Can we stop Mr Toad from croaking?
In the third part of a series highlighting British species at risk, Joe Shute raises the plight of the once common amphibian
The mole and the water rat are taking breakfast on the riverbank, when Mr Badger strides in. “The hour has come,” Badger instructs his fellow characters in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.
“Why Toad’s hour! The hour of Toad!”
The time in question was the moment when the wayward Mr Toad was to be stripped of his driving gloves and castigated by his fellow creatures for his selfishness and extravagant ways.
Now the hour of the toad is upon us once more – yet it has changed from a mission of mercy to a race to save an entire species.
When Grahame’s book was published in 1908, the common toad was, as the name suggests, a ubiquitous resident of Britain’s waterways. Today, most of us still believe it to be so. But the reality is the past century has borne witness to a terrible decline, which experts fear may soon be terminal.
Exact population figures are hard to come by – for generations, we have been so convinced that toads would simply always be there that scientists never paid much attention. Even if summers passed by without seeing a single one, the presumption was it had somehow been a fallow year.
In 2016, however, a joint study conducted by researchers from the UK and Switzerland, concluded that common toads had collapsed by 68 per cent over the past 30 years across all regions in Britain, with the decline most marked in south east
England and the North. Such a rapid fall, the academics pointed out, almost qualifies the common toad for the IUCN red-list of the most threatened species on Earth.
The cause of the decline will be, for readers who have followed this series over the past few weeks (during which we have also charted the plight of the turtle dove and dormouse), depressingly familiar: habitat loss, human intrusion upon the landscape, pesticides killing the insects upon which they feed, and industrial and agricultural chemicals leeching into water supplies without proper scrutiny by the authorities.
Earlier this month Salmon and Trout Conservation, which monitors waterways across Britain, published its latest riverfly census, highlighting declines of up to 58 per cent of some species of aquatic insects over the past 30 years. Globally, the 2018 Living Planet Report compiled by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has registered an 83 per cent drop in freshwater species since 1970.
Ponds, explains Dr John Wilkinson, science programme manager at the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust, are the toad’s habitat of choice and one being placed under unique pressure.
“I have always lived on the same road in Telford and there is a pond that I have always searched for toads,” he says. “In the past there were hundreds but this year, for the first time, I haven’t been able to find a single one.”
Practically every village in Britain once boasted its own pond, but we have lost half a million over the past century – grubbed up for development or simply left to dry out. As well as being especially susceptible to pollution (due to their relatively small size), without proper maintenance silt can build up and a pond can simply vanish. And while garden ponds are still proving a vital habitat for frogs, toads require a larger space in which to breed. Dr Wilkinson likens the toad’s decline to another once common species – the adder – which research published in March warned could be wiped out within 20 years.
“The fact we think this is also happening to toads is something we need to urgently look at now, before it is too late,” he says.
We are standing in what is now a national rarity: a toad stronghold, the Dothill Nature Reserve in the north west corner of Telford, Shropshire. Despite being surrounded by Sixties housing estates and ringed by a main road – traffic can be lethal to toads, who stray up to 3km from their breeding sites in pursuit of food – the reserve is an oasis of meadows, woodland, pools, ponds and streams. Established four years ago, it is based on the site of an old manor house. The remains of a 14th-century moat have been discovered to provide a refuge for the great crested newt. Several 17th-century leisure ponds – originally designed to impress the neighbours, as well as host a ready supply of carp – have been happily colonised by toads. During the summer months, the amphibians have been seen gathering in their hundreds on the woodland paths.
The abundance of different landscapes has provided the perfect setting for threatened wildlife to flourish. But what offers real hope that this could be a vision for the future replicated elsewhere in the country, is its proximity to local schools.
Dothill Primary School is situated inside the reserve, while Charlton School and Wrekin View Primary School are located on its fringes. A generation of children is growing up with wildlife on its doorstep and it is making a profound difference.
“Ensuring the next generation really understands about nature is my passion,” says Mike Hughes, a volunteer with the Friends of Dothill Local Nature Reserve, who works with the schools surrounding the site. “This is the biggest challenge all these children will face in their lifetimes. It’s vitally important they really understand ecosystems.”
Youngsters are regularly invited out to help monitor the animals on the site and in winter are recruited to build hibernacula – dens made out of sticks and foliage – providing vital refuge for creatures such as toads. Today, they are helping scientists take DNA samples of toads as part of a PHD project with the University of Wolverhampton to map the national decline.
The children cherish their time in the outdoor classroom – and in particular the warty splendour of the toads. For Connor Edwards, 11, it is the sliminess of the skin he enjoys the most. For classmate Elizabeth Pearson, also 11, it is staring deep into their golden eyes and the discovery that toadspawn – their stringy clumps of eggs – tastes vile to fish. “The more you look at a toad, the more things you discover,” she says.
Matthew Kilford, 12, appeared in a Dothill Primary School production of
The Wind in the Willows. “It makes me really sad to know there are animals that might be gone in the future,” he says. “Without all the toads, frogs and newts these ponds would feel lifeless.”
As demonstrated by the ongoing school climate strikes across the country, inspired by the Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg, this is a generation becoming deeply aware of the political imperative to preserve the natural world – and increasingly frustrated at the inability of politicians to seize the mantle.
“I get a bit annoyed when people are talking about Brexit the whole time,” Matthew says, unprompted, as we are standing at the side of one of Dothill’s larger ponds. “If it carries on like this, by the time they’ve got through it, everything in nature will already have gone.”
This is the motivation behind the “Time Is Now” mass lobby gathering at Westminster on June 26, which will urge action from MPS to properly address the biodiversity crisis through the forthcoming Environment Bill. WWF is one of a number of organisations urging its members to attend. Despite the scale of the biodiversity crisis, says Paul De Ornellas, chief wildlife adviser for WWF, there is still time to act.
“We face a shocking collapse in wildlife populations in Britain with more than 1,000 species at risk of extinction and 140 species already extinct,” he says. “Our nature is seriously struggling but given a fighting chance it can recover.”
In October, the children of Dothill Primary School embarked on The Noah’s Ark project.
Every child painted a piece of slate depicting their favourite wildlife at the reserve and a checklist of individual species was placed in a time capsule, to be opened in 50 years’ time.
A blank space has been left next to each, so that whoever opens it can place a tick or a cross to indicate whether that animal is still present at the reserve. The children all hope Mr Toad will be among those still flourishing – and that the hour of toad isn’t up after all.