Every summer thousands of Western Toads emerge from wetlands in Chilliwack’s Ryder Lake neighbourhood, freshly metamorphosed from tadpoles to tiny toadlets. These creatures, no bigger than an earbud on your headphones, journey en masse to their forest homes. Along the way they must attempt to cross roads, risking their lives to answer the call of this natural phenomenon called migration.

The FVC has worked tirelessly to support this migration, installing an amphibian-friendly culvert (toad tunnel) under the road in 2015 and installing temporary directional fencing annually to get the toadlets where they need to go.

While this tunnel has saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of amphibians since, there are always some toadlets who slip through and make their way around the fence, or choose to migrate in another direction, and are subject to the treacherous roads standing between the wetlands and the forests.

This is why we encourage everyone to take the voluntary detour route.