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It’s Not Only a Matter of Frogs!
By Peter Brazaitis, Harwinton
The nightly symphony of croaking, peeping and chirping is a deafening chorus. The loudest choruses are from thousands of spring peepers; but the peepers are not the first. The first calls begin weeks before the peepers emerge, even as the peepers are only beginning to warm and awaken from their winter dormancy into the spring thaw. The clacking calls of wood or "robber" frogs, their faces marked with a dark-colored mask, are heard well before the ice begins to leave the ponds and marshes. They take their turn as our wetland tenants in February and early March. They court, breed and leave as the peepers arrive. Before the wood frogs come, the spotted salamanders come out by the hundreds, to entwine in great breeding masses, swimming in circles of courtship, as the males pass their packets of sperm to receptive females. And marbled salamanders lay their eggs the previous fall among the same grass hummocks, then dry from the summer heat, to wait until coming spring floods allow them to hatch.
But the real, deafening chorus is composed of the voices of thousands of spring peepers, tiny tan-colored treefrogs, barely an inch long, that congregate to breed in the flooded grass hummocks created by the melting winter snow and early spring rains.
Have a Harwinton adventure minute! Take a moment to pause by the roadside with a flashlight and look along the edges of one of Harwinton’s bucolic wetland marshes or ponds. See if you can find at least one of these tiny creatures as it sits holding on to a stem of grass, with the tiny suction pads it has on each toe. It will not be easy, and don’t be surprised if the little fellow with the resounding voice sits only inches away from your nose, unnoticed.
The peeping is made when the frog inflates a bubble of transparent skin on its throat, creating a kind of musical amplification chamber. It is hard to believe that so tiny a frog can create a chorus of trills and peeps that can be heard for miles around. Each male frog, in the hope that it will attract the best possible mate, creates its own melodic composition, which combines with those of other frogs, creating a philharmonic of early spring sounds. In a few weeks, the frogs will be gone, leaving their eggs to hatch into tiny tadpoles. The tadpoles will grow into adult frogs during the summer months, and will return year after year, for generations, to lay their eggs in the same ponds in which they began their lives.
But it is not over yet. The trilling voices of hundreds of toads will come next, followed, well into the summer, by the clacking call of gray treefrogs.
This musical succession of wetland creatures means more than you may think. Amphibians have taken on global importance as indicators of a healthy environment. Amphibians have a highly permeable skin, which can rapidly absorb the toxins and pollutants that may enter their aquatic environments. When exposed to the pollutants, the frogs may die. Tadpoles and small developing frogs feed on tiny aquatic organisms, plants and the larvae of insects, while adult frogs constantly feast on a wide variety of flying and ground-dwelling insects. Thousands of peepers feed on trillions of mosquitos in their lifetimes, helping control such mosquito-borne infectious microbes as West Nile or other encephalitis-causing viruses.
The sounds of Harwinton’s healthy amphibian populations are music to my ears because I know that by their presence, they test and monitor the environment in which I, too, live.
It isn’t the same everywhere. Amphibian populations have declined in numbers or completely disappeared over the last ten years in many regions of the United States, particularly here in the northeast; in all of Australia; in Central America; throughout Europe; and now in Africa and South America. These disappearances have sent a far-reaching alarm signal. Not only are species in trouble, but the signal is that the health of the very environment we share with them and need for food and water is threatened or already rendered inhospitable. Some of the causative culprits are suspected to be the loss of wetland habitats resulting from development and environmental pollution; global climate change; the loss of the ozone layer that may allow harmful ultraviolet rays, which cause human cancers, to affect the DNA of developing frogs’ eggs; new and emerging viral agents; and a global fungal agent that may be linked to commercial fish culture.
Governments are investing millions of dollars to investigate the causes and take action to deal with the issue as a serious human health and economic threat. The U.S. National Science Foundation has recently given millions of dollars in research grants to study the environmental factors causing frog population declines. A national survey is underway throughout the U.S. to quantify the health and stability of amphibian populations, including those here in Connecticut. International committees have been formed to coordinate a global response.
Protecting Harwinton’s open spaces is not a simple matter of protecting frogs or wildlife. It is a matter of protecting all of us, and the very heart and soul of Harwinton. We need to enlighten our elected representatives, especially at the local level. Local wetlands and open spaces are critical habitats. Their loss and contamination will affect all of our lives for generations to come. Every square inch is important.
Mechanisms are in place to make monies available through state and private agencies to protect and expand our open spaces: woodlots, marshes, trees and grasslands, including the wildlife that live within them, and the water and air that are purified as they pass through. A study by the Trust for Public Land shows that in Connecticut, open spaces translate into lower taxes.
Open spaces in a community increase the quality of life and may even increase property values. A house bordering on permanent woodlands is worth more than one bordering on acres and acres of suburban sprawl development.
Five hundred trees on a 50-acre woodlot grow and increase in value, provide recreation and beauty, control erosion, and absorb and render toxic pollutants harmless. They cost nothing to educate, nor do they require the social, safety, and health services that 100 people occupying the same space need. The loss of another farm or any open space is a tragedy that befalls the whole community. Harwinton does not need more treeless, barren, commercial housing developments that ultimately cost us more than just increased taxes. They cost us our quality of life. We need sound, managed growth that preserves Harwinton as the rural family community that it is—and, by the way, preserves the frogs and salamanders along with it.
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