You Can Foster An Endangered Species In Your Home

When special-education teacher Thomas Ackermann comes home from work, he heads straight for the basement of his house in Aachen, Germany. Behind the door of his self-described “man cave” lies a four-by-four-meter world of mossy logs, trickling water and humid air — an astonishing micro-jungle he has built in a dozen terrariums.

“I could watch them for hours,” he says, pointing at thumbnail-sized electric-yellow poison dart frogs that hop between bromeliads. But the rarest residents are the ones he tends most carefully: Ecuadorian stump-foot toads — delicate green amphibians with black speckles and neon-orange feet. Barely larger than half a thumb, they were declared extinct 15 years ago.

The culprits were habitat loss, a warming climate and a lethal fungal disease, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which has contributed to declines in hundreds of amphibian species worldwide.

Ackermann breeds stump-foot toads for Citizen Conservation (CC), a German nonprofit that partners zoos, scientists, schools and trained hobbyists to safeguard endangered species by spreading their care across many households. The approach is simple: Instead of keeping all fragile populations inside a handful of zoological institutions, CC “outsources” breeding work to a network of dedicated volunteers.

“It’s a win-win-win,” Ackermann says. “The animals thrive, zoos gain breathing room and ordinary people can contribute to real conservation.”

Two years ago he began with three pairs of stump-foot toads and now has bred around 400 young toads — an extraordinary number for such a vulnerable species. He has distributed several hundred to the Basel and Karlsruhe zoos to establish additional safeguarding populations.

To Ackermann, the appeal goes beyond conservation. “I donate my time, my resources, my terrariums,” he says. “I don’t get money for this. What I get is the chance to work with species I would never otherwise encounter, and to help keep them on this planet.”

CC began as a media project. Founders Björn Encke and Heiko Werning, both journalists and long-time amphibian enthusiasts, launched Frogs & Friends more than a decade ago — a storytelling initiative focused on raising awareness about the global amphibian extinction crisis.

But they quickly realized awareness wasn’t enough. “Communication alone wasn’t going to save these species,” Encke recalls.

The founders started where help was needed most: Amphibians, reptiles and fish. Amphibians are disappearing faster than any other vertebrate group — over 40 percent of all known species are threatened, according to the IUCN. They also happen to be ideal candidates for small-scale, decentralized care since any species requires limited space but offers high educational and ecological value.

“When amphibians vanish, ecosystems send up a red flag,” Werning says. “They’re like a fever thermometer for the planet.”

While thousands of scientists, environmentalists and politicians gather this November in Uzbekistan for CITES CoP20, the latest round of the world’s largest and most influential meetings on international wildlife trade, hundreds of hobby breeders are helping endangered species in their own homes. Some species saved through CC are already thriving. The Mangarahara cichlid from Madagascar, once gone from both the wild and the pet trade, now persists entirely because of CC’s descendants from the last 20 survivors rescued from a dying river. The Mallorcan midwife toad and the Patzcuaro salamander have also stabilized in CC’s network.

Reintroductions to the wild are usually not yet possible, however, because diseases, habitat destruction and new threats like mining stand in the way. “In the case of the stump-foot toad, a new gold mine is being opened right where they live,” Ackermann says. “One wrong move and they’re gone again.”

The model isn’t limited to hobbyists. At the Wilhelm-Dörpfeld-Gymnasium in Wuppertal, principal and trained biologist Claudia Schweizer-Motte oversees a school vivarium with 42 amphibian and reptilian species, six of them for CC.

In glass cases lining the hallway, students care for bright yellow fire salamanders, Oriental fire-bellied toads, green-black Lake Patzcuaro salamanders, Vietnamese crocodile newts, Mallorca midwife toads and brown Bony-headed toads.

The program costs about €10,000 a year, funded through donations. And despite the terrariums being semi-public, nothing has ever gone wrong.

“If someone taps the glass, ten students immediately rush over to explain why that disturbs the animals,” she says with a laugh.

To coordinate its expanding volunteer base, CC is developing a digital platform called Wild at Home — part species registry, part husbandry logbook, part social network.

“It’s like a cross between The Sims and Facebook for wildlife keepers,” says CC co-founder Encke. The platform will allow CC to track demographic changes, monitor breeding success and detect potential bottlenecks before a population collapses. “It would be a quantum leap,” he adds. “With the Mangahara cichlid, the river was already dry before anyone realized the species was gone.”

As the network has grown, so has CC’s influence. European regulators are debating stricter rules on exotic pet keeping. Encke was invited to speak at a recent European Commission hearing. “It became clear that the goal was not reframing but reduction,” he says. “They want fewer animals in private hands. But Citizen Conservation shows that responsible keeping can be part of the solution, not the problem.”

CC’s animals are non-dangerous and non-venomous.

The organization operates with the equivalent of just 2.5 full-time staff members. With stable funding, they say, they could manage many more species, perhaps hundreds. Each new species represents a generational commitment: Decades of coordinated care.

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Despite the challenges, the founders are convinced the model works because it distributes responsibility. “Citizen Conservation only functions when lots of people get involved,” Werning says. “Their time, their space, their knowledge. That’s what keeps these species alive.”

In an era when biodiversity is collapsing at alarming rates, Citizen Conservation shows that species protection doesn’t have to be centralized, exclusive, or top-down. It can be a community effort — distributed, democratic and remarkably hopeful.

As Werning puts it: “It’s the most beautiful form of engagement. You save a species — and it lives in your home.”

Scrolling photos courtesy of: Citizen Conservation; Thomas Ackermann; Benny Trapp; Frogs & Friends; Tijl Liekens; Aljoscha Paulus; Heiko Werning; Holger Kraus.