COUNTING FROGS

by Greg Harman

NORTH HARRIS COUNTY – Railcars roll by slowly about 200 yards to our south, squealing plaintively along the warm rails. The staccato bursts of semi-trucks along Highway 90 puncture the greenery around us, but the ears of this group are tuned to the marsh. We’re listening for the lamb’s bleat of a Narrow-mouthed Toad, the obvious snorts of Pig Frogs, and the wild sounds of sleek-bodied Green Treefrogs.

The small group of volunteers is momentarily distracted by a gator’s sudden retreat into the cool, lotus-covered pond at one of the best reclamation projects in the Houston area, the Sheldon Lake State Park and Environmental Education Center. “It’s nice and still out here, other than the occasional train, truck, and airplane,” says Tim Olson, the park’s education coordinator.

With only a couple of hours of classroom prep time, this group of eight is now moving slowly along the trail edges of the former fish hatchery. They are led by Jaime Gonzalez, the area’s volunteer coordinator for Texas Amphibian Watch, a program of Texas Parks & Wildlife that works to keep track of some of the most vulnerable of nature’s creatures.

Frogs, toads, salamanders, and the like have been experiencing serious decline, due to factors such as increased ultraviolet radiation passing through our atmosphere’s weakened ozone layer, reactions to popular agricultural chemicals, and increased development worldwide. It’s development that has been fracturing and decimating the endangered Houston Toad population of Harris County over the past decades.

Amphibian Watch started in 1998, with the first Gulf Coast Region meeting being held at Sheldon Lake’s facilities where, today, the lights and A/C are powered in large part by experimental solar, wind, and geothermal stations. This is the third group training held in the past six weeks in the Houston area.

Despite the occasional distractions of industrialized Northeast Harris County the group manages to spot six of the most common Gulf Coast frogs and toads. “A lot of people come into (this) intimidated because you have to learn 26 calls,” says Gonzalez. “But you’ll mostly encounter the same ten over and over… with some surprises thrown in.”