Listen‘It’s Wyoming’s toad’: Inside a multi-state effort to save a humble species from extinction
The main entrance of Como Park Zoo & Conservatory in St. Paul is busy with strollers and chatty kids on a hot weekday afternoon. Below all that, in a tiny basement room marked “biosecure,” zookeeper Allison Pizel tends to one family in particular.
“This is Meatball,” she said, holding a brown blob of a toad in a gloved hand. Meatball is a survivor, as the only member of Pizel’s breeding program to make it from egg to tadpole to toad in 2025. Meatball also belongs to one of the most endangered amphibian species in North America: the Wyoming toad…