# Frogs & Toads > African Bullfrogs >  African bullfrog relocation in South Africa

## Buck Rogers

Morning from South Africa

John requested that I submit these photos and explain a bit about the photos to give you guys some on sight info and also probably make you jealous :Big Grin: 

I live in Gauteng South Africa, on the highveld we have a large population of wild Bullfrogs and the area I live in Fourways is know for its bullfrogs. It is just unfortunate that there is so much development that is going on at the moment so a lot of the natural enviroment which these frogs thrive in is being destroyed. The last wild bullfrog i saw was walking across the parking lot of a nightclub/bar so just to give you an indication of how close we are to their territory. As you probably know bullfrogs enhabit perinial water pans like most of our highveld frogs. So when the water hole dries up they head underground and hibernate till the rainy season starts (usually around September). Thie last season it was my mission to go out and find several bullfrogs but unfortantly this did not happen, it was a slow herping season all around the country and I was only able to find a few frogs and managed to help relocate this big male bullfrog. 


(©2009 Darryn Rogers - first published on www.FrogForum.net)

A friend of mine does snake removals and was phoned to remove a bullfrog from an office park's underground parking basement. apparantly the office park was built in winter and as soon as the rains came this guy came through the drainage system and was sitting in the middle of the parking lot. Its sad becasue that means that the office park destroyed his pan of water and any other's that were there were killed, so he was the lone survivor. The red snout is from rubbing his nose against the transport tub.

So we are fortunate enough to know of a guy who owns a game farm/piece of land allows us to relocate any herps we find in the Pretoria area to his place for a new lease on life. This is one big male as you can clearly see and measures in at around 27cm (sorry metric system), I have only ever seen two (including this one) this big, usually what i have seen is around 15cm.

So we relocated this guy into what would be the ideal enviroment, and these pics can give you some idea of what their natural enviroment looks like:


(©2009 Darryn Rogers - first published on  www.FrogForum.net)



(©2009 Darryn Rogers - first published on  www.FrogForum.net)

I am currently planning on doing some indipendant research into bullfrogs, I will be observing several different areas in and around Gauteng and will be looking at distrobution, paternal care, size, weight, and hopefully be able to observe mating. Please feel free to answer any questions that you may have, I am no expert in the field but I will do my best to answer.

----------


## John Clare

Excellent post Darryn!  It's rather saddening to hear about the habitat loss but that is a common problem around the world.  I hope they come to their senses and make more intelligent choices on where to build.

One other note - there's no copyright notice on the first photo and it's the kind of photo I think people might be interested in "stealing".

----------


## Jace

Amazing photographs-thank you very much for sharing.  That male makes my guy look like a tadpole still!  It's unfortunate to hear of their loss of habitat, but it sounds like they have a very good advocate in you.  I really hope that your independent research allows others to see the postitive aspects of these frogs and why they are needed.  Best of luck and I look forward to more pictures...and you were right-I am jealous!

----------


## Kurt

> Excellent post Darryn! It's rather saddening to hear about the habitat loss but that is a common problem around the world. I hope they come to their senses and make more intelligent choices on where to build.


Don't worry, they won't. As long as there is money to be made and people keep on reproducing, they will continue to develope land. More people are being born than are dying these days. The human population continues to mushroom.

----------


## Buck Rogers

> Don't worry, they won't. As long as there is money to be made and people keep on reproducing, they will continue to develope land. More people are being born than are dying these days. The human population continues to mushroom.


This is too true, but its more greed than anything else now days. I have been in contact with a lady at the Centre for Environment Studies to do some photographic research in an area that has a healthy population of bullfrogs (thanks John for that link to her website) and they are concerned about the area next to the water pan being developed for what is known as low cost housing. Due to apartheid in South Africa we have a large portion of our population that is previously disadvantaged so as a governemnt project they build low cost housing for these people (wont get into the politics here) but these houses tend to get built in areas where there is peranial water holes (surely can't be very stable) but at the cost of many indigineous species being destroyed. The only way to prevent this from happening is to prove that a threatened species inhabits this area which is what she is doing. So hopefully with my photographic research I will be able to give them a helping hand in recording numbers and preventing this from happening.

----------


## John Clare

Sounds very promising Darryn.  Good luck!

----------


## Kurt

Yes, good luck with that.

----------


## ampieb

Hi Darryn, I represent a WESSA Friends group that was recently founded in reaction to an attempt by JHB City to turn one of the wetlands in our area into a large pavement. We focus on the Fourways Stream wetland system (north of Fourways Mall) and have representation from several complexes from Fairfield to Fourways Gardens. We are joining forces with Working for Wetlands to try to salvage and rehabilitate wetland zones in the area. As you know, the Fourways area used to be known for the rich amphibian life. We still have a couple of amphibian species hanging on in our area, but are keen on rehabilitating habitat specifically for the African Bullfrog. In fact, we believe that the Fourways Stream could potentially form a strategic corridor for amphibians from the Fourways Mall dam to the Jukskei river. Unfortunately, we are still very new to this field, and it seems like you are much more experienced than us.
Would you be interested in meeting me to see if there is a potential for synergy?
Ampie Barnard
WESSA Friends of witkoppen Park

----------


## Buck Rogers

Hi AMPIEB

I am in the Douglasdale area and work quite close to the fourways mall area, I would love to meet up with you and see what we can do. Drop me a mail on <removed by John due to spam fear> and we can arrange to meet up and see what we can do together.

Last season I spent a bit of time around the Jukskei (more like YUCK-skei) trying to find some bullfrogs but I think I was too late in the year for this, with the rainy season coming up in the nest few weeks we should definetly meet up.

Darryn

----------


## John Clare

Darryn, fyi this is a publicly accessible forum so the email address you put in your message is available to anyone who wants it.

----------


## Buck Rogers

Oi, I didn't think it would be a problem, but for safety sake is there some way which it can be removed? I already sent AmpieB an email with my details.

What repocussions will occur with having my email accesable? Sorry very naive...

p.s. John sorry I haven't got back to you about the book, haven't touched sides of late.

----------


## John Clare

Darryn, I've edited out the email address.  The problem with putting your address on publicly accessible pages is that robots pull out email addresses which are then sold to spammers.

----------


## Buck Rogers

Thanks so much John, really appreciate the assistance.

----------


## Kevin1

I found this to be a very interesting and informative post.
And like everyone else said, it is a shame to hear about the loss of habitat these frogs endure.
Thanks

----------


## Douglas

It is so exciting to find a post like this! Those are some great photos and it's great to hear you are trying to save some pyxies. You have to give us more info, Buck. Anything from pictures to updates on your work would be wonderful  :Smile:

----------


## Buck Rogers

Hi all, sorry I have been absent from the forum for such a long time but just had so much on my plate of late. I am pleased to say (although off the topic) I have a strong possibility to be the first person in South Africa to captive breed Bosc's (savanna) Monitors (_Varanus exanthematicus_). Okay in all honesty 2 people have done it before me but they haven't been able to hatch the eggs, but now that I know the process it should be easy going from here out to do this more than once.

It has been a very interesting season for us in Gauteng. We had very late summer rain falls and this obvioulsy had a toll on the Bullfrogs, we had one pop up in a garden and was injured by a dog, which the local rescue centre took care of and released and then we had a nother incident of froglets washing up in a public damn from a storm water drain but that's another story and wont get into it now. It has been very wet in January - Feb with some late season showers going into March, I have had a few call outs for Rinkhals (_Hemachatus haemachatus_) with the one regurgitating a toad in the bucket, but after the one call out I found a new spot for Bullfrogs so will be checking it out in September if we have the proper rainfalls 

On my side we spent a lot of time trying to find wild BF, I specifically wanted to photograph and film the wild mating and paternal care displayed by the fathers but the local pan which has an apparant abundance of Bullfrogs had none this year. So I spent a good number of evenings doing some road crusing with NO luck. One evening I was out for a jog with my girlfriend and I noticed a lot of flying ants after an afternoon shower, this must have been at around 8 o'clock in the evening. So I got home and phoned my friend and said get the 4x4 ready we ganna go find some bullfrogs. We got to the spot and the pan was going wild but with no bullfrog calls, we drove around on a back dirt road close to the pan and we found this little guy just sitting in the road. The key factor was that there was 50mm of rain in one day which is the catalyst for this species, I hope some of this info can help you guys with breeding or correct keeping of the species. Please if you have any questions (except locality where this one was found) feel free to ask.

Sex: Unknown
Size: 9cm
Temps: 15 - 18 degrees Celcius
Time: 9:20pm
Rain: 50mm in one day.

----------


## John Clare

Looks like a female to me, Darryn.  Many thanks for posting this useful for information  :Smile: .

----------


## Buck Rogers

> Looks like a female to me, Darryn.  Many thanks for posting this useful for information .


How do you tell the sex of bullfrogs, is there something that you can just spot or is it from working with them enough that you can pick up?

----------


## John Clare

> How do you tell the sex of bullfrogs, is there something that you can just spot or is it from working with them enough that you can pick up?


Females are much smaller than males and the head shape is narrower in females and also smaller, proportionally.

----------

