A town councillor and co-ordinator of the Smallwood Toad Patrols near Sandbach has had her essay, "Crossings", about toad patrols short-listed for a top prize.

Jane was so fascinated by the work of the group she set up that she wrote a story about their findings and entered it into the Future Place Environmental Essay prize.

The prize is sponsored by the Eden Project, Lancaster University Future Places Centre, Iceland, Digital Economies and Saraband Publishers.

The essay was also a semi-finalist in the Van Der Mey Non-Fiction Prize (USA).

Sandbach Nub News told in January here. how Jane set up the group four years ago.

Now more than 40 volunteers, ranging from eight years of age to 73 from as far away as Macclesfield but also Sandbach and Alsager help out with toad patrols during the mating season.

They help the toads to cross roads in Cherry Lane, Alsager and Lawton Heath and Brookhouse Lane, Moss End Lane, Pitcher Lane, Mill Lane and Back Lane in Smallwood near Sandbach.

Jane says the toads' mating season is now very much in full swing in Smallwood and on Cherry Lane. One night alone patrollers helped 121 migrating toads in under two hours. Toads return to the pond where they were born to mate.

Jane, a member of Alsager Town Council, is also deputy leader of the Animal Welfare Party.

She said: "I'm really pleased that the subject matter – toads' Spring migrations, and their vulnerability vis-à-vis human infrastructure – was appreciated by the judges.

"This piece is non-fiction completely taken from real-life events and all on our doorstep here in Cheshire.

"I'm happy that nature writing about toads being acknowledged in this way will raise awareness among a much wider audience – readers who may not ever have thought about toads' incredible lives."

Last month her poem 'Toads During Lockdown' was Highly Commended in the Shepton Mallet International open poetry contest.

She was invited to Somerset to give a reading of the poem, printed below, at the Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival.

Toads During Lockdown by Jane Smith

Locked down, I missed those March nights,

Rain on the tarmac, mist on the land,

And your slow, slow journeys back to your natal ponds,

Toad minds focused on the job in hand.

Many evenings after sitting through the human news

With its daily body counts and endless flow charts,

I looked out at the shared stars and pictured you crossing safely,

Back to where you were born, no trucks, no cars. Anthropause! It's what I'd wished for you each Spring

No traffic, no tyres crushing toad lives and lust;

But the price we paid was high, so high -

A plague, a plague on all of us.

Though I cried for people's sorrow,

There was a soft green shoot of hope for us yet.

Could we live differently, humbly, more kindly?

Rediscover our species and its seasons, re-set? One night I watched through a window our common moon,

Imagining the lanes alive with your throaty chords,

And heard the radio downstairs,

The Beatles coming up through the floorboards,

Singing your toad message

With a human song:

We just need to get back,

Back to where we once belonged. How Jane began writing Jane said she returned to writing during lockdown after a 20-year hiatus and the first piece she wrote was published by the environmental journal, Dark Mountain, which encouraged her to keep writing. After that she was runner-up in the Bat Conservation Trust's Batty Laureate award with 'Frequencies at Dusk', an essay about bat watching in North Staffordshire. And Jane's fame doesn't stop there - next month her essay 'Morris', which is about pigeons and human infrastructure, will be published by Dark Mountain.