An army of thousands of frogs heading for their spawning grounds forced a road in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, to be blocked.
Amphibians are usually transported by volunteers who have transported 97,000 frogs in previous years, including 2,000 last year alone.
But this year, COVID-19 events make it impossible for people to gather, and now the authorities have taken steps to ensure that frogs are not affected by oncoming traffic on one of the city’s busiest roads.
“The frogs were here before the road came along,” said Kristel Saarm, a volunteer with the Estonian National Foundation. “Now the ponds where they breed are on one side of the road and their wintering grounds are on the other. That’s why they have to cross the road. “
The warm road surface can make amphibians sleepy and slow, and up to 300 of them can get stuck at once, making them vulnerable to cars.
Tallinn is considering building a tunnel under the road so that frogs can cross, or creating a pond on the side where they spend the winter, said the deputy head of the Haabersti district Oleg Silyanov.
Source: Reuters