Teams of volunteers are trying to protect Taiwan's native amphibians by rooting out invasive competitors like the cane toad and the spot-legged tree frog. Invasive species like these can wreak havoc on native ecosystems.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00It's a miserable wet night in the mountains of Taichung, but a team of volunteers equipped
00:07with rain gear, headlamps and nets is walking the soggy hillside trails with purpose.
00:14It doesn't take long for them to find their targets, cane toads.
00:18These plump frog-like creatures, native to Latin America, were brought into Taiwan through
00:23the pet trade.
00:24Now as in other places, they've established themselves in the wild as a stubborn nuisance.
00:30They eat valuable insects, pose a risk to dogs and cats with their poison glands, and
00:35both out-compete and prey on Taiwan's native amphibians.
00:41At first, these strange new creatures were a mystery to people like team leader Zheng
00:46Li Mian, who first came across them in a vegetable plot in 2021.
00:51But it was soon clear these were unlike anything from her home in central Taiwan.
01:14She's since been a part of a corps of volunteers trying to find a solution to the pests.
01:20In the hometown of Cao Chun alone, they've caught over 30,000 cane toads with nets and
01:25bags like these.
01:26The toads are sent on to the Agriculture Ministry's Taiwan Biodiversity Research Institute for
01:32cataloging.
01:33The toads are then placed into a cold environment where they enter a hibernation state, and
01:38are then frozen, never to wake again.
01:41Researchers say this is a humane way to deal with a pressing ecological problem.
01:46The institute is also working on traps that can supplement the labor-intensive process
01:51of catching toads with nets.
01:53No country where cane toads have been introduced and become a problem has managed to eradicate
01:58them.
01:59But researchers like Lin Chun-Fu say making Taiwan the first is a worthy goal.
02:20Cane toads aren't the only invasive amphibian Taiwan is struggling to contain.
02:25Since 2006, the spot-legged tree frog, native to China and Southeast Asia, has been rapidly
02:31out-competing local frog species and pushing them from their habitats.
02:36Since 2011, Yang Yiru, associate professor at National Donghua University, has helped
02:41lead the pushback against them.
02:45These invasive frogs produce enormous numbers of eggs, in clumps of up to 1,000 at a time,
02:51and they can reproduce five times a year.
02:54This is why Professor Yang's approach relies on stopping their growth from the tadpole
02:58stage.
03:04Camellia seed powder kills them directly, without harming the environment.
03:08And in hard-to-reach breeding grounds, like in among thickets, a solution with 16 percent
03:13citric acid will do the trick, too.
03:16Another important part of her approach is bringing the whole family into the process
03:20of catching mature frogs, so that even the youngest children learn about the importance
03:25of protecting Taiwan's ecology, as she did during her childhood.
03:29When I was a kid, there were frogs everywhere in the countryside.
03:32But as I said, 20 or 30 years ago, I discovered that the population of frogs in Taiwan was
03:36declining.
03:37So we started to protect them.
03:38And I think it's too late to do it alone.
03:39If everyone can protect the frogs near their homes, then all the frogs in Taiwan can be
03:40protected.
03:41Let's take a look.
03:43Though the speed at which the frogs breed makes catching them all or reversing their
03:55damage difficult, teams like this hope to at least make a dent, preventing a complete
04:01takeover of Taiwan's ecosystems and leaving a space in them for the local species that
04:07have long called the island home.
04:11I'm Luffy Lee and John Ventreeste for Taiwan Plus.