Inquiry: James Collins: EXTINCTION IN OUR TIMES: GLOBAL AMPHIBIAN DECLINE

In the late 1980s, at an international conference on herpetology, research scientists began to realize that certain populations of frogs and salamanders were rapidly declining or becoming extinct around the world. Though it had been widely recognized that many species of amphibians were in decline due to habitat destruction caused by human changes, many of these new declines were occurring in pristine environments like the Monteverde cloud forest in Costa Rica, where the stunningly beautiful Golden Frog became extinct in a manner of just a few years. What was happening? Tonight, Inquiry talks with JAMES P. COLLINS, the Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Natural History and the Environment in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. With Martha L. Crump, he has written EXTINCTION IN OUR TIMES: GLOBAL AMPHIBIAN DECLINE one of the best summaries of how scientists began to discover the complex answers to this alarming trend. Tune in and find out what is now known about the causes of these extinctions, what is being done and what the future looks like for the frogs, toads and salamanders that have been found all around us. This is a critically important story that everyone should know the details of. Attention biology teachers and professors: This is also one of the best books written to date about how science is actually done.