The green and gold bell frog

Originally published in the Morisset and Peninsula Bulletin, May 2018.
Submitted by Morisset and Peninsula Sustainable Neighbourhood Group. Article by Lindi Bowen. Photos by Lindi Bowen and Angela Finney

Do you have any green and gold bell frogs in your backyard?
The endangered green and gold bell frog has been known to inhabit suitable ponds in backyards, as can be seen in these photographs.

You may already have, or could create, a wonderful frog attracting habitat. Your frog-friendly habitat could provide for a diversity of frogs including the endangered green and gold bell frog. The green and gold bell frogs love ponds with sedges growing out of them for breeding sites. Away from the pond, they like tufted grasses to hide in. They generally breed between September to February, especially after rain. The males croak with a cheeping sound that builds up and then drops. These dulcet sounds call in the females to breeding ponds. When one male starts, the others in the area also start calling in a loud competitive chorus.

The frogs can be very beneficial in your backyard. They eat cockroaches, flies, grasshoppers, mosquito wrigglers, fruit flies, slaters, locusts, spiders, mice, baby tiger snakes, various insect larvae and slugs, which you might not want in your garden. They will however also eat smaller green and gold bell frogs, other frogs, crickets, dragonflies, earthworms, juvenile frogs (tadpoles) and freshwater crayfish.

This is suitable habitat for the green and gold bell frog. Spot the frogs!

Once green and gold bell frog tadpoles mature into frogs, they rapidly leave the breeding pond and scatter. This is presumed to be to avoid being eaten by larger green and gold bell frogs as well as all their other predators, and to hunt for their own food. The frogs can travel up to 1.5 kilometres in a night and range up to at least 3 kilometres away.
As an endangered species, we need to nurture them to ensure that this species survives along the east coast of NSW. As with all frogs, they are succumbing more and more to frog chytrid disease that seems to be decimating frog populations around the world. The green and gold bell frogs also need to be protected from foxes, cats and dogs.

Also toxic chemical use in the garden needs to be avoided including glyphosate. Instead, create suitable habitat and leave the insects for nature to recreate a balance. Fly swats are non-toxic and effective against mosquitoes, flies and cockroaches if those insects are bothering you, however if you are thinking of providing food for the green and gold bell frogs, the frogs will only eat moving insects, not dead motionless ones, so consider leaving the flies alive and let the frogs get rid of them for you.

A haven for frogs is easy to construct

As part of the food web, the frogs also become food for herons, egrets, ibis, long-necked tortoises, water beetles, water scorpions, dragonfly larvae and Eastern water skinks, so having green and gold bell frogs provides for these native species as well. The tadpoles of green and gold bell frogs are also eaten by native eels, the introduced fish species Redfin Perch and European Carp. As you are unlikely to have the eels or fish in your garden pond, this will be a safer nursery for them.

The most likely causes of the green and gold bell frog being endangered are the loss of wetland habitat and the isolation of one habitat from another. Best practice guidelines for creating a frog-friendly habitat are available from www. environment.nsw.gov.au. If enough people create backyard habitats the frogs will be able to hop between these islands to connect with other populations and interbreed.