Move Over Fish: Here Come the Frogs!
July 25, 2008
SG in Continuity of Parks, Wildlife
Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog (Rana Muscosa), candidate for endangered species status. USFS Photo.The frogs were there first. Then people--Basque sheepherders, gold miners, recreational anglers served by the USFS and the Department of Fish and Game--brought the fish. The fish ate the frogs. Oops.

Now the Forest Service, in a setup ripe for a new Pixar/Disney blockbuster (Finding Nemo meets Watership Down), is proposing to treat the interlopers to a few years of thorough gill-netting and electroshock.

Once the door is open, so the thinking goes, the frogs will leap back to their ancestral homeland. "They are capable of moving on their own," USFS spokesman Rex Norman told the AP, "and we prefer for them to do that."

The Forest Service Yellow-Legged Frog Page.

Article originally appeared on Yosemite, the Southern Sierra Nevada & Death Valley (http://www.sierrasurvey.com/).
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