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ARE OREGON'S FROGS IN DANGER OF CRAOKING?

Article Excerpt
Byline: Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

SWEET HOME - Most people you see turning over rocks in the Santiam River or its tributaries are prospectors looking for flakes of yellow metal.

But the flash of yellow Chris Rombough triumphantly pulled from beneath a boulder in the South Santiam River one day last week was on the underside of a frog - a foothill yellow-legged frog to be exact.

Rombough, a private herpetologist, was hired by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to prospect up to 567 miles of streams in the Santiam and Calapooia river basins in search of what's left of the yellow-legged frog population in the Willamette Valley.

And the once-common amphibians now may be even more scarce than gold dust.

"The yellow-legged frog population in the Willamette Basin has gone from very abundant to almost completely extirpated in less than 50 years," Rombough said. A few dozen breeding-age yellow-legged frogs in two sites are all that remain.

Meanwhile, most other frogs and toads native to Oregon are also in...

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