| By Olivia Rudgard It's a dark, wet night on the side of a road cutting through a Swiss forest. Cars rush past, their headlights lighting up a toad slowly creeping towards the edge of the sidewalk. The small amphibian steps its way off the curb and inches further into the road. Disaster seems inevitable, until a savior arrives — a child scoops the toad up and deposits it safely in the vegetation on the far side. This is the pivotal scene in Risky Routes, a short documentary made by a Switzerland-based team of naturalists and filmmakers. It seeks to shed light on the perilous journeys made by migrating toads to their ancestral breeding grounds, as well as the work of volunteers to save them. The documentary won Bloomberg's Green Docs competition on Wednesday for films addressing the urgency of climate change, along with a $25,000 prize.  A still from Risky Routes. Image courtesy of Thomas Klaper, Jonas Steiner and Roman Willi The humble toad may seem an unlikely hero for a documentary designed to alert people to the plight of wildlife. But that was partly why the filmmakers chose it. The plight of toads is under-covered, yet it's a prime example of how humans have destroyed and disrupted animals' natural habitats, says Jonas Steiner, an environmental scientist and one of the team of three that made the film. "We tried to really take that perspective of the toad, this little animal that has this big journey," he said. Toad populations are under threat globally because their migratory routes have been disrupted by roads and other barriers, while the ponds they return to year after year to reproduce are polluted or drained. Droughts exacerbated by climate change only add pressure to their ability to reproduce. Yet these issues and their impacts are poorly understood by a public that frequently can't differentiate between frogs and toads, says Thomas Klaper, a teacher and one of the other filmmakers. (The main giveaway is their skin: Frogs are smooth and shiny, while toads look bumpier.) Showing the short film to people "really made them feel like they're missing out on something that's at their doorstep." Filming from the perspective of a little animal proved logistically challenging. Toads emerge at night in wet weather and live in damp, soggy environments, a poor mix with expensive camera equipment. A sequence involving a pet cat was also challenging to film, since — as anyone who has interacted with a cat can tell you — they don't take direction very well. The team tried to use toys and food to persuade the animal to act in the manner they needed, but it did "not care at all," says Steiner. The team, which also included wildlife photographer and filmmaker Roman Willi, also had the police called on them as they filmed their car driving back and forth close to the toad's crossing. "They didn't believe us," Klaper said. "They thought we were lying about just making a movie about toads." The finished product is a six-minute film that also includes a slapstick sequence showcasing the competitive mating that toads engage in once they reach the pond. The overall effect is a hopeful one, says Klaper. The team hopes the documentary can be an educational resource to help children understand both how the modern world makes it difficult for animals to survive and how they can directly take action to help protect not just toads but biodiversity as a whole. Klaper is working with schools to build takeaways into their lessons on biodiversity and providing inspiration for kids to volunteer with the groups working to protect toads at dangerous road crossings like the one in the film. "It's not a sad story with a decline and just like everything's going to waste. I think our film has a light at the end of the tunnel," Klaper said. Read the story and watch the film here. | 
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