EST. 2009 · PORTLAND, OR · 380 REGIONAL REVIEWERS
Get Involved — Keep the Pond Counting.
A field dispatch from the amphibian desk: for sixteen years FrogWorld has run on the porch-light flicker of strangers submitting sightings, vetting calls, and editing species records. There is no lab, no grant-funded quota — just 380 regional reviewers, 42,617 geo-tagged observations, and a notebook passed between anyone willing to kneel beside a pond at dusk.
Join the Pond — Free →EDITORIAL STANDARDS
Every sighting is reviewed by a regional herpetologist within seven days.
FrogWorld is a peer-reviewed field reference, not a content farm. Our editorial workflow cross-references every submitted observation against the AmphibiaWeb and IUCN Red List APIs before it is plotted on a range map or paired with a call spectrogram. The process is led by Editor-in-Chief Dr. Mira Halverson (PhD, Herpetology, UC Berkeley; author of three peer-reviewed papers on Neotropical dendrobatids) and a fourteen-person editorial staff — and is the reason 217 university libraries and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's amphibian monitoring program cite us as a primary source.
That same work was recognized with the 2024 IUCN Amphibian Specialist Group Media Prize for conservation-impact journalism. Standards of accuracy here are not a slogan — they are the precondition for the science downstream of every page on this site.
— Dr. Mira Halverson, Editor-in-Chief
FROGWATCH MARCH · 2026 SEASON
FrogWatch March 2026 — registration opens January 15.
FrogWatch is our annual three-week amphibian call survey, run in cooperation with regional herpetological societies. The cohort is large enough to publish meaningful range data and small enough that one participant's record can shift a county map. Last year's numbers, before we open the books for 2026:
9,600
Registered participants in 2025
42,617
Geo-tagged sightings logged to date
138
Countries with at least one contributor
1,847
Long-form species profiles published
FOUR WAYS TO JOIN THE WORK
Four ways to join the work.
You don't need a degree to be useful. FrogWorld runs because a few thousand volunteers each pick the role that fits their evenings, their backpacks, or their camera rolls. Pick one. The pond is patient.
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01
Citizen Scientist
Log a sighting from your backyard.
Photograph, record, or note any frog or toad you encounter. Submissions take 3 minutes through the field app; 92% are reviewed by a regional herpetologist within 7 days.
Submit your first sighting → -
02
FrogWatcher
Run a call-survey route in March.
Commit to three listening stations across one wetland during FrogWatch March. Your route joins 9,600 others and feeds the annual range-shift dataset.
Claim a survey route → -
03
Expedition Reporter
Publish a long-form field report.
Traveling somewhere amphibian-rich? We commission 612 field-trip reports a year from regional contributors — with editing support from our 14-person desk and a stipend for approved submissions.
Pitch a field report → -
04
Regional Reviewer
Vet submissions for your region.
Of the 380 active regional reviewers on staff, most started as readers with a strong working knowledge of their local fauna. Applications open quarterly; a herpetology background is welcomed but not required.
Apply to the reviewer corps →
"A pond is only ever as alive as the people willing to kneel beside it."
— Dr. Mira Halverson, Editor-in-Chief
CONSERVATION PARTNERSHIP
Three campaigns. 14,200 acres.
Co-acquired with Rainforest Trust.
FrogWorld has partnered with Rainforest Trust on three land-acquisition campaigns to date, preserving 14,200 acres of critical amphibian habitat across the Neotropics. A portion of every Pond membership funds the next parcel — and we publish the deed, the species inventory, and the post-acquisition monitoring plan on the site within 30 days of closing.
- 2021 — Cordillera de Talamanca corridor, 4,200 acres
- 2023 — Eastern Andes cloud-forest block, 6,800 acres
- 2025 — Guiana Shield headwater catchment, 3,200 acres
JOIN THE POND
Join the Pond — Free.
Membership is free for individual readers. You'll get The Daily Tadpole newsletter (86,400 subscribers, 41% open rate), a forum handle, full access to 1,200+ downloadable dichotomous keys, and the right to vote in our annual species-profile priority poll.
Join the Pond — Free →Supported by memberships, grants, and ethical wildlife-tourism affiliate partners. We do not run sponsored editorial and we do not sell user data.