Chapter 1 : The Sixth Extinction (Angel Jorge)

In Chapter 1 of Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert introduces the reader to the town of El Valle de Anton in Panama. It is a small town with a low population due to its location in a crater that is about 4 miles wide and its wildlife surrounding it. This wildlife includes many amphibians including very rare species of amphibians like the Golden Frog. These amphibians have attracted the attention of herpetologists around the world. Over time, El Valle and its wildlife became very interconnected with the wildlife especially the Golden Frog which has now become an important part of the town's culture. Recently, many species of frogs around El Valle and around the world had been disappearing including the town's lucky charm known as the Golden Frog. The reasoning behind the disappearance was unknown at the time. To preserve the rest of the endangered frogs and a part of El Valle's culture, the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center (EVACC) was founded to raise, preserve, and shelter the frogs. They made the frogs feel at home with containers that were very similar to their original habitats. They also were treated luxuriously receiving everything they needed and more. The EVACC location was far from the town and to enter you had to be "decontaminated"  in a way so that nothing from the outside can affect the frogs. At EVACC, Kolbert met Edgardo Griffith, the director of EVACC. Griffith and his volunteers were all ambitious amphibian lovers that were devoted to the cause of preserving the endangered species held at EVACC. Griffith and the volunteers and members had been very protective over these frogs because of likely how serious their risk to extinction was. I cited in the text "Amphibians are, after all, among the planet's greatest survivors," (page 11). This line shows that an amphibians ability to adapt and survive was so great that since something was killing them around the world, it must have been very dangerous and EVACC understood that. A clue later developed leading to the mystery amphibian killer from a zoo in Washington D.C. that led to the discovery that the killer of the frogs was a chytrid fungus named Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis-batrachos or Bd for short. Bd is described as extremely dangerous fungi and one that spread like wildfire throughout the globe. This connected to the theme that the Earth itself is one interconnected system. The spread of the fungi showed that one small change in one area of the world can affect the rest of the world. Through the interconnectedness of our planet's ecosystems, the fungus was able to spread throughout the world and affect amphibians globally. This brings up a few questions like whether or not a similar situation to this has occurred in the past and how was it solved? Or will frogs be able to adapt to the killer fungus before it causes a mass extinction? Will humans be able to preserve the remaining species of frog and return them to their currently infected homes?





I noticed many frogs on this lake when I went on my two-week camping trip in Colorado. I was wondering about how the frogs have adapted to live in such conditions and what brought them here.