Oregon Spotted Frog: Knock Knock... who's there

In this episode of 'Rarefied,' host Meredith Meeker explores the conservation efforts surrounding the Oregon Spotted Frog, an amphibian facing critical endangerment. The discussion delves into the frog’s habitat, threats they face, and the innovative measures being taken to protect and restore their populations. Wildlife biologist Andrea Gielens shares insights from her extensive work with the species, highlighting the complexities of captive breeding, habitat restoration, and the challenges posed by invasive species. Through fascinating anecdotes and scientific explanations, the episode underscores the importance of preserving biodiversity and the intricate ecological role of the Oregon Spotted Frog.

00:00 Introduction to Rarefied Podcast

00:35 Exploring the Oregon Spotted Frog

06:56 Challenges Facing the Oregon Spotted Frog

12:49 Conservation Efforts and Captive Breeding

17:23 Successes and Future of the Program

25:03 Releasing Spotted Frogs into the Wild

26:46 Public Involvement in Frog Conservation

28:10 Challenges and Support for Conservation Efforts

29:01 The Role of Zoos and Aquariums

31:30 Why We Should Care About Frog Conservation

40:39 Unique Behaviors of the Oregon Spotted Frog

44:53 Fieldwork Mishaps and Funny Stories

47:33 Final Thoughts on Wetland Conservation

48:36 Episode Wrap-Up and Next Time Teaser

Transcript

Theme Song 0:00

In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy. Let's listen close, let's take a stand, to keep the wild across the land. In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy.

Meredith 0:23

Welcome you found us. Let the adventure begin. This is rarefied the podcast where we're going to learn to love some of our rarest and most imperiled species. I'm your host Meredith Meeker. And on this week's episode, we are heading to the West Coast, and more specifically to the wetlands in the Fraser River Lowlands. We are entering the world of a very elusive frog. And the first amphibian we featured on this show, let me introduce you to the Oregon spotted frog, contrary to its name. This frog can be found not only in Oregon, but in British Columbia and Washington. It once had a much larger range and could even be found in California. But unfortunately, the Oregon spotted frog has disappeared from almost 90% of its original range globally. And in the United States, this species is considered imperiled. And in Canada it's considered critically imperiled, just one ranking up from being potentially extinct. I grew up catching frogs with my cousins and siblings, and I remember when they were everywhere. The calls and splashes of leopard frogs were numerous. Anytime we waited into the swale on our neighbor's property, and then it felt like overnight, or at least over one winter, they all disappeared. They were much harder to find and even harder to catch. I don't want future generations to grow up next to silent wetlands and silent lakes with only the sound of waves, which is why I am so excited to introduce our guest this week who is working hard to protect another amphibian species from disappearing forever. Andrea Gillens is a wildlife biologist with, with extensive experience managing captive breeding programs for conservation. And reintroduction, as well as supporting field work to develop recovery programs and assess species. Andrea manages the captive breeding and release program for the organ spotted frog, and if she wasn't busy enough, she also manages the programs for the coastal Western Painted Turtle and the Taylor's Checker Spot Butterfly as the BC program's lead biologists for Wildlife Preservation Canada. We are so very lucky she took the time to chat with us. Well Andrea, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about the Oregon Spotted Frog. I'm very excited. This is our first amphibian that we're featuring. So here in Ontario, that's where I'm recording. We don't have the Oregon Spotted Frog and it's not maybe the most nationally, internationally well known species. So could you give us a little intro into what is an Oregon Spotted Frog?

Andrea 3:09

Yeah, so Oregon spotted frog is kind of our, like, infamous Pacific Northwest critter, especially in the amphibian world. So it's a relatively nondescript when we're talking about frogs globally. It's not bright orange or blue. It's kind of brown with some little red rosettes on its back pretty beefy little frog that likes to live in the water so we don't see them a ton just on the landscape even when they weren't at risk or endangered they're a pretty rare critter. When we look at the landscape as a whole and yeah, they're definitely one of the species that I started my career with and is still going many, many years later.

Meredith 3:53

Do you have a favorite thing about the Oregon Spotted Frog?

Andrea 3:57

Favorite thing we've been together for so long. of my favorite things is their call. They have a really unique call and a lot of people are, you know, familiar with. frogs and the kind of ribbit ribbit ribbit sounds that we kind of characterize with in general and These guys there for their call sounds exactly like somebody knocking on a door Which is really bizarre and and very cool So they make their call underwater, but it's still pretty well broadcasted through the air We can hear it from quite a distance away but it does sound exactly like that. I was in the field monitoring once, and I heard them calling from a pond a little bit away, and my first reaction was almost to say, come in, because it really just sounds like someone is trying to knock on your door. So that's pretty cool. And very we'll be starting to see that probably in just a little while here on the, on the West Coast.

Meredith 4:59

Oh yeah, are they starting to breed soon or like, what's their phenology? What's their kind of like life cycle? Like

Andrea 5:06

Yeah, so we'll be looking for them to start breeding really soon. We're here at the kind of tail end of February, and usually we start seeing them starting to move towards their communal breeding sites within the next couple of weeks. So they do have communal breeding sites that they regularly will revisit year after year, and they kind of move there when they're ready to breed, and the females lay their eggs communally, which is really neat to see.

Meredith 5:33

how many frogs, like if the it's at risk, so I'm assuming there's not too many, but how many frogs are like using these communal ponds

Andrea 5:44

Yeah, it's kind of like, we don't know the limit. So here in BC, we do have really small numbers. So if we had 300 egg masses a year, that would be amazing. But when we look at our partners in Washington and Oregon State, where they do have larger numbers than we do, still endangered, but larger than us. You know, they'll see hundreds of egg masses in a giant cluster. So here we're kind of like 20 would be awesome in a cluster, and then we'll look in another place where they're known to lay and see another group. But yeah, it's part of their, their strategy to help their tadpoles develop faster.

Meredith 6:19

and so Washington, Oregon, BC, is that most of their range

Andrea 6:25

yeah, that's, that's the limit of their range. So they were never one of those species that ranges really far and wide. And it is the, the kind of the bane of our existence here in BC that they are called the Oregon spotted frog because that, leads people to think that we shouldn't be worried about them here or that there are invasive here. Some people even think that they're, they wouldn't actually be found here. But no, that's just where they were first named and characterized. but yeah, they're a Northwest specialty species for sure.

Meredith 6:53

And you said they're endangered throughout their range. What's threatening these creatures? This is the um, uh, Um, Uh,

Andrea 7:21

originally a lake. So it was a huge lake that if you know the geography of the area, kind of stretches from Abbotsford to Chilliwack, which is about 30, 000 acres, and this would have been a massive lake. And it was drained in the 1920s because it was very shallow and very relatively easy to drain it was drained for farmland as a lot of really shallow water, wetlands and marshes were so that pushed the animals into like a fringe or marginal habitat. So now in that area, they reside in a few sloughs and some actual agricultural drainage ditches. So we don't actually have. Any Oregon spotted frog habitat left in Canada. Everything is modified. They live there, but it's not kind of what we would expected to have seen them in historically. And incidentally, this area, the former Sumas Lake area. I don't know if you're familiar at, It flooded catastrophically in 2021. So these are one of these huge events and our infrastructure was not able to manage it and the lake became a lake again. That was almost exactly a hundred years after it was drained and

Meredith 8:31

This is a This is a This is a

Andrea 8:45

our use of of land with these species. We're

Meredith 8:49

Hi, everyone. My name is Jenny Wu. And I'm a Senior Vice President of Public Health, Public Health Innovation and Innovation Services. I'm going to speak to you just briefly today about the CPSC jogger job in a little bit. the time and place that you want to show your program or location. Do you want to do it right now? Or will you be doing it tomorrow? So, it really depends on how you want to show your program. So, you want to show your job. Let's say, you're going to be there at 1000 o'clock, you're going to be there at You

Andrea 9:09

And since our native species breed very early in the spring and need the entire summer to really get their maximum growth, anything that changes those heat cycles really can affect whether or not they're be able, a year's worth of tadpoles will be able to effectively metamorphose. And then also things like invasive species. So. Some of our big culprits here is American bullfrog, which was introduced after the Second World War to try and, have a project for returning veterans to raise frogs for food, and when that didn't work out, they were just released, and so American bullfrogs are a huge problem here now, but we also have problems with invasive plants, like green canary grass and that's a grass that was brought in for bank stabilization, and It does a really good job of that, but it also really takes over those shallow warm water wetlands that are just really easy to encroach on.

Meredith 10:05

Sounds like there's a lot of threats. coming at this frog from like a lot of different angles. Really interesting to talk about, you know, historical landscapes and how infrastructure has changed them. But also even though we do such a good job of like engineering, like nature really does want to go back in so many ways to, to what it was like. You said with that massive flooding event, so in terms of, you know, trying to protect these species from threats is habitat restoration, a big part of that, or what are you guys working on to, to help, you know, make sure that this frog sticks around into the future.

Andrea 10:49

Yeah, habitat restoration can definitely be part of that. These guys, it can be challenging with this species because they do like those really shallow warm water wetlands and it's hard to engineer those so that they stay wet at the right times. And. The of complicating factor with that is that shallow warm water wetlands are also really good for bullfrogs. So it's making wetlands in areas where bullfrogs either aren't yet or at low levels. Otherwise, we're just kind of forcing them into close contact with. A predator or engineering the wetlands very, very specifically so that they do skew more positive towards spotted frogs and more would discourage bullfrogs. But that is proven really challenging to do because bullfrogs are just such a generalist. They, they don't mind. They'll breed in a muddy puddle. They don't care. So it's really hard to exclude them.

Meredith 11:45

What is it with our, history of just like releasing frogs where they're not supposed to be like, humans have a history of this like cane toads, like, I guess amphibians, not frogs, but cane toads. I know. We've had issues, like you were mentioning, like the tree frogs and those really colorful species with like chytrid virus, because we released captive frogs. Like what, what is it with humans? And we're just like,

Andrea 12:09

yeah, easy to just like, if the project didn't work out, just euthanize the frogs. And like, this wouldn't have been, they would have gone here some other way, but it wouldn't have been that obvious of a problem. But here we are. They are delicious. So when we do trap for them, we do have little bullfrog barbecues. So they are, they do serve their purpose, but there are just too many of them now.

Meredith 12:33

What do they taste like?

Andrea 12:35

that's the standard thing. They taste like chicken.

Meredith 12:38

Okay.

Andrea 12:39

They don't have a lot of flavor. They're so they taste like kind of the dark meat of a chicken. Yeah,

Meredith 12:45

Okay.

Andrea 12:47

nothing to write home about, but interesting. Yeah. But yeah, in terms of recovery so. I'm part of the larger provincial recovery team that works on the species, so have a quite a few different recovery actions that they focus on in order to kind of get that this species to downlisted. So, you know, they're critically endangered, hopefully just threatened would be nice. So they, we do a bunch of different things. So we monitor for the effects of disease. So. Things like chytrid fungus that is now prevalent here. It's found in every location where bullfrogs. And so if we know, if we know both frogs are in an environment, we can guarantee there's probably chytrid there as well, which has proven a problem globally for amphibian species and tends to more dramatically affect tropical species than temperate species. But we have seen some large impacts in the Pacific Northwest as well. So we do monitoring for disease. We also. Continue to monitor the populations and so with amphibian species, we generally see really large fluctuations in their population numbers. And that's something that does happen naturally especially when we're dealing with really small populations like we are here in BC, you know, it's not uncommon for us to have 300 egg masses, then less than 100 and then 250. And so it kind of fluctuates all over the place. And that can make it really. Okay. Difficult to navigate what we're going to do any given year. And at the beginning of this project, it was definitely much of a thing that caused us to kind of panic. When we would see these numbers dip and we, it took us a long time to define science, but also in our hearts when we're trying to recover a species, what is a normal low and what is something that is a concerning trend, this is one reason why our ex situ populations, our captive breeding and assurance colonies are so important, and that's one of the reasons why we did have a higher focus on assurance colonies when we originally started, was to prevent just complete extinction of the species in Canada. But like we were talking about, also habitat restoration. Trying to make sure that we have habitat to put the animals back to back into and then obviously what I'm most closely involved in now is the existing management. So captive breeding and head starting.

Meredith 15:18

Yeah, you mentioned sort of at the beginning that you've had a long relationship with this species and the species has been endangered for quite a while. So can you talk to us like a little bit about the history of this program? Like what are the challenges, what have been the successes? What does it even like look like?

Andrea 15:42

Yeah, so the, the. Project has been going on for a really long time. The frog was emergency red listed in 1999. So it was thought to be completely gone and then was rediscovered and emergency listed as critically endangered. And from that point, we started. Working to build the recovery team and bring in the experts to be able to start working on the recovery for this species. And 1 of the 1st things we did from an ex situ management perspective was build that assurance population. So not knowing anything about what the wild population numbers would look like, we bring in some animals so that if next year we go back and there's nothing there, we still have frogs. And then from I said, from a completely ex situ perspective, then we started looking at head starting, so bringing in portions of egg masses from the wild protecting those eggs from things like freezing, flooding, where they could be washed away predation, all those aspects, and raising the tadpoles up to small metamorphs. So that's what we did for quite a few years, and there's been partners at different stages because it has been going on for so long. And then we looked at different kind of laboratory based methods looking at Hormone induction of both females to lay eggs and males to produce sperm and how that could potentially work because it's hugely successful with some amphibian species. And now we've progressed to looking more and focusing more on captive breeding and release and translocation of egg masses and tadpoles, as opposed to. Head starting or using hormones to induce breeding.

Meredith 17:23

And how did you figure out how to get these frogs to breed in captivity? Like, was that like, do you just put males and females together and they, and they know what they're doing? Or is there a little bit more science or magic to it?

Andrea 17:40

Yeah, so I mean, some, there's some aspects that we still don't know. So I will chalk those up to the magic, but it's, it's can be challenging with breeding endangered species in captivity, any type of species, you kind of have to find the, the key to that lock, right? We don't necessarily know what small thing it could be in the wild that is triggering them. So it is something we worked on for years. It has taken so long to know exactly what that is. And if we can replicate it, if we can replicate it in a way that is more beneficial than what's in the wild. So we can get extra output or whether we can even hope to match what is actually happening to them. So with this species, we get one chance a year to change something and see its effects. And then after that, we have to wait for a whole other year. So that means that. Kind of doing this process of elimination can take a really, really long time and being able to deduce what is actually happening and whether it is a benefit as well. So yeah, it took a really long time and what actually ended up happening is that I decided to overwinter males and females separately. So, we know that males move into the egg laying area around the time of birth. Of breeding. They don't necessarily stay there all year long. So I was like, well, let's keep them separate. it was generally main idea at the time was to actually prevent injury to the females. So in captivity, Oregon spotted frogs, and females get into M. plexus very easy. So M. plexus is the. Like breeding posture for frogs, and it can look really different depending on the species of frog, but for Oregon spotted frogs, the males kind of grab the female under her front legs, grab her around under her armpits, and they hold on very tightly. So in captivity, having them together all the time, those males would get in that breeding position. Very, very early. So they would be kind of inbreeding position at Christmas when they wouldn't necessarily lay until March. And so what that was causing us problems with the females was that it would essentially cause bed sores on the females under their arms, which can lead to infection and death with frogs pretty quickly. So the original idea was to separate the males and females so that the males just wouldn't have the females to be able to grab early. So then what we did was kept them separate until the field crews that are monitoring them in the wild said, okay, the males are moving, we're starting to see animals and traps. You can probably introduce them safely now. So I did that. We got them introduced and then waited and we started to see egg masses in one of our tubs. and only one of our tubs. Which, we have three breeding tubs and so that was kind of weird. Like, someone's gotta start the process but usually the others are gonna kick in pretty quickly. And it was like a week and we hadn't seen anything in any of the other tubs. So I'm like, Oh, well, I'll just move some of the tub, the pairs from the non laying tubs into the laying tub. Moved five pairs and the next morning there were five egg masses. So we took those guys out, moved new ones in, and within hours, by the end of the day, there were egg masses. corresponding to the number of frogs that we had moved. So we continued to do that and got all of the frogs to lay in that one tub. And when we looked at that, what is different about this tub? Like, what is it that made it so hospitable to laying eggs? The enclosure was built the same. The only difference was that that was the tub that the females had overwintered in all winter. So something about that water you know, maybe hormones maybe having to the females, just their body chemistry in it, something really worked in terms of laying and it has now worked that way exclusively for the last four or five years. So we know there's this reproductive endocrinologist that we work with since it's our magic water. We've looked at it with a grad student we've been able to look at some components of the water and we know that those aren't, it's not cortisol. but there's something about that magic girl water allows them to lay and lay really well. So, in the past, we've been able to have all of our females lay successfully but what happens is their eggs are usually not really fertile. So, we'd have less than 10 percent fertility on our eggs now it's. It's really rare that we have any infertile eggs, so we're getting almost 100 percent fertility, which means from a number of standpoint, we've gone from producing about 1500 eggs out of our breeding colony every year to over 25, 000. So huge impact in terms of what we're able to release onto the landscape. and we, we hope to be able to figure out what it is that's causing that. It's really hard to say. Because our enclosures are very complex. So if you were to look down on our 300 gallon tanks with your hands on the side of your eyes, you can't see the edge. It would look exactly like a wetland. There's all sorts of floating plants, submerged plants, layers of detritus at the bottom. We've even had freshwater clams and mussels show up in our tanks. Because of that, the water itself is really complex in terms of organic compounds and hormones, so it is very hard to tease out what it is that is triggering the females. From my perspective, I'm just happy that they are. whatever is in there is triggering them, and if you find out what it is, then awesome, but as of right now, it's working, and I'm happy with that.

Meredith 23:14

I mean, it sounds like it's working. It's working really well, like you've got more than 10 X, the number of eggs than you originally did before this intervention or figuring it out. But I also think it's so important to highlight how. We can't necessarily like wait until like the species are almost gone before starting this process of can we do captive breeding or, or can we not? Because it's not as simple always as just taking a male of the species and a female of the species, putting it in a safe place and be like, do your thing.

Andrea 23:49

yeah, yeah, and that's 100 percent something that is, is really challenging because a lot of, because it is labor intensive. At ex situ management of any species, like we're looking at a frog, it's relatively low compared to if you're looking at a large mammal or an animal that has like family grouping is a lot, is really challenging and it's expensive and it's a lot of work and. It can be viewed as the last resort which is fine. If that's how we want to implement it as the last resort, but it doesn't work for it to be the last resort in terms of what our knowledge. So it takes time to build that knowledge. It's not always easy, especially even with animals that we think we know exactly how to. It, takes a long time and it really, what you put into it really matters as well. So we can't take, you know, five animals, the last five animals left and expect to execute program to be successful and bringing them back. we need what goes in determines the quality of what goes out. So it's, it's thinking about this as. a part of the program, even if we end up using it as a last resort, it needs to be thought of before that.

Meredith 25:01

That's very well said. So now that you are, cause you're captive breeding, you're now releasing spotted frogs back into the wild. Do you know how many you need to be releasing a year to get their numbers up? Or is it just where, like, do we have a target or what's the goal with your program?

Andrea 25:23

Yeah. So the overarching goal of the program is more locations that have sustainable breeding populations of Oregon spotted frog. But in terms of our head starting and releasing objectives, we want to make sure that we are releasing and having an impact on the populations in which we are releasing at. our general goal is to release 5000 animals on the onto the landscape consecutively for 5 years. And at that point, we would hope that we would start to see. Results of that. So we would start to see either the see the animals visually on the landscape or see the results of them being on the landscape. So increased egg masses, for example so that's kind of our goal at this point. And if we don't see that, then what is the issue? Are animals not surviving? Is there something about the landscape that is preventing them from surviving? Does our, does that number need to be higher? So that's just a general goal for a prey species being reintroduced into the landscape. Obviously, if we were trying to reintroduce elephants, we wouldn't need. 5, 000 a year for five years, they're going to hang in there and not be predated as much as like a frog or a butterfly or an insect. So we would look at, do we need more? Is there something in the environment that still needs to be worked on that is preventing them from establishing at that point?

Meredith 26:44

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then I guess on, on that note of like how intensive this is and how many hours, like, Obviously there's a lot of people working on this program in Canada and like you have partners in the States as well, but people who aren't part of this program, like, are there things that people can be doing to help protect this species? Is it reporting sightings? Is it changing the way we're on the landscape? Like, how can people listening help?

Andrea 27:18

Yeah, so this is we obviously want people to be involved and passionate about this animal, but how rare it is and what kind of landscapes it in, in makes it really hard for people to connect with this species on the landscape. So we kind of have to count on. The more common frogs, the more the frogs that people are more likely to come into contact with to kind of create that empathy for this frog that they're pretty unlikely to see. I mean, we have to get in waders into wetlands and put out traps to be able to catch them. So you know, we have a lot of members of the public that really love this frog and they're like, Oh, I have them in my backyard. And, you know, the middle of. Downtown Abbotsford, and unfortunately, yeah, it's probably a tree frog. It's really, really unlikely that you have an Oregon spotted frog there. And it's really unlikely that people will just kind of stumble across them. So the main thing that we would like from the public and that the public can really benefit from is kind of supporting the work that we do and sharing it widely. We've been working on this species for a very long time. And so it isn't the flashy new project anymore. Sometimes it can be really hard for us to gain traction in the media with what we're doing because they, you know, I know them. I know some of these reporters have interviewed me like 10 times. So. It's not as much of kind of a big flashy thing, it's that long term action, the monitoring and support that really makes an impact. And it's really, really hard to find. So being able to do that is another part of. the research and the part of the program that's going to be able to direct us in the future.

Meredith 29:01

So, people share the story, basically, support your work through donations, are you, are you out of the aquarium or, or where's your work based out of?

Andrea 29:11

I work out of the Greater Vancouver Zoo. So I work for Wildlife Preservation Canada out of the Greater Vancouver Zoo. They're one of our partners. We do have partners with the Vancouver Aquarium. They also do rearing and involved in the ex situ component because the aquarium or the zoo, that's kind of our specialty is working on the ex situ component. And bringing those that knowledge and resources to the table.

Meredith 29:34

Can people see the spotted frogs if they go to the zoo? Like, are they on display or are they only in the bag?

Andrea 29:41

we usually have opportunities, especially in our peak season in the summer, where we open up our conservation area for people to come and see the frogs and the tadpoles usually in the afternoon. And it's, it's advertised on the Greater Vancouver Zoo website. But yeah, they're that's kind of the only time the aquarium has done and I'm not sure if they still have an Oregon spotted frog

Meredith 30:08

Okay. Okay. So, that's it. Thanks. Have a good day. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye.

Andrea 30:24

they don't make really good display animals for that reason. But we do try and get frogs to be visible to people as much as we can. Another way that people can support the Oregon spotted frog is really looking for groups in their community that do wetlands either restoration or repair maintenance and get involved in assisting with that work. So that usually involves things like pulling invasive species or planting native And that really may. Sure, that the environment, we have the environments to put the animals back into because those groups do a lot of amazing work trying to maintain our natural areas so that I can make as many frogs as I want. But if I have nowhere to put them, then they're not useful to this species.

Meredith 31:10

And wetlands, you know, they support Oregon spotted frog, but they support so many important species. So maybe Oregon spotted frog can be like your ambassador, but know that you're helping. Lots of different amphibian species if you're helping wetlands and birds and all the way up

Andrea 31:28

Exactly.

Meredith 31:30

and So lots of people working on this captive breeding exitry populations pretty resource intensive Projects, why should we care about keeping this species on the landscape? Why are we investing so much into this?

Andrea 31:47

Yeah, that's a question we always get, right? And I mean, it's fair enough. It's they're limited resources when it comes to endangered species. Management and protection one of the things I always like to consider is that this species, like I said, was never super abundant. So we're not looking to create or expecting to create a situation in BC where we're absolutely tripping over these frogs. Even when they had their ideal habitat, that was really unlikely to have been the case. So these frogs are really specific and bound closely to their environment. So what we're going for is we don't want an environment where all we have to know is that's a frog. So we want people to be able to be in the natural environments around them and be able to say, okay, that's a frog, but what kind is it? There's not just one if we don't do anything, then eventually it will be, Oh, that's a bullfrog. That's the only type of frog we have. Because that is where things were very likely to end up. We know that these frogs are naturally rare but that they, we're also on the fringe of their natural range. So they are more common in Washington and Oregon than they are up here. we're in the harshest, most northern habitats. and they have very different selection pressures than their southern relatives. We have a much shorter growing season. Our animals take longer to mature. And when we look at like modeling for extinction, like over time, based on the habitat and the climate parameters that we're able to measure. If we model what, the suitable and available habitat for this species is going to look like over time. we see it restricting up towards the Fraser Valley where we work. so lower Washington, Oregon, those areas are going to get drier possibly less hospitable when we look at a bunch of different factors. So it's, this area is going to be really important to maintain as climate changes. that being said, when we get the why should we care question I always feel like I have to justify the species existence like, oh, it helps agriculture in this way, or we could make a medicine from it at some point, or learn something that like directly helps humans like 100%. We, you know, we want to be able to get this medicine that cures cancer from this frog. And I mean, honestly, likely not, right? Like, it's, chances of this being like the cure for cancer is, is probably pretty low. And I just always try and focus it that it's not about observing something through its value to us. So it doesn't need to have intrinsic value to us as humans in order to be valued in general. So just trying to maintain these species on the landscape. I mean, if we maintain habitat for Oregon spotted frog, there is going to be benefits to humans because those wetlands are going to absorb floods that then will not flood your home. it's really hard to sell that because you're selling a prevention and selling a prevention is always much harder than selling a cure. But it's really unlikely for someone to say, Oh, my house didn't flood this year because we left that wetland intact a couple blocks over, right? Because they're never going to know that it was, it would have happened. And they're never going to see that benefit. So it is harder to kind of sell the species in that way. But these habitats are super valuable. From that perspective as well.

Meredith 35:21

I really like what you said to about, like, painting that picture of, Oh, we only have one frog left. So if you hear a frog, like. This is what it is because that like that really hit me. It made me really sad when you think about, you know, spring and summer nights when you can hear chorus of like different animals and the picture of just having, like, if we just had one frog left or one bird left, so much of the magic of the world is gone. And so much magic of the wetlands are gone. So I think, yeah, maybe it doesn't have, maybe it's not going to cure cancer, like you've said, but you know, there's a lot of magic around wetlands and frogs and our world will be poorer for it if we lose the species.

Andrea 36:06

Yeah. I remember I actually grew up right behind a historic Oregon spot of frog habitat. And as kids, we used to kind of go into the Creek behind our house and probably very illegally onto the army base behind that and go searching for frogs. And I had no idea as Oregon spot of frogs were there, we were just grabbing whatever we could and put it in a bucket to look at. Right. And I remember when we were growing up, we couldn't. we wanted to talk on the phone in our house in the middle of summer, we would have to shut the windows and go inside because you couldn't hear for the sound of the tree frogs. Just, it was so loud. and since then, they've put a couple rows, more streets of houses behind us right over the creek and there's no frogs anymore. really rare that you'll hear one. So we went from an overwhelming chorus of frogs to now nothing. So it can happen really quickly that you kind of lose those touchstone things that you maybe don't notice until they're gone.

Meredith 37:03

It kind of sounds like from that story that you were always meant to be working with frogs and then frog conservation, if that was like how you grew up. And but yeah, actually how, how did you get into this role? Cause it, it's a pretty niche position.

Andrea 37:19

Yeah, so I I think like a lot of kids, frogs are, and amphibians in general are often kind of our first opportunity to get wildlife kind of close to us or even in hand. And so that was definitely the case for myself. Poor mother is actually kind of scared of frogs and the amount of times they would be like a frog under my bed and she's like, Calmly trying to tell me to come and remove it from the house like it's great that it's there, honey But please remove it from the house So yeah, I definitely grew up with that but my career after I did my bachelor's was working on my master's which again was on frogs, but In between, I worked an endangered species breeding center and actually worked with, small cats and primates and thought that that was going to be the main focus of my work going forward and like a young, early 20s, idealistic biologist, I'm like, I'm going to travel the world and save the exotic species. And it's going to be amazing. And then, yeah. One of our other projects that we worked on the Vancouver Island Marmot the lady that worked with that program also did our spotted frog program, and she was finding it too much. So looking for someone to take on the work of the Oregon spotted frog program. And none of my other coworkers were really interested in doing it. They also were like, I'm going to work with rhinos or like crazy exotic stuff. And I put up my hand. I'm like, okay, well, I'll do it, but I don't want to be passed up for like. Other quote unquote cooler opportunities, right? Like, I'll do it fine. And so I started that and then ended up doing my master's on it and then did a little bit of traveling to work with some more exotic species of amphibians and reptiles, and then came back and started really drilling into the program and trying to figure out some of these bigger problems so yeah, it was definitely not what I went directly to a kind of circled back around to that.

Meredith 39:22

Yeah, I, it's such a funny story. So many people who I've talked to, they think they're going to work with mammals and then something takes them on this other direction. And they're like, and then I got to explore this other world. And I don't know if it's just because we grew up with like fuzzy pets and we're just like drawn to that because we're mammals and it's harder to understand like the life of an amphibian. But I'm sure you've, Gotten to be like immersed in this whole cool aquatic and terrestrial world.

Andrea 39:54

Yeah. And I mean, that's. There's definitely a lot of people in the world, herpetologists, so people that study amphibians reptiles that know more about herps in general than I do. I mean, there's a lot of people that know all the Latin names and all the species, and I know a lot about one species, so I'm very specific in that way. And that's. My, my goal of kind of figuring out these problems and figuring out, individual species as opposed to like the larger groups. That's kind of what has driven the species that I work with as opposed to like, I love frogs, I really just want to ever work with frogs.

Meredith 40:39

And since you have worked with a species and you've gotten to know this one species really well, is there something like really unexpected or like surprising you've learned about the Oregon spotted frog that you, like, you would have never imagined when you first started?

Andrea 40:55

Yeah, kind of the thing that I love most about them, and I touched on it briefly, is like how they lay their eggs. So, the fact that all the females come together and cluster their egg masses, like, so they're physically touching. And, and it can be hard to tell which egg mass is which, especially a few days after, up to a few days after they've been laid, they really start to merge together. And, like, why that is. Like, they don't have that draw them together as a group, they don't have a herd, they don't have any sort of way in which they rely on each other normally, but it's really neat how they create these mats of eggs that float on the surface, so they're not attached to anything else. that's one of the reasons why we are concerned about flooding for this species because it could very easily wash away an entire year's worth of productivity. But they create these big floating masses of eggs and what that actually does, it forms like an, a wild incubator for the tadpoles. So it creates a really shallow layer of water on the surface of the eggs. And as the tadpoles hatch, they hatch. From the top to the bottom so that the tables hatch and they sit on top of the egg masses. So they're still in the water, but they're in this really warm layer of water on top of the egg masses. So any sort of sun that we get, like today is cloudy, it's probably going to be cloudy week, but any sort of sun that we get would warm that water up really quickly and really nice. So it helps those tadpoles develop faster in this protected, like little Greenhouse that's created by the clear jelly of the eggs beneath them. So the tadpoles will just mass in there really tightly and they'll eat the jelly from the eggs and the algae that grows on the jelly. And as they're doing that, they're growing, they're getting stronger. So a tiny little tadpole as soon as it hatches, it really can't even maintain itself in the water column. It just falls, it would fall to the bottom of the wetland on its side where it's cold and it wouldn't develop very fast. So having this egg mass support them, keeps them up near the surface, it gives them food, it gives them warmth and as they develop, they eat through the egg mass, and by the time they get to the bottom, they're able to maintain themselves in the water column, they're really good at swimming, and they self release out into the wetland. So it's like, it's, it's kind of externalized maternal care. It really, they create an environment that helps to care for their tadpoles. So that is just really neat to see. And it's, it's really important for them because they do lay so early in the year and their tadpoles take all summer to develop that if they don't give them this little head start, it could really impact how many tadpoles are going to be able to metamorph.

Meredith 43:46

I love learning tidbits like this. It just makes you go like, wow, evolution is so weird. How did this? Come about this little incubation, but it makes such a big difference to the survival of the young and that's very cool. Really fascinating.

Andrea 44:05

Others, other frog species, like even red legged frogs, which are also on the landscape, they're more, slightly more common and, but they can be mistaken for Oregon spotted frogs, like they always, they often live side by side, but when we're, when we're surveying for egg masses in the wild, those are some of the distinguishing characteristics that we look for. Is it, is the egg mass by itself, then it, it's more likely to be a red legged frog egg mass. Could also be an Oregon spotted frog egg mass because they're so rare that the female might not find other egg masses to lay next to. But if it's attached to a stick, it's definitely not Oregon spotted frog. So, red legged frogs always attach their egg masses to a stick unless it has become dislodged for some reason. And Oregon spotted frogs don't. So it's, it's a distinctive way of laying their eggs for sure.

Meredith 44:53

And then I guess kind of last question, because I can't believe I haven't asked this yet, but we've talked a lot about, like, going into the or going into the field to serving for these egg masses. Do you have you have, have you had any, like, mishaps or funny stories from from going out and doing surveys?

Andrea 45:10

Yeah. So I don't do many surveys anymore, but back when I did, we were doing a study, a telemetry study. So that's where we put a transmitter on the animal that actively sends out a signal. So we pit tag or microchip all the frogs that we release. But that's a passive form of tracking them. So we need to get them in hand and scan them and to be able to tell who they are. transmittering is active, so that little transmitter that we put on them, it actively produces a signal that we can track. So when you're watching a nature documentary and someone has that radio antenna that they're holding that's got all the prongs on it, and they're listening to the beeps, that's radio telemetry. So, we do that for, we did that for the Oregon Spotted Frogs.

Meredith 45:54

And I, I'm gonna go ahead and do that. As we're, we're all the we're all, we're, we're all going to be together. We're all going to be a part of this. We are adjourned.

Andrea 46:22

cut into their tiny little arms. It's all very adorable. But anyway, we were tracking the frogs on the landscape. I was following the frogs, so it's a very linear, very long wetland area and getting the signal from one end and then trudge through there and my waders to get to the other side. And then on that side, I would look and it was back where I came from. So trudge back that way. And I was chasing it back and forth across this wetland, which doesn't make any sense because frogs are not that fast. but turns out what I was doing was chasing the heron back from one end of the wetland to the other and he had eaten the frog which I figured out when I was trying to track the heron, which I did not know I was tracking at that point, but it flew over top of me and that's where my signal went. So I'm like, okay, I haven't been tracking a frog this whole time. I've been tracking this heron. So, yeah. That was pretty funny. In maybe not so funny for the frog, but that's what happens when you're a prey species, so.

Meredith 47:24

yeah, the hair put you through your paces for sure. And yeah, so thank you. That's a great place to sort of wrap it up. But is there anything else that you would love people to know either about your project or about the Oregon spotted frog before we, before we say goodbye?

Andrea 47:43

I think just to really look at the value of the wetlands that we have around us. I know there is a lot of knowledge generally about the value of wetlands and that has been dispersed amongst the public quite a bit. And I think that as we start to experience more dramatic climate events that these things are going to be even more at the forefront of our minds and by helping these species, we can not only just have wetlands that function for us, but also function for our biodiversity. So having these frogs in a wetland doesn't take away from the fact that those wetlands help us and only makes them better.

Meredith 48:25

Perfect. That is the perfect note to leave it on. Andrea, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. I am in love with the Oregon Spotted Frog now.

Andrea 48:34

Success. Yay.

Meredith 48:36

And that's a wrap on this episode with Oregon Spotted Frog and Andrea LANs. A massive thank you to Andrea for taking the time to chat with us. And if you loved this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. It helps rare verify, reach more people who care about our planet's rarest creatures. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at rarefied dot pod and sign up for our newsletter on our website for updates and sneak peeks at upcoming episodes. And on our next episode, this one is going to be the closest episode to home. Once again, another super bear species that can only really be found in two bogs. It's got a tongue twister of a name and is an amazing pollinator. You won't wanna miss it. So until next time, get out there and explore the wild, because every species has a story and every one of us can make a difference. Thanks for listening and happy trails