My wife and I recently purchased the BBC's "Planet Earth" series of DVDs devoted to a year's worth of intensive photography across the globe chronicling the ebb and flow of seasons and wildlife migrations, etc. I'd highly recommend the work for its shear immensity in scope and excellence in photographic quality.

Like most "nature" productions, however, there's a chapter included on the doom and gloom and fall of "Earth as we know it" with observations from the folks who filmed the production -- people, I'd say who are about as qualified to predict the rise and fall of empires of nature, wildlife, and climates as anyone who knows how to use a camera and had an interest what passes for journalism today.

In that session of the DVD series there's a section about the "collapse" of the amphibian population in the Amazon basin of South America (as I recall). The so-called collapse of frog and toad populations amounts to one-third of what the experts figure was an earlier population. Now, I for one am in no place to judge the amphibian population estimates of the Amazon Basin, but I do spend a lot of time in my front yard around the pond I built three years ago, and on a pond of a neighbor which has held water since 1929. I'd estimate there is no "amphibian" problem at either reservoir, since on my pond, my grandson and I walked the perimeter recently and observed different species of frogs jumping to the safety of the water about every six feet of our hike! Likewise, frogs and toads abound in the riparian area of my neighbor's pond and the timber that separates their property from ours.

Now, we don't live in a jungle (that's "Rain Forest" for anyone born in the past 30 years) but we do take care of our land. At least we make an attempt to maintain the native species of plants found there, and we don't try to make a golf course of our lawns. So, here we find a healthy, thriving and growing amphibian population (albeit small compared with the red-eyed, chartreuse-toed creatures of the Amazon) living within 20 yards of a human, canine and feline population. But in the Amazon, populated only by aboriginies, native wildlife species and poachers, the frogs are "crashing?" What gives?

Could it be private property ownership? Remember the colossal environmental train wreck that was the former Soviet Union after 70 years of prohibitions on private property? I wonder if there could be any disconnect in the riparian environment I see improving across the United States today and the so-called "utopias" of the wilderness?