Houston Toad Photo by: USFWS, Paige Najvar

The Houston toad is an endangered species that lives exclusively in southeast Texas. It is about 3 inches big, varies in color from light brown to gray or purplish gray, and has an alluring croak.  And it secretes chemicals in its skin to protect itself, such as serotonin and alkaloids, which are used as medicines to treat heart and nervous disorders in humans. Take Our Leap Day Frog Quiz!

Harmed by Record Drought

The Houston toad makes its home in loose, deep sands supporting woodland savannah and needs still or flowing waters for breeding. A five-year review of the toad’s status (see p. 12) conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows the need for water makes drought a significant threat to the toad.

As NWF has reported, climate change begets drought.  Since September of 2009, severe to exceptional drought has occurred in central Texas right in the heart of the Houston toad’s limited range. And last year was the driest 12-month period for Texas since measurements began according to Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, who says the Texas drought could continue until 2020.

Even more concerning for the Houston toad may be that climate change exacerbated drought begets wildfires.  Another recent environmental review (see p. 20) has pointed out that the toad’s need for moisture also means that “catastrophic wildlife fires could have devastating effects to Houston toad habitat.”

Devastated by Extreme Wildfires

Unfortunately, on September 4, 2011, a firestorm known as the Bastrop County Complex Fire engulfed Bastrop, Texas and by September 30th had destroyed 1,645 homes, burned over 34,000 acres, and killed two people. This fire is now regarded as the most catastrophic wildfire in Texas history.  The largest population of Houston toads exists in Bastrop County, one of the Houston toad’s few remaining habitats. The fires were so intense they could have wiped out the Houston toad.  A Texas State biologist recently called the Bastrop fire “an extinction level event.”

Read how climate change induced drought and wildfires have also made Monarch butterflies climate victims and impacted the livelihood of one Texas city.

Luckily, while the wildfires had a devastating impact on the Houston toad population, some were found to have survived.  Conservationists in Texas are working to rebuild the population, but the endangered toads will face an uphill battle as the extreme wildfires took away the plants and brush they rely on for cover and safety and the insects the toads eat.

New Carbon Pollution Limits Can Help

We shouldn’t wait any longer for more fire alarms about how the impacts of climate change are harming America’s wildlife heritage.  Climate change-causing carbon pollution is impacting not only the Houston toad but frogs as well.

You can help turn the tide for wildlife–from frogs to polar bears.  Join NWF Action Fund in celebrating the entire Leap Year by supporting new efforts to limit the carbon pollution coming from power plant smokestacks.

And wouldn’t you know that U.S. presidential election cycles pop up during Leap Years, giving us an extra day of campaigning and attack ads, especially onerous because in politician years, a day is like 12 months.

But it can’t be helped. The need for Leap Year is an excellent example of how the natural world just won’t fall neatly in line with human plans, schemes and machinations. The Earth circles the sun at the rate of about 365.242199 days—just roughly speaking, you see—which means our 365-day calendars fall six hours behind each year. In a century, the calendar would be off by 24 days—nearly a month. So every four years we add the otherwise elusive February 29th to the calendar, allowing our appointments to catch up with the orbiting speed of the planet, which, by the way, is more or less 66,486.717569 miles per hour.

Where’d Leap Year Come From?

The sun sets behind trees at Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp in a photo entered by Jack T. Sandow in the NWF Annual Photo Contest. Variations in the Earth's orbit around the sun make Leap Years a chronological necessity.

Now the injection of a Leap Day occurs in every year evenly divisible by 4, unless the year also can be evenly divided by 100, in which case it’s not a Leap Year, unless it also can be evenly divided by 400, in which case it is a Leap Year. If this sounds confusing, well, you can perhaps forgive Gaius for his oversight, which must not have been made easier by the use of Roman numerals.

Luck of the 29th

Of course, a date as wayward in its recurrence as February 29th is bound to have some myth attached to it, the human mind being as superstitious as it is. In Scotland, being born on Leap Day is considered unlucky. In Greece, marrying during a Leap Year is a bad sign, and marrying on Leap Day is even worse (though it would simplify anniversary celebrations). In some European nations, Leap Day is a sort of Sadie Hawkins event in which women propose to men. This day is also called Bachelors’ Day in some nations where, according to tradition, if the man turns down the woman, he must give her gifts (you can see the potential for abuse of this system). Among the upper classes in some countries, the demurring man was supposed to give the woman a dozen gloves, which she could wear to conceal her lack of a wedding ring.

Planetary Changes

The vagaries of the Earth’s rush around the sun isn’t the only factor that can remind us that what happens in space doesn’t stay in space. For example, the spin of the Earth on its axis, currently at a speed of about 1,070 miles per hour at the Equator, is slowing down. During the age of dinosaurs, a day was probably around 23 hours long. In the Devonian period, some 370 million years ago—long before dinosaurs—the day was around 22 hours long. So when someone complains, “There are only so many hours in the day,” you may smugly reply, “It could be worse.”

Other factors affect the measuring of time. Last November, scientists who study this sort of thing discovered that the Earth’s axial spin actually sped up after the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, a powerful stream of ocean water, slowed down. Each day from roughly November 8 to the 20 was about 0.1 millisecond shorter than usual. Before the planet resumed normal speed, we lost a good 1.2 milliseconds, which can ruin a two-week vacation. Such shifts may become more common as climate changes in the wake of global warming, because some scientists suspect that warming trends caused the alterations in the sea current’s velocity.

Record Leap Day Births

A Norwegian family holds the world’s record for the official number of children born within a family on Leap Day—Mrs. Karin Henriksen, from the town of Andenes, gave birth to three children on consecutive Leap Days—1960, 1964 and 1968.

Were you born on Leap Day?  If so, perhaps you can tell us in the comment section how, or when, you celebrate your birthday anniversary.

To see more photos like those in this blog, or to enter the 42nd Annual NWF Photo Contest, visit the NWF Photo Contest.

Much of the information in this blog comes from the Time and Date website,  which has tons of data on, well, time and dates.

National Wildlife magazine online offers you more information on animals and birds.