When toads are ready to breed, they head to their chosen pond regardless of dangerous roads in their path. Hundreds migrate over a few nights in spring so it is important that we can help them to safety to ensure a successful breeding season.
Why did the toad cross the road?
Every spring, Keeping It Wild members get hands on and help save lives!
Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust’s youth team is dedicated to helping local toads survive the breeding season by becoming Toad Patrollers.
Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust’s youth team is dedicated to helping local toads survive the breeding season by becoming Toad Patrollers.
Our youth team 'Keeping It Wild' preparing to go on a toad patrol
We are very excited to start our third year of toad patrols in Notts. In 2017, we went to Oxton, Strelley and Newark armed with buckets and high vis vests (not all super heroes wear capes) and helped lots of toads cross the road at night. We found our help was most needed in Strelley village so we went back again in March 2018.
We walk along the dark road searching for toads, frogs and newts with torches and pick them up as they go to cross, collecting them in buckets and moving them close to the breeding pond. Last year we helped over 300 on just one stretch of road in Strelley, giving local toad saviour Michael a welcome helping hand.
This work allows young people from Nottingham a chance to get hands on and make a real tangible difference to local wildlife, while learning to identify our different amphibians. We even learnt you tell a toad is male if he squeaks when you gently touch his back. We love helping toads so much that on a visit to Idle Valley we stopped traffic when we realised toads were migrating across the carpark!
If you ever see toads on your roads, your local toad migration could need your help! Find out more and how and why toads cross our roads
Thanks to support from players of People’s Postcode Lottery, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust can provide experiences for young people such as this.