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'So Grotesque They're Beautiful': Eastern Hellbender May Get Federal Protections
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Their nicknames are unpleasant — from "old lasagna sides" to "devil dog" to "snot otter" But the eastern hellbender is adored by many for their flat heads, wrinkled bodies and paddle-shaped tails.
"You look at them and you can tell you're looking at something prehistoric. They're not like anything else. They're fascinating. They're so grotesque they're beautiful," said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.
North America's largest salamander lives in streams and rivers across 15 states from the Appalachian Mountains to the Ozarks.
The eastern hellbender, which was named Pennsylvania's state amphibian in 2019, are found in the Allegheny watershed, as well as the Susquehanna River and its adjoining streams.
Though the species has existed for millions of years, and each individual can live for more than 30 years, the salamanders are threatened by poor water quality and their populations have drastically declined.
In an effort to protect the eastern hellbender and their habitats, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to list the species under the federal Endangered Species Act.
"It would be a real shame if we were to lose them forever," said Jeromy Applegate, a biologist with the service. "They're really excellent indicators of water quality, and we find that the healthiest populations of eastern hellbenders are always in rivers with clean, cool water. Our proposed listing is the first step to help conserve the species for future generations."
In 2010, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the species under the Endangered Species Act. However, the petition was denied, with exceptions for populations in Missouri. The center challenged the decision and a court ordered the service to conduct further surveys.
In the six years since, eastern hellbender populations have declined by 59%, according to the service, and close to half are presumed locally extinct.
The salamanders, which breathe through their skin, require clean, cold water to breathe in. The species is particularly threatened by sedimentation, which is when soil particles from farms, construction sites and logging operations reach streams and rivers.
Sedimentation fills in the spaces between small rocks beneath the water young hellbenders, and the insects they eat, live in. Sedimentation can also cover large boulders adult hellbenders use for shelter and for reproduction.
Ted Evgeniadis, executive director of the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association, said he was pleasantly surprised by the recent proposal.
"They made a really bad decision in 2019, and they corrected that decision now by listing [the species]," said Evgeniadis, who has advocated for the species' protection. "We're happy that they did it, but it should have been done a long time ago."
Prior to making a final decision, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is accepting public comments over a two-month period. If the eastern hellbender is listed, it would be illegal to collect or kill the species, funding would be allocated for research and conservation efforts, and federal agencies would be required to work with the service to protect the species.
"It will prohibit activities that would cause additional pollution in the areas where they live," said Curry of the Center for Biological Diversity. "It will provide funding to do things like plant trees along rivers so that agricultural fields don't run straight up to the riverbank. It will provide funding to work with landowners who want to participate to put in those riparian buffers to help improve the water quality."
The service's Applegate encourages people who live near streams or rivers to plant and maintain forested buffers to help improve habitat and reduce sediment. He added that anyone who catches an eastern hellbender while fishing should release the species, and urges swimmers and kayakers to leave rocks alone to avoid disturbing the creatures.
Evgeniadis said Pennsylvania residents should care about protecting the eastern hellbender and the water they live in. The health of the species, which can only thrive among clean water, can indicate how pristine a river or stream is.
"The water resources need to be protected, and the aquatic species that call those places home need to be protected, too," Evgeniadis said. "Everybody should have an interest in clean water, and everybody should have an interest in the aquatic species that live in those waters, because if they can't live in those waters, then that's not going to be suitable water for us to drink, too."
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Beloved Appalachian Hellbenders Are On Their Way To Being An Endangered Species
In Frankfort, Kentucky, Monte McGregor opens the door to what appears to be a normal three-car garage: a nondescript building on a concrete block with metal siding. But what's inside looks like an intricate science project. And it is.
The building is full of giant water tanks laid out in long rows. All sorts of tubes run into them and fans hum in the background, keeping the water at a constant, cool temperature. On one side of the building sits a wall of glass fish tanks where dozens of slimy salamanders swim around and pack on top of each other.
This is a nursery that breeds eastern hellbenders for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, and McGregor is an aquatic scientist.
He pulls a flashlight out of his pocket and shines it into a tank full of roughly foot-long salamanders – and they're only teenagers.
"These are juveniles," McGregor said. "They're about 14 months old, and they like to swim with their tail. They have a large tail – and you can actually see one swim in there."
These hellbenders aren't conventionally cute and cuddly critters, but they do have a certain bizarre charm. They can grow up to two and a half feet long, and their skin is wrinkly and comes in shades of brown and gray. They have wide, flat heads, tiny beady eyes and long flat tails. It's earned the species nicknames like "snot otter" or "the last dragon." McGregor said, at a glance, some people assume they must be poisonous. (They're not).
"They're kind of slimy," he said. "People are scared of them, but they're really, really majestic creatures."
McGregor said Kentucky began studying them because their presence in streams signals really clean water. They can only live in clean water because they breathe through their skin. But clean, undisturbed streams have become something of a rarity.
Justin Hicks
Monte McGregor directs the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources Center for Mollusk Conservation, where hellbenders are being raised."Three hundred years ago…people started, you know, cutting the trees down and mining all the coal and all that stuff. As a result of that, you know, the hellbenders have responded to the loss and in their habitat, basically, or the polluted water," McGregor said. "They're very sensitive. We know they're there in some places, but they're pretty rare."
So rare, that two weeks ago the federal U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a proposal in December to officially declare them endangered. If it's finalized, hellbenders would be afforded protections under the Endangered Species Act, meaning companies who do things like build bridges or log forests would have some extra permitting requirements.
Tierra Curry is with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental conservation group. She said the designation has been a long time coming.
"I would say that hellbenders have been endangered, they just haven't gotten that recognition," Curry said. "We've petitioned for [Endangered Species Act] protection for them back in 2010, so it's been 14 years to get them to the proposed state."
Hellbenders are elusive, hiding under rocks during the day and coming out only at night to hunt. So it's always been a struggle to get a firm sense of how many populations there really are. But biologists have a pretty good idea that less than 50 known populations of hellbenders are stable.
Curry said it took over a decade to get this far because the feds would always point to a handful of healthy hellbender colonies in western North Carolina and Tennessee – places that don't have large amounts of coal – as evidence the amphibians didn't need the protection.
Then in September, Hurricane Helene happened.
"So the rivers there rose to 20 and 30 feet high and…carried hellbenders out into farm fields, onto roads, into debris piles," Curry said.
Poet Nickole Brown lives in Asheville. She heard those same stories of hellbenders washed up and smelled the chemicals and sewage lingering in the rivers after the flood.
"It was devastating on so many levels," Brown said. "I'm sure that Hellbenders were not the only non-human species that were affected."
Justin Hicks
The research lab in Frankfort, Kentucky where hellbenders are being raised for release into the wild.Brown said hellbenders are special to many people in the mountains. The creature has lent inspiration to hellbender murals, music festivals, and breweries all over the East Coast.
Even Brown named her poetry collective, aimed at supporting poets exploring the climate crisis, after hellbenders.
"What was suggested to me was 'the dandelion festival,' was 'the persimmon festival,'" she said. "They all sounded sweet, but I really wanted something that sounded just a tad bit more like a motorcycle rally."
Hellbenders are a harbinger of healthy water, Brown said. They embody how ancient and fragile the region is and its need for vigorous protection and support, especially after Helene.
"By protecting the species, you are talking about protecting an entire area," she said. "You're talking about, ultimately, protecting the people of this region."
Curry, with the environmental group, expects the federal government to finalize the salamanders' endangered status sometime next year. With a new administration coming in, her group will be watching closely.
"So if anything goes awry with that, it will be the result of political interference and we will go back to court," Curry said. "This is not a species I'm ever going to give up on."
In the meantime, those teenage salamanders McGregor is growing in his tanks are expected to be released into the wilds of Kentucky next year.
State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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