What’s killing Sinharaja’s shrub frogs?

Dr Rukshan Rizwie

Hidden in the Morningside of the Sinharaja Rainforest, an expanse with open grassland -type meadows, rippled by curled cloud forest patches, troughed through by gurgling mountain streams, is a habitat that’s home to several endemic species of shrub frogs. The small-eared shrub frogs, the point-snouted, the whistling ones, the golden eyed, the stripped ones.... Spot them if you can. But chances are you never will.

“There are eight species of shrub frogs that are point endemic and critically endangered,” Dr. Madhava Meegaskumbura, an evolutionary biologist who studies species extinction and conservation strategies for endangered species in biodiversity hotspots told the Sunday Observer. “Based on our observations, we’ve noticed their populations are dramatically dwindling.”

“The species are primarily lowland, he said. They defy the common belief that frogs live near waterways because water is not necessary for the survival of these shrub frogs but humidity is,” he said.

“These frog species are new to science and were recorded for the first time in the Morningside area,” he said. “But they are also critically endangered which means they have an extremely high risk of facing extinction in the wild,”he said.

According to Dr. Meegaskumbura who is currently teaching at the Department of Zoology at the Faculty of Science of the Peradeniya University, most of these shrub frogs demonstrate a pattern of moving upwards to higher elevations.

“These are low elevated adaptation species, but due to the effect of climate change their habitats are becoming warmer forcing them to move upwards traversing into specialised habitats.” he explained.

So far, Dr. Meegaskumbura has found 14 new frog species and five fish species. The researcher based at Peradeniya University together with his wife Suyama Meegaskumbura, also found a shrew in the Sinharaja forest reserve. However, he said research on the population of these species were still in its infancy. “We need more of that kind of research because chances are they would disappear before they are documented.”

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recognises these species as being Critically Endangered Species. Critically Endangered Species are those that have an extremely high risk of facing extinction in the wild, based on a set of IUCN criteria that can be applied globally.

Program Officer at IUCN, Sampath De A. Goonathilake, also said there was very little data on the population figures of these species.

The most recent updates that researchers like Goonathilake and others have to rely on is the National Red List of 2015, which details species that are vulnerable, endangered and critically endangered.

“Other than this distribution data, we don’t have information on the population and patterns,” he said. “We know with certainty that there are 19 amphibians that haven’t been sighted in a long time,”he said.

Goonathilake added that when a species is not sighted for 15 years it is considered critically endangered and probably extinct. He said encroachmens, tea plantations, forest fires and, development work pose a clear and definite threat to the extinction of some of these species.

But it’s not just the Sinharaja Forest Reserve that environmentalists and researchers are concerned about. There is a clearing at the Dellawa Rainforest so widespread and visible that there now exists dams instead of dense forests, environmentalists said.

“Although these are two different rainforests, there is a strikingly similar feature which is the cause why such destruction and pillage could not be halted. The Koskulana and the Anda Dola mini hydro power plants were approved without an Environmental Impact Assessment, instead they were approved with merely an IEE (Initial Environment Examination),” Coordinator of Rainforest Protectors, Jayantha Wijesinghe said.

He added that every plan to halt the destruction over the past few months has met with little success. It was a court case filed by the Environment Foundation Limited and an order by the Judge in December last year which halted all construction activities.

The Anda Dola mini hydro plant which was still in its infancy was halted by Forest Department officials, despite stiff opposition from investors and constructors he said.

A site visit headed by manager of programs at the Environment Foundation Limited, Chamila Weerathunghe in December last year found that the project had encroached the boundary lines of the Sinharaja Rainforest.

He said the site can now be reached by the Ketalapthwala Trail which begins from the Kudawa entrance in the Sinharaja along the bank of the Koskulana river. He added that the area which had been identified as a region with high ecological value and sensitive to soil erosion has led to siltation in the river, reducing the quality of the water. This is also the only source of water for residents in the area.

‘Wildlife in the Sinharaja World Heritage Rainforest is dependent on the Buffer Zone for survival. Disturbance to the Buffer Zone will inevitably cause the loss of species and dilute the biodiversity of the Sinharaja Rainforest,” Weerathunghe said.