Texas Parks and Wildlife Department released more than 1 million Houston toad eggs into Bastrop State Park southeast of Austin.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) announced last week that it has released more than 1 million Houston toad (Anaxyrus houstonensis) tadpoles into Bastrop State Park southeast of Austin. The release, in conjunction with the Houston Zoo, Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy (ARC) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) took place this spring and is the first year in a renewed push to restore the amphibians into Bastrop State Park.
According to the department, the endangered species has been missing from Bastrop State Park for 10 years. They disappeared five years after the 2011 Bastrop County Complex Wildfire. The effort to recover the amphibians reached a milestone this year with the one million eggs released into the park. Previous reintroductions into the park occurred in 2015 and 2019 but were ultimately unsuccessful.
“This year, the overall program pivoted to releasing eggs in three sites – two in Bastrop County and one in Milam County,” Matt Lammers, Houston Zoo’s Houston Toad Recovery Coordinator said in a statement announcing the release “Each of these sites is managed a little bit differently. Going forward, we can measure the varying success of these populations to determine what environmental factors are helping them along. Then we can try to replicate the most important of these factors in our other sites and across the state.”
Houston Toad Information
The Houston toad is 2 to 3.5 inches in length and is light brown to purplish gray to sometimes green and red patched skin. Males have a dark throat. They live primarily on land and aestivate during hot and dry conditions. It was listed as an endangered species in 1970, one of the first animals listed under the Endangered Species Conservation Act of 1969. This act led to the Endangered Species Act of 1973. It was listed due to landscape fragmentation and urban development. Feral hogs, invasive red fire ants and drought in Texas further led to the population decline of the species. They can be found in grassland and forests of loblolly pine and post oak, and in sandy soils that it uses for migration, hibernating and feeding, according to the TPWD.
