My PhD brought me not only to Spain but also to Italy through a 2-year stay at the European Commission’s research center at the Lago Maggiore. The resesarch centre there is a quirky little European bubble nestled around the lake, bringing prosperity but also some outside influence that wouldn’t typically reach the Italian countryside, a bit more than an hour outside Milan. For example, there are people advocating for better cycling paths, the reopening of defunct train stops, or a small food distributor of (mostly) locally sourced products from small farms (I’m a big fan of Alveare).
The community has a funny little email distribution list where people trade, promote, and share whatever they feel like. It’s wild. From 600€ customised hypoallergenic cats with different eye colours to century-old alcohol being given away, as well as large snails and strollers. All you need to do is be quick and respond almost as soon as the email is sent out. I wonder why no one at the center has been employed to calculate the productivity loss caused by this list and people constantly checking it (at least I did). Sometimes I was lucky and found Italian books, plants, and furniture. I also came across a group dedicated to protecting biodiversity, active mostly in the spring to safeguard toads and frogs from one side of the street to the other. Roads that intersect the migration paths of toads when they journey to the pond to hatch their eggs.
How to save the frogs
End of winter, once the temperatures at night are getting less freezing, the association meets to set up small fences along the street. They also put up signs to inform drivers to slow down and to raise awarness for the migrating animals. As soon as the warmer nights collide with rain, the migration period of the toads and frogs will start, mostly in February and March. In those nights, the group organises shifts for each day of the week so that enough people will be present, walking up and down the fence to check for “movement,” as they call it. When toads gather in front of the fence, they are collected in a bucket. Once the bucket is full, the volunteer carries it across the street and releases the toads where they can safely make their way to the pond to hatch their eggs. However, the frogs were only carried in one direction. I am until today wondering how the hatched toads will make their way back to the forest crossing the street another time.
Also other creatures gather around the fence such as fire salamanders, frogs and even a snake, I encountered one evening.
The gathering of amphibs gathering people
It was Anna sharing the group’s yearly gathering in the email list that became one of my dearest friends there. I am not only very grateful for this beautiful friendship that blossomed, but also for meeting this little group of volunteers caring for the well-being of those more-than-human-beings. I loved, how the little group connected very diverse people from all age and all type of backgrounds. It was their motivation, dedication, effort and eagerness to protect the toads that fascinated me. For some of them it seemed to be more than just a regular evening activity but more a life purpose.
These volunteers are attempting to mitigate the harmful effects of landscape fragmentation, which disrupts the space and habitats of non-human creatures. They want to make people in the car see what often remains far away. Just by driving by and seeing the signs, maybe some toads that sadly met their fate under the wheels make people realise the consequences of roads built in the wrong places. While it’s uncertain whether this approach will significantly alter the system, taking no action would be worse. This effort offers hope that some of these amphibians may survive and continue their migration for more years to come. Maybe long enough until long-term solutions for their migration are found, cars will hover in the air, or will the toad evolve around the obstacle of the street? Like hopping with a big jump around it? Only time will tell.
