Species.

Unite.

Unite.

I think you can probably go back and track, like, you know, the stages of grief,

probably that I went through.

But I think if you do it right, you end up at acceptance.

And that's where I ended up.

And that's not to say that I've fully accepted the idea that the golden toad is extinct.

Personally, I do still hold out hope that it could still be out there in those forests.

Yeah. there in those forests. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novogratz.

This is Species Unite.

This conversation is with Trevor Rittland, co-author, along with his twin brother, Kyle, of the Golden Toad.

The Golden Toad is about a beautiful journey that he and Kyle took into the heart of one of the biggest extinction mysteries of our lifetime.

This was in the cloud forest of Costa Rica, where hundreds of golden toads

once emerged for a brief few weeks each year, and then suddenly they were gone, vanished.

Trevor and Kyle set out to unravel the mystery. What started out as a search for a lost species

became something much deeper, a reckoning with ecological grief, a meditation on hope, and a call to protect what's still here.

Thank you. Hi, Trevor. It is really good to see you, and thank you so much for doing this today.

Happy to be here, Elizabeth. Thanks so much for having me.

So we're here to talk about your book called The Golden Toad. I read it. I loved it. Will you just give a background like what it's about? Yeah, for sure. So the Golden Toad revolves around the Golden Toad. This species from Monteverde, Costa Rica, an endemic toad species. It was found nowhere else, but this one little ridgetop elfin forest habitat in tropical cloud forest,

Costa Rica. It was discovered in 1964, or described by science in 1964. Bright orange

toad that was underground for most of the year

...