Frogs and How Conventional and Sustainable Energy Impact Their Habitat

Every day there is talk about saving the environment and making sure everyone does their part to provide for future generations. Yes, it is true there is only one Earth and we must do what we can to make sure that what took billions of years to form is not destroyed beyond Mother Nature’s control. There are now 7 billion people living in the world in 2012 and 20 million species existing together, there are a lot of resources that can be cut down on to keep the environment a viable habitat for all.

According to Cunningham & Cunningham, "One of the easiest ways to avoid energy shortages and to relieve environmental and health effects of our current energy technologies is simply to use less". There is one place where you might least expect that energy conservation efforts are being enforced and frogs are being saved: the prison. In Washington State the project is called Sustainability in Prisons and it is spearheaded by the Evergreen State College and Washington State Department of Corrections. Started in 2004, the projects main focus is to bring science and nature into prisons. Since the summer of 2012, inmates have successfully raised 250 Oregon spotted frogs which were declining in population and released them into the wild (Johnson, 2012).

The inmates are paid prison wage of forty-two cents per hour for a ten hour work day. Their duties include monitoring frogs’ water temperature and collecting hundreds of crickets as a food source for the frogs. There are other various jobs that 2000 inmates do to help make the prison a more green facility.

The goal is that by 2030, prisons across the United States will have "zero-net energy use" (Johnson, 2012). The prisons in Washington all use their inmates to construct bins and compost food scraps, sort items for recycling , use and maintain non-motor grass cutters, plant and oversee vegetables in the garden, make and collect rainwater in barrels for irrigation for the gardens, and plant and grow native plants and flowers ("Sustainability in prisons," 2012). All these methods have helped the environment by not depending on many outside resources like water to use for the plants and flowers which has reduced their need by 100 million gallons of portable water each year (Johnson, 2012). The amount of garbage that was once shipped out has now been reduced by half and it continues to drop even though the amount of inmates increases ("Sustainability in prisons," 2012).

Other way frogs can be saved is by limiting the amount energy we use. Stop buying bottled water in areas that water is already safe to consume is one of the best things one can do to keep our environment safe. In 2005 Americans bought 30 million bottles of water and a fraction of those bottles were recycled (Kriger, 2008-2011). It then took 17 million barrels of oil to make those bottles which is enough oil to fuel 1 million cars. Keep in mind that Aquafina and Dasani are just bottled tap water and 25% of other bottled water companies are also just taking away water from your resource and selling it back to you for 100 times more of the cost (Kriger, 2008-2011). 

Using rechargeable batteries will help the frogs and our energy as well. The metals that are used to produce batteries are toxic to frogs and cause limb deformities, but by using rechargeable batteries we are mining for less metal and the batteries are also recyclable after a few hundred recharges (Kriger, 2008-2011). Recycling helps keep the metals from getting into the frogs sensitive skin.

Sources:

Cunningham, W., & Cunningham, M. A. (2012). Environmental science a global concern. (12 ed., pp. 445-471). New York, New York: McGraw-Hill.

Johnson, K. (2012, September 27). Raising frogs for freedom, prison project opens doors. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/us/raising-frogs-for-freedom-prison-project-opens-doors.html?_r=0  

Kriger, K. (2008-2011). How to help save frogs. Retrieved from http://www.savethefrogs.com/how-to-help/index.html 

Sustainability in prisons project. (2012). Retrieved from http://blogs.evergreen.edu/sustainableprisons/ 

Frogs and Water Pollution

It is well known by now that frogs are great indicators of environmental changes because of their skin. Every element of nature that they come into contact with, they are affected by. Atrazine found in water can alter the internal reproductive organs in male frogs. There are two other water pollutants that are a cause of concern for frogs: birth control pill and parasites. 

Every time someone takes birth control or other forms of estrogen such as skin creams and prostate cancer medication, they are excreting the chemicals through their urine and into waste water or other ground water resources. For a long time it was thought that only Atrazine, the herbicide used in farming, was the only culprit for finding male frogs containing both testes and ovaries. This is not true. A study done in various water resources around Connecticut are proving that birth control is another contributing factor found in our water that is polluting our frogs’ fragile bodies. 

Ecologist and associate dean at Yale University, David Skelly, is heading the research being done in Connecticut to understand why birth control is getting into water resources. During Skelly’s research he found that frogs living “in agricultural areas, only 7 percent of the frogs show these deformities” and frogs in “urban and suburban areas, it’s about 20 percent” (Burgeson, 2010). This is important because it means that birth control and estrogen medication is a problem for frogs living in urban and suburban areas. 

When medications are being disposed of either through the body or being flushed in whole down the toilet, they are not always finding their way to sewer systems where they can be treated and eliminated from drinking water. John Herlihy, director of water quality and environmental management for Aquarion Water Co,. states that “it’s because those water bodies are receiving wastewater discharge” (Burgeson, 2010). This means that there are flaws in the water treatment that ends up in the groundwater or drinking water. When we add medication to the mix, it is extremely hard to eliminate every single chemical because it would be awfully expensive for cities to do so. In addition, water treatment centers are not aware of what people are flushing down the toilet and that is why they campaign and stress to people to not do so. 

            One way the EPA is trying to do their best by removing estrogen in drinking water is by adding chlorine or powdered activated carbon (Burgeson, 2010). This is not the best way to go about but so far it is one of the only few alternatives until either other forms of birth control are used or other alternatives are found to do away with estrogen in our water which harms our frogs. Skelly brings up a good point when he mentions that “we could end up medicating the natural world, and even re-medicating ourselves” (Burgeson, 2010).  Those humans who do not take estrogen medications should not be introduced to it through their drinking water and nor should our frogs reproductive organs be in jeopardy.    

Another alarming introduction to our water source is the introduction of harmful parasites that are deforming our four legged amphibians. In various water sources in Minnesota and the Midwest, there is an increase of a specific snail species that is a host to a parasite called trematodes. The increase of snail population is due to nitrogen and phosphorus used in farming sites. Trematodes are harmful to the frogs because “larvae burrow into tadpole limb regions and form cysts that disrupt normal frog and toad leg development, causing extra or missing limbs” (Johnson, 2012). Missing limbs, extra limbs or deformed limbs are hazardous to the frogs’ survival because if they cannot escape from their prey, they will decline at a faster rate. Or vice versa, if they cannot hunt for food because they are not fast enough they will starve to death. 

The life cycle of the trematodes is serious. An increase of snails means a decline in frog population. As the frogs who are deformed fall victim to prey by birds, the birds then excrete the parasite and then find their way to a host and the cycle starts all over again (Johnson, 2012).

On a lighter note, there is some good that frogs can do to help the environment without losing their life or altering internal organs. In countries where there is very little financial assistance to help protect, preserve or control water quality, frogs are now seen as a safe alternative to test unsafe polluted drinking water.

Dr. Tyrone Hayes has discovered that in Ethiopia and Uganda the reed frog in males’ skin changes when the water quality is poor. The males are normally green but took the appearance of the females.  Thousands of experiments were conducted on frogs to prove Dr. Hayes theory that “During the metamorphosis from tadpole to adult, frogs are very sensitive to changes in their environment, including chemicals in the water or their food supply. So the changes in coloration indicated that the frogs’ extremely thin, sensitive skin was reacting to the contaminants in the water” (National Geographic). Dr. Hayes was correct and had an idea for developing countries to test their water.

The reed frogs could be a low-cost solution to countries where lack of government assistance or environmental organizations can test the quality of water. If the local people raise the frogs and observe color changes in male frogs, then they would know that the water has pollution, plastic by-products, pesticides or synthetic hormones (National Geographic). This could be a good solution provided the only adverse effect to the frogs is just color change and nothing else that would lead them to extinction.

Sources:

Burgeson, J. (2010, Feburary 28). For frogs, and perhaps humans, there’s something strange in the water. Retrieved from http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/For-frogs-and-perhaps-humans-there-s-384390.php

Johnson, P. (2012, May 22). Richer parasite diversity leads to healthier frogs, says new cu study. Retrieved from http://www.colorado.edu/news/features/richer-parasite-diversity-leads-healthier-frogs-says-new-cu-study  

National Geographic. (n.d.). Explorers bios- tyrone hayes . Retrieved from http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/tyrone-hayes/