PA to add northern cricket frog to endangered list

Harrisburg, Pa. — Just when a New York State Assemblywoman is about to propose that the northern cricket frog be taken off the state’s endangered species list, neighboring Pennsylvania is about to add the frog to its own endangered list. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission in January proposed adding the diminutive free frog to the list along with the northern redbelly dace and blue-spotted salamander. Pennsylvania and New York are at the northernmost fringes of the northern cricket frog’s range. The center is in North Carolina. It is listed as “a species of concern” in Ohio. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s report said the frog was “historically distributed throughout the southeastern and southcentral portions of this Commonwealth with several apparently disjunct populations found in northeastern and southwestern Pennsylvania. Counties of historical occurrence included: Allegheny, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Chester, Cumberland, Dauphin, Delaware, Franklin, Lebanon, Montgomery, Philadelphia and York. Nearly half of all records were collected from within or near the coastal plain in southern Bucks, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties. All records considered historical were initially documented before 1983.” The report said the frog is “apparently extirpated” from approximately 92 percent of historically documented collection sites in the Commonwealth. In the meantime, Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt (R-C Greenwood Lake) has drawn up a bill, which she plans to introduce to the Assembly, that would take the frog off the endangered list in New York. She drew up the bill in response to a request from the Village of Florida, which wants to use an herbicide to rid Glenmere Lake of the invasive plant species Eurasian watermilfoil. Florida Mayor James Pawliczek Sr. the watermilfoil is filling up the village’s water supply, and that getting the frog off the list will remove an obstacle to using herbicides.