I remember the chirps of the Golden Frogs. I remember the reverence with which my mother sang of them, and I remember my father’s sunken eyes when he told me that the last female frog in his conservation unit had succumbed to her chytrid fungal disease. Her name was Theia, aptly named after the goddess of light in the Greek pantheon whose beauty was said to be embodied in the radiant shine of all precious metals. But she was worth more than any precious metal, even the extraordinarily scarce gold for which she was named. For with all the hoarded wealth in the world, you cannot pay to resuscitate a species from extinction’s grasp.

Despite growing up with the Panamanian Golden Frogs, my heart has always remained with our neighboring Colombian Auratus frogs – whose striking mint green coloration has enamored me since childhood. I feared for their safety, and almost morbidly, needed to know if they were already lost. Almost a year ago, now, I endeavored to join the conservation efforts to protect them (and their sister species) along the wooded pacific coasts of Colombia. We’ve collectively realized that there is no protecting them from what awaits them (and us shortly thereafter).

God, how could this much death have come of only a couple degrees warming? The Paris Agreement tried to hold us to one and a half degrees, and yet, here we remain – barely having breached that threshold, and our forest undergrowth is littered with the corpses of climate casualties. Our highlands now reverberate not with the mating calls of our frogs, or the pecking of our Helmetcrests, but with the ripping activation of our saws and the bellowing of the smokestacks to our East.

We have yet to encounter a single Auratus individual in our search, and the overwhelming majority of their sisters that we have found are already riddled with the chytrid fungi. We have found little relief in the discovery of their cousins, the salamanders, who have all been dehydrated, lacking their distinct mucus coating that glosses over their gorgeous coloration, and of course, not long for this world. Our wildlife has been hit especially hard here, around the tropics, where the heat blisters and our coasts boil. We may have lost our species to martyrdom, if only the rest of the world was awake to their suffering, but I fear their pursuits are less concerned with the endurance of their wildlife, let alone ours, and moreso with their gold that cannot sing to them or adorn their trees.

Nevertheless, the hunt continues. Today we are scouring the Monterian lowlands in search of the Auratus frogs. The heat is festering around us, and smoke on the wind permeates the air. We only have a few hours to search, with the limited drinking water we have available to us, or we risk dehydration. We carefully traverse the deep foliage, ever with an eye on the trees, and an eye to their roots. I catch a glimpse of a gorgeous streak of vibrant mint green, nestled atop a philodendron leaf, and my heart skips a few beats. With disbelief and adoration in my eyes, I slow down to a glacial pace and control my breathing to the best of my ability. I cannot afford to startle this beautiful creature, or we risk another year of searching with the creeping feeling that extinction will outpace us in our hunt. I slowly crouch a foot or two from our enrapturing discovery, and freeze – lost in awe of the patterns I cannot believe are to be found in nature. The little frog shuffles a bit, turns in my direction, and props up on its forelegs to appraise me. As its underbelly is revealed, almost in slow motion, horror seizes me and my stomach drops. The little frog, likely unaware, sports the markings of the chytrid fungus on its underbelly. As it gazes up at me, with its beautiful beady eyes, tears well in mine.

We are too late.

I didn’t work with an AI source to generate or develop the ideas or composition of the story above. I abstained partially due to my stubborn unwillingness to contribute to the rampant increase in usage of AI, and largely due to my faith in my own creativity and writing outweighing my inclination to cut corners and have my writing and idea generation done for me. I see the merit in the AICliFi assignment, I just can’t endorse the usage myself.