Counting the Days for the Arroyo Toad

Eyebrows were raised last week when the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service released its economic analysis for the federally endangered arroyo toad, which included a $720 million budget for proposed critical habitats throughout Southern California, and a revised 2009 proposal for the endangered toad’s conservation plan.  The proposal designates about 112,765 acres of land towards critical habitat zones across Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, and San Diego counties.

The arroyo toad (Bufo californicus) is limited to slow moving streams or rivers in all stages of its life, and stagnant ponds with sandy banks during breeding season. These toads require vegetated stream banks and terraces—where the toads burrow in the dryer months—linking populations to upland habitats where they forage.  It has been increasingly difficult to conserve transition zones between terrestrial and aquatic habitats as agriculture and other encroachments onto their habitats spreads higher in the watershed.

In addition to the economic analysis, Fish and Wildlife released a five-year plan updating the toad’s current status. “Arroyo toads have disappeared from approximately 75 percent of the species’ historically occupied habitat in California,” the plan reads. “The arroyo toad is threatened by habitat destruction, changes in river hydrology influenced by construction of dams and water diversions, alteration of riparian wetland habitats by agriculture and urbanization, overgrazing, mining activities, and introduced species.”