Gamboa Amphibian Research and Conservation Center (ARCC) - Annual Golden Frog Day Parade

Now in its fourth year, we expanded golden frog day celebrations to include a weeklong series
of events in in Panama City, Summit Municipal Park and El Valle de Anton. Activities were
featured in four newspaper and five television reports. This year’s celebrations were the largest
yet, drawing 40 volunteers to help run nine events that drew 6,200 participants, about half of
whom were school children. This year included a popular new pubtalk at the Rana Dorada Pub
www.laranadorada.com who kindly donated a portion of their proceeds to amphibian conservation.
The exhibit at EVACC in the El Nispero Zoo draws 100,000 visitors a year and plays a
significant role in highlighting the importance of frogs to the Panamanian public and is the only
place in Panama where visitors can see golden frogs. We have been working with STRI’s director
of public programs Sharon Ryan and the BioMuseo curator George Angehr to create a new
public exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Punta Culebra Nature Center. This new exhibit highlights
the cultural, scientific and conservation value of amphibian biodiversity in Panama and will
open in 2014. The exhibit will help us to engage Panamanian audiences in amphibian conservation
issues and we developed a draft amphibian curriculum that will be produced for school
teachers to connect the two exhibits at EVACC and Punta Culebra to classroom activities that
are relevant to the Panamanian school curriculum.