African bullfrog relocation in South Africa

[Buck Rogers]

Morning from South Africa

John requested that I submit these photos and explain a bit about the photos to give you guys some on sight info and also probably make you jealous

I live in Gauteng South Africa, on the highveld we have a large population of wild Bullfrogs and the area I live in Fourways is know for its bullfrogs. It is just unfortunate that there is so much development that is going on at the moment so a lot of the natural enviroment which these frogs thrive in is being destroyed. The last wild bullfrog i saw was walking across the parking lot of a nightclub/bar so just to give you an indication of how close we are to their territory. As you probably know bullfrogs enhabit perinial water pans like most of our highveld frogs. So when the water hole dries up they head underground and hibernate till the rainy season starts (usually around September). Thie last season it was my mission to go out and find several bullfrogs but unfortantly this did not happen, it was a slow herping season all around the country and I was only able to find a few frogs and managed to help relocate this big male bullfrog.


(©2009 Darryn Rogers - first published on www.FrogForum.net)

A friend of mine does snake removals and was phoned to remove a bullfrog from an office park's underground parking basement. apparantly the office park was built in winter and as soon as the rains came this guy came through the drainage system and was sitting in the middle of the parking lot. Its sad becasue that means that the office park destroyed his pan of water and any other's that were there were killed, so he was the lone survivor. The red snout is from rubbing his nose against the transport tub.

So we are fortunate enough to know of a guy who owns a game farm/piece of land allows us to relocate any herps we find in the Pretoria area to his place for a new lease on life. This is one big male as you can clearly see and measures in at around 27cm (sorry metric system), I have only ever seen two (including this one) this big, usually what i have seen is around 15cm.

So we relocated this guy into what would be the ideal enviroment, and these pics can give you some idea of what their natural enviroment looks like:


(©2009 Darryn Rogers - first published on www.FrogForum.net)



(©2009 Darryn Rogers - first published on www.FrogForum.net)

I am currently planning on doing some indipendant research into bullfrogs, I will be observing several different areas in and around Gauteng and will be looking at distrobution, paternal care, size, weight, and hopefully be able to observe mating. Please feel free to answer any questions that you may have, I am no expert in the field but I will do my best to answer.

[John]

Excellent post Darryn! It's rather saddening to hear about the habitat loss but that is a common problem around the world. I hope they come to their senses and make more intelligent choices on where to build.

One other note - there's no copyright notice on the first photo and it's the kind of photo I think people might be interested in "stealing".

[Jace]

Amazing photographs-thank you very much for sharing. That male makes my guy look like a tadpole still! It's unfortunate to hear of their loss of habitat, but it sounds like they have a very good advocate in you. I really hope that your independent research allows others to see the postitive aspects of these frogs and why they are needed. Best of luck and I look forward to more pictures...and you were right-I am jealous!

[Kurt]

Excellent post Darryn! It's rather saddening to hear about the habitat loss but that is a common problem around the world. I hope they come to their senses and make more intelligent choices on where to build.

Don't worry, they won't. As long as there is money to be made and people keep on reproducing, they will continue to develope land. More people are being born than are dying these days. The human population continues to mushroom.

[Buck Rogers]

Don't worry, they won't. As long as there is money to be made and people keep on reproducing, they will continue to develope land. More people are being born than are dying these days. The human population continues to mushroom.

This is too true, but its more greed than anything else now days. I have been in contact with a lady at the Centre for Environment Studies to do some photographic research in an area that has a healthy population of bullfrogs (thanks John for that link to her website) and they are concerned about the area next to the water pan being developed for what is known as low cost housing. Due to apartheid in South Africa we have a large portion of our population that is previously disadvantaged so as a governemnt project they build low cost housing for these people (wont get into the politics here) but these houses tend to get built in areas where there is peranial water holes (surely can't be very stable) but at the cost of many indigineous species being destroyed. The only way to prevent this from happening is to prove that a threatened species inhabits this area which is what she is doing. So hopefully with my photographic research I will be able to give them a helping hand in recording numbers and preventing this from happening.

[John]

Sounds very promising Darryn. Good luck!

[Kurt]

Yes, good luck with that.

[ampieb]

Hi Darryn, I represent a WESSA Friends group that was recently founded in reaction to an attempt by JHB City to turn one of the wetlands in our area into a large pavement. We focus on the Fourways Stream wetland system (north of Fourways Mall) and have representation from several complexes from Fairfield to Fourways Gardens. We are joining forces with Working for Wetlands to try to salvage and rehabilitate wetland zones in the area. As you know, the Fourways area used to be known for the rich amphibian life. We still have a couple of amphibian species hanging on in our area, but are keen on rehabilitating habitat specifically for the African Bullfrog. In fact, we believe that the Fourways Stream could potentially form a strategic corridor for amphibians from the Fourways Mall dam to the Jukskei river. Unfortunately, we are still very new to this field, and it seems like you are much more experienced than us.
Would you be interested in meeting me to see if there is a potential for synergy?
Ampie Barnard
WESSA Friends of witkoppen Park

[Buck Rogers]

Hi AMPIEB

I am in the Douglasdale area and work quite close to the fourways mall area, I would love to meet up with you and see what we can do. Drop me a mail on <removed by John due to spam fear> and we can arrange to meet up and see what we can do together.

Last season I spent a bit of time around the Jukskei (more like YUCK-skei) trying to find some bullfrogs but I think I was too late in the year for this, with the rainy season coming up in the nest few weeks we should definetly meet up.

Darryn