Mississippi frog release took an unusual turn this June.
Jim and Laura Currie spent more than 20 years fixing up their land in Hancock County. They planted trees and burned the woods on a schedule set by biologists.
Only now are those efforts beginning to pay off.
An unusual event took place. Crews showed up with plastic containers full of animals.
Nearly 500 of them, all raised in captivity, were let go into the ponds on the property. This marked the first expansion of the program in over ten years.
The land didn’t look like this two decades ago
Woodland Cottage is located in Hancock County, Miss., in an area that historically held a high percentage of longleaf pine forests. The Curries have spent many years attempting to rebuild that ecosystem.
They worked with the federal Partners for Fish & Wildlife program, Wildlife Mississippi, and the Natural Resource Conservation Service.
Together, they planted longleaf pine seedlings, restored understory vegetation with native grasses, and used prescribed burning as a management tool.
Habitat restoration was initially conducted to benefit the gopher tortoise. It ultimately created homes for many additional species due to the tortoise’s burrowing habits.
Biologists still needed to determine if the newly restored ponds and woodlands would provide suitable habitat for something far more fragile.
The animals need temporary ponds that periodically flood and dry at specific times of the year. They also require the same type of longleaf pine ecosystem that existed prior to widespread fire suppression and urbanization breaking apart those ecosystems.
The Curries’ property satisfied both sets of criteria.
Keeping everything in one place was the problem
The release marked the first time in over a decade that the program had expanded beyond its original site.
From 1988 to 2004, only one population of these animals was known to exist, and it was surviving at a single pond in the DeSoto National Forest.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says private landowners play a vital role in recovering this species, since public land alone cannot hold every group that needs protection.
Those roughly 500 released frogs represent an attempt to establish a metapopulation. A network of separate populations helps ensure that if a hurricane, disease outbreak, or poor breeding year hits one site, others remain.
Private landowners like Jim and Laura Currie have become essential to the strategy.
The species that once lived across three states
The frogs now living in those ponds are dusky gopher frogs, a federally endangered species that historically inhabited areas throughout the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
They are dependent upon the intact longleaf pine ecosystem maintained by fire.
Prior to the extensive fragmentation of their habitats due to fire suppression and land-use changes, the species was common enough to be unremarkable. By the late 1980s, the known population had collapsed to just one pond.
Habitat recovery attempts have helped improve overall prospects for this species; survival rates remain low for most years, and long-term survival of the species continues to be threatened.
This is the only population of its kind in Hancock County, and the only release on private working lands in the entire effort.
What 500 frogs in a rebuilt pond actually means
Jim and Laura Currie didn’t set out to save frogs.
They wanted to repair their property after decades of grazing and cutting had taken its toll on it.
What they accomplished is an example of what happens when private property is managed with enough patience and fire.
The real question is whether programs that pay landowners to host endangered species can make 20 years of fire and patience look like a price worth paying.
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