Building a Safety Net: Recovering the Endangered Jemez Mountains Salamander
Jemez Mountains salamander. Red Hills salamander. Santa Cruz black salamander. What is it about salamanders that inspires people to name them after the places they’re found?
“I like to believe it’s because they embody so many of the places they inhabit,” said JJ Apodaca, ARC’s Executive Director. “When you see a salamander in a creek or under a rotting log, they seem to be as much a part of that feature as the log or creek itself. And often, you see them nowhere else on Earth.”
The close relationship between salamander and place, in this case between the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico and their namesake salamander, was no accident. It was the result of millions of years of evolution. Of adaptation and survival in one of the most unique places in the world.
For this species, that relationship can be seen in something as ordinary as a log on the ground.
In 1962, two biologists found 110 Jemez Mountains salamanders beneath a single 20- to 30-foot log. Today, finding even one of these Endangered salamanders in the wild is a success.
People whose parents and grandparents spent their lives in the Jemez Mountains remember a time when these salamanders were easy to find.
“With a crew surveying full-time, we can go weeks without finding one individual. If we’re lucky, we have a two-salamander week,” said Nancy Karraker, ARC’s National Conservation Strategy Director.
Finding them requires the right conditions. When the forest floor is damp enough, trained surveyors move through the forest, turning cover objects such as logs, rocks, and bark before replacing them exactly as they found them.
The entirely terrestrial Jemez Mountains salamander lives in cool, moist forests of Douglas fir, Engelmann spruce, ponderosa pine, and aspen at elevations above 8,000 feet. It spends much of its life underground, emerging onto the forest floor when conditions are good for foraging and mating.
But what happens when those conditions begin to change rapidly? Adaptations that once allowed the species to thrive can become a detriment. Populations shrink, and the species moves perilously close to the edge of extinction.
“The Jemez Mountains seem to be getting hotter, with longer periods of dry weather between limited rain events,” said Nancy.
Nancy has studied Jemez Mountains salamanders for nine years and has noticed that the summer monsoon seems to be arriving later. In recent years, the forest floor often hasn’t become wet enough for salamander surveys until August, instead of July as in the past.
That matters because the salamanders depend on moisture to emerge and forage. During that active period, they need suitable conditions and enough food to sustain them through the long periods they spend underground.
Drought also changes the forest around them. Increased tree mortality from drought-related beetle and fungal infestations can open gaps in the canopy, allowing more sunlight to reach the forest floor and drying out the soil and downed wood that salamanders rely on for shelter.
This summer, those changes were impossible to miss.
“It is shocking to recognize that it is September and the annual monsoon has not returned to the Jemez Mountains so far this year,” Nancy said.
It can be daunting to think about recovery in the face of the large-scale challenges that this species is experiencing. Yet, there is one simple place to start. One recovery-based step at a time.
“For the Jemez Mountains salamander, the first step is to ensure that we don’t lose the species entirely,” JJ said. That’s why we’re partnering with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha to establish the first-ever captive population for the species.
Starting a captive population is not a decision we take lightly. We will only consider doing so if we believe it’s imperative for the species’ recovery.
And in this case, it is. Nancy visited sites in the Jemez Mountains PARCA (Priority Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Area) twice this season with federal and zoo partners to assess conditions and collect soil, wood, and rock for the captive habitats being developed at Henry Doorly Zoo. During her second visit in early August, even the soil beneath rocks and logs that would normally provide shelter was dry.
It was too dry to send a survey crew into the field.
The goal is to establish a captive population of 25 Jemez Mountains salamanders. This year, the team hopes to collect 10, although given the unusually dry conditions, Nancy says we would be happy to find four.
Then, getting the salamanders from northern New Mexico to Omaha will be its own kind of challenge. The team has developed life-support systems that Nancy describes as “blinged-out portable electric coolers,” designed to keep the salamanders at their optimal temperature of about 55 degrees Fahrenheit and constantly moist.
Initially, this effort will provide a safety net against losing the species entirely.
But a captive population is only a single piece of the puzzle. It cannot replace the forests these salamanders depend on.
In areas where Jemez Mountains salamanders still persist, large downed logs are becoming increasingly scarce. Mature trees were harvested from these forests decades ago, and without those mature trees, the forest is no longer producing the large pieces of downed wood that provide essential shelter for salamanders.
Alongside our partners, we’re developing plans to restore this part of the salamanders’ habitat. One idea is to create artificial wood structures that could functionally replicate the shelter provided by large downed logs, while also helping reduce the warming influence of gaps in the forest canopy.
“We can try to make more salamanders but we need to also restore the habitats on which wild populations rely,” said Nancy. “This new initiative gives me hope.”
Maybe that’s what it means for a salamander to embody a place. For the Jemez Mountains salamander, the forest is not simply where it lives. The soil, the trees, and the logs have shaped the salamander over millions of years, just as the salamander has become part of the landscape itself.
Recovering the Jemez Mountains salamander means protecting the place that shaped it too.