Croaking Frogs; B. Doherty

It's tiny by federal standards. Still, the fed eral agency umbrella group created last year for which Babbitt is seeking this new cash infusion, the Taskforce of Amphibian Declines and Deformities (TADD), could portend something big. It certainly seems as if the government is prepared for anything and everything to come out of the issue of unex pectedly disappearing and deformed amphib ians: TADD, in an almost archetypal example of federal overkill, has representatives from the departments of state, justice, and defense on the team. While the Department of the Interior posits this program as an example of pure science, research into a vital issue that only govern ment force can supply, Babbitt's science adviser William Brown let slip the real score to a reporter from RNA Daily Environment: "There are a whole set of regulatory initia tives" waiting in the wings for when they find what they set out to find.

Brian Doherty is the Warren Brookes Fellow in Envi ronmental Journalism at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. 48 The frog situation has gotten just enough media attention-stories in Newsweek, episodes of "Nightline" -and is just bizarre and frightening enough that the average man in the street knows there's something funny going on with frogs. There are two potential problems-probably unrelated, but conflated in· both media and government-with amphibians: die-offs (frogs no longer appear ing in customary numbers in certain habitats) and deformities. That frogs are disappearing in numbers larger than what herpetologists have come to consider normal is not controversial in the field now; what these observations mean, and what might be causing them, are. A recently discovered chytrid fungus has been found killing frogs in Australia, Central America, and the United States; it is moving to the fore front as a convincing explanation in the scien tific debate. Also, there is the possibility that natural fluctuations occur in frog populations that scientists don't understand because they haven't been looking at trend lines long enough.

Even the government's own Web site devoted to the nascent frog crisis acknowledges that one of the frog species whose diminution con cerns us now, the Northern leopard frog, cre ated an earlier alarm in the Midwest in the 1960s and '70s, and "initiated our concern about amphibian declines, but many of these original declines have stopped and popula tions have recovered to some extent." These population fluctuations happen in nature, and the workings of nature, like that of the human Captain Ribbitt Young visitors to the FrogWeb are encouraged to "find out how you can SAVE THE FROGS!" economy,are so multicausal and complex that we don't always know why certain things occur. Our intimate knowledge of long-term population trends is so poor that we can't even be sure we are seeing an alarmingly unnatur al diminution. Also, there are a couple of very likely man caused, though prosaic, problems that could be killing off frogs: general encroachment on habitat and stocking non-native fish in large numbers in frog ponds. Indeed, man's desire for trout fishing could be hurting young tad poles-but this is a matter of tradeoffs, not unquestionable bads.

Favored Explanations However, the government frog effort prefers other controversial explanations. Not coincidentally, these explanations-while government researchers admit they have found no causal smoking gun-are those for which industrial society can be blamed: pesti cides and ultraviolet radiation. These are the sort of explanations that would inspire the "whole set of regulatory initiatives" Babbitt's science adviser crowed about. It's true that UV radiation can cause problems for frog eggs in labs, but no one has shown that amphibian eggs in nature are actually being exposed to too much of it. (The UV thesis is thought to have more to do with the problem of deformed frogs rather than dying ones, though even there the evidence of realworld exposure is lacking.) Two herpetologists, from Stanford and the Smithsonian Institution, wrote in the journal Froglogthat "what fund ing is available tends to be directed toward the most high-profile factors, regardless of whether or not they are the most likely causative agencies." And when government bureaucrats pay the scientific piper, the bureaucrats call the tune-and they tend to love the sweet sound of more regulation.

Thus, while even such potential causes as chytrid fungus might have man to blame, in the sense that herpetologists themselves might be spreading the fungus cross continent, advising scientists to wash their boots more carefullyjust doesn't pack the reg ulatory punch of stopping UV radiation or 49 banning more pesti cides to stop man's mad, unchecked lust for food'not infested with (or eaten by) insects. The frog deformi ty problem is the more grotesque and disturbing-freakish frogs with eyes in their mouths, multi ple sets of limbs, missing limbs, miss ing jaws, appearing (or being noticed) in unusually large numbers. Consequently,it has gotten the most attention and money so far. The state of Min nesota alone-where the crisis first hit the media in 1995 after a school field trip found an unusual number of deformed frogs in one pond-has spent around a million dollars investigating the matter, and has already cre ated a public scare on scant evidence. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in Sep tember 1997 announced that local well water was definitely causing frog deformities (pres suring scientists to go public with studies before they felt they were ready), and began giving out bottled water to frightened resi dents. The agency later admitted it was mis taken. One of the leading researchers of frog deformity, who thinks that naturally occurring parasites and cannibalism among tadpoles are most likely the main culprits, complains that the information presented to Babbitt was biased in the direction of scary man-caused explanations.

The feds are pulling out the whole panoply of modern devices to create a scare about this issue. They set up a Web site and created a cute mascot to encourage children of all ages to get scared and get active-and, perhaps coincidentally,to become a public constituen cy for more federal money •on matters amphibian. Captain Ribbitt, a cartoon frog in a space suit presented as "Earth's Ambassador from the Planet Amphibian" tells "earthlings" that they "must join Frog Force now, get involved 50 THE FREEMAN/IDEAS ON LIBERTY • JULY 1999 in finding the cause, and become a friend to frogs everywhere." Some amphibian scien tists shudder at the thought of thousands of eager kids recruited by this cartoon comman do tromping heedlessly through the habitat of possibly endangered frogs, but you can't get a good environmental scare story rolling without starting a Children's Crusade. One wonders how much of last year's frog bud get-your tax dollars at work-went to cutesy absurdities such as this.

When Babbitt first heard about the frog problem, he told the Washington Post that it "illuminated a landscape of potential extinc tion that extends all the way round the world." This is rhetoric of the sort that herpetologists don't necessarily agree with. The govern ment's and media's panic over frog disappear ances is based on the oft-repeated rhetorical notion that frogs, because of their permeable skin and water-based and land-based life cycles, function as a sort of canary-in-the coal-mine early warning system for the bio sphere. But herpetologists Joseph H. K. Pech mann and Henry M. Wilbur, writing in the academic journal Herpetologica, write that "we are not aware of any evidence available to substantiate it. The toxicological literature does not support a general statement that amphibians are a relatively sensitive group." But because that idea, false as it may be, is widespread, the frog problem could be anoth er global warming in the making-media hype and government science in alliance· to condemn industrial society and justify mas sive government intervention-on question able evidence.

In federal terms, $9 million makes for a mere tadpole of a program. But tadpoles become frogs. And little government pro grams have been known to metamorphose into regulatory monsters. 0 "With his masterful grasp of history and his ingenious insight into economics, phi losophy, politics, and human nature, Dr. Faria has pronded us with an enormous contribution to the recent literature on health care reform, and an important weapon in our Iife-or-death struggle to preserve private medicine." - JeromeC. Arnett,Jr., M.D. Medical Sentinel MiguelA. Faria,Jr.,M.D. arguesthatmanagedcareand HMOs are not"freemarket"alternatives,butratheran unholypartnership of government and corporate interests seeking monopolistic governmentprotectionto eliminatecompetition... Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D. Editor-in-Chiefof the MedicalSentinelof the Association of American Physiciansand Surgeons (AAPS), and author of Vandals at tlw Gates of Medicine-II~toric Perspectiveson the BattleOverIIealdlCareReform.

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