Hellbenders
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.
Aldo Leopold
When my daughters were young, I took them to the Springfield Conservation Nature Center to walk the trails and visit the exhibits. Inside the building, in one corner of the atrium, sat a big glass aquarium, and in it, lying on the bottom, immobile, was a beast that looked for all the world like a fuzzy log. It was an Ozark hellbender, a large aquatic salamander—in fact, a giant among salamanders, reaching an impressive (for a salamander) two feet long. The girls pressed their noses close to the glass. There was a single minnow swimming around in the tank, and at one point the little fish paused, seemingly unconcerned, right in front of the hellbender’s nose. Suddenly, the log darted forward at lightning speed, inhaling the minnow so suddenly that my girls jumped and squealed in delight.
They, and I, have been fascinated by hellbenders ever since. They are so strange, and unique, that in their own quiet way, they demand our attention. Hellbenders live in clear Ozark streams, hiding by day under rocks, emerging in darkness to patrol for crayfish and other bottom-dwelling prey. Their habitat is cool, swiftly-flowing, highly oxygenated water. With only shrunken, vestigial lungs, they get almost all their oxygen through their baggy skin, especially the frilly folds along their sides, which are packed with oxygen-absorbing capillaries. These wavy membranes have earned hellbenders one of their nicknames: “lasagna lizards.”
With tiny eyes, a blunt snout and mottled brownish color, they are not known for their beauty. One commentator suggested their ugliness is “almost unequaled” among creatures. Adding to their image problems, misunderstandings about them were once common. A newspaper column in 1950 suggested the “large fellow” was “greedy, and destroys many fish.” A fisherman told a local reporter; “they say they can bite a kid’s finger off.” But by the 1960s, there was recognition that finding hellbenders in a stream was, in fact, a good thing. If you see one, a biologist quipped in 1967, “you are on one of the best streams in the state.”
Unfortunately, Ozark hellbenders are in trouble. By the late 1980s, biologists could see that populations in some places, like the Spring River in Arkansas, were crashing. In 1989, the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) bestowed protection status on hellbenders, forbidding their capture or killing. Anglers were urged to release them unharmed. By 1992, they were candidates for listing under the Endangered Species Act. But questions remained about just how many remained in the wild. Dennis Figg, Endangered Species Coordinator for MDC at the time, said, “We really don’t know their current status.” The agency hadn’t taken a statewide survey for fifteen years.
By the early 2000s, MDC biologists announced there had been a 77% decline in hellbenders since the 1970s, a crash which accelerated in the 1990s. A survey in 1991 of hellbender strongholds in southern Missouri found 150 hellbenders, reporting that they seemed to be holding their own. But a statewide survey in 1998 showed almost 80% of previously identified populations had “vanished.”
Hardly any juveniles were found during the survey, a foreboding sign for the salamander’s future. A few years ago, it was estimated that less than a thousand Ozark hellbenders remained in the wild.
The drastic decline of hellbenders was hard to figure out. With further research, several potential factors in their disappearance came to light—disease, predation, over-collecting, declines in water quality. One explanation quickly rose to the top—a fungal disease that is decimating amphibian populations worldwide. Frogs have been particularly hard hit, not only in disturbed areas like cutover forests, but also in pristine, undisturbed habitats, such as high-altitude lakes and ponds. A fungus, it came to light, had quickly spread to amphibians around the world. A species of the chytrid genus, the fungus infects the amphibians’ skin, interfering with its ability to uptake electrolytes.
Chytrid reproduces by spores that can “swim,” but that doesn’t explain how it has managed to spread over several continents. Apparently, it first emanated from the highlands of South America and the eastern coast of Australia, but has since been detected in the Caribbean, Europe, and North America. Scientists still puzzle over how this rapid spread occurred, but prominent theories involve a suspiciously common vector—us. One theory posits that African clawed frogs or bullfrogs, both of which are resistant to the fungus, spread the disease when they escaped from aquariums or were purposely introduced into new areas.
Another potential factor in the decline of hellbenders is predation of juveniles by an introduced species—trout. Trout, it turns out, are very fond of these tender morsels. Hellbenders are native to Missouri, living in Ozark streams for millennia. Trout, on the other hand, were first introduced in the 1880s. Both like the same kind of habitat—cool, swiftly flowing streams. Scientists theorized that the evolutionary disconnect between the species meant that larval salamanders did not recognize the non-native trout as predators, so were easy prey. The stocking rate of trout in Missouri streams rose dramatically in the 1960s, exposing hellbenders to higher numbers of hungry predators.
The future of Ozark hellbenders hangs in the balance. Many professionals are hard at work to keep them from going extinct. But their status must be considered within a wider context. Animal and plant species are in trouble over the entire planet, and we are largely to blame. Scientists call the era in which we now live the “Anthropocene” because humans have “directly transformed” over half of the 50 million square miles of ice-free land on the planet. With pesticides, fertilizers, fires, bulldozers, tractors, and many other instruments of disturbance and change, we have altered landscapes in all but the most inhospitable regions. In the process, we’ve eliminated a good portion of the planets biological diversity without realizing, until recently, the potential jeopardy of doing so.
Aldo Leopold
When my daughters were young, I took them to the Springfield Conservation Nature Center to walk the trails and visit the exhibits. Inside the building, in one corner of the atrium, sat a big glass aquarium, and in it, lying on the bottom, immobile, was a beast that looked for all the world like a fuzzy log. It was an Ozark hellbender, a large aquatic salamander—in fact, a giant among salamanders, reaching an impressive (for a salamander) two feet long. The girls pressed their noses close to the glass. There was a single minnow swimming around in the tank, and at one point the little fish paused, seemingly unconcerned, right in front of the hellbender’s nose. Suddenly, the log darted forward at lightning speed, inhaling the minnow so suddenly that my girls jumped and squealed in delight.
They, and I, have been fascinated by hellbenders ever since. They are so strange, and unique, that in their own quiet way, they demand our attention. Hellbenders live in clear Ozark streams, hiding by day under rocks, emerging in darkness to patrol for crayfish and other bottom-dwelling prey. Their habitat is cool, swiftly-flowing, highly oxygenated water. With only shrunken, vestigial lungs, they get almost all their oxygen through their baggy skin, especially the frilly folds along their sides, which are packed with oxygen-absorbing capillaries. These wavy membranes have earned hellbenders one of their nicknames: “lasagna lizards.”
With tiny eyes, a blunt snout and mottled brownish color, they are not known for their beauty. One commentator suggested their ugliness is “almost unequaled” among creatures. Adding to their image problems, misunderstandings about them were once common. A newspaper column in 1950 suggested the “large fellow” was “greedy, and destroys many fish.” A fisherman told a local reporter; “they say they can bite a kid’s finger off.” But by the 1960s, there was recognition that finding hellbenders in a stream was, in fact, a good thing. If you see one, a biologist quipped in 1967, “you are on one of the best streams in the state.”
Unfortunately, Ozark hellbenders are in trouble. By the late 1980s, biologists could see that populations in some places, like the Spring River in Arkansas, were crashing. In 1989, the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) bestowed protection status on hellbenders, forbidding their capture or killing. Anglers were urged to release them unharmed. By 1992, they were candidates for listing under the Endangered Species Act. But questions remained about just how many remained in the wild. Dennis Figg, Endangered Species Coordinator for MDC at the time, said, “We really don’t know their current status.” The agency hadn’t taken a statewide survey for fifteen years.
By the early 2000s, MDC biologists announced there had been a 77% decline in hellbenders since the 1970s, a crash which accelerated in the 1990s. A survey in 1991 of hellbender strongholds in southern Missouri found 150 hellbenders, reporting that they seemed to be holding their own. But a statewide survey in 1998 showed almost 80% of previously identified populations had “vanished.”
Hardly any juveniles were found during the survey, a foreboding sign for the salamander’s future. A few years ago, it was estimated that less than a thousand Ozark hellbenders remained in the wild.
The drastic decline of hellbenders was hard to figure out. With further research, several potential factors in their disappearance came to light—disease, predation, over-collecting, declines in water quality. One explanation quickly rose to the top—a fungal disease that is decimating amphibian populations worldwide. Frogs have been particularly hard hit, not only in disturbed areas like cutover forests, but also in pristine, undisturbed habitats, such as high-altitude lakes and ponds. A fungus, it came to light, had quickly spread to amphibians around the world. A species of the chytrid genus, the fungus infects the amphibians’ skin, interfering with its ability to uptake electrolytes.
Chytrid reproduces by spores that can “swim,” but that doesn’t explain how it has managed to spread over several continents. Apparently, it first emanated from the highlands of South America and the eastern coast of Australia, but has since been detected in the Caribbean, Europe, and North America. Scientists still puzzle over how this rapid spread occurred, but prominent theories involve a suspiciously common vector—us. One theory posits that African clawed frogs or bullfrogs, both of which are resistant to the fungus, spread the disease when they escaped from aquariums or were purposely introduced into new areas.
Another potential factor in the decline of hellbenders is predation of juveniles by an introduced species—trout. Trout, it turns out, are very fond of these tender morsels. Hellbenders are native to Missouri, living in Ozark streams for millennia. Trout, on the other hand, were first introduced in the 1880s. Both like the same kind of habitat—cool, swiftly flowing streams. Scientists theorized that the evolutionary disconnect between the species meant that larval salamanders did not recognize the non-native trout as predators, so were easy prey. The stocking rate of trout in Missouri streams rose dramatically in the 1960s, exposing hellbenders to higher numbers of hungry predators.
The future of Ozark hellbenders hangs in the balance. Many professionals are hard at work to keep them from going extinct. But their status must be considered within a wider context. Animal and plant species are in trouble over the entire planet, and we are largely to blame. Scientists call the era in which we now live the “Anthropocene” because humans have “directly transformed” over half of the 50 million square miles of ice-free land on the planet. With pesticides, fertilizers, fires, bulldozers, tractors, and many other instruments of disturbance and change, we have altered landscapes in all but the most inhospitable regions. In the process, we’ve eliminated a good portion of the planets biological diversity without realizing, until recently, the potential jeopardy of doing so.