A tiny species of toad whose only known habitat is the misty banks of Tanzania’s Kihanzi river has been saved from extinction at the hands of the safari ant and thirsty hyro-power, a conservationist reported on Tuesday.
”The population size of the spray toads appears to be returning to the levels in October 2000,” said Wilfred Sarunday, head of the project to save the protected amphibian, scientifically known as Nectophrynoides asperginis.
Millions in World Bank cash helped the spray toad, which is just three-quarters of an inch (two centimetres) in length, to win its battle for survival against the electricity needs of a developing nation.
After water was diverted to a hydro-electrical generating plant in Kihansi gorge, in the southern Udzungwa Mountains, the toad’s population plummeted to around 1 200.
The toad’s habitat needs as much water, about seven cubic metres (250 cubic feet) per second, as is used to generate 52 megawatts of electricity.
Coupled with poor rains, the diversion robbed the animals of the essential mist produced by the river’s waterfalls and exposed them to ravenous safari ants.
When Tanzania’s power generator Tanesco reduced the output from the hydro plant to allow spraying of the habitat a couple of years ago, it did not seem keen to publicise the conservation gesture.
”How can you tell a Tanzanian that a one-inch toad has prevented Tanesco from generating adequate power? Nobody will appreciate the problem,” the company’s director of projects, Francis Shaidi, said at the time.
Many Tanzanians were bemused when international animal activists took up the toad’s cause, even exporting 500 of them to zoos in the United States, but efforts to launch a captive breeding programme appear to have met with little success.
Diseases such as lungworm and other problems reduced this parent stock to less than 80, and many of the offspring initially died of starvation because of difficulties obtaining their natural diet.
As well as the sprinklers set up under the conservation programme, farmers in surrounding arable land were taught efficient irrigation techniques to minimise water wastage.
Two years of good rains also helped to reduce the water deficit caused by the hydro plant’s consumption, according to Sarunday.
Nectophrynoides asperginis is listed under Appendix 1 of the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species, the highest level of protection offered under the convention. – Sapa-AFP