News

The Princess and the Frog Movie Promo.

The Murray CMA and Regent Cinemas, Albury are promoting the plight of the Corroboree Frog over the next two weeks to coincide with screenings of the new Disney movie The Princess and The Frog.

Go to http://www.regentcinemas.com.au/ to enter our competition to win free movie tickets and go in the draw for the grand prize of a 'Behind the Scenes' tour of Taronga Zoo's Corroboree frog breeding program with Taronga zookeeper Michael McFadden.

Everyone that buys tickets to The Princess and the Frog will also receive a free Corroboree Frog sticker.

Student with frogs.

Gerry Marantelli of the Amphibian Research Centre.

Students at sixteen schools in the Murray Catchment had the opportunity to get up-close with Corroboree Frogs, and lots of other frogs from the local area, at Frog Education days held in September.

Gerry Marantelli, of the Amphibian Research Centre in Melbourne, visited schools with an entourage of frogs for students to see, touch and feed.  Gerry also talked to students about the many superpowers of frogs from across the world, including the frog that can freeze solid and come back to life when it thaws, and the most poisonous animal in the world - the poison dart-frog of South America.

All the students were fascinated by Gerry's stories and we hope are inspired to help us stop the decline and extinction of more of the worlds’ wonderful frogs.

Dr Murray Evans in one of the temperature-controlled breeding enclosures at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.

Northern Corroboree Frog.

The gang at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve in the ACT has had a major breakthrough in the captive breeding program of Corroboree Frogs.  During the last breeding season their Northern Corroboree Frogs produced close to 1,500 eggs or an average of 6 eggs per female. This is by far the best breeding success we've had with either of the Corroboree Frog species and gives us lots of hope for the future.

Corroboree frogs can't breed until they are about four years old, and breeding success improves as they get older with older females appearing to produce much more eggs. Because of this only frogs that were collected as eggs from the wild over 5 years ago are breeding. On top of this we have had lots of problems with eggs and tadpoles not surviving to frog stage.

The reason for the last season's success at Tidbinbilla is still not really known. Dr Murray Evans - Senior Wildlife Ecologist with the ACT Government has developed a temperature regime for the captive frogs that he believes might be part of the reason. The regime mimics the conditions the frogs would have in their natural environment and involves cooling the frogs down to 5°C for a short Winter and a longer Summer at 20°C to allow the frogs to grow and develop eggs.

During the next breeding season Murray and his team at Tidbinbilla will be looking extra closely at the temperature regime, and a range of other factors, to see if they can find the secret to their success.

Corroboree frog eggs

Recent research has looked at the opportunity to use IVF to help improve breeding Corroboree Frogs in captivity.  Dr Phil Byrne, a biologist with Monash University, is trialing the tecnhology as part of a project with the Corroboree Conservation Program. The trial managed to get fertilisation of the embryos but unfortunately the embryos failed during the early stages of the development. 
More work will be carried out in the next breeding season to try to improve the technique and further test whether this will help us get a step closer to better breeding success in captivity.