some herpetologists think it may have been brought into new terrain on the boots of tourists. Others see a likely conduit in the trade in aquarium fish, and in amphibians themselves. In Australia, scientists suspect that the chytrid made its way across the continent in the skin of an infected frog that stowed itself away in a box of fruit. And once the fungus arrives in an area, there are all sorts of ways it could spread: it may be dispersed by local people, for example, or cattle. It can even be carried by birds and insects.
But chytrid infection outside eastern North America is not an automatic death sentence; the dainty tree frog, for example, is still a common Australian species. That doesn't invalidate the "invasion theory" outright, but it could be evidence that the fungus was in Australia long before 1978. That suggests another theory. Perhaps the fungus is a well-established pathogen in many parts of world, and something is upsetting amphibian immune responses. "It doesn't do a parasite any good to kill its host," Don Nichols has noted. "Other factors may be tipping the balance."
This theory might find support in the behavior of the various other pathogens implicated in amphibian declines. A group of viruses called iridoviruses may have caused the tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) die-offs in Arizona, Utah, Maine, and Saskatchewan. Iridoviruses have also triggered declines of the common frog (Rana temporaria) and the common toad (Bufo bufo) in Britain. Boreal toads in Colorado have been attacked not just by the chytrid, but also by a bacterium, Aeromonas hydrophila. And a fungus of the genus Basidiobolus is killing Wyoming toads (Bufo hemiophrys baxteri) in Colorado, Wyoming, and Minnesota. Why so many epidemics in so many places, in so short a time? It's possible that scientists are just finding more disease because they're getting better at looking for it. Or it might be evidence that some widespread stresses are throwing amphibian immune systems out of kilter.
By the late 1990s, evidence for one such stress turned up in Costa Rica. Working on the initial hunch that the golden toad's disappearance had something to do with the weather, a group of climatologists and biologists led by Alan Pounds, head of Monteverde's Golden Toad Laboratory for Conservation, found strong evidence that the reserve's cloud forest is losing its clouds. According to their findings, published in the April 15, 1999 issue of Nature, local sea surface temperatures have risen since the mid-1970s, and that has tended to push the cloud bank higher. The mountain tops are bathed in the clouds less frequently, so the forest is now somewhat drier. This drying might account for the amphibian losses. The theory is corroborated by bird observations: some lowland, "cloud-forest-intolerant" birds have moved upslope, into areas they had never occupied before. But the golden toad lived on top of the range and had nowhere to go.
Did the golden toad die of climate change? One appealing aspect of this theory is that it might apply to die-offs in other regions with a similar topography. The mountain forests of Puerto Rico, for example, have seen 12 of their 18 endemic frogs decline over the past 20 years, and three of them may now be extinct. There is as yet no satisfying explanation for these losses. Elsewhere, other forms of climate change could threaten amphibians-drought, for example, or rising water temperatures.
But many scientists see another, more ominous possibility in the team's findings. Climate change could be "overlapping" with disease: the stresses of a changing climate could make amphibians more susceptible to infection. Scientists have not yet looked for the chytrid at Monteverde, but perhaps the fungus haunts that forest as well. Perhaps the Monteverde declines are the result of a kind synergism between the pathogen and the warming seas.
Climate change and spreading disease: both of these forces have a global reach and they could overlap in a number of ways-either simultaneously or in sequence. A change in the moisture regime, as at Monteverde, or a change in water temperature might weaken amphibian immune systems. Warmer water might also affect a pathogen's virulence, or its capacity to move from one animal to another. Warmer air might increase the range of insects that carry it.
Infections are likely to combine with other types of stress as well. Excess UV exposure, like climate stress, could suppress amphibian immune systems. So could some forms of pollution. And some diseases appear to have been spread through the introduction of infected game fish like trout; in such cases, a new predator overlaps with a new disease.
There are many overlaps besides those that involve disease. Consider non-native species. Successful invaders are often capable of tolerating very disturbed conditions. If some kind of disturbance injures the native amphibians but does an invader no harm, then the latter may gain a level of dominance it might not otherwise have achieved. In the Ural Mountains of Russia, this mechanism has apparently allowed the introduced lake frog (Rana ridibunda) to displace some of the native frogs. The lake frog apparently tolerates industrial pollution much better than the natives do, so the natives may have succumbed to an invasion-pollution overlap.
Habitat loss, pollution, UV exposure, non-native species, disease, and climatic instability-those are the stresses that we know or suspect are killing off so many of the world's amphibians. Perhaps there are other, as yet unidentified stresses as well. But a simple inventory like this, dismal as it is, still doesn't adequately represent the threat, because it doesn't account for the overlap factor. And unfortunately, we cannot predict exactly what those overlaps will eventually do.
Beyond the Declines
The loss of amphibians demands our attention not just because we need to know why they are dying, but also because we need to know what their death will mean. Amphibian decline is itself a form of environmental degradation, since amphibians play critical roles in many ecosystems. Although their secretive, inconspicuous nature might suggest otherwise, in some temperate and tropical forests, amphibians account for more biomass than any other vertebrate group: if you could weigh all the frogs and toads in a forest, there's a good chance you would find more mass in them than in the forest's reptiles, birds, or mammals.
That's important because it means that a great deal of the nutrients and energy in these places normally passes through or resides in amphibians. In ways large and small, amphibians shape the ecosystems of which they form a part. In ponds, for example, tadpoles may keep algal growth in check. Remove the tadpoles and you may end up with an oxygen-depleting algal bloom. Adult frogs and toads often devour vast quantities of invertebrates, especially insects. Large frog and toad species also eat fish, birds, and even small mammals. In some wetlands, amphibians are the top predators, exerting enormous influence on the diversity and abundance of other organisms.
And of course, amphibians are themselves important prey for many other animals, including fish, birds, reptiles, and mammals. Some bats and snakes live exclusively on amphibians; their fate will mirror that of their prey. In California's Sierra Nevadas the decline of the mountain yellow-legged frog (Rana muscosa) apparently underlies a decline in a local garter snake species, which is one of the frog's main predators. There are probably many such casualties in the world's forests and wetlands.
Amphibian decline is an incipient social tragedy as well. There are, first of all, the practical effects of losing major insect predators. During the 1970s, for example, India was a major supplier of large frogs to the culinary markets of Europe, the United States, and Japan. But after the trade had cleared many marshes, the mosquito populations exploded, malaria infections rose, and the authorities responded by increasing insecticide applications. The trade was banned in 1979, but much of it has gone underground, as a smuggling network into Bangladesh.
But the social tragedy is not simply a matter of immediate effect; it's also a question of lost potential. Amphibians are an incredibly diverse group of organisms and we know relatively little about them. We do know that they are living chemical factories; amphibians produce all sorts of powerful compounds, or they concentrate compounds found in their prey. This characteristic is frequently a form of defense. Because amphibian skin is thin and permeable, it offers little physical protection from attack or infection. So the protection is often chemical instead. Many species produce antibiotics and fungicides. Some produce powerful poisons, which they advertise to predators with their bright coloring.
These chemicals are a medical treasure, as many traditional cultures have long recognized. Pulverized toads, for example, have long been used in traditional Chinese medicine for a variety of ailments. And while traditional remedies doubtless vary greatly in their efficacy, modern chemistry is substantiating the power of many of the raw materials. In Ecuador, for example, indigenous peoples have long used a local frog's skin secretion as a painkiller; the secretion contains a chemical that is reportedly 200 times more powerful than morphine-and that lacks the side-effects of opiates. Abbott Laboratories, a U.S. pharmaceuticals company, is developing a drug modeled on the chemical.
Many other amphibians could contribute to our pharmacopoeia as well. A foamy secretion of the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) could become an important new antibiotic. Compounds in the skin of various South American dart poison frogs might be useful as anesthetics, muscle relaxants, and heart stimulants. A chemical produced by the South American bicolored tree frog (Phyllomedusa bicolor) could open up new possibilities for treating Alzheimer's disease and depression.
We have yet to learn even the most obvious lessons from some of these creatures. The wood frog (Rana sylvatica) is able to tolerate temperatures low enough to turn up to 65 percent of its body water to ice. It produces some sort of natural antifreeze to keep the remaining water liquid, but how does this system work? An Australian water-holding frog (a Cyclorana species) is able to absorb enough water to last for months or even years of drought. How does it do that? Australia's gastric brooding frog (Rheobatrachus silus) was the only animal known to incubate its eggs in its stomach-a feat it apparently accomplished by switching off its digestive enzymes. Unfortunately, that frog's secrets are now beyond our reach. The gastric brooding frog disappeared in 1981.
The Nature of Science Itself
It has been more than 10 years since the prospect of global amphibian decline first attracted widespread scientific attention. There is now little doubt that the problem is real. And yet, even as the evidence piles up, the phenomenon itself seems to grow increasingly mysterious. It is clearly global, but we don't know its full extent. It is definitely the result of human activity, but it cannot be explained by just one or two causes. It is doubtless of deep ecological significance-but we have only a rather vague sense of what that significance is. When we peer into amphibian decline, we are looking into the depths of our own ignorance.
In part, our ignorance seems to be a by-product of specialization-of the compartmentalization of information and research. The declines cannot readily be contained in a single field of inquiry. They involve microscopic pathogens and global climate change; they are part of forestry economics and wildlife toxicology. Understanding them will require a much more interdisciplinary, integrative approach than is typical of conventional research. Some of the most successful recent work is already moving in this direction-the climate research at Monteverde, for example, or the international investigation of the chytrid fungus.
That idea is beginning to resonate within some major scientific institutions, such as the National Science Foundation, the U.S. government agency that is the chief source of U.S. federal funds for scientific research. In 1999, the NSF awarded $3 million to a team of 24 scientists from fields as diverse as veterinary epidemiology and evolutionary ecology to study host-pathogen relationships as an aspect of amphibian decline. Jim Collins, the Arizona State University biologist who heads the team, explained the challenge this way: "as we went through thinking about how to answer the questions, we really had to think about how we did the science. And how we did the science had to change-it couldn't be just an individual investigator laboring away in an isolated laboratory." Collins emphasizes the need for interaction not just between the different biological disciplines, but also with the social sciences and possibly even the humanities. "To understand this problem we have to do a better job of integrating humans into ecological and evolutionary theory," he argues. "The nature of science itself is going to have to change."
The science is going to have to change in another way as well: there's an enormous geographical mismatch between the research capacity and the creatures themselves. Canada, for example, has plenty of amphibian specialists, but not a single endemic amphibian. On the other hand, Mexico, like most tropical countries, has a vast amphibian fauna and very few herpetologists. We know a good deal about the amphibians of the United States, western Europe, Costa Rica, and Australia, but little about those of South America, Asia, or Africa. It's possible that the tropics could harbor thousands of amphibians not yet known to science. And among the tropical species already identified, many are in the literature only by virtue of their original descriptions; in such cases, virtually nothing is known of the animal's ecology or even whether it is still extant.
If you want to get a sense of how skewed the research is, look at the April 13, 2000 issue of Nature, which contains the most exhaustive overview of amphibian population trends to date. To produce it, a team of researchers led by Jeff Houlahan, a biologist at the University of Ottawa, combed through the scientific literature and coaxed additional data out of more than 200 scientists in 37 countries. Of the 936 populations the team managed to cover, 87 percent were in western Europe or North America; 5 percent were in Central and South America, 2 percent were in Asia, and less than 0.5 percent were in Africa and the Middle East.
Despite the sketchy science, declines are being reported in many tropical countries. In Ecuador, for example, a little frog called the jambato (Atelopus ignescens) used to be so common you could find it in the backyards of Quito, but the last time a jambato was seen alive was in 1988. Santiago Ron, a biologist at the Universidad Católica del Ecuador, thinks the frog may have fallen victim to a fungus, possibly the chytrid, but there is no money to investigate.
In Latin America, amphibian research may be constrained by a lack of funds-but not generally by a lack of interest. Last year, the Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force helped organize a series of workshops in Mexico, Panama, and Ecuador. (For more on the DAPTF, see below.) The organizers hope the meetings will be the first in a series of efforts to coordinate and build amphibian research in the region. Given the level of participation-the workshops drew in 88 people from 13 countries-that seems like a reasonable expectation.
Elsewhere, however, the research suffers from a much more profound institutional poverty. Take Sri Lanka, for example. That country's recent amphibian inventory is a first-rate scientific achievement by any standard, and yet Sri Lanka's Department of Wildlife Conservation, which is the agency responsible for all government conservation activities, and which has a staff of about 800 people, is reported not to employ a single biologist, even at the B.S. level. It is said to have fewer than 10 people with any type of degree, and to discourage independent research, because researchers may "show up" the Department. (The amphibian inventory was not a Department project.)
An exclusive focus on the scientific agenda would, however, confuse the basic issue. It's certainly reasonable to argue for more money for research and conservation. It's reasonable to demand better conservation policies. But the painful fact is this: no amount of money or cleverness is going to make this problem go away-if it's directed only at this problem. We cannot protect amphibians simply by trying to protect amphibians. The survival of these creatures now depends on our willingness to confront the major, systemic environmental issues of our day: climate change, forest loss, pollution, the spread of invasive species, and the control of the human population. Amphibian decline is a fundamental challenge to the way we live. We may not understand all the biological particulars, but the ethical issue is now very clear.
Ashley Mattoon is a research associate at the Worldwatch Institute.