Future For Frogs On Film

Forest and Bird, Issue 298, 1 November 2000, Page 7

Future For Frogs On Film

he last production of the [ now-disbanded video unit of the Department of Conservation is devoted to Pepeketua — New Zealand’s native frogs. The video was made possible by an Auckland-based company, Ace Doors Ltd, which has a frog in its logo. The company has given $30,000 for research into native frogs over the past three years. New Zealand’s native frogs differ from species found elsewhere in the world and are regarded as the ‘most primitive’. They don’t croak, have round (not slit) eyes, no external eardrum, and no free-swimming tadpole stage, each egg hatching instead as a tiny frog. Of the seven species, three are already extinct and two species exist only in very limited, offshore environments. (Hamilton’s frog and the Maud Island frog, see our feature on

Maud Island in this issue.) ‘Sponsorship’ of the frog species has allowed more research to be done into the animals, according to Don Newman, the DoC science manager responsible. Ongoing research includes assessing the impact of 1080 poison (yé7-@@ programmes on native frogs, and research into their numbers and populations. Further work includes developing methods for translocating frogs to other places — as was done with the Maud Island frog when a population was transferred and established on Motuara Island, elsewhere in the Marlborough Sounds. The frog video introduces all four species, shows their habitat, and how to distinguish them from introduced frogs. It runs for 18 minutes and should be available on loan from conservancy offices of the Department of Conservation.