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Toads on Roads

Newton Valence Toad Patrol: Road Closure Success.

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Sue Binder, Manager of Newton Valence Toad Patrol, writes about her success in achieving road closures for the last three years during her Toad Patrol. 

Newton Valence Toad Patrol has succeeded in closing the road for the toad migration for the last three years, which has resulted in a substantial reduction in toad deaths. 

A majority of villagers supported the closure in a referendum sent out by the Parish Council, but, of course, you can’t please everyone! A small, but vocal, minority complained that the road should not be closed during the day as toads are not moving then. We suggested they might like to pay the traffic management company to come out every evening to put out the signs, as required by law, and they suddenly went quiet!

In an attempt to appease the dissenters, we managed, after months of negotiations, to get permission from Hampshire Highways for an experimental evenings only closure, allowing us to put out the signs ourselves, under supervision from Chapter 8 Traffic Management Company, to comply with the law. Chapter 8 are very toad-friendly, and agreed that “supervision“ could mean us putting out the signs every evening and photographing them in situ, then emailing the photos to Chapter 8, which saves us the fees!

This seems to be working well, and we hope that this initiative might pave the way for other Toad Patrols to try for evening closures too.

 

A night as a Toad Patroller

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Here our Reserve Warden, Chantel, recounts her experience of helping out at her local toad patrol in 2022….

One of the toads Chantel rescued on the Sleaford Toad Patrol

In the subdued light I put on lots of layers and double-checked my torch was working. During these essential preparations, I felt like a weird superhero armed with my high vis jacket (or cape if you prefer) and bucket, excited to help the local wildlife.

In the twilight, the toad patrol team walked down the road hearing the coo of an owl and disturbing sleeping muntjac with their torches. I was eagerly awaiting the sight of a toad making its epic journey across the road, though that moment was more exciting than I initially had thought… I could hear a high pitched ‘quark’ and the fallen leaves began to rustle all around me. I shined my torch down onto the woodland floor to see dozens of golden eyes staring back at me, full of determination and crawling through the undergrowth. I turned around to see a toad still on the tarmac, when I picked up this delicate little soul, he clung onto my hand and did not want to let go.

Male toads were hitchhiking on the backs of the females and any male I picked up clung on ready for the hike. The anticipation of the evening did not let me down and from that night I was hooked. I am looking forward to the 2023 Toad Patrol season and being back with a passionate group of people on the Sleaford Toad Patrol.

Want to help out at your local Toad Patrol? Find your nearest one using our Toads on Roads map and get involved! 

 

My first season running a Toad Patrol

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Lorna Williamson (Patrol Manager of Milngavie Library & CE Centre Toad Patrol in East Dunbartonshire) writes about her first season running a Toad Patrol. 

It was with a mixture of sadness and relief that I stashed away my toad road signs and head torch. My first official season as a Toad Patroller had been a busy one, with 382 lives saved over a 31-day period. It had started modestly: first came the toads on 12th March, followed by frogs two days later, until a melting-pot of amphibian-hopping-madness on 22nd March! Up to that point, I’d merely made the patrolling area official on the Froglife website, but the need to be omnipresent to cover everywhere at once spurred me into putting an urgent call out to a community action group I was loosely connected with. A few days later, we had our first volunteer! We met every night in the library car park for the next two and a half weeks, each with our own toad-gathering equipment, which on more than occasion for me was an old food-waste bin, deep enough to prevent jumping escapees! I was quite nervous on our first patrol that the main ‘spectacle’ might have passed for my eager helper, but finished the evening with 18 toads, two frogs, and one newt. I am aware that these are modest figures compared with busier patrols taking place on main roads.

During the five-week patrolling period, I found it practically impossible to stay in as the critical dusk hour approached – I was addicted! Hopefully other patrollers are familiar with the sensation of closing your eyes at night and being filled with images of yet more toads – all the little lives you’ve given a ‘hopping’ hand to! Once, when I looked out of my bedroom window late at night, ignoring the little voice in my head – “Don’t do it!” – I spotted the unmistakable movement of a toad ambling awkwardly over the road. Groaning, I threw on my waterproof trousers and coat to hide my pajamas and ran down the three flights of stairs in our block before reaching him, thankfully still unharmed, and minutes before a car appeared. I hadn’t got my tub, so prayed not to find any others in the 125 meters en-route to the pond. I found one more, a beautiful, huge female, smack bang in the middle of the car park, who didn’t really seem to know where she was going! I’ll always remember that occasion.

A surprising highlight was the encounters with other people along the way. I suppose our little team of high-vis ’ed helpers stood out, with our buckets of squirming creatures and habit of scooping them up moments before the impact of foot, tyre or paw! We certainly became familiar to the weekly jogging group (who I’m pleased to say would shout “toad!” back through the ranks as appropriate), and one personal trainer and their client who watched bemused as we frantically rescued toads from the road next to where they were busy exercising! Such encounters raised awareness of the plight, with two ladies being so affected by our conversation one evening that they expressed their apprehension to leave the car park for fear of running any over. My favourite encounter was with a man who, having spotted us in action already, backtracked to alert us to two toads “right on top of each other, over there in the middle of the path”!

I admit, I became a bit obsessed with the mission over the patrolling period – there were missed church meetings, abandoned phone calls, and compulsory participation from visiting family members. But the alternative just didn’t bear thinking about. It was hard enough witnessing the relatively few casualties that I did. In contrast to many patrols, our only road is a cul-de-sac with comparatively less traffic to contend with. What’s more, the experience had an extra special layer to it last year. It was one of the few passions I was still able to indulge, after three months of suffering from post-covid fatigue, which had rendered my attempts at a pre-diseased lifestyle futile. Taking care of something other than myself and being so engrossed in an activity offered a much-needed release from my own problems. Quite frankly, the toads were helping me as much as I them, and in fact it was hard to find a purpose again once the season ended.

© Dave Kilbey

And so, it goes without saying that I await the soggy slap of a frog’s belly on the ground in 2023 with bated breath! I’m also extremely excited that not long ago, a second volunteer was recruited through the Froglife website. If I’m feeling brave enough, I’d like to increase awareness of the migration through direct contact with the community centre and library, as well as in the community magazine. Ideally, use of the car park for regular events would be limited until BST begins and event timetable clashes with peak amphibian movements can be avoided. One thing I am grateful for is the kind donation of a colour printer from our lovely neighbours which will save hours of work spent on making the red warning triangle by hand! I can happily encourage anyone reading this with an inkling of making your rescue missions official by registering as a toad patrol to go for it! It’s great to have the support from Froglife and to feel like you’re part of the migration up and down the country. Happy patrolling, everyone!

Eyes of swirling fire
Beauty in a bumpy maze
Fingerprint of warts

 

To find out more about the Toads on Roads Project, please visit the Froglife website.

What our animals are doing this month: Toad Special

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The wonderful common toad will be migrating to its breeding grounds now. They take the saying ‘there’s safety in numbers’ seriously and migrate en masse. These migratory journeys can be perilous especially as we tend to dissect habitats with roads and housing estates. This is where our lovely volunteers from Toads on Roads come in. Rather than lots of squished toads, we have volunteers that visit migratory crossing places with buckets and torches to transport the toads from one side of the road to the other. The numbers can vary, but there can be hundreds travelling at once, so that means lots of buckets and volunteers are needed!

Once safely across, the toads can go about their business getting to their ancestral breeding pond. The males get to the breeding grounds first and wait for females to arrive. You may get the odd male straggler that manages to grab a female before she gets to the pond-  successfully securing his mate.

Once the toads have found mates, the main event begins- spawning! A toad’s spawn is unlike frogs in that it is laid in two long strings rather than being laid in clumps. The strings are attached to underwater plants and one female can lay as many as 1500 eggs! This is to ensure the next generation of toads is secure.

Toads waste no time leaving the water once spawning has been completed. Back to slurping slugs at night at their earliest convenience!

If you would like to get involved and support our toads please check out our website for a Toad Patrol near you.

Common toad spawn

The Power of Ponds – Froglife at COP26

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This year COP26 is being hosted in Glasgow, and there is a lot of excitement building up for the long-awaited conference after it was postponed last year. With the climate crisis looming bigger than ever, and time for action rapidly running out, this is arguably one of the most important COPs to date. COP26 provides the perfect platform to discuss and debate, find solutions and set bold new targets, but most importantly we must use this momentum to start taking action now!

Here at Froglife we are excited to announce that we are one of the few organisations selected to run an Exhibition Stand at COP26. Our Exhibition will be a collaboration with the British Dragonfly Society, and together we will be highlighting the power of ponds! Ponds are a fantastic and highly under-rated tool in the combat against climate change. They are carbon sinks which means they reduce the levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and consequently reduce the effects of global warming. Ponds can store and absorb carbon at unexpectedly high rates, with many ponds even able to absorb carbon at a higher rate than woodlands1. It’s not just carbon either – ponds can remove all sorts of greenhouse gases from our atmosphere. For example, two thirds of farm ponds in the UK are nitrous oxide sinks2. Nitrogen is a component of chlorophyll which is often used in farm fertiliser. When fertiliser runs into farm ponds, the algae in these ponds absorbs the nitrogen before it is able to react with oxygen in the air to become nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas which can trap heat at 300 times the rate of carbon dioxide.

Ponds can function as carbon sinks, biodiversity hotspots, educational resources, and flood mitigation amongst other things. When creating new ponds, it is always good to be clear about why you are creating it and design and manage it accordingly. To gain maximum benefit it is best to create a network of multiple different ponds that serve for different purposes.

Research into the role of ponds in combatting climate change is very promising, and ponds are such a useful tool because they are also highly actionable, with many people able to create them in their own gardens and community spaces. This is why our Exhibition will focus on teaching people all about ponds. Our key element will be a fun, interactive model pond activity using two recycled container ‘ponds’ and a number of handmade pond props. We will be encouraging people to get stuck in and have a go at creating their idea of a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ponds, prompting discussion around why ponds are important, and what makes a good pond.

Although our main focus will be on ponds, we will also be highlighting another important threat to biodiversity at COP26; wildlife road mortality. This is a significant issue that threatens wildlife globally, with the Common Toad being at particularly high risk in the UK3. We will be immersing people into this issue through our virtual reality technology which will allow participants to view the world through the eyes of a Common Toad attempting to migrate to its breeding pond. This thought-provoking activity will not only demonstrate the problem, but also the solution offered by wildlife tunnels! Read more on this issue here: www.froglife.org/t-o-a-d-campaign

Our Exhibition Stand at COP26 is an important opportunity for us to stimulate discussion and encourage and support people to take action at home. We also want to use our platform to make your voices heard! Please send us your message for world leaders and we will share these at COP26 through an interactive ‘pond dip’ (or ‘message dip’) activity, as well as displaying them on a large screen for everyone to see.

We are really excited to talk to people about the power of ponds at COP26. We will be in the Green Zone on November 1st, so grab your free Green Zone tickets and we will see you there!

References:

  1. Taylor, S., Gilbert, PJ., Cooke, DA., et al. (2019) High carbon burial rates by small ponds in the landscape. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 17(1), 25-31.
  • Webb, JR., Hayes, NM., Simpson, GL. et al. (2019) Widespread nitrous oxide undersaturation in farm waterbodies creates an unexpected greenhouse gas sink. PNAS. 116(20), 9814-9819.
  • Petrovan, SO., Schmidt, BR. (2016) Volunteer Conservation Action Data Reveals Large-Scale and Long-Term Negative Population Trends of a Widespread Amphibian, the Common Toad (Bufo bufo). PLOS ONE 11(10): e0161943. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161943

What our animals are doing this month….

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March is often a good month to spot common toads as they migrate from their overwintering sites to breeding ponds, particularly on warm, damp evenings. Every year they return to the same pond via the same route, but they can get into trouble if humans build along these routes. Roads in particular can make this migration dangerous, but our wonderful volunteer Toad Patrollers are working hard to reduce this risk by helping common toads safely cross roads along their migration routes.

Once they arrive at breeding ponds, males grasp onto the backs of females forming an amplexus, allowing the male to fertilise her eggs as she lays them. Mating balls often form where multiple males hold onto one female, and unfortunately this can sometimes end up with the female being drowned. However, many female toads do survive and successfully breed, producing a new generation of common toads! Unlike common frogs which lay their eggs in clumps, common toads lay their eggs in long strings wrapped around pond vegetation, so you may have to look a little closer to spot the toad spawn!

To find out more about toad patrols take a look at our website. 

A pair of common toads in amplexus during the breeding season