It is now two years since the Amphibian Campaign and the challenge to raise the profile and the husbandry standards in our institutions. The time has passed quickly and there can be no rest when we are talking about amphibians. We feel that the understanding of the complexity of keeping amphibians in captivity has been integrated well in our institutions and this is reflected in the many courses held and courses developed during this period. There is still lots to continue with regarding training but we are starting to raise our standards higher than in 2008.

However the objectives didn’t stop there and we decided to make a significant contribution to conservation in situ by applying the funds collected during the campaign. A total of €421,524 was raised and EAZA committed to support the Amphibian Ark with 40% of these funds. The remainder will be used to support the proposals from our institutions in conservation using the tool of the Amphibian Conservation Fund. Since the first call in September 2009 four deadlines have passed and we have received 19 applications and 13 have been awarded full or partial grants. A total of €111,909 has been distributed so far to these programmes within the successful institutions, to be directly applied towards amphibian conservation.

These funds have been mostly orientated towards topics such as biological/ecological research programmes, ex situ breeding programmes and education/public awareness. But the diversity of programmes is so broad that ten further topics were supported with these resources.
More than 30 species are covered by these funds and also a vast geographical area including Eurasia, Madagascar, Asia, Caribbean and South America.

All institutions participating in this campaign should feel very proud of their support for the conservation of amphibians because the first reports that we are receiving from these awards are very positive. We responded to emergency calls such as the rescue programme of mountain chicken frogs in Montserrat, the restoration and field surveys of European species, we supported ex situ work in other countries such as Colombia, training activities in one of our key focus areas for amphibians, Madagascar, research and raising awareness in remote areas like Vietnam…and the list does not end there. It’s very impressive to see how seriously our institutions have reacted to this call. It was necessary and we hope to continue supporting more programmes because we still have the funds to do so.