id: 12850462
Beneath the dense canopy of the forests of Risaralda, Colombia, on the mountains that open the gateway to the Chocó biogeographic region from the village of Santa Cecilia, I captured this extraordinary moment: a Phyllobates bicolor moving across the leaf litter with the sun’s brilliance reflected on its yellow skin, as if the forest itself had painted its own sunrise upon the frog. Known as Neará by some communities in the Chocó, this diurnal species is the second most toxic terrestrial vertebrate on the planet and a true endemic jewel of Colombia.
Its scientific name reveals its very essence: phyllos (leaf) and bates (walker), thus “the walker of the leaves.” This species inhabits only a small region where the departments of Risaralda, Chocó, and Valle del Cauca converge. However, habitat loss from cattle grazing, mining activities, and pollution from chemical spraying has drastically reduced its populations, driving it to the brink of extinction. This photograph stands as testimony to an increasingly rare encounter, a gift of life that highlights the fragility of our biodiversity and calls upon us to act for its survival. To capture Phyllobates bicolor in its natural environment is to preserve, even if only in an image, a fragment of the sun that still walks among the leaves of our forests.
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