Chapter 01: The Sixth Extinction

   

As The Sixth Extinction starts, Elizabeth Kolbert describes her experience with an ongoing extinction of the golden-frog population. This takes place in the location of El Valley of Antón, in Central Panama where the frogs had started to noticeably disappear from some of the populated, disturbed, and pristine areas that they would normally be found. As this continues, Ms.Kolbert meets Edgardo Griffth, the director of El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center (EVACC), who was trying to find ways to help these frogs as well as researching the vast history of it and the amphibians surrounding them. This would eventually lead to them finding “the mysterious killer that was claiming frogs from Queensland to California” in The National Zoo located in Washington D.C. which was “Chytrid fungi” (p. 13). This situation represents the theme that science is a process, because this mysterious killer was not found immediately after they noticed the occurrence. They decided to start by studying the frog’s history to examine all the frog’s evolutions while, other facilities were also searching for the cause of these deaths through different methods such as blood test. The prevention of an extinction seems very hard to deal with due to the amount of managing you have to do to get the right environment for that species like EVACC did during the chapter to monitor the golden frogs and make sure they aren’t going extinct as they are working [E].