Peril in the Ponds: Deformed Frogs, Politics, and a Biologist's Quest

8. The Quest

{ 137 } CHAPTER 8 THE QUEST 7 “Hey Judy, any chance your field crew could collect some fertilized frog eggs for us from one of your study sites?” asked EPA researcher Joe Tietge during a break at the amphibian meeting in Madison in the spring of 1997. He wanted to expose eggs to some chemicals and to ultraviolet light to see if deformities would develop, he explained. I hesitated, still unsure if my agency would support any of our fieldwork that spring. “We’ll try,” I said. “But I can’t guarantee we’ll be able to get out in time.” Dave Hoppe, standing nearby, spoke up. “To find egg masses, you practically have to camp out at the wetland in May when the males are calling.” And finding the eggs at a pond is a challenge because the frogs tend to breed in one local spot, not spread throughout a pond, he said. Our chances of collecting frog eggs for the EPA lab looked slim. Back at work after the meeting, I sat down at my computer with a sense of urgency. I glanced out the window. It was late March, and I could almost hear the biological clock of the frogs ticking out there in the still frozen landscape . By May leopard frogs would be breeding and laying their eggs, exposing the vulnerable embryos to whatever harmful agents, chemical or biological , might be lurking in the water. I turned to Mark, who was busily writing, and asked: “How can we get in { 138 } CHAPTER 8 the field this spring when the new funding, if it’s approved, won’t be available until July?” With no real options, going to the ponds looked dicey. Luckily, the MPCA held to its publicly made commitment to fund a “frog” position, and that allowed us to hire a person to coordinate fieldwork as part of an investigation into the frog deformities. I think the negative media exposure that embarrassed the agency in January had compelled our managers to do something about the frogs. At the last minute, right before frogs would begin to reproduce, we hired a young graduate student, Dorothy Bowers, who had experience surveying frogs across North Dakota and documenting spotted owls out west, to help plan and carry out the fieldwork. Joining us near the end of April with little time to prepare, she dove headlong into making plans for surveying frog populations, collecting and shipping samples to contract labs for analysis, and managing student field assistants. At first glance, one might not have realized that this diminutive woman with dark hair and eyes, whose small feet necessitated a special order for wading boots, had the take-charge and sometimes scrappy attitude that the unpredictability of the work required. Mark and I didn’t need to warn her about the long work hours that lay ahead. She knew. Even with Dorothy on board, Mark and I kept working double time to move the frog investigation and our wetlands research forward. Our bosses ratcheted up the pressure to complete the wetlands projects. Every two weeks, we wrote time-consuming, detailed progress reports for them, accounting for everything we did—or hadn’t been able to do. No other staff had such close scrutiny. Our immediate supervisor and section manager wanted us to wrap up our federal grants and get them “off the books,” as they put it. The biweekly meetings we had with them were punitive in tone, and we always went away feeling we had done something wrong. We were criticized for not getting enough done on our wetlands grants because of the work on the frogs, yet pressured to do more media interviews. After one especially difficult meeting , Mark said quietly, “I can’t help but think our bosses are trying to make things unbearable for us. Are they increasing the pressure-screws on us to get us to quit our jobs?” We were both at the breaking point. Recently our supervisor, who hated doing paperwork, had asked me what my “best-case scenario” would be for hiring summer field staff, assuming Representative Munger’s proposal to fund an investigation was approved. “Three,” I said immediately, “One to work with Dorothy, two more as a second field crew to survey additional sites.” { 139 } THE QUEST He leaned back in his chair and chuckled. “That’s interesting,” he said. “You and I see this in polar opposites...