Melbourne Water and the Healthy Waterways Program invite you to participate in the Melbourne Water Frog Census. The Census is a community-based frog monitoring program operating within greater Melbourne that aims to reflect waterway health, raise awareness about wildlife, and encourage people to get to know their local waterways.
Join the band of volunteers recording frog calls at rivers and creeks within greater Melbourne.
Have you ever wondered what frogs live in your local creek?
Sign up to record the frog calls in your local area and find out if it’s a Growling Grass Frog, an Eastern Common Froglet, or one of the many other frogs found in Victoria croaking away in your neighbourhood.
Spring is just around the corner and this is one of the best times of the year to record croaks and ribbits at waterways. All you need to volunteer is a recording device and a notebook.
Don’t worry, you don’t need to know all the different species of frogs to volunteer; just record the ribbits and croaks, upload them or send them to us and we get our experts to analyse the recordings to identify the frogs. They then plot the locations of all the different species recorded on a map of the greater Melbourne region.
The data you collect is submitted to the Department of Sustainability and Environment’s Victorian Wildlife Atlas - the official state registry for flora and fauna. This registry is used to make decisions about the status of species including threatened species nominations.
The Growling Grass frog (Litoria raniformis) is an endangered species which is still found within the Melbourne region. It is the icon for the Melbourne Water Frog Census. More information about the Growling Grass frog can be found on the Victorian Frog Group website.
Check out the Frog Census results from previous years.
Photographs courtesy of Peter Robertson, Wildlife Profiles