Amphibians — frogs, toads and salamanders — are declining in the United States and across the world.
If you’re like me, that matters tremendously because you find them fascinating and wonderful. But, beyond my fascination, amphibians are essential parts of the food web, eating tons of insects like mosquitoes and serving as food for other animals like birds and mammals. They also have superpowers that could lead to major medical breakthroughs. Did you know that many salamanders can regrow lost limbs? Or that frog skin secretions may hold the key to treating pain, infections, and even cancer? Amphibians are also highly sensitive to environmental toxins because of their absorbent skin, making them nature’s early warning system for problems that can affect people, too.
Since 1996 I have worked with some of the most interesting amphibians in the world, but only recently have I become terrified that some of these species will not survive my lifetime. The United States of America has never lost an amphibian to extinction, and we can all take steps to help keep it that way.
For decades, amphibians have been threatened by habitat loss, infections, and invasive predators. The Endangered Species Act (ESA), signed into law by a Republican president in 1973, has provided a framework for identifying and protecting at-risk species from further decline and extinction. At the time, the United States collectively believed in safeguarding its natural heritage, ensuring wildlife was not lost permanently due to human activity.
Protecting the most at-risk species requires strong partnerships. For example, the Frosted Flatwoods Salamander (“Frosties”) were once common throughout the southeast but are now restricted to a few clusters of wetlands. This striking creature depends on habitats that require periodic wildfires to thrive. Due to rapid habitat destruction, Frostie populations have declined 90% in just 25 years, quietly going extinct.
Today, Frosties are found only on public lands, where federal and state biologists — including those with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), U.S.Geological Survey, U.S. Army, and U.S. Forest Service — are fighting to protect, restore, and expand their fragile habitat. The risk to this species is so high that saving them requires a combined strategy of captive breeding, habitat protection, and habitat restoration. For the past nine years, an Atlanta-based nonprofit, the Amphibian Foundation (AF), has been filling critical gaps in conservation — stepping up when federal agencies were underfunded and overstretched.
My wife, Crystal, and I founded AF to prevent the extinction of Frosties. In 2022, for the first time ever, our lab successfully bred the Frosted Flatwoods Salamander (featured in Newsweek). To further the effort, we launched a research coalition called the Frosted Flatwoods Salamander Conservation Breeding Working Group, bringing together experts from zoos and conservation groups to scale up healthy salamander breeding efforts. Each baby salamander is a candidate for release into the wild, bolstering the fragile population.
AF doesn’t receive funding from federal agencies, but we collaborate with boots-on-the-ground biologists in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies working to protect, restore, and reintroduce Frosties into their native wetlands.
This urgently needed work is now in grave danger. Recent budget cuts and firings of our nation’s wildlife protectors and the elimination of key protections in the Endangered Species Act directly threaten the future of U.S. amphibians. These cuts weaken our ability to save Frosties. We need our dedicated partners who actively protect our wildlife every day.
Frogs and salamanders are experiencing declines at a rate faster than mammals and birds combined. While the United States has never lost an amphibian to extinction, we are dangerously close. If Americans allow these essential protections to be dismantled, we will push several irreplaceable species into extinction. The time to act is now. Speak up, spread awareness, and demand that critical funding and protections be restored — before we lose unique species like Frosties forever.
In the United States of America, we all just took a giant step closer to losing our first frogs and salamanders, and extinction is forever. If amphibians are indeed a warning system for humans, then they have been warning us, quite alarmingly, for several decades. I am not sure how much more of a warning they can provide for us.
It’s quite scary to think that in relatively recent years, the decline, in not just amphibians, but their very habitats as well, is overwhelmingly huge. It is imperative that we all act accordingly. Thank you, AF!
Thank you for your support, Jill! We agree, it’s scarier out there for amphibians than ever.
It would be useful to know where the habitat losses were for these salamanders and what was behind the loss… great article making us aware of this challenge.
Thank you, Don.
I apologize for not including that in the original article. Frosted Flatwoods Salamanders, as all Longleaf Pine ecosystem endemic species, are experiencing a 97% loss of habitat. Longleaf Pine (and the ecosystem which supports it) is practically gone now (3% remains) and was once the predominant habitat in the southeast.
This puts a lot of pressure on the remaining 3% to support a lot of imperiled species. In that remaining 3%, these systems are still experiencing fire-suppression and drought, so salamanders (and other species) continue to decline — even in protected spaces.