14 DAY TRIAL // It would appear that oil roads cause more damage to the environment than previously assumed. Thus, a new paper published in the journal PLOS ONE says that, according to evidence at hand, such roads harm frog populations found in their proximity.
The paper in question is authored by scientist Shawn McCracken with the Texas State University – San Marcos and his fellow researchers.
It focuses on remote oil roads in the Amazon, and their impact on local populations of so-called high-living frogs, Mongabay reports.
The high-living frogs that this team of researchers studied inhabit various plants found in the forest's upper canopy, the same source details.
Thus, they are found at heights of as much are 50 meters (roughly 164 feet) above the ground. A large number of them can be found inside massive plants known as bromeliads.
Both the oil industry and the Ecuadorean government have argued that, because they are very well managed, oil roads in the Amazon have little – if any – impact on the environment.
However, researcher Shawn McCracken and his colleagues have found that this is not the case, at least as far as plant-dwelling frogs living in the upper canopy are concerned.
Thus, the overall headcount of such amphibians living close to oil roads in the Amazon was found to be very low, despite the fact that the roads are not all that impressive in terms of size.
“Our findings of significantly reduced frog abundance and occupancy along the Maxus oil road were somewhat unexpected to us, as this is a road of minimal width and there is primary forest right up to the edge of the right of way with small forest clearings limited to a very few sites within our study area,” says Shawn McCracken.
By the looks of it, frog populations inhabiting a flower species known as Aechmea zebrina are the ones most affected by oil roads.
Thus, such plants housed 50% less frogs if located in low-disturbed patches of forest, and were twice more likely to serve as a home to such amphibians if they were located in undisturbed areas.
In light of these findings, the researchers urge that high officials and the oil industry rethink their way of exploiting rainforests.
“Based on these results, we recommend that natural resource development treat rainforest habitat as an offshore system where roads are not used, employ industry best practice guidelines, and current access roads be protected from colonization and further deforestation,” the researchers reportedly write in their paper in the journal PLOS ONE.