Utah wants people to eat invasive bullfrogs
The state of Utah wants residents to catch - and eat - more bullfrogs.
Bullfrogs are an invasive species there, meaning they interfere with local ecosystems by feasting on native animals and introducing new pathogens. The Utah Department of Natural Resources tweeted a reminder last month that people can catch as many bullfrogs as they want.
“And bonus,” the agency wrote: “they’re tasty.”
The frogs, however, can be difficult to capture. Hunting missions often take place in the dark of night, with catchers straining to identify the animals by their eyeshine and grabbing them before they can leap away.
The practice is not particularly technical, said Greg Jongsma, a professional frog catcher. It usually requires a head lamp, two hands and some practice.
“The art of catching frogs just takes a little bit of perseverance and not being afraid to get wet and muddy,” said Jongsma, assistant curator of zoology at the New Brunswick Museum in Canada.
Utah’s message to residents is part of a trend of conservationists encouraging people to eat invasive species. Urging adventurous eaters to consume sometimes-harmful animals such as lionfish, Asian carp and nutria is a creative way to try to reduce their populations, some experts say.
For bullfrogs, the trouble comes when they spread from their native habitats in the Eastern and Central United States to more Western states. As “explosive breeders,” Jongsma said, they can quickly establish large populations in new places.
Bullfrogs are ferocious eaters that will chomp on just about anything that can fit in their mouths, including smaller frogs, and compete for food with native species. They also carry chytrid fungus, which can be deadly to other amphibians.
Trying to capture them can be an adventure. In one video of a frog-catching expedition, an Arkansas-based couple ventures out on a canoe about 11:30 p.m. with headlamps and flashlights.
As they approach a group of lily pads, the woman spots a stationary frog. She reaches out her hand, slowly at first. “Get ‘em!” her husband says as she snaps her hand forward and grabs the creature around its chest. “Holy smokes, look at this guy!” she yells as she holds the frog up to the camera.
Minutes later, her husband reaches for a frog but it leaps away before he can wrap his hand around it. By the end of the night, the couple estimates that they have about two dozen of the amphibians in their cooler.
The speed with which bullfrogs will jump away from an approaching hand depends on the particular population, Jongsma said. Male frogs in peak breeding season are typically so amped up while looking for mates, he said, that they are not easily scared into fleeing. Other times, the frogs are more skittish.
The process of capturing them is simple: Go out at night and look for the reflections of their eyes. Compared to insects’ shimmery eyes, frogs’ eyes look more like globes. When you find one, approach slowly and then quickly grab the frog’s hips while keeping their legs outstretched so they cannot leap away.
Nets can also help, Jongsma said, but they have to be deep enough that the bouncy frogs cannot escape. He suggested approaching the creatures headon because they always move in a forward motion. So if they jump as someone approaches from the front, he said, they should land in the net.
Trudging through marshy waters on frog-catching missions requires some planning when it comes to clothing. The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission suggests wearing a camouflage or earth-tone Tshirt, swim trunks and water shoes. Bring insect repellent, a flashlight and a large bag that can be cinched.
There are other ways of catching bullfrogs, though Jongsma said some are more humane than others. Some people spear frogs using sticks with nails or spikes, an approach sometimes used - and protested - in frog-catching competitions. Other frog hunters bury buckets in the ground as traps.
Nancy Ketchen, of British Columbia, began capturing bullfrogs years ago as a bonding activity with her youngest child and then transitioned to gathering them for research at a nearby university.
Ketchen uses bait and barbless hooks, which are meant to cause less harm to the frogs, she told a podcast for the school district where she works as an absence dispatch coordinator. She puts the captured frogs in her home freezer for about an hour to slow them down. Then, she said, she packs them into plastic bags and places them back in the freezer, where they die slowly.
Ja Eggett, a shooting range facilities and grounds supervisor for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, said he has used marshmallows or earthworms as bait when fishing for bullfrogs. But the frogs would often spit out the bait when he pulled on the pole, so Eggett said he started putting hooks directly onto a bobber.