Every year, more than a million animals die or are gravely injured while trying to cross or use Ontario roads. The toll for reptiles and amphibians can be extremely high, says Nathalie Karvonen, executive director of the Toronto Wildlife Centre.
While reptiles, especially turtles, are often admitted to wildlife-rehabilitation centers with serious injuries from being struck by a motor vehicle, she says, amphibians are generally killed outright at the scene. “We have a family cottage in the Kawarthas. And, after a rain, it is absolutely frightening how many frogs and sometimes toads will come out onto the road — sometimes hundreds and hundreds and hundred of them,” she says. “And people just don’t stop. They just speed on through and crush them with their tires.”
Changes to new or redeveloped roads, like ecopassages that allow these animals to pass underneath, have made some difference in road deaths, says Karvonen. But many roads in areas surrounded by natural habitat and wetlands where amphibians or reptiles are likely to be don’t have this kind of infrastructure, and the ecopassage isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.
The good news: you can help, as a driver or a pedestrian, just by playing crossing guard for a few minutes. TVO Today called up three experts to learn about best practices for helping animals like turtles and frogs cross the road safely.
Assess the situation
If you see an amphibian or reptile trying to make it from one side of the street to the other, “we would always recommend that you try to help them get across,” says Karvonen. After all, these animals are crucial to the ecosystems they inhabit, and research has found that they face disproportionate rates of death on the roads.
Beyond that, Karvonen notes, “they’re a vertebrate, and they feel pain like any other animal.”
A recent observational study found that disproportionate numbers of four frog species are dying on GTA roads. The green frog, pictured here, is one of them.(Jun Zhang/iStock)
The first step in any mission of herpetological assistance is always to make sure it’s safe to stop your car or step out in the road to help, says Sue Carstairs, executive and medical director of the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre.
The second step is to figure out where the animal is trying to go. Always move animals across the road in the direction they are heading, she says: “A turtle needs to be put in the direction it’s going, even if it makes no sense to us.” Some are heading to longstanding breeding sites that humans have cut off from other habitat by building a road in the way. Others, like frogs and toads in rainy spring weather, might have come out to benefit from the wet conditions or to head to breeding grounds themselves.
Once you’ve secured the environment and established the animal’s intended destination, helping can be as simple as encouraging them across the road or even picking them up and carrying them from one side to the other. Once they’re off the road, you’ve given them a chance to get where they’re going safely.
Amphibians
Frogs and toads are fast and difficult to pick up, so Karvonen suggests catching the animal as you would a spider: get it into a small plastic bin and slip a piece of card or something of that nature under the bin so you can carry it across.
“I pick them up just with my hands, but I’m pretty used to catching them,” she says. Another option is to use a small piece of clean cloth — steer clear of tissues and paper towel, she cautions, as the fibres may stick to your new friend. Also remember that frogs, like all amphibians, absorb chemicals very readily through their skin. So make sure that your hands are clean and that whatever objects you may be using are, too. If you encounter salamanders or newts, the same rules apply.
How to move amphibians safely
If you encounter hundreds of amphibians in the road after rain, as Karvonen has, attempting to shoo them off the road before you drive through is helpful, as is slowing down as much as possible. “When I had a second person with me, I have gotten out and walked in front of the car and literally just shooed them away from the car,” she says, noting that the situation took place in an area with a wetland along one side.
Reptiles
If you come across one of Ontario’s eight types of turtle, all of which are considered at-risk on the federal list of endangered species, you could well be helping a senior citizen. “A lot of the time, it’s adults,” Carstairs says. "And those adults might be decades old — or up to 100 years old.”
Egg-carrying females are particularly vulnerable, since they are often moving around in May or June trying to find a nest site. These members of the species are important to protect, because it can take turtles decades to reach maturity, and each individual turtle egg has a very small chance of survival. Even if the turtle seems to already be dead as the result of having been hit by a car, says Marcus Maddalena, nature-reserves manager at Ontario Nature, it’s worth calling the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre or a local wildlife centre. It may be a female whose eggs can be saved and hatched by conservation experts.
Turtle safety: How to help a turtle cross the road
Most of those eight species are smaller turtles, of up to eight inches in length, head to snout. They don’t pose much of a threat to humans. To help them across: pick them up from the sides on the back half of their body and then simply carry them in the direction they are trying to go. (Be aware that any turtle will nip if trying to defend itself, so you should try to avoid getting too near the head.)
“I move probably five to 10 turtles off the road a year just incidentally driving around,” says Maddalena. “When you’re watching for them, you actually see quite a few.”
While what’s on your hands may injure an amphibian, the opposite is true with turtles, says Carstairs: “Things like salmonella, which is a nasty bacteria for humans, they live with quite commonly.” After touching a turtle, she adds, make sure not to touch your face or anything else that’s sensitive before disinfecting your hands. (This is where that in-car bottle of hand sanitizer we all seem to have now can come in handy.)
One species, the noble snapping turtle — also known as Ontario’s Unofficial Official Animal, thanks to its impressive showing during TVO Today’s contest last summer — requires a slightly different approach. “The snapping turtle is our largest turtle, and they’re the ones that kind of look like prehistoric dinosaurs,” says Carstairs. Unlike most turtles, the snapper can’t retreat into its shell when threatened, which means it evolved a fearsome bite to protect itself.
You could get a nasty bite from a snapper if you’re not careful, so you should approach with caution. But, if you’re prepared, it’s actually not that hard to assist them — even by picking them up, which you should do from the back end and very carefully.
How to help a snapping turtle cross the road
Maddalena suggests reviewing the Toronto Zoo’s video on exactly this issue or some of the resources on the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre’s website.
As with other turtles, don’t ever pick them up by the tail: “Their tail is connected to their vertebrae, which are sort of connected to the underside of its shell,” says Maddalena. Also, he says, don’t drag them: “If you had to be moved, you wouldn’t want to be dragged either.”
What else can we do?
You can help protect these vital critters without ever getting out of a car, if you shift your driving behaviour, says Karvonen. If you’re driving through a natural area, especially after a rainstorm or during peak turtle-breeding season in May and June, “then just slowing down and being more aware of, what’s that thing on the road ahead of me?” she says. “If you blast up to it at 130 kilometres an hour, you’re not even going to know what it is until you’re driving over it.”
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