THE QUEST
COSTA RICA
Follow the
Frogs
Amphibian-centric
safaris help preserve
vulnerable species
By Lisa Krieger
D
eep in the middle of a Costa Rican jungle,
rain dripped down my face and muddy water
swirled around my boots. I stabbed my flash-
light into the darkness.
This is where we’d find our frogs.
They beckoned us with a weird nocturnal orchestra:
bass notes and piccolos, barks and whistles, croaks
and hiccups. We had traveled thousands of miles for
a glimpse, and they now surrounded us. Yet, madden-
ingly, they were impossible to see. Then, through the
vine-draped trees, I heard excited voices and saw a
scramble of flashlight beams.
“Right here. Under this leaf,” whispered naturalist
Michael Starkey. We crouched around a small shrub,
squinting for a view. A tiny glass frog stared back at us.
Translucent and gemlike, this frog was soon joined
by scores of other species sighted in the soggy days thatfollowed: strawberry poison dart frogs, smoky jungle
frogs, masked tree frogs, hourglass tree frogs, red-eyed
tree frogs, snouted tree frogs, and others.
In a world that is rapidly losing amphibians, we
set out to find them. Our tour group, which included
a psychiatrist, a pediatrician, and a Lockheed Martin
F-35 instructor pilot, was organized by the nonprofit
organization Save the Frogs, an effort to support the
growing number of parks and ecolodges that protect
the vital habitats for these vulnerable creatures. “These
are our goals: Find frogs. Go to places that have lots of
frogs. Give these places money, so they keep saving
habitat and keep having frogs,” said Starkey.
Costa Rica—which recently received a 2019
Champions of the Earth award, the UN’s highest envi-
ronmental honor, for its role in protecting nature and
combating climate change—hosts plenty of ecotours