Survival test: Tanzania’s rare toads get 2nd chance in US

This is a story about a waterfall, the World Bank and 4,000 homeless toads. Maybe the story will have a happy ending, and the bright-golden spray toads, each so small it could easily sit on a dime, will return to the African gorge where they once lived, in the spray of a waterfall on the Kihansi River in Tanzania.



The river is dammed now, courtesy of the bank. The waterfall is 10 per cent of what it was. And the toads are now extinct in the wild. But 4,000 of them live in the Bronx and Toledo, Ohio, where scientists at the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Toledo Zoo are keeping them alive in hopes of returning them to the wild.



Meanwhile, though, the toads embody the conflict between conservation and economic development, their story also raises questions about how much effort should go to save one species. These issues are pressing for frogs and toads, whose populations are plunging. Jennifer B Pramuk, curator at Bronx Zoo said at least 120 species vanished in recent years.

Source:indianexpress.com/.../