Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the CU-McKenzie Lab Research Team joined forces to reintroduce over 5,500 highly endangered high alpine Boreal Toads into ponds near Brown’s Creek Falls almost 3 miles up Brown’s Creek drainage near Mount Antero.
These tadpoles grew from Boreal toad eggs that CPW collected from the Cottonwood Creek drainage earlier this month. The eggs were nurtured at the Native Aquatic Species Restoration Facility (NASRF) hatchery in Alamosa. The toads were off-loaded into large plastic bags at the Brown’s Creek trailhead and then carried in backpacks by dozens of volunteers and CPW staff to the release site.
At the camp, the toads were put in large tubs and treated with the experimental “Purple Rain” probiotic bath, a groundbreaking treatment developed at the CU-McKenzie Research Lab. This bathing and stocking event is pivotal in CPW’s efforts to recover the Boreal toad, which has experienced dramatic population declines over the past two decades.
The declines appear to be related to habitat loss and to an infection by the chytrid fungus. Chytridiomycosis is an infectious disease in amphibians, caused by the chytrid fungi Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or BD as officials call it. The fungus is killing off amphibians all over the world. The first signs of the fungal disease appeared in the 1980s and 1990s. After bathing in the probiotic solution for 24 hours the tadpoles were released into pristine ponds near the Brown’s Creek Waterfall.