BUENA VISTA, Colo. — Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced on Tuesday that a team reintroduced boreal toad tadpoles in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness in Chaffee County.
The team was led by Alex Jouney, a CPW native aquatic species biologist. A new importance was given to the work of reintroducing the state endangered animal with the recent discovery of boreal toads naturally reproducing in the wild near Pitkin, Colorado.
Jouney is part of a statewide team working to save Colorado's only native alpine toads. Boreal toads have disappeared quickly from their high mountain wetland habitat due to chytrid fungus. This fungus has caused a worldwide crisis in amphibian declines.
CPW has made it a high priority to find breeding areas for the boreal toads that are between 7,000 and 12,000 feet and free of the deadly chytrid fungus. The reintroduced toads are being produced at CPW's Native Aquatic Research Hatchery in Alamosa and the Fish Research Hatchery in Bellvue.
At one point, the Collegiate Peaks region of Chaffee and Lake counties was home to big populations of boreal toads. At one site, the amphibians bred consistently in the wild until a decline began in 2010. Three or four years later, the chytrid fungus was detected nearby.
In 2015, CPW selected this region as a high priority for the toad reintroduction. Biologists began hauling 40 pound bags of tadpoles in water to the original breeding sites.
On July 30, Jouney and his team hiked up the mountain ridge with coolers filled with bags of tadpoles. After the trek, the team has to decontaminate their boots, find appropriate release locations, place bags in the pond to acclimate the tadpoles, then release them.
“It’s been a few weeks since the reintroduction and hopefully the tadpoles we stocked have metamorphosed into juvenile toads,” Jouney said in a news release. “They will spend the rest of the summer and early fall foraging for insects and gaining weight to help them through the winter.”
Journey expressed optimism about the tadpoles maturing and being able to reproduce like at the reintroduction site in Pitkin.
“It’s certainly great to hear we have natural reproduction and may be able to save the boreal toads in Colorado,” Jouney said. “This has been a massive effort by CPW biologists and researchers, CPW hatchery staff and technicians, volunteers and our partners in the Arkansas Basin Toad Conservation Team. If the toads are reproducing in the Southwest Region, we have great hope they can reproduce in the Southeast Region, too.”
In upcoming years. the team will revisit the Chaffee County reintroduction site to search for adult boreal toads and new tadpoles. CPW will continue to bring new tadpoles from the hatchery for the next five years, then will take a step back to, hopefully, allow the toads to naturally reproduce.