Toad Trackers

Calling future wildlife biologists!

In the Spring of 2010 we are piloting a new conservation education program called Toad Trackers. In this very special and one-of-a-kind, interactive program, a group of lucky students will actually monitor wild toad populations on grounds at the Houston Zoo!

Class Description:

Toad Tracker students will be introduced to the equipment a field biologist would use in their research and some of the methods used in the scientific study of animal populations. In an evening class, students will actively search for a common toad species on Zoo grounds, the
Gulf Coast Toad (Bufo nebulifer) for processing and data collection.

The students will collect environmental, geographic and toad data. On select nights (warm and wet) on zoo grounds, supervised participants will perform a toad round-up, collecting every toad that can be found. Students will weigh, measure, determine gender, note any mutations of each toad and record its GPS coordinates. A trained teacher or conservation biologist at the Zoo will then insert a pit tag into each toad (like the microchips in your cat or dog) and the student will then release it where they initially caught the toad. Subsequent toad round ups during the same or following year will provide valuable information (through the ability to individually recognize toads) on growth rates, reproductive events, and movement patterns.

This program is also a forum in which students are educated about global amphibian extinctions and why monitoring local amphibian populations are important to detecting declines in our own region.

2011 Toad Update:

In our first Toad Trackers of 2011 we got our first recapture from 2010! Female toad, “Mustard”, was captured on our very first Toad Trackers ever on May 26, 2010, in fact, she was the second toad ever captured! She has grown in length by 21.4 mm and weighs 19.5 g heavier! She has also moved about 264 feet. Looks like she may be heading from the Brown Education Center over to the Herpetology Department. Stay tuned for more information on Mustard and the others on our Toad Trackers Facebook page!

Current Houston Zoo amphibian conservation projects in Panama and Texas will be covered in the class.