FrogID announces its 1 millionth recorded frog.
Category
🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:00 [no audio]
00:13 The Frog ID Project is the Australian Museum's national citizen science project
00:18 aimed at better understanding and conserving some of our most vulnerable creatures, frogs.
00:23 It's all based around the fact that every frog species makes a different call
00:26 and through the free Frog ID app that you can download, you can record those frog calls
00:31 and help us build a database of where our frogs are and how they're doing across Australia.
00:36 [no audio]
00:41 Once you download the free Frog ID app for your smartphone,
00:45 register and then head out and listen for frogs.
00:48 The best time to hear frogs is the first few hours after dark and particularly after any rain.
00:54 If you hear frogs, press record for at least 20 seconds.
00:59 The time, the date and your location is automatically uploaded as part of the app
01:04 and then every single audio recording that you submit to Frog ID is listened to
01:09 by myself or one of the Frog ID frog call experts.
01:14 We will identify every frog species calling and let you know
01:17 and this builds our database of frog calls.
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01:25 We've just reached one million records of frogs across Australia
01:30 thanks to 45,000 people across the country recording frogs with the Frog ID app,
01:36 which is absolutely remarkable.
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01:45 We've reached one million records of frogs in the Frog ID project
01:51 and the millionth frog was a Spalding's rocket frog.
01:56 This one was from Queensland and they're one of the frogs with the craziest calls in Australia.
02:01 So it's something like, they do a bit of a warm-up.
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02:07 And then,
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02:10 And then they just get faster and faster.
02:12 This is what it really sounds like.
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02:23 Now it's going good.
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02:29 Brilliant.
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02:36 Frogs are some of the most threatened animals on the planet
02:39 so we desperately need to get the information that we need
02:42 to help make informed conservation decisions.
02:44 And we need frogs around because they are such an important part of healthy ecosystems
02:48 and when they disappear, it has huge consequences.
02:52 The other thing about monitoring our frogs is that it doesn't just tell us
02:56 about the health of our frog populations,
02:58 but because they're like canaries in the coal mine
03:01 and really sensitive to environmental change,
03:03 it actually helps us understand the overall health of our environment.
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03:13 Frog ID all came out of a conversation between the Australian Museum's director,
03:17 Kim McKay, and myself when I was telling her that every species
03:20 of frog makes a different call.
03:22 And she thought something like this was possible.
03:25 I had no idea how to do it.
03:27 But together, the Australian Museum and many other partners have created
03:30 this project that has been a massive game changer,
03:33 not just for frog conservation in Australia, but is the envy of scientists
03:38 and conservationists across the world in how to get the information
03:42 that we need to save frogs, but also get people involved in conservation.
03:46 [no audio]
03:52 As a scientist launching Frog ID, I was most excited about the data,
03:56 the data that we need to inform conservation.
03:59 We don't have time to make guesses around our frogs anymore.
04:03 We need to know what we need to do to save them,
04:06 and we are at that incredibly pivotal time.
04:09 And thanks to Frog ID, we now have more than 1 million records,
04:13 and we're using that.
04:14 We've got over 20 scientific papers that have been published
04:17 using the Frog ID data, describing new species,
04:20 helping understand the impacts of bushfires,
04:23 figuring out how frogs are doing in the face of urbanisation.
04:27 So much information now to help us conserve frogs.
04:31 And as Frog ID has been progressing, even though I'm still
04:35 absolutely blown away by how much data we have - a million -
04:39 it's actually probably also connecting frogs to people
04:43 and having this big community of people across Australia,
04:46 more than 45,000 people that have contributed to this data set,
04:51 to know that scientists like myself, we're not alone,
04:55 that there are so many people across Australia, you know,
04:58 that are willing to get a pizza and drive out and record frogs
05:02 after the bushfires go across, to record frogs as soon as the rain
05:06 hits, you know, the beginning of the monsoon season,
05:08 to take the dogs for a slightly extra long walk to get frogs
05:13 to help the project and to help our frogs.
05:15 So for me it's been a really, really positive journey,
05:20 and to realise that there are so many people across Australia
05:23 that care about frogs, that are contributing to this data set,
05:26 has just given me hope, and I'm getting goosebumps now.
05:29 That's beautiful.
05:31 Everyone can and hopefully should take part in Frog ID.
05:39 You just download the app, get out there and record frogs
05:42 whenever you can.
05:44 We want to understand how frogs are responding to a changing
05:47 environment, so we still need frog calls.
05:50 We hope that we can get many more than a million from across
05:53 the country, and we want to try and understand exactly
05:56 where frogs are everywhere.
05:58 At the moment we only have about 37% of continental Australia
06:03 covered with frog calls, thanks to Frog ID, so there are huge
06:06 parts of the country where we desperately still need
06:09 to understand what frog species are there and how they're doing.
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