"Toiling to Save a Threatened Frog"

"SEQUOIA AND KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARKS, Calif. — From the summit of Bishop Pass in the Sierra Nevada, elevation 11,972 feet, all you can see are miles of granite peaks against the sky. There is no traffic and no pollution. The natural world seems pure and unspoiled.

But appearances are deceiving. Over the last decade, disaster has struck in the form of chytridiomycosis, or chytrid, a deadly fungal disease that has driven at least 200 of the world’s 6,700 amphibian species to extinction. One third of the world’s frogs, toads and salamanders are threatened. Forty percent are declining. Chytrid’s arrival has laid waste to the indigenous Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, Rana sierrae."

Erica Rex reports for the New York Times October 4, 2010.