Inside three water tanks in a tucked-away room at the Aquarium of the Pacific, biologists are tasked with bringing back a population of frogs that once thrived across the state’s mountainous streams but has since reached the brink of extinction.
It’s a program that’s nearly closed out its fifth year with a major milestone: more than 1,000 frogs raised and released into the wild.
That’s more than five times as many mountain yellow-legged frogs — named for the lemon-hued streak along their hind legs — believed to be in the wild when last recorded in 2019, reduced to small pockets of wild streams in the San Gabriel, San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains. By the time the frog was listed under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2002, fewer than 100 adults remained in Southern California. A count in 2020 put the number at about 188 in the wild, though biologists say that figure has almost certainly shifted since…