Toad patrols ferry 10,000 amphibians to safety

Over 235,000 toads, frogs and salamanders were helped to cross a road safely in 2016 thanks to the efforts of toad patrol volunteers across the Netherlands.

‘Our landscape is criss-crossed with roads which amphibians have to cross in order to get to the water where they mate,’ nature website NatureToday.com said. ‘The migratory peak is just after dusk and coincides with the rush hour, killing hundreds of thousands of toads every year.’

This year’s busiest migration days were March 26, April 2 and April 3 when over 10,000 amphibians a day crossed the road, helped by hundreds of volunteers.

Last year the site wrote that putting all 270,000 animals helped to reach their mating grounds nose to tail would produce a queue of 19 kilometres, or roughly the distance between Amsterdam and Utrecht. This year the site concentrated on the animals’ combined weight: some 4,700 kilos.