Amphibian deaths may signal disaster; also, Mediterranean fruit fly infestations cease in CA

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Our friends at the Times’ environmental blog Greenspace have a few animal-related items up today:

First: California declared a victory today in the battle against the annoying Mediterranean fruit fly, according to a story by Times staff writer Jerry Hirsch.

The 103-square-mile Los Angeles County quarantine is no longer being enforced and will be formally lifted after paperwork is completed in a few days. The California Department of Food and Agriculture said there were no remaining Mediterranean fruit fly infestations in the state, after determining them to have cleared out of Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Solano counties.

Second: The death of frogs, salamanders and other amphibians could be a sign of a larger biodiversity disaster, according to an article published online this week by researchers from UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University, Tami Abdollah reports.

‘What makes the amphibian case so compelling is the fact that amphibians are long-term survivors that have persisted through the last four mass extinctions,’ the study found.

Above is a Yellow Dart frog, photographed in 1997 at the Santa Barbara Zoo.

--Francisco Vara-Orta