Valerie C. Clark, aka the Frog Caller, grew up roaming the State Parks that surrounded her home in the suburbs of Maryland, USA. It was here where she first plunged her hand into ponds capturing her tadpoles. And when one of these tadpoles grew up, back in the 1990’s, Valerie entered her little contender in the local community’s celebrated Mark Twain’s Jumping Frog Competition. Her champion won the 3rd place position!
Boophis cf rodosclis: Photo credit Valerie C Clark
Today, Valerie continues to roam the wilds at home in the USA, but she has also “taken a special liking to the people and exotic rainforests of Madagascar” where she studies poison frogs.
Her commitment to her work springs from her awareness of rainforests’ complex significance to our own survival; not just the one in Madagascar, but all of the rainforests throughout the world.
In our recent conversation, Valerie noted examples of what rainforests offer to our own survival as a species on this planet. She discussed the rainforest’s potential to offer medications to cure and fight disease and alleviate pain. She also drew a picture for me of how they filter our air, acting as ‘the lungs of the Earth,’ to provide a clean and adequate oxygen supply. The rainforests are home for thousands of people whose entire way of life is endangered by their destruction, and, in turn, they are home to thousands of species of animals that can survive no other habitat for living.
Mantella baroni: Photo credit Valerie C Clark
Although rainforests may seem remote and removed from our control, there are simple things we can do in our everyday lives to slow down their decimation. Valerie highlighted: “Most importantly, everything each of us does, like reusing stuff, reading labels to avoid palm oil, well, this all adds up to our impact and thus our ability to survive as a species on this planet with limited resources.”
Valerie is a National Geographic grantee. Boyd Matson featured her work on his Wild Chronicles series on National Geographic.
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Loved this video and all the work she is doing! Thank you Moments Count for making this available.
This work Valerie is doing is so wonderful! And I love her paradise “office,” looking out on palm trees and beach. I spent some time in the rainforest in Borneo working with orangutans. There I learned that rainforests are getting burned and plowed down for farmland to support the cattle required for the worldwide beef industry (as in fast food hamburgers). But tragically, rainforest soil cannot support that kind of farming, and so after a few years, those plowed fields become virtually useless, requiring new acres to replace them. So we’ve taken something utterly precious and life-giving, and turned it into nothing. One of the greatest things we can each do to help, in addition to avoiding palm oil and rare rainforest wood, is to cut back on beef consumption, and stop supporting fast food. And thank goodness for people like Valerie!