While the medium-sized, dark-spotted green or brown Northern Leopard Frog is a familiar site in the ponds and streams of eastern Canada, it has disappeared from all but one small wetland area in British Columbia. Fortunately, that area is the site of the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area and the Northern Leopard Frog Recovery Project.

Biologists associated with the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program have used radio telemetry, call count surveys, and habitat assessments to confirm that both the population and the reproductive output of Northern Leopard Frogs are critically endangered. (The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada lists the frog as Endangered in British Columbia; the British Columbia Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management has placed it on its Red list.) They have concluded that a fungal disease, predation by introduced fish such as large mouth bass and black bullheads, and the loss and fragmentation of important habitats have all contributed to the amphibian’s drastic decline.

In order to boost the Northern Leopard Frog population, the recovery team is rearing tadpoles in captivity and releasing them as froglets. Long-term plans call for the redistribution of frogs to other suitable habitats in the Columbia watershed, and to re-introduce the species in the East Kootenays to expand their range in southeastern British Columbia.