What do these two frogs have in common?

     

Usually, when we think of extinct species of animals, we think of something that happened a geologically long time ago, like the dinosaur. Or perhaps something that happened a long time ago because of humanity's unenlightened stance about nature and the ecosystem, like the near extinction of the buffalo or giant panda.

Toads and frogs have been the hardest hit by the depletion of ozone in our atmosphere. It takes humans years or even decades to contract melanoma. And even then, we simply slice, dice and we're healthy again. Amphibians are becoming sterile and dying in numbers that far surpass any plague, disease, war or genocide humans have experienced by orders of magnitude!

Look how beautiful these toads are. You don't see such bright blue in nature very much. Now consider: by the time you read this, both of these frogs are extinct. If you haven't seen them in nature yet, you never will. Both of these species are gone. Forever.

I urge people to spend an hour at http://www.frogweb.gov/. It's a (fun) clearing house of information about amphibians, including their current extinction. We're all responsible for the ozone layer, and that makes us responsible for what's happening to the amphibians. We should all at least learn a bit about the species we're killing off.