Totes for Wildlife

Totes for Wildlife highlights a local threatened species each year and, through the sale of exclusively designed tote bags, raises funds for the vital conservation projects we and our partners undertake to protect them.

This year, the Spotted Tree Frog (Litoria spenceri) needs your help.

The Spotted Tree Frog

These special frogs live camouflaged amongst the rocks and vegetation alongside mountain streams in alpine Victoria and New South Wales.

Reaching 6cm in length, with usually bumpy skin, they feature fantastically individual colouration ranging from bright green to dark brown and everything in between. The frogs have golden features; a gold stripe runs along the side of their body and their eyes feature a beautiful golden iris around their pupil.

Females lay a cluster of 50-1000 eggs attached to rocks under the waters surface during Spring/Summer, with tadpoles metamorphising to froglets approximately 3 months after hatching. It appears tadpoles contribute to improving water quality by feeding on algae and river detritus.

A healthy waterway ecosystem and healthy frog populations go hand in hand. Due to a number of threats, such as chytrid fungus, predation by introduced fish species and habitat disturbance, Spotted Tree Frogs have disappeared from around 50% of their known sites in Victoria, and as such, are Critically Endangered.

The sale of every Totes for Wildlife bag will help fund release of zoo-bred Spotted Tree Frogs into the wild.

Zoos Victoria is part of a Recovery Team working to protect the Spotted Tree Frogs from extinction. An important part of their conservation will be ensuring healthy population numbers in mountain stream habitat across Victoria.

Spotted Tree Frogs are being bred at Melbourne Zoo and Healesville Sanctuary, with these frogs to be released to wild sites across the state. Releasing individuals as juvenile frogs will minimise the risk of predation from introduced fish species, giving these frogs a chance to establish and maintain healthy populations in Victorian alpine streams.

How has Totes for Wildlife helped threatened species so far?

Since 2019, more than 60,000 Totes for Wildlife bags have been purchased. Thanks to everyone who bought a tote bag and our conservation partners, this has resulted in:

• 15,000 plants being planted within Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve to the east of greater Melbourne to improve and increase available habitat for Helmeted Honeyeaters.
• Over 6,000 Mountain plum pines and other alpine food plants planted in Mountain Pygmy-possum habitat here in alpine Victoria, and habitat improvement works and planting in alpine areas of New South Wales to help the Mountain Pygmy-possum recovery after the Black Summer bushfires.
• 35 Hectares of land to be protected for the Plains-wanderer through a conservation covenant in northern Victoria to maintain as habitat for this unique bird species, forever.
• Planting of Thousands of Creeping Boobiala plants in the Wimmera region of Victoria, providing important food and habitat for the Golden-rayed Blue butterfly.