“The amphibians are like canaries in a coal mine and they are in trouble first. …The fact of the matter is: we have only one coal mine for planet earth. The coal mine is in trouble right now. And the amphibians are telling us it’s a warning!”
– Andrew Blaustein, Ph.D., Oregon State University Zoologist
August 26, 2005 Corvallis, Oregon – What is killing amphibians around the world? The die-off in many species began in the 1980s and has not stopped. There have been waves of extensive amphibian die-offs in Australia, Central and South America and spreading into North America. Zoologists and other scientists have been forced to look urgently for the cause. One of the culprits is a fungus called Chytrid (KIT-trid) which attacks amphibians in such a way that they can’t eat. Its formal name is Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which was first discovered on dead and dying frogs in Queensland, Australia in 1993. Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) reports, “This is the first time a chytrid fungus has been found to parasitize vertebrates.”Click for report.