Though the study didn’t cover the reasons for the decline, traffic certainly plays a part: Froglife estimates that 20 tonnes of toads are killed on UK roads every year – in other words, several hundred thousand. Unlike frogs, which would probably be happy to mate “if you left out a bucket of water”, according to one of Warminster toad patrol’s founding members, Iain Perkins, toads like large ponds. Their ability to stay out of water for longer than frogs, means they can travel further to reach them – sometimes hundreds of metres, Petrovan says. They tend to stick to their ancestral migration routes – it’s common for adult toads to return to their birth pond to mate.