Ben Prater, our Southeast Program Director, explains how partnering with private landowners is helping to protect the third largest salamander in the world – the Eastern Hellbender.
Learn more: https://defenders.org/wildlife/hellbender
Footage by: @Running Wild Media
Video Transcript:
Today we are here in the home of one of the most amazing creatures that I have the privilege of working on and that’s the Eastern Hellbender.
It’s the third largest salamander in the world and the epicenter of its global population is right here in Western North Carolina.
In fact, they have persisted in these watersheds for over 65 million years, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure they’ve got a bright future ahead.
The rivers and streams of Southern Appalachia represent some of the most important hotspots for biodiversity in the world.
Also, these clear, clean, fast-moving waters are highly oxygenated, which is very important for the Hellbender’s survival, and they provide not only a fantastic source of food, but really unique habitats. These Hellbenders require large slab rocks, just off of bedrock that they actually use as nesting rocks.
These places are really precious because they have not only so many species, but unfortunately they have a lot of threats as well. That’s why Hellbenders themselves are an imperiled species. They’re on the decline. We’ve lost significant numbers of populations in pockets all across the Southeast, across historic range.
The reasons for that are really two primary factors that have negatively affected Hellbender habitat.
The first factor is just simply pollution. Then probably a threat that’s on an order of magnitude greater because it lasts so long and it can be somewhat permanent is the amount of impoundments, dams and other impediments we’ve put into our free-flowing rivers and streams, which do not allow for animals and wildlife to move up and down in-stream habitat.
The rivers and streams that we’re working on to address those direct threats of pollution and impoundments are mostly happening on private lands. We’ve really been engaging at the intersection of private lands and really important Hellbender habitat to work with the goals of those landowners, whether it’s producing crops, raising cattle, managing their property in a certain way to ensure that those things that they want to do can move ahead, but they’re doing so in a way that we’re providing mitigation and also incentives to prevent the worst impacts from some of those types of activities.
By protecting that habitat, we’re also protecting the productivity of that land so it’s very much a win-win solution. The other great thing about working with private landowners is as these things become established, as these patterns are developed, as trusted relationships are built, the word of mouth capacity for these things to spread and grow is great.
