Pictured is John Bateman and GSC FrogWatch USA chapter leader, Kristen Burns. (Photo by Barbara Barker)
(Canastota, NY – June 2014) John Bateman, a graduate research fellow in the Department of Environmental Science and Biology at the College at Brockport presented a program on the value of amphibians in our wetlands at the FrogWatch USA meeting held recently.
Bateman explained his thesis work of examining local and landscape level variables that impact amphibian use of stormwater ponds. When parking lots and roads are salted the runoff poisons the local area stormwater ponds and damages the frogs, for they cannot live in saline waters. When drugs are flushed into the sewers they are not removed by the water treatment plants. These drugs, especially hormones, are changing the DNA and altering the amphibians ability to reproduce, rendering many sterile. (This sterilization is also happening to birds, insects and mammals.) This worldwide occurrence is creating a massive loss of amphibian species, nearly one-third of the world’s amphibians are extinct or severely endangered. Amphibians are the barometer of an area’s ecological health.
Bateman has spent the past four years monitoring amphibians and breeding birds within Great Lakes coastal wetlands as part of the Great Lakes Coastal Wetland Monitoring Plan, funded by the EPA. He has also conducted amphibian and bird research for other agencies and organizations, including the Army Corps of Engineers, Ducks Unlimited, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
If you are interested in working with this national citizen science program, the next monthly meeting will be July 9 at 8 p.m. at the Great Swamp Conservancy, 8375 N. Main St., Canastota. Come learn to recognize the frog calls and listen for them at two designated research areas.