ECOVIEWS
HOW RARE IS THE GOPHER FROG?
The gopher frog is one of the cutest big frogs I know. A calling male sounds exactly like someone snoring, a loud and marvelous noise you can actually enjoy, when it's a frog. Another lovable feature is that when you pick one up it's likely to put its hands in front of its face, like a child shielding his eyes from a bright light. Unfortunately, you may never get to see one, because the gopher frog is rare, and seemingly becoming rarer.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is concerned about its fate. So are the southeastern timber and pulpwood companies, on whose land many of these amphibians live. Is site preparation during forestry activities one cause of its apparent disappearance? This evidence of concern is a good sign, a sign that many people care about the status and fate of this fascinating animal.
Gopher frogs are like many other native animals in regard to our depth of knowledge. Some text books and TV nature shows give the impression we understand more than we really do about animal ecology and behavior. For a few animals we know a lot. For most, including the gopher frog, our knowledge is superficial.
Early naturalists noticed an association between the frogs and gopher tortoise colonies. The underground burrows of tortoises were used as refuges by the frogs. Gopher frogs will also use crawfish and rodent burrows. Indeed they spend much of their lives underground, often in someone else's home. Seeing one above ground, especially during the day, has always been unlikely. Seeing one at all has become a noteworthy event.
Once geographically widespread, gopher frogs ranged from North Carolina to eastern Louisiana to most of Florida. But the number discovered in the past few decades has been disturbingly low. Few if any specimens have been found in Louisiana since the 1960s. Only one breeding population is now known to exist in Mississippi.
Gopher frogs are known from several sites in southern Alabama but they cannot be found in some places where they once were. In South Carolina most have been discovered on the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site where habitat protection and opportunities for ecological field research are ideal. But the records represent the only ones reported from the entire state of South Carolina in most of the past decade. In Georgia most have been found on Ft. Stewart military base near Savannah.
An important point amid today's zeal for "privatization" is that large military bases and other government lands serve as vital havens for rare as well as common species. By limiting public access, commercial development, and other forms of environmental disturbance such sites protect wildlife habitats. Equally important they protect the field research needed to enhance ecological understanding of various species.
Our perception of rarity hinges on the difficulty of determining the presence of a species. The chances of discovery are low for a frog that stays beneath the ground. Most frogs are located by listening for calling males at night at a breeding pond or catching the tadpoles with a dipnet. What if adult gopher frogs call on only one night each spring at a particular breeding site? If no one is there to hear them, their presence goes unnoticed.
And imagine your chances of catching a gopher frog tadpole in a ten-thousand-square-foot pond, which is not very big. If a hundred are present it means only one tadpole for every hundred square feet! To reduce the odds further, frightened tadpoles retreat to the bottom muck of a pond. Such behavior makes their capture with a net difficult. One's chances of finding a gopher frog tadpole or adult in the wild are slim.
The reasons for concern about the destiny of gopher frogs vary. Most center around environmental protection issues, ranging from legal aspects to an interest in preserving our natural heritage of native plants and animals. An encouraging sign is that the organizations and industries that can have the greatest influence on survival of these species care about their destiny. Balancing economic and environmental concerns is in the best interest of all species--including our own.
If you have an environmental question or comment, email ecoviews@gmail.com.