Community involvement in the detection, surveillance and management of frog diseases: a case study from Alcoa frogWAtch, southwest Australia
Ken Aplin1 and Suzanne Johnson2
1. Dept Terrestrial Vertebrates, Western Australian Museum, Francis St., Perth, Western Australia, Australia 6000.
2. Alcoa World Alumina Australia, Davey St, Booragoon, Western Australia, Australia, 6154.
Frogs have an almost unique popular appeal. Conservation biologists have attempted to capitalize on this to garner support for "endangered species", but have largely ignored the potential role of local communities in broad-scale frog conservation.
Alcoa frogWAtch was started in 1995 as a partnership between the W.A. Museum and Alcoa World Alumina Australia. With a regional focus on southwestern W.A., it has grown rapidly in membership and scope to become both a major instrument for frog conservation and an influential agent of social change. Working from the premise that "education leads to concern, then to participation", more than 5000 information packs have been distributed to schools, land-care groups and interested individuals. The strategy has worked - as witnessed by the many thousands of people in the community who not only know the names of at least some local frogs, but have become passionate about their survival.
Direct community participation is taking three forms. First, numerous locally-based frogwatching groups have emerged to monitor particular sites, with some taking to the political arena in defense of threatened wetland habitats. Second, many thousands of people have responded to the call to make their garden "frog-friendly", thereby providing sheltering and feeding habitat for seasonally mobile species, and installing small breeding ponds to facilitate genetic diversity and dispersal. And third, in both metropolitan and rural areas, preservation and restoration of frog habitat is being factored into land-care initiatives, resulting in protection of many small but important wetlands. Each of these activities will be important in ensuring the broad-scale survival of frogs in southwestern Australia.