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Remember, Remember the toads this November!

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As we do every November, Froglife is reminding people to thoroughly check their bonfires for wildlife before lighting them…

At this time of year, toads, frogs and newts are all looking for somewhere safe and frost-free to see out the winter. A big pile of logs, leaves and twigs may be the ingredients for a perfect bonfire, but they’re also an ideal hiding place for amphibians, hedgehogs and all sorts of other garden inhabitants.
Here are a few tips to make help make your celebrations more wildlife-friendly:

  • Collect your wood and other bonfire materials in a separate place to where you’ll be having the bonfire, and move them just before you want to light the fire, ideally as late in the day as possible.  If you’re going to an organised event you could get in touch beforehand and ask if they need any help searching for uninvited guests!
  • If you do come across any animals, just transfer them to a similar habitat in another part of the garden. They may be a little disorientated but the disturbance won’t do them any harm.
  • Just before lighting, have a last check through with a torch and then ensure the fire is only lit from one side so anything left within has the chance to escape.
  • Try to burn only clean, untreated wood on your bonfire, with no nasty varnish, paint or plastics so you don’t release toxic chemicals in the smoke

You could create a permanent log and leaf pile specifically for frogs, toads, newts, lizards, hedgehogs and other creatures to hide in over winter in a quiet corner of the garden.  Other wildlife-friendly features include compost heaps and rockeries. Find out more here.

Don’t forget if you do spot any amphibians or reptiles to use our Dragon Finder App to help identify and record your sightings!

So, have fun this fireworks night but remember what might be buried in your bonfire!

What our animals are doing this month….

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Smooth snakes are the rarest of our native UK reptiles, mostly found in heathland habitats in parts of Dorset, Hampshire, Surrey and West Sussex. They are very elusive and secretive, so you need to watch closely to spot this species! Look out for their distinctive facial markings, including a dark stripe along the side of the head and through the eye, and a heart-shaped crown on the top of the head.

Smooth snakes, like other reptiles, will have been busy feeding up during the autumn months. Their diet mostly consists of lizards and rodents which they kill through restriction. As the weather is now getting colder they will be looking to find a warm, safe place to overwinter. Smooth snakes overwinter communally in groups. This strategy can be very beneficial, particularly for juveniles, to help them conserve heat during the coldest months. Overwintering in groups can also be a safer option if the site is discovered by predators.

Smooth snakes have a distinctive heart-shaped marking on their head, a dark line along the side of the head, and two rows of dark spots along the back.

Froglife’s role at COP26: The world’s last, and best chance to get climate change under control.

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The UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow on 31 October – 12 November 2021.  Many believe this is the world’s last, and best chance to get climate change under control.  Each day 8 NGOs from around the world have been invited to have a stall in the Green Zone of the event that delegates and members of the public can visit.  Froglife is honoured to have been selected as one of these organisations and will be attending on Monday 1st November.

We want to share this opportunity to have our voice heard by asking you to send us your messages for world leaders 

What is it?

COP26 is the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place in Glasgow in November 2021. COP comprises 197 countries (known as parties) which signed the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convent on Climate Change) in 1994. COP member countries are encouraged to set ambitious climate targets in order to combat climate change. At COP26 these targets will be reviewed and debated, and decisions made on what actions need to be taken.

Why is it important?

COP26 is important because it facilitates a global assessment of the climate crisis, and monitors the climate actions (or lack thereof) of member countries. It is also an opportunity to inspire climate action both amongst world leaders and the general public, and enables new solutions to be discussed and debated.

What is Froglife doing?

Climate change poses a huge threat to amphibians and reptiles.  The UK Government must set binding targets to keep global temperature rises to below 1.5°C.  Froglife, in collaboration with The British Dragonfly Society, is one of a few organisations that have been selected to run an Exhibition Stall in the Green Zone on November 1st. The aim of our stall is to highlight the importance of ponds as carbon sinks and for biodiversity, and encourage people to take action by creating their own garden ponds.

Our stall will be created from sustainable materials.  We will offer a model pond activity using re-purposed containers filled with water, and a selection of pond props which attendees can use to create ‘good’ and ‘bad’ wildlife ponds. We will have a third mini-pond filled with your messages which people can ‘pond dip’ for.  These messages will also be displayed on screens at the event and with participants accessing the event online around the world.

In addition to our pond activities, we will be highlighting the issues of habitat fragmentation and road mortality using our VR video of a toad trying to migrate to its breeding pond.

Your messages to world leaders

We want you to send us your messages to share with world leaders and participants from around the world at COP26, so we can help make their voices heard. The messages can be any comments, opinions or ideas you have relating to climate change.  Messages featuring amphibians and reptiles and their habitats are encouraged!

What our animals are doing this month…

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September is an exciting month for sand lizards. Females laid their eggs in May and June which they buried in the warm sand. These eggs have been incubating throughout the summer, and now they are ready to hatch!

Young sand lizards do not receive parental care, but they can be spotted hunting for invertebrates in pairs or small groups of fellow juveniles. They will feed up as much as possible during September and October before hibernating. Unfortunately the tiny juveniles can be vulnerable to predation from adult male sand lizards as well as a number of other predators including birds, mammals and reptiles.

Females will sometimes lay a second clutch later in the summer, and given the rate of global warming, we may well see this behaviour increase. Individuals that hatch later in the year may also hibernate later; this is because they need to spend as much time feeding as possible before hibernating to improve their chances of surviving their first winter.

Remember to record any reptile, amphibian or egg sightings to our FREE Dragon Finder App. 

As the name suggests, sand lizards occupy sandy heathland habitats where females bury their eggs in sand to keep them warm. Look out for juvenile sand lizards emerging throughout September!

Submitting your sightings is now quicker and easier

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Froglife’s new and improved Dragon Finder app is here.  The app helps you to identify amphibians and reptiles, find out more about individual species and submit a record of your sighting.  Collecting records is a vital first step in wildlife conservation.  This data provides the evidence needed to protect important sites and alert us to population declines.  

Dragon Finder app users will find all the great features of the original version but now with a simpler process for submitting your records, many technical improvements and compatibility with recent models of mobile phones.  Existing users will simply be asked to update the app the next time they open it.

Froglife submit all the records collected through the Dragon Finder app to the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) to be shared publicly on the NBN Atlas.  Many of the improvements that we’ve made to the app and supporting database mean that the records are now in better shape to be submitted to this platform and local biodiversity record centres.  In short this means that the records you submit are now even more valuable.

The Dragon Finder App was first launched in 2014 and is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Amphibians and reptiles are the most threatened species globally and also the least recorded.  For successful conservation of these fascinating creatures we need to understand their national distribution and population trends. 

Froglife’s CEO, Kathy Wormald says “We are delighted to be launching this much needed new version of the app.  To support Froglife’s work conserving UK amphibians and reptiles we ask everyone to download the app and submit their sightings”.

Find out more

The Road to Success? Experts share research at our Wildlife Road Mortality Conference.

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The Road to Success? Experts map route to try and safeguard wildlife in the future (written by Jules Robinson). 

The UK’s planned transformative infrastructure developments must not be at the expense of the countries wildlife, concluded experts at Froglife’s Wildlife Road Mortality Webinar. Wildlife conservationists from around the world came together online at 1pm on 10th March 2021 to discuss their work in relation to mitigating the death of wildlife on our roads.

Froglife’s CEO, Kathy Wormald, introduced the webinar by sharing the work of Froglife over the past 30 years, particularly with regards to Froglife’s ‘Toads on Roads Campaign’ where thousands of volunteers take part each year to help toads and frogs successfully navigate roads on the way back to their spawning ponds to breed. Froglife is also currently running a Wildlife Tunnel Campaign, having undertaken research at a number of highway crossings for smaller wildlife including toads, demonstrating that for relatively small costs, tunnels and grids can be included in road schemes which provide a safe crossing for many other species.  Common Toad populations have declined by an estimated 68% in the last 30 years, and roads are a key factor. Research has also recently shown that in addition to the death of the adults, going to spawn, a few months later there are thousands of small toadlets, migrating from their spawning ponds into the countryside which are killed and not seen. The creation of balancing ponds and drainage ditches next to roads only exacerbates the situation.

Did you know that 1/5 of the Earth’s terrestrial surface is located within 1km of roads and that up to 100million animals die on roads around the world each year?  Badgers and pheasants top the list for the most common mammal and bird species in the UK, according to figures provided by Dr Sarah Perkins, co-ordinator of Project Splatter, a citizen-science monitoring scheme for wildlife vehicle collisions across the UK. Their research has also shown that 95% of the public are interacting with wildlife more by seeing it dead on the roads, than seeing it alive in the wild.

Citizen science proved to be a strong theme throughout. Debobroto Sircar (aka Debo), Head of Species Recovery and Wildlife Crime Control Division, Wildlife Trust of India spoke of the successful launch of RoadWatch, a user-friendly smartphone app that they’ve encouraged members of the public to use, which gathers necessary data such as photographic records, GPS location, type of animal, date of record etc. The app can transmit the data in less than a minute, with minimal effort and has helped them successfully map roadkill hotspots, identifying India’s most affected species so they can instigate mitigation measures, including signs, fencing and road closures at different times of the year. Their ‘#I brake for wildlife’ social media and car sticker campaign has also created awareness and is gradually reducing the incidence of wildlife road kills across the country and signs put up at rail crossings notifying train drivers of elephant corridor areas has also had a huge effect in reducing speed and the number of elephants being hit.

Dr Sean Boyle, a postdoctoral researcher at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, also recognised the importance of engagement and outreach activities, particularly involving youth, and he too mentioned a range of mitigation measures including the closure of roads such as one in Ontario for salamanders to make their yearly migration. He also spoke of recognising road mortality, as not just the roadkill itself seen on the surface of a road, but the ‘Road Effect Zone’ which is the area surrounding the road that an animal won’t approach or go near because of a combination of factors including pollution, light or sound and the fragmentation of habitat. His research has indicated this can be between 2-5km for some species. He also reminded us that we should include the effects of railways on wildlife mortality and the area around the tracks. Following on from his surveys into reducing the harmful impacts of roads and evaluation on the success of fences and crossing structures, he summarised that to best avoid wildlife road mortality humans need to modify their behaviour. Whilst he recommended the use of signage and putting up fencing directing wildlife to tunnels, he also recognised that people who regularly use the same route, initially reacted to the road awareness signs but then became less receptive as they got used to them.  Tunnels are costly and mitigation should be thought of at the time of construction.

Fragmentation was a key concern of both Froglife’s Reptile Project Officer, Ben Harris and author and ecologist Hugh Warwick. Ben spoke of the lack of desperately needed reptile road mortality research in the UK but that European data has indicated that despite the noise and ground vibrations from traffic, reptiles are still susceptible to road collisions, especially on smaller roads when adjacent to their preferred habitat and they may be attracted to the warm tarmac to bask. In the UK adders exist in small numbers so even if 1 or 2 are killed this could lead to a genetic imbalance. He suggested that we may need to adapt and install tunnels that reptiles will use it like the ‘Herpetoduct’ in the Netherlands, to reduce reptile road mortality and help stop fragmentation.

Hugh Warwick, a spokesperson for the British Hedgehog Protection Society, continued with this theme – as he told us that habitat fragmentation is one of the most serious threats to face hedgehogs. Whilst 167-335,000 hedgehogs were killed on the roads in a study undertaken in 2004, the current road kill estimate is 100,000 a year because of the hedgehog populations overall decline. He told us that with a starting population of 32 hedgehogs they would need 90km of unrestricted landscape not fragmented by fences, roads, lakes or ditches (created alongside roads to stop flooding, which can act as pitfalls). He called for all new infrastructure to have eco-ducts built in such as in the Netherlands, the A556 near Knutsford in the UK or the tunnels built over the A3 near Hindhead. “We need to start making our case for the value of nature and how life-giving it is”, he summarised at the end of his presentation which was the final talk.

Professor Roger Downie, Froglife Trustee who hosted the event agreed, “A big message coming loud and clear from to-day’s timely Froglife webinar on ‘Wildlife Mortality on Roads’ was that the UK’s planned transformative infrastructure developments must not be at the expense of the country’s wildlife. Wildlife needs safe routes to travel through our landscapes, and these must be built into all developments.”

Kathy Wormald, Froglife CEO concluded by saying, “We are extremely pleased with how the webinar went today, it has certainly raised the bar for action to be taken to stop the carnage of wildlife death on the worlds roads. Let’s collectively take positive action to bring this matter to a halt.  We know that it is impacting on the sustainability of wildlife across the globe resulting in population declines and in some instances extinction.  Governments need to take this matter seriously and help conservationists to address this issue.”

You can watch a recording of the webinar here: www.froglife.org/webinars

To sign Froglife’s Wildlife Tunnel Campaign please click here.