Critically Endangered
Amargosa toad
Anaxyrus nelsoni
Amargosa toad is a toad in the family Bufonidae (order Anura) — Anaxyrus nelsoni, recorded as Critically Endangered and tied to United States.
The toad
Amargosa toad is a toad in the family Bufonidae (order Anura) — Anaxyrus nelsoni.
Range and habitat
The Amargosa toad is endemic to the Oasis Valley in the Amargosa Desert in Nye County, Nevada, United States. Its natural habitat is along a 10 miles (16 km) stretch of the Amargosa River in the Oasis Valley between Springdale and Beatty, in tributary springs and in nearby isolated springs. The riverside growth consists of cottonwoods, sedges and cattails and breeding takes place in the springs where there is often little aquatic vegetation.
Effective steps are being taken by local citizens, ranchers, and farmers to preserve and restore the Amargosa toad's population in the area, in part to avoid federal intervention through the Endangered Species Act.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Calling males and egg sites define most frog field work. A species known from one ridge is as narrow as it sounds.
Eggs and damp skin make amphibians quick to vanish from a drained wetland or a forest stripped of litter.
In crisis
It is threatened by habitat loss and is classified by the IUCN as being critically endangered. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed the status of the Amargosa toad as being critically endangered. Another threat is the introduction of non-native species that prey on it among them catfish, crayfish and bullfrogs.
The population of the toads is believed to be in decline.
Chytrid fungus, collection, and wet-forest loss are the usual pressures on frogs with a high threat category.
Amargosa toad is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Amargosa toad, Wikidata item Q25678281. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
