Call it a spring miracle—or frogs with fight.
Some of the chorus frogs who live in the now-infamous bulldozed pond have survived the destruction, filling the streets of Thorold once again with their mating calls.
As first reported by ThoroldToday, a developer sent in heavy machinery last month—with the city’s permission—and decimated the protected frog pond on the corner of Decew Road and Richmond Street.
But it now appears that some of the frogs survived.
“I really thought things were more dire,” says environmental activist Carla Carlson, in an interview with ThoroldToday. “It’s obvious that there are bits of that pond where they didn’t go as deep. I’m guessing the ones that survived are mainly from the areas they didn’t dig up.”
It’s still early in the frog breeding season and Carlson is worried that the surviving frogs won’t make it.
“Right now it’s the males calling, looking for mates,” Carlson says. “They don’t have a lot of protection with everything being dug up. They’re going to be laying their eggs in whatever place they can find. After they do their breeding they’re going to be up on the land and they need vegetation and a place to hide. It’s all barren.”
At the last city council meeting, councillors voted unanimously to look into hiring a restoration ecologist to restore the area. With the survival of some of the frogs, Carlson thinks that the city should start the hiring process sooner rather than later.
“I’m really sad because how do we restore this wetland and keep the existing frogs alive?” she wonders. “To restore something you end up probably trampling through it, to get it back to the way it was. That means more destruction. You would think that getting the wetland ecologist in as soon as possible would be really important.”
In the meantime, Carlson’s environmental group ‘Friends of the Forest’ wants the residents of Thorold to keep an eye on the frogs.
“There’s other frog ponds all over Thorold and if people want to monitor them, we’ll help them do it,” says Carlson. “People could just simply walk by the ponds or woodland areas and they could listen. We want the time, location, the temperature and wind conditions.”
If you want to share your findings with the 'Friends of the Forest,' you can head over to their brand new Facebook page. If you want to listen to some of the surviving frogs, watch the video below.
