A nature reserve near SESTRORSK, Russia (AP) – It occurs every spring along a road section in the north of Russia…
A natural reserve near SESTRORSK, Russia (AP) – This happens every spring along a section of the road north of the second largest city in St. Petersburg: many yellow vests, patrol near the Sondrortsk Bog nature reserve.
They serve as guards to cross thousands of toads and frogs, who try to sail to their Frai sites.
There is generally not much traffic, but even the relatively low number of vehicles would still kill up to 1,000 toads each year, said Konstantin Milta, a senior herpetology researcher at the Holy Petersburg Zoological Institute.
“On large highways, the mortality rate is monstrous. Sometimes the road surface can be covered with a layer of dead animals,” Milta told the Associated Press.
On this section, a large reddish orange panel which presents one of the amphibians warns motorists: “attention!” Slow down! The toads cross the road. “
When the volunteers find one of the creatures, they collect it, put it in a plastic bucket and make a record before depositing it in the grass on the other side.
“So cute!” One of the volunteers said, referring to the way the toad clung to his pink glove.
In the SESSTRORTSK peat bogs reserve, “the toads migrate from the forest to the bay in the spring, reproduce in the reeds of the coastal strip, lay eggs, then, somewhere in mid-May, they leave the water and migrate to the forest,” said Milta.
“So they cross this road twice,” he added.
The members of this bucket brigade have been volunteer since 2016, said Viktoria Samuta, head of the environmental education section of the management of the protected areas of Saint Petersburg.
According to the weather, work begins in mid-April and continues for a month or more, she said, with more than 700 volunteers who participate each year.
Last year, Samuta said, the volunteers helped move thousands of specimens.
“It is very good that in recent years, more and more people have helped living beings,” she said. “Our mission is, precisely, to make people love our nature more and more and to be willing to help him.”
Volunteer Diana Kulinichenko described this a great break from her studies.
“I whine all the semester I want to go to the forest,” said Kulinichenko. “And here is the forest, the toads, you help the toads, you are in the forest, you breathe the clean air. And I really want to volunteer, so after that, I will look where I can do it.”
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