Toads and other amphibians are killed in enormous numbers crossing roads during breeding migrations, but volunteer toad patrols have shown that simple interventions save thousands of lives.
Road mortality during migration is a welfare emergency played out across millions of individual toads each spring. Death by vehicle strike may be sudden or involve crushing injuries that are not immediately fatal. Toads that avoid cars still navigate a stressful gauntlet of light, noise, and heat from road surfaces. Climate change alters migration timing, potentially mismatching with volunteer patrol availability. The scale of mortality - often the majority of adults in a local population crossing a busy road - makes this both a conservation and welfare crisis that simple human intervention can significantly reduce.