Northern Leopard Frog Recovery
This project involves the inventory monitoring and stewardship of the Northern Leopard Frog population at the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area (CVWMA). This population hosts the majority of the remaining Leopard Frogs in B.C., and serves as the source population for re-introductions and a captive assurance population.
Actions for 2016 include: calling surveys, songmeter deployment and analysis, egg mass surveys, egg mass caging and care until tadpoles are free-swimming, collecting chytrid samples; morphometrics and location information on NLF captured; tadpole trapping and young-of-year surveys; monitoring of migration; transfer of tadpoles from CVWMA to Columbia marshes; and support for captive assurance colony at Vancouver Aquarium.
Final Report: Executive Summary
Once widespread and common throughout south-eastern British Columbia (B.C.), the Northern leopard frog (Lithobates pipiens) has declined in recent decades and as of the 1990’s was believed to be restricted to a single extant remnant native population located in the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area (CVWMA) near Creston, B.C. Currently the B.C. population referred to as the Rocky Mountain population is listed as Endangered nationally by the Committee On the Status of Endangered Species In Canada (COSEWIC, 2009) and is on Schedule 1 of the Species at Risk Act (SARA, 2006); provincially, it is ranked S1 (critically imperiled; 2010) and it is on the British Columbia Red list (B.C. CDC, 2016). For additional information on species status, reasons for decline, current threats and general species information see the Recovery plan for the Northern Leopard Frog (Lithobates pipiens) in British Columbia (Northern Leopard Frog Recovery Team, 2012).
The Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program – Columbia (FWCP – Col.) has supported recovery efforts for the Endangered Northern leopard frog since 2000. A captive-rearing and reintroduction program ran from 2001-2005 and since then the focus has been monitoring the Creston population, protecting wild egg masses from predators, helping to establish a captive assurance colony at the Vancouver Aquarium and conducting reintroductions. This report summarizes the results of the 2016 field season program for the Northern leopard frog project administered by FLNRO.
Click the provincial database link below to read the full final report for this project.