PANAMA — National symbol of Panama now preserved through captive breeding programs: Roberto Ibanez, the director of the Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project, run by the Smithsonian and financed by the government, holds a golden frog, an endangered species, in Gamboa, Panama, Thursday, April 2, 2026.
Considered functionally extinct in the wild, the golden frog was brought to the brink by a combination of habitat loss and the chytrid fungus.
The Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project, founded in 2009 by several zoos and conservation groups, works to protect amphibians threatened by the fungus.