Panama Backpackers’ Hotel Doubles as “Noah’s Ark” for Endangered Frogs
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 10.26.06 | 7:20 AM ET
Panama’s golden frogs are, according to the Washington Post’s Manuel Roig-Franzia, “considered so lucky that their images appear on lottery tickets.” They’re also on the run from a fungus that has killed more than 100 species of amphibians in Central America, so an international network of biologists, zookeepers and environmentalists, in conjunction with Panama’s Hotel Campestre, has decided to make a stand by building a Noah’s Ark for the creatures within the hotel.
The guests in Rooms 28 and 29 at the Hotel Campestre here in this lush volcano-crater town get the full spa treatment.
Daily cleansing rinses. Exotic lunches. Even 24-hour room service.
It would all be so lovely, a real dream, if they could only go outside every once in a while. But they can’t. Not ever. One step outside, or in their case one hop, and they’d be goners.
Thus is the lot of Panama’s—and perhaps the world’s—most unusual hotel VIPs, the darling little Panamanian golden frogs of El Valle de Anton.
It’s both a heartwarming and sad tale—and somewhat controversial. “There’s this moral dilemma,” Adrian Benedetti, the Summit Zoo outside Panama City and a supporter of the frog rescue project told the Post. “Is this evolution? Should we let it run its course? If we do this for frogs, then do we do it some other time for the snakes?”
WashingtonPost.com has some video to go with the story.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
