Latest news with #BrianTodd
CNN
08-07-2025
- Climate
- CNN
The timeline of warnings from the National Weather Service ahead of Texas flooding
CNN's Brian Todd breaks down the warnings from the National Weather Service ahead of the deadly and catastrophic flooding in the Texas Hill Country.
Miami Herald
11-06-2025
- Science
- Miami Herald
Invasive bullfrogs ‘eat everything' — including turtles — at Yosemite, study says
A study has found that removing invasive bullfrogs from Yosemite National Park ponds has generated a resurgence in the population of native pond turtles, experts said. When University of California, Davis, researchers first began studying four ponds at the park, they were overwhelmed by non-native American bullfrogs, a news release said. 'At night, you could look out over the pond and see a constellation of eyes blinking back at you,' said Sidney Woodruff, a UC Davis Ph.D. candidate and lead author of the study. 'Their honking noise is iconic, and it drowns out native species' calls.' The invasive frogs had decimated the native population of northwestern pond turtles, according to the study, published in the May issue of the journal Biological Conservation. Together with the southwestern pond turtle, northwestern pond turtles are the only native freshwater turtles in California, the university said. Northwestern pond turtles have vanished from over half their range, which stretches from Baja California to Washington state. At Yosemite, the only surviving turtles in the ponds surveyed were the ones that were too big for bullfrogs to eat, the study found. American bullfrogs are native to the eastern United States but don't belong in the West. 'One reason American bullfrogs are among the top worst globally introduced pests is because they eat everything — anything that fits into their mouth,' said senior author Brian Todd, a UC Davis professor in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. 'They've been causing declines to native species everywhere they're introduced, which is around the world.' The bullfrogs were introduced to Yosemite National Park in the 1950s and quickly spread throughout the park, researchers said. While their arrival was believed to be linked to the decline in pond turtles, it wasn't confirmed until the study took place, according to researchers. Between 2016 and 2022, researchers monitored four ponds at Yosemite, two with bullfrogs and two without, the study said. Turtles were 2 to 100 times more prevalent at the ponds where bullfrogs were absent, researchers said. When bullfrogs were removed from the other two ponds in 2019, researchers found juvenile pond turtles in them for the first time, the study said. 'As bullfrog presence declined, we started to hear other native frogs call and see native salamanders walking around,' Woodruff said. 'It's nice to be able to go back to these sites and hear a chorus of native frogs calling again that previously would not have been heard.' The Western Pond Turtle Range-wide Conservation Coalition, Yosemite Conservancy, U.S. Geological Survey and USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture funded the study.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
This invasive frog can fit baby turtles inside its mouth
Listening to frogs croak at night might sound like the perfect nature-focused getaway. But if those vocal amphibians are American bullfrogs and the place is in Yosemite National Park in California, that's not really a good thing. American bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus) are large frogs originally from the eastern United States, meaning that in California, they're considered an invasive species. Humans introduced them in Yosemite in the 1950s, and within two decades they had become well established in the region. 'One reason American bullfrogs are among the top worst globally introduced pests is because they eat everything — anything that fits into their mouth,' Brian Todd, a professor at the University of California (UC), Davis' Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, said in a statement. The problem is that a lot of things can fit into the frogs' mouths, from snakes and birds to rodents and baby turtles. 'They've been causing declines to native species everywhere they're introduced, which is around the world,' Todd added. Northwestern pond turtles (Actinemys marmorata) are one of only two native freshwater turtles in California, and they have seen a particularly dramatic population decline. Todd and colleagues thus decided to investigate whether this could also be linked to American bullfrogs. In a study published recently in the journal Biological Conservation, the team monitored four native turtle habitats in Yosemite National Park, two of which also hosted the bullfrog. They immediately saw that native turtles sharing their habitat with American bullfrogs were fewer, older, larger, and heavier than those in habitats without them. In other words, adult turtles that can't fit in the frog's mouth. 'The evidence so far suggests that bullfrogs are physically eating young western Pond turtles, which means the baby western pond turtles never grow up to become adults and the population will eventually disappear as adults are not replaced,' Todd tells Popular Science. The researchers started removing American bullfrogs to see how this might impact the native turtle populations. Low and behold, when the researchers had almost completely eliminated the invasive species from both sites, baby northwestern pond turtles made a comeback. [ Related: It's raining tiny toxic frogs. ] Furthermore, 'as bullfrog presence declined, we started to hear other native frogs call and see native salamanders walking around,' Sidney Woodruff, lead-author of the study and an ecology PhD student at UC Davis, explained in the statement. 'It's nice to be able to go back to these sites and hear a chorus of native frogs calling again that previously would not have been heard.' As such, the study suggests that this could be a winning approach for supporting pond turtle populations in priority conservation areas where non-native bullfrogs are unlikely to make an unwelcome comeback. 'The best reason to eradicate invasive species or to prevent them from establishing in the first place is because of how damaging they can be to native ecosystems,' Todd tells Popular Science. 'Invasive species can outcompete and eliminate desirable native species and cause declines in many endangered species. Invasive species can even damage human livelihoods by affecting crops or domesticated animals and they can spread diseases.'
CNN
19-03-2025
- Politics
- CNN
‘You are not fighting!": Voters demand answers at Dem lawmaker town hall
Voters in Forestville, Maryland expressed frustration during a town hall with Democrat Rep. Glenn Ivey. CNN's Brian Todd reports many voters complained Democrats are disorganized and aren't fighting President Donald Trump hard enough.
