Anaxyrus boreas
Identification Tips:
Adults
• Rough, dry, warty skin with colour varying fron yellowish to tan, gray, or greenish on top
• Adults have white or yellowish central stripe extending the length of back
• Oval glands protrude behind each eye
• Females large (to 12 cm excluding legs)
Juveniles
• Dry warty skin
• Black, brown, greenish, or reddish without stripe in middle of back
Tadpoles
• Small and black or dark brown
• Eyes about midway between mid-line and outside edges of head
• Congregated often moving in schools
Egg Masses
• In single or intertwined long strings of jelly at or near water surface
Conservation Status:
| British Columbia | Canada | Natureserve | |
| COSEWIC | Species at Risk Act | ||
| Blue List | Special Concern | Special Concern | G4, S4 |
Life History:
• Sexually mature at 2-6 years of age
• Females may only reproduce once in their lives
• Feed on a variety of invertebrates
• Retreat to aquatic habitats during periods of dry weather
• May migrate several kilometres over the course of a year, often along stream corridors
• Tadpoles feed on suspended particles of plant material or bottom detritus
• Metamorphose into toadlets in mid-summer, within 3 months of hatching
Habitat:
• Use a wide variety of aquatic and terrestrial habitats
• Breed in lakes, temporary or permanent pools, wetlands of all kinds, roadside ditches etc.
• Found in all forest types, old fields croplands, from sea level to above 3000 m elevation
Range:
British Columbia
• Throughout the province including Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii
Global
• Along Pacific Coast from southern Alaska to Baja California
• Inland to central Alberta, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and northern New Mexico
• Absent from most desert areas in the southwest.
Comments:
• Western toads are extremely vulnerable to roadkill as they migrate to and from breeding ponds
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Primary Information Sources:
Efauna BC: http://ibis.geog.ubc.ca/biodiversity/efauna/
BC Conservation Data Centre: http://a100.gov.bc.ca/pub/eswp/
