Vermont Fish and Wildlife is asking drivers to slow down and be cautious when travelling at night in early spring or to take alternate routes to avoid driving roads near wetlands and ponds that salamanders and frogs cross during their breeding season.

Every year, typically in early spring, many of Vermont's amphibians leave their overwintering sites and migrate to the wetlands and ponds where they will breed and lay eggs. The timing of this annual event, termed Big Night(s), coincides with melting snowpack, thawing soils, relatively warm evening temperatures, and rainfall.

One such place in Sandgate is just below the Notch where hundreds of black spotted salamanders cross between the brook on the south side of the road to a pond on the hill on the north side and back. If you get out of your car to help them, make sure you put them on the side they were heading.