Tiger Salamander die for chance to Romance

Siren song - Returning to breed in Sonoma County vernal pools where their lives began, many fall victim to traffic


A tiger salamander, drawn out by the season's first rains, is seen at the edge of Stone Point Road in December 2007.

By PAUL PAYNETHE PRESS DEMOCRAT

December rains are a siren song for the California tiger salamander. They also are a death knell.The endangered species crawl out of their holes on soggy nights, looking to mate in vernal pools filling up along the Santa Rosa plain.But biologists said many of them never make it.

Vast numbers are crushed under the wheels of cars slicing across roads that dissect their dwindling habitat.

On a recent night, herpetologist Dave Cook counted 36 tiger salamanders on a short stretch of Stony Point Road near Cotati. All but 16 of the black and yellow spotted critters were dead."This was their chance for romance," Cook, a senior environmental specialist for the Sonoma County Water Agency, said as he stopped his truck to retrieve a freshly killed salamander.

"But it didn't happen."The roadside slaughter, which occurs each year at the start of rainy season, is contributing to the overall decline of the species, listed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as endangered.Up to 20 percent of the breeding population is wiped out each season, Cook said, putting the tiger salamander's chances for long-term survival on a path with other species facing extinction such as the northern spotted owl and red-legged frog.

Cook, the region's foremost expert, has been tracking migration and reproductive patterns in part because the Water Agency is considering construction of a new pipeline from Santa Rosa to Petaluma that could cross part of its range.But he said the salamander's precarious situation has even greater implications.

The animal's ultimate success or failure is linked by scientists to the future of other plants or animals similarly threatened by habitat destruction, Cook said."They are a canary in the coal mine for the environment," Cook said.Until recently, not many people in Sonoma County knew about the tiger salamander, whose habitat crosses 25 counties from the Central Coast to Santa Rosa and covers 11 million acres.

In 2003, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service granted the species endangered status in Sonoma County, following a similar ruling in Santa Barbara County in 2000.

The government said residential development and agriculture were encroaching on the tiger salamander's breeding ponds, threatening the amphibian's survival.

Federal officials ordered locals to develop a conservation plan or face widespread land use restrictions that many feared could stall the economy.A coalition of developers, environmental activists, farmers and local government officials has been working on a plan ever since.

Relying on much of Cook's research, they have agreed on a conservation strategy encompassing 4,000 acres and are hammering out the details for executing it.Jake Mackenzie, the Rohnert Park city councilman who heads the committee, said a plan will be finalized over the next year."It's a very complex matter, as you can imagine," Mackenzie said. "You clearly have the spectrum of interests represented.

"Life for the salamander, which grows to 10 inches and can live more than a decade, begins at the vernal pool -- seasonal ponds that number in the hundreds west of Highway 101.

With the first winter rains, the pools begin to fill, attracting male and female salamanders like lonely singles to a nightclub, Cook said.Under cover of darkness and only in a downpour, the randy creatures come out in large numbers from their dry, upland gopher holes, heading instinctively to the same pools where they were spawned, Cook said.

"Think of it as a barroom scene," Cook said. "The boys kind of hang out until 2 a.m., when the bartender kicks them out.

"Sometimes whole generations appear on the same night, crossing farm fields, sidewalks and, often, roads to get to the pools.As they venture onto the asphalt, their glacial pace is no match for speeding cars.

A commute-hour rain can be disastrous."Often you get an entire breeding population showing up at the same time," Cook said. "It's not a good thing for the salamander."Their plight has given rise to whole groups of salamander watchers who hit the streets in wet weather.

Al Wolf, director of Sonoma County Animal Rescue, goes out with about a half-dozen others, helping the amphibians cross roads. He said he's asked transportation officials to build crossing tunnels under the roads but just got strange looks."When you see 50 or 60 squished in a night, that's pretty incredible," said Wolf, a salamander protector since the late 1980s. "If I can help stop that, it's worth doing it.

"Windshield wipers flapping, Cook drives slowly along the shoulder of Stony Point Road, helping stragglers and observing the carnage.He stops to take samples from dead salamanders that will be sent to UC Davis for testing. And he enters the GPS coordinates where each amphibian is found, dead or alive, in the hopes of figuring out a pattern to their movement.At one point he gets out to look at a smashed critter only to find a live, egg-filled female hiding in the shadows.

He puts her in a plastic pail and brings her into his truck.Later he'll carry her across the road to the pool."This was the night," Cook said, making a note on a clipboard. "This was the hot spot."

This article was taken directly from the Press Democrat “Empire Section” dated December 31, 2007