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.
"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."
Typically, no sooner do we discover a remarkable creature like this than we risk wiping the poor thing out. Still, you have to marvel at nature's never ending capacity to astonish.
Mutate and Survive
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