Extinct Hula Frog Rediscovered In Israel

By: Tina Hodges
11/19/2011 05:20 AM ET

Extinct Frog Israel – The extinct hula painted frog has been rediscovered in Israel. They thought it had croaked, but missing for a half-century from the population, the extinct frog Israel has been rediscovered and painted green.

“The species now has another chance to survive,” Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority said on Thursday, reporting that one of its inspectors had come across the frog in the Hula Valley and that it had been placed in a protective facility.

Only five Hula painted frogs have ever been collected. Four were found in 1940 and one in the 1950s, when most the valley’s marshes were drained in efforts to eradicate malaria and make the land arable.

Part of the wetlands was turned into a nature reserve, but fruitless searches for the frogs over the years led experts to conclude that the species, “Discoglossus nigriventer”, had not survived the blow to its habitat.

In 1996, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources declared the Hula painted frog extinct. Blaming habitat loss and fungal disease, the IUCN believes nearly a third of the world’s amphibian species are endangered or extinct.

The Israeli nature authority said it appears the Hula painted frog bounded back after more water was diverted to the Hula region three years ago to reverse the ecological damage caused when the marshes disappeared.

The frog sports a dark belly with small white spots, and other colors include ochre and rust grading into dark olive-grey and grey-black.

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Source: Extinct Frog Israel

Tags: Extinct, Frog, Israel