A visit to the Garden Show

Last week we went to the Perth Flower and Garden Show, which usually happens around this time of year. This year the show was held on the Perth foreshore and it attracted the usual thousands of garden enthusiasts from all parts of the state. We walked around and looked at all the various nurseries,tree planters,gardening organisations,and fringe activities in the garden world such as experts who build and design rockeries, etc. As a matter of fact a friend won a large contract for the design and building of a rockery and waterfall. I believe one of the most important members of the garden fraternity is the common or garden "frog". I hope they don't mind being called that. Right next to the Nursery Industry stall at the show was the 'frog friendly garden pond'. When we first moved into our house twenty or so years ago there was a rather large colony of frogs around the stream about 30 metres (100 feet) away from the front door. Over the last 5 or 6 years we have noticed there has been a sad lack of the 'sound of the frog' in the autumn, which is usually the time of peak frog movements and activity. There is now, in Western Australia, a Frog Watch Program, sponsored by Alcoa and the Western Australian Museum. I picked up a copy of the latest newsletter of Alcoa Frogwatch and noticed that there is a fungal disease attacking the frog population in the Perth area. The latest news tells us that studies have confirmed that a chytrid frog fungus has spread to a lot of localities around Perth, and even to some localities in the southern forests. This must provide a challenge to the scientists trying to find the reason for the spread of the fungus and trying to eradicate the disease. As the Newsletter tells us, 'The future of the frog conservation in Western Australia is very much in the hands of the community...' there appears to be a challenge here, and moves are in hand to change the methods of investigation and control. The Newsletter tells us that there will be a number of new programs established to moderate the impact of the fungus, these are:

· A new program aimed at building frog friendly gardens throughout the suburbs - getting frogs back into everyday lives an keeping them there · An expansion of the current frog monitoring program to include the whole of the southwest region of Western Australia - this will allow rapid detection of the decline in the number of frogs

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