This article was written and photographed by me and published in the first edition of Dominica Traveller magazine in 2015.

On the brink of extinction for a decade, Dominica’s most famous amphibian, the mountain chicken, survives by a precarious thread. But protection and research are beginning to suggest there may be a faint glimmer of hope.

JENNY SPENCER asks me to step into a bath of disinfectant when I enter. “Just to be on the safe side,” she says. “So you don’t bring any of the disease in here with you.” I do as I am asked and step into the shallow purple-coloured liquid and look around. The small building contains several enclosed pens, each sealed by plastic sheeting and mesh, and with doors that are bolted shut. It’s humid inside, and there’s a faint aroma I can’t place. I suddenly feel inexplicably anxious.

The disease Jenny is referring to is chytridiomycosis, also known as amphibian chytrid fungus. There are about 1,000 species of chytrid fungus that live in water or moist environments around the world and, in 1999, a new species was identified called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd for short, and it has infected amphibians around the globe, many of which develop chytridiomycosis and very quickly die. Here, on this island, it has almost entirely wiped out the Leptodactyllus fallax, known by Dominicans as the crapaud or the mountain chicken.

Jenny works for the Zoological Society of London and her aim is simple: to save the mountain chicken from extinction; for Dominica and nearby Montserrat are the only places on earth where mountain chickens live in the wild.

“It’s hard to know for certain what the island population is now, but based on how few we find during our field work, we’re probably talking about less than a hundred. But you never know. We have just five in here right now; three males and two females. We had more, but the disease got in a while back.”

Jenny used to work in the reptile house at Bristol Zoo in the UK, followed by a stint at the Amsterdam Zoo. This is her third trip to Dominica. She came in 2011, 2012 and 2014 for roughly six months at a time.

“Amphibians are my passion,” she smiles. “I even have a room full of frogs in my home in Amsterdam. I bet that sounds a bit weird,” she realises and laughs. But this passion has brought Jenny back to Dominica and she has grown very attached to the mountain chicken and the challenge of trying to save it.

The building we are in is in the Botanic Gardens in Roseau. It is a captive breeding facility, which is trying to maintain a back-up population of the mountain chicken on Dominica just in case they don’t survive at all in the wild. When the disease was first detected here and on Montserrat, several thousand were evacuated to Europe in a dramatic attempt to avoid total extinction and specimens are now found in zoos across Europe.

Food for the five frogs is also bred here; and plastic bins are alive with an assortment of crickets and forest cockroaches which she enjoys showing me.

“The forest cockroaches are very pretty, look,” she says, reaching in and pulling one out. “And the Jamaican crickets are my particular favourites. Now I really do sound weird, don’t I ?”

While the disease is everywhere, it doesn’t harm every amphibian it touches. The tree frogs that live here on Dominica have the disease too, yet they don’t get sick from it for reasons scientists don’t yet understand. But they do pass it on, and that is a major concern.

“And there are so many tree frogs,” she says. “So it’s completely impossible to control the spread of the disease to more vulnerable species such as the mountain chicken.”

Red and peeling skin is the usual sign of a diseased frog. Because mountain chickens breathe and absorb liquids through their skin, they are very vulnerable to water-borne infection of any kind. The Bd species of chytrid fungus that causes chytridiomycosis (mycosis = a disease caused by a fungus) makes the skin very thick and so the transfer of air, water and minerals becomes impossible. The heart stops beating and the animal dies.

“Rivers and streams that may have traces of pesticides and other farming chemicals are potentially another big problem for them,” Jenny explains. “And they get stressed easily. The dry season stresses them and so they try to hide in deep natural burrows where they can find areas that are cool, dark and damp during the day. The females also get stressed after laying eggs when they don’t eat very much. Disease and contaminated water exploits this weakness, of course.”

So is Jenny fighting a losing battle to save the mountain chicken ? “It can seem that way but there is hope,” she says forthrightly. “When the first outbreak of the disease hit the island at the turn of the millennia, and decimated the population, a few survived. They were strong, or ‘persistent’ enough, perhaps they even had some kind of natural resistance. We don’t know, and scientists are studying this phenomena with interest. But what we are discovering is that the few mountain chickens we have been finding in the wild in Dominica recently show little or no sign of falling sick from the disease. This is encouraging of course and we hope this means that the small population that has survived is now passing on some kind of resistance or immunity to their offspring. But it’s a very fragile situation and much is still unknown.”

Jenny goes out on night-time field trips every week to specific locations where small mountain chicken populations are still living in the wild. If she finds them, she gives them a health check, records their details and then releases them.

“The field trip locations are a secret,” she smiles. “But if you promise not to tell anyone where they are, you can come along if you like.”

A couple of weeks later I’m in a pick-up truck with Jenny and two colleagues from the Forestry, Wildlife & Parks Division, Ronnie and Sylvester. As our destination is a secret I’m half expecting to be blindfolded or have a bag pulled over my head but I am, thankfully, spared the indignity. It’s a clear night and the dry season has made the western margins of the island as crispy and flammable as tinder. Not an especially good combination for discovering creatures that like damp places.

“They tend to move out of the forest down towards water sources when the weather is like this,” Jenny explains. “And that’s where we’ve been finding them recently. Down by the rivers. As soon as it starts raining again they’ll stop making this migration as often and stay up in the forest instead.”

The locations of these night-time field trips is kept secret because people still hunt the frog for food, despite a ban and despite it almost becoming extinct. Not too long ago, the mountain chicken was Dominica’s national dish. It seems some people still have a taste for it.

We arrive and check equipment and flashlights. There is no moon and the night sky is full of stars. The forest is still and silent. To our right is a small river. Jenny tells me that during the last few years over twenty different frogs have been sighted and recorded here.

“It’s a real shame it isn’t raining,” she whispers as we make our way through the darkness. It isn’t a sentiment I especially share until she explains that rain would probably make the frogs call out and thus make them easier to find. Instead we have to rely on ‘eye-shine’, the reflection of the frogs’ eyes in the beams of our flashlights.

It isn’t long before Jenny spots something.

“Eye-shine,” she says. “Over there in the woods. See it ?”

My eyes strain in their sockets as I search the darkness trying to see what she sees. I’m embarrassed, for I can see nothing at all.

“I think it’s probably just a lizard in any case,” she says, sympathetically, and indeed it turned out to be just that.

A little later, after further searching, we hear a splashing in the river. It’s Ronnie. He’s discovered a frog but it has eluded him and we find him chasing around in the water trying to find it again. Reluctantly he gives up and we all continue up river in the darkness.

Jenny explains that whenever they find and catch a frog they check to see if it is one that they have seen before – each receives a digital identification chip – and then they measure and weigh it, look for any sign of the disease and, if it is a new one, they take identifying photographs. Each frog has slightly different skin markings.

“There,” Jenny says, stopping in her tracks. “A frog. See it ?”

This time I do. It’s a large female mountain chicken, sitting on top of a dry palm frond by the margins of the river, looking away from us into the water. Slowly and as silently as he can through the dry and crispy bush, Ronnie creeps up behind it until it is within reach. We all hold our breaths and daren’t move or make a sound. He flicks out an arm and grabs the frog before it has a chance to jump away. Our first catch of the evening.

Jenny scans the frog for an identification chip. It has one, so she checks it against her records.

“This is Courtney Love,” she smiles. “We like to give them names.”

Courtney Love seems rather subdued and gives Jenny cause for concern. She also has a few worrying marks on her skin. Jenny carefully swabs Courtney – the results will be processed back in London at a later date – and she measures and weighs her before we release her into the river. If Courtney has the disease, she would be the first case in this particular location.

On our return journey we are keen to find the frog that eluded Ronnie earlier and he spots eye-shine coming from beneath another dry palm frond on the far river bank. As stealthily as possible he makes his way through the water towards it but, before he can get close enough, it leaps high into the air and dives into a deep pool. Now we all splash around, shining our flashlights into the water, until we eventually catch it.

Also electronically tagged, but as yet with no name, this is a male frog that was first recorded in January 2014 when it weighed a mere 94 grams and was too small to determine gender. Now he weighs 310 grams; impressive and encouraging growth over just 18 months. He is lively and shows no sign of the disease.

“You know, it’s a shame he doesn’t have a name yet,” Jenny grins. “I think I may have to give him yours.”