Colorado's fight to save the boreal toad takes serious heights

It's the signature Colorado animal you know nothing about: the endangered boreal toad. It's normal to see people lugging massive backpacks up a Colorado trail toward beautiful scenic views. It's not normal for 35 of them to be carrying tadpoles by the hundreds in those backpacks, but here we are. 

The massive plastic bags full of roughly 300 tadpoles that are pushed snuggly into backpacking sacks are a hopeful push from multiple state and federal agencies to get the boreal toads back on their tiny little feet. The toads are native to Colorado, but have lost 60-70% of their natural habitat due to a few factors, the main being a nasty fungus. 

The chytrid fungus, roughly and non-scientifically explained, hardens the toad's skin, which stops gas exchange, essentially suffocating the poor little guys. 

"They used to be common in the wetlands and hiking in the mountains," Brad Lambert, Research zoologist with the Colorado National Heritage Program (CSU) said. "People don't expect to find these things up here. So I think that it's important to restore to our heritage in Colorado."

Lambert and folks from the National Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Colorado Parks and Wildlife teamed up to move 10,500 toad tadpoles up to Titan Lake, relatively close to Leadville. The team dropped tadpoles there the year before and at least some of them made it through the year, so they figure it's a good spot that hasn't been impacted by the fungus so far, and therefore a good spot to prop up the population. 

"It's really challenging," Paul Foutz with Parks and Wildlife said. "It is not a simple feat and we have not had a lot of success doing it." 

Lambert compared it to a struggle to build back the endangered toad population, while they continue to lose them to the fungus. 

"Since we can't really solve the chytrid problem, it's pretty complex, we are working on it, in parallel with that we are trying to establish new populations and hopefully keep chytrid fungus free areas," Lambert explained.

Tuesday's hike left the biologists and wildland workers in good spirits, seeing the last year's toads swimming and hopping around looking for bugs. 

"We found lots of little toads, so it's good news so far, so far so good," Lambert laughed. 

Learn more about the cute little Colorado toad's and their nasty fungus situation.