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SUCCESS, miss. When does the mood strike a dark frog?
In winter or spring. The night. When the water in a single type of pond in a separate forest type is at a specific depth. And it rains.
With such a capricious libido, it is not surprising that Rana Sevosa – spotted, big eyes, about three inches long and with a call that has been compared to human snoring – is one of the most endangered amphibians in the world.
The fate of the dark gopher frog will be the first item on the agenda of the Supreme Court as she begins her new term on Monday, a member in short and at the center of a national debate on the man named to replace him, Brett M. Kavanaugh. While this battle rages, the judges will focus on a frog.
[Who is Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s pick for Supreme Court?]
Weyerhaeuser Company c. US Fish and Wildlife Service tests until the federal government can go on to designate private land as future habitat for an endangered species – when the creature itself does not live on the land in question and could not, without modification, and maybe never.
Ranger Chuck Burdine, left, and researcher Jaime Smith, right. (Emily Kask / For the Washington Post)
The frog, once considered extinct, lives in the wild exclusively in Mississippi, in the De Soto National Forest. His new potential home is more than 50 miles from the other side of the Pearl River in Louisiana, where the frog once lived but which has not been seen since the 1960s.
"This is nowhere and he will not come back," said Edward B. Poitevent II, whose family owns most of what the government calls Unit 1, a 1,544-acre strip of land located in the parish of St. Tammany. He challenges the government's designation of the land, as does the wood-based giant Weyerhaeuser, who owns some of the land and has a long-term lease for the pine harvest on the rest.
"It's not a flying bird or a swimming fish; it's not going to fly on my land or swim on my land, so what are we talking about here? "Asks Poitevent, whose family is the largest owner of the parish, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain, across from New Orleans. "How can this be a habitat for something that does not exist on the earth?"
The government says to consider Unit 1 as an insurance policy, required by the Endangered Species Act. Once a species has been identified as endangered, the government must identify the critical habitat of the creatures, and the law specifically considers the lands currently occupied by the species and not.
Unoccupied lands can only be considered critical when the government deems it "indispensable to the conservation of the species". The law defines "conservation" as encompassing not only the survival but also the restoration of the Alabama population and frog. Mississippi and Louisiana.
Smith pulls a bag of dark frog into a burrow where the frog cools. (Emily Kask / For the Washington Post)
A panel of experts stated that Unit 1 met the requirements of the law, mainly because it contained something essential in the frog's breeding habits: "ponds" ephemeral ". It is a poetic appellation for low areas that fill with water at certain times of the year and then dry out. outside. These ponds are not able to feed the fish, which would eat them.
Poitevent notes that the specific requirements of what he points out were called the Mississippi frog. "They are very delicate creatures, are not they?" He asks. "They look so prehistoric, and yet they are pretty delicate."
Jaime Smith, the newest of a long line of researchers who came to Mississippi to help restore the frog population, says: Not really. The frog hears well until people arrive.
"The main factor of its near-extinction was human activity and habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation," she said last month while she was heading a visitor looking for the frog.
"So when I hear the argument that it's about an animal that was clearly not supposed to survive, I have the impression that it is as if someone broke into your apartment, trashed it and said you were not really destined to have that apartment. . "
Others can listen to the dark Gopher frog and detect a snoring. Smith hears more purring.
"They are great little animals," she said.
Smith, 27, is known for his evening gatherings during the breeding season, when the water level in the ephemeral ponds has reached at least 55 centimeters and the rain is falling.
In the middle of the night, she briefly holds the frogs headed to the pond for a quick review and then sends them on their way. Later, she will collect some of their egg masses to bring them back into captivity. A few years ago, a setback occurred: a protozoan parasite decimated its efforts. She collected 121 egg masses, each containing about 1,200 eggs, and only two metamorphosed tadpoles.
On a recent trip to the National Forest, a journalist and a photographer were asked to turn off the GPS on their devices to keep frog locations secret. The Gopher Dark Frog spends most of its time underground, living in stumps and holes created by giant turtles, hence its name.
In a part of the forest, researchers are trying to determine whether frogs would be equally happy in a hole dug in the ground and drilled by a two-inch auger. Smith pulled out a net liner and there was actually one of the endangered amphibians.
When protection efforts began, there were only about 100 frogs capable of breeding. That number has doubled, Smith said. And she recognizes that it takes a lot of work to keep the frog happy.
In addition to the rare ponds, frogs need an open-canopy forest with plenty of sun, and their protected areas are regularly burned to remove the undergrowth that would prevent them from reaching the ponds.
This is where the friction lies, according to Poitevent and Weyerhaeuser. Unit 1 contains ephemeral ponds, but none of the other features the frog needs, they say. Imposing additional conditions on their lands could prevent their development and devalue the property by almost $ 33 million over the next 20 years.
If this happens in a rural part of Louisiana, they could argue that it could happen anywhere. "Large parts of the United States could be designated as critical habitat if only one element used by an endangered species is present," says the company in its submission.
The government understands this by saying that the designation does not pose an immediate problem to the landowners. This may only be necessary if things go south for the Mississippi frog and the land could be made habitable for the frog with reasonable effort, "distinguishing them from other historically occupied sites where such restoration is difficult feasible".
Until now, the courts have found that the government's efforts constituted a reasonable interpretation of the Endangered Species Act. And the Trump administration is defending the designation of the land, even though it proposes changes to the law that, according to environmentalists, would weaken it.
Poitevent is among those surprised by the Trump administration's support for the frog.
"I thought it was curious, yes," he said. "I had hoped that they would change [sides]and they are not.
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