The Guardian
By Robin McKie
October 15, 2923
They were once so numerous they were cooked as the national dish of Dominica. Every year, thousands of mountain chicken frogs, roasted with garlic and pepper, were eaten by islanders and tourists.
Two decades later, the animal – one of the world’s largest species of frog – has in effect disappeared from the Caribbean island. A series of ecological disasters has reduced its former healthy, stable population of hundreds of thousands of animals to a total of 21 frogs, according to scientists’ most recent survey.
The startling rapidity of Leptodactylus fallax’s decline has stunned biologists who believe it is one of the fastest eradications of a wild animal ever recorded, an ecological calamity that demonstrates how quickly wildlife can be damaged and destroyed.