Common toads in the Aaper Forest: the picture shows the female’s belly filled with eggs under the male,©Landeskapital Düsseldorf/Garden Office
Düsseldorf is preparing for the amphibian migration. To protect the endangered animals, the city erects protective fences for toads, frogs and newts. They help the animals when they wake up from the hibernation and make their way to their spawning grounds.
The routes from the winter quarters to the spawning grounds often lead over dangerous roads – many of the protected animals die when crossing. The city is putting up amphibious protection fences and information signs along the most important migration routes and is asking motorists to drive slowly.
Catch buckets are embedded in the ground along the knee-high fences, which city employees check every day. They then bring the captured amphibians to the opposite side of the road and set them down near their spawning waters so that the animals can continue their migration safely. The city has been taking on this task for more than 30 years and sees it as an important task in species protection, because the number of animals that employees can collect at the protective fences has declined significantly in recent years.
The toads, frogs, and newts migrate primarily in the evening, at night, and in the early morning hours—between about 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. Anyone can help the amphibians on their migration by paying attention to the warning signs on the roads. Driving a maximum of 30 kilometers per hour or slower can save the lives of many animals.
There are sticks in the catch buckets. Accidentally caught insects or small mammals can crawl out of it – toads, frogs and newts cannot. The city asks the population to leave the sticks in the buckets and not to catch the animals.
