u/SaraGallegoM10

I'm not sure this is the right place to ask, but I have a moral dilemma I can't get out of my head, and I'm honestly struggling with it because of these little animals.

I often go to a beach here in Galicia (Spain) where there's a small stream that flows into the sea. When the tide rises a lot, many tadpoles get swept out to sea by the current, and others die when the current leaves them in spots that later dry up. That part, in the end, is just nature.

The worst part comes in summer: the beaches fill up with kids who play with them. They scoop them into buckets, take them home, pull them out of the water, throw them into the sea, or leave them on the sand. Most of the time the parents don't say anything. When I'm there, I try to explain to them that these are living creatures, and that if they do that the tadpoles will die and never get to turn into little frogs or toads. But of course, I'm not always there. There are fewer and fewer of them every time, and this last part is no longer nature's doing.

The spot itself doesn't offer many options: you can't go further upstream, because there's only a tiny trickle of water falling that's impossible to climb. I've thought about taking them out of there and moving them somewhere calmer, where they could actually grow up. They're tadpoles of common midwife toads, common Iberian toads, and common frogs — but I don't know if I'd be doing the right thing.

I've tried looking for information. Sometimes I see people rescuing them, but the videos that come up are usually cases where the tadpoles are in a spot that's drying out and they're going to die anyway.

What would you do?