This management strategy also favors gopher tortoises. Mechanical site preparation, as well as stump removal, should be avoided in forestry operations. Five zoos (New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit, Miami, and Omaha) have 75 Mississippi gopher frogs in captivity, and are conducting ongoing artificial breeding programs. U.S. Supreme Court case In January 2018, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Weyerhaeuser Co. v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in which landowners challenged the Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to designate 1,500 acres of forest in Louisiana as a critical habitat for the gopher frog. On November 27, 2018, the case was decided, with the Supreme Court vacating and remanding it back to the Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court's opinion is succinctly summarized with "Because it determined that the Service’s decisions not to exclude were committed to agency discretion and therefore unreviewable, the Court of Appeals did not consider whether the Service’s assessment of the costs and benefits of designation was flawed in a way that rendered the resulting decision not to exclude Unit 1 arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion. Accordingly, we remand to the Court of Appeals to consider that question, if necessary, in the first instance." The Court neither confirmed nor denied that the area should be designated as critical habitat at this time. References Further reading (Rana sevosa, new species). Powell, R.; Conant, R.; Collins, J.T. (2016). Peterson Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern and Central North America, Fourth Edition. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. xiv + 494 pp., 47 plates, 207 figures. . (Lithobates sevosus, pp. 158–159 + Plate 11 + Figure 69 on p. 150). External links Lithobates Amphibians described in 1940 Taxa named by M. Graham Netting Amphibians of North America Endemic fauna of the United States Amphibians of the United States Critically endangered fauna of the United States Taxonomy articles created by Polbot ESA endangered species