Hula Painted Frog
In this world you see a lot of different things, it could be strange or it can be very unique, and that's what I see when I look at the Hula Painted Frog. The Hula Painted Frog has a dark belly with small white spots, a sort of rusty color above with dark-olive-grey to greyish-black on the sides. The Hula Painted frog has only been found in the vicinity of a single pond in Israel and found terrestrially in detritus among reeds. This frog is one of the most extinct species ever, it's the only member left of the genus Latonia (a subfamily of frogs in the family Alytidae). This species was believed to be extinct as a result of habitat destruction during the 1950s until the species was rediscovered in 2011, right now the current population is unknown.
"Nature and Parks Authority warden Yoram Malka set out Tuesday for a routine patrol to monitor the birds in the Hula Nature Reserve, but he was also keeping his sharp eyes peeled for a specific type of frog". That specific type of frog is obviously The Hula Painted Frog, however what makes this interesting is they saw something special in that frog, similar to what I see in it, I feel like for as rare as this thing is these people got to make a better effort on gathering all the informations they can and to figure out more ways to find more of The Hula Painted Frog so maybe one day it can produce and we can have a special thing going on for the future.
"Listed as Critically Endangered given that its extent of occurrence (EOO) is estimated to be below 5.6 km2, but its area of occupancy (AOO) is estimated to be between 8-12 km2, hence the EOO is set to be the same as the AOO following the Red List Guidelines. It is known from one threat-defined location; its population may be severely fragmented; there is a continuing decline in the quality of its habitat at the most important known site; and also a likely ongoing decline in the number of mature individuals due to heavy predation pressure by the waterbird population in the Hula Valley area. The largest known subpopulation consists of fewer than 250 mature individuals and this may represent the majority of the surviving population; consequently this species may be close to, or may qualify for, listing under criterion C1. The effective population size is considerably lower, and potentially below 50 individuals."
Probably from reading what I have up top you can figure out some of the threats that have a major affect on this frogs living situation but if u can't no worries. Housing and Urban areas is one of the significant threats to the Hula Painted Frog, other threats include Annual & perennial non-timber crops, which all makes sense to me, in the Hula Valley there aren't any surrounding buildings around, it's all filled with marshland and this species need enough of the marshes so they can have an Habitat.
A Picture of a Marshland
Although the nature reserve is well-managed, it functions as a refuge for many water birds, and elevated predation pressure is thought to be a major threat to the remaining amphibian populations. The Hula Painted Frog is protected by national legislation in Israel and there are plans to undertake a monitoring effort on this species from what I'm hearing and i couldn't agree with that any more.
Because of the draining of "Lake Hula" and its marshes in the 1950s was thought to have caused the extinction of this frog and to me hearing about that made feel some type of way, Having a what if feeling, like what if habitat destruction never happened in Israel and we got to see more and more of The Hula Painted Frog. Not too many times you see something so different in this world and if u have a chance to keep on making more of that something, you try your best to do so in my opinion. In this article I was reading about the frog the lady had a reaction I'm sure we all would've had, she says "I saw something jump that didn't look familiar,"I rushed over and caught a frog, and when I turned it over I saw that it had a black belly with white spots, the identifying mark of the painted frog."
Lake Hula
A role someone in Keene can have on something like this is being able to use the resources we have to figure out other ways on how we can fix this problem, how we can be able to put together a plan to get more information about this unique species. Clearly this solution won't be happening overnight but whatever we can do as a group to dilemma this problem moving forward we should try and do.
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