THOUSANDS OF WESTERN TOADS SAVED FROM HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AT FISH LAKE
This was the sixth year of the Valhalla Wilderness Society’s Western toad conservation project at Fish and Bear Lakes between New Denver and Kaslo. Each spring, thousands of adult toads move down from the surrounding mountains and cross Highway 31A to breed and lay eggs in Fish Lake, and then return across the highway to their mountain habitat later in the summer. Highway traffic along this popular destination route poses a particular risk to gravid (egg-bearing) females that can carry clutches of over 12,000 eggs.
VWS biologist Amber Peters tells about the experience this year of helping the toads safely across the road, and explains the significance of the work to biodiversity conservation in general, and to VWS’s campaign to protect the area, which is some of the highest value wildlife habitat and recreation lands in the southern Interior of BC.
VWS biologists and volunteer “Toad Ambassadors” spent many nights this year scouting the study area in the remote mountain pass of Highway 31 A to record breeding toads and save them from highway mortality. The adult toads crawl across the highway, snatch worms on their way to and from Fish Lake, and are recorded in data sheets before being moved to safety.
Approximately 650 adult toads were carried across the highway this year, and almost 5,000 have been helped since the start of the project. Each nighttime survey was an adventure to look forward to. In the spring, we witnessed many bears and their cubs feeding on the roadside vegetation, and a general diversity of wildlife that was truly remarkable. We observed moose peacefully feeding in the wetlands that we came to know individually and always anticipated meeting again, and sometimes we would have to patiently wait as they occupied the highway with no apparent intention to move. There were many herds of elk and deer, bats zipping by to catch mayflies, otter, mink, beaver, waterfowl, loon, great blue heron, and other amphibians and reptiles. At times, as the night fell, we couldn’t help but pause from our focus on the highway to gaze at the vast constellations of stars over the wild and beautiful mountain range that is now being considered for a major resort town. To lose this place of beauty would be nothing less than a tragedy for British Columbia.
In late summer, another incredible event occurs with hundreds of thousands of toadlets hatching in their aquatic habitats and crossing Highway 31A to migrate into the mountains. This migration occurs in the heat of the day, so highway traffic is heavier, and many travellers stop to see what’s happening at the Fish Lake rest stop.
Here we offer public education about the project and the risks facing it. Western toads are a particularly special species because they are a bridge between the aquatic and terrestrial worlds, bringing nutrients from the lakes and wetlands through the mountain forest and even into the high alpine, feeding fish, leeches, birds, snakes and frogs along the way. The toadlets that survive spread out across the landscape before burrowing to overwinter below the frost line.
This impressive migration is truly a force of nature, like the great migrations of wildebeests and caribou, and it is clear that our help is needed to make it a safe journey. With the ongoing support and involvement of the Columbia Basin Trust, the Regional District of Central Kootenay – Kootenay Lake Local Conservation Fund, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, the Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program, local businesses, volunteers and biologists, this project has been a significant community effort to protect the provincially yellow-listed Western toad; a Species of Special Concern in Canada. The Western toad is just one. Migration warning signs and deflection fencing will remain permanent at Fish Lake to help with future migrations. [Photo: A Sherrod] A mass of tadpoles metamorphose into toadlets at a staging area in preparation for their migration at Beaver Lake. [Photo: Craig Pettitt] important species in the beautiful wetland, lake and mountain ecosystems of the New Denver Kaslo corridor, and they play an important role in the delicate ecosystems they represent.
An overwhelming concern for this place of abundant life would be the unmanageable level of traffic that would come with the proposed Zincton Mountain Resort, which would operate on the very mountain that is the core terrestrial habitat for the Fish Lake toad population. The massive increase in highway traffic and human use of this core mountain habitat would surely spell the end of the benefits achieved from this community conservation project.
This year, an exciting discovery was made that raised further concerns regarding the impacts that the proposed commercial tenure would have on the extraordinary migrations of Western toads at Fish Lake. When a hiker alerted VWS to toadlets moving at the snow line on London Ridge in late spring, researchers rushed to document the phenomenon and, given the time of year, concluded that this was the continuation of last year’s toadlet migration. Then, later in the summer, toadlets from last year’s hatch were found at the summit of London Ridge at about 2200m elevation. This finding further demonstrated that the vast migration extends over a long seasonal and spatial scale, and that toads are important landscape connectors.
In late summer, the deflection fence that was finalized in 2019 guided tens of thousands of migrating toadlets away from their usual high-mortality highway crossing to a toadlet migration bridge under the Goat Creek bridge on Highway 31A. Hundreds of tourists now visit the Fish Lake rest stop to view the toadlets in their various stages of metamorphosis, and to see them migrating along the low-level fence. A VWS interpretive sign, brochures and interactions with toad researchers and volunteer ambassadors create an integrative learning experience.
VWS is now analyzing the Western toad population dynamics from six years of study, to bring similar mitigation efforts to the region’s Beaver Lake, where we have continued to monitor a significant breeding population of Western toads that are also at risk of road mortality.
With pressures of climate change, habitat loss and degradation, and disease having a particularly negative impact on global amphibian populations, efforts must be taken to preserve these remaining significant populations. To date, the Fish Lake toad project has been a huge success, and we are very grateful for our supporters and for everyone who stopped to learn about Western toads and their incredible journey this year. VWS would like to thank Bradley Higham of Collabo Consulting Inc. for the contribution of a beautiful new website this year. Please visit www.vws.org for more information on our projects. Amphibians are sensitive to environmental change and are therefore considered indicator species. Habitats where amphibians are still found in healthy populations should be of high priority for preservation.
