Chapter 1 Abudul Gaku

Chapter 1 Abudul Gaku

Chapter 1 of Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction introduced us to a problem in the town, El Valle de Anton in Panama. El Valle de Anton is located in the crater of a  known for its wildlife, and specifically the Golden Frog was a symbol of it. Recently the frogs started disappearing from around El Valle and wildlife experts have been alarmed - the frogs are an important part of the culture and the wildlife. The reasoning behind the disappearance was not yet known at the time. To preserve the frogs, the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center (EVACC) raised and sheltered the frogs in glass containers. EVACC was located away from the town and everything  and everyone that entered had to be decontaminated at first. The habitats in the containers were made to mirror that of their habitat in the wild. At EVACC, Kolbert met Edgardo Griffith, the director. Edgardo and the volunteers were all amphibian lovers that devoted their time to the protection and conservation of the animals. From this point Kolbert explains to us that there are amphibians all over the world that are disappearing and are slowly becoming extinct. The National Zoo of Washington, D.C discovered that their population of blue poison-dart frogs was dying off, thanks to Bactrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). It was later discovered that Bd was the cause of the extinction of the Golden Frogs. Something that stood out to me that Kolbert said was, "Once chytrid swept through El Valle, it didn't stop; it continued to move east. It has also since arrived in Panama from the opposite direction, out of Colombia. Bd has spread through the highlands of South America and down the easter coast of Australia , and it has Crossed through New Zealand and Tasmania" (15). This made me realize how dangerous Bd is and it made me wonder what would happen to the amphibian species all across the world. Is it the beginning of the sixth extinction? Will another fungus affect another species of animal?