New frogs on the block
An example of how little we know of the amphibians world in India is the recent discovery of three frog species in the Barbara forests, located around 30 km north of Balugaon in district Khurda of Orissa. In a survey undertaken on the April 14 and 15, S K Chaddha, divisional forest officer of the region, Biswajit Mohanty, secretary of the Wild Life Society of Orissa, Asad Akhtar, ornithologist at the Bombay Natural History Society and Sushil Kumar Dutta, professor at the department of zoology at the Utkal University, Orissa, identified three species of frogs, earlier not known. Two of them are tree frogs. As the name suggests they live either on the trees or in bushes. One of the two tree frogs is a close relative of a frog found in Northeast India. The second tree frog species is small at approximately 2.5 centimetres and very secretive. Barbara forests are known to contain patches of moist floral growth, which shelters rare varieties of amphibians and reptiles. This 400 sq km forest was one of the first forested areas to be taken up by the British for plantation of teak during the late 19th century.