“In the 1980s zoologists became aware that many amphibians around the world, principally frogs but also salamanders, were in steep decline. . . . The golden toad of Costa Rica (Bufo periglenes) population . . . plummeted. Its color was spectacular: males in the breeding season looked as though they had been dipped whole in orange Day-Glo paint. . . . In the spring of 1987 hundred of thousands of breeding toads made their annual appearance on schedule in the only place the species occurred. . . . The following year a team . . . could find only five individuals. No golden toad has been seen since, and the species is presumed extinct.”

—Edward O. Wilson, The Future Of Life, 2002.