CONTRIBUTION
The Asociación Herpetológica Española (AHE) came into being in 1984, the product of a wave of interest in nature and natural resources that had swept in Spain in the 1970s, along with a newfound concern about how this heritage could best be conserved. The founding assembly was attended by just 32 herpetologists from around the country, united by the view that amphibians and reptiles deserved the same rigorous, professional treatment extended to other zoological groups. Although the development of herpetology came much later than in the rest of Europe, interest in the field has never ceased to grow to the extent that today’s AHE boasts more than five hundred members.
The AHE promotes and coordinates the study of herpetofauna – amphibians and reptiles – along with their conservation and that of their natural environment. A necessary task, since, as Eva Graciá, the association’s president, points out, “amphibians are the world’s most endangered group of vertebrates.” For more than a decade, the AHE has sought to counter this threat through preventive action, with projects aimed at garnering rigorous information for the early detection of conservation problems.
“They are animals that are highly sensitive to habitat loss, degradation, pollution, climate change and invasive species,” says Graciá, “so their decline sounds a wider alarm. And in the case of reptiles, particularly turtles, we have the added problem of wildlife trafficking.” If the situation is problematic globally, it is no less so in Spain. “It is telling that even such a common species as the Iberian green frog is currently in decline,” she adds. “These species act as indicators, alerting us to environmental deterioration on a major scale.”
Juan Manuel Pleguezuelos, president of the association between 2010 and 2016, explains that “monitoring these species is more complex than monitoring birds, for example, which are easily tracked. Many members of the species we work with are small, nocturnal and difficult to spot. And some are masters of camouflage.” In this respect, the association’s members also act as sentinels, whose ongoing monitoring of reptile and amphibian populations serves to identity trends and warn of imminent threats. “This has proved a very useful tool which, if well designed and properly deployed, can produce high-quality information,” says Graciá. “And while that is happening, these same citizens are learning about environmental stressors. By participating, they can at times reverse the causes of decline as well as producing information.”
For jury chair Rafael Zardoya, director of the Spanish Museum of Natural Sciences, the conservation strategy followed by the association has provided valuable lessons: “When we think of biodiversity conservation projects, we sometimes confine ourselves to those aimed at protecting a species or habitat that is already critically endangered, but what the Asociación Herpetológica Española brings to the table is a preventative approach. Continuous population monitoring is a vital conservation resource, because it can detect the risk before collapse happens, and allow measures to be put in place.”
In 2015 they launched one of their keynote projects within the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park, centered on the fight against emerging amphibian diseases. Titled SOS Amphibians, it starts from the awareness that disease is among the gravest threats facing this class of vertebrates. The program’s coordinator, Jaime Bosch, recalls that “in 1997, we realized something was going wrong in Guadarrama when we saw the first dead specimens. We wondered if the pathogen causing the damage was really specific to the area, and started looking for it elsewhere. And what we found was that it was present in practically all of Spain and across Europe.”
Driving the problem are the twin phenomena of globalization and climate change. “The former facilitates the arrival of new pathogens from distant parts, and the latter upsets the balance between native hosts and pathogens, to the extent that it can wipe out 99 percent of individuals in the affected populations,” Bosch explains. The goal of SOS Amphibians is twofold. On the one hand, to learn more about the distribution and incidence in Spain of the three main emerging amphibian pathogens. On the other, to aid in the control of these infectious agents, providing diagnostic and remediation tools (free of charge) to public authorities, NGOs, pet stores and any other actor involved in amphibian conservation. Monitoring work targets three pathogens: the fungi Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), and Ranavirus. “These are the ones that are causing problems globally, as they are highly virulent and capable of wiping out entire populations and species,” Bosch continues. “We estimate that up to 200 species may have disappeared in recent decades due to the action of these pathogens. The two fungi referred to are native to Asia and have been dispersed by humans over practically the whole world. The third pathogen is a virus found in most places, but with different variants.”
Anyone can join in this conservation project by collecting samples of infected animals in the wild or in the pet trade. Eva Graciá describes how this works: “We provide the sampling kit, they send it to us and we analyze it in the laboratory using a quantitative PCR similar to the COVID diagnostic test.”
“We currently have people collaborating throughout Spain, and have received over 6,500 samples, with AHE itself contributing 1,400 more,” says Graciá, “and it turns out that 25 percent of these samples display one of the three pathogens.” The project has also given rise to a website, sosanfibios.org, where information can be shared. Thanks to the data gathered, the pathogen B. salamandrivorans has now been added to the list of invasive species.
This project is supplemented by a further two programs. “Monitoring of the Amphibians and Reptiles of Spain” (SARE in its Spanish initials) was launched in 2008 with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment. Designed so any herpetology enthusiast can provide data on the presence and abundance over time of amphibian and reptile species in a given area, without materially interfering in their behavior and dynamics, so far data have been obtained for 25 species.
In second place, we have the “Amphibians and Reptiles of Spain Information Server” (SIARE), a collaborative platform for disseminating the data gathered under AHE’s various monitoring programs, which currently contains over 50,000 entries, all of them verified by experts; and AHEnuario, a parallel, open-access database with almost 36,000 entries where users can collect and manage individual observations of amphibians and reptiles in Spain.
This information has made it possible to detect changes in species distribution and activity patterns, and assess how they are tied in with environmental factors, so helping to design and prioritize conservation actions. A case in point, says Eva Graciá, was “the successful submission to Spain’s Ministry for the Ecological Transition of a proposal to include the European pond turtle (Emys orbicularis) in the ‘vulnerable’ category of the threatened species list of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).”
The association also works alongside a series of national and international bodies. “Within Europe, we are members of the European Herpetological Society, as well as serving on the Spanish committee of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. At national level, we have worked with both central and regional government authorities, providing scientific advice and implementing monitoring projects throughout Spanish territory. We have also collaborated with universities by, for instance, coordinating volunteer groups and organizing herpetology congresses. And we have advised firms on topics such as environmental impact assessments or environmental restoration plans.”
Its president refers in closing to the technological upgrades the association is rolling out: “Our aim now is to create an app that can facilitate data gathering by supporting data entry from a mobile phone. We are working hard to be more efficient.”
Imagen: ©Íñigo Martínez Solano