Foreword
The dusky gopher frog lives in a delicate ecological balance. It spends most of its life in the forest, underground. To breed, however, it heads to “ephemeral” ponds —small bodies of water that exist only during rainy seasons. Because these ponds are temporary, they contain no predatory fish, making them a safe place to lay eggs in safety. The species once lived across a three-State region in the southern United States. Due to habitat destruction from human development, however, the number of frogs dwindled down to a few hundred in Mississippi. In 2001, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)…
