Sri Lanka is known globally as an Amphibian Hotspot, with over 125 known species of which nearly 85 per cent are unique to the island.

Most of these amphibians are threatened; many species are now extinct here -21- than anywhere else in the world. Current island wide surveys indicate a high rate of malformations and parasitic infection among the surviving species.

Thus, captive facilities have to play a vital role in current amphibian conservation efforts to prevent more species going extinct before our experts know how to protect them in the wild.

To meet this challenge, high standards of care, reproductive management and strong disease protocols will be needed by local and foreign experts who must disseminate their knowledge if Sri Lanka wants to build the regional capacity required to respond effectively, says Sri Lanka’s leading herpetologist Anslem de Silva.

Whilst Sri Lanka possesses one of the specious amphibian faunas in the world and is a recognised hotspot for endemism as well as diversity, it’s natural resources have come under ever increasing anthropogenic pressures which have led to the extinction of significant portions of the described endemic amphibian species.

Habitat loss and fragmentation are likely agents of these extinctions with these processes continuing to impact on Sri Lanka’s remaining wilderness areas. Environmental toxicology and wildlife disease are also likely to impact on Lankan’s amphibian population to a very great extent.

Climate change is now also an accepted anthropogenic process and its effect on the ecosystem both locally and globally is only now being gauged.

Critical to achieving advancement of amphibian conservation at a national level is the establishment of three processes: monitoring of amphibian and other biodiversity at sufficient resolution to effectively inform of changes in species and population circumstances, and of management decisions, bio security monitoring and response planning for the presence of invasive organisms such as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and planning management options for potential scenarios as actually and potentially identified through biodiversity and bio security monitoring.

The Global Amphibian Crisis offers Sri Lanka with its technical capability and globally significant fauna the opportunity to become a world leader in tropical biodiversity management through supporting the development and implementation of the proposed monitoring and management focused amphibian conservation framework.

Without the establishment of monitoring procedures and a clear framework for the development and absorption of information into the decision making processes of the Ministry for the Environment and Natural Resources management agencies, Sri Lanka will be helpless in the face of the global amphibian extinction crisis.

Establishment of such a monitoring and planning process will also contribute to the national biodiversity management targets set by the IUCN –World Conservation Union.

Development of this monitoring programme will enable Sri Lanka to be on par with the best resources management nations such as New Zealand and Costa Rica, which earn lavish foreign exchange from their natural resources, as can Sri Lanka if those resources are managed and valued approporiateltly.

Involvement of students and amateur conservation and environmental groups in national biodiversity monitoring programmes is a feasible and beneficial synergy of interests as monitoring a small proportion of Sri Lankan amphibian diversity at even a small and select number of locations will require significant labour.

Integrating these monitoring programmes with university courses in zoology and environmental management will be a tremendous capacity building and perception changing opportunity.

These initial actions Anslem has proposed for these monitoring and planning methodologies must be presented to the research and conservation management communities in Sri Lanka at the proposed Amphibian Conservation Workshop for consideration and development.

Amphibian Biodiversity and landscape processes: Over recent years robust techniques are available applicable to large-scale monitoring of biodiversity trends. Prominent amongst these is the analysis of patch occupancy by target species. The development of an analysis programme: Presence, allowing for the estimation not only of proportional occupancy of a species over a number of habitat patches within a study site but also the degree of extinction or colonization of those patches over time.

Monitoring design should be informed by a detailed knowledge of amphibian occurrence across Sri Lanka and the niche specificity of those species.

The key to the success of this monitoring programme will be animals be detected passively, that is not captured or displaced during monitoring as this is likely to influence detection probabilities and threaten local population stability.

The nature of occupancy monitoring is such that only presence or absence needs to be recorded, that is once a specimen of a target species is identified within the specified search timeframe the monitoring team can move on to the next site.

Reporting of the findings to management authorities will also be a critical component of the process and ideally management bodies should be central members of the monitoring coordinating body.

Bio security Monitoring: It is envisaged that a synergistic programme may be run alongside the biodiversity monitoring programme to sample populations for the presence of pathogenic organisms. Bio security monitoring be extended to the vicinity of ports, areas where biological materials regularly enter the country and risk centres such as commercial freshwater fish farms.

Conservation Planning: It is prudent that plans are developed for dealing with the potential alerts provided by the monitoring programmes.

Anslem believes that these plans must be developed by the agencies which would be tasked with their enforcement but can also be done so in collaboration with national and international herpetologists and conservation managers who have already developed such procedures.

Sri Lanka possesses a sizable community of herpetologists more than capable of assisting in the delivery of the proposed monitoring and assisting in the development of management plans.

"I am able to offer a presentation of these methods and their utility to adaptive conservation management as proven by my management of critically endangered species recovery programmes and extensive reserve areas on behalf of the Department of Conservation in New Zealand," says Anslem.

He also said that he was able to present the methodologies that led to successful species conservation plans, again from a background of over six years experience of constructing such programmes for the Department of Conservation in New Zealand.

Within Sri Lanka Anslem de Silva, Kelum Manamendra-Arachchi, Madhava Meegaskumbura, M. Mohamed Bahir and a few others possess the necessary ecological and taxonomic knowledge of the amphibian fauna to adequately inform the development of monitoring methodologies.