Sonoran Desert Toads are denizens of the grasslands in our area of southeastern Arizona. We have lived here since 1999 and had never seen one on our property until recently. There are probably several reasons for this but the most prominent is the fact that our entire area was horribly overgrazed by cattle in the 1920s-1940s. Mesquite and Acacia took over the grasslands making it more of a steppe habitat. We fenced out the cattle in 1999 when we moved here and since then many small landowners in our valley have also fenced out the cows. With the break in a 30 year plus drought native grasses are starting to come back. On our lot we had no grasses that we could find two years ago. The last two years have been wetter than usual and now we have thousands of acres of three to four foot tall grass across the valley. With the return of the grasses we are getting some of the grassland species back including the Sonoran Desert Toad. The fellow in the picture visited us two nights ago during a light rain. He was 8 inches long and big enough around that I could not reach around him with two hands. He was enjoying the beetles and moths attracted to our back light. He was made welcome and we hope to enjoy him more as the summer progresses. We are hopeing he will find a friend and raise a family in our four tiered bird pond in our yard where he was soaking the next morning when I went out to feed the birds. We are hopeing that the Sonoran Desert Toad is back for good.
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