快猫短视频

AMPHIBIANS are dying in mysterious circumstances. Sometimes not even the
bodies are found. In the Casuco National Park, Honduras, several species of frog
have vanished without trace, leaving not so much as a tadpole behind. In
Australia, four frog species have disappeared from the forests of Queensland. On
the Hawaiian island of Kauai, a once plentiful toad is no longer there. Locals
told the investigating zoologist that the toads 鈥渉ad gone away鈥�. Do the
amphibians know something we don鈥檛? The current catastrophic decline of
amphibian populations across the globe is surely an ominous sign. Could these
creatures, living delicately balanced lives betwixt land and water, be
harbingers of an eco-disaster to come? It鈥檚 a chilling prospect, brilliantly
dramatised by the Cuban-born writer Mayra Montero, who now lives in Puerto Rico,
in her novel You, Darkness. The title echoes a prayer to be said by the
dying: 鈥淵ou, darkness, enfolding the spirit of those who ignore your glory.鈥�

Montero tells the tale of an American herpetologist, Victor Grigg, who comes
to Haiti to find Eleutherodactylus sanguineus, a small, bright-red land
frog on the verge of extinction, and known to the Haitians as grenouille du
sang, the blood frog.

In her bleak tale, the search for the rare frog becomes an allegory for much
more than the extinction of a particular species. This story hints at the
grenouille du sang鈥檚 demise as the sign of 鈥渟ome unspecified and general
collapse to come鈥�, as Alex Ivanovitch writes in The Observer(23
November 1997). Michael Kerrigan in The Scotsman (29 November 1997)
notes that 鈥渉umans are a threatened species here, humanity an endangered idea鈥�.
In Montero鈥檚 vision, the frog, the novel鈥檚 narrators鈥擥rigg and his Haitian
guide Theirry Adrien鈥攁nd society at large all seem to be 鈥渉urtling . . .
towards extinction鈥�.

At last, on a mountain that is the preserve of deadly macoute
warlords, Grigg and Adrien find the elusive frog鈥攁 solitary individual
that is perhaps the last of its kind, as Grigg narrates: 鈥淚t was an adult male,
fairly old judging by the skin on his paws and head, disoriented by age. I felt
as if I were holding an ancient survivor, a creature that had forgotten to die,
or had taken refuge in a place so remote he hadn鈥檛 heard the warning, if there
was a warning, or the annihilation order, if that鈥檚 what it was. I put him into
the plastic bag filled with moss and ferns, then I placed the bag in the
protected compartment I had prepared in my knapsack.鈥�

It鈥檚 not a pretty picture of science in action. In the end, the scientist鈥檚
knowledge and technical procedures are inadequate. Grigg concludes: 鈥淚 have no
explanations. Nobody knows what鈥檚 going on.鈥� But Montero dedicates her novel to
scientists鈥攊n particular to the Declining Amphibian Populations Task
Force, an international coalition with a mission statement: 鈥渢o determine the
nature, extent and causes of declines of amphibians throughout the world, and to
promote means by which declines can be halted or reversed鈥�.

By 2001, the 3000-strong task force intends to 鈥済et as close as we can to a
global assessment of the status of amphibians and an understanding of what is
causing the declines鈥�, says Tim Halliday, the task force鈥檚 international
director. He predicts that 鈥渢here will be no single cause, but there may be
strong links between a complex of factors鈥�. Outbreaks of disease, for instance,
can strike amphibians driven below par by pollutants as diverse as PCBs,
nitrates and pesticides, or by the stresses of climate change and increased
exposure to ultraviolet as a result of holes in the Earth鈥檚 ozone shield.

Fittingly, by 2001 the task force will itself become extinct. 鈥淲e will
dissolve ourselves, to avoid becoming what conservation organisations often
become, a self-perpetuating bureaucracy,鈥� says Halliday. 鈥淭here is an urgency
about what we do.鈥� And not just for the amphibians鈥� sake, perhaps.