You never forget your first time seeing a giant salamander, according to Andy Hill.
He was a teenager, standing thigh-high in the Watauga River outside Boone, North Carolina, casting a line on an early fall day when he saw his first eastern hellbender. The salamander stretched 2 feet long and was camouflaged among rocks beneath the clear water.
“You never lose your sense of wonder and otherworldliness when you see one,” said Hill, who now works as the Watauga Riverkeeper for MountainTrue, a nonprofit protecting natural ecosystems in western North Carolina, home to part of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The ancient species, which evolved on the supercontinent Pangaea and outlived the dinosaurs, was submitted for federal protection Friday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If the proposal is adopted after a period of public comment, the creatures will be protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Their population in the U.S. has rapidly declined in recent decades; dams, industry and even flooding worsened by climate change have threatened their habitat and ability to reproduce and find food. Today, just 12% of eastern hellbenders are successfully reproducing.
Hellbenders in the Blue Ridge Mountains had been considered the healthiest population of the eastern subspecies but were devastated this fall by Hurricane Helene. Thousands were displaced or found dead amid rubble. Others were found in flooded church basements and returned to the river. But some rivers are so polluted, there’s still a “do not touch” advisory for people.
Tierra Curry burst into tears when she learned of the proposed protection.
“I just think it’s a moral failure that we’re pushing 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 contest, but it is famous as the largest amphibian in North America.
The hellbender breathes dissolved oxygen in the water through its skin. Water that becomes slow-moving, warm or polluted holds less oxygen.
Over the past five years, two dams were removed on the Watauga River to help improve water quality and reconnect hellbender communities. The most recent one came down this summer — and two months later, Helene upended life not just 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, said Erin McCombs, Southeast conservation director for American Rivers.
“We have to be paying more attention to the health of our nation’s rivers and streams, and that means paying more attention to the critters that live in them,” she said. “When species like the hellbender, which are reliant on free-flowing and clean water, are declining, alarms need to be going off, because we’ll feel the impacts next.”
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 hellbender, in 2021. The group sued, seeking protection for all eastern hellbenders. As of this week, all hellbenders in the U.S. are protected or slated for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Hill says he hopes the new federal protection will usher in “bold strategies” to help the species recover.
“It’s going to take a massive effort,” he said.
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