Coqui Frog By Dave Gee

Division of Aquatic

and Wildlife Resources Imagine – you’re sitting outside on a beautiful Guahan evening, warm but breezy with the smell of the ocean on the wind, relaxing in the peace and quiet. Suddenly, “croak!”

Then again, and another chimes in, until the air around you is thick with the sound of, well, what is that sound? If this sounds familiar to you, you’re not alone. Several new frog species – some of them very vocal – have invaded Guam in the past few years. There are barking frogs spread throughout southern Guam and moving north with their aggravating choruses; greenhouse frogs, a small, brown and black frog with a quiet high-pitched chirp; dwarf tree frogs, a little green frog with a call like a cricket, and even cane toads, the bumpy frogs you see so often on the roadways, with a loud trill. But the most important call is the one you’re not hearing yet – from the coqui frog. The coqui is native to Puerto Rico, but has been causing trouble in Hawaii for several years. They’re small – about the size of a quarter – brown, often with a narrow white stripe running down their back, and big sticky pads at the ends of their toes. But what really makes them stand out is their volume – a coqui frog can call at 100 decibels. That’s as loud as busy city traffic, almost the volume of a chainsaw from a few feet away. The call is two notes, and gives the frog its name – ko-KEE!, a high-pitched chirp that will make a human listener’s ears ring. In Hawaii, the frogs have caused millions of dollars in losses because the calls are causing sleep loss for residents and visitors alike. Tourists are avoiding some areas because of the high-pitched noise, and locals are finding it hard to sell their homes and land because of the sound. The horticulture industry has also suffered – several nurseries on the Big Island, where the infestation is the worst, have gone out of business because people are afraid to purchase plants with frogs in them. The frogs are unusual because they don’t need water to breed – they lay their eggs on damp soil, or in the nook where a leaf meets the stem of a plant. They often use ornamental plants like bromeliads as egg-laying sites. Because they don’t need water, they could very quickly spread around all of Guam, much like its cousin the greenhouse frog is doing now. The Guam Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife section captured two coqui frogs on Guam in 2004. None have been found since then, thanks to new live plant import protocols and the vigilance of Customs inspectors at our ports and at the Plant Inspection Station. If we’re lucky, the frogs will never arrive to cause the trouble they have elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean we can rest easy just yet. There is still a threat, and we need to keep an ear out for it. So Listen Up Guam! If you hear a coqui, or anything you don’t recognize, call 687-FROG!