How about some good news? I think we could all use a bit of that, and the endangered Houston toad is here to give you some.
Houston Toad (Anaxyrus houstonensis)
The Houston toad may no longer live in the city it’s named for.
Urban growth pushed the small, warty amphibian out of most of the region decades ago. Today, it survives in only a few Texas counties.
But in Central Texas, the toad is showing signs of a comeback.
This spring, wildlife officials and conservation groups released 1.6 million Houston toad eggs into protected habitats in Bastrop County. The massive release was part of a decades-long effort involving the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the Houston Zoo, the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other Texas zoos.
Now researchers are finding breeding adults at sites where the species had nearly disappeared.
The effort is testing whether decades of captive breeding, egg releases and habitat restoration can rebuild a self-sustaining population of a species nearly wiped out by development, drought and wildfire. Scientists still don’t know whether those populations can sustain themselves without millions of additional eggs.
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Scientists concluded in 2006 that the species needed a captive population as insurance against extinction. The Houston Zoo joined the recovery effort and began breeding toads.
The strategy shifted in 2014. Instead of focusing mainly on captive toads, the program began producing eggs for release into wild habitats. Conservationists also built and restored ponds where the toads could breed.
“The idea behind that was just to get as much biomass out into the wild as possible,” said Matt Lammers, the zoo’s Houston toad recovery coordinator.
The season begins in winter or early spring and lasts about 11 weeks, Lammers said.
The Houston Zoo keeps about 800 Houston toads. Roughly 12,000 live across all participating facilities, including other Texas zoos and a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hatchery in San Marcos.
The Houston Zoo splits its breeding population among three rooms to guard against disease or another disaster and to preserve genetic diversity. About 99% of the eggs go into the field, Lammers said.
The program first released 1 million eggs in 2018. The Fort Worth Zoo joined the effort in 2016, followed by the Dallas Zoo and the federal hatchery in 2020.
Many of the eggs went to Griffith League Ranch, one of the program’s main recovery sites.
The ranch, now owned by Scouting America, is one of the few remaining land grants from the Republic of Texas. It became federally designated Houston toad habitat in 2006 and has participated in the recovery effort since the early 2000s.
Volunteers help clear vegetation on the property, said Charles Mead, director of marketing and public relations for Scouting America’s Capitol Area Council.
“You don’t often get the chance to truly have the values that you speak about come to life, and this is a chance for us to do that,” Mead said.
Forstner said successful conservation requires three tenets: landowners willing to protect habitat, government agencies willing to work with them and scientists who can guide the recovery.
“You need the nerds — the full-on, oh my God, horn-rimmed glasses nerds,” he said.
Let’s hear it for the nerd brigade, am I right? See here for the background, and read the rest, it’s a gift link. I did not know that the Houston toad existed, much less about its precarity and the efforts to save it, before this June. Now I’m fully invested in its recovery. They may not live here in Harris County again – we’re too developed, it seems – but as long as they can live and thrive somewhere in the state, that’s what matters.