Petition to save yellow-legged frog filed with state

The Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco has petitioned the California Fish and Game Commission to list all populations of the mountain yellow-legged frog as endangered under the California Endangered Species Act.

Mountain yellow-legged frogs inhabit high-elevation lakes, ponds and streams in the Sierra Nevada.
 

  “Once the most abundant frog in the High Sierra, the mountain yellow-legged frog now barely clings to survival,” said Jeff Miller, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The mountain yellow-legged frog needs the protections of the California Endangered Species Act to have any chance at recovery.”

Although some believe mountain yellow-legged frogs throughout California should be protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has only listed the Southern California population as endangered.

But some critics worry that overzealous protections for the frog could impact other uses in the Sierra, including grazing and fishing. Environmental groups cite fish-stocking as one of the enemies of a healthy frog population, because planted trout eat tadpoles.

The Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors, for instance, recently sent a letter to the California Fish and Game Department, expressing concern that proposed environmental regulations could affect sport fishing. Fishing brings in millions of dollars in tourism revenue each year, supervisors said.

In response to a 2000 petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Fish and Wildlife Service determined that Sierra Nevada mountain yellow-legged frogs also warrant federal listing as endangered, but that such listing is precluded by actions to list other species, Miller said.

As a fallback, the agency placed the Sierra population on the candidate list, which does not confer federal protection. The average time on the waiting list for candidate species is 17 years, and many animals and plants have gone extinct while waiting, he said.

“Continued delay of federal protection for all mountain yellow-legged frog populations is placing this unique California amphibian at risk of extinction,” said Miller. “Without federal action, this frog needs protection under the California Endangered Species Act.”

Only a few decades ago, it was difficult to walk around many of the Sierra’s alpine lakes without tripping over diminutive mountain yellow-legged frogs, known as “mountain gnomes.”

"Surveys since 1995 at 225 historic frog localities show extinction of 93 percent of the northern and central Sierra populations and 95 percent of southern populations,” Miller said.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national nonprofit conservation organization with more than 255,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

“Mountain yellow-legged frogs are adapted to high-elevation habitats without aquatic predators,” Miller said. “Widespread stocking of nonnative trout in high-elevation Sierra lakes by the California Department of Fish and Game has been the primary cause of decline for the species.”

Since 2000, the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service have begun removing nonnative trout from some high Sierra lakes on federal lands in an attempt to restore yellow-legged frog populations, he said.

Recent research also has linked pesticides that drift from agricultural areas in the Central Valley to declines of native amphibians in the Sierra Nevada, Miller said. 

Pesticides and other pollutants can directly kill frogs and also act as environmental stressors that render amphibians more susceptible to diseases, including a chytrid fungus that has recently ravaged many yellow-legged frog populations, he said.