Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024 - 10

Save Salamanders, Save our Health
BY NANCY HENDERSON
Advocates for the rare yellow-spotted woodland species fight to list it as endangered.
W
ill Harlan sounds not just appreciative,
but downright reverent
as he describes the yellowspotted
E
woodland
salamander.
" They are gorgeous, beautiful salamanders, " he says.
" They're kind of a dark purple color, with really bright
yellow spots that run along its back, and usually in two
rows. They're also slender and thin. "
Harlan is just as protective of the amphibian's
whereabouts. Although he confirms that it's found primarily
in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, with a
few in Tennessee, he declines to identify the sites, or
even the towns where it's been found. By most estimates,
only 200 to 400 remain in the wild, and only 65
have actually been seen in 21 small outcrops scattered
throughout Appalachia.
" Unfortunately, they're targeted by poachers, " says
Harlan, " because they're so rare and so beautiful. "
Unlike the similarly named, and much more common,
spotted salamander that lives in vernal pools in the
eastern U.S., the lungless, yellow-spotted woodland species
thrives in shale and sandstone outcroppings.
" That's why this salamander is so imperiled, " Harlan
says. " If you cut down the forests or blow up the shale
and sandstone outcrops where they live, they get exposed
to a lot more sun. Even if you don't destroy their
rock home, if you cut down the forests around that rock
home and expose them to a lot of sun, they're going to
dry out and desiccate and die. "
This unusual species has adapted to an environment
that no other salamander can live in, Harlan
points out. There used to be a lot more of them because
their habitat was abundant across southern and
central Appalachia.
" Mountaintop removal mining, and surface mining
more generally, targets shale and sandstone specifically, "
Harlan says. " It has blown up more than 500
mountains across the Appalachians to get coal and
FRANK GEBHARD
10 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
ven if you don't live in a part
of Appalachia where the
imperiled yellow-spotted woodland
salamander is found, you can help
protect the amphibian and its cousins,
says Will Harlan, Southeast director and
senior scientist at the Center for Biological
Diversity in Asheville, North Carolina.
It's as simple as exploring the woods for
salamanders-any kind. " They're completely
harmless. They don't bite. They're not any
kind of threat at all to humans. "
Adds Harlan, " There are probably a dozen
other rare, imperiled and even federally listed
salamanders in our region. Just connecting
to salamanders, recognizing them in the
wild, appreciating the fact that we live in the
Salamander Capital of the World-I think if we
could elevate salamanders and take pride in
them in our region, that would go a long way to
giving them the protections they need to hang
on a while longer. "
-NH
You
WHAT
CAN
DO
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2024

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