Feature Pool frogs take a leap forward By Jim Foster - Conservation Director ARC’s Conservation Director, Jim Foster, explains how ARC is securing the future of our rarest amphibian thanks to a new government grant. In November 2020 we were delighted to hear that ARC had secured an award from the government’s Green Recovery Challenge Fund for a project on pool frogs in East Anglia. This project will allow us to enhance the conservation status of the pool frog, which is our rarest amphibian and indeed one of Britain’s scarcest animals. A recent review by ARC has indicated the species should be considered “Critically Endangered” in England, largely as it occurs at just two locations. Both those populations result from translocations undertaken by ARC and partners, after the species had gone extinct in the wild in the 1990s. It is very rare for a vertebrate to be reintroduced after going nationally extinct, and in the case of the pool frog we did this by importing animals from Sweden. You can read more about the background on our website, here: www.arc-trust.org/pool-frog The project has three broad strands. Firstly we will consolidate the existing pool frog population through captive rearing of tadpoles, restoring pool frog breeding ponds, and gaining a better handle on the status of those populations through intensive monitoring. Using experience from previous years, our captive rearing aims to take spawn from the wild and rear the resulting tadpoles past the stage where, in the wild, they would suffer high losses from predators. The animals will be released into the wild once they reach a good size, in July and August. We are recruiting a small band of volunteers to help with monitoring the wild populations and rearing tadpoles.
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Secondly, the project will bring pool frog conservation to a wider audience. With such a rare and vulnerable animal, we obviously need to be careful about encouraging lots of people to see pool frogs in the wild, as that carries a risk of harm for example through disturbance. We can, however, raise awareness by other means, so the project involves the creation of professional videos, which we will put on our website. This will allow us to tell a wide range of people about pool frogs without the risk of compromising wild populations. The videos will also be used to train volunteers and professionals in future.
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Photo: top right: A pool frog completing metamorphosis. Photo above: An adult male pool frog, Norfolk © Jim Foster (ARC).
