Millions of tiny toads crawl over state park
CHIMACUM, Wash. - Anderson Lake was known, at least until now, for its trout and for the toxic blue-green algae that spurred public health officials to close the lake but leave the state park around it open.
For the next several days, however, the lake near Chimacum will be noticed instead for its streams of dime-sized Western toads, first noticed last week.
They're newly metamorphosed ex-tadpoles, doing their amphibious thing and scrambling across the land around the lake - in impressive numbers.
"I was just out there yesterday, and saw a million of them heading toward the woods," state park ranger Mike Zimmerman said Friday afternoon. "There are no more polliwogs," he added.
Instead, the four-legged tiny toads, between a quarter- and half-inch in body length, are "up in the woods. The ground was just absolutely alive with them."
"It's a pretty unique situation," added Zimmerman, who has been manager of Fort Flagler and Anderson Lake state parks for some 14 years. "I haven't seen this phenomenon" in those years, he said.
This August, the toad yield appears excellent not just at Anderson Lake but around East Jefferson County.
"I've talked to people with ponds on their property, and they are experiencing the same thing -- lots more toads," Zimmerman said.
And at the state park, "we have created a little more visitation ... the people who drove up made a beeline for the shore, with their cameras," in hopes of toad photos.
The tiny toads probably are creeping all over Clallam County as well, although they haven't received the attention of this year's Anderson Lake amphibians.
While not having noticed the tiny toads this year, state Fish and Wildlife Officer Win Miller remembers seeing "hundreds of thousands" of them, so thick it was imposible not to step on them on the trail, in the Hoh high country.
Migrations of the western toad, or bufo boreas, are noted throughout its range, which extends from western British Colombia and southern Alaska through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana and western Wyoming to northern California, Nevada, western Colorado, and western Utah.
They are so numerous during their annual migrations in Chilliwack, British Columbia, that the city this year agreed to temporary closures of roads near a lake to allow thousands of baby toads to migrate from wetlands to forest without danger, the Vancouver Sun reported last month.
Word got out late last week that an estimated 2 million newborn toads were emerging from Anderson Lake, the ranger said.
The counter-intuitive thing about this is that the lake is considered poisonous.
It's been closed to fishing and other waterborne recreation for all but a few weeks this year, after Jefferson County Public Health officials found anatoxin-a, a potent neurotoxin at about 100 times the level considered safe.
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This is an abbreviated story from the Peninsula Daily News, a media partner of KOMO News. Read the original Daily news story.
For the next several days, however, the lake near Chimacum will be noticed instead for its streams of dime-sized Western toads, first noticed last week.
They're newly metamorphosed ex-tadpoles, doing their amphibious thing and scrambling across the land around the lake - in impressive numbers.
"I was just out there yesterday, and saw a million of them heading toward the woods," state park ranger Mike Zimmerman said Friday afternoon. "There are no more polliwogs," he added.
Instead, the four-legged tiny toads, between a quarter- and half-inch in body length, are "up in the woods. The ground was just absolutely alive with them."
"It's a pretty unique situation," added Zimmerman, who has been manager of Fort Flagler and Anderson Lake state parks for some 14 years. "I haven't seen this phenomenon" in those years, he said.
This August, the toad yield appears excellent not just at Anderson Lake but around East Jefferson County.
"I've talked to people with ponds on their property, and they are experiencing the same thing -- lots more toads," Zimmerman said.
And at the state park, "we have created a little more visitation ... the people who drove up made a beeline for the shore, with their cameras," in hopes of toad photos.
The tiny toads probably are creeping all over Clallam County as well, although they haven't received the attention of this year's Anderson Lake amphibians.
While not having noticed the tiny toads this year, state Fish and Wildlife Officer Win Miller remembers seeing "hundreds of thousands" of them, so thick it was imposible not to step on them on the trail, in the Hoh high country.
Migrations of the western toad, or bufo boreas, are noted throughout its range, which extends from western British Colombia and southern Alaska through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana and western Wyoming to northern California, Nevada, western Colorado, and western Utah.
They are so numerous during their annual migrations in Chilliwack, British Columbia, that the city this year agreed to temporary closures of roads near a lake to allow thousands of baby toads to migrate from wetlands to forest without danger, the Vancouver Sun reported last month.
Word got out late last week that an estimated 2 million newborn toads were emerging from Anderson Lake, the ranger said.
The counter-intuitive thing about this is that the lake is considered poisonous.
It's been closed to fishing and other waterborne recreation for all but a few weeks this year, after Jefferson County Public Health officials found anatoxin-a, a potent neurotoxin at about 100 times the level considered safe.
-----
This is an abbreviated story from the Peninsula Daily News, a media partner of KOMO News. Read the original Daily news story.