Amphibians of Rhode Island

RIDEM Division of Fish and Wildlife is pleased to announce the publication of Amphibians of Rhode Island, available in hard copy with funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service State Wildlife Grants Program. All revenue generated by the sale of this book will be directed towards wildlife conservation via the Rhode Island Division of Fish and Wildlife.

Amphibians of Rhode Island provides meticulous accounts of the state’s 18 native frogs, toads, and salamanders and their respective habitats accompanied by beautiful photographs depicting multiple life stages. Far more than a field guide, author Chris Raithel’s book also combines an exhaustive search of the historical record and four decades of intense personal study to provide comprehensive information on the state-wide distribution, demography, seasonal movement, reproduction and development, research needs, and conservation status of each species. An additional chapter is devoted entirely to conservation, detailing overarching threats as well as the actions we can and must take if we are to safeguard the amazing creatures detailed within the book’s pages.

Christopher Raithel was hired as the staff zoologist at the outset of the Rhode Island Natural Heritage Program in 1979 and became the nongame and endangered species biologist for the Division of Fish and Wildlife until his retirement in 2018. One of those increasingly rare naturalists who has come to know his subjects and their world in great depth, Chris’s enormous compassion for them shines through in the less technical sections of his writing.