Fort Worth Zoo
In a quiet patch of piney woods southeast of Austin, just outside Bastrop, a slow and steady resurrection is underway. And it starts with a toad.
To mark Endangered Species Day on May 17, the Fort Worth Zoo announced the release of nearly 691,000 Houston toad eggs, tadpoles, and adult toads into the species’ native range — protected habitat in Bastrop County. It’s a hopeful surge in the recovery of a tiny amphibian that once echoed across the sandy soils of central Texas but is now among the rarest creatures in the state.
“We released exactly 690,957 toads at various life stages this season,” says the Zoo’s conservation team. That number includes 682,216 eggs, 8,677 tadpoles, and 64 adult toads — an effort that’s part of a broader, decade-plus partnership with Texas State University and the Houston Zoo, according to a release.
It’s not the first time the Fort Worth Zoo has sent its amphibious emissaries eastward. Since 2014, annual releases have taken place in the toad’s last remaining habitat, with all eyes on a single goal: keeping this fragile species from blinking out entirely. Today, fewer than 400 Houston toads are believed to survive in the wild.
The toad, Bufo houstonensis, was one of the first amphibians added to the Endangered Species Act in 1970. But listing it was just the start. Saving it would require what biologists call “intensive managed care” — and what Texans might call one hell of a toad-wrangling operation.
Here in Fort Worth, that means a full-time reproductive physiologist, detailed breeding schedules, and egg-counting marathons that would make any CPA sweat. During the six-to-eight-week breeding season, the Zoo’s team pairs adult toads based on precise hormonal cues. When everything goes right, the female lays a translucent strand of thousands of eggs, each a tiny gamble on the future. Once laid, those strands are counted by hand, bagged with care, and trucked down to Bastrop, where they’re introduced to protected ponds inside floating mesh baskets.
Fort Worth Zoo
It’s delicate work, but crucial. The Houston toad is a habitat specialist, meaning it can only survive in very specific conditions: deep sandy soil, native grasses, canopy cover, and unpolluted water sources. That’s a tall order in modern-day Texas, where much of the toad’s original longleaf pine ecosystem has been razed for agriculture and development.
“Because they’re an indicator species,” the conservation team continued, “a decline in their numbers often means something bigger is going wrong in the ecosystem.” In other words, if the toads vanish, they won’t be the last.
In 2016, the Zoo constructed the Texas Native Amphibian Center — a state-of-the-art breeding facility designed to ramp up conservation for the Houston toad and other at-risk native amphibians. Since then, the Fort Worth Zoo has released more than two million Houston toads in various stages of development, and it's not slowing down.
For the biologists working behind the scenes, the cause is personal. The toads may be small, but the fight to save them speaks to something bigger than just one species. It’s about whether Texas can keep its wild heart beating — in every chirp, every splash, every slippery footstep toward survival.
