How chytrid fungal disease and habitat loss are decimating global amphibian populations and what conservation responses protect both species and individuals.
Amphibian conservation is one of the most urgent wildlife welfare challenges of the current era - an entire vertebrate class is being systematically devastated by introduced disease, habitat destruction and climate change at a pace that outstrips conservation response capacity. Chytridiomycosis causes individual amphibians to die through a form of cardiac arrest driven by electrolyte imbalance - a prolonged welfare harm that has occurred across billions of individuals in the last three decades. Captive assurance colonies provide a welfare safety net for species while wild habitat and disease management strategies are developed, but the scale of the decline means that captive conservation cannot substitute for wild population protection.