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Ian Recchio, wades into an amphibian tank at the L.A. Zoo, where he leads a captive breeding program for endangered frogs. Image: Brian van der Brug / LA Times
California’s native southern mountain yellow-legged frog is an endangered species and Ian Recchio, the LA Zoo’s curator of reptiles and amphibians, is out to save it. As the LA Times reported, “named for the bright yellow on their undersides, southern mountain yellow-legged frogs once thrived in hundreds of streams cascading down the high mountains that surround Los Angeles. But since the 1960s, nonnative trout, bullfrogs and crayfish have decimated these frogs. So have wildfires, extreme weather and hotter stream temperatures linked to climate change.”
At the LA Zoo, Recchio runs a program (nicknamed the Frog Shack) that mimics the very specific conditions these frogs need to survive and each year hatches hundreds of new tadpoles each year. About 900 of this year’s crop are scheduled to be released this week in a creek where they’d been absent for half a century–all thanks to Recchio’s tireless work to keep this native species from going extinct.
By Wizipan Little Elk On August 23, 1804, a shot rang out on the wind-swept prairie near what is now called southeastern South Dakota, marking the first buffalo kill of the famous Lewis and Clark reconnaissance expedition. For us Lakota, our neighbors, and our buffalo relatives, it signaled the beginning of what was to become […]
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Continuing its set of opinion surveys in the run-up to Earth Day, Gallup has released the results of another poll, finding that the percent of American adults who say that “protection of the environment should be given priority even at the risk of curbing economic growth” has dropped by 15% since 2018. Experts say that this number often correlates with unemployment, which the COVID-19 pandemic greatly increased.
Why This Matters: President Biden has worked hard to debunk the jobs vs. environment arguments of Republicans — he instead argues that job creation and economic growth must go hand in hand with investment in clean energy and other “green” policies.
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by Amy Lupica, ODP Staff Writer Netflix has announced a commitment to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2022. The plan, called “Net Zero + Nature,” was announced on the Netflix blog by Dr. Emma Stewart, who became the content platform’s first sustainability officer in the fall of 2020. Netflix estimates that its 2020 […]
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