Charity tackles toll of wildlife deaths on the road

A CONSERVATION charity which is instrumental in a number of Yorkshire projects is holding a global webinar to raise awareness of wildlife road mortality.

Froglife, which co-ordinates the Toads on Roads project, is holding the webinar next Wednesday, March 10. Speakers from Project Splatter and Froglife will join Hugh Warwick from the Hedgehog Preservation Society to present the UK perspectives on wildlife road mortality with international findings from Debobroto Sircar from the Indian Wildlife Trust and Sean Boyle sharing his studies on mammals and amphibians in Ontario, Canada.

Kathy Wormald, CEO of Froglife, said: “By discussing and sharing our research and initiatives we hope to show decisionmakers that we need to work with nature, not against it. We need to give wildlife the green light.”

At the end of last year Froglife was awarded nearly a quarterof-a-million pounds from the Government’s Green Recovery Challenge Fund to improve the region’s wildlife habitats.

Froglife’s Tails Of Amphibian Project (TOAD), which will focus on work around the common toad, a species which has declined by 68 per cent over the past 30 years, has been awarded the funding which is designed to help environmental recovery.

At the beginning of 2020, just before the first lockdown, the charity also held its inaugural northern Toad Summit bringing together the network of volunteers who take part in Yorkshire’s Toad on Road Patrols. With road mortality the largest contributor to toad population declines as new roads and developments are built near the ancestral breeding grounds they migrate back to each year, toad patrols, monitor the routes helping toads and amphibians cross safely.