Most of the time it’s a balance between desperation and happiness for Elisa Hanusch. Happiness is squeaking in the bucket she carries with her. Five male toads and one female toad sit and wrestle in it. Three males fight over the female, the others try in vain to climb up the smooth wall of the bucket. They don’t know that Elisa Hanusch, 34, may have just saved their lives. Desperation lies on the ground a few meters away from the shopper, flattened, her lungs crushed. It must have only been a few moments ago that a car hit the toad.
Every year in March a natural spectacle begins at the Kaiserweiher, which is increasingly threatened by humans. Thousands of frogs, newts and, above all, toads make the journey to the Kaiserweiher, one of the largest amphibian areas in Bavaria on the edge of Kaufbeuren, to spawn there, i.e. to lay their eggs. The toads have a magnetic sense in their heads – a kind of toad navigation system that always navigates them back to the place where the animals hatched.
Elisa Hanusch is your toad taxi. For several weeks she and other volunteers walk the approximately two kilometer long path around the Kaiserweiher and try to help as many animals as possible make their way across the streets. Because they are the greatest danger to amphibians. The Kaiserweiher is now “encircled” on three sides, as Hanusch says. Only one side of the pond is still directly connected to nature, the rest is built on with a university and two new residential areas. Many young families have moved to the area, which has such beautiful natural surroundings. Close to the small old town of Kaufbeuren and yet in the middle of the idyll of nature.
On this evening in mid-March, cars with loud music kept racing past Elisa Hanusch. The 40 km/h speed limit sign, above the sign on which the frog indicates that the amphibian migration has begun again, is often ignored. The animals are run over by cars. Or their lungs burst due to the suddenly changing air pressure on the road when a vehicle drives past quickly.
Elisa Hanusch feels encouraged by the recklessness of some drivers that her work is important. She walks along the small green fence that the helpers have set up on the side of the street. Her gaze is always directed towards the ground. For eight years every spring, she has been collecting frogs, newts and other amphibians for several weeks and carrying them across the street to the pond. But her favorite thing is the toads. The croaking in her bucket is now even louder. Eight toads have already gathered there. “They have such personality,” she enthuses. They are so “full of character” and have a “cuddly nature”.
For a long time, Elisa Hanusch was also unaware that there was a huge amphibian area here on the outskirts of the city. It was only when she observed a toad collection campaign in another town and researched where she could get involved that she came across the collection campaign run by the local branch of the Federal Nature Conservation Association in Kaufbeuren.
She releases the ten squeaking toads that she collected on the first route into the swampy water. Then she walks along Kemnater Straße. The cars are particularly fast here. The street used to be outside the city area and still looks like a country road today. This is also why the city of Kaufbeuren built a tunnel under the street for the amphibians. That evening he helped at least two toads: a biplane sat in the passageway in the beam of the flashlight. That’s what Elisa Hanusch calls the already taken couples – females with a male on their back. Since there are significantly more males than females in the toad population, the males try to “secure” a partner as early as possible – by climbing on their backs and allowing themselves to be carried to the pond.
A few meters further, the city has created a green strip that the toads should use to get through the two residential areas. There is now a playground in the middle of the “Toad Highway”. A path winds past it, which is popular with toads because of the warm asphalt, but is dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians. Instead, piles of dead wood and other hiding places in which the animals can hide on their way and protect themselves from the sun are missing. But Elisa Hanusch finds one at the playground. “Demonstration effect,” she laughs and slides two fingers under the toad man. He clings to her, apparently assuming he has caught a female. For Elisa Hanusch, this is a sign that he is on the way to the pond and not already on the way back. “I figured out the technology a few years ago,” she says proudly. She is not a biologist, but over the years she has learned more and more about the animals.
She also wants to raise awareness among local residents about the spectacle that takes place here every year. There are now information boards on the edge of the pond that explain the Kaiserweiher biotope and the amphibian migration. Elisa Hanusch took over the editing. Sometimes school classes come to the pond and help out, and this evening a teacher was out with a few students.
Elisa Hanusch spent two hours on the road that evening and at the end she counted how many animals she had documented. Because it was warm but dry, it was comparatively quiet that evening. She had 21 toads. Together with the others, she saved 102 amphibians that evening. In total, a few thousand of the almost 50 volunteers will be brought across the streets again in the spring.
Another spectacle will begin in June: hundreds of thousands of small, so-called hoppers, which have developed from larvae to tadpoles to small toads, will radiate from the Kaiserweiher into the surrounding landscape and look for hiding places. Elisa Hanusch will once again help to save as many people as possible from death on the streets and in drains.