These gopher frogs are endangered, but at the Edenton Fish Hatchery in North Carolina, they're getting a helping hand.

Biologists there are working as part of a team to raise these frogs outside of their natural habitat, which is not as available as it used to be.

Part of the reason that they're in trouble is that they rely heavily on longleaf pine forests to survive.

They live in the burrows of longleaf pine trees that have died due to fire.

As their roots decay, they leave a network of burrows, and that's actually why they're called gopher frogs.

They spend over 90% of their life, 90 to 95% of their life in those burrows.

And then the only time we get to see them is when they come out to spawn.

In addition to working to restore habitat, scientists are trying to give the existing population a boost by increasing the chance that some of the eggs in the wild make it to adulthood.

North Carolina State Aquarium and Wildlife Resources Commission staff collect egg masses from the wild, leaving 90% behind to hatch naturally.

Once those eggs hatch, they're spread out to places like the Edenton Hatchery to grow into adulthood.

We're kind of like a safe haven, right?

So we protect them by providing a headstart safe space for them because this is the most vulnerable time in their life.

At the Edenton Hatchery, they've created these tanks to mimic the ponds the frogs will spawn in in the wild.

In these small worlds, or mesocosms, are where the tadpoles grow up.

These are the mesocosms that the tadpoles are raised in.

And they've been in here since mid-March.

And we put traps in there.

And as you can see, there's some in the minnow traps.

Minnow traps help to collect the adult frogs as they metamorphosize from legless tadpoles.

But biologists at the hatchery still have to sort the frogs to select only the ones ready to be re-released to the wild.

We'll harvest them throughout the day.

More of them will be in the traps in the morning.

And if they have a tail, like this little guy, they have to go back in and reabsorb them.

Look at that tail.

This one definitely isn't ready yet.

Anything that has less than a quarter inch of tail is okay to keep.

But if there's much of a tail at all, then it goes back in to cook a little longer.

Here's a tadpole.

Here's one with no legs on it yet.

These were harvested from different egg masses at different times, so that's why there's differences in the development of each of these.

If they don't have a tail, then they come out of the traps, go into a bucket, and they'll go and get weighed.

The hatchery has weighed over 260 gopher frogs that are ready for release so far this season.

And it's only June.

Okay, so let me just explain what I'm doing.

So what I'll do is pick the frog up, put it on the scale.

I'll initially hold my hand over it while I'm weighing them, and then I'll put the lid on it so that I can put them in this container.

The main thing with this part is creating a system and doing the same thing every time, because when you're weighing 75 frogs, it's easy to get distracted.

So these are the frogs that are graduating from our Head Start program.

Frogs that are ready for release are tagged and then brought back to their home turf.

These came from Holly Shelter game land, so Wildlife Resources Commission biologists will be re-releasing them there.

Since there's only about 200 to 300 known adult frogs out there, that's an estimate, then we're just concerned that even with the improvements that people are trying to make to their habitats, they're just not going to make it.

So we're just trying to give them a boost to the population.

Hopefully this is just a temporary situation and they'll be able to handle the populations, be self-sustaining without our help.

But for now, we're just kind of giving them a head start.