04/4/12

How Does a Toad Cross the Road? With a lot of Help from their Friends

As the days are getting longer and the sun is getting warmer in the Northern Hemisphere, a young male toad’s thoughts turn to love – it’s mating time for amphibians. Unfortunately this springtime ritual is often fraught with danger for frogs and toads. As we were looking for stories for this week’s post, we noticed a lot of stories about how people in Britain and the U.S. are helping toads make this important but dangerous journey. Here are a few:

Great Britain

Blades of glass rustle as hundreds — if not thousands — of toads spring forth from hibernation, each one a bloated, wart-ridden, writhing mass of arms of legs. Then, wide-eyed and kamikaze-like, they fall from the high kerb [curb] before making a desperate dash across the road, determined to reach their hereditary breeding ground. (As reported by  in the Henley Standard, Henley-on-Thames, England)

Unfortunately the toads in Henley must contend with a human-created challenge — rush-hour. Local toad patrols, however, are helping the toads cross the road. This year they’ve saved 7,500 toads from road death.  The toad patrols can’t stop traffic, but motorists slow down when they see their toad crossing signs and their high-visibility jackets.

Henley Wildlife Group Toad Patrol, courtesy of the Henley Standard, Henley-on-Thames, England

Volunteers spent every night of the past month helping toads by carrying them in buckets. The Toad Patrol happens every year and saves about 80 per cent of the migrating population of toads.

The BBC reports that in Northhampshire, England, hundreds of toads make a yearly one-mile journey from a woodland across a number of roads to an area that is now a housing development in the village of St. Crispins, to the south of Northampton.

Many toads are squashed by cars and dozens more fall into drains as they try to get back to where they were born. But those that do make it alive will find that the pond has been replaced by buildings. Donna Robins, a toad patroller, was quoted in the article as saying: “My house is on the woodland where they used to live, I feel responsible. I see them getting killed every night on the road.”

In Edinburgh, Scotland, the Historic Scotland Rangers are helping out with the toad annual ‘Watch Out, Toads About,‘ which helps toads migrate. Early every morning Rangers carry out patrols to check the nooks, crannies, and drains in Holyrood Park to make sure each toad gets to its destination safely.

In winter the toads live around Arthur’s Seat [the beautiful small mountain right outside the city] and Dunsapie Loch. In order to get to where they spawn, they must cross a public road with high curbs. When the toads are tired and hungry they can become disoriented and may be unable to make that last leap to safety. Volunteers are needed to help the roads cross the road safely.

United States

As reported in the Roxborough (PA) Patch.com, frogs and toads are on the move and in an annual tradition,the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education has helped them along.

photo courtesy The Schuylkill Environmental Center

The environmental group coordinates volunteer shifts to aid the toads crossing roads. There’s lots of information about volunteering on their site. After the toads breed, the toadlets, about the size of a fingernail, make their move from May 15 to June 30 and hop back to the woods, so volunteers can pitch in later, too.

Recently, according to the Provincetown (MA) Journal, the Cape Cod National Seashore issue an announcement that beginning this spring and continuing through October, certain local roads will  be closed at times, particularly on rainy nights, to protect the spadefoot toad, which is listed by the state as a threatened species.

These unusual toads, one of 12 species of amphibians found within the Seashore, use shallow, temporary ponds for breeding, and the surrounding uplands to feed. They migrate to and from these ponds on rainy nights, especially when the water table is high and temperatures are above 48 degrees.

The toads must cross paved roads, and during such crossings many of these well-camouflaged creatures are unfortunately killed by moving vehicles. Thus there is a need for carefully timed, strategic, temporary detours.

The Province Lands area of Cape Cod is one of the last strongholds for the eastern spadefoot toad in Massachusetts, and the public’s cooperation — and forbearance — is urged in the effort to ensure their survival.

As reported in the article [and mentioned as a difficult issue in some of the other articles cite above], sometimes the public isn’t very enthusiastic about the measures to help amphibians:

A related challenge to protecting these elusive creatures is raising the public’s consciousness about their importance environmentally. By their very nature, spadefoot toads do not attract the throngs of admirers that, say, whales do. Because of their size, habits and habitat, the toads are hard to find and quantify, and are challenging to study. Further, by most standards, they are not very glamorous — except perhaps to herpetologists.

While their tiny, almost invisible close “cousins” the spring peepers can claim status for their joyful, lilting songs that herald the arrival of spring on the Cape, the pained dyspeptic croaking of a spadefoot induces no similar elation. However, in the larger environmental scheme of things they are important marvels of adaptation….

The public can listen in on recordings of frog and toad calls, as well as discussions on amphibian ecology, via links to podcasts and videos on the Seashore’s website. At Frog are Green, we’d like to wish these toads “safe travels” and applaud all  the Toad Patrols in the US and the UK who are helping them along on their journeys.

06/28/10

Cape Town’s secretive inhabitant and pilot conservation species – the Western Leopard Toad

Written by Guest Blogger: Mark Day

Dusk ascends to cover the suburb of Bergvliet under a blanket of darkness. It brings with it the chill of a Wintery August night in Cape Town, South Africa, as a nippy breeze sweeps across the small urban wetland of Die Oog (an Afrikaans word meaning “The Eye”).

This man-made depression was originally dug out some 284 years ago to provide water for livestock on the neighbouring farm of Dreyersdal. In more recent years, however, Die Oog has come to serve a much greater purpose, as a pivotal breeding site for one of Cape Town’s most threatened amphibians, the western leopard toad Ameitophrynus pantherinus.

IUCN listed Amietophrynus pantherinus in Noordhoek - Photo by Maria Wagener of Fishhoek

As little as six years ago it was thought that only several such breeding sites remained in existence, for a species which has suffered massive population declines as a consequence of numerous threats including urban expansion, habitat destruction and population decimation through road kills. Today, conservationists and scientists with the aid of concerned volunteers and the public have listed a total of 52 breeding sites within the Cape Town range of the species. Further eastwards, some 150 kilometres away from southern Cape Town, a largely unprotected population comprising seven breeding sites exists.

Unlike most frogs which remain at water courses throughout the year, toads live in what’s termed ‘foraging areas’ where they lay dormant by day and hunt by night—with an exception for August month and there about when they migrate to and from local aquatic environments to breed. Presently, the majority of these foraging and breeding areas fall under urban suburbia, guaranteeing a window of constant interaction between these toads and the unknowing dangers their human neighbours pose.

Despite current conservation action and volunteer efforts to protect the Cape Town populations, census data from the 2009 breeding season only generated a recorded 1125 live migrants and 258 dead. Great strides have been achieved in recent years through a consistent increase in awareness of the plight of the species and in the recruitment of volunteers. The fate of the species is however uncertain—unless the citizens residing in these areas value their endemic and endangered leopard toad, there will merely remain stories of its once enigmatic nature and quiet existence.

For further details on the species, join the group on Facebook, The Endangered Western Leopard Toad or visit the website, www.leopardtoad.co.za.

Mark Day
Coordinator: Awareness, Volunteer & Census Operations
Western Leopard Toad Conservation Committee

Email: leopardtoad@gmail.com

Websites: www.leopardtoad.co.za /  www.toadnuts.co.za

Facebook: The Endangered Western Leopard Toad

06/6/10

Toad Detour

Our last post was about Greek frogs on the move, but close to home, American toads are also on the move and are being helped by an organization called Toad Detour, as reported on Philly.com.

American Toadlet, photo copyright © Marcia Maslonek

In early March, volunteers with Toad Detour helped adult toads cross a road in Upper Roxborough, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, to get to their breeding ponds. Now the Toad Detour volunteers are helping tiny toadlets make their way back across the road to reach their home in nearby woods. From May 23 to June 30, the Streets Department has provided a permit for the group to detour cars when the toads are crossing.

The toadlets have been traveling by the thousands, especially on damp and rainy nights, and will continue to do so for the next several weeks, according to Lisa Levinson, coordinator of Toad Detour. The toads temporarily halt their migration during dry weather. But nothing else will stop them. A 15-foot rock wall stands in their path, but they hop up and over it.

“One car will kill a thousand of them,” Levinson said. “It’s hard to see them. They look like insects, spiders, or more like flies.”

Volunteers are badly needed to protect the toadlets, set up road barricades, and distribute brochures about the migration, Levinson said. If you live in the Philly area and would like to become a Toad Patroller, visit the Toad Detour website.

07/15/09

Make Way for Toadlets

Citizens of Chilliwack, BC, Canada, have closed off roads to protect Western toadlets on their annual migration. The toads breed in wetlands, but must migrate across a busy road to reach the forested areas where they spend the rest of the summer and winter. Over a 3-day period, volunteers saved over 38,000 toads.

Here is a cute slide show of the event and a YouTube video of one tiny straggler’s epic journey across the road.