Yellow-legged frog restoration slows, but positive signs show
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Frank Santana, a research technician with the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, prepares to make the first-ever release of endangered mountain yellow-legged frog tadpoles into a mountain stream. They are among 36 of the Southern California population of mountain yellow-legged frogs reintroduced into a stream near Idyllwild, Calif., Tuesday. There are believed to be less than 200 of the frogs living in the San Gabriel, San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains. Photo: Courtesy
Frank Santana, a research technician with the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, prepares to make the first-ever release of endangered mountain yellow-legged frog tadpoles into a mountain stream. They are among 36 of the Southern California population of mountain yellow-legged frogs reintroduced into a stream near Idyllwild, Calif., Tuesday. There are believed to be less than 200 of the frogs living in the San Gabriel, San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains. Photo: CourtesyThe restoration of the Hill’s mountain yellow-legged frog population is continuing although no new releases of eggs are planned for 2012, according to Adam R. Backlin, ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Western Ecological Research Center in Irvine.
“It looks like our captive breeding program this year did not produce as many new frogs as we had hoped. So we will not be releasing any frogs in 2012,” Backlin wrote in an email last week. “Instead we will be head starting the 200 to 300 new frogs to an older life stage in captivity and releasing them in 2013 as juvenile frogs.”
The team continues to monitor frog releases from 2011 and did detect tadpoles in the creek as recently as February 2012, he added.
They are hoping some of tadpoles released in 2011 will have survived this winter and metamorphose into frogs this summer.
No students were injured in a traffic crash Friday morning involving a school bus. At about 8:20 a.m. Friday, a man driving a white SUV pulled out of a dirt road in front of a Hemet Unified School District bus carrying about 40 Tahquitz Valley High School students and traveling westbound on Highway 74. The…
Fire threats not diminished The dry summer was temporarily abated this weekend yet the rain here never approached the hurricane levels that drenched Texas and now are inundating Florida from hurricanes Harvey and Irma. “The rain helps slow the fire and its spread if we do get a start,” said Idyllwild Fire Chief Patrick Reitz….
Fire log The Idyllwild Fire Station did not report responses for the past week. Sheriff’s log The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department Hemet Station responded to the following calls, Sunday to Saturday, May 17 to May 23. Idyllwild • May 17 — Public intoxication, Village Center Dr. Handled by deputy. • May 17 — Noise…
Depleting their treasury by nearly half, the Pine Cove Property Owners Association handed out more than $7,000 to nearly a dozen local organizations on Saturday. Both the Idyllwild HELP Center and the Idyllwild Area Historical Society were beneficiaries of $1,000 checks. (See the accompanying list for the complete list of awards.) American Medical Response, the…
Last week, President Donald Trump took further action to establish federal control of state processes to vote-by-mail by issuing an Executive Order ordering oversight of citizenship verification of voters. The order involves multiple federal agencies to police vote-by-mail procedures and associated activities though the U.S. Within two days, several lawsuits opposing this action were filed…...
Despite a summer cloudburst, the 18th Annual Jazz in the PInes barely missed a beat. Raindrops fell, but jazz fans hovered under cover, tents, easy-ups or other shelter. the inclement weather merely built a stronger bond among the thousands of Jazz fanatics in Idyllwild today.
