#A LITTLE MORE OBSESSED SCHEDULE DRIVERS#

MCCAMMON: The bad news is, LeClair says, is lots of drivers are now back on the road. LeClair's research appears in the journal Conservation Science and Practice. SHAPIRO: Those numbers track with data from Maine's Department of Transportation, which found a steep drop in the number of deer, turkeys and moose killed by cars and trucks over the same time period. LECLAIR: 2020 was a great year to be an amphibian, at least in recent history, because mortality rates declined by about 50%. They found only half as many frogs crushed on Maine's roads compared to previous years. MCCAMMON: And in the spring of 2020, at the height of pandemic shutdowns, the volunteers noticed something unusual.

And for the last four years, he's organized a legion of volunteers to canvass the roads of his state, surveying for amphibians and plucking them out of harm's way if they can. SHAPIRO: LeClair is now a graduate student at the University of Maine. And it didn't take long for me to realize that this was something that was pretty problematic. LECLAIR: I would see just tons of them getting hit by cars. MCCAMMON: But as LeClair got older, he had an awful realization about his beloved study subjects. LECLAIR: Basically, if you were to put this in a proportional sense, it's equal to the migration of wildebeests in the Serengeti happening in our backyards that we're just completely oblivious to most years. Some occasionally get lost, as they travel half a mile or more from their forest homes to seasonal puddles and ponds to breed.

You see, every spring in the eastern U.S., amphibians like the spotted salamander and the wood frog migrate. GREG LECLAIR: I had never seen a salamander so big and brightly colored before. Wildlife biologist Greg LeClair has been obsessed with amphibians since he was a kid, when one rainy day, a black and yellow spotted salamander stumbled into his driveway in Maine.

A little more obsessed schedule