Lost golden toad heralds climate's massive extinction threat

Those who have seen them will never forget.

The elfin cloud forest of Costa Rica was a hive of golden toads for a few days every year.

The trees are dwarfed and wind-sculpted, gnarled and heavily laden with mosses, according to J Alan Pounds, an ecologist at the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica.

The soils are very dark and so golden toads stand out. It was quite a spectacle.

They were gone in 1990.

The golden toad is the first species that has been identified as a key driver of extinction.

Its fate could be just the beginning.

The world is facing both a climate and a biodiversity crisis. They say they are connected.

One in 10 people face extinction.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that nearly one in 10 of all species are at risk of extinction if warming is capped at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The golden toad was found in a forest. The species was wiped out when trouble hit.

Pounds' research into the disappearance of the golden toad was cited in the February report on climate impacts.

When Pounds first arrived in Costa Rica in the early 1980s, climate change was barely on the radar.

Global warming was already taking its toll.

Researchers compared temperature and weather patterns with those on local species after the disappearance of the golden toad.

The signature of the periodic El Nino weather phenomenon was found by them.

The Climate Trigger.

Unusually warm and dry periods caused the die-offs.

The decline was linked to chytridiomycosis, but Pounds and his colleagues concluded that the disease was only the result of climate change.

We theorize that climate change and extreme events were loading the dice for these kinds of outbreaks.

It wasn't an isolated incident.

The extinction of a wide range of tropical amphibians is linked to the expansion of the chytrid fungus and local climate change.

The fingerprints of global warming can be seen in other disappearances.

The melomys, a small rodents, were last seen in 2009.

The only mammal endemic to the Great Barrier Reef, its populations were battered by sea-level rise, increased storm surge and tropical cyclones, all made worse by climate change.

In 1998 there were 11 plant species that provided its food. It was declared extinct recently.

Climate change is listed as a direct threat to over 11,000 species. There are 5,775 at risk of extinction.

The #metoo movement was used for species.

Wendy Foden, the head of the climate change specialist group at the IUCN, said that the main reason why climate change is being cited as a threat to so many species is that its impacts are becoming more obvious.

There is a growing understanding of the effects.

Warming can cause species to move, change behavior or even have more male or female offspring.

On top of that, there are other human threats such as pollution.

A report by UN experts said one million species could disappear in the coming decades, raising fears that the world is entering a sixth era of mass extinction.

Foden said that warnings of catastrophic loss have often been overlooked.

A whole wake up on what we are doing is what we need.

A key milestone of 30 percent of Earth's surface will be protected by the year 2030.

The threat of climate change means that the response will have to go beyond traditional conservativism.

Even in the most remote wilderness, climate change will affect it.

People will need to choose which species to save.

Foden wrote about the African penguin in South Africa for the report on climate impacts.

Forced to nest in the open after humans mined their guano nest sites, the adults now have to swim ever further to find fish, likely because of a combination of overfishing and climate change. The heat stress can cause the death of the exposed chick.

We are down to 7,000 pairs. Foden said that at this point, every penguin counts.

The forest is cloudless.

The clouds have changed in Monteverde.

Over the past 50 years, Pounds said it has become much more variable.

In the last decade, the forest has seen more than 100 dry days a year.

The mist that kept the forest wet during the dry season has reduced by 70%.

Tourists stop Pounds and ask for directions to the Cloud Forest.

He said that you are in it.

It feels more like a dust forest than a cloud forest.

Changes in the bird populations have also been seen by researchers. Some have moved uphill to cooler areas while others have vanished completely from the area.

The golden toad was the subject of an expedition last year, supported by the group Re:wild, to look for it in its historic habitat in the Children's Eternal Rainforest.

But in vain.

During the rainy season, Pounds and his colleagues keep an eye out for the golden toad.

He said that they haven't completely given up.

It looks less likely that they will reappear with each passing year.

There will be a new year in 2022.

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