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Starrett’s Tree Frog Isthmohyla tica

Andreas Hertz, an expert on Panama’s amphibians, and his colleague Alex Shepak visited us in early January. This was Andreas’s 3rd visit to Mount Totumas surveying amphibians.

The Pandemic of chytrid fungus (Chytridiomycosis) effecting many amphibian species around the world is a focus of Andreas’s work. Many species formerly common in Central America are now feared extinct, a few have bounced back.

During their visit Andreas located a critically endangered Tree Frog, the Starrett’s Tree Frog Isthmohyla tica. This frog has not been seen on the Pacific side of Panama or Costa Rica in over 10 years. Here is the red list IUCN reference of this species:

http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/55675/0

There is hope that the remnant populations of this and other critically endangered amphibian species are made up of individuals with disease resistance. This may enable some species to bounce back. For this reason Andreas and Alex were taking tissue swap samples for further investigation.

...In our sample, comprising nearly half of known vertebrate species, 32% (8,851/27,600) ; that is, they have decreased in population size and range.

In the 177 mammals for which we have detailed data, all have lost 30% or more of their geographic ranges and more than 40% of the species have experienced severe population declines (>80% range shrinkage).

Our data indicate that beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization.

We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.

Cog wrote:I see no true advantage for bio-diversity from a human point of view.

Newfie wrote:Well, taken to the literal extreme, no-biodiversity would mean you are the sole living thing on the planet. Slightly less extreme would imply nothing alive except humans.

Which of these definitions do you adhere to?

Cog wrote:

Newfie wrote:Well, taken to the literal extreme, no-biodiversity would mean you are the sole living thing on the planet. Slightly less extreme would imply nothing alive except humans.

Which of these definitions do you adhere to?

Bio-diversity enough to insure that humans continue to survive is sufficient. At least for me. We seem to be doing fine without giant dragonflies and trilobites.

Americans devote 70 hours, annually, to pushing petrol-powered spinning death blades over aggressively pointless green carpets to meet an embarrassingly destructive beauty standard based on specious homogeneity. We marvel at how verdant we manage to make our overwatered, chemical-soaked, ecologically-sterile backyards. That’s just biblically, nay, God-of-War-ishly violent.



To understand the sheer inanity of devoting 40 million acres, nearly half as much land as we set aside for our biggest crops, to an inedible carpet, we need to back up—beyond the modern lawn’s origins with a real estate family peddling the “American Dream” as Whites-only cookie-cutter suburbs—to the evolution of grass.

... We mow our lawns every few weeks. This coaxes our grass into growing its roots outwards, rather than down, spawning more sprawling shoots, in hopes of enabling any one blade to avoid overzealous grazers. However, the $47.8 billion to $82 billion we spend annually on overcutting and landscaping (FYI: we spend $49.47 billion in foreign aid) effectively amounts to trying to kill the grass while offering it life support. We trap it in prepubescence—too young to reseed, racing desperately ever-outward to find reproductive refuges that doesn’t exist.

We cut ourselves equally: Thirty-five thousand people, 4,800 of which are children, are treated annually for mower-related injuries—resulting in 600 youth amputations. The Royal Statistical Society even awarded the fact that nearly eight times more Americans are killed by lawnmowers than Islamic terrorists International Statistic Of The Year.


Newfie's Solution

“Continual amputation is a critical part of lawn care. Cutting grass regularly—preventing it from reaching up and flowering — forces it to sprout still more blades, more rhizomes, more roots, to become an ever more impenetrable mat until it is what its owner has worked so hard or paid so much to have: the perfect lawn, the perfect sealant through which nothing else can grow—and the perfect antithesis of an ecological system.”

According to University of Florida ecology and conservation professor Mark Hostetler, that’s no hyperbole: Producing no seeds, nectar, or fruit, few creatures can use can use lawns as habitat. Biodiversity-wise “it’s almost like concrete,” he told Earther.

Nature Bats Last

According to the EPA, we use 580 million gallons of gas each year, in lawnmowers that emit as much pollution in one hour as 40 automobiles driving— accounting for roughly 10 to 18 percent of non-road gasoline emissions.

We also dump roughly 10 times more fertilizer on our lawns than on crops, notes Columbia’s Earth Institute. These fertilizers and the 67 million pounds of pesticides with which we drench our lawns ever year degrade, releasing compounds like nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 298 times more potent than CO2.

All America’s farmland consumes 88.5 million acre feet of water a year. Lawns, with a fraction of the land, drink an estimated two-thirds as much. Most municipalities use 30-60 percent of drinkable water on lawns.

The Robots Will Appreciate It Though

...the mass of humans is an order of magnitude higher than that of all wild mammals combined ...