ST. LOUIS – Missouri and Illinois conservationists are seeing troubling signs in amphibian populations, mirroring problems seen elsewhere in the world.

Jeff Briggler, an amphibian specialist at the Missouri Department of Conservation, wasn’t expecting good news when he swabbed slime off a 2-foot-long hellbender salamander in the Ozarks last year. An analysis by technicians showed some of the state’s hellbenders were infected by a fungus that has wiped out entire frog populations elsewhere.

Scientists have known for some time that endangered hellbender populations in the Ozarks have been shrinking. One reason is lost habitat; fungus may be another, they told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in Thursday’s edition.

“We need to understand why we are losing species in Panama, Asia, my own backyard in Illinois, and across the river in Missouri,” said Karen Lips, a zoologist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. “This is not just a problem of global amphibian decline. It is a problem of global amphibian extinction.”

The World Conservation Union proposed a global plan that would curb amphibian decline three weeks ago. Divided into sections based on the top 11 amphibian plagues, such as climate change and infectious disease, the plan sets guidelines for conservation in different parts of the world. The five-year initiative has a price tag of more than $400 million.

Almost one-third of the world’s 6,000 amphibian species are on the brink of extinction. But just 12 percent of all bird species and 23 percent of all mammal species are threatened.

Scientists are finding many reasons for the decline of amphibians: habitat destruction, pollution from pesticides and herbicides, and the proliferation of exotic species that can lead to the decline of native species.

But amphibian populations are also declining in areas that do not have those problems.

One emerging infectious disease is caused by the very same fungus, called chytrid (pronounced “kit-rid”), that Briggler found on hellbenders. Scientists confirm that the fungus has led to the demise of amphibian populations in the Americas, the Caribbean and Australia.

Researchers have more to learn about how the fungus devastates amphibian populations. It may act by infecting the skin with so many fungus cells that the frog, which uses its skin to breathe, essentially suffocates.

A research team from Canada and California examined preserved museum specimens and found that some frogs had been infected in parts of North America since the 1960s. Although the fungus may be the same, the environment has changed. Researchers think that current lethal outbreaks are the result of underlying, predisposing factors.

But fungal infection pales in comparison to threats from habitat loss because of urban development and agriculture in Missouri and Illinois, area herpetologists say.

Harsh winters and hot summers limit the fungus in the Midwest. While many frogs and salamanders safely rest in burrows below ponds in the winter, freezing temperatures kill the fungus.

Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch: http://www.stltoday.com

A service of the Associated Press(AP)