Syzdekistan

I spent last week in Beatty, Nevada helping the Nevada Department of Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with one of their two yearly Amargosa toad surveys. The Amargosa toad (Bufo nelsoni) is a species of toad only found in a small area near Beatty in the Amargosa River. Several years ago, the population of this toad declined to 30 animals, however they now number in the hundreds. Counting the toads is simple: you gather a bunch of volunteers, wait until dark, then tromp around in the river and nearby riparian areas picking up the slow moving amphibians. Adult toads are given a Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT tag) which is a small device about the size and shape of a grain of rice. The tag is implanted under the skin and can be read by waving a wand over the toad. By comparing the numbers of recaptured animals to “new” animals, the total toad population can be estimated.

One of the other things we do is kill bullfrogs. Bullfrogs are an introduced species that eat the toads. In the past, there have been large numbers of bullfrogs in the area, but now we only found three. Two were very small and emaciated. One was found to a native chorus frog in its stomach and the other had only a small beetle. Another bullfrog was enormous. I carried this monster frog in a bucket for a few hours. It was transported back to Las Vegas to be euthanized and have it stomach contents analyzed. We checked it with the scanner to see if had eaten any tagged toads but it had not.