‘You just hope for the best’: rarely seen froglets – the length of a grain of rice – released into small patch of Victorian wilds

To aid with tracking, adult Baw Baw frogs were released fitted with radio transmitters attached to a small belt around their hips. Photograph: Zoos Victoria

More than 3,000 critically endangered Baw Baw frogs have been released in Victoria’s east as part of a record-breaking conservation breeding program.

Zoos Victoria’s reintroduction of 3,000 tiny froglets and 40 adult frogs into the high-altitude forests of the Baw Baw plateau, about 120km east of Melbourne, was the largest in its breeding program for the species.