Tuesday, December 11, 2007; Posted: 03:43 AM
The World Bank and the Tanzanian Finance Ministry signed over the weekend the loan agreement in hope of boosting the survival of the Kihansi Spray Toad.
The World Bank money will be spent on an environmental program known as the Lower Kihansi Environment Management Project which also aims at improving the water quality in the Kihansi River.
The World Bank loans came at a time when international conservationists are preparing to return home some of the Kihansi Spray Toad which have been brought up in captive breeding in the United States where two zoos are accommodating some 500 Kihansi toads from Tanzania.
The government of Tanzania and international development partners started in 2000 the captive breeding program to make sure that the Kihansi Spray Toad, a dwarf toad measuring no more than three quarters of an inch long in adulthood, do not become extinct.
Discovered in 1996, the toads are only found in spray zones around the Kihansi and Mhalala waterfalls in the Udzungwa Mountains in southern Tanzania.
But the toad has soon been listed as a critical endangered species due to a restricted habitat range, a fast habitat loss and a declining population.
Tanzanian Natural Resources Minister Jumanne Maghembe announced earlier this year that some Kihansi toads are expected to return from the United States to their natural habitat at the waterfall spray wetlands.
"We are planning to return the species in phases at the end of this year," said the minister.
The diversion of water away from the waterfalls in the Kihansi Gorge and into the power generation plant at the namesake hydropower dam has resulted in a loss of about 95 percent of the toad's habitat and hence the significant population decline.
Since April 2000, 90 percent of the water that formerly maintained the toad's habitat has been diverted into a tunnel to power the Kihansi hydropower plant. This has caused 95 percent of the spray-dependent habitat to dry up.
The number of Kihansi Spray Toad plummeted from an estimated 21, 000 individuals to some 50 individuals around 2003 for a population crash.
Researchers Jeremy Thompson and James Gibbs tried to spot a live Kihansi Spray Toad in late 2004 but failed to sight one in the spray wetlands within a time span of three months.
Other factors that have added to the decrease of the Kihansi Spray Toad included the release of toxic substances which accumulated due to water reservoir sedimentation and the existence of the chytrid fungus in the Kihansi river water.
The Kihansi Spray Toad, scientifically known as the Nectophrynoides asperginis, is one of seven species in the genus Nectophrynoides in the family Bufonidae.
The genus, having one of the most restricted ranges of any vertebrate in the world, is found only in a 0.2 square km spray zone wetland around the Kihansi and Mhalala waterfalls.
The toad is dependent on the delicate habitat maintained by the spray from the waterfalls.
In recognition of the rarity of the genus Nectophrynoides, it is listed on Appendix 1 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) thereby prohibiting any commercial trade.
Nike Doggart from the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group has pinpointed the contradiction of the development of the hydropower dam and the survival of the toad.
The fact that the Kihansi hydropower plant generates up to a third of the country's electricity supply has rendered the dam unfeasible either politically or economically to close down.
On the other hand, mortality rates among the captured toad individuals have been high, i.e., 55 percent for adults and 45 percent for the young due to lung worm parasites and related infections.
Conservationists, boosted by the money from the World Bank, will now try one of the few remaining feasible ways to "re-locate" the toads back to their natural habitat which is expected to be improved by the World Bank money.
Though officials from the Tanzanian Finance Ministry are optimistic, those from the Tanzania wildlife conservation NGOs would not agree with them too readily.
Nike Doggart said that the chance for success is bleak if the Kihansi water level could not return to their previous level to re- generate the waterfalls and therefore the spray zones under them.
Even if the Kihansi environment should not change for the better for some time, animal lovers can still see the miniature toads as they are now being kept in the Bronz Zoo in New York and in the Toledo Zoo in Ohio in the United States. The Toledo Zoo is the only place in the world where the miniature toad is on display.
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