Northern Leopard Frogs Make A Comeback at The Nature Conservancy's Santa Fe Canyon Preserve, Santa Fe, NM The first image is a photo I took back in August of 2014 and the second is a video from earlier this Spring when my friend and I visited before the foliage turned green. The important thing about the video is not what you see but what you hear. If you listen carefully you will hear frogs. The frogs are a real success story for the Nature Conservancy. From AP News: “The northern leopard frogs were singing a romantic tune — long, deep, growl-like croaks — on a recent spring night at the beaver pond in the Santa Fe Canyon Preserve. Their call-and-response routine made Robert Findling happy. “It gives me hope,”said Findling, director of conservation projects at The Nature Conservancy, which owns the east-side wetlands preserve off Upper Canyon Road. It means, he said, there’s probably a healthy population of the chatty amphibians. But there wasn’t a decade ago. As part of a larger effort to restore the 525-acre preserve to what it might have been like in pre-Spanish Colonial times — before a series of dams were built on the Santa Fe River for storage of water supplies to meet growing demand — The Nature Conservancy began to stock northern leopard tadpoles. Beginning in 2012, the conservancy began using funds from a $15,000 Intel Corp. grant to release more than 1,000 tadpoles and some adult frogs into the ponds at the preserve. The organization also purchased listening devices so staff could monitor the frogs’ progress — or lack of it. Now, seven years later, things are looking up for the leopard frogs, based on the crooning sounds emanating from the marsh.” So let’s here it, or I should say hear it from the frogs. Their croaking symbolizes their return as a successful species in Santa Fe Canyon! https://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/newmexico/placesweprotect/santa-fe-canyon-preserve-1.xml #SantaFeCanyonPreserve #NorthernLeopardFrog #FrogCroak #SpeciesRecovery #NatureConservancy #NatureConservancySantaFeCanyonPreserve #PhotoByJeriRae #VideoByJeriRae https://www.instagram.com/p/ByIfHeRAG_z/?igshid=1bkrm2kudfffr
