According to Andy Hill, you never forget the first time you see a giant salamander.
He was a teenager, standing thigh deep in the Watauga River outside Boone, North Carolina, casting a line one early fall day when he spotted his first eastern hellbender. The salamander was over two feet long and was camouflaged among the rocks beneath the clear water.
“You never lose your sense of wonder and otherworldliness when you see one,” says Hill, who now works as a Watauga Riverkeeper for MountainTrue, a nonprofit that protects natural ecosystems in western North Carolina, home to part of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The ancient species, which evolved on the supercontinent Pangea and outlived the dinosaurs, was submitted for federal protection by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday. If the proposal is adopted after a period of public comment, the creatures would be protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Their population in the US has declined rapidly in recent decades; dams, industry and even flooding, exacerbated by climate change, have threatened their habitat and their ability to reproduce and find food. Today, only 12% of eastern hellbenders successfully reproduce.
Hellbenders in the Blue Ridge Mountains were considered the healthiest population of the eastern subspecies, but were devastated this fall by Hurricane Helene. Thousands were displaced or found dead in the rubble. Others were found in flooded church cellars and returned to the river. But some rivers are so polluted that there is still a ‘do not touch’ advisory for people.
Tierra Curry burst into tears when she heard about the proposed protections.
“I just think it’s a moral failure that we’re bringing them to the brink of extinction,” said Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.
The slimy, brown creature with a broad, flat head may never win a beauty pageant, but it is known as the largest amphibian in North America.
The Hellbender breathes dissolved oxygen in the water through its skin. Water that becomes sluggish, warm or polluted holds less oxygen.
Over the past five years, two dams on the Watauga River have been removed to help improve water quality and reconnect hellbender communities. The most recent one came down this summer – and two months later Helene turned life upside down, not only for people, but also for animals like the salamander.
For those working to ensure the species’ survival, the newly proposed federal protection couldn’t come soon enough, says Erin McCombs, American Rivers’ Southeast conservation director.
“We need to pay more attention to the health of our nation’s rivers and streams, and that means we need to pay more attention to the critters that live in them,” she said. “When species like the hellbender, which depend on free-flowing, clean water, decline, alarms should sound because we will feel the consequences afterwards.”
The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned and won protection for the Ozark subspecies of hellbenders in 2011 and for Missouri hellbenders, another population of eastern hellbenders, in 2021. The group sued and sought protection for all eastern hellbenders. As of this week, all hellbenders in the US are protected or about to receive protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Hill says he hopes the new federal protections will usher in “bold strategies” to help the species recover.
“It will take a huge effort,” he said.
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