Nearly Extinct Toad To Be Re-Introduced Into the Wild

The Kihansi spray toad, which last year was declared extinct in the wild, has been brought back from the brink by a captive breeding program and will soon be reintroduced into its native habitat in Tanzania. The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said that 100 spray toads have been flown to Tanzania in preparation for their return to the Kihansi Gorge in south-central Tanzania. Nearly 7,000 of the tiny spray toads have been reared at the WCS’s Bronx Zoo and the Toledo Zoo. The species — which is unusual because it bears live young rather than laying eggs — inhabited a 5-acre microhabitat created by the spray of waterfalls in the Kihansi Gorge. But the 1999 construction of a dam, which produces a third of Tanzania’s electricity, eliminated the spray and led to the near-disappearance of the toads in the wild. Roughly 500 were saved and reared in the U.S. zoos. The Tanzanian government, working with the World Bank and WCS, has installed a series of sprinklers in the toad’s former habitat to enable it to survive as it is reintroduced.