This week is Conservation Week, with the theme Meet the Locals Tutakitia te Iwi Kainga. The Marlborough Express headed out to meet some of them.
Crawling along a boardwalk on your stomach in the middle of the night on an isolated Marlborough Sounds island, preferably in the rain, is the only way you’ll ever find an endangered Hamilton’s frog.
With tiny bodies and huge eyes, the frogs live among damp rocks under forest canopy on two Marlborough Sounds locations, Stephens Islands and Nukuwaiata Island in the Chetwodes.
The Marlborough amphibians are one of the world’s rarest frogs, with an estimated population of just 250 to 300.
Biz Bell, a senior biologist for Wildlife ManagementInternational, is one of just a handful of people in the world lucky enough to regularly see the reclusive frogs.
Twice a year she visits the islands to monitor their progress by sliding around on boardwalks, so she does not tread on a frog, by night.
Ms Bell says she has developed a keen eye to spot the frogs which are just 12mm in size as juveniles and up to 49mm as adults.
She says the frogs may be tiny, but they are fascinating.
Hamilton’s frogs don’t croak; Ms Bell said at most they produce a tiny squeak, and they emerge from their eggs as a frog not a tadpole. They live in damp hollows rather than in or near water. Adult females lay just seven or eight eggs and then leave dad to hatch and raise the young which he carries on his back. The family will spend several months in a rocky hollow, and dad often looks a lot thinner when he finally emerges, Ms Bell says.
Hamilton’s frogs were discovered in the 1930s on Stephens Island. There is evidence they once lived on New Zealand’s mainland but Ms Bell says even early Maori did not know they existed because of their reclusive lifestyle and diminutive size.
In 2004, 40 frogs were transferred to Nukuwaiata from Stephens Island, followed by another 31 in 2006 to establish a second population. This year, Ms Bell and volunteer Kelvin Floyd found 37 of them plus the first juvenile frog found on Nukuwaiata, showing the population was happy and breeding.
It’s a huge step in the right directions for one of Marlborough’s tiniest but most unique locals.
From The Marlborough express.
