The Brief

It had been five years since the first of the frog eggs had been moved, carefully plucked from Mexico's Baja Peninsula and transported by cooler to Southern California. Anny Peralta-Garcia was getting nervous.

The eggs belonged to California red-legged frogs, an amphibian that had been eaten, bulldozed and eventually pushed out of the state decades earlier. Peralta-Garcia, an Ensenada-based conservation biologist, had helped harvest fresh eggs from a pond in Baja. The efforts to move them back to the frogs' historic range in California had been monumental — involving private landowners, federal agencies, conservation groups, helicopters and an international border.

And now, 87 more moved egg masses later, everyone was waiting to see if it worked. If the re-introduced frogs were breeding.

"We were like, OK, if frogs reach sexual maturity in two years, maybe three, maybe four, we should be seeing something," Peralta-Garcia says. "But then, third year, fourth year, nothing."

California red-legged frogs lay hundreds of eggs, like these in Baja California. Because of natural attrition and predation, fewer than 1% of eggs survive to the tadpole phase, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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Jorge Valdez

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Fauno del Noroeste

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Finally this year, the scientists tried something new to listen in on the frogs: artificial intelligence. A customized AI model sifted through thousands of hours of audio recordings from the relocation sites and picked out the sound of mature male frogs calling — grunting, more like — at their new location.

It was the first time the California red-legged frog had been heard in the wilds of San Diego County in 25 years, and a new egg mass soon followed.

It's the latest example of how new technologies like AI are helping muddy-boot biologists and wildlife conservationists fight an ever-worsening extinction crisis.

"It's been like an impossible dream since the '90s to actually be able to go out and see wild frogs at these sites again," says Robert Fisher, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
Here's how it happened.

The celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County 

At about five inches, the California red-legged frog is the largest native frog species west of the Rocky Mountains. It used to be found in ponds and waterways, from northern Baja California to above the San Francisco Bay, with populations as far inland as the Sierra Nevada.

The frog's prevalence made it a popular food source in the 1800s and for miners during the California Gold Rush, says Bennett Hardy, an amphibian ecologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum. "It was kind of the hot cuisine at the time," he says.

The frog leaped to national fame with Mark Twain's short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which helped launch his writing career.

The California red-legged frog used to be prevalent in the wetlands and streams of coastal California before being displaced by invasive species, agriculture and other human development.

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Paula Sternberg Rodriguez

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San Diego Natural History Museum

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But the next 150-or-so years weren't so great. Wetlands were drained for agriculture and homes. Streams were dammed, diseases struck and the American bullfrog, a fearsome predator and the largest native frog east of the Rocky Mountains, was introduced.

In 1996, the California red-legged frog was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

"It's now occupying less than 70% of its historic range," says Susan North, director of stewardship for the Nature Conservancy in California. That includes a stretch from Los Angeles to northern Baja California with zero populations.

"So that's a 260-mile gap in the range of the species," she says. "With a gap that size, you're not going to have five-inch frogs re-colonizing their range naturally."

A group that includes the Nature Conservancy was formed in the mid-2000s, and the decision was made to help bring them back. Genetic testing showed the frogs that used to live in Southern California most closely resembled remnant populations in Mexico.

"So in thinking about reintroducing frogs and bringing them back and restoring these ecosystems, it became clear we needed a Mexican source for the frogs," Fisher says.

Using coolers, the team of federal wildlife agencies and conservation groups have moved 87 California red-legged frog egg masses to new locations in Southern California.

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Bradford Hollingsworth

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San Diego Natural History Museum

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In Mexico, Peralta-Garcia and her nonprofit Fauna del Noroeste set to work preserving the Baja Peninsula's last-remaining populations of red-legged frogs, restoring habitat and boosting their populations with the support of the U.S.-based groups.

Meanwhile, in Southern California, two sites with multiple water bodies were identified as suitable habitats in San Diego and Riverside counties. They were cleared of invasive, predatory bullfrogs.

In 2020, after a tangle of paperwork and permits, the first translocation took place.

"It was like planes, trains and automobiles," Fisher says. "It was just a lot of different moving parts."

An egg mass was moved by helicopter and car, down dirt roads and over the U.S. border to one of the prepared sites in Southern California. Others followed. The wait began.

Tasking AI to listen for frogs

The goal of a translocation, or assisted migration, is to either move a species back to a place it's been extirpated from, or to a more suitable habitat. The latter is becoming more relevant as the climate warms and ecosystems change.

For a relocation to be successful, the moved species needs to be able to survive on its own in its new environment. It needs to be self-sustaining. And to self-sustain, the frogs needed to be breeding.

During mating season, male frogs often call at night to warn other males or attract females.

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Brad Nissen

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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

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The easiest way to know if frogs are breeding is by listening for their calls, says Hardy. "When frogs are calling, most of the time, that's the male of the species using those calls as an advertisement."

But trying to listen out for occasional nocturnal mating calls is tedious work. "I'd love to be out there every night at these ponds, with my tent and camping and trying to listen for them, but it's just not feasible," he says.

So instead Hardy and the team set up a series of microphones around the relocation sites.

The microphones recorded audio from dusk to dawn, day after day, week after week, collecting thousands of hours of audio during the frog's winter mating season.

But that led to a new problem. Hardy says they'd need an army of ears "to be able to sort through all these files and find where the frogs are."

To help reduce the time and effort, the team partnered with outside engineers to create a custom machine learning model — similar to the popular birding app Merlin — trained to sort through the data and detect the calls of two species: the California red-legged frog and their competitor, the non-native American Bullfrog.

Microphones set up around the relocation sites recorded the "sounds of the night," says Bennett Hardy, a researcher at the San Diego Natural History Museum.

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Bradford Hollingsworth

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San Diego Natural History Museum

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It wasn't perfect at first. Hardy says that early on, the model flagged a call that it thought was a frog but was in fact a hooded merganser, a bird that's also known as the frog duck because its mating calls sound so similar to a frog's. But with time, they've been able to refine the model and are now working on a real-time alert system that will let biologists know instantaneously when a Bullfrog or red-legged frog is detected.

For Clark Winchell, a long-time muddy-boot biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the technology has been revelatory.

"I spent countless hours by myself in a kayak listening for bullfrogs. It's not the most efficient use of time," he says. "What they've done with AI on this project is incredible. It's systematic monitoring of two species."

Using the model, earlier this winter, they were able to identify the grunts of a California red-legged frog. Soon after, a survey found a new gelatinous ball of fresh eggs near the microphone that recorded it.

North, who'd helped spearhead the effort for more than a decade, says it brought tears to her eyes. There's still work to do, she says. There's still a lot of gaps in the species' historic range.

But in some parts of Southern California, for the first time in decades, she says, "We're hearing them again."

Copyright 2025 NPR

Los Angeles city officials are asking LA28 to hand over a list of its contracts, saying the Olympics organizing committee could be in violation of its agreement with the city.

LA28’s annual financial report released last week included a broad review of the organization’s deals with contractors hired to help put on the event, but no names or detailed breakdowns of spending.

The Games Agreement between the city and LA28 requires the committee to submit the name, type, amount, term and purpose of each contract it has entered into worth more than $1 million.

No such list was provided in LA28’s report.

“It's inadequate, what we've been provided, and that's not acceptable,” City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said at a committee meeting on the 2028 Olympics Wednesday afternoon.

Chief Legislative Analyst Sharon Tso said she has requested a full list from LA28 and is waiting to hear back.

Jacie Prieto Lopez, a spokesperson for LA28, said in an emailed statement to LAist that LA28 had received the request.

“We are working through those requests now and remain committed to meeting our obligations," she said.

Tso told the council committee she had seen a more detailed list of LA28’s contracts, but only when it was “flashed on the screen very quickly” at a meeting with her, Olympics organizers, the city administrative officer and the mayor’s office.

“So we don't have a list,” Tso said. “We don't have the names of the folks. We don't have the dollar amounts.”

Tso told the council that Olympics organizers were wary about making contracts public, due to concerns that public disclosure could harm negotiations over competitive event sponsor deals.

City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez said that did not satisfy LA28’s obligations to the city.

“They can just be like, ‘Flash it, we're done, and we did our requirement,’” Soto-Martinez said.

The federal financial aid process opened this past week for students applying to college for next year. But for many California students, a source of state financial help remains untapped.

In 2022, the state launched the California Kids Investment and Development Savings Program, also known as CalKIDS, and began creating investment accounts for more than 6 million children in the state to use for higher education.

Babies born on or after July 1, 2022, can get up to $175 in their accounts, while low-income public school students can claim up to $1500.

In Los Angeles County, about 1.1 million public school students are eligible for the accounts, but fewer than 20% of kids have claimed them, said Cassandra DiBenedetto, executive director of California’s ScholarShare Investment Board. The claim rate is even less for babies — about 11%.

“The money itself, it has a long trajectory. So you have these newborns, and there's not a sense of urgency among some parents; they know the account's there, it’s been created. Parents are busy,” DiBenedetto said.

There is no deadline to claim the money, which is already growing in the investment accounts. (You do have to use the money by age 26). But DiBenedetto says kids are more likely to see themselves as college-bound if they have it — and will be able to watch the account grow over time.

“ You talk to second-and third graders who are like, ‘I'm gonna go to UC Santa Barbara,’ ‘I'm gonna go to Cal Berkeley,’” she said.

The state is working with the Los Angeles Unified School District and other school districts to get students signed up.

The city’s top financial adviser is recommending that the Los Angeles City Council deny a police department request to procure 300 additional vehicles for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics.

The report, submitted to the council Monday by City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, found that the L.A. Police Department would have enough vehicles to temporarily expand its fleet during the Games without the additional cars.

LAPD officials had previously requested around $31 million, arguing the additional officers deployed for the Games will need additional vehicles for their police work.

But Szabo disagreed in his report, finding instead that the department would soon have a large enough fleet.

“Given the current available vehicles and new vehicle procurements which have already been funded, it is not recommended to authorize the procurement of any additional police vehicles for the 2028 Games deployment,” Szabo wrote.

An LAPD spokesperson declined to comment on the city administrative officer’s report. Previously, the department has emphasized that its request seeks only to temporarily expand its fleet, with plans to retire old vehicles after the Games.

The police department has offered different estimates of how many additional vehicles it will need to patrol the Olympics. Two months after the LAPD asked for an additional 300 vehicles, the department released another report estimating an even higher need: 576 police vehicles.

Either way, Szabo’s report found that more than 1,100 police vehicles not yet in use by the department were funded in the past three budget cycles. He said those should be sufficient for the Olympics.

When you sit down at Birria Pa La Cruda in El Sereno, you might be expecting one thing. What you'll leave talking about is something else entirely, and it's just as good.

Take the mushroom quesataco. It starts with a tortilla brushed with avocado oil and griddled until lightly crisp, then layered with a thin skirt of cheese and a smooth smear of refried red kidney beans. On top goes a heap of shimeji mushrooms braised in a house-made salsa verde, mild, nutty and savory with a bright finish.

It's a slight departure for chef Carlos Jaquez, who spent seven years building a reputation for the birria de res at his popular pop-up. Now, at his new brick-and-mortar just blocks from where he got his start, he's serving his much-loved birria alongside several vegetable-focused dishes — including this one.

You get the sense that Jaquez has been refining each one for years through his pop-up, his work as a private chef and his high-end dining background at Otium and Bestia.

Homegrown talent

Jaquez grew up in El Sereno and launched Birria Pa La Cruda (which means “for the hangover” in Spanish) as a Sunday pop-up in 2019. Over the years, he's drawn on everything from his family's cooking to his Indigenous roots, to the bounty of local produce, building a repertoire that showcases the full range of his influences. His new place, on Alhambra Road near Cal State L.A., is his chance to prove it.

Carlos Jaquez, chef and owner of Birria Pa La Cruda, draws on the El Sereno community where he grew up and a wide range of culinary influences.

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Eric Valle

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Courtesy Birria Pa La Cruda

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"I don't wanna just be the birria guy," Jaquez said. "If people know me for just the birria, then I'm sure that one day when I cook something else they'll be like, 'Wow, he can cook other stuff too.'"

The menu

The mushroom quesataco may be exquisite, but Jaquez's birria de res hardly takes a back seat. For example: the mulita. Two corn tortillas are dipped in spiced 12-hour braising liquid, and the beef he uses is cooked in a pot lined with charred blue agave leaves that Jaquez harvests from the El Sereno hills. The meat is piled on thick, then topped with cheese, resulting in a juicy, well-seasoned bite where all the flavors and textures meld together. It's a mouthful, but the mulita shows backbone, never falling apart bite after bite.

The sweet potato tamal, topped with date-almond mole and sesame seeds, served with red amaranth leaves and pickled vegetables.

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Eric Valle

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Courstesy Birria Pa La Cruda

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Where the birria is a constant, the tamal is expected to change with the seasons. Right now, it's sweet potato and organic yellow corn masa steamed in a banana leaf, then topped with a rich mole made from California-grown dates and almonds. It's entirely vegan, though Jaquez doesn't advertise it that way. It's served alongside pickled carrots and a small salad of amaranth leaves grown just outside the space and dressed in a confit garlic vinaigrette.

Amaranth was a staple for Indigenous peoples in Mexico long before the Spanish arrived. Jaquez, who attended Anahuacalmecac, an Indigenous-focused charter school in El Sereno where students learn Nahuatl from third grade through high school, wanted it on the plate.

"We were eating amaranth and tamales and maybe even combining them thousands and thousands of years ago," he said. "Serving that on a menu today is a reflection of the resilience of our roots."

California love

Jaquez believes the caliber of his cooking comes from using local ingredients, whether it’s tortillas and masa milled in Boyle Heights by Kernel of Truth or heirloom tomatoes from Valdivia Farms in Carlsbad.

Chef Carlos Jaquez's birria de res is braised for 8 to 12 hours before it's served.

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Eric Valle

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Courtesy Birria Pa La Cruda

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"Its uniqueness comes from the locality and the quality of the ingredients that we're afforded because we're in L.A. and California," he said.

So, is it a taqueria or a restaurant?

"I don't know," Jaquez said. "It's Birria Pa La Cruda."