- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The federal government, an environmental group and
a children's television show joined forces Tuesday to recruit children
to help determine out what is killing the nation's frogs.
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- They set up an Internet site devoted
to the search and hope to commission thousands of schoolchildren as a nationwide
"frog force" to try to save the disappearing amphibians.
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- Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said
numerous studies show that frogs are dying in alarming numbers. Others
are turning up with gross deformities.
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- "The real questions are why now
and why is this happening in so many places around the world?" Babbitt
told an audience at the kick-off of the new program.
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- Babbitt's department is also part of
the Task Force on Amphibian Decline and Deformities (TADD), which includes
other agencies such as the Agriculture, Education and Health and Human
Services Departments, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Science
Foundation and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
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- "When we consider that these creatures
are hardy enough to have been on Earth for 350 million years, it is shocking
to think that there could be a world without frogs. We must act quickly,
first to understand the problems and then to try to solve them," Babbitt
said.
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- Frogs are considered a "sentinel
species," succumbing early to threats that may later affect humans.
Because of their permeable skin and because they live both on the land
and in the water, chemicals and pathogens can affect them easily.
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- The new Internet site, www.frogweb.gov,
is meant to be an interactive site. It gives information about frogs and
invites users to enter details about dead or deformed amphibians they might
see while out-of-doors.
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- "Clearly, the government and scientific
community can't solve this problem alone," Mark van Putten, president
of the National Wildlife Federation, which joined in the project, said
in a statement.
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- "Our goal in this partnership is
to educate citizen naturalists about the plight of amphibians and equip
them to help find the answers," he added.
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- "By unlocking this secret, we are
looking out for ourselves and the whole living community that we're part
of."
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- Chris Kratt, who hosts the public television
series "Kratt's Creatures," has also joined in the initiative.
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- Experts say frogs are dying off from
Minnesota to Australia and Costa Rica. They say a fungus normally found
in the soil seems to be involved, and theories blame a range of toxins,
from chemicals known as retinoids, to heavy metals and ultraviolet radiation.
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