From the Armoured Mist Frog to the Spotted-Tailed Quoll, heads together to chart a way forward
Frogs aren’t generally regarded as ‘sexy’ either in conservation or in human (kissing) terms, but a frog local to the wet tropics is ready to blow that myth out of the waterfall.
Cairns
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Frogs aren’t generally regarded as “sexy” either in conservation or in human (kissing) terms, but a frog local to the wet tropics is ready to blow that myth out of the waterfall.
Associate Professor Conrad Hoskin, (JCU Townsville) gets excited when he talks about it.
“There’s a really cool frog called the Armoured Mist Frog,” he said.
“The males have these nuptial pads for gripping females, useful in a waterfall amplexus.”
He describes the amplexus as “the breeding embrace”, and because these frogs get together in waterfalls a “nuptial pad” is a crucial accessory to “amplexus”.
And for the record, a “nuptial pad” is not a room and a bed with red satin sheets and mirrors on the walls, but a set of spikes on the male’s chest.
Professor Hoskin has a particular interest in frogs, and has even discovered one new to science himself. He is also one of the brains behind the second North Queensland Threatened Species Symposium, being held in Cairns from 9-10 March.
The reason for the Symposium is to get all the people working on species recovery into one place, to determine what kinds of actions work best to conserve threatened species. And there are plenty in the Wet Tropics.
Jacqui Diggins is also on the co-ordinating committee for the Symposium, and she says local action groups meet and do good works for locally threatened species.
One example is Kuranda Envirocare, which has a subgroup working to give the Kuranda Treefrog a future.
Volunteers restore and maintain habitats to improve breeding sites for frogs, monitor populations, eradicate pests, educate the community about the frog and conservation issues more generally, and run workshops.
The organisations behind the Threatened Species Symposium all have a stake in a healthy Wet Tropics, whether it be government department, local council or natural resource management organisation.
“The big issues here, from a species conservation perspective, are the same as always, habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation,” Ms Diggins said.
“And for addressing these, what we’re trying to achieve is a co-ordinated approach across the board.
“We want the groups to walk away inspired and reinvigorated, and provide them with a platform for sharing their successes – and their less successful attempts.”
Some of the guest speakers will be from government, she said, as well as the odd scientist, but the majority will be from people who have experiences to share from their own groups and conservation efforts.
“There’s a success story from the last symposium, where we provided an opportunity for people to network, and from that opportunity they formed a working group for the Magnificent Brood Frog,” Jacquie said.
“They still don’t have a photo of the female which is how elusive they are, they live in the seepage line on the Tablelands, they have a really obscure habitat where you wouldn’t think there’d be a frog.”
The forum will provide opportunities to network and share western and traditional cultural knowledge on threatened species recovery.
While there are headline species in this region that get a lot of attention such as cassowaries and Mahogany Gliders, Conrad Hoskin is interested in some of the smaller endangered species, such as quolls and, of course, frogs.
He’s done work with gliders and quolls, and a lot of the frogs on his agenda are nursery frogs, isolated on the mountaintops of the wet tropics and some of the most endangered species in Australia.
The male of one of the nursery frogs sits on the eggs, which is heartwarming but also puts it at risk as the climate dries and heats up.
The armoured mist frog was thought extinct for 20 years until Dr Hoskins and a colleague found a single surviving population in a hot dry part of the Daintree.
“They survived there because the temperature was too hot for disease,” he said.
“I’ve worked to shift some of the population to a nearby site with the right environmental characteristics, and we’re now looking at establishing a third population.”
“We’re working on research understanding how the disease acts with the frogs, gradually stepping them back to their original population.”
The waterfall frog is naturally recovering, but a lot of species are going to need a hand up, he said.
“I think firstly this diversity is incredible, and we should be looking to keep it here for the sake of the diversity, but also for humans.
“We can’t keep losing species, we can’t have streams without healthy frog populations, even if we can’t quickly understand their function.
“With spotted quolls, you take the top predator out and suddenly you have a lot of possums and rats.
“All these species are no doubt important even if we can’t quickly and easily understand the role they play.
“Slimming down the diversity will put us in a bad way.”
More information on the North Queensland Threatened Species Symposium: https://terrain.org.au/nqtss-2023/
Some of the species under pressure
Cassowaries
The southern cassowary is listed as ‘Endangered’ under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. The Wet Tropics population is listed as ‘Endangered’ and Cape York populations, ‘Vulnerable’.
Magnificent Brood Frog
Habitat appears to be the greatest threat to the Magnificent Brood Frog. Ninety-seven per cent of frog sites are located on unprotected land, mostly is in state forest or timber reserve. Grazing, logging, road works, clearing and development all affect the quality of frog habitat.
Golden-Shouldered Parrot
By Peter Carruthers
Three separate nature reserves totalling 166,000ha of critical habitat including the home of the endangered Golden-Shouldered Parrot have been created to help save the species from extinction.
It’s hoped the creation of two new nature refuges northwest of Mt Isa, another 45km southwest of Bowen and the expansion of Artemis Station at Cape York 300km northwest of Cairns will help to boost the population.
It’s estimated there are only between 780 and 1100 individuals left in the wild.
Nature refuges are a class of private protected area under the state’s Nature Conservation Act and are administered by a legally binding conservation agreement between a landholder and the government.
Mahogany Gliders
Conservation efforts are around restoring and managing habitat corridors for Mahogany Gliders as smaller habitat patches disappear.
These have included revegetation, fire management to maintain the glider habitat on private and state lands, installing crossings across roads and easement corridors, and community engagement projects to raise awareness of Mahogany Gliders’ habitat requirements.
Spotted-Tailed Quoll
by Sarah Nicholson
One of the Far North’s most reclusive residents is under threat with the Spotted-Tailed Quoll population plunging.
One of the Far North’s most reclusive residents is under threat, as the Spotted-Tailed Quoll population has plunged.
Conrad Hoskin said mainland Australia’s largest remaining marsupial predator had already disappeared from much of the Wet Tropics with isolated colonies only surviving in small areas on the Tablelands.
“We have five remaining populations, isolated from each other, with less than 300 individual animals,” he said.
“There are three populations in the northern Wet Tropics that are not huge but not declining either and the Tablelands population has declined badly.
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