Dr. Kerry Kriger cracks a smile during his visit to Grist's Seattle HQ.Russ Walker / GristOn Tuesday, the staff at Grist devoured frogs for lunch.  Well, not exactly.

We sat down with conservation biologist Dr. Kerry Kriger of the newly minted nonprofit Save the Frogs! -- one of several stops he's making in Seattle during a country-wide speaking tour. As one of the lone voices raising the alarm for amphibians, Kriger dished about the worst disease ever to hit wildlife, why it's such a big deal that one-third of amphibians are threatened with extinction, and just how many people actually are having frogs for lunch.

A scientist by training, Kriger first became involved with amphibians while in Australia researching how frogs are affected by the fungal disease chytridiomycosis, which currently is decimating frog populations and which may be the worst disease ever recorded to hit a group of organisms. It's the chytrid fungus, and it has caused more than 100 extinctions since the 1970s.

Didn't know frogs were in such shoddy shape? Don't worry, you're the norm. Which is precisely the reason Kriger started Save the Frogs! in the first place. He realized he was writing scientific papers about how bad the situation is globally for frogs, which then got published in journals "normal people don't read." On top of all that, he and other scientists were making recommendations based on that research, but there was no one to carry them out. Kriger figured starting a nonprofit was the best way to fill that void.

His current vision for the organization is simple but powerful: "that everyone in America know that frogs are disappearing." Once general awareness is established, especially among the younger generation, it is Kriger's hope that grassroots and legal action to protect frogs and their habitat will follow.

When asked why the average citizen should care about some dying frogs on a mountain somewhere, Kriger took a minute to measure his answer.

"Frogs have been around 250 million years," he said. "They've outlived the dinosaurs ... But in the last 30, 40, 50 years, they're now going extinct."

Because thin-skinned frogs live both on land and in the water, they are biological indicators of the planet's health -- the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. With over one-third of these species in imminent danger of extinction, what's really alarming is that most of us have no idea what's going on.

If that's not cause for concern, he reasoned, you only have to look as far as human disease and medicine. Little-known fact: 10 percent of Nobel prizes in medicine and physiology recognized research that was performed, in part, by researchers using frogs. Additionally, frogs eat disease-carrying ticks and mosquitoes, reducing the spread of malaria, dengue fever, and other less-than-desirable conditions people don't want to catch.

So where is the ray of sunshine in all of this? Kriger admitted he was rarely asked that question, saying, "Good news comes out occasionally."

However, he went on, individuals can do a lot to reverse the threats to amphibians. A few ways to do this are by supporting organics (keeping harmful pesticides far from frogs), by buying pet or food frogs that are captive-bred and local (America is the second-largest importer of frog legs ... who knew?), and by dropping into casual conversation news of the amphibian extinction crisis (over cocktails, naturally).

If you're interested in hearing more from Kriger, take a look at his list of speaking engagements or contact him to help organize an event in your area. And really, consider skipping the frog legs next time.

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These images are from a series of drawings titled “Unnaturalism” by artist Don Simon. His work examines the impact of industrialization and sprawl on ecosystems. From his artist statement:

“Throughout history, particularly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, mankind has been less than kind to our cohabitants on the planet. We build, produce, and consume with little or no regard to the impact it has on the environment. It is the nature of nature to adapt and evolve in order to survive, and we are forcing other species to deal with compromised, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems.

“This series of triptychs depicts scenes resulting from our tragic indifference. They are rendered in a beautiful and natural way, highlighting the idea that we find this acceptable. We are numb to the damage—and so, the unnatural becomes natural to us. This may be the saddest commentary of all.”

Simon, who walked away from a career in advertising to pursue art full-time five years ago, has shown his work in galleries and museums across the U.S. and in Europe. He lives and works in Medford, N.J., just outside of Philadelphia.

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Pop quiz: After Saudi Arabia, which country has the most proven oil reserves? Wrong. Not only wrong, but wrong part of the world. Unless you are among the .00001 percent who guessed Canada—in which case, congratulations!

Canada has 179 billion barrels of proven “oil” reserves. I use quotes because it is not normal oil—i.e., it is not as “good” as regular oil (an extremely low bar, if you ask me). Almost all of it lives in Alberta’s tar sands, a sticky, greasy combination of 10 percent bitumen and 90 percent sand, clay, and water that underlay an area the size of Florida.

This vast store was first discovered by the Cree, and used benignly enough to patch canoes. It was first utilized by industry in 1967 with a mine operated by Suncor. The primary method of extraction is to remove the “overburden”—Orwellian newspeak for what the rest of us might call living Earth: lakes, streams, old-growth Boreal forests, and wildlife. Once all living matter is removed, some of the largest open pit mines in the world are used to extract the bitumen.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, trucks haul 400-ton loads to polluting industrial facilities called “upgraders” that turn the sands into synthetic crude. Some of our biggest companies and largest cities buy tar sands gas and diesel—unwittingly, at this point. Current production is over 1.4 million barrels per day. Canada plans to at least triple that in the next decade.

I went to the tar sands this fall. My organization has been challenging Canadian officials publicly to keep their dirty oil and generating media around the issue since January. I have read many reports, books, and articles, and been briefed by my staff and others who have been there. None of that prepared me for what I would witness.

The tar sands are what you get when you combine 18th Century nonchalance about toxic substances, 21st Century greed, and medieval sensibilities about the ethical treatment of human beings. It is the place that inspired Al Gore to say in Rolling Stone: “It is truly nuts. But you know, junkies find veins in their toes.”

That junkie is us—and Canada is the pusher.

But there are some simple ways to improve things. Like not exempting the tar sands from practically every environmental law in Canada—that would be a start. Like applying basic precautions including cleaning up toxic tailings ponds, installing air pollution controls, and conducting health assessments of workers and downstream communities. Like consulting with First Nations, implementing carbon capture and sequestration, and pursuing biodiversity offsets.

Instead, Canada’s response to criticism has been to launch a $25 million public relations campaign. More recently the federal government made an earnest but laughable overture to President-elect Obama—a climate-protection deal that protects the tar sands from potentially forthcoming U.S. climate regulations. This is not going to change anyone’s impression of the most destructive fossil-fuel project on the planet—but it will mean further delay in real change. And that’s something no one on this planet can afford.

To get involved and learn more, check out Forest Ethics’ Stop Tar Sands campaign.

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A mob of some 3,000 people trashed a government office in Paragominas, Brazil, on Monday to protest the government's crackdown on illegal logging. Environment Minister Carlos Minc says the riot will not deter anti-logging efforts.

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Cocaine users get no love from Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos Calderon, who speechified to police officers in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday: "Colombia has lost more than [5 million acres] of rainforest in the last 15 years to plant coca. If you snort a gram of cocaine you are destroying [43 square feet] of pristine rainforest. That rainforest is not just Colombian. It belongs to all of us who live on this planet, so we should all be worried about it."

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The population of West African chimpanzees in Cote d'Ivoire has declined 90 percent in the last 18 years, according to a new study published in Current Biology. In the 1960s, the West African country was home to about 100,000 of the apes; in 1989-1990, scientists counted 8,000 to 12,000, which they estimated to be half the remaining population of the species. The most recent count turned up 800 to 1,200 chimps. "We were not expecting such a drastic decrease," says lead author Geneviève Campbell. Researchers attribute the chimp decline to a 50 percent jump in Côte d'Ivoire's human population since 1990, as well as civil unrest that has been simmering since 2002. Hunting and deforestation have skyrocketed; one national park has lost a full 93 percent of its forest cover since 2002. And more bad news may be ahead: External funding for Taï National Park, where chimpanzees are holding strong, is scheduled to end in 2010.

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The Galapagos Islands are totally hot right now. To tourists, the island chain 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador offers stunning biodiversity (blue-footed boobies!) that infamously inspired Charles Darwin to write The Origin of Species. To residents, the tourism-driven economy offers high wages, top-notch public schools, and a dearth of violent crime. But as more and more humans show up -- the resident population has nearly doubled in the past decade to 30,000, while 180,000 tourists are expected to visit this year -- they bring with them alien species and increased pollution. In response to a 2007 United Nations listing of the Galapagos as a World Heritage Site in Danger, the government has taken some steps to regulate tourism, but has resisted a hard cap on visitors. It is, however, cracking down on citizens: This year, 1,000 folks without residency and work permits have been kicked off the islands, while 2,000 others have in effect been told they must leave within a year.

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Hundreds of beach houses on the gulf coast of Texas may soon be declared illegal and seized under a state law that prohibits houses from being built (or remaining) between a beach's high and low tide marks. Hurricane Ike's 12-foot storm surge and 100-mile-per-hour winds severely eroded many Texas beaches and redrew the tide lines enough that even many beach houses that survived the hurricane intact could be seized by the state under the law and eventually be returned to beach. Texas officials said it would be about a year or more before they decide for sure which houses violate the law, but homeowners whose beachfront houses were damaged or completely destroyed said that the uncertainty of whether their house will be seized is already making them rethink expensive repairs. Experts say that simply repairing the beaches isn't possible; even if tons of sand were trucked in, it would all wash away in a year or so. "We're talking about damn fools that have built houses on the edge of the sea for as long as man could remember and against every advice anyone has given," said the former state senator who wrote the 1959 Texas Open Beaches Act.

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Louisiana's people and property fared better under Hurricane Gustav than had been feared, but acres of valuable wetlands were likely irrevocably destroyed. "The last thing on anyone's mind during a hurricane is how the wetlands are going to do," says activist Aaron Giles. But since happy and healthy wetlands act as storm barriers, "wetlands are a critical piece of keeping coastal Louisiana safe." Heavy storms toss around fauna in marshes and deposit saltwater where it ain't supposed to be. Louisiana's wetlands have been severely eroded by natural disaster and development; some estimates hold that healthier wetlands could have knocked Gustav's 12-foot tidal surge down by three feet. The hurricane shut down oil production in the Gulf of Mexico but caused no structural damage or spills on offshore platforms, leading President Bush to reiterate Tuesday, "This storm should not cause members of the Congress to say, 'Well, we don't need to address our energy independence.' We need more domestic energy. One place to find it is offshore America.''

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The amount of old-growth forest designated as critical habitat for the northern spotted owl was slashed 23 percent, or 1.6 million acres, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday. One might think that means that spotted owls are doing well for themselves, but no: the spotted owl population is dropping by 4 percent each year. Despite widespread efforts to protect their Northwest old-growth home, the birds continue to lose habitat to logging, wildfires, and the aggressive barred owl. A federal study released last month warned that the remaining spotted owls lack genetic diversity, which may send them even more quickly toward extinction. "I have not lost hope for spotted owls," says wildlife geneticist Susan Haig, "but I think we're at a pretty serious crossroads." The federal axing of critical-habitat acreage resulted from a settlement with the timber industry, which complained that the 5.3 million acres left as critical habitat is still too much.

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Louisiana wildlife have so far largely escaped harm from the oil spill that shut down 100 miles of the Mississippi River last week. But biologists remain nervous as the oil slick heads downstream toward the Delta National Wildlife Refuge and neighboring marshy areas, where nearly 100,000 migratory birds will alight in the fall. Barriers are being erected to keep oil away from marshes, and folks are keeping fingers crossed that currents will push the grease to the banks of the river before it reaches the wetlands. Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has set up propane cannons designed to scare animals away from oily areas. The agency has so far found nearly 60 oil-coated ducks and other birds, as well as a beaver and a muskrat; nearly all of the animals were weakened but still quick enough to elude capture by biologists trying to get 'em cleaned up.

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Some 420,000 gallons of fuel oil spilled into the Mississippi River early Wednesday, after a 600-foot chemical tanker collided with a fuel barge. The collision split the barge in half; thick, slow-to-evaporate fuel has traveled at least 12 miles downriver. The Coast Guard closed a 29-mile stretch of the river around New Orleans, and residents have been asked to conserve water as drinking-water intakes are closed or diverted. Cleanup is expected to take days. Full environmental impact is yet unclear, but, notes a spokesperson for the Louisiana environmental agency: "We have a lot of wildlife in the southern delta." To look on the bright side, the spill pales in comparison to the millions of gallons of oil that the Coast Guard estimates were dumped in the river following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Yes, folks, millions -- not zero.

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Every ecosystem in the eastern United States is tainted by air pollution, says a new report from The Nature Conservancy and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. The report looks at the impacts of sulfur, nitrogen, mercury, and ground-level ozone in six different habitats, and concludes that those damn pollutants are pretty much everywhere. Coauthor Dr. Tim Tear breaks it down: "Mercury contamination results in fish that are unsafe to eat. Acidification kills fish and strips nutrients from soils. Excess nitrogen pollutes estuaries, to the detriment of coastal fisheries. And ground-level ozone reduces plant growth, a threat to forestry and agriculture." Eastern ecosystems, downwind from many large urban and industrial areas, have the highest levels of deposited air pollution -- that is, pollutants whisked on the wind that eventually settle to the land -- in North America. The report calls, of course, for better federal monitoring and regulation of said pollutants.

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Livestock grazing will be allowed on thousands of acres of Midwest land that had been set aside for conservation, Department of Agriculture Secretary Ed Schaeffer announced this week. Under the federal Conservation Reserve Program, landowners are paid to let their acreage just chill out and be wildlife habitat. But after the region's recent spate of flooding, Schaeffer gave in to the requests of several state and federal officials to allow grazing on CRP land in counties designated as presidential disaster areas. "Flood waters inundated thousands of acres that cannot be salvaged for production this growing season," explains Schaeffer, "and it happened at a time of record crop, food, and fuel prices." Advocates of the exemption hope to convince Schaeffer to also allow haying on no-longer-really-conservation-reserved land.

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We're in the midst of the International Year of the Reef, but there's little to celebrate: Nearly half of coral reefs in U.S. waters are in "poor" or "fair" condition, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported at this week's 11th International Coral Reef Symposium. Human activity messes with reefs in all sorts of ways, from ocean acidification (spurred by carbon-dioxide emissions) to fishing, boating, diving, marine debris, coastal development, pollution, erosion, and smothering seaweed grown for human consumption. Two coral species -- elkhorn and staghorn -- are listed as endangered. And loss of coral doesn't just mean disappointed snorkelers: one-quarter of all marine species rely on coral in one way or another, and 40 percent of fish with commercial value breed in reefs.

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It's hard to believe, now that it's been overrun by 7 million residents and 7 jillion strip malls, but southern Florida was once America's last frontier. As late as 1880, the census recorded just 257 residents in a county covering most of the region -- because most of the region was a watery wilderness called the Everglades. Mapmakers weren't sure whether to draw it as land or water. Politicians dismissed it as uninhabitable swampland. Explorers described it as a "godforsaken" and "hideous" and "abominable" morass, "suitable only for the haunt of noxious vermin, or the resort of pestilential reptiles."

When good wetlands go bad.

Photo: usgs.gov

Those explorers never would have imagined that the Everglades would get so dry that it would burn out of control, or that desolate southern Florida would become a sprawling megalopolis. But those two weird developments are intimately related. The wildfires raging through nearly 40,000 acres of the Everglades this week are the direct legacy of the elaborate water-management system that made southern Florida safe for human civilization. The system has functioned according to design for decades, but it's killing the Everglades, and it's ultimately unsustainable for human South Florida as well.

Environmentalists like to say that the Everglades is a test; if we pass, we may get to keep the planet. I wrote a book about the death and possible rebirth of the Everglades that was basically dedicated to the proposition that southern Florida is where we're going to find out whether humans can live in harmony with nature, and perhaps avoid the water wars that could otherwise dominate the geopolitics of the 21st century. The fires are a vivid, symbolic reminder that we've got a long way to go. History's bill is coming due for a century of bad decisions, and we haven't yet figured out how to pay it.

For all its famous sunshine, southern Florida has always been one of the rainiest swaths of North America; with 60 annual inches, it's significantly wetter than Seattle. And for thousands of years, most of that water ended up in Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, a panoramic sheet of shallow water flowing through 100 miles of serrated sawgrass from the lake all the way down to Florida Bay. In fact, the fires that are now raging in the northeast corner of Everglades National Park are incinerating one of the wettest sloughs of the original "river of grass." Another fire ravaging 25,000 acres around Lake Okeechobee is actually burning drought-exposed lakebed.

The scientific term for this phenomenon is FUBAR. Sloughs and lakes are not supposed to be flammable. Sure, there were fires in the natural Everglades, but they were caused by lightning strikes during summer rains, and were quickly extinguished by the waterlogged landscape. The Everglades is incredibly flat, declining just a few inches per mile, so its original wetlands were incredibly wet, storing rainfall and recharging underground aquifers in the summer so that there was still water on the ground when the rains stopped in the winter. If you were a glutton for punishment, you could have walked across the entire marsh without getting your hair wet, and without stepping on dry ground.

But starting in the 1880s, Americans determined to subdue Mother Nature started trying to drain the Everglades with canals, hoping to create a new paradise for agriculture and development. A few lonely voices warned that ditches could turn the swamp into a desert, but most Floridians agreed with Gov. Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, who declared in the early 1900s that if drained swamps could really burn, "the great bogs of Ireland would have been ash heaps long before St. Patrick drove out the snakes."

But sure enough, the early ditches started sucking the marsh dry, ruining wells, damaging soils, and, yes, igniting fires so smoky that children in Miami had to cover their faces at school. And in the summer, southern Florida's torrential downpours overwhelmed the ditches, converting farmland back to swampland, inspiring the first jokes about buying Florida land by the gallon. The jokes seemed a lot less funny in 1928, when a hurricane blasted Lake Okeechobee through a flimsy muck dike, killing 2,500 pioneers in the Everglades.

Enter my friends in the Army Corps of Engineers, the ground troops in America's war against nature. They built the massive Hoover Dike around the lake, forever cutting off the Everglades from its wellspring. Then they built America's most ambitious flood-control system, with more than 2,000 miles of levees and canals, plus pumps so powerful the engines were cannibalized from nuclear submarines. The project gave water managers power to move almost every drop of rain that fell south of Orlando, allowing them to whisk floodwaters into the lake, the Everglades, or its estuaries for the convenience of thirsty farms and communities that only wanted water when they wanted it.

These waterworks made southern Florida safe for 400,000 acres of sugar fields, as well as one of the spectacular development booms in human history. On the southeast coast, suburbs like Coral Springs, Miami Springs, Sunrise, Miramar, Weston, and Wellington began sprouting west of I-95, paving over the eastern Everglades. And on the southwest coast, Naples and Fort Myers started marching east into the western Everglades.

Unfortunately, most of that boom took place back when wetlands -- which absorb stormwater, cleanse drinking water, and nourish wildlife -- were still considered wastelands. The result is a dying ecological treasure, but also a megalopolis that still seesaws between dangerous floods in the wet season and harsh droughts in the dry season.

Today, half the original Everglades has been lost, along with its ability to smooth out high-water and low-water events. The other half is a mess -- usually too dry, occasionally too wet, always polluted and discombobulated. The ecosystem hosts 69 endangered species, including the Cape Sable seaside sparrow, which exists only in Everglades National Park, and could use some flame-retardant pajamas this week. Water is supposed to be the lifeblood of the Everglades, but these days it barely reaches the park.

Meanwhile, since the leaky Hoover Dike is at risk of a catastrophic failure, and water managers don't want a repeat of the 1928 disaster, they often blast billions of gallons out of the lake when it gets high, ravaging the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries to its east and west, wasting fresh water they need in times of drought. For example, they dumped tons of water into the sea to prepare for the 2006 hurricane season -- just in time for a two-year drought that has left Lake Okeechobee three feet below its normal level.

That's how southern Florida got into its current predicament. Raindrops that used to fall on wetlands, recharge aquifers, and dribble across the landscape all year long now land on yards, roads, and parking lots, migrate into canals, and get whisked out to sea. And now the exurbs have moved to the doorstep of the Everglades, where they constantly stick new straws into the aquifers. So now the Everglades is parched enough to burn out of control when some yahoo gets careless with matches. And millions of people in the surrounding suburbs suddenly have to worry about smoke and particulates as well as unbearable traffic, overcrowded schools, skyrocketing insurance rates tied to the omnipresent threat of a hurricane, and a disappearing sense of place.

The good news is that in 2000, Congress decided to fix all these problems, enacting the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan to restore some semblance of southern Florida's natural hydrology. It's a complex project, but the basic idea is to spend $12 billion on reservoirs and high-tech wells that will store rain that used to be stored by wetlands, then redistribute it to people, farms, and the Everglades when it's needed.

The project passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both Washington, D.C. and Tallahassee, because everyone agreed that the Everglades was a national treasure. It's supposed to be a model for ecosystem restoration work in the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, Louisiana's coastal wetlands, and even southern Iraq's Garden of Eden marshes.

The bad news is that the project is deeply flawed, particularly when it comes to getting water to the Everglades. And now it's stalled by money problems, engineering problems, and political problems. The Everglades is as sick in 2008 as it was in 2000.

Eventually, it will stop burning. But it will still be dying.

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