Towards the end of April, I was given the opportunity to venture over to South West Cumbria in search of an endangered and often forgotten amphibian of our shores, now only dwelling in an incredibly rare and isolated coastal habitat.

A designated National Nature Reserve, Sandscale Haws is located along the sandy estuary of the River Duddon, boasting stunning panoramic mountain views of the Lake District. The dune grasslands that hold the shallow, freshwater pools are a unique natural environment that supports a vast array of flora and coastal bird life. Not only was this my first visit to Sandscale Haws, it was also the first time that I had been able to wander through dune slacks of this beauty and magnitude. Joining the local ranger team we went off in search of one of Britain’s rarest and most strictly protected amphibians, the natterjack toad.

Natterjacks are themselves confined to three main habitat types - coastal dune systems, upper saltmarsh and lowland heath, all of which are present at Sandscale Haws. Their rarity is mainly down to the usual suspects of both habitat loss and fragmentation due to urbanisation. At Sandscale they take to the warm, shallow waters amongst the sand dunes to breed and are doing so in at least 20 of the 40 pools there. Outside of the breeding season, the toads will live out in the dunes hunting for insects and will burrow into the banks for their winter hibernation. They are by far the noisiest amphibians we have in the UK and each year from April to July, the males will relentlessly demonstrate their rasping call from the pool edge at night to attract a mate. A daytime trip wasn’t going to provide this, but with a bit of luck and careful surveying, the spawn of the natterjack was a definite possibility.

We began to traverse the edges of the pools and navigate the dune slacks with cautious delicacy so as to provide as little disturbance as possible. Our aim was to identify spawn strings to establish population and breeding pair numbers as well as assessing and mapping the preferred locations of the spawning grounds. Various conservation works are carried out here by the ranger team which include turf-stripping (to create more bare sand habitat), grazing regimes, invasive plant species removal, dune stabilisation and pond restoration. At Sandscale there is an assemblage of frontal dunes, dune slacks and dune grassland all forming sadly what is now classed as the most at risk habitat in all of Europe.

Coastal sand dune habitats are highly diverse and Sandscale is home to some vibrant flora and fauna species. Coral root orchid, dune helleborine, spring vetch and dune pansy to name a few. Creeping willow and round-leaved wintergreen also thrive here.

Northern colletes mining bees, another UK priority species reverberated around us as we scaled the sandy tracks up the mature slacks for a viewpoint of the pool topography. The fluting song of the skylark and the occasional call from a sandwich tern in the distance provided a welcome accompaniment all around us. Meadow pipits with their erratic flight patterns fluttered in and out of tussocks and shovellers and shelducks made the most of the convenient standing bodies of water.

What struck me most was that as soon as you dropped down to a pool to continue the search and temporarily leave behind the lakeland fell panoramic, the tranquility of this very special place went to another level altogether. Out of the wind and hunkered down under the dune ridges presented the perfect marriage of calmness and solitude. Clusters of cladonia lichen decorated the ground and we even caught a momentary glimpse of a great crested newt in the margins of one of the pools.

Marram grasses and other dense vegetation is a constant threat to the indispensable bare ground habitat on the dune grassland areas and its control is one of the priorities of the Sandscale rangers. Some of this imbalance in the dune systems is in fact caused by a local decline in grazing wild rabbit populations because of the myxomatosis disease. I was surprised to see that the often maligned and persecuted European rabbit is sought after here, with safe habitats created for them around their burrowing areas. Rabbits are in fact a key stone species of coastal sand dunes. Through their burrowing habits, they keep sand moving through the system and maintain an open, short and diverse sward; thus slowing the process of vegetation succession to a species poor grassland - something which is always trying to push through because of the gaps in the ecosystem. Managing habitats as sensitive as this is never easy, and with that comes a lot of responsibility. The common factor of urban development is apparently another reoccurring threat which comes of little surprise to me. We should be ever grateful that organisations such as the National Trust and the like are able to take on the management of these incredible places and protect them as well as they do. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

Here is where I felt really grateful though. As we circled several of the pools amongst the dunes, what I had been hopeful of in the lead up to the trip became a reality. Present around the pool margins, meticulously draped over the submerged vegetation were the classic spawn strands of the natterjack toad.

The female natterjack will lay one to two metre long strands of spawn. She can lay up to a whopping 7,500 eggs in one season. The eggs are black and are laid as two spawn strings, each string containing a single row of eggs, although sometimes they are initially arranged in a zig-zag and will settle into a single row after a few days. In comparison, the common toad will lay larger, less delicate looking eggs in deeper water that are fully wrapped around vegetation. The feeling of gaining the affirmation that natterjacks were not only there but also breeding around us was magical and it felt almost a privilege to witness just a small part of the work that goes into aiding their conservation on the coastal fringe of Cumbria.

Natterjack eggs begin to hatch after about a week and quite incredibly, they will metamorphose into their toadlet form within two months. They reach sexual maturity three years later and will then return to the water to breed. With a little luck natterjacks can live for up to 15 years in the wild.

Inevitably, these days a lot more than luck is required to overcome the many obstacles that this dwindling species has and will continue to face.

It is however, especially reassuring that we now have teams of specialists dedicated to their protection and survival. This small, nocturnal, short sward, dry-habitat loving amphibian is a vital element of our ecosystems and food chains but is now sadly in severe decline.

A common misconception is that they are exclusively a coastland species. The reality is that they have been pushed into inhabiting these ecologically condition-specific niches because of habitat destruction, with our increasingly scarce dune slack pools like the ones I visited in Cumbria now the only suitable habitat left for them in the UK.

The natterjack toad. A species that we simply cannot afford to lose.

A massive thank you to Darren and Emily at Sandscale Haws for their hosting skills and wonderful work on natterjack conservation. Long may it continue.