A Russian bucket brigade helps toads and frogs cross the road to the spawning site
Nature Reserve near Sestroretsk, Russia – Every spring, it takes place along a section of road north of St. Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city.
They are off-road guards for thousands of toads and frogs who are trying to navigate to the spawning site.
Konstantin Milta, a senior herpesology researcher at the St. Petersburg Institute of Zoology, said that there is usually not much traffic, but even relatively few vehicles will still kill up to 1,000 toads every year.
“On large highways, the mortality rate is terrible. Sometimes the surface of the road can be covered with a layer of dead animals,” Mirta told the Associated Press.
In this section, a large red and orange sign with amphibians warns the driver: “Beware! Slow down! The toad is crossing the road.”
When volunteers find one of the creatures, they pick it up, place it in a plastic bucket, and store it in the grass on the other side.
“So cute!” said one of the volunteers, referring to how Toad clutched her pink gloves.
In the Sestroretsk Bog reserve, “toads migrate from forest to bay in spring, breed in reed beds in coastal areas, lay eggs, and then somewhere in mid-May, they leave the water and migrate back to the forest,” Mirta said.
He added: “So they crossed the road twice.”
Viktoria Samuta, head of the environmental education department of St. Petersburg Reserve, said members of the barrel brigade have been working voluntarily since 2016.
Depending on the weather, the work began in mid-April and lasted for a month or more, with more than 700 volunteers participating each year.
Last year, volunteers helped relocate thousands of specimens, Samuta said.
“In recent years, more and more people have been ready to help creatures, which is great,” she said. “Our mission is to make people love our nature more and more and willing to help it.”
Volunteer Diana Kulinichenko believes this is a good breakthrough in her studies.
“I kept complaining about the whole semester I wanted to go to the forest,” Kulinichenko said. “It’s the forest, toad, you help the toad, you’re in the forest, you breathe clean air. I really want to volunteer, so after that, I’m going to look for other places to do.”
