I have a special place in my heart for toads because of Grandpa.

The year was 1975 and my mother, 9-year-old brother and I, age 5, were spending another summer at my grandparents’ home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We had just finished a dinner of breaded pork chops and potato salad, and the grown-ups were at the kitchen table playing cards. My brother and I were sitting on the steps to the backyard, our silhouettes growing darker in the beam of light shining from the kitchen as the sun began to set.

Grandpa was a kindly soul and while he didn’t say a lot to us, he was always ready with a joke or a piece of rock candy when he came home from a long day of cutting glass. He could see we were bored, so without a word, he got up and grabbed a couple of large metal flashlights from the back porch, gave them to us, pointed at the grass and went back to playing cards. My brother and I just looked at each other, knowing we were supposed to wait for something to happen—but what?

Just then, lumps seem to emerge in the grass as if by magic. What were they, fairies? I shone the light on one of the larger lumps coming our way. Gleaming gold eyes stared back at us. I almost screamed! Then it hopped into the light: a toad, one of a great menagerie of hopping black-speckled gold and brown balls of various sizes. The grass looked like popcorn popping on a stove. Suddenly, we knew the game.

I ran out to the grass and picked up the biggest one I could find. It puffed up so much I could barely grasp it in my tiny hands. I was so proud of discovering what I called the “king of toads,” I ran into the house to show Grandpa. “You may have the grand prize winner!” he proclaimed. Everyone applauded and didn’t even mind as the dirt from the toad was smeared all over my shirt after I returned him to his place in the yard.

When Grandpa died, I asked for our lucky toad-hunting flashlight because all one might need for finding a toad and a love of nature is a source of water, a flashlight and a vivid imagination.

So the summer went: the great toad game of who would find the most toads or the biggest one, the one with the prettiest spots or the fastest jumper, and each night ending with a firework display above the water dishes. I never got tired of it.

By the time we were teenagers, my brother and I had stopped spending every summer at my grandparents. When I was 20, I visited them after not seeing them for many years. At first, Grandpa didn’t know what to do with this grown-up grandchild. Then, he silently got up out of his lounge chair, went to the back porch and picked up one of those heavy metal flashlights. I followed him out the back door.

“I haven’t seen them for years since they built up over that pond in back of us,” Grandpa said apologetically. “But we’ll try.” After nearly a half hour, we finally saw him: a lone majestic toad prince peering out from under the shed. I gently picked him up and showed my prize to Grandpa. “I guess you win this round,” he proclaimed with a grin.

That was the last time I saw Grandpa before he died. I had indeed won, both memories I treasure and an enduring appreciation of toads. Along with Grandpa, these wondrous creatures will always sit in a special place in my heart. Never underestimate the power of grandparents or a simple backyard experience with nature to inspire one’s love of it for a lifetime.

Be Out There

NWF’s Be Out There® program offers many guides for parents and grandparents on how to grow the enjoyment of nature in your backyard and beyond. See the new Nature Play at Home Guide for tips on how to create nature play spaces at home and get The Dirt on Dirt, on why letting kids get dirty is a good thing.

Get More About Wildlife

Read and subscribe to National Wildlife magazine’s Animals Channel for more articles on wildlife, including How to Dote on Toads and Frogs Need Our Help, So Hop to It!

Here’s a video of the adorable kitten:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Top Threats to Panthers

Sadly, this story is not uncommon in south Florida–home to the only remaining breeding population of panthers–where a sea of strip malls, housing developments and roads continue to destroy and fragment precious habitat. Collisions with motor vehicles are now one of the top causes of panther deaths. In fact, this same kitten’s brother was struck and killed by a car only a few weeks earlier.

Compounding the pressures that panthers are facing from unchecked development are impacts from climate change, threatening the limited habitat that remains. Due to Florida’s very low elevation, panthers are especially vulnerable to the stronger hurricanes and sea level rise that are predicted to inundate their habitat.

Show Your Support on Endangered Species Day

Florida panthers are one of the most endangered mammals on earth, with only about 100-160 remaining. Although they are protected under the Endangered Species Act, panthers are still not protected from the single greatest threat to their survival: habitat loss. And while there have been some wonderful successes in creating corridors to connect habitat areas, they are literally running out of space.

But hope remains for these majestic cats. The National Fish, Wildlife, and Plant Climate Adaptation Strategy and other federal conservation programs that protect panther habitat are crucial to preventing the species–and many others–from going extinct, but they urgently need funding to move forward.

Today is Endangered Species Day, and your voice is needed to ensure decision makers and resource managers have the resources they need to safeguard Florida panthers from extinction.

Show your support for crucial wildlife conservation programs that protect and restore panther habitat.

Why the face?

The ‘face’ that you can see carved into the tree is from a logging technique called springboards. When loggers needed to get above brush or other barriers when cutting down trees they would put notches into the tree into which they would insert their springboard. This gave them a platform to stand on from which they could operate their saws. A Haunting Reminder Logging has been an important cultural and economic aspect in the Pacific Northwest for over 100 years. The ancient forests provide many communities with a source of income from the timber. These forests do not exist solely for our economic benefit. They provide habitat for wildlife such as birds and mammals. They also provide critical ecosystem services such as preventing soil erosion by holding the soil in place so that the rain does not sweep it away.

Habitat loss from endeavors such as logging is the leading threat to wildlife. There are many reasons for this. The first is the removal of critical habitat through cutting down trees. The effects of clear cutting are evident while driving down many of the highways or back roads throughout Washington and Oregon. Large areas that were once full of ancient trees are now gone, leaving a slow healing scar on our hillsides. A second threat is from fragmentation. When trees are cut or roads put in for logging the habitat is cut into pieces. A road might not seem like a large area to cross for humans but they can present significant barriers to wildlife that run the risk of being hit while crossing the road. Many insects also find difficulty crossing what to them are giant expanses of unknown and dangerous terrain.

The National Wildlife Federation Connection

The National Wildlife Federation is dedicated to protecting wildlife and their habitat. Find out more about our work and about the threats from Habitat Loss! You can also discover ways that you can Create a Certified Wildlife Habitat^® for wildlife in your own back yard!

Photo credit: William Drumm

Entering Mount Rainier National Park I am automatically drawn to the White River; its braided, meandering channels flowing down from Emmons Glacier, sweeping through old growth forest, and Mount Rainier towering above, is a sight of true beauty. As I sat and admired the river, I couldn’t help but ponder its pristine state and the natural habitat it must provide for spawning salmon. This is what a healthy river looks like, I thought to myself, there must be salmon here. In truth, the answer is not as straightforward as I thought.

First the good news: In a recent report, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) concluded that over a 10-year period the White River showed a trend of increasing abundance among Puget Sound Chinook salmon populations. Furthermore, White River salmon populations have some of the highest escapement trends observed; meaning a high portion of salmon escape the commercial and recreational fisheries and reach the White River freshwater spawning grounds. Great, right?

Now the bad news: though abundance trends are increasing, the average historical abundance of Upper White River Chinook was 6,700, today they are estimated at only 500. The White River is a tributary of the Puyallup River, which is heavily diked, leveed, and dammed. White River salmon need to swim up (or as in most cases, be caught and then trucked up) the Puyallup before they start their journey to spawn upstream in the White River. So, how are Puyallup River salmon doing? The answer: Not so good. Moreover, Puget Sound salmon are not doing well either. The overall trend shows that Puget Sound Chinook populations are no better than they were 10 years ago when they were first listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The driving force behind this lack of improvement: habitat loss. In Puget Sound natural habitat is being developed and altered more often than it is restored. Not only can fish not access upper river reaches because of dams and other barriers, but if they get there they find a river no longer in its natural state due to levees and dikes.

Recently, Federal Judge James Redden rejected (for the third time) the federal government’s recovery plan for the Columbia-Snake River salmon, stating it as “arbitrary and capricious” because it failed to identify adequate habitat improvement.  A similar plan in Puget Sound is being implemented to limit floodplain development and reform the National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP’s) minimum criteria for eligibility in 122 communities by September 2011. But is all this going to be enough?

Probably not. Though these plans all take into account future development, they do very little to fix past mistakes. In “Is Salmon Extinction the Option” Tom Bancroft comments, “we need the federal government to recognize that their plans for salmon recovery in the Pacific Northwest are lacking.” As Billy Frank puts it, “If we are going to recover salmon, we must have stronger and better-coordinated federal leadership to align the policies and actions of all federal agencies and departments that impact salmon.”

What can you do? We all need to work to protect the future of our iconic salmon species. Limiting the impact of development is critical in any highly-urbanized watershed.  Incorporate green development ideas into your next home improvement project and if possible leave previously undeveloped areas undisturbed.

Take action: speak up for endangered salmon by telling your local representative or urging the Obama administration that healthy native habitats and endangered salmon recovery is important to you.

Learn more about NWF campaigns for Puget Sound NFIP reform and salmon restoration and Columbia-Snake River salmon.

Inspiration for post comes from ”Is Salmon Extinction the Option” by Tom Bancroft of People for Puget Sound.

This guy was "hanging around" outside our hotel one evening.

For those who have never seen a sloth, let me warn you, they are incredibly cute. As hinted by their name, sloths are very slow, very cautious animals. While some consider them to be lethargic creatures (in fact, the name for sloth in Spanish, perezoso, literally means “lazy”), they are in fact one of the most well adapted species on the planet.

Everything about them – their frightening long claws, their slow to react reflexes, and the extra vertebrae in their neck – helps them thrive in their arboreal habitat.

Of course, what goes up must come down. In the case of sloths, the animals are forced to ground about once a week to relieve themselves or to move to another tree. Watching a sloth move on land is like, well, watching paint dry. As NatGeo explains:

“On land, sloths’ weak hind legs provide no power and their long claws are a hindrance. They must dig into the earth with their front claws and use their strong front legs to pull themselves along, dragging their bellies across the ground.”

While this can be entertaining to watch when they are crossing a small distance in the forest, it is a terrifying thing to watch when they try to cross a road:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dangerous Crossings

As I learned at the Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica, habitat fragmentation by roads and power lines is a threat to the country’s sloths. While the two species of sloth found in Costa Rica (Bradypus variegatus and Choloepus hoffmanni) are not classified as endangered, habitat loss has pushed other species like the jaguar to the brink of extinction.

A coyote crossing a road

In the U.S. it is not sloths and jaguars that suffer because of habitat fragmentation, but rather bears, deer, panthers, moose, salamanders and host of other species. The system of roads and highways in the U.S. often cuts directly through the network of paths wildlife use to access their basic survival needs.

When animals try to cross over a road to gain access to their essential feeding grounds, breeding areas, and shelter, it can be fatal to them and to the humans driving on the road. Making the problem worse is climate change, as even the slightest rise in average temperature can change an entire ecosystem–sometimes forcing wildlife species to move around to find habitat they like better.

To help wildlife find the pathways they need to migrate in latitude and elevation, NWF and partners have launched a program in Vermont called “Critical Paths for Wildlife.” The goals of the project include enhancing migration pathways, strengthening wildlife populations, and reducing animal-vehicle collisions. For anyone who has ever had a collision with wildlife (or even a near miss), it is easy to see how these types of programs are a “win-win” for people and wildlife.

After you read more about the Critical Paths (pdf) program and learn about the threats of habitat loss, check out NWF’s Certified Wildlife Habitat^® program to find out how you create habitat for wildlife in your own yard!

Finally, if you want an overload of sloth cuteness, watch this video.