One million frog calls

Newcastle Herald

2/6/2024

FrogID announces its 1 millionth recorded frog.

Transcript

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00:13 The Frog ID Project is the Australian Museum's national citizen science project

00:18 aimed at better understanding and conserving some of our most vulnerable creatures, frogs.

00:23 It's all based around the fact that every frog species makes a different call

00:26 and through the free Frog ID app that you can download, you can record those frog calls

00:31 and help us build a database of where our frogs are and how they're doing across Australia.

00:36 [no audio]

00:41 Once you download the free Frog ID app for your smartphone,

00:45 register and then head out and listen for frogs.

00:48 The best time to hear frogs is the first few hours after dark and particularly after any rain.

00:54 If you hear frogs, press record for at least 20 seconds.

00:59 The time, the date and your location is automatically uploaded as part of the app

01:04 and then every single audio recording that you submit to Frog ID is listened to

01:09 by myself or one of the Frog ID frog call experts.

01:14 We will identify every frog species calling and let you know

01:17 and this builds our database of frog calls.

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01:25 We've just reached one million records of frogs across Australia

01:30 thanks to 45,000 people across the country recording frogs with the Frog ID app,

01:36 which is absolutely remarkable.

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01:45 We've reached one million records of frogs in the Frog ID project

01:51 and the millionth frog was a Spalding's rocket frog.

01:56 This one was from Queensland and they're one of the frogs with the craziest calls in Australia.

02:01 So it's something like, they do a bit of a warm-up.

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02:07 And then,

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02:10 And then they just get faster and faster.

02:12 This is what it really sounds like.

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02:23 Now it's going good.

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02:29 Brilliant.

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02:36 Frogs are some of the most threatened animals on the planet

02:39 so we desperately need to get the information that we need

02:42 to help make informed conservation decisions.

02:44 And we need frogs around because they are such an important part of healthy ecosystems

02:48 and when they disappear, it has huge consequences.

02:52 The other thing about monitoring our frogs is that it doesn't just tell us

02:56 about the health of our frog populations,

02:58 but because they're like canaries in the coal mine

03:01 and really sensitive to environmental change,

03:03 it actually helps us understand the overall health of our environment.

03:07 [no audio]

03:13 Frog ID all came out of a conversation between the Australian Museum's director,

03:17 Kim McKay, and myself when I was telling her that every species

03:20 of frog makes a different call.

03:22 And she thought something like this was possible.

03:25 I had no idea how to do it.

03:27 But together, the Australian Museum and many other partners have created

03:30 this project that has been a massive game changer,

03:33 not just for frog conservation in Australia, but is the envy of scientists

03:38 and conservationists across the world in how to get the information

03:42 that we need to save frogs, but also get people involved in conservation.

03:46 [no audio]

03:52 As a scientist launching Frog ID, I was most excited about the data,

03:56 the data that we need to inform conservation.

03:59 We don't have time to make guesses around our frogs anymore.

04:03 We need to know what we need to do to save them,

04:06 and we are at that incredibly pivotal time.

04:09 And thanks to Frog ID, we now have more than 1 million records,

04:13 and we're using that.

04:14 We've got over 20 scientific papers that have been published

04:17 using the Frog ID data, describing new species,

04:20 helping understand the impacts of bushfires,

04:23 figuring out how frogs are doing in the face of urbanisation.

04:27 So much information now to help us conserve frogs.

04:31 And as Frog ID has been progressing, even though I'm still

04:35 absolutely blown away by how much data we have - a million -

04:39 it's actually probably also connecting frogs to people

04:43 and having this big community of people across Australia,

04:46 more than 45,000 people that have contributed to this data set,

04:51 to know that scientists like myself, we're not alone,

04:55 that there are so many people across Australia, you know,

04:58 that are willing to get a pizza and drive out and record frogs

05:02 after the bushfires go across, to record frogs as soon as the rain

05:06 hits, you know, the beginning of the monsoon season,

05:08 to take the dogs for a slightly extra long walk to get frogs

05:13 to help the project and to help our frogs.

05:15 So for me it's been a really, really positive journey,

05:20 and to realise that there are so many people across Australia

05:23 that care about frogs, that are contributing to this data set,

05:26 has just given me hope, and I'm getting goosebumps now.

05:29 That's beautiful.

05:31 Everyone can and hopefully should take part in Frog ID.

05:39 You just download the app, get out there and record frogs

05:42 whenever you can.

05:44 We want to understand how frogs are responding to a changing

05:47 environment, so we still need frog calls.

05:50 We hope that we can get many more than a million from across

05:53 the country, and we want to try and understand exactly

05:56 where frogs are everywhere.

05:58 At the moment we only have about 37% of continental Australia

06:03 covered with frog calls, thanks to Frog ID, so there are huge

06:06 parts of the country where we desperately still need

06:09 to understand what frog species are there and how they're doing.

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