The Golden Toad: An Ecological Mystery and the Search for a Lost Species

Trevor and Kyle Ritland, twin brothers and documentarians, debut with an overwrought investigation into the extinction of the golden toad, a native of Costa Rica’s cloud forests whose last recorded sighting was in 1989. The authors alternate between discussing the global collapse of amphibian populations in the 1990s and their efforts to determine if any golden toads remain in the wild. Despite presenting themselves as detectives seeking to solve the “ecological mystery” behind the mass frog die-offs, their research shows scientists have known the cause for decades: a parasitic fungus that fatally inhibits frogs from regulating their electrolyte levels. The authors’ search for a living golden toad is similarly underwhelming. Providing reason for hope, they point out that a 2010 campaign to find supposedly extinct frogs led to the “rediscovery” of 15 species, but this only makes the brothers’ decision to give up after a single night of camping on a Costa Rican ridgetop all the more baffling. Worse, they implausibly play up their brief sojourn with grandiose allusions to conquistadors’ quest for El Dorado and florid prose (“The lonely forest swayed in the slow wind, reaching out wet and woody hands in consolation; we were only now encountering the grief [over the toads’ disappearance], but the forest had been living with it”). This falls flat. Agent: Lauren Hall, Folio Literary. (June)