Their populations are all threatened: the midwife toad and the yellow-bellied toad, the dice snake and the adder.

While the two amphibian species live in floodplains, which are increasingly rare in Germany, the adder need flowing water, and the adder prefers to colonize sandy heaths or rock dumps.

As different as their living spaces are, they all have one thing in common: their numbers continue to decrease in Germany.

This is shown by the publication of the new Red Lists of Amphibians and Reptiles, which the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) has now presented together with the Red List Center.

All 21 amphibian and all 14 reptile species occurring in Germany are included in the lists.

Peter-Philipp Schmitt

Editor in the section “Germany and the World”.

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The main cause of the alarming endangerment situation in both groups is the loss of their living spaces and partial habitats. According to the BfN, this includes breeding and spawning biotopes, structurally rich summer roosts and frost-proof wintering areas. "In particular, the effects of intensive agricultural and forestry use, the fragmentation of habitats by traffic routes and the ongoing land use by new residential, commercial and traffic areas are decisive for their loss."

For no species could it be determined that the populations have increased in the past 20 years. With only two amphibian and four reptile species, individual occurrences have stabilized, which is mainly due to nature and species protection measures: the agile frog, for example, benefits from the promotion of the deciduous forest portion in forests and the creation of new bodies of water, the eastern green lizard from conservation measures, among other things and upgrading of open land habitats.

"Without profound changes in agriculture and forestry, we will only find a large part of the species in a few isolated protected areas in the future," said Ulrich Schulte, coordinator of the Red Lists. “We urgently need more nature-friendly agriculture and forestry. In addition, we have to allow the natural dynamics in the open landscape again and reduce the land consumption in the traffic and settlement areas. "