THE OREGONIAN (Portland, Oregon) 08 August 08 Western toads get by with a little help from their friends - Volunteers in Sunriver carry the migrating amphibians across treacherous bike paths (Matthew Preusch)
Sunriver: Few present at Lake Aspen likely envisioned tiny toads peeing on their hands as the high point of a central Oregon vacation.
But such were the circumstances this week for scores of volunteer toad herders and protectors assisting thousands of Western toads making their way out of the lake during their annual migration at this resort south of Bend. The migration is expected to last at least through today.
"I had 16 in my hand," Jordan Agtarap boasted to his mother, Christie. The family from Olympia was riding bikes along a Sunriver path when volunteers from the Sunriver Nature Center asked them to please dismount so as not to crush the coin-sized toads on the asphalt ahead.
Soon they were helping to move the toads into the sanctuary of the grass on the other side of the path.
"It's pretty wild," Christie Agtarap said. "It's fun to see them jumping around."
As far away as British Columbia, volunteers are helping Western toads manage their migration through man-made environments, but nowhere in Oregon is the toad-human interaction so extensive and predictable as it is at Lake Aspen.
On the shore of the man-made pond, youngsters -- many still in their bike helmets -- gathered the toads into 5-gallon buckets, squealing when the toads hopped free of their grasps or into their hair.
Once each collector had a respectable load of toads, he or she carried them across the path and tipped the buckets into the tidy lawn in front of a row of beige condominiums.
Parents took snapshots as the brown toads spread from a squirming mass into a peppering of brown dots hopping across the lawn toward what habitat they could find.
Juvenile toads will bury themselves under decks or in the nearby pine forest and return once they are mature in about four years to lay their eggs in the spring in Lake Aspen or some other pond.
"They are called explosive breeders. That means they breed in a very short period of time," said Andrew Blaustein, a zoology professor at Oregon State University. Each female will lay between 10,000 and 15,000 eggs, but 99 percent die of natural causes, he said.
Those who survive face predation from garter snakes, birds or, in the case of Sunriver, bicycle tires. Despite the help of staff and volunteers, there was evidence of the inevitable toad carnage, with squashed bodies spotting the path.
Once the ice is off the lakes in the high country, the juvenile toads start emerging, waiting for the right weather conditions -- such as Wednesday's clouds and rain in Sunriver -- to head for the woods.
"Anybody who used to camp in the high Cascades in the summer is familiar with the fairly staggering synchronicity of this emergence of toads," said Jay Bowerman, a Sunriver naturalist.
Bowerman likes to tell the story of friends who left their tent door open on a trip to an alpine lake, only to find it later full of squirming, hopping toads.
"It creates great amusement amongst the youngsters and consternation among their mothers when they start climbing into the tents and that sort of thing," he said.
The toads are found in Western forests from California to British Columbia, generally between elevations of 3,500 and 6,500 feet, but they are disappearing throughout their range because of habitat destruction, pollution and diseases such as water mold, Blaustein said.
That's part of why volunteers go to such lengths to protect Sunriver's population of toads on the move.
Luke Galloway, a 15-year-old naturalist at the Sunriver Nature Center, has been assisting at toad migrations since he was 8.
Last year was the biggest toad exodus he has ever seen, the largest since 1970, perhaps, when Lake Aspen was newly created.
Such was the flood of toads across the bike path and nearby River Road that he and others had to don orange safety vests and stop traffic to allow their passing.
"The mortality was just piles," he said. "All over the road."
Western toads get by with a little help from their friends