After years of unlikely species survival, the Western Leopard Toad looks set to face its biggest existential threat — a 1.2km stretch of road through a wetland in Noordhoek, Cape Town. And the toad may have to face it alone.
An environmental group fighting to protect the habitat of the pint-sized amphibian recently lost the latest round of an eight-year court battle against the City of Cape Town and the provincial government. ToadNUTS, which forms part of the Noordhoek Environmental Action Group (NEAG), was this week unsure whether it had the resources to continue the fight.
The high court in Cape Town last month dismissed NEAG’s application to overturn government environmental approval for the construction of a new road known as “Houmoed Road” phase one. The court ruling effectively gives the green light to the road project that would ease congestion in the Noordhoek valley by traversing part of a wetland site, home to three known leopard toad breeding ponds.
ToadNUTS is mulling over whether to appeal the court ruling, a move that would incur further legal costs with no guarantee of success. “We’ve spent almost eight years of our life on this thing, and around R800,000,” said co-founder Alison Faraday. “It has been an expensive and really exhausting process to be involved in. We’re meeting our funder and our legal team next week.”
Opponents of Houmoed Road fear it could be the last straw for the endangered Western Leopard Toad. They say the proposed mitigation measures, including “toad underpasses” — tunnels in the form of dry culverts under the slightly elevated wetland road — are largely untested. If mitigation fails, the toad population may have nowhere left to go.
Faraday says the court ruling set a precedent for future legal showdowns related to biodiversity: “It could be used to make bad decisions about the environment.”
The Noordhoek Valley is under pressure due to several developments, among them the newly approved Generations School, and an upmarket development on the slopes of Chapman’s Peak that caused dust storms during the windy summer season and kaolin spills into a green corridor.
Western Leopard Toads have grown in popularity over the years, thanks largely to ToadNUTS volunteers who sometimes shepherd them across busy roads. There are even “toad crossing” road hazard signs in the valley — a popular tourist attraction. Since 2007 ToadNUTS has rescued and recorded thousands of toads while mentoring more than 100 volunteers, according to the organisation’s website.
Dr Andrea Marais-Potgieter, a Noordhoek-based conservation psychologist and NEAG member, described the fate of the Western Leopard Toad as an “indicator that environmental decisions being made are not precautionary or responsible.
“The city did not explore all the alternative solutions that we suggested and ultimately the toads and the wetlands will pay the price.
“The onus should not be on small volunteer organisations to hold decisionmakers accountable for environmental destruction because it is not sustainable. If the City of Cape Town wants to remain a richly biodiverse space, they will need to start thinking differently about how they view endangered species.”
