Help a Toad Cross the Road

November 3, 2025

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• Biodiversity
• Wildlife
• WLA Archive

While my day-to-day at AWA is focused on Alberta’s conservation issues, I want to see strong environmental efforts and protections in our neighbouring jurisdictions too — the benefits of which bleed long past the borders.

By Kennedy Halvorson, AWA conservation specialist

Read the PDF version here.

 

It’s not often I get to be on the visitor side of a conservation event. So, it’s equal parts familiar and novel attending Toad Fest 2025.

What’s Toad Fest, you may ask? Well, every year in August, tens of thousands of Anaxyrus boreas toadlets make the perilous trek from Summit Lake, a key breeding site for the species in British Columbia, to the surrounding forested slopes where they’ll mature into adult Western toads (or Boreal toads).

Now you might be thinking, isn’t the Advocate about Alberta’s wilderness? What do I care about British Columbia conservation? Hopefully you’re not, but you could be. And to that I say, other species, ecosystems, and ecological processes have little regard for the lines humans draw on maps. While my day-to-day at AWA is focused on Alberta’s conservation issues, I want to see strong environmental efforts and protections in our neighbouring jurisdictions too — the benefits of which bleed long past the borders.

Plus, this story includes my first real brush with conservation work.

The beginnings of toad salvation

Historically, Western toad casualties sustained during this annual migration have been high. Toadlets are little match for the unmitigated summer traffic along Highway 6, which divides their aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. It’s a textbook case of habitat fragmentation, where loss of ecological connectivity significantly increases species’ mortality.

Pre-Toad Fest, the sight was grisly. Think kilometres of two-lane highway crusted black, thick with crushed toad carcasses. Croaked. My twelve-year-old brain couldn’t help but sear that memory deep, so you can imagine the huge relief I had when a couple of years later, the inaugural Toad Fest was held.

In its humble beginnings, volunteers from around the area came to scoop up toadlets lakeside. Traffic was reduced to a single alternating lane at each end of Summit, so buckets filled to the brim with the baby toads could be deposited on the periphery of the western red cedar and hemlock forests, bettering their chances of reaching adulthood.

This wasn’t a perfect solution. As early reports from 2012 (my first Toad Fest!) remark,

“Significant mortality occurred when cars were periodically allowed through. Some toadfest attendees were very disturbed by seeing toadlets being killed first-hand and participating in this mortality. This emphasizes the paradox of creating a large toad conservation event attended by many people and accompanying foot and vehicle traffic, which in turn, increases localized toad mortality.”

The toadlet tunnel

In 2014, the first toad tunnel was constructed by BC’s Ministry of Transport. With a soil-covered bottom stretching 1.8 metres wide, the intent was to provide a more natural-feeling route for the toads. Field studies immediately following the tunnel’s completion report observing “very large numbers of toadlets”, along with “at least nine other vertebrate species” using the corridor. Temporary fencing was erected shortly after to aid in directing the toadlets away from the road and through the tunnel. In combination, this wildlife-friendly infrastructure has been so successful at restoring connectivity and mitigating mortality that another underpass was constructed in 2022.

The conservation of Western toads at Summit Lake has come a long way, and similarly, so has Toad Fest.

Now in its 15^th year, the annual event hosted by the Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program is multi-purpose. Along with facilitating toadlet passage, Toad Fest raises awareness of the Western toad and other conservation efforts in the region and works to provide that personal connection to nature that motivates folks to care.

It’s the same ethos behind AWA’s Adventures for Wilderness Program, because no amount or phrasing of words I put on this page will inspire you more than actually getting out on the landscape and seeing what’s worth protecting for yourself (it won’t stop me from trying!).

Other learnings

Booths from other environmental organizations and local stewardship groups ring the grounds at the small provincial park at Summit Lake. The volunteers at Slocan River Streamkeepers have bins of benthic invertebrates (aquatic bugs) for the public to peruse. One is full of a healthy watershed’s signature residents, mayflies, stoneflies, dragonflies, and caddisflies. A good abundance and diversity of these orders of insects is an indication that a river or stream is doing well, as they are keenly sensitive to changes in water quality and pollutants. One of their members tells me these insects can live for years (years!) in their larval or nymph stages underwater. When they transform into adults and take to the skies, they have just a few weeks to months of life left to reproduce.

At the Kootenay Community Bat Project’s tent, I learn how bats drink. It’s such a mundane need that I’m embarrassed I never thought much about it before. They explain that because bats can’t land on the ground (apart from Antrozous pallidus, the Pallid bat), they must dive down, skidding along waterways to sip mid-flight. Each species needs a certain amount of space to drink, a  “swoop zone”  free of obstacles, depending on their size and maneuverability, so some streams may be too narrow or without sufficient stretches of open water for bats to use.

I hear from WildSafe BC that they’ve had a blessedly quiet year in terms of human-wildlife conflicts. The bears are staying high up on the slopes, well-fed by this year’s abundant berry crop. We share the mutual hope they’re busy gorging themselves, making up for the past years made lean by a lack of precipitation. The Kootenays, particularly this area along the Arrow Lakes, have been drought-stricken until recently and, along with high temperatures, have culminated in some severe wildfire seasons. Everyone’s grateful for this year’s rain.

As I visit each organization, it’s a welcome reminder that there’s still so much to learn. It’s also inspiring; in just this little pocket of BC, there are so many different grassroots groups, and so much good work being done. Conservation is a cool field, because it doesn’t really feel competitive — how could it be? We’re all working towards better environmental protections and values, so the success of others only spurs our own.

The Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program provides disinfected buckets after hands are washed and walks us over to a good spot to catch toadlets. I’m told Summit Lake is likely the largest breeding site for the species in BC, if not North America, and that because of the conservation work here, this population is increasing.

Having arrived a bit premature to the main migratory mass, we catch and transport 11 toadlets to safety across the road. In total, Toad Fest 2025 saw 350 participants save around 19,000 from being squashed. It’s equivalent to the brood of just a few Western toads, as one female can lay up to 15,000 eggs in a single clutch.

In conservation, every little bit counts.