Wildlife Hurt By Drought is Expected to Rebound

BUTLER, Ga. – The first day of February, John Jensen peered into the murk of a pond that was recently nothing but a mud flat. Last spring it dried up in Georgia’s record drought, stranding the tadpoles of rare gopher frogs.

“It was a puddle of really warm water with wading birds just picking them off,” said Mr. Jensen, the state herpetologist. “The next week it was just cracked mud and carcasses.”

Mr. Jensen recently searched the pond at the Fall Line Sand Hills Natural Area for frog eggs among golden grasses waving underwater. There were none yet. But he spotted a few leopard frog tadpoles, and ornate chorus frogs called from the bank with a sound like sonar blips.

Although the pond filled in the past month, it remains lower than usual. Mr. Jensen fears that even if gopher frogs have another good breeding season, without heavy rains the tadpoles will die.

The record Georgia drought has harmed some of Georgia’s most endangered and threatened species. The number of endangered wood stork nests dropped by almost half last year. Biologists think endangered flatwoods salamanders have spent years unable to breed. And rare fish must rub fins with their predators in shrunken rivers.

State wildlife officials say many species have likely taken a hit, but most are expected to recover unless the drought continues several more years. Still, human changes to Georgia’s landscape may cause droughts to have a greater effect on animals than in the past.

The state purchased the Fall Line Sand Hills Natural Area in 2006 mostly to protect the amphibian oasis. It holds not only gopher frogs but also newts and salamanders that are among the only amphibians in the United States that can choose either lungs or gills as adults. On the banks grow Georgia’s largest stand of endangered pondberry.

Originally published by McClatchy Newspapers.

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