Richard J. Severson

Recently, I read a fascinating book by conservation biologist William Newmark titled The Kihansi Spray Toad: Crisis Biology in the 21^st Century (Springer, 2025).  It tells the story of a tiny toad that only exists in the spray zones that surround a few water falls on the Kihansi River in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania.  Sadly, the toad is now extinct in the wild (but not in captivity) despite the incredible efforts to save it by a dozen organizations from around the world, including two American zoos.  Even in the best of times—before the Lower Kihansi dam was built in 1999—the total population of the Spray Toad only numbered approximately 20,000 individuals.  The loss of such a marginal species may seem insignificant, but this little toad is a perfect symbol of the earth’s biodiversity, which is under serious threat from human activities.    

Until recently, I suspect the greatest moral crisis that every human civilization faced was how to get along with the “strangers” who are not members of our own tribe/family/village/political party/state/nation, etc.  So how do we make sense of the ever-increasing conflicts between ourselves and the other species that are threatened by our ways of life?  Can we learn to curb the inadvertently lethal consequences of our own unprecedented dominance (hegemony) on this planet?   If Newmark’s fateful tale of the heroic efforts to save the Kihansi Spray Toad is any indication, the answer to that question is, “Yes, we can.”