A local frog watching group is in negotiations with the ACT government over core funding to its programs.
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ACT and Region Frogwatch lost $80,000 in core funding from the government at the last budget, while receiving funding grants for specialist projects.
Coordinator Anke Maria Hoefer said they were grateful for the grants for special projects but core funding was needed to help conduct the annual frog census in the Canberra region.
"Even if we don't have funding to run a full census as in the previous years these projects will contribute to our census," Ms Hoefer said.
"We normally monitor around 150 sites. This year we may only be able to monitor 80 sites."
Frogwatch volunteers have been conducting the census since 2002, providing long term data used by projects including advising the government on local wetlands health or scientific publications on climate change.
Ms Hoefer said frogs were "canaries in the coal mine" when it came to environmental change.
"If you have long term data, you want to keep that going to catch trends and see what's going on," Ms Hoefer said.
The ACT estimates committee has said Frogwatch provides value for money for the ACT government and has warned insufficient funding would lead to the program terminating.
The committee recommend the ACT government work with the group to develop sustainable funding options for the program.
Canberra's frogs begin mating from late winter into spring and Frogwatch sends out trained volunteers to monitor sites for the amount of frogs croaking and variations in species.
Ms Hoefer said frogs go through a total change in lifestyle and habitat between when they are tadpoles and when they are frogs.
"They are very susceptible to environmental changes," Ms Hoefer said.
Less water means fewer places for tadpoles to live and shorter winters mean less time for frogs to mate.
Because frogs have permeable skin, they absorb everything in the water and so their health can indicate the health of the water ways.
Ms Hoefer said the endangered Green and Golden Bell Frog, now extinct in the wild in the ACT, was surviving in small areas along the NSW coast and parts of Sydney's Olympic Park.
"Whatever is in the environment in the way of chemicals, any pollution, straight away it affects the frog," Ms Hoefer said.
Ms Hoefer said core funding allowed her time to collate the data. She said if she could no longer take time to train volunteers and review their data, the volunteers would stop participating in the census.
"If I can't manage the surveys they feel like they're not supported," Ms Hoefer said.
"It costs my time to manage them and email and keep them updated."
Ms Hoefer said with the money for various grants, Frogwatch could run a smaller census but it would be great to have census specific funding in the future.
"That is a start and we hope with some other avenues we might be able to to just keep the census to make it bigger, to make the survey count," Ms Hoefer said.
