On a typical night in October last year, a group of young people lined up on a country road in the Tashanpei (大山背) mountain area in Hsinchu County’s Hengshan Township (橫山), armed with nets and observation boxes. They swung the beams of their flashlights back and forth across the tarmac as if tracking a fugitive.
Suddenly, their beams picked out a Rana sauteri, more commonly known as Sauter’s brown frog in Taiwan. The tiny creature was stunned, frozen into stillness by the bright lights.
The five-member group, led by Shih Fen-ru (施芬如), a volunteer from the Hsinchu branch of the Society of Wilderness (SOW), crept carefully toward the creature. Just as Shih was stretching out her hand to capture the amphibian, a truck roared past and the group instinctively turned away from the vehicle.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY SHIH FEN-RU
When they turned back, they saw only a squashed frog, plastered to the road with its legs splayed out, looking more like a freshly pressed flower than an animal.
With no time to mourn the frog’s untimely demise, the volunteers immediately spotted another fat and gravid brown frog. Shih grabbed it and deftly transferred it to an observation box.
When the group had collected a number of the frogs, they carried the animals to a stream flowing 6m below the road and released them there to breed.
Last year marked the launch of the Hsinchu branch of the SOW’s brown frog protection campaign, on Shih’s initiative.
Shih, an associate professor at Ta-Hwa Institute of Technology who joined the SOW three years ago, said the Tashanpei area is a local study site.
In field study trips in 2008, Shih discovered big challenges facing the brown frogs living in the region because of a combination of factors including the species’ particular breeding habits, habitat fragmentation and the use of concrete slabs in slope and river bank protection work.
The Rana sauteri family is a woodland amphibian native to Taiwan. The species can be seen in large numbers only during its breeding season, when males and females converge in rivers and streams to mate.
“The creature’s reproduction tends to take place en masse, with large numbers of frogs traveling to streams simultaneously on particular evenings from September to November,” Shih said. “Their migration looks like they’re going to a group wedding.”
For the frogs living in the Tashanpei area, the road to mating is especially difficult and treacherous, Shih said.
“They have to cross a 5-to-8m-wide country road in twilight or poor light, jump a 90cm-high roadside barrier and then nosedive 6m to a concrete slope protection before reaching the breeding ground on the river bed,” she said. “Along the way, many frogs are run over by passing cars and trucks. During one field trip in 2008, I saw nearly 100 dead frogs, which prompted me to propose a ‘brown frog escort across love road’ campaign to the SOW Hsinchu branch.”
More than 200 volunteers, including SOW members, high-tech professionals from the nearby Hsinchu Science Park, school teachers and students, took part in the program last autumn, taking shifts to police the road.
“Each evening, four or five volunteers were assigned to patrol the route, advising drivers to slow down to avoid hitting the frogs as well as catching the creatures and taking them down to the river to mate,” Shih said.
Among the volunteers was Yeh Chin-ching (葉晶京), who at the time was a sixth grader and who is now a student at Sanmin Junior High School.
She spent her summer vacation completing more than 20 illustrations for a book, titled Jump, Sauteri! which was co-authored by Yeh’s mother and several other SOW volunteers to promote the campaign.
The book features the story of two male brown frogs — Sau Sau and Teri Teri — who engage in a race to see who can reach a stream where female frog Nana is waiting for marriage.
The two frogs hop neck-and-neck, competing to reach the stream first. Unfortunately, Teri Teri is run over by a truck while crossing the road, but Sau Sau manages to survive the risky road-crossing, his fate hanging in the balance when he jumps from the barrier wall into the stream below.
Shih said the SOW is recruiting volunteers to tell the story of Sau Sau and Teri Teri to elementary schoolchildren around Taiwan to instill in them awareness of environmental protection and wildlife conservation.
Noting that frogs are an important indicator of environmental health, Shih said the campaign is not just for the well-being of the species, but also symbolizes concern for natural ecology and biodiversity.
“We hope our campaign will bring attention to the poor planning and poor design of riverbank protection that is prevalent in Taiwan,” she added.
The installation of continuous concrete roadside barriers along mountain roads has fragmented the natural habitats of many wildlife species, which has hindered the foraging and migration patterns of small animals, she said.
The planning of infrastructure construction in mountainous areas lacks vision in terms of environmental protection, Shih added.
Such projects do not need environmental impact assessments and are not subject to strict supervision by environmental and conservation experts, Shih said.
“We hope our escort campaign will bring government attention to these issues and that the Hsinchu County Government will erect clear road signs to remind motorists that brown frogs will be crossing the road in October,” she said.
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