You Can Foster An Endangered Species In Your Home

You Can Foster An Endangered Species In Your Home

You Can Foster An Endangered Species In Your Home When special-education teacher Thomas Ackermann comes home from work, he heads straight for the basement of his house in Aachen, Germany. Behind the door of his self-described “man cave” lies a four-by-four-meter world of mossy logs, trickling water and humid air — an astonishing micro-jungle he has built in a dozen terrariums. “I could watch them for hours,” he says, pointing at thumbnail-sized electric-yellow poison dart frogs that hop between bromeliads. But the rarest residents are the ones he tends most carefully: Ecuadorian stump-foot toads — delicate green amphibians with black speckles and neon-orange feet. Barely larger than half a thumb, they were declared extinct 15 years ago. The culprits were habitat loss, a warming climate and a lethal fungal disease , Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis , which has contributed to declines in hundreds of amphibian species worldwide . Ackermann breeds stump-foot toads for Citizen Conservation (CC), a …