Life
1,500 Golden Toads. Two Years Later, Zero.
Costa Rica's golden toad went from a booming breeding season to gone in about two years, inside a protected reserve where nobody cut trees or hunted it. The Short explains how an El Niño lifted the cloud mist and dried out the breeding pools before tadpoles could grow. Chytrid fungus is named as the leading explanation for the final collapse.
The numbers
- In April 1987 Martha Crump counted nearly 1,500 breeding golden toads.
- Of 43,500 eggs recorded that year, only 29 tadpoles survived.
- The last sighting was a lone male on 15 May 1989.
- The IUCN declared the species extinct in 2004.
- Only three preserved specimens were ever tested for chytrid, all negative.
Sources cited in the video: Pounds, Fogden & Campbell (1999), Nature · Anchukaitis & Evans (2010), PNAS · Martha Crump, In Search of the Golden Frog · IUCN Red List
