Eastern Hellbenders: Blue Ridge Country Creature Features May/June 2016

Summary: Eastern hellbenders are Blue Ridge Country Creature Features in May/June 2016 and one of two giant salamander subspecies native to eastern North America.

Eastern hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) is designated federally as a Species of Concern; Eastern hellbender in National Aquarium, Washington DC: Brian Gratwicke, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Eastern hellbenders are Creature Features in the May/June 2016 issue of Blue Ridge Country magazine and one of two giant salamander subspecies native to North America’s planned and wild amphibian-friendly water gardens.

Nancy Henderson, author of Raising Hell (benders), brings attention to the extreme perils that similarly threaten Eastern and Ozark hellbenders by way of the Virginia experience. She considers 21st century threats from farmers, miners and poachers of “man-made habitat loss from pesticide pollution, siltation from land clearing and removal of hiding places.” She describes stream-sampled hellbender DNA projects through Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

John D. Kleopfer, VDGIF herpetologist, emphasizes, regarding the project’s introduction of “natural-looking, concrete nest boxes” and restoration outreach: “It’s a big task, but it’s worth undertaking.”

Cool, fast-flowing foothill and mountain streams from New York eastward into Missouri and southward into Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina furnish Eastern hellbenders habitat niches. Semi-buried boulders and logs in planned and wild amphibian-friendly water gardens give Eastern hellbenders cover from predation-minded fish, mink, river otters, salamanders, turtles and water snakes. Loose gravel on stream bottoms and shade trees along stream sides help keep waters oxygenated and riffle-friendly at 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) or below.

Such globally warmed climate change-sensitive habitat niches include prey such as arachnids, crayfish, insects, minnows, snails and worms, and as frog, newt, salamander and toad tadpoles. Eastern hellbenders join North America’s feeding chains and food webs as predators of arthropods, fish, molluscs and worms and, when prey gets scarce, of one another.

Eggs and hatchlings keep Eastern hellbenders fed if prey vanish during mating seasons, from late summer through early autumn, in planned and wild amphibian-friendly water gardens. Adult females lay 150 to 450 one-quarter-inch (0.64-centimeter), yellow eggs that adult males fertilize after excavating shallow, stream-bottom nests in crevices or under debris and rocks. The male-tended eggs must remain attached to one another by 1- to 2-inch- (2.54- to 5.08-centimeter-) long jelly strands, enclosed within two gelatinous capsules, and oxygenated.

Brown or gray, 1.5-inch (3.81-centimeter) hatchlings from 68- to 84-day-old eggs need edible yolk sacs the first two months and external gills the first two years.

Lungs offer buoyancy for dark-spotted, flat-headed, large-mouthed, paddle-tailed, 3.3- to 5.5-pound (1.49- to 2.49-kilogram), 20- to 29-inch (50.8- to 73.66-centimeter) adults sexually mature within eight years.

Anti-abrasively mucus-covered bodies, five-toed hind-legs, four-toed forelegs, light-sensitive skin-cells, slip-resistant footpads and vibration-sensitive lateral lines protect skin-breathing Eastern hellbenders in planned and wild amphibian-friendly water gardens. They quit being effective when gas-exchanging capillaries in skin folds and two lidless eyes get overwhelmed by acid mine drainage, chemical herbicide runoff and untreated sewage.

Building, canoeing, damming, farming, fishing, logging, mining, poaching and ranching at 2,526.25- to 2,723.09-foot (770- to 830-meter) altitudes result in 70 to 80 percent population declines. Not killing the non-biting, non-poisonous hellbender and not polluting or removing rocks under 0.52- to 1.84-foot (0.16- to 0.56-meter) subsurface depths start restoration’s hellbender-friendly, thousand-mile journey.

J.D. Kleopfer tells Blue Ridge Country: “We have reason to believe that we are going to be making a difference in the recovery of the species.”

Eastern hellbender, Mills Creek, Henderson County, western North Carolina: Gary Peeples/USFWS Asheville Ecological Services Field Office, Public Domain, via US Fish and Wildlife Service National Digital Library

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Eastern hellbender, National Aquarium, Washington DC: Brian Gratwicke, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hellbender_Cryptobranchus.jpg

Eastern hellbender, Mills Creek, Henderson County, western North Carolina: Gary Peeples/USFWS Asheville Ecological Services Field Office, Public Domain, via US Fish and Wildlife Service National Digital Library @ http://digitalmedia.fws.gov/cdm/singleitem/collection/natdiglib/id/18501/rec/1

For further information:

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Available @ https://twitter.com/BRCmagazine/status/727835668412551168

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