WTC security and emergency response newspaper article

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“0 I o c o o o' Oi "0 ro o ro 3- tn Thflk POnd In MIsslssippi where the last 86 gopher frogs on named; with frogs and snakes into a career, as do many her- j 03 ro the piaABt exist Is named tor Hs'discoverer, Glen Johfison* who lives a few miles from his namesake, petologists. This is at least partly because, unlike i O Johnson, bBlow. a ganBtlcstechnlcian wIlh the Forest A.’XS’d?n<)hefmZith ; o o c 3 ••"I *'™0* I’OP® ponds lor guttural growl. a nois/that only a female go- tom between two careers: constitutional law and her- ■ CD 3 them, bocauSB, as ho says, “you don't want to have all pher frog could love.) petology. He chose, the latter, forsakihg .money and ■ your lrogs tn one basket,” Since then, he has tracked the creature, visiting prestige to tramp around forests and jungles search- ! the pond regularly and keeping a detailed log on his ing for cold-blooded creatures. “This is something . ' observations. Prior to that, no one was studying it — you do because you love it,” he says. most researchers assumed it had already gone ex- He takes his task very seriously. friendly mail in his. 60s who resembles a “I think we have an obligation to the next genera- sun-creased William H. Macy, Johnson is a genetic tion,” he says. “I don’t want to go to my nine-year-old technician for the nearby Forest Service Tree Labora- son and say. There used to be a thing called the go- tory. He has always been fascinated by frogs and pher frog, or the grizzly bear, or the right whale, but snakes. He is the sort of person whose idea of a vaca- my generation couldn’t be bothered, we had to drive tidh is going to West Texas to catch snakes. Seigel SUVs.’” without Johnson’s devotion, the frog would On a recent Saturday, Seigel went to the pond-to already be extinct. release one of the 86 frogs. Captured a few days earli- . Seigel first met Johnson nine years ago. Since er, the creature had beentaken to a vet, who had sur- then, they have worked together. gically inserted a radio transmitter next to its stom- To keep tabs on the population, they set up an elab- ach. To foUow the frogs’ movements more closely, Sei- orate monitoring system.. The lynchpin of the opera- gel has over the past few years outfitted 16 Or so go- tlon is a foot-high fence that surrounds the pond. At pher frogs with transmitters, which are about the regular intervals along both sides of the fence, Seigel size of a calcium tablet. ' und his graduate students dug holes. When the frogs - Worried that the frog might overheat in the blaz- to or from the pond, they run into the fence, ing Mississippi sun. Seigel waited until evening tore- ’^tdch is. too high to leap. Not being the brightest lease his charge. He was being extra-caUtiousr^Tm creatures, , they usually hop along the barrier until not gonna take a chance on l/80th of the gopher they fall into a hole. By counting Sie number and 10- frogs left in the world.” i. cation of captured frogs, the researchers get a sense The pond, which covered about an acre, brimmed i of how many frogs there are, and what they are up with rainfall from a recent storm that had ended — I ■ to. at least temporarilythe drought. With trees and L Seigel, 43, is not a typical herpetologist. For one, .shrubs growing throughout it looked, like a gar- O’ M-'