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ENVIROBRIEFS, June 2007

Feature Partner: Instituto Rã-Bugio.

Brazil’s Frog People .

Amphibians like frogs and toads are enormously sensitive to environmental conditions. Hence, they are the closest thing we have to the coal miner’s canary when it comes to sounding the alarm about deteriorating environmental conditions. That is why it is so troubling that amphibian populations have plummeted in recent years the world over owing to falling water tables and increasing water contamination.

Together with the Instituto Rã-Bugio, Natural Partners is currently working on a conservation project in Brazil’s Atlantic Rain Forest—one of the world’s highest biodiversity biomes and an embattled environmental “Hot Spot”. Rã-Bugio founders Elza and Germano Woehl created their non-profit to provide local children with the opportunity to get to know and appreciate the marvelous frogs and toads that are their neighbors as a first step along the path to environmental activism. Thanks to the success of the Instituto’s creative hands-on programs with children, this vibrant couple is now featured regularly in newspaper headlines and on Brazil’s most popular TV programs. Their many successes are broadening public awareness of amphibians, their critical role, and the threat to their survival. Their efforts are paving the way for public and private initiatives to conserve Atlantic Rainforest’s water quality and habitat.

Even the amphibian community seems to be collaborating in this effort. Recently, Elza and Germano made a spectacular discovery of the world’s tiniest toad (brachycephalus) in their home state of Santa Catarina. The photo shows that it is smaller than a human thumbnail. (add photo here)

NP and Instituto Rã-Bugio propose to raise funds to purchase some 2,000 acres of primary forest that is home to frogs, toads and many other creatures that together make up one of the world’s richest environmental heritages. The project is urgently needed to conserve such vestiges of precious native forests from clearing for agricultural and industrial uses including plantations of eucalyptus and other exotics.