The golden toad

by Trevor Ritland

ISBN: 9781635769968

Published: 2025-06-17

The Costa Rican cloud forest, a mysterious amphibian killer, and the vanished species of the golden toad—Twin documentarians and environmental writers, who have collaborated with Leonardo DiCaprio’s RE:WILD campaign, carry on their father’s mission at the heart of the modern extinction crisis. As young boys, Trevor and Kyle Ritland were fascinated by the magnificent Golden Toad of Costa Rica, a brilliant species their biologist father showed them in his projector’s slide shows. Native to only one wind-battered ridgeline high on the continental divide in Monteverde, Costa Rica’s cloud forests, thousands of golden toads would congregate for a few weeks each year in ephemeral pools among the twisted roots to mate, deposit their offspring, and vanish again beneath the earth. But as the years passed by, the toads’ numbers diminished, with the last of them vanishing without a trace more than thirty years ago. Since then, only rumors abound—alleged sightings by local residents, which beg...