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SYDNEY \u2014 A species of frog thought to have been extinct for 30 years has been found in rural Australian farmland, officials said Thursday.<\/p>\n
The rediscovery of the yellow-spotted bell frog is a reminder of the need to protect natural habitats so "future generations can enjoy the noise and color of our native animals," said Frank Sartor, minister for environment and climate change.<\/p>\n
A fisheries conservation officer stumbled across one of the frogs in October 2008 while researching an endangered fish species in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales state.<\/p>\n
The officer, Luke Pearce, told The Associated Press he had been walking along a stream trying to catch a southern pygmy perch when he spotted the frog next to the water.<\/p>\n
Pearce returned in the same season in 2009 with experts who confirmed it was a colony of around 100 yellow-spotted bell frogs. <\/p>\n
Dave Hunter, threatened species officer with the Department of Climate Change and Water, said the find is very important.<\/p>\n
"To have found this species that hasn’t been seen for 30 years and that professional researchers thought was extinct is great," he said. "It gives us a lot of hope that a lot of other species that we thought were extinct aren’t actually extinct — we just haven’t found them."<\/p>\n
The find wasn’t made public until now to allow enough time to establish conservation measures to protect the frogs from many dangers, including poaching, Hunter said.<\/p>\n
The discovery is "as significant in the amphibian world as it would be to discover the Tasmanian tiger<\/a>," said Sartor, the environment minister.<\/p>\n The last known tiger — a cousin of the Tasmanian devil — died in a zoo in 1933<\/a>, although unconfirmed sightings have been reported since then.<\/p>\n Seven of 216 known Australian frog species have disappeared in the last 30 years.<\/p>\n Mike Tyler, a frog expert at the University of Adelaide, said around a dozen species of Australian frogs are regarded as critically endangered.<\/p>\n "Most of them are on the east coast, mainly in Queensland and New South Wales," he said, but added there are probably other species that never have been identified.<\/p>\n Tyler said the cataloguing of fauna in Australia is still far from complete.<\/p>\n "In the last decade, three new species of frog have been discovered in the Kimberley," he said, referring to a northern region of Western Australia state. "I know of two more in the Northern Territory which haven’t even yet been described … one of the specimens is sitting here on my desk looking at me."<\/p>\n — Associated Press<\/p>\n Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Photo: A pair of yellow-spotted bell frogs in an undated photo provided by the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service. Credit: David Hunter \/ Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SYDNEY \u2014 A species of frog thought to have been extinct for 30 years has been found in rural Australian farmland, officials said Thursday. The rediscovery of the yellow-spotted bell frog is a reminder of the need to protect natural habitats so "future generations can enjoy the noise and color of our native animals," said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}