Why I Want to Help Save Frogs

Posted on March 20th, 2025

FBA’s very own Frog Lady, Science Communication Officer Bethlea Bell, has loved the cute croakers since she was two years old.

Bethlea’s earliest frog memory is watching a green tree frog swim around in a hand basin at her childhood home near Chinchilla.

She said as a little girl she was “just fascinated with frogs”.

“I used to take them upstairs for a bath and swim in our hand basin and then take them back down and release them,” she said.

As Bethlea grew up, her love of frogs continued to blossom.

“I would collect tadpoles and put them in the pond and watch them develop,” she said. “I was just always fascinated with the metamorphosis they undergo. It is quite dramatic from looking like a little fish with just a tail to developing legs and losing their tail and changing their shape completely.

“I started buying a few different frog books and going out at night, looking at what frogs were around and trying to identify them by their calls.

“I just think they are cute and innocent creatures, and they are a strong indicator of environmental health.”

A workshop held at Kershaw Gardens in Rockhampton by a frog expert sparked her interest in different frog species so much that she joined the Queensland Frog Society and was a local coordinator for five years.

Her passion to help save frogs saw Bethlea, who held a Bachelor of Education, go back to university to study a Bachelor of Environmental Science, which she graduated with Distinction in 2015 from CQUniversity.

Bethlea joined the team at FBA in 2018. Prior to her role as a Science Communication Officer, she was an Environment Project Officer and worked on a project involving the critically endangered Kroombit Tinker Frog.

“It’s what I had been working towards throughout my life,” she said.

As a citizen scientist, Bethlea identifies frogs at home, recording them into FrogID or iNaturalist. She is currently the second highest observer of frogs on iNaturalist in Australia, contributing 1,500 images.

Bethlea has lots of ponds at her rural property outside Bouldercombe, as well as ponded pastures which provide great breeding ground for lots of species.

Bethlea’s favourite frog species is the Scarlet-sided Banjo Frog.

“It looks like a chocolate drop with orange and red blotches on its sides,” she said.

Her second favourite frog is the New Holland frog, which she says breeds on her property.

In recognition of World Frog Day on 20 March, we caught up with Bethlea to talk everything frogs:

Frog Fun Facts

• Frogs absorb water through the skin on their abdomen and legs rather than drinking with their mouth.
• Frogs use their eyes to help push food down their throats.
• Frogs have sticky tongues that can shoot out and capture prey in a fraction of a second.
• The New Holland frog burrows underground for up to 7 years at a time, waiting for flooding rain before it pops up to feed and breed.
• The Ruddy tree frog cleverly uses camouflage, changing colour from white to grey to brown to red to match its surroundings.
• We have three rocket frog species in our region – the Bumpy rocket frog, the Broad-palmed rocket frog and the Striped rocket frog. All can jump great distances for their size thanks to powerful, long back legs. Striped rocket frogs have extra cartilage in their toes, allowing them to leap up to 2m, roughly 36 times their own length. In humans, this would equate to jumping over 60m in a single bound.