Newts in Alaska, Yes ...
Newts and frogs for sure ... but like everywhere else, they're under threat.
ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS (Alaska) 14 August 00
Discovering Deformities: Abnormal Kenai Frogs Concern Researchers (Sonya Senkowsky)
The deformed frog problem first noticed by a nature studies class in Minnesota five years ago may now be a concern in Alaska. U.S. Fish and Wildlife scientists participating in a nationwide study of abnormal amphibians found 26 deformed wood frogs in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge last month.
"I'm very surprised at the number we found," said Kim Trust, environmental contaminant specialist with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage.
Most of the abnormal frogs had leg deformities, but one was missing its eyes, and another had an unusually bulging eye, said biological technician Heidi Tangermann.
It's the largest number of frog abnormalities ever reported in the state.
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Whatever the Alaska results are, they are bound to raise some eyebrows, if only because the six kinds of amphibians known to inhabit the state are not often studied, said Sherry Krest, national U.S. Fish and Wildlife amphibian project coordinator. "There seems to be a lot of interest in Alaska and what we find up there."
http://www.adn.com/lifestyles/story/0,2649,186093,00.html
ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS (Alaska) 22 April 01
It's almost showtime for wood frogs. (Bill Sherwonit)
Returning to my Hillside home on the last night of April, I detour to Westchester Lagoon. It is shortly before 10 p.m. when I step out of the car and walk to the water's edge. In fading daylight, I listen for frogs.
Though arguably peculiar, this behavior isn't as silly as it might first appear. Anchorage, like much of Alaska, is home to the wood frog, a remarkable creature whose range spans North America. The only amphibian known to inhabit arctic Alaska, these frogs overlooked by most of the city's residents occupy wetlands and forests throughout the Anchorage Bowl.
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Wood frogs spend their winters on land buried among leaf litter, moss, grasses and soil. Before breeding can begin, both ground and frogs must thaw more on that later and ice-covered ponds and lakes must open up.
For most of Anchorage, the meltdown usually occurs in mid-to-late April; on the Hillside, it's May.
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http://www.adn.com/outdoors/story/0,2922,259914,00.html
ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS (Alaska) 29 October 01
Experts seek clues to frog abnormalities (Doug O'harra)
In the second year of a national survey looking for abnormal amphibians across the United States, federal biologists found 33 wood frogs with deformities last summer among sample populations in three Alaska wildlife refuges from the Kenai Peninsula to Interior Alaska.
Unlike some Lower 48 refuges that have reported animals with extra legs or missing eyes, most of these troubled frogs lacked limbs or toes. But one frog scooped from a pond in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge near the Porcupine River suffered from an unusual growth: Its ankle was connected to its pelvis by a thread of tissue.
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http://www.adn.com/front/story/733732p-776378c.html
Photo:
http://www.adn.com/ips_rich_content/760-frog.jpg
ALASKAN SOUTHEASTER (Juneau, Alaska) November 01
Newts in the Rain Forest (Bob Armstrong and Marge Hermans)
Southeast Alaska, home of bald eagles, brown bears, humpback whales, and … what? Rough-skinned newts?
Not many tourism brochures wax poetic over the fact that you might find small, four-legged, long-tailed, poisonous amphibians under rocks and logs in parts of Southeast. But for some folks finding small critters like these generates as much excitement as seeing whales bubble-feeding or brown bears wrestling salmon from a stream.
We first heard that newts were being found in the Juneau area from our friend Dick Wood. He told us some buddies of his son Evan had been finding newts in the woods and in a marsh close to Tee Harbor. One day last July we met two of the boys, Eric and Brendan Daugherty, and their mom Susan. They took us into the woods to see for ourselves.
The boys found the first newt under a rock in the woods not far from the highway. The small, quick-moving critter was about four inches long. The skin on its sides and back was dark brown, with the rough, pebbly look that gives the species its name, Taricha granulosa. Its underside was a brilliant orange-yellow. With its four strong legs and long tail, it looked for all the world like a miniature dragon that had escaped from some children's fairy tale. As Dick held up the half-rotted chunk of wood we'd placed it on, the newt clambered up and over its ridges and crevices, rearing up and peering intently about as if to get the lay of the terrain so as to end this ridiculous exercise of being ogled and poked at by a gaggle of babbling giants.
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Since the Brodies' work seems to show newt toxicity decreasing as you move north through their range in the Lower 48 and British Columbia, we wondered if newts from Southeast Alaska, the northernmost part of their range, would be toxic at all. We sent several live newts from the Tee Harbor area to "Butch" Brodie, and to everyone's surprise, the newts did turn out to be toxic. This disrupts the idea of any orderly progression in level of toxicity from north to south. It also raises a number of questions.
Do all newt populations in Southeast exhibit the same levels of toxicity? What animals, if any, eat newts here in Southeast, where garter snakes do not occur? And are any predators here resistant to the TTX in our newts?
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Perhaps some youngster fascinated by the small amphibians he finds near his rainforest home will grow up to study and find the answers to tantalizing puzzles like these. That would be a fitting acknowledgment of the importance of one of the lesser- known, less spectacular animals found here in Southeast Alaska.
http://www.mcpheepub.com/archives/nov2001/newts.html
Bonus Caudata.org Culture Note:
Hodge, RK.
Amphibians and Reptiles of Alaska, Yukon and the NWT. Alaska NW Pub Co., 1976. "The newt
Taricha Granulosa [Tarichos - Greek for mummy] is the lizard of the totem carver." No page copied.
