This month a carpenter on Vancouver Island off Canada’s west coast got a bit of surprise.
While dragging his fishing line in a muddy pond near Port Alberni, he snagged onto something heavy.
Lifting it the surface he found he’d snagged a large frog, a very large frog. Intrigued and surprised, but not knowing what it was, he put it back.
Later, as the photo began circulating it became known he’d snagged an American Bullfrog, an invasive species that’s been slowly spreading through the island landscape.
A local bullfrog hunting contractor, Stan Orchard is reported in the National Post newspaper saying, “They’re eating salamanders and garter snakes and hatchling turtles … songbirds that come down to the water’s edge to drink, baby ducks, waterfowl … everything that will fit in their mouth”.
In the temperate climate of the British Columbia coast, there are few predators to stop them unlike their natural habitat in the southern US where alligators, kingfishers and water snakes keep them in check.
It is suspected that the American frogs were introduced into the lower mainland and Vancouver Island by ill-informed gardeners stocking their decorative ponds, or from failed attempts at commercial frog-leg operations.
Orchard, a frog conservationist who now runs a business called BullfrogControl, says he became concerned when he noticed indigenous frogs, such as the red-legged frog and the Pacific chorus frog were being wiped out.
It seems difficult to stop them and in 2008 the lower British Columbia mainland community of Delta voted simply to abandon it’s war on the bullfrogs and intead try a policy of containment.
Orchard disagrees saying that with enough effort the invasive bullfrog can be eradicated. He points to the devastation caused by the cane toad in Australia as an example of letting an invasive species get out of control.
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