[olddogrib]

Anybody here float fish the upper Yadkin? When I was a teenager my uncle, cousin and I floated and camped on the Yadkin River from Elkin all the way down to new 421. We would often spend several days and nights subsisting on catfish, frog legs and corn ears "borrowed" from river bottoms roasted over campfire coals. The catfish were caught mostly at night from what my uncle called trotlines. Technically these were individual bank poles made from cut green river cane baited with Catalpa worms. The frogs were shot with .22 short hollow points. The kicker was they were shot during the day, not at night. We typically got anywhere from 30-40 frogs even of short 4-6 hour floats. I know we never dented the populations, because we kept it up for the better part of 10 years, until girls, cars and other things took precedent and I never noticed a decline. But on the few floats that I took in my 20's the frog populations had diiminshed considerably. I figured like many wildlife populations it may have been a cyclical thing, but to my knowledge they've never made a comeback. I did a short float last summer for the first time in many years and never saw a single frog. I have no idea if it was possibly pollution due to a pesticde runoff or possibly an over abundance of natural predators when hunting racoons, fox etc. declined. Any armchair biologists got a theory?

 

[SnowCamp]

Lots of articles on the web about declining frog and amphibian populations in many (most?, all?) countries for the last 20 years... Lots of theories on what to blame but no proofs.... Global warning and drought are getting a lot of attention but I'd suspect chemical run-offs are causing genetic and reproductive problems...

 

[Nat's Dad]

I've read it's an increase in UV light that hurts them. I do see more Leopard frogs around my place than in years past though. Up on the Yadkin I'd blame Monsanto and that corn or hormones in the treated sewage upstream if I was a betting man.

 

[OptiMystic]

I hope this doesn't degrade into another debate on whether or not it is occurring, but I think the climate change theory holds the most water. Here is some info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_amphibian_populations

Note that it is a world wide decline that has been very rapid over the last 30 years. It's even occurring in remote isolated habitats with no nearby farming or industry.

 

[Nat's Dad]

I thought frogs like warm weather.

 

[OptiMystic]

I thought frogs like warm weather.

It's a shame that the issue was first labeled global warming instead of climate change. If you read the theories about amphibians, it's more about effects with sunlight than temperature.

 

[Nat's Dad]

About what year did folks start confusing "fact" and "Truth" and thinking they were the same thing?

 

[OptiMystic]

About what year did folks start confusing "fact" and "Truth" and thinking they were the same thing?

That's been going on almost as long as the confusion between belief and truth. Our observations lead us to believe things, while others believe different things based on other observations. Once you or I believe something, it is hard to be objective. Anyway, I believe the observations about amphibians declining everywhere the last few decades and I also believe the observations about the change in climate and it seems reasonable to me that they might be related.

 

[Nat's Dad]

I believe the observations about amphibians declining everywhere the last few decades and I also believe the observations about the change in climate and it seems reasonable to me that they might be related.

No more so than the reported rise in Autism.........or is that related to Climate Change © also?

 

[OptiMystic]

There's a tangent; the rise in diagnosis may or may not indicate a rise in incidence; the data is not very clear. Autism is a syndrome - widely varying symptoms classified under a general category. It's not something you can measure with a thermometer or ruler like temperature and sea level.

 

[h2ohhh]

Al Gore: I invented amphibians.

Hillary Clinton: What difference does it make at this point why there are fewer amphibians?

Barack Obama: Let me be perfectly clear, if the amphibians like their current treated sewage they can keep their current treated sewage.

Martha Stewart: No one called me to warn me which way the frog legs market was going. I had a standing order to sell when the price dropped to a certain level.

Grandpa h2ohhh: In my day nobody cared about the reason there were less amphibians. Someone told us there were and that was good enough for us....

 

[OptiMystic]

The tan Gent has spoken...

 

[Fish_Fiend]

Maybee this worlds creator had a plan? Maybee the world is supposed to eat itself? Maybee just maybee there are things out there we dont need to understand. The meaning of serenity.

 

[Mack in N.C.]

I would blame chemicals and pesticides more than global warming but I am not a scientist but its a good guess....one often overlooked factor especially with bullfrogs is predation from above....I have seen owls and hawks eat bullfrogs. 30 years years ago it was shoot on site for a quail hunter.... chemicals are the biggest culprit though.

 

[mrpossumtail]

Kinda with Mack on this one. The sterilization of existing farm land tracts and the deforestation in Surry and adjacent countiers will have significant impacts on not only the Yadkin riparian zone, but also it's many tribs. Bottom land frogs near the river seem to be doing ok where the river bottom is heavily forested.

 

[Mack in N.C.]

Roundup is one of the most common herbicides sold today....it is actually one of the safest for people.....you can drink roundup and it wont kill you.....yes that is correct......but, it is deadly on frogs and tadpoles though....

 

[papadave]

there are no fewer frogs. there are no fewer frogs. there are no fewer frogs.there are no fewer frogs. there are no fewer frogs. there are no fewer frogs.there are no fewer frogs. there are no fewer frogs. there are no fewer frogs. there are no fewer frogs.

You don't need to see the frogs.
These aren't the frogs you're looking for

These aren't the frogs we're looking for
We don't need to see the frogs

Move along

Move along... move along

 

[OptiMystic]

The problem with the chemical theory is that the decline seems to be world wide, even in undeveloped areas where there is no nearby farming or industry.

 

[olddogrib]

LOL, there's a few peep's on here that obviously still have a good private stock of those psychedelic Amazonian toads on the Discovery channel, if not the big green croakers with the tasty legs that I miss from 45 years ago. Word of warning: if you keep on sucking those with the day-glo spots you'll loose your memory in way less time than it took me!

 

[pgarick]

Al Gore: I invented amphibians.

Hillary Clinton: What difference does it make at this point why there are fewer amphibians?

Barack Obama: Let me be perfectly clear, if the amphibians like their current treated sewage they can keep their current treated sewage.

Martha Stewart: No one called me to warn me which way the frog legs market was going. I had a standing order to sell when the price dropped to a certain level.

Grandpa h2ohhh: In my day nobody cared about the reason there were less amphibians. Someone told us there were and that was good enough for us....

Honorable H, far be it for me to correct you as you typically speak the gospel, but did Al Gore not invent the Internet?