cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8484458

Banner image: The golden mantella, an endangered frog species found only in Madagascar. Image by Frank Vassen via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Africa’s amphibians are overlooked in conservation planning, experts warn

Herpetologists are calling for greater inclusion of amphibians in African conservation planning, in a recent letter published in the journal Science.

Africa is home to roughly 1,170 known species of amphibians, 99% of which are endemic. Some 37% of the amphibians are recognized as threatened with extinction.

The researchers note that amphibians — frogs, salamanders and caecilians — are especially important as early-warning detectors of ecological disruption, given their sensitivity to pathogens, thermal stress, pollution and hydrological changes in their wetland habitats. Yet amphibians as a group remain poorly represented in protected-area planning and management tools in Africa, the authors write. They note there are only 12 documented amphibian-specific action plans across the continent. These include a conservation plan for frogs in Cape Town, South Africa, and for the golden mantella frog (Mantella aurantiaca) in Madagascar.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for example, doesn’t yet have conservation action plans specifically dedicated to amphibians, according to the letter’s lead author, Bienvenu Mwale, an expert on amphibians in the DRC and Cameroon. “To date, the DR Congo existing legal frameworks remain broad and give limited attention to this taxonomic group, with a stronger focus on large mammals,” Mwale told Mongabay by email.

Cameroon, on the other hand, has given full protection to six amphibian species, including the Goliath frog (Conraua goliath), the world’s largest, through a ministerial decree. This could be a good model for African conservation planning, Mwale said.

He added that several African amphibian species are currently classified as data deficient on the IUCN Red List, meaning there’s not enough information to assess their conservation status.

“One of the needs for amphibian conservation plans in Africa (that citizens can help with) is specific information on distribution,” Amaël Borzée, a co-author of the letter and member of the Amphiban Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, told Mongabay by email. “This is something anyone can help with, and for instance, doing it through the iNaturalist platform is a great way for people to get engaged. This is easy: take a picture of any amphibian and upload it on iNaturalist, and the job is done, and it helps.”

Karen Lips, an amphibian expert not affiliated with the letter, told Mongabay in an email: “I agree that much more research and much more conservation is needed in Africa. It is a continent with incredible richness of biodiversity, but still needs research to understand patterns of distribution and threats to that biodiversity.

“Africa is one of the regions with the least amount of information on amphibian population biology, meaning that we are not able to assess how land use change, climate change, disease, or other factors affect those species, because we have no baseline population data for comparisons,” Lips added.