Saving the Snot Otter

IndigoShort

Saving The Snot Otter

the Orianne Society's Efforts to conserve the largest North American salamander

October 2013

phot

o: C

hrist

ian

Sper

ka

Indigoshort

An embattled remnant of the distant past

The creature you have just seen is a hellbender (Cryp-tobranchus alleganiensis) and it is a salamander. It looks quite different than most salamanders, it is very large (sometimes more than two feet long) and it has

a flattened body. In fact, it doesn’t just look different than most salamanders; it is also one of the most ancient sala-mander species still around today. Its closest relatives are the giant salamanders

2 ORIANNESOCIETY.ORG Indigo short

in China and Japan, and the fossil record goes back to the Jurassic period. From this perspective, rivers with hell-benders are already a “Juras-sic Park”. Unfortunately, this unique, ancient elder of our rivers might be on the way to extinction. The hellbender is divided into two subspecies: the Eastern Hellbender (C. a. alleganiensis) and the Ozark Hellbender (C. a. bishopi). The Ozark hellbender occurs only in Missouri and Arkansas and is already listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. There are only a few rivers where sci-entists and managers can still find the Ozark Hellbender de-spite the fact that researchers used to find these salamanders numbering in the hundreds or thousands just a few decades ago. The Ozark recovery team is doing an incredible job try-ing to save this subspecies, with successful captive breed-ing at the St. Louis Zoo and protecting the few remaining populations, but it’s still an up-hill battle. The other subspe-cies, the Eastern Hellbender, is the target of The Orianne Society’s hellbender conserva-tion efforts, along with a di-verse group of partners. This species has a broader range, with populations in portions of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Geor-gia. The plight of the Eastern Hellbender is not as dire as the Ozark’s, but it’s not stable and broad declines have occurred

IMAGINEyou are

visiting a mountain stream somewhere in the

Appalachians of the eastern United States. Maybe you’re

swimming, kayaking, even fishing. All of a sudden you look down, and an odd

creature enters your field of view. You do a double take and try to figure out this strange creature. At a glance it looks like some giant lizard slowly crawling along the river bottom. But if it is, it’s the strangest lizard you’ve ever seen. It’s got a flattened head, with lots of folds around its side, and it doesn’t have any scales. So it’s not a lizard. But what

is it? You don’t know – all you know is that you’ve never seen anything like

it before. While you puzzle it out, the animal crawls underneath

a large rock and disappears from

view.

Indigoshort

ORIANNESOCIETY.ORG indigo short 2013 3

in some regions. Our goal is to make sure the Eastern Hellbender never gets to the brink of extinc-tion by reversing the declines that are already occurring.

How could these declines happen? Hellbenders have been around for millions of years, sure-ly they have faced a little adversity before, right? The short answer to that is - the world is changing and with that change comes threats to hellbender survival. Hellbenders need clean, cold, oxygenated wa-ter. The folds on their skin allow them to absorb oxygen directly from the water to breathe. If there are toxins in the water or not enough oxygen due to pollution,

they will be poisoned or suffocate. Another problem is soil erosion and siltation. Have you ever seen the brown plume in a river after a rainstorm? That’s all sediment that comes from the land where trees, grasses or shrubs have been removed. That sediment doesn’t just flow in the water, it eventually settles to the bottom. Remem-ber how that hellbender crawled underneath that rock? Well, it needs a space to do that. Sedi-ment fills the space and makes the underside of the rock like con-crete. No spaces under rocks, no hellbenders. Dams could be major issues too, as they change how rivers flows and may trap aquatic salamanders into small popula-

tions that have no other place to go. And, finally, the hellbenders have a bit of a PR problem. Just read some of its nicknames: snot otter, devil dog, Allegheny alliga-tor, mud devil, the list goes on and on. I personally think snot otter is a great name, but I wouldn’t call a good friend that! It goes beyond unflattering names. People often kill hellbenders that they come across. This is sometimes because they can look scary, but also because of some false myths. They are definitely not poisonous and have no way of causing any real harm to humans. They do not decimate fish populations – in fact, crayfish are by far their main food.

The Orianne Society becomes involved This variety of threats are the reason hellbenders are start-ing to disappear – they just can’t deal with them all at once. The good news is, for the Eastern Hellbenders, conservation efforts have ramped up within the past 10 years. This work has encom-passed activities such as inventory and monitoring to assess current status, local restoration of stream-side habitat, studies to assess genetic diversity, captive breeding efforts, and artificial nest boxes to increase reproduction. As you can imagine, a number of people are needed to implement all of these activites, and there is now is a strong partnership focusing on Eastern Hellbender conserva-tion. The Orianne Society became one of these partners in 2010. I photo: Michael Freake

4 ORIANNESOCIETY.ORG indigo short 2013

Indigoshort

photo: J.D. Willson

photo: Gabrielle Graeter

Indigoshort


had started working for The Orianne Society the year prior, focusing on our Midget Faded Rattlesnake conservation program. But in addition to snakes, salamanders are a great passion of mine, and for some reason I tend to like the bigger ones. I did my master’s research on Tiger Salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum), one of the big-gest pond-breeding sala-

manders, and did some work with Pacific Giant Salamanders (Dicamptodon species) while working on my doctorate. But the thing that most intrigued me about hellbenders was that they were completely aquatic, but yet don’t appear to move around a great deal (some adults can be found at the same rock year af-ter year). This means that they can’t move around to escape bad habitat conditions. One of my skill sets is called “landscape genetics”. In a nutshell, land-scape genetics compares pat-terns of landscape features with how closely related populations are to each other. The idea is if something is a barrier to move-ment between two populations, then the two populations will start to become more genetically distinct since they have no con-nections among them anymore. We can use landscape genetics, what aspects of the environ-ment seem to be either allowing or limiting movement, and the amount of genetic diversity to test for things like inbreeding.

“This variety of threats are the

reason the hellbenders are start-ing to disappear – they just can’t

deal with them all at once.”

photo: North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission


Indigoshort I contacted a profes-sor, Dr. Michael Freake, at Lee University in eastern Ten-nessee. He had already been conducting monitoring and genetic work in east Tennessee and had collected hellbender genetic samples from a number of rivers. Mike and I agreed to collaborate on some landscape genetic work with hellbenders. Since then, our initial findings have suggested that dams and agriculture may be limiting connections among hellbender populations. We didn’t see a big

loss in the amount of genetic diversity overall, but there was an exception of one stream that had become isolated and had lost a great deal of genetic diversity. Also during this time period, I became aware of an emerging technique that would strongly influence our current hellbender work.

Finding hellbenders with filter paper In 2008, a study was released that demonstrated that DNA extracted from very small

amounts of water could detect Bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeia-nus) that had invaded wetlands in France. This method was termed aquatic environmen-tal DNA, or often just eDNA for short. I remember hearing about this paper and think-ing it was really interesting, but at the time I was preparing to work on rattlesnakes and wasn’t conducting any aquatic research, so I didn’t really think about it too much. However, my colleague Caren Goldberg at the University of Idaho (the

photo: John Groves

Indigoshort


institution where I have been based during my time with the Orianne Society) decided to use this method to detect Pacific Northwest stream amphibians. I was beginning the hellbender work with Mike at about the same time Caren was having success with eDNA in river sys-tems. Now I did have a reason to implement eDNA work and began to have discussions with Mike about incorporating eDNA into our hellbender genetic work. Mike thought this was a good idea, and in fact, was part

of a team that had just received a Tennessee State Wildlife Grant that could help fund some of this work. We began a pilot study in the summer of 2011. Since this time, we successfully detected eDNA at all sites where we knew hellbenders occurred and identified new sites as well. You might be asking if we really need to go through the trouble to take a filtered water sample into the lab to just see if an animal is there. After all, can’t you just find it when you

are at the river? That’s a really good question. The reason eDNA is so exciting for hellbenders is that it’s not so straightforward to find them. So we’ve mentioned that hellbenders live under rocks. What I haven’t mentioned is that the rocks hellbenders live un-der tend to be really big. So to find them, we have to take a log peavey to pry up big rocks while someone snorkels under the rock to look for hellbenders (not to mention, fully trust that the rock won’t be dropped on them!). And what if a hellbender is un-

DID YOU KNOW:• The hellbender is the largest salamander

by mass in North America, with the largest known individual almost 2 ½ feet.

• Their closest relatives occur in China and Japan, and the group that includes hellbenders is more ancient than any other

salamander, dating back 160 million years.• The Ozark Hellbender is the most endangered hellbender, with a nearly 80% population decline, and was added to the U.S. Endangered Species list in 2011. Many individuals are found with a mysterious condition that is causing limb deformities.

• The major threat to hellbenders is the loss of clear, flowing rivers and streams, either due to siltation from soil erosion or

inundation from dams. Other concerns include water pollution, disease, and human persecution.


Indigoshortmethod becomes more appeal-ing. We are continuting to move forward with our hell-bender conservation efforts. With the advances in eDNA as a survey tool, this is a very

exciting time for conducting research on aquatic animals, and we look forward to shar-ing more information and successes conserving Eastern Hellbenders with you soon!

photo: Pete Johantgen

der a rock that’s too big to lift? Furthermore, if the lifted rock isn’t placed down in the same way that it is lifted, it might not be as good as a hiding place for the individual. Sud-denly, the non-invasive eDNA

If you encounter a hellbender, please

do not disturb it as they are a

protected species. Any hellbender

caught on a fishing line should be

released unharmed. Please report any

sightings to a local conservation agency.

Indigoshort


About Dr. SpearDr. Stephen Spear is an Assistant Conservation Scientist with The Orianne Society, as well

as a visiting scientist at the University of Idaho. He received his Ph.D. from Washington State University in 2009 and a M.S. degree from Idaho State University in 2004. Dr. Spear has been

fascinated with reptiles and amphibians beginning as a child growing up in central Virginia, where he was constantly looking for snakes, frogs, and turtles around his house. He knew by high school

that he would be a herpetologist. The goal of his research is to better understand what threatens rep-tiles and amphibians and to learn what we can do to conserve those populations. During his master’s

research, he discovered the power of genetic tools to provide information about a species status and ecology, and he became one of first contributors to the field of landscape genetics (using genetic infor-mation to identify important environmental features that affect movement between populations and survival within populations). He studied Tiger Salamanders in Yellowstone, demonstrating that the large 1988 fires actually improved habitat for salamanders and also showed that drought was leading to popu-lation declines in the Yellowstone National Park. He worked with state, federal and industry partners to use genetic data to identify how different forest disturbances affected tailed frogs and Pacific Giant Sala-mander population size and connectivity in Washington and Idaho. Upon joining The Orianne Society, he embarked on research to identify important habitat for Midget Faded Rattlesnakes, a species of great-est conservation need in Wyoming and Colorado. This work produced accurate models of denning habi-tat that were immediately put to use by managers to protect these critical habitat features from energy development and other threats.

Dr. Spear’s is currently involved in several conservation projects on both amphibians and reptiles. As detailed in this article, he is working with several partners and using innovative approaches to monitor and conserve Eastern Hellbender populations. Elsewhere in the southeast, he is using eDNA to monitor threatened Coastal Plain amphibians. He has used landscape genetics to identify threats to connectiv-ity of Eastern Indigo Snakes across their range in Georgia, and recently helped develope the first list of Priority Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Areas (PARCAs) across the southeast. The identifica-tion of PARCAs will help The Orianne Society and its partners prioritize conservation efforts, as well as serve as flagship sites to draw public attention to the conservation needs of herpetofauna. In the western United States, he is a member of a working group dedicated to maintaining wildlife connectivity across the Pacific Northwest, and has served as the species expert for the western rattlesnake in this initiative. Finally, he is building a Bushmaster conservation program in Costa Rica and Panama that will serve as a foundation for future conservation actions for this iconic viper.

In the future, Dr. Spear will continue his conservation work in the Coastal Plain and Appalachian Mountains of the southern United States, focusing on alleviating the effect of habitat degradation on populations, through identifying the exact threats and providing solutions to manage these threats. He has a track record of working with diverse partners to achieve these goals, and his work will continue to be highly collaborative so that his findings can be translated into conservation actions.


Indigoshort

hellbenderEastern

IndigoShort

Cryptobranchus alleganiensis

photo: photo: Lori A. Williams

Saving the Snot Otter

Documents

Transcript of Saving the Snot Otter