This ugly little guy, compared to “a squished version of Jabba the Hutt” by one biologist, is the only known lungless frog. This unique creature could help scientists understand evolutionary change, if it doesn’t go extinct first:
Bickford and Gillespie said the frog’s discovery adds urgency to the need to protect its river habitat, which in recent years has become polluted due to widespread illegal logging and gold mining. Once-pristine waters are now brown and clogged with silt, they said.I don’t expect this frog to have any effect on the river or the illegal activities polluting it. Regulations are difficult to enforce in Indonesia, and even more difficult when the culprits are thousands of small scale operations.“The gold mining is completely illegal and small scale. But when there are thousands of them on the river, it really has a huge impact,” Bickford said. “Pretty soon the frogs will run out of the river.”
The standard of living is so low, too, that it’s hard to begrudge people their livelihoods. To some degree, the profits from these activities must be filtered up to the well-off. But many peole rely on these jobs for their very sustenance. Not for cable television or for the latest mobile phone, but for enough food for their families. How do you say to these people ‘this frog is more important than you?’
Or more productively, ‘What alternatives can we offer these people, such that protecting the river habitat coincides with their interests, instead of contradicting them?’
