Hop to It, Frog Lovers! A Crisis Looms

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 12, 2000

It's easy enough to dismiss a lot of environmentalist hysteria about species extinction as arrogance anchored in the present. If that bunch had been around a while back, we'd be overrun with saber-toothed tigers, mastodons and pterodactyls, for gosh sakes. But even dour cynicism must have limits, and ours was reached with the news that the Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County may be endangered. To arms!

The California red-legged frog may or may not be the same species that inspired Mark Twain to write his famous short story. A clue that it indeed may be the critter in question is that this particular breed is the largest frog native to the western United States. But the sponsors of the annual Jumping Frog Jubilee at the Calaveras County Fair are not sure, and they are a bit touchy about the matter.

Jim Smiley's frog "could have been a bullfrog, red-legged frog or Kermit the Frog," groused Laurie Giannini, spokeswoman for the fair. Apparently, fair officials are a little shy -- no, we won't exaggerate and claim they are "hopping mad" -- about the matter because one of the aforementioned creatures, the red-legged one, is a threatened species.

No doubt the folks who conduct the Jubilee envision the media circus that would result if word gets around that they are subjecting a threatened frog to some sort of abuse. Giannini asserts that "we take very good care" of participating frogs, obviously aware that any action to the contrary would bring down contingents of state, federal and activist protectionists on the Calaveras event.

Well, Jim Smiley's frog's red-legged relatives are in good hands. They are candidates for a $6.7 million effort to restore them to their habitat, according to tentative plans just announced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The red-legged frog, it seems, has lost about 70 percent of its turf to urban encroachment, water impoundment and diversion, contaminants, agriculture and livestock grazing, according to a report in California's Stockton Record. Concerned parties may comment about the plan through Aug. 10. Speak up, fellow citizens. If Mark Twain still were among us, no doubt he would leap at the oppommity himself.