Common toad is becoming uncommon in UK, study shows

They are an iconic part of Britain’s natural world, inspiring myths, fairytales and at least one of its most-loved children’s book characters. But the number of toads hopping through British grasslands, forests and gardens has almost halved in a generation.

“Vast numbers of toads are being lost every year,” said Silviu Petrovan, a senior researcher at the University of Cambridge, who was lead author on the study showing just how uncommon the common toad is becoming.

Their decline mirrors that of many other domestic species in the UK, where the collapse in the natural world is accelerating to runaway speed as desperate calls for conservation conflict with strident demands for growth.

“The base-level population is much lower than it was even in the 1980s – and the decline is ongoing, confirming that we need to urgently act to protect this much-loved and once-common species before it’s too late,” Petrovan said.

The analysis was based on data from counts of amphibians by “toad patrol” volunteers, who collect and count toads, frogs and sometimes newts from the start to the end of the creatures’ spring breeding migrations, typically between March and April.

They found that between 1985 and 2021, the populations of toads counted by the toad patrols had fallen by 41% in the UK. Similar counts carried out in Switzerland showed the abundance of toads there had fallen by a third since 1973.

The study focused on trend estimation rather than the reasons for the decline, but the researchers speculated that road traffic was a major driver, combined with loss of ponds, increased urbanisation and the decline of the beetles, earthworms and slugs that toads feed on. In 1908, when Kenneth Grahame published the Wind in the Willows and Mr Toad fell head over heels in love with the motor car (“poop poop!”), he could never have known that decades later there would be millions racing up and down the roads of England, squashing his relatives one by one.

Petrovan said: “The situation toads are facing in Britain probably reflects what’s happening both in the wider rural landscape in Britain but also in Europe, too, and thanks to our partners in Switzerland we now understand how toads are faring overseas.

“Long-term monitoring of any species is crucial to its recovery, and together I hope we can build on our findings by increasing monitoring across more of the toad’s range in Europe in order to fully understand the wider situation the species is facing and how we can collectively help to conserve them.”