Educational Media Reviews Online

In just 18 minutes this film does a wonderful job of acquainting the viewer with the challenges faced by the mountain yellow-legged frog which has disappeared from more than 90 percent of its historic range. This frog breeds in the ice and snow of the Sierra Nevada lakes, but the introduction of golden, rainbow, brown and brook trout for anglers has taken a toll on the frog’s reproductive success. Most frogs undergo metamorphosis very quickly, but the mountain yellow-legged frog stays in the tadpole stage up to three years making them more vulnerable to predation.

The film uses terms such as estivation and amplexis that may be new to viewers, but they do explain and define the terms. Interviews with University of California Berkeley researchers are interspersed nicely with footage of the breeding frogs. The narration by Amy Harris is not as polished as it might have been, but it does not detract from the film. Last Legs touches on the endangered species petition process as well as National Forest and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service management decisions. This is a thoughtful and well-constructed film and is appropriate for school and college libraries.