Common toad being saved by patrollers.

Volunteers carry amphibians across busy roads

Over the coming weeks and months, volunteers will be giving toads a helping hand across busy roads as they make their way back to their breeding ponds.

A national campaign called Toads on Roads takes place each year to help save the common toad from mass road mortalities.

Conservation organisation Froglife, which coordinates the campaign, says the common toad is thought to be experiencing large-scale declines and local extinctions in the UK, made worse by road traffic as toads travel back to breeding ponds.

Commenting on last year's campaign, Sivi Sivanesan, public engagement officer for Froglife said: "In 2013 volunteer toad patrollers saved over 74,254 toads at 132 crossing sites.

"This is a fantastic result especially as we know that this is the minimum number saved as some crossings don’t submit data."

However, Sivi says toads are still killed by traffic at sites where there are too few volunteers or where it's too dangerous to patrol.

This year, Froglife has launched a new interactive map to show potential volunteers where to find the nearest registered crossing, in a bid to boost the number of volunteers.

View the map here to find your nearest patrol site. 

Image courtesy of Dave Kilbey.