In mud puddles located on a sprawling military post in Coastal Georgia where tanks rumble and soldiers train for war, the last of a threatened species clings to life.
Fort Stewart Army Base is home to the only remaining documented colony of frosted flatwoods salamanders in Georgia; The only other two groupings of the black-bodied amphibians with mottled bands of silvery white anywhere else on Earth are in Florida, although they once inhabited thousands of wetlands along the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
Amphibians have been around for millions of years but scientists have documented a sharp decline worldwide over the past few decades. That worries herpetologists, scientists who study reptiles and amphibians, because vanishing amphibian populations are a likely sign that Earth is becoming less inhabitable.