“The world’s a better place with frogs,” says devout amphibian lover Kerry Kriger. Kriger is sitting in his Santa Cruz office, his arms and legs crossed and his shoes kicked off to reveal white socks. “For me it’s enough just protecting wilderness because I like wilderness,” he says. “It’s our ethical responsibility to other organisms on the planet.”
Kriger is headed April 29 for the steps of the Environmental Protection Agency, where he will protest the use of Atrazine, a chemical compound used mostly on corn and which mimics estrogen. The most commonly detected pesticide in American groundwater, Atrazine is currently under review for repeal by the EPA. “It’s rare that any pesticide ever approved comes back for review,” says Kriger of the Swiss-made product, which the European Union banned in 2004. “There’s so much scientific evidence of its harm.”
Kriger says a tiny drop of Atrazine—less than three parts per billion in a water supply—can transform male frogs into females. “They have permeable skin, so they’re absorbing anything bad that gets in the water,” says Kriger with an almost indistinguishable lisp. As he talks, he searches his pants and black shirt for microscopic pieces of lint, which he is constantly pulling off.
Kriger, who received his PhD in environmental science doing amphibian research in Australia, founded Santa Cruz-based Save The Frogs in February 2009. Today, his battle against Atrazine is part of a Save The Frogs Day celebration, an event now entering its third year. Later this month, 200 cities across 30 countries will host rallies to protect frogs in a small part of Kriger’s uphill climb on behalf of amphibians, the fastest disappearing animal class on the planet.
For a variety of reasons like destroyed habitats, frog harvesting and invasive species, amphibians are disappearing from the planet. Based on fossil records, Kriger estimates they’re going extinct at 3,000 times the natural rate. That estimate is a conservative one.
Malcolm McCallum, managing editor of Herpetological Conservation and Biology, estimated in a 2007 study that amphibians may be becoming extinct at between 25,000 and 40,000 times the natural rate. “No matter what the number is, it’s unprecedented in the history of the planet that anything could be going extinct this fast,” says McCallum. “For amphibians in general the rate of extinction at which these animals is going is just off the chart.”
For millions of years amphibians have served as an important link in the food chain between the biting, disease-carrying bugs they eat and the reptiles, mammals and birds that in turn eat them. Tadpoles help clean and filter drinking water by eating algae before supplies even leave reservoirs and streams. Ten percent of Nobel Prize-winning research has been done on amphibians. Today research is being done on the Southern Orange-eyed Tree Frog, whose skin contains a peptide that could prove useful for an HIV vaccine.
“Anything frogs can do that we cannot do is something that we can learn from [them]. But if they’re extinct, there’s no chance,” says Kriger.
In addition to his Washington, D.C. rally, Kriger is coordinating a Santa Cruz gathering on Save the Frogs Day to remove non-native vegetation from Antonelli Pond behind Natural Bridges State Beach, where invasive American bullfrogs are gobbling up endangered California red-legged frogs. In San Francisco, frog supporters will decry the Sharp Park Golf Course built on wetlands that are home to the same endangered amphibians. In New York City, under Kriger’s planning and guidance, picketers will turn their energies to Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs, which sells frog legs at their Coney Island location.
“He is focused on this,” says McCallum. “He took this [cause] under his wing and decided to dedicate his life to it.”
For more information or to sign the online petition against Atrazine, visit savethefrogs.com.
