Reforestation, Reggaeton and the Recovery of Puerto Rico’s Crested Toad

Wildlife lovers had a special treat at this year’s Super Bowl—Bad Bunny’s halftime show featured an endangered Puerto Rican toad. While it may have been the first time some viewers saw the species, the amphibian’s natural and cultural significance goes much deeper.  

The Puerto Rican crested toad’s story is emblematic of both environmental destruction and more recent attempts at restoration on the island. European colonizers deforested most of the island to cultivate sugar cane, leaving a devastated environment in their wake. Today, conservationists are working to rebuild these forests by following nature’s lead. The endangered Puerto Rican crested toad, a species that was almost wiped off the island entirely, is just one of the species benefiting from these efforts. 

In this episode of “Our Wild Lives,” staff writer Olivia Milloway visits Hacienda la Esperanza nature preserve to investigate how Puerto Rican nonprofit Para La Naturaleza is restoring the island’s forests for the sake of endemic birds and crested toad populations.  

“Our Wild Lives” is The Wildlife Society’s weekly podcast, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts, Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices. New episodes are released weekly wherever you get your podcasts. 

This episode features reporting from a three-part online series on habitat restoration and wildlife management in Puerto Rico. Read the first part on deforestation and habitat fragmentation, the second part on Puerto Rican oriole conservation and the third part on the reintroduction of the crested toad.  

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Transcript

Hook: Album, Toad, And Forest

SPEAKER_03 0:03

What does an award-winning album, an endangered species, and its successful forest restoration have in common? Keep on listening to find out more. Today we take you to Puerto Rico, a small island in the Caribbean, famous for its music, food, beaches, and more recently, smash hit artist Bad Bunny. TWS staff writer Olivia Millaway recently visited to learn more about wildlife conservation efforts on the island. Today, she brings us along as she explores restoration sites with wildlife professionals, treks through the forest in the dead of night in search for an endangered toad, and more. I'm your host, Katie Perkins, with special reporting for this episode done by Olivia Millaway. Welcome to the Our Wildlife Podcast, brought to you by the Wildlife Society. Hey Libby. Did you watch the Super Bowl last month? I missed most of it. I really just tuned in for the halftime show.

SPEAKER_04 1:12

Yeah, me too. I was especially excited for this year's performance, where we had a special amphibious guest.

SPEAKER_03 1:19

Okay, I thought I saw a frog on the screen. What was going on there?

SPEAKER_04 1:23

Well, in case you missed it, Puerto Rican artist Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, better known by his stage name, Bad Bunny, was this year's Super Bowl halftime performer. And he brought out one of his friends, an animated toad named Concho. Concho isn't just any toad. He's a Puerto Rican crested toad, or sapo concho, who has become the mascot of Bad Bunny's latest album, Debí tirar más fotos. It was the first Spanish language album to win a Grammy for Album of the Year.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

I really loved his show, and I was so sad I missed out on that casting call to be a huge bunch of grass. But tell me more about this toad.

Meet The Endangered Crested Toad

Why Forest Loss Hit Toads Hard

SPEAKER_04 2:01

Well, not many people, not even many Boricuas or Puerto Ricans, had heard about the crested toad until recently. The Puerto Rican crested toad is an endangered species that scientists are working to bring back from the brink of extinction. Only one natural population of the species exists on the island, but there are several new experimental populations where wildlife biologists are reintroducing the animal to the wild. Wow, what drove that decline? Well, nearly the entire island, around 94%, has been deforested at one point or another. And these toads, they rely on healthy, intact forests.

SPEAKER_03 2:40

What caused all the deforestation in Puerto Rico?

On The Ground With Alcides

SPEAKER_04 2:43

Well, today it looks like coastal development for luxury marinas and resorts. But there are a whole host of Puerto Rican wildlife professionals and nonprofits who are working to make the island more resilient for the future. I went and visited the island last August and talked to some folks who are working to ensure the future of the island's diverse ecosystems and the endemic species who call them home. I wrote a three-part series on conservation in Puerto Rico for our website, wildlife.org, that you can read now. But I learned so much during my visit that I couldn't just fit it into three stories. So I wanted to share some more with you today.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

Yes, that trip looked so awesome. So I have to know, did you get to see some crested toads?

SPEAKER_04 3:25

We'll get to that, Katie, I promise. But first, I want to introduce you to a wildlife biologist I met on the island. After touching down in San Juan, I drove straight to meet with Alcidas Morales Perez, the manager of Hacienda Esperanza Nature Preserve.

Hacienda Esperanza’s Past And Birds

SPEAKER_02 3:43

We're in Hacienda Esperanza Nature Reserve, which is located in the north region of Puerto Rico. It's about 2,200 acres of protected land in the Alluvio Valley of the Rio Grande de Manatin. It used to be a very important sugarcane hacienda in the early 1800s until 1900s. So all this was completely deforestated to make space for sugarcane, wetlands were drained, so a lot of habitat destruction and devastation. A historic site from the Spanish era.

SPEAKER_04 5:12

The historic manor house of the plantation is actually still standing, and they use it for the reserves visitor center.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

That sounds so beautiful. What was it like visiting there?

SPEAKER_04 5:22

Yeah, it was gorgeous. And it was also a little hard to focus on the interview. There were so many birds around. Al Cidas is really good at finding birds. Like, really good.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

Oh, a woodpecker, woodpecker. Come this angle. Come here, here, come, come, come. Oh, that's a Puerto Rican spindalis. Come, come this angle. In the very top.

unknown 5:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

That's a female.

unknown 5:44

What is this?

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Puerto Rican spindalis. Oh, hummingbird, Puerto Rican mango.

SPEAKER_04 5:50

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

That's huge.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

That's one of our endemic hummingbirds.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Well, I think I need to visit and learn some birding tips from him. So what else did you see?

Hurricane Maria’s Ecological Toll

SPEAKER_04 6:02

Well, Alcidas gave me a tour of the preserve with ample interruptions for seeing native birds. And he told me more about the place's natural and cultural history. Like many islands in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico was colonized by Europeans. Enslaved Africans were brought to the island and forced to work on sugar plantations, like the one at Hacienda La Esperanza. Sugar was a main driver of deforestation in Puerto Rico, like that statistic we talked about earlier. At one point, researchers estimate that only 6% of forest cover remained. But now it's up to around 50%, thanks to natural and planned restoration efforts. There's a new threat though, really, really devastating hurricanes, like 2017's Hurricane Maria.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

The eye of Hurricane Maria just came ashore in Puerto Rico. The storm weakened slightly overnight to a strong category four, but officials there predict entire towns will have to be rebuilt. Maria's top winds.

SPEAKER_03 7:00

I remember that.

SPEAKER_04 7:03

Yeah, they did. The official death toll rose to nearly 3,000, but some researchers still estimate that it was higher. At one point, the entire island lost electricity, and in some areas it took years for it to come back. It was the longest blackout in U.S. history. The hurricane also reshaped the island's environment. Some studies have estimated that between 40 to 60 percent of all tall trees on the island were damaged or destroyed. That's up to 31 million trees.

SPEAKER_03 7:31

31 million trees? That is hard to wrap your mind around.

Reforesting For Endemic Birds

SPEAKER_04 7:35

Yeah, exactly. After seeing all this devastation that was caused by Maria firsthand, Alcidas decided to start reforestation efforts in earnest at Aciana Lasperanza.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

After Hurricane Maria, Category 5 hurricane that passed to Puerto Rico, we saw how much damage it's done, but how vulnerable the land was because of a lack of forest cover.

SPEAKER_04 8:03

The preserve had a lot of erosion for one. But Alcidas also noticed how the birds were struggling. Especially the endemic birds, which Alcidas said are especially reliant on forest cover.

SPEAKER_03 8:26

And endemic means they're native to that area and not found anywhere else, right? Is that why they're so reliant on forest cover?

SPEAKER_04 8:33

So this is one of my favorite examples of where wildlife management, evolutionary biology, and animal behavior all collide. Like other island birds, think New Zealand's Kiwi, for example. Endemic birds in Puerto Rico were likely on their way to losing flight. They live on a really small island. Puerto Rico is smaller than 48 U.S. states. It's a little bit smaller than Connecticut and a little bit bigger than Delaware, if that means anything to you. And there are a few native predators on the island. The only native mammals in Puerto Rico are bats. So birds weren't really worried about flying away from land-based predators, like a cat, for example.

SPEAKER_03 9:11

Okay, I get it. So they're really weak flyers, so they need all of this forest to get from point A to point B.

Designing Corridors That Birds Use

SPEAKER_04 9:17

Exactly. Alcidas noticed that birds, especially these endemics we're talking about, were present in certain forest patches at Hacienda Las Baranza, but they weren't present in others. Knowing all this about endemic birds, he created a reforestation plan that worked on connecting existing forest patches to one another. We spoke about one species in particular, the Puerto Rican bullfinch, which is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, better known as the IUCN. It's also listed as a species of conservation concern by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

The Hacienda Esperanza Nature Reserve, they're restricted to the south side of the reserve in the karse forest. So that's a red legged trash. So that's one of the criteria.

SPEAKER_04 10:12

But this kind of work, especially in a place like Puerto Rico, is easier said than done.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

We had one dilemma, is that we have a lot of native species to plant, but we have no idea of how these lowland forests look like. They were chopped down before any naturalist could document it well back in the day. So in during that exercise, I look at what was growing naturally in the secession in the lowlands, here in the Hacienda and in nearby sites in nearby private land or nature reserves, and also looking at nearby islands.

Seed Rain And Succession

SPEAKER_04 10:57

So Alcida started to design the plantings, thinking about which species were fast growing and could outcompete the invasive grasses, which were a big problem. He also wanted to prioritize trees that produced fleshy fruits and would attract seed dispersers.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Because I want to promote birds, bats, and reptiles to come and feed. So because they can kick start faster the animal-plant interactions.

SPEAKER_04 11:31

These reforestation efforts may also help another declining species, the Puerto Rican Oriole, against an invasive brood parasite, the shiny cowbird. That's what the second installment of my three-part series is about. So go there if you want to learn more. I had the chance to talk with a researcher from the University of Maryland, Michael Ocasio, about his work on the species. There's a video that really makes me giggle in that story, so be sure to go check it out. But, anyways, back to the story. So this is like an example of natural succession, or yeah, that eh.

Planting For Decades Ahead

SPEAKER_02 12:11

We can head in there and have a look. That's been planted. That's a corridor. That's a corridor. And however, now we don't manage much in it.

SPEAKER_04 12:22

It looks really good. Yeah, it's super diverse.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Super diverse. It has strata. Yeah, yeah. You got the dominant emergent tree, you got the canopy. Exactly, yeah. There's some understory developing. You got vines, you got cover.

SPEAKER_04 12:40

As you can tell from that clip, I was quite impressed. Nowadays, Alcida said that the only management he does is cutting down invasive vines every once in a while to make sure they don't overtake the forest. But other than that, it's a really hands-off approach.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

All the bigger trees were planted. So we can see some of these trees um were dispersed by bats naturally. For example, these ones that are already dying, those are pioneer trees. So they grow really fast, provide a lot of food and cover, but they don't live long enough, like 10, 8 years. So they will start dying, but they promote a lot of seed rain because bats and birds come to feed on the fruit.

Building A Replicable Recipe

SPEAKER_03 13:30

Okay, wait, what is seed rain? Um, I'll let Alcidas explain it.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

So seed rain is when a bird, either a bird or a bat, uh after feeding in a nearby forest, comes to rest at a at another uh site. It could be a perch, it could be uh a roosting side, and all those fruits that that organism ingested are filled with with seeds, and once they defecate, it rains seeds.

SPEAKER_03 14:06

Oh, so it sounds like seed rain is a very sophisticated way to say birds pooped and did the work for him.

SPEAKER_04 14:13

Yeah, I guess you could say that. There's not a lot out there on what trees should be planted first and what succession looks like thereafter. So that's why Alcidas follows these ideas and other cues from the ecosystem to guide his management decisions.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

I think like a bird. That's the thing. You need to think like a bird.

SPEAKER_03 14:33

So is his focus just on these fruit-bearing trees, or how else is he planning for the long-term regrowth of these forests?

SPEAKER_04 14:40

Yeah, so Alcidas also plants trees that he knows are going to take a long time to get established, like the bullet wood tree. It can take more than 50 years to reach maturity, and it was commonly logged across the island for construction. The manor house where we started our tour was made out of bullet wood. Bullet wood is dispersed by bats, so it could take years and years for the seeds to reach these reforested plots naturally. So Alcidez wanted to plant some to give the tree a leg up. In thinking like a bird, he's trying to create a recipe that can be replicated across Puerto Rico and in other parts of the Caribbean too.

SPEAKER_03 15:17

How's this recipe development going for him?

SPEAKER_04 15:19

I'll let Alcidez answer.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

Nowadays, in the of a time of a restoration need and biodiversity crisis. But if you know we we we're trying to kind of make a recipe that can be replicated, and that's one of my goals too. That's why I'm documenting eventually I want to publish some of these findings. Because in on the track of getting information to do the restoration planning and eventually the restoration, there's a high lack of information out there of how to restore forests in the Caribbean, especially especially in the Caribbean.

Break And Membership Message

SPEAKER_04 16:16

In this time of a biodiversity crisis, I'm really glad we have people like Alcidas on our team. But now I'll finally tell you the story of how I got my eyes, but not my hands, on the famous crested toad. That after the break.

SPEAKER_03 16:33

Wildlife needs professionals, and professionals need community. Join the Wildlife Society for career resources, networking, publications, and opportunities that support your work in wildlife science and conservation. Learn more and join today at wildlife.org slash membership.

SPEAKER_04 16:51

After hearing so much about the crested toad, I was ready to get my eyes on one. But it's not that easy. Like I said at the top of the episode, the crested toad is an endangered species, but a group of scientists, veterinarians, and land managers are working to reintroduce the animal into the wild. Omaha's Henry Dorley Zoo and Aquarium is actually one of the zoos involved in the captive breeding effort. In an interview, their curator of amphibians and reptiles said that there's probably more crested toads in their breeding facility in Omaha, around 350, than there are anywhere else in the world, maybe even in the wild.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

So Omaha, Nebraska, home of Warren Buffett, the College Baseball World Series, and endangered crested toads.

SPEAKER_04 17:34

Who knew? Yeah, I know, right? I like to imagine the poor little Puerto Rican frogs in their mittens and scarves over the winter. Definitely. But I digress. The Henry Dorley Zoo, along with a handful of other zoos that are all a part of the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums, or AZA, are partnering with Barola Naturales, the organization that Alcidas works for, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Puerto Rico's Department of Natural and Environmental Resources. Because it's an endangered species, U.S. Fish and Wildlife determines where and how many animals are released back into the wild.

SPEAKER_03 18:10

Where you went birding with Alcides at Hacienda de la Esperanza is one of those places that meet the criteria for reintroducing these toads. Exactly.

Into The Karst At Night

SPEAKER_04 18:19

There are also a few other sites where the frogs are being released. When I was in Puerto Rico, I met Ricardo Rodriguez, who manages a few of those sites on the northern side of the island. He explained to me more about how the program works and how they've released thousands and thousands of crested toad tadpoles back into the wild. It involves toads on a plane, but I don't want to spoil the ending. You can read more about it in the third and final installment of this mini-series. After Ricardo told me about their protocols for reintroduction and monitoring, he and Alcides took me out into the karst forest to search for the crested toads themselves. So what is a karst forest? Great question. Alcidas mentioned it earlier when describing all the different habitat types at Hacienda La Esponanza. Puerto Rico's karst region is a stronghold of biodiversity on the island. When colonizers were cutting and burning down forest for plantations, the mountainous regions on the island's center were too steep to accommodate farming. When I talked about how around 94% of Puerto Rico had been deforested at some point, some of the remaining 6% that was left standing were located in the karst region.

SPEAKER_03 19:26

I see, so it just wasn't economically viable to cut this karst forest down.

SPEAKER_04 19:31

Yeah. Luckily, some of the karst forests were spared. They're also crucial habitat for the crested toad. Karst itself is a landscape type that's mostly made out of limestone, which is really porous and breaks down easily. So it's full of caves, sinkholes, and other sort of scraggly, craggly rocks that have lots of tiny hidey holes for crested toads. And it needs these hiding spots to survive. The crested toad's upturned nose, which I think looks like a baby crocodile, it's very cute, can actually be used to block up the entrance to the hole and keep them safe from predators.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

That's a design choice. So you got to go out into the field with Ricardo. What else did you see?

SPEAKER_04 20:10

We saw a Puerto Rican racer, a species of endemic snake, which was really cool. We heard a Puerto Rican owl, but couldn't get eyes on it. And we also heard another bird that startled me the first time I heard it.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

You know the first Predator movie? I think that the writer of that movie came to Puerto Rico in the late uh 70s or 80s because the lizard cuckoo goes like have you? Not super loud, similar to the sound of the creature. Yep.

Finding Juvenile Toads

SPEAKER_04 20:44

That was Ricardo, who works with Alcidas on the toad reintroductions. We were walking along the trail, bats flying overhead, mosquitoes coming out for a late night snack, listening to the lizard cuckoos, the frogs calling, and all the other night critters. Nighttime is maybe my favorite time to be out in the forest. It wasn't long until we found our first toad.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Oh frogs! Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Ricaldo! Hey! That's a crested toad. Nice, fine. Wow. It was meant for you.

SPEAKER_04 21:16

Not to brag, but I was pretty good at finding them.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Oh, there's two.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Yeah, yeah, there's a couple, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Yeah, we're in Last time we estimate um 75. Wow. Be prepared.

SPEAKER_04 21:30

The crested toads we found that night had just left the pond. They were still super tiny with a kind of shrevron pattern on their back. In a few years, they'll grow to full size, about the size of a credit card. And the males will turn more yellow, like the ones that we're all used to seeing in Bad Bunny music videos. Did you see any adults? No, we just saw the little guys this time. But Hacienda Lasperanza was actually the first site in the entire reintroduction program. Where they found a natural breeding event. So, in other words, frogs similar to the ones that we saw that night had mated and made their own babies.

First Natural Breeding Success

SPEAKER_03 22:08

That's so exciting. I have so many more questions, but I'm gonna go read the story online for now.

SPEAKER_04 22:14

Yeah, it was honestly a really fun night. And y'all know what night surveys are like. There's plenty of time to be quiet and think about the world around you. But there's also lots of time to chat and share stories. Al Cidas told me a bit about why he got into conservation work in the first place.

A Toad As An Umbrella Species

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Yeah, well, I grew up uh in a rural area. My grandfather was a farmer and he knew his birds, the plants, my dad also. I I always had an interest in every creature, bird, reptile. I was lucky to have a really good teacher in high school from biology that you know he he saw my interest, so he lent me equipment, uh he helped me out into the field, and so I was involved in the crested toad from high school because my teacher was the one who discovered, rediscovered the population in the north. He was the last person to take pictures and saw it in Quebradillas before it disappeared.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

I love that story. It's clear he has a real passion for conservation in Puerto Rico. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:35

Alcidez told me it's been really cool for him to see the crested toad get so much attention recently.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

It's very interesting because it's got a wide acceptance, and we're sell everybody celebrating it because we got uh not so pretty species being elevated as an umbrella species. Because before that, the Puerto Rican Amazon was the umbrella species of conservation, wildlife conservation in Puerto Rico. Now you have a turnover of a toad being kind of the umbrella species for conservation. And that's very important, and and I think that's uh the point of the arrow that you know can have a wider impact in the conservation movement.

SPEAKER_04 24:22

So Alcides just mentioned the idea of an umbrella species, which is an animal whose popular attention and conservation protects a whole ecosystem. You could think about pandas or the bald eagle. And putting attention on the crested toad specifically could lead to things like purchasing more land around where the reintroductions are happening, or expanding protected areas on the northern side of the island where the historic populations used to be. That will help the island's other endangered species, like the Puerto Rican boa. Alcida says that maybe if there's enough improvement in the habitat and resources for their return, the Puerto Rican Amazon, the island's only native parrot species, another endangered species, could settle down in Hacienda la Esperanza, too.

Culture, Concert, And Conservation

SPEAKER_03 25:08

You said Esperanza means hope, right? That seems like a really fitting name.

Why People Keep Doing The Work

SPEAKER_04 25:13

Yeah, it really is. Talking to Al Cidas and seeing the progress that's been made, especially post-Hurricane Maria, was the most hopeful I've been in a long time. So was this field work the end of your trip? Actually, it wasn't. A few days later, I did see Bad Bunny in concert in his historic residency. That would have been so fun. What was it like? Ugh, it was so fun. The experience and love for the crested toad started before the concert. Outside the Coliseum, there were booths sharing information on the crested toad and its conservation and other environmental issues important to Puerto Rico. You could even buy shirts with a crested toad on it. Inside the Coliseum, the excitement and energy was even stronger. It was one of the most powerful and moving pieces of artistic expression that I have ever seen. When Concho came on the screen and had his little cameos throughout the concert, everyone in the stadium went wild. It was really, really special to see. But as I was standing there listening to the music, I wondered how many people in that stadium had actually seen a crested toad in person. And then I thought about Alcidas, Ricardo, and all the other scientists, students, and volunteers who are working hard to make sure the reintroduction is a success, who are walking through the forest at night looking for tiny camouflage toads hiding in a leaf litter. And something sort of clicked for me. And my reporting here at the Wildlife Society, I always want to get to the why. Why do scientists travel around the world to do crazy field work or fly tadpoles across the ocean and work so hard on so little sleep to finish their projects when the odds often feel stacked against them? And in the case of the crested toad, too, I mean, there are more than a thousand species of endangered amphibians, and hundreds of them have already gone extinct. But in that arena, surrounded by boricwas and visitors like myself, all there to celebrate the island and its natural and cultural history, I finally found an answer.