A CONSERVATION project to raise awareness of Britain’s rarest and noisiest amphibian has been launched on Cumbria’s coastline.

A £49,500 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) will be used to organise activities to boost interest in Natterjack Toads and urge people to help conserve them.

Entitled Promoting Cumbria’s Natterjack Heritage, the one-year project will continue work already being done to improve habitats.

It will also include initiatives to bring more people into contact with Natterjacks in Cumbria, which is home to around half of the country’s breeding sites.

Bill Shaw, the officer leading the project, said: “Natterjacks have thrived in and around a lot of the communities along the Cumbrian coast and their evening chorus is a well-known feature of the springtime,” he said.

“This project aims to publicise their presence and bring them back into people’s focus, while trying to boost populations in their old haunts and establish some new ones.”

A website for people to record sightings and sounds, guided walks and a project to gauge reaction from former industrial workers are also planned.

“Natterjacks are quite unusual in that they used to breed in industrial sites in Cumbria and various sand and gravel sites along the coast,” explained Mr Shaw.

“We are going to do a social exercise with local history groups where we go and find out how people felt about them.”

A computer model will also be used to predict where the toads should be found but it is hoped new sites could be discovered as well.

Money has been earmarked specifically to improve habitats and install new interpretation signage at the National Trust’s Sandscale Haws Nature Reserve, near Barrow.

Mr Shaw said the Natterjack was a ‘special feature’ of Cumbrian wildlife.

“They are quite nice, visually,” he said. “They look attractive and they’re a real audio spectacle - it’s quite an evocative sound, certainly around the Duddon estuary.

“They create more of a tropical rainforest sound, they are a mysterious species.”

Visit www.arc-trust.org for more information.