The disappearing frogs story that hit the news today may be just the tip of the iceberg of global warming impacts on animals.

Newspapers across the country, including the front page of the Washington Post,
reported on a new study linking the decline of frogs in Central and South America to a deadly fungus that is spreading faster because of warming temperatures.

The study, published in the journal Nature, is the first to directly blame climate change for killing off a species, in this case 65 types of amphibians.

But it’s not the first study to show that global warming could have dramatic effects on a variety of species.

Just this week a University of Montana professor told duck hunters in Arkansas that their sport could become extinct, too, because rising temperatures are drying up breeding grounds needed by ducks in North America, the Associated Press reported.

Colorado is starting a revolt against a blanket exemption from the Clean Water Act that Congress granted to oil and gas drillers last year.

The energy bill signed by President Bush in August prohibits regulation of runoff from oil and gas operations, relieving drillers of the need to prevent sediments and contaminants from draining into nearby water supplies.

But after months of debate and a contentious two-day hearing this week, the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to require erosion-control permits for drilling sites larger than an acre.

Commissioners cited sampling data and studies showing that the state’s recent drilling boom is causing sedimentation that threatens water quality and fish habitat.

Snowfall is up this winter in many Northern states, so salt levels in rivers and streams are rising too.

A recent study by University of Maryland researchers found that waters in the Northeast have gotten increasingly salty over the past three decades as a result of deicers used on roads.

Sujay Kaushal of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science said salt levels in New York’s Hudson River, in Baltimore’s water system and in New Hampshire’s mountain streams directly corresponded to the amount of paved surfaces and snowfall in each of those areas.

Well users in the Boston suburbs are tasting saltier water from their taps, too, largely because last winter was one of the snowiest on record for the region, according to the Boston Globe.

More than a year after Congress was told the oceans face an immediate crisis, the House last week briefly considered appointing a task force to study the problem. But the modest proposal offered by Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md., was quickly washed away in a wave of partisan sniping. As a result, Congress is no closer to tackling a host of recommendations for action made last year by the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy.

One of the commission’s top concerns was that the government’s ocean policies are badly fragmented, with 15 federal agencies and 58 congressional committees dealing with issues ranging from fishery management and climate research to offshore drilling and deep seabed mining. The commission’s chairman, Adm. James Watkins, told the Natural Resources News Service last week that those concerns have not been addressed.

Reporters obtained an unreleased report on damages caused by Great Lakes pollution at an awkward time for the Bush administration.

Frothing from the right about United Nations involvement has stymied a world treaty on oceans protection that has broad support in Congress and the Bush administration.

Republicans who want to weaken NEPA blamed environmentalists again last week for the flooding after hurricane Katrina despite two government reports that failed to show any connection.