Andy Hill said, “You never forget your first time seeing a giant salamander.”
When he witnessed his first eastern hellbender, he was a teenager standing thigh-high in the Watauga River outside Boone, North Carolina, casting a line on an early October day. Beneath the crystal-clear water, the two-foot-long salamander was concealed behind rocks.
According to Hill, who is currently the Watauga Riverkeeper for MountainTrue, a nonprofit organization that protects natural ecosystems in western North Carolina, which is home to a portion of the Blue Ridge Mountains, you never lose your sense of amazement and otherworldliness when you see one.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday nominated the ancient species, which outlived the dinosaurs and originated on the supercontinent Pangaea, for federal protection. The animals will be protected under the Endangered Species Act if the proposal is approved following a period of public feedback.
Their habitat, ability to reproduce, and ability to find food have all been challenged by dams, industry, and even flooding made worse by climate change, which has caused a sharp drop in their number in the United States in recent decades. Only 12% of eastern hellbenders are able to reproduce effectively nowadays.
Hurricane Helene decimated the Hellbender population in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which was thought to be the healthiest of the eastern subspecies, this fall.Amidst the debris, thousands were either killed or relocated. Others returned to the river after being discovered in flooded church basements. However, some rivers are so contaminated that people are still advised not to touch them.
When Tierra Curry heard about the proposed protection, she started crying.
According to Curry, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, “I just think it’s a moral failure that we’re pushing them to the brink of extinction.”
Despite never winning a beauty pageant, the slimy, brown creature with a broad, flat head is well-known for being the largest amphibian in North America.
Through its epidermis, the hellbender inhales the dissolved oxygen in the water. There is less oxygen in slow-moving, heated, or contaminated water.
Two dams on the Watauga River have been demolished in the last five years in an effort to unite Hellbender communities and enhance water quality. This summer saw the most recent one, and two months later, Helene changed not only people’s lives but also those of wildlife like salamanders.
Erin McCombs, Southeast conservation director for American Rivers, stated that the recently suggested federal protection is much needed by those tasked with ensuring the survival of the species.
In order to maintain the health of our country’s rivers and streams, we must pay more attention to the creatures that inhabit them, she stated. Alarms should be raised when species that depend on clean, flowing water, like hellbenders, are in decline since we will be the ones affected next.
The Missouri hellbenders, another population of eastern hellbenders, were protected in 2021 after the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned for and received protection for the Ozark subspecies in 2011. In order to protect all eastern hellbenders, the organization filed a lawsuit. According to the Endangered Species Act, all hellbenders in the United States are either protected or scheduled for protection as of this week.
Hill expresses his expectation that the new federal protection will lead to the implementation of strong recovery plans for the species.
“It will require a tremendous amount of work,” he remarked.
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