Saving Ecudadorian land for wildlife (including my frog)

August 1, 2025 • 9:25 am

Reader Lou Jost, a naturalist and evolutionist who works at the Dracula Reserve of Ecuador’s EcoMinga Foundation, just sent me this Facebook post put out by an Ecuadorian province a few years ago. It features MY frog, Atelopus coynei (it’s got a Wikipedia page, too), so it’s a bit self-aggrandizing of me to post this, but in fact the species is critically endangered and I want it saved.  There are surely other undescribed and endangered species on the property (here’s a new tree frog discovered and described by the tem on the reserve.)

The story of the frog, how it got my name, and how it seemed to have gone extinct, but, Lazarus-like, was discovered by Andreas Kay decades later in Chinambi, Carchi, Ecuador, can be seen here.

Isn’t it a beaut? I suspect that its colors indicate that the frog is aposematic, i.e., toxic or dangerous to eat or touch. (The photo is by the late Andreas Kay courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Click photo below go to the FB post:

Lou adds this:

The province is proud to be the only place in the world where your frog survives. It is one of the fruits of our work trying to raise awareness for the rare species of our reserves.

Our  president, Noboa, is firing massive numbers of public employees from ministries he doesn’t like, and closing or re-organizing them so he can do what he wants. Last week he placed the ministry of the environment into the ministry of energy and mining, and this is expected to make it harder for us to fight our main threat in the Dracula Reserve, mining.

There is at least one population of A. coynei outside our reserves. It was the first one that Andreas Kay found. We tried to buy it but the property was apparently involved in drug trafficking and arms dealing, and this scared us too much to deal with it. Maybe someday we or others will be able to protect this population too. We also continue to search for more populations using eDNA. Meanwhile we are monitoring our own populations and they are doing well. Each individual can be identified by their back pattern, so we can keep track of many of them.

If you want to donate to the reserve to save not only the frog, but tons of rainforest wildlife, Lou gave me this information:

Thanks Jerry, the Orchid Conservation Alliance is a US charity that can accept donations for us, and give tax credit for the donations. Donors should specify that their support goes to EcoMinga’s Dracula Reserve (which protects your frog)

I hope some readers can cough up a few bucks for the Reserve!  Any amount will help.

photo by Juan Pablo Reyes and Jordy Salazar/EcoMinga

10 thoughts on “Saving Ecudadorian land for wildlife (including my frog)”

  1. That is a gorgeous frog and well worth a donation to the EcoMinga Dracula Reserve.
    Thanks and donation coming.

  4. “Our president, Noboa, is firing massive numbers of public employees from ministries he doesn’t like, and closing or re-organizing them so he can do what he wants.”

    Sounds familiar.

    Made a donation — hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

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