Volunteers saved exactly 109 frogs, toads and sixteen salamanders in Heeze on this Friday alone. In this way they prevent the animals from being brutally flattened by passing cars on the Somerenseweg. “This is unprecedented,” says volunteer Hans Teeven.
Nineteen buckets are standing next to the road where the speed limit is 80 kilometers per hour. The road has already brutally killed many an amphibian. “People destroy everything. I can’t let that happen,” says Teeven, who gets up before dawn. “They are so fragile and delicate. A salamander like that weighs one and a half grams.”
“A moor frog!” Ben Pollmann of the local nature association exclaims enthusiastically. “They’re beautiful!” he adds, leaning over the bucket. In the meantime, Hans is furiously taking notes. “This is just wow! All those different colors and shapes. The tension is always enormous: what’s in the bucket?”
“You can’t skip a day.”
Every day two of the total of 26 volunteers stand along the highway. They take the animals out of the buckets and put them out at the water across the road. They do this during the mating season: from the end of January to the beginning of April. “You can’t skip a day,” says Hans. So far, a total of 230 animals have been transferred since the end of January. Friday was a real record day with remarkably full buckets.
“The road completely gone”, Hans would prefer. That will not happen, but there will be three tunnels in the autumn through which the frogs can get across. The volunteers want five more tunnels. “They are very expensive.” That is why they are trying to raise 150,000 euros.
“We just keep fighting.”
Last week, volunteers made perhaps the most special find. Then a rare drum wolf spider was found in Heeze. This is an endangered species and was voted European Spider of the Year last year.
Extra tunnels or not, the volunteers get up every morning at six: “We just keep fighting. We do everything for animals”, Yvonne beams.
