Glass pyramids to help revive sound not heard since 1980s in Australia's capital

Yahoo

2 days ago

Back in the 1980s, if you were living in Australia's capital, you would have heard bands like Cold Chisel, the Divinyls and INXS blasting on the radio. While most people remember their music, there's a natural sound that echoed through the night but has been largely forgotten — the startling motorbike-like call of a small native frog.
Canberra is famously a transitory city that attracts workers for stints in the public service, and most people living there in 2025 have probably never heard a green and golden bell frog. It's considered locally extinct in Canberra, and it's vanished from 90 per cent of its entire natural range, which extends from Queensland to Victoria.
Excitingly, there's a major plan underway to reintroduce it to Canberra later this year.
How building glass pyramids could protect newly released frogs
One of the main problems the newly released frogs will face is a disease associated with chytrid fungus, which has caused the extinction of six other native species and dramatically reduced numbers of several others. There are high-tech solutions in the works, like genetic engineering resistance in amphibians, but a team from the University of Canberra is trialling something more analogue to protect the green and golden bell frogs it plans to release.
Because the fungus thrives in colder environments, the plan is to build infrastructure at 15 sites to keep the frogs warm.
This will involve building tiny glass pyramids, which will act like 'frog saunas' to raise the temperature inside by trapping heat from the sun. Stacks of bricks that are painted black to store even more heat will be placed inside, giving the golden bell frogs somewhere to hide.
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Jarrod Sopniewski, an amphibian researcher at the University of Canberra, explained that if the frogs spend a long period in the cosy saunas, the fungus will be killed off.
'Green and golden bell frogs really like bricks for some strange reason. Whether they're actively seeking out the heat or just looking for a safe place to be, we don't know for sure,' he said.
The first frogs will be reintroduced in late November or early December at existing wetlands. In total, they plan to build 180 saunas and place between nine and 18 at each location.
To help improve their chances of survival, 60 satellite ponds will be dug into the landscape, and salt will then be added to the water because it's known to kill off chytrid.
'Hopefully the frogs will find these little salt baths and treat themselves when they're sick,' he said.
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Why introduce rare frogs into a city?
It's not just chytrid that's caused problems for the frog. Habitat destruction and fragmentation, along with the introduction of invasive mosquito fish, have also contributed to its decline.
'That fish is particularly bad for this frog because it likes to eat their eggs. And obviously if all the eggs are eaten, we don't get any frogs,' Sopniewski said.
While reintroducing wild frogs into an urbanised environment may seem counterintuitive, it's hoped doing so will help excite the public about their natural environment.
'The more people know about frogs, the more they tend to like them, and the more they care about them. So that's good for the frog,' Sopniewski said.
The Reintroducing Green and Gordon Bell frogs to Canberra project is funded through an Australian Research Council grant. It's led by the University of Canberra and supported by Healthy Waterways ACT and the ACT Government.
On August 14, the university will be running a free event on frog saunas as part of National Science Week.
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