Agriculture and Farming
Affects on the California Red-Legged Frog

Agriculture and farming has been a cause of disruption in the California Red-Legged Frog population. The California Red-Legged Frog habitat has been directly affected by grazing cattle and domestic livestock. The ubiquitous nature of livestock grazing in the western United States has resulted in its identification as the major cause of excessive habitat disturbance in most areas in that region (Jennings, Hayes, and Holland 1992). Domestic livestock has the tendency to negatively change the habitats in which they graze.         Well-grazed stream margins also lack extensive undercut banks… For California Red-Legged Frogs the loss of undercut banks and reduced water levels is particularly critical because refuge plunge pool habitat would be reduced and eliminated and water temperatures would tend to be higher than in habitat not altered in this way, a feature not only detrimental to R.a. draytonii, but which also tends to favor a number of introduced exotic aquatic predators (Jennings, Hayes and Holland 1992). Grazing cattle either remove or trample vegetation (Jennings, Hayes and Holland 1992).         In addition to cattle, feral pigs (Sus scrofa) also disturb the riparian zone through their rooting, wallowing and foraging behavior in the shallow margins of water bodies (61 Federal Register 25827). Feral pigs disturb and destroy vegetative cover, trample plants and seedlings and cause erosion (61 Federal Register 25827) (61 Federal Register 25827).