What do Toledo, the Bronx and Dar es Salaam have in common? At least one thing is a population of one of the world's rarest amphibians -- the tiny Kihansi spray toad, which officially went extinct in Tanzania's Kihansi Gorge last year.  The Kihansi spray toad was first discovered just 14 years ago, in 1996, in a tiny, five acre micro-habitat created by the spray of nearby waterfalls in the Kihansi Gorge. Three years later a hydroelectric dam vital to the Tanzanian economy was built there, generating one-third of the nation's total electrical supply. But it also drastically reduced the mist zone in which the toads thrived.  The last reported sighting of the species was in 2004 and in 2009 they were declared extinct in the wild.  Thankfully, before that the Wildlife Conservation Society of the Bronx Zoo and the Tanzanian government collected an "assurance colony" of 499 of the toads from the gorge. The project was funded by the World Bank, which also funded the building of the dam.  Today 5,000 of the toads live at the Toledo Zoo and 1,500 in the Bronx Zoo. On Thursday 100 of the toads, 50 from the Bronx and 50 from Toledo, touched down in Dar es Salaam where they were moved in to a new, state-of the-art propagation center. The Tanzanian government is currently working to install a series of sprinklers in the Lower Kihansi Environment Management Project to allow the species to return to the wild.  The toads are unusual in that the females give birth to live, fully-formed young, rather than laying eggs. that hatch into free-living tadpoles.  To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor  . For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to  . Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to
Back from the brink: near-extinct Kihani spray toad returns to Tanzania - Science Fair: Science and Space News - USATODAY.com