Tadpole Rescue

   

     This morning, Jane and I went up to Oak Glen Preserve to hike the loop.  It was a perfect spring day.  I wish everyday (or most) were as nice as this.  Throw in with a few rainy days and life would be perfect.  While on the preserve, I shared with Jane that Naturalists and Rangers have implemented my idea to relocate Pacific Tree Frog and Western Toad tadpoles from the preserve's Duck Pond spillway.  On Friday, during my lunch break, I observed the water level had dropped an inch or so, but it seemed there was still plenty of time to get more tadpoles relocated.  As Jane and I visited the spillway, we were shocked to see that most of the water was gone.  All remaining tadpoles where is very small shallow areas or were beached on piles of wet sediment that would most likely become dry the next day.  I wanted to save them all.  Jane and I decided to finish hiking the loop, then return with equipment to relocate as many tadpoles as time would allow.

     As we returned to the trail head, I got the keys for the equipment shed on the trails from the Naturalist on duty, grabbed 5 small buckets, some cups, and a turkey baster before returning to the Duck Pond.  As I climbed into the spillway, I realized my feet were standing on piles of dead and dried up tadpoles.  We began collecting as many tadpoles as we can.  The turkey baster was the best tool to move them into the buckets, so we took terns using it.  We also used cups but due to how shallow the water was, it became a more difficult method.

     After about an hour, we had placed hundreds of these future frogs and toads into buckets ready for transport.  We could have stayed out there all day and would have been able to save all.  Sadly, I had two 4-H meeting to get to in the afternoon.  We had to stop.  As we left, it didn't feel like we made that big of a dent as 1,000s still remained.  We poured two buckets into the Red-wing Pond, one bucket into the Frog Pond, and two buckets into the Falling Waters Pond.  Kids loved to see the tadpoles we had in the buckets, and we allowed us to help with the release.  This was a fun project and it felt good to be able to do something that assists protecting our amphibian species, which is extremely important.  Just 24 hours later, I returned to see that all the water has dried out of the spillway, and the remaining tadpoles (in the thousands) were gone.  Though it is sad, this is apart of nature.