Watching frogs for lake health.
ENVIRONMENTAL INDICATOR: Frogs can absorb water and oxygen through their skin, which makes them excellent indicators of environmental health.
LAKE OF BAYS - Frogs and toads are a natural part of life around Lake of Bays.
Who doesn’t love those bullfrogs that insist on “more rum” late into the night when you’re trying to fall asleep?
There are the toads the kids chase after and keep in a little plastic pail for as long as mom and dad will let them.
And you know it’s spring when the evenings are filled with the spring peepers’ loud chorus.
Things just wouldn’t be the same without those amphibians around us.
But did you know just how important amphibians are? Yes, they eat pesky mosquitoes and other insects that are such a nuisance.
But they do more than that.
Frogs and toads live “on the edge” between water and land. They have semi-permeable skin through which they both breathe and drink.
This makes them very sensitive to pollution and other environmental changes and their numbers are a very good indicator of the health of the lake and its surrounding wetlands.
In the same way that canaries were used in coal mines to signal when dangerous gases were present, the absence, or loss of, frog populations can indicate a disturbed environment.
The Lake of Bays Association constantly monitors the health of the lake.
Keeping track of the distribution and numbers of amphibians in the area is one method of doing that.
Ten different species of frogs and toads make Muskoka their home, each with their own distinctive call.
The easiest and most effective way to track their populations is to listen for their calls during mating season in the spring.
This year, 21 wonderful, enthusiastic volunteers from many different areas around the lake stepped forward to assist the Lake of Bays Association to do just that.
These volunteers learned the amphibian calls and spent a minimum of three minutes, once or twice a week from the end of March until the end of June listening for, and observing the activity of the frogs and toads found in Muskoka.
Some volunteers have continued to monitor their wetland areas throughout the summer identifying and reporting on the different species they encounter.
All the data collected by the volunteers is entered into the Nature Watch Canada website, which is a volunteer ecological monitoring program that gathers the information that scientists need to monitor and protect the environment.
Nature Watch includes monitoring programs for frogs, ice, plants and worms and is run collaboratively by the Government of Canada, Nature Canada, EMAN (Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Networks) and the University of Guelph.
Go to the Nature Watch website (www.naturewatch.ca) and click on ‘Frog Watch’ to learn more about the program.
You can even click on ‘View Results’ and see the Lake of Bays locations where observations are made and submitted by our volunteers.
Our results not only help provincial and national researchers monitor the environment, but also help the association keep track of the health of our local ecosystem.
This is intended to be a long-term project as the true value is in being able to compare results over a long period of time.
If you are interested in becoming involved in this or future association frog watch activities please contact Caroline Konarzewski at caromike@gmail.com.
-submitted by Caroline Konarzewski
Environment committee, Lake of Bays Association