A mountain village was in deep economic trouble. The resource industry on which it depended was slumping. Many were the contradictory notions proposed by various groups to reverse the downward trend, and on everyone's lips the question was the same: Who's to blame for the failing Frogging Industry?

The lure of mining had first attracted the local population. Rich ore-bodies, there for the taking, outcropped on the surface of the mountain ranges, and export of the easy-to-mine minerals made many investors wealthy in far-away cities.

When the ore-bodies were exhausted the working people turned to the forests for their livelihood, supplying mills that exported lumber for buildings, and pulp for paper and cardboard. Forest landscapes were skinned of their trees and many watersheds ruined. Once again, in distant cities, millionaires sprouted by the dozen. But eventually, as with the mining boom, the clear-cutting boom also ended and hard times returned to the village.

What to do? Export fruit, vegetables, and grain crops? Not possible; the locals could not compete with neighboring valleys more favored climatically. Export water? The quality had deteriorated because of mine wastes and logging-caused erosion. Furthermore, other depressed communities had jumped on the waterwagon first and the market was flooded with "Fresh Spring Water" and "Glacial Ice-Cubes" of dubious quality. Export fresh air? City manufacturers of canned oxygen already had the Japanese and Chinese market sewed up. Then one day an imaginative citizen hit upon another exportable item: Frog's Legs!

By good fortune the village was beside a lake on whose margins lived in teeming numbers the Slocan Three-Striped Frog (Rana slocana trilineana). By happy chance the originator of the idea of turning frogs' legs into cash had taken a government-sponsored course - "How to be an Entrepreneur" - where the gospels of production and marketing were preached. "Everyone can be a seller," said the expert lecturer. The implication that everyone must also be a buyer and super-consumer was not discussed.

"What can be sold?" mused the entrepreneurial graduate, glancing at her framed Diploma above the kitchen counter. Her son had brought up from the lake a couple of plump frogs in a glass jar, and as she turned the pages of her cook book in preparation for dinner she had a sudden epiphany: Frogs' Legs! In such intuitive flashes are great industries born.

The proposal developed rapidly thanks to a leg-up from the Small Business Bureau. A few trips to Quebec and France nailed down a steady and dependable market and the export business flourished. Soon everyone in the village had a good job, either in the canning factory or as a frog "harvester" - a popular term suggested by the Wildlife Branch that for years had encouraged thinning the ranks of cougars, elk, bear, and other large mammals by gunning holes in them from a safe distance. "Of course," said the wildlife experts, "civilized people don't kill wild animals for fun; they harvest them like, you know, farmers cutting hay."

The supply of frogs seemed inexhaustible and soon the more inventive of the "harvesters" began to tinker with machines to collect frogs more efficiently. That this reduced the number of jobs was not considered important. "Technology makes jobs, it doesn't eliminate jobs," said the inventors as they turned out ever-bigger and more sophisticated "Rana Reapers" and "Froggie Bunchers" to scour the lake shorelines at speedier rates. The government encouraged mechanization with hefty tax write-offs keyed to the size and expense of the equipment. As people were displaced by the machines and unemployment grew, the government mounted a public information campaign whose centerpiece was the promise: "We will create more jobs."

Then total disaster struck. A money crisis in France was followed by collapse of the chief export market. At the same time a government document reported that scientists had detected a marked decrease in frogs: the breeding stock was not returning to the shores of the lake.

The figures were immediately contested by the industry whose hired scientists argued that the census should have counted tadpoles not frogs. The tadpoles of today are the frogs of tomorrow, they said; our data show there will be a good run of frogs next year. Nevertheless, a total ban on collecting frogs was ordered by Ottawa.

At once the provincial government accused the national Minister of mishandling the frog stocks and hired a Newfoundlander to prove it. The commercial froggers pointed the finger of blame at the weekend sport-froggers, expressing their belief also that war should be declared on cormorants and seals who were undoubtedly eating the tadpoles. The big operators said it was the fault of the little inefficient operators, adding that the government should buy them out and consolidate their licenses. It's the Americans, said some; they're intercepting Canadian frogs returning to spawn. It's the Natives, said others; they're selling frogs commercially when they're only supposed to take them for cultural purposes. It's not the fault of the technology, said the CEO of the Rana Reapers Manufacturing Company; reapers don't kill frogs, people kill frogs.

It's deadly ultraviolet radiation due to the thinning of the ozone layer, said the biologists; we're finding frogs with green sunburns everywhere. It's clearly over-frogging combined with loss of marsh habitat, said the environmentalists; frogs are on the way out just like cod and salmon. It's the environmentalists, said the froggers; they've got the government to set aside five percent of the lakeside marshes as nature preserves, and that's where all the frogs have gone.

Soon a SHARE group was formed, arguing for equal access to every part of the lakeshore for frogging, and little signs appeared here and there in the Village reading: "I Support the Frogging Industry" and "Frogging Feeds My Family." The latter appealed especially to the prolific family-values group of the Deform Party who bought TV time to argue that anything feeding a family must be good. Elect us, they said, and we will not only open the National Parks for frogging, but pay off the national debt and bring back capital punishment.

About this time the government ran another course for entrepreneurs and from it, as before, a brilliant idea emerged: ecotourism! "Look," said the originator of the idea, a college graduate, "the frogging industry is a friggin' fiasco - its day is done! What we need is tourism and not just any kind of red-neck tourism where guys zoom around the lake in sea-dos and motorboats trailing their kids on rubber rafts. We want the baby boomers from the city, the wealthy guys, and what are they interested in? Nature, that's what, and the rarer it is the better they like it.

The fact that we've exported everything means that we've got lots that's rare. We'll show them the last few specimens of the Slocan Three-Striped Frog in what remains of their natural habitat. Then we'll take them to a big Douglas fir or Cedar or Hemlock - I'm sure we can find a few back in the hills - and then we'll take them to the worked-out mines and show them a bunch of old broken-down machinery. People love this historical stuff. They'll leave some money behind and go back to the city, happy!

The idea worked for a few years, but then the tourism boom died down. Back in the city things had got as bad as out in the countryside. With the mineral wealth and forest wealth shipped out, with all plant and animal wealth sent away and lost, with soils, water and air degraded, the city's life-blood dried up too. Computerized businesses dissolved. Stocks and bonds evaporated. No resources remained to prop up city industry, nothing to justify all the paperwork, the abstract facts, the figures, the bottom lines with which cities deal. Few now could afford expensive trips to the mountains for holidays. For the leaky-condo set, times were just as tough as they were back in the country villages.

Only then throughout the nation a little question began to be asked: "Maybe export, export, export, wasn't a smart idea?"