Turns out global warming is probably to blame for pushing the extinction, not just of a species, but an entire class of vertebrates, the amphibians. Amphibians like frogs and salamanders live in a delicate liminal environment, heavily dependent upon maintaining moisturized skin... Global warming in some cases is directly to blame for changing the (humidity?) habitat of amphibians; it may also be indirectly causing the proliferation of certain forms of fungi that attack the fragile skin of amphibians, causing them to die in vast numbers...
Right now, there is an effort to collect amphibians and hopefully preserve them in man-made environments, in terrarium zoos...
There are so many slow and creeping ecological disasters looming upon us... And yet no one is doing anything.
Maybe if amphibians were cute and cuddly like panda bears or kangaroos, there would be an uproar. But who gives a shit about toads? Well, like them or not, perhaps they are serving as our figurative "canaries in the coalmine." If they die, it's likely that things are going to go downhill for the rest of us as well...
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