download the FrogLog 96 - Amphibian Specialist Group

Haiti: An unlikely haven for amphibians
By Robin D. Moore
When the Alliance for Zero Extinction
(www.zeroextinction.org) declared
the Massif de la Hotte in Haiti as the
site with the highest number of site-restricted
species in the world, it sent some ripples
through the conservation community. We do
not often hear Haiti and biodiversity under the
same breath, but with over a dozen critically
endangered or endangered amphibian species
found nowhere else in the world, the Massif was
suddenly a site of global conservation concern.
If the remnant patches of forest that cling on
to the jaggy karstic mountainsides were to be
stripped completely, the extinction of these,
and other, species would be imminent.
I first visited the area soon after the AZE
announced these findings, but it wasn’t until
I visited the area in the rainy season with,
among others, Blair Hedges from Pennsylvania
State University, Carlos Manuel Rivera from
Philadelphia Zoo and Miguel Landestoy, a
talented naturalist and photographer from the
Dominican Republic in October last year that I really got a sense
of the diversity of the area. In under a week in the field we were
able to record some 25 of the Country’s 49 native amphibians,
almost all of which are threatened, and half a dozen of which had
not been recorded in some two decades.
The findings were a symbol of hope in a country ravaged
by environmental degradation and suffering the cascading
A lone tree stands as a testament to the forest that once stood in this area in the buffer zone of Pic Macaya
National Park. Photo: R. D. Moore/iCLP.
consequences to human wellbeing that come along with that.
Drought, floods and massive erosion are a way of life. We have
now secured funding from the MacArthur Foundation to embark
on an ambitious three-year project to work with the Societe
Audubon Haiti and other local and international partners to
develop incentives to keep people from cutting down the last
trees on Haiti. It is a daunting task, but as long as the forests are
standing and the frogs and chirping, we have a reason to try.
Ventriloqual frog, Eleutherodactylus dolomedes,
a Critically Endangered species in Macaya
Biosphere Reserve on the Massif de la Hotte,
Haiti. Only known from a few individuals and last
seen 1991. Photo: R. D. Moore/iLCP.
8 | FrogLog Vol. 96 | May 2011