A group of rare frogs has survived its first year after nearly 1,000 eggs were transported to two streams in the Santa Monica Mountains last spring.
The California red-legged frog, made famous in Mark Twain's short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," is on the endangered species list due to invasive species and habitat loss, according to the National Wildlife Federation. Surviving a year in the mountains doesn't mean victory in the effort to spread the range of the frogs, named for the reddish color under their legs and abdomen, just yet.
"Most studies have found that only one to five percent of frogs in the wild make it to adulthood, so this is not a given," said Katy Delaney, wildlife ecologist for the National Park Service. "They're basically teenagers now since it takes them two years to reach adulthood. And they're the first California red-legged frogs to grow up in the Santa Monica Mountains since the early 1970s."
Once the eggs developed into tadpoles, Delaney and her team fed them organic lettuce, algae and pellets and released them in July 2014, according to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Center. More than 1,000 additional tadpoles were also released earlier this week.
Because only visual detection during daytime surveys of the frogs is currently being conducted, the exact number of the population is unknown, but the frogs will be marked in the future. Biologists are hoping enough of the frogs, the largest native frogs in the western United States, survive to start breeding in spring 2016.
