A story in the Washington Post that is both heartwarming and heartbreaking: the tale of the golden frogs of El Valle de Anton in Panama. With a deadly fungus tearing through Central American amphibian populations, the golden frog has been sequestered in a run-down backpacker's hotel at the edge of the mountains with hopes that it can wait out the naturally-occuring chytrid fungus. The Hotel Campestre has become a sort of postmodern Noah's Ark and currently has 40 species of endangered frogs and toads shacking up in it. "The volunteers found glass frogs with skin so translucent that their organs are always on full display," explains the Post. "They picked up frogs that look like rocks and eat freshwater crabs, aggressive tree frogs and shy, nocturnal toads."
The hotel's guests are happily mating, and scientists are monitoring their reproduction, waiting for the day when it is considered safe to release them back in to the wild. But Good Samaritan impulses aside, interesting questions arise.
"There's this moral dilemma," one Panamanian biologist said. "Is this evolution? Should we let it run its course? If we do this for frogs, then do we do it some other time for the snakes?"
Also, scientists wonder if "the frogs they are saving in Panama might be the last of their kind? And might those frogs -- those jumping, squirmy delights -- never see the outside world again?"
Should humans play the role of Noah by taking wildlife out of their native habitats and shielding them from the blind course of natural selection? Is our planet becoming so unhospitable to animals, birds and fish that we will eventually have to create virtual habitat in order for them to survive?
Read the rest of the story here.
