Frog rescue project and a framing approach at the Tápió-Hajta area
Abstract
The frog saving project began near Farmos (Hungary) in 2006, which is being coordinated by three organizations at present. The most abundant amphibian species is the Common Spadefoot Toad (Pelobates fuscus) in the studied area. Road 311 crosses their migration routes towards the swamp. A temporary drift fence with the length of 1,3-1,5 km was built to prevent the amphibians from mass overrun at first in 2007. In 2011, 75 pitfall-traps were used to amphibian prevention. We observed 9 amphibian species in the studied area. The mean number of the saved amphibian specimens is 45000, but this result alters every year. Besides the nature conservation work we highly emphasize the importance of environmental education, too. The children who had contributed the frog saving project had an active part in our conservation work. The aim of our work was to measure the change in the children’s attitude and motivation during and after the work with a simple test. We measured whether they understood the aim of our work, whether they found our work useful or not? We considered the factors that could influence their behaviour towards the amphibians (sex, age, parents behaviour), and if this relation had any influence on how they evaluate the conservation work. According to our results, after their involvement in the frog-saving project, their motivation and interest have significantly increased. They have become aware of what kind of actual dangers threaten the amphibians, though the question ‘Why amphibians are important beings’ only about half of them could answer correctly. Independently of their attitude towards frogs they could appreciate the usefulness of our work. In the investigated children groups any significant correlation between the sex, the age, the parents approach and the children’s attitude towards amphibians was detected.
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