First, the frogs died. Then people got sick.

"Kneeling on the muddy rainforest floor, the biologist opened his red Coleman cooler and scooped one up. It was a Pratt's rocket frog - about the size of a walnut, sporting black-and-white racing stripes. Gratwicke deposited the frog in a small mesh tent, a "catio" for indoor pets to glimpse the outdoors, and encouraged it to acclimate to its transitional home."

"Gratwicke is a conservation biologist who leads amphibian work at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. He had flown to Panama, in the middle of rainy season, to help resurrect frog species that had vanished from the cloud forest decades ago. What is becoming increasingly clear is that without them, humans are in trouble."

Brian Gratwicke, a conservation biologist, collected frogs in Altos de Campana National Park to reintroduce species that disappeared from the cloud forest decades earlier. Teams held frogs temporarily to acclimate them before release. Declines across Central America have reduced tadpole populations that normally consume mosquito larvae. Reduced tadpoles have coincided with higher mosquito numbers and a fivefold rise in malaria cases. The link between amphibian loss and human disease has prompted ecologists and economists to quantify the economic and health costs of species declines and to prioritize amphibian conservation for public-health benefits.

Read at The Washington Post