By Kim Severson, The New York Times, February 21, 2012
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| Tom Mann holds a spotted salamander that he was helping to cross a road. Photo: James Patterson, NYT |
Salamander people
are special people. Consider Tom and Debora Mann, biologists in their early 60s
who live in a little town near Jackson, Miss.
Mr.
Mann looked for salamanders along the road and shoulder of the Natchez Trace
Parkway.
When it rains hard
at night, they rush to a dark stretch of the Natchez Trace Parkway and start
scooping salamanders into quart-size freezer containers.
Then (and this is
not the premise for a joke), they help them cross the road.
Most rainy nights
during the late winter and early spring, dozens — sometimes even hundreds — of
salamanders, generally three to nine inches long, try to get from their burrows
on one side of the road to seasonal ponds on the other to mate. The
salamanders, some of which can live up to 30 years, procreate only once a year.
The compulsion to get across that road is unyielding.
Unfortunately, so
is the traffic. So the Manns, along with a handful of volunteers, have made it
their scientific and personal mission to help. They are out there for hours in
the rain at night, cajoling the slimy-skinned amphibians across the wet
pavement. The nocturnal animals need moisture to travel and spend most of their
days safely tucked in their forest habitat.
The dream is that
the National Park Service, which maintains the
Natchez Trace, which winds through 444 miles of historical sites from Natchez,
Miss., to Nashville, would shut down a two-mile stretch during salamander
mating season.
But the volunteers
are realists. They know that not everyone cares as deeply as they do about what
Mr. Mann, a zoologist at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science,
describes as helping “ameliorate vehicular take of a non-listed amphibian
species.”
In other words, it
is hard to generate a lot of interest in preventing salamanders, only a few
species of which have been legally declared endangered, from becoming roadkill.
So they have
settled for two lights that flash when it is dark and rainy, notifying drivers
to slow down to 35 miles per hour from 50. A ticket for breaking that speed
limit costs $80 to $500.
It is too soon to
tell how well the signs are working. On a recent Tuesday night, the bucket
brigade helped at least 120 salamanders make it. But field notes reflected a
grim reality. Twenty were found dead.
“You hate it, but
what’s even worse is when they are mortally injured. That’s really bad,” said
Dr. Mann, a biology professor who met her husband years ago on a college field
trip to observe alligators in the Everglades. Mr. Mann was the only one who did
not slather on bug spray. He worried it would get into the water and harm the
fish. She fell in love.
The Manns do not
know of any other national road in the South with designated salamander
speed-reduction zones, although there are other salamander-saving efforts. Last
month, Homewood, Ala., held its annual salamander festival. People who help
salamanders cross the road in that area gathered, but the celebration was
muted. A couple of weeks earlier, 41 salamanders had been found dead on a
nearby road.
The nation’s
herpers — those people engaged in the act of searching out amphibians or
reptiles — have long helped salamanders cross rainy roads, protesting
development and other environmental threats to the species.
Salamander-saving
projects can be found from California’s wine country to the cold, wet roads of
Vermont. North America’s first salamander underpass system, basically a culvert
built under a road, was constructed in Amherst, Mass., in the 1980s.
In some
communities, the salamander, like the spotted owl before it, has become a flash
point between conservationists and those who think stopping development or
dedicating government money to save salamanders reflects poorly ranked
priorities.
When the
speed-reduction signs first went up in Mississippi, they were mocked.
“The salamanders
will squash just as dead at 35 as they will at 50,” wrote one fisherman on an
online forum dedicated to Gulf Coast fishing and hunting.
To be sure, the
public is more sensitive to hitting larger creatures, like deer or bears,
according to the Federal Highway Administration and wildlife experts.
“You hear the term
‘sexy mega fauna’ thrown around,” said James Andrews, an adjunct professor of
herpetology at the University of Vermont. “Something cute and furry, like an
otter or a bobcat, gets people’s attention.”
In a report to
Congress, highway administration officials said that about 300,000 collisions
between animals and cars are reported each year, but the actual number of
collisions is much higher. The insurance industry estimates that the annual
cost is $200 million.
Still, park rangers
who work the salamander-rich section of the Trace parkway say visitors are
responding well to the new campaign.
“People come into
the information center and say, ‘What are we slowing down for? Deer?’ I say,
‘No, salamanders.’ So word is getting out,” said Sandra Kavanaugh, a park
ranger.
The park service
has also developed a salamander education kit for elementary school students
that includes two spotted salamander models and the book “Big Night for
Salamanders” by Sarah Marwil Lamstein.
Out on the rainy
parkway, the Manns and their crews have encountered some less-than-friendly
motorists but more often they get offers to help.
Recently, two young
women stopped while Mr. Mann was scooping salamanders. He explained his
mission.
“You’re doing the
Lord’s work,” they told him, before driving off, barely missing a salamander.
“Too
bad they missed the take-home lesson and failed to more closely scrutinize the
road,” Mr. Mann said.
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