Two frogs are at the centre of a battle against mining in Ecuador

After lifting heavy logs and rummaging through rocks, biologist Andrea Terán can finally say eureka! In her hands she has one of the two species of frog that are waging a unique legal battle against mining in Ecuador.

Drenched by the icy water that comes down from a crystalline waterfall, Terán studies the fragile life of the resistance rocket frog (still without a scientific name) and the long-snouted harlequin (Atelopus longirostris), which was believed to be extinct for 30 years.

The discovery a few years ago of both amphibians, which measure up to four centimeters, caused joy among scientists and environmentalists.

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And it became an argument to try to stop a 4,829-hectare mining project inside a cloud forest with prehistoric-looking trees in Junín, in the province of Imbabura, three and a half hours by car north of Quito.

Atelopus longirostris first appeared in 2016. “It was a frog that came back from the dead,” said an emotional Terán, who was accompanied by AFP on an expedition to study these amphibians in a wooded area that is reached after almost two hours of walking.

But “if the water is contaminated (by mining) the last population of this frog is lost,” explained the biologist from the Jambatu Center, dedicated to amphibian research and conservation.

The harlequin snout is extinct according to the red list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). But scientists found it again in a forest handed over to the Llurimagua copper project, in charge of the state-owned Enami and the Chilean Codelco, whose operation is scheduled for 2024 with a production of 210,000 tons of copper per year.

The concession set off the alarms. And the discovery of a new rocket frog in 2019 only increased action to save this habitat.

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Terán led a lawsuit in 2020 in court to stop the exploitation. Although a judge agreed with him in the first instance, he lost on appeal.

In Ecuador -which entered large-scale mining in 2019- there are at least 12 projects in an advanced stage with reserves of some 43.7 million ounces of gold, 46,156 million pounds of copper and 183 million ounces of silver, according to the consultancy Grupo Spurrier.

Endurance

When scientists at the Jambatu Center found the new species of rocket frog, they thought it was the confused nurse frog (Ectopoglossus confusus).

However, an anatomical difference in its tongue and genetic studies determined in 2019 that it was a completely unknown species of the genus Ectopoglossus.

In an optimistic nod, they named this agile little brown frog “resistance.”

“The conditions in which it lives are unique, with the noise of the waterfall we don’t know what its communication mechanisms are, we don’t know what its reproductive biology is like,” explains Terán.

In a second battle against the mining concession, a group of inhabitants of Junín and neighboring towns promoted a new protection action. Terán was a witness in this process.

The argument? Errors in the environmental impact and management studies in the first phase of advanced exploration, including the omission of a protection plan for the two species of frogs, says lawyer Mario Moncayo, whose law firm supports the case.

“There are so many errors. The rights of nature were violated, in addition, the documents were never properly disseminated to the community and an environmental consultation was not carried out” with the residents, Moncayo explained to AFP.

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