Jeroen Kalkhoven walks a lot of kilometers with an antenna in his hand. In this nature reserve in Valthe he searches for the rare garlic path. Since spring he has been looking between two and five hours a day five days a week.
They are mysterious animals, the garlic toads. In the event of danger, they give off a garlic -like scent, hence the name. But they cannot be found in the field. And they don’t show themselves quickly, they are buried in the ground during the day. Research into the rare amphibian is therefore not easy.
But that does not prevent the Diermanagement student. He is fourth -year -old at Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences and is doing an internship at Ravon, the national organization for research into reptiles, amphibians and fishing. In Weather and Wind he cooperates in collecting important data.
Sometimes they are in the top layer at a depth of five centimeters, sometimes they are quite deeply buried to eighty centimeters deep. A number of garlic toads have a channel, which has been brought in by a veterinarian from Wildlands. With an antenna you can absorb signals from the channel, and the location can be determined.
View how the research is being conducted (text continues under the video):