Cascades frog (rana cascadae) populations have been declining in california for decades (fellers and drost 1993, fellers ET AL. 2008, piovia-scott ET AL. 2011, pope and larson 2013, thomson ET AL.…

This $835,113 Formula Grant award from the U.S. Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service under the State Wildlife Grants (CFDA 15.634) program supports the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) in implementing strategic conservation efforts to address the declining Cascades frog populations across California. The funding will enable CDFW to conduct research, monitoring, and habitat restoration activities focused on this at-risk amphibian species over the 3-year grant period from July 2024 to June 2027. Key activities include investigating threats such as introduced predatory fish, disease, and climate change impacts, as well as developing targeted recovery strategies at the local and regional scales to promote the Cascades frog's long-term viability in the state. The grant leverages CDFW's expertise in wildlife management and ecology to advance comprehensive conservation measures for this California species of special concern.

Cascades frog (rana cascadae) populations have been declining in california for decades (fellers and drost 1993, fellers ET AL. 2008, piovia-scott ET AL. 2011, pope and larson 2013, thomson ET AL. 2015, california department of fish and wildlife cdfw 2017, cdfw and USFS unpublished data). Many populations across the southern extent of the california range are presumed to be extirpated with no viable RE-colonization potential without human mediated reintroductions (fellers ET AL. 2008, pope ET AL. 2014). Based on these declines, the cascades frog has been a california species of special concern (SSC) since 1994 and in 2017 was advanced to candidate status pursuant to the california endangered species act (CESA) by the california fish and game commission. A final listing determination is pending. The cascades frog has complex life-histories and often requires separate fishless habitats in the form permanent lentic (lakes and ponds) and lotic (MEADOWS) waterbodies for reproduction, foraging, and overwintering (garwood and welsh 2007, garwood 2009). Because local habitat conditions are usually most responsible for regulating individual populations, broad-scale conservation strategies need insight into patterns and processes at local scales to best manage range-level species recoveries (ryan ET AL. 2014, muths ET AL. 2017, adams and muths 2019). Despite occurring in predominantly protected montane habitats above 4000 feet in elevation, cascades frogs have widespread, emerging, and long-term cumulative threats. Three dominant risk factors include introduced predatory salmonid fishes, recent outbreaks of the fungal pathogen batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (i.e. chytrid fungus) (DE leon ET AL. 2017), and habitat alteration and desiccation through climate change (pope ET AL. 2014, ryan ET AL. 2014, thomson ET AL. 2015). All three risk factors pose broad-scale heterogeneous challenges for defining specific conservation actions and adaptive management (pope ET AL. 2014).