Inside the Audacious Mission to Bring a Rare Toad Back From the Brink

About a decade ago, the endangered Houston toad was the closest to extinction than it had ever been. Today, scientists at the Fort Worth Zoo are doing everything they can to help the species survive in the wild. For Vox‘s The Highlight, Christine Peterson reports on the zoo’s complex conservation work—which involves in vitro fertilization, freezing sperm, injecting hormones, and a whole lot of matchmaking—and on the state’s program through which some Texas landowners, in exchange for tax benefits, are helping to create habitats where Houston toads can thrive. The collective effort to save them is “weird, hopeful, kind of beautiful,” writes Peterson, “and it just might be working.” (Must be a member to read.)

The Houston toad isn’t among the class of iconic megafauna like grizzly bears or wolves. It doesn’t grace national emblems like the golden eagle or put food on our tables like Canada geese. But uncharismatic species like the Houston toad still matter.

Amphibians are among the most endangered classes of animals on Earth. More than 40 percent are threatened with extinction, and as many as 220 have already blinked out. That means fewer creatures to eat disease-carrying mosquitoes, and fewer animals to feed other animals. So many amphibians died in recent decades in Costa Rica and Panama, for example, that malaria cases in humans in the mid-2000s spiked.