There are a total of seven toad tunnels under the road between Gasteren and Oudemolen. “They are really a solution,” says Henk Hellema of the toad working group Gasteren. “Because when those tunnels were not yet there, we found hundreds of flattened specimens every spring. Tragic.”
These tunnels are now there, but they must actually be used by the animals. “And that is why today we are having a big cleaning day with eighteen volunteers,” says Hellema. “We remove leaves and vegetation near and on the screens that have been constructed along the roadsides. In this way we make it easier for the toads to reach one of the tunnels. If we did not do this, the animals would easily climb via leaves and moss over the screens and they still hit the road.”
And that is especially important these days. The toad migration will soon begin again. Then the toads return to the area where they were born to mate. “A road has been constructed between the front and rear peat,” says Hellema. And that is why the working group would like the animals to pass under the road, instead of over it.