A WILDER FUTURE


On warm, damp evenings in early spring, toads migrate back to their breeding


ponds. But busy roads often block traditional routes.


Space for toads


Live no longer in fragments, eh? A hard thing to achieve when many areas of our countryside have been split down the middle with roads. There’s a classic example in Herefordshire, where a road cuts off an area of woodland from Bodenham Lake. That’s not good news for toads, which hibernate


in the woods and, in spring, travel down to the lake to get on with the crucial business of mating and spawning and making more toads. Toads are not swiſt and sure crossers of roads. It’s ironic: Mr Toad in The Wind in the Willows is the great mad driver of fiction, but in practice toads are the constant road casualties of Mr and Mrs Human. Sophie Cowling of Herefordshire Wildlife Trust


coordinates a team of lollipop people for toads. They go out on spring nights with buckets and torches as toads, mad with desire, make their way to the lake. In its first year, the team helped 200 toads to the other side. Last year, the score was 1,300 – not because they’re beter at catching toads, but because, thanks to their efforts in previous years, there are now more toads needing to cross. As a simple example of connectivity in action it could hardly be betered.


An estimated 20 tonnes of unlucky toads are killed on the UK’s roads every year.


Toads have declined by 70% since 1985, due to a complex combination of reasons. But saving them from being run over is a swiſt and effective counter-blast to the fragmentation of our countryside. Yet it’s only the beginning. In an ideal world there would be no need for


toad patrols. And so work is underway to improve the landscape around the lake for the toads. Plans include making places where toads can hibernate without needing to cross the road to do so.


Creating new ponds for toads One of the problems toads suffer from is the loss of the old farm ponds. On the wooded side of the road, farmers are being encouraged to install new ponds, so that toads will be able to mate and spawn – again without crossing the road. “It’s all about improving the quality of the connecting landscape,” says Sophie. More ponds: part of a gentler and soſter


landscape that joins up the best places and so brings the wider countryside back to life. It’s good for wildlife and good for humans. A wilder countryside is a beter place for us all, reconnecting us with nature and making our lives richer.


Cumbrian Wildlife | September 2019 35


SIGN: LINDA PITKIN/2020VISION, TOAD: SAM HOBSON


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