Flattened frogs, toads and salamanders: Love and death on Pennsylvania roadways

[modrepub]

On warm, rainy, spring evenings, rangers close River Road in Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in northeastern Pennsylvania from about 4 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. the next morning to protect migrating amphibians from squishy deaths under the tires of motor vehicles.

Hordes of frogs, toads and salamanders are crawling and hopping to breeding pools in their annual rite of spring. Some will travel just a few hundred feet. Others might cover more than a quarter-mile.

All of them are focused on finding a mate and leaving behind gelatinous masses of eggs that, if conditions are favorable, will hatch into new generations of their species before the temporary pools dry up and disappear.

Elsewhere in the recreation area, outside of the protected passage over River Road, and across Pennsylvania and other northeastern states, countless other amphibians are making the same overland dash, and huge numbers are losing the race on roadways.

Several years ago, staffers at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary on the Berks-Schuylkill county line worried about similar carnage on the road crossing the Blue Mountain at the sanctuary. They tried “Caution, Amphibian Crossing” signs along the road.

And, to get a handle on the loss of life, they collected all the dead frogs, toad and salamanders they could find on Hawk Mountain Road. After just a few spring evenings, they had filled a gallon jar with the squashed remains.

A series of roadkill surveys in Indiana and New York in the late 1990s and early 2000s came up with a more quantified measure. In about a hundred days total they found more than 42,500 amphibians and reptiles dead on just a bit more than 7 miles of road.


https://www.pennlive.com/life/2019/03/flattened-frogs-toads-and-salamanders-love-and-death-on-pennsylvania-roadways.html

[FakeNoose]

1. Well we all know the REAL problem - deer

Hitting a deer on a PA road can kill you, or cause serious damage to your vehicle. Drivers will swerve to avoid hitting a deer and it can cause a serious or fatal collision. Even just a dead deer in the middle of the road is a problem. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that mounting one of those "deer whistles" on your car doesn't do shit.

[Freddie]

2. Yes

And they flock to more populated areas where hunting is not allowed. People go to Tioga County and wait all day to see a deer when there’s a whole family of them in their backyard in the Philly burbs.