salamander - The Environment Report

Searching for Salamanders at Old Nuke Site

Salamanders are a good indicator of wetland health. (Photo courtesy of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife)

Government workers are slogging around in man-made wetlands.
looking for salamanders. Back in the 1950’s, the United States government
selected a plot of land to be the home of its newest uranium processing plant.
Since the end of the Cold War, the now-closed nuclear processing plant has
been undergoing the long and arduous task of returning to its natural wetland
state. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tana Weingartner reports on the search for salamanders at the site, and why
their presence is so important:

Transcript

Government workers are slogging around in man-made wetlands looking for salamanders. Back in the 1950’s, the United States government selected a plot of land to be the home of its newest uranium processing plant. Since the end of the Cold War, the now-closed nuclear processing plant has been undergoing the long and arduous task of returning to its natural wetland state. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tana Weingartner reports on the search for salamanders at the site, and why their presence is so important:

It’s a cold, windy day in late March as specialists from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency head out to check their traps at the Fernald Nuclear Plant. The 1050-acre facility sits in a rural area just 18 miles north of Cincinnati. Although the EPA is in charge of cleaning up the uranium contamination here, today they’re on a different mission. Today they’re hunting salamanders.

“Salamanders basically are a sign of an established wetland usually, and in this case would show that we put a wetland in a location where salamanders need additional breeding habitat.”

In other words, Schneider says the presence of salamanders indicates the first level of success for these manmade wetlands. The wetland project is one of several ways the EPA is ensuring Fernald is properly restored to its natural state.

“Well, we’re looking forward to the day when we get the site cleaned up, and it can be like a land lab, and people can bring kids out here and do environmental education on the importance of wetlands, and it’s going to make a great contrast with what used to be here and the environmental contamination with the environmental benefit the facility is providing down the road.”

Today, the site is 70 percent certified clean, and officials expect to finish the cleanup by June 2006. Creating healthy wetlands full of insects, amphibians and salamanders is one of the first steps to success.

“So the method here is to set ten traps equidistant, hopefully, around the perimeter of the wetland. And they’re passive traps, whereby animals that are moving over the course of the 24 hours or so that the traps have been in, will bump into the traps and it’s a funnel that directs them into the center part of the trap, and they’re held in there until we release them.”

(splashing sound)

Schneider and his team laugh and joke as they pull the traps up by brightly colored ribbons. Train horns and construction noises mix with bird calls – one a reminder of what has been, the other a sign of what’s to come.

“That’s probably a one-year-old bullfrog there and then these big guys are dragonfly larvae and these other guys are back swimmers. Mayfly larvae and dragonfly larvae are both good indicators of high water quality.”

The third pond, or vernal pool, turns up 46 tadpoles and a tiny peeper frog, but no salamanders.

(truck door slams)

So it’s back in the truck and on down the dirt road to where several more wetland pools sit just across from the on-site waste dump. That dump will be Fernald’s lasting reminder of its former use. These pools are younger and less established, but they do offer hope. Last year, adult salamanders were found in the one closest to a clump of trees.

Each spring, as the snow melts away and temperatures rise, salamanders venture out in the first 50-degree rain to begin their search for a mate. Schneider had hoped warm temperatures in late February and early March prompted “The Big Night,” as it’s known.

“So, no salamanders today?”

“No salamanders today. I think we learned a little bit about the difference between wetlands that are three years old. We saw a lot more diversity in the macroinvertebrates, the insect population, than we have down here.”

Perhaps the salamanders haven’t come yet, or maybe they have already come and gone, leaving behind the still un-hatched eggs. Either way, the team will check back again in April and a third time in late May or June.

“And we have high hopes, high hopes, high apple pie in the sky hopes. That’s the kind.”

(sound of laughter)

For the GLRC, I’m Tana Weingartner.

Bioblitz: Bugs and Birds in Your Backyard

A fish sample from this summer's BioBlitz in Ohio. (Photo courtesy of the Geauga Park District)
Volunteers line up to examine the day's catches. (Photo courtesy of the Geauga Park District)
Netting butterflies during BioBlitz 2003. (Photo courtesy of the Geauga Park District)

Hundreds of tiny plants and animals live in our city parks. But most people are too busy enjoying themselves to bother thinking about the critters… let alone to get down on their hands and knees and look for them. Now a campaign is underway to get people to take a closer look at what’s living in their neighborhood parks. The effort is called a “BioBlitz.” It pairs volunteers with scientists. They go into natural areas and see how many different species they can identify. The idea is to show the important role city parks can play in preserving diverse wildlife. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Patty Murray attended a BioBlitz and has this report:

Transcript

Hundreds of tiny plants and animals live in our city parks. But most
people are too busy enjoying themselves to bother thinking about the
critters… let alone to get down on their hands and knees and look for
them. Now a campaign is underway to get people to take a closer look at
what’s living in their neighborhood parks. The effort is called
a”BioBlitz.” It pairs volunteers with scientists. They go into natural
areas and see how many different species they can identify. The idea
is to show the important role city parks can play in preserving diverse
wildlife. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Patty Murray attended a
BioBlitz and has this report:

A small crowd of people is gathered around a table at a picnic shelter.
They’re not reaching for the mustard. Instead they’re watching Bob
Howe open a metal, shoe box-shaped trap… to see what comes out.

“Yeah, there he is, a masked shrew.” “Wow.”

Howe is a Professor of Applied Science at the University of Wisconsin,
Green Bay. He’s at Baird Creek Park… dumping the little, brown
masked shrew into a clear plastic display cage. It darts under a pile
of grass, probably wondering what the heck’s going on.

“There he is wow, he’s tiny.” ‘What is he?’
“He’s called a masked shrew. Sorex cinereus. It’s our smallest mammal in
Wisconsin. A very common species though most people never see them.”

The shrews are apparently rarely seen because they’re so small… not
even half the size of a toy rubber mouse you’d give your cat to play
with.

It’s obscure animals like this that the BioBlitz is all about.
Organizer Tammy Lee is with the group Great Lakes Forever. She wants
people to take time out from barbecuing… and think about the other
beings that share the park with them.

“And just to make them say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that yellow billed
cuckoo exists here or that salamander.'”

Lee says BioBlitzes are deliberately staged in urban or suburban parks –
not wildlife sanctuaries -to drive home the point that wildlife doesn’t
always
stay within the boundaries of a preserve. It’s in our own backyards.

“Somewhere that they can walk to, something they can go to, not
necessarily to look for biodiversity, but they might come here to play a
baseball game or play on the playground.”

“Hey do you guys want to help me catch some bugs?”

Volunteer Joan Berkopec is corralling a young brother and sister team.
She
hands the kids cloth nets and leads them beyond the merry go
round and the slide to a patch of waist high wildflowers.

They make a few sweeps with the nets, then sit on the grass to see what
they
came up with.

“Oh Lydia! You have a bunch of stuff in here. You have a
grasshopper.”

“Oh… everything’s getting away!”

The nature hunters lose a few flying insects out of their nets, but in
a matter of minutes they’re able to grab five or ten other funny
looking bugs and put them in sample jars.

They’ll take the bugs back to the Park Shelter where professional
scientists
will identify them. By the end of the 12-hour BioBlitz in the park
they’ll
have identified 571 different species.

Professor Bob Howe, recovered from the excitement of the masked shrew
discovery, thinks this park harbors more than 800 different types of
wildlife depending on the season.

“Well, one species that we suspect is nesting there is Wilson’s fowler, which
is a species found in just a few places in the entire state. We’ve also found
a number of what’re called forest interior bird species like scarlet tanager and wood thrush.
That indicates this forest is intact and quite a good habitat for breeding
birds.”

Not bad for a city park.

Howe says it’s important to have a lot of different species living
together.
Without certain trees, some birds wouldn’t come around. Without the
birds… certain insects would proliferate… and so on. Also, Howe
says city parks filter out all sorts of pollutants such as fertilizers
before they get
into lakes and streams.

More BioBlitzes are going on in Wisconsin this summer. The events have
also
been held in places like Chicago and in New York’s Central Park.

For the
Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Patty Murray.

Bugs Released to Munch on Invasive Plant

Purple loosestrife's looks are deceiving. It's a beautiful plant, but researchers say it has caused enormous damage in many parts of the country. An imported beetle has now shown significant signs of controlling the plant.
Galerucella calmariensis is a species of beetle being reared and released throughout the region to control purple loosestrife. The bug was imported from Europe and Asia. (Photo courtesy of L.T. Kok)

Purple loosestrife is a beautiful plant. It’s tall… and each cone-shaped stem produces hundreds of flowers. When the plants bloom in mid-summer they can create a sea of purple in wetlands throughout the region, but the ability of the plant to spread and reproduce in great numbers is what concerns scientists and land managers. Over the years they have been working to control it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush says one way they’re trying to control it is by releasing a bug to eat the plant:

Transcript

Purple Loosestrife is a beautiful plant. It’s tall… and each cone-shaped
stem produces hundreds of flowers. When the plants bloom
in mid-summer they can create a sea of purple in wetlands
throughout the region… but the ability of the plant to spread and
reproduce in great numbers is what concerns scientists and land
managers. Over the years, they have been working to control it.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush says one way
they’re trying to control it is by releasing a bug to eat the plant:

Roger Sutherland has lived next to this wetland for more than 35
years.

He helped build a boardwalk over the soggy marsh so that he can
get a close-up view of some of his favorite plants:

“You see that plant with the big green flower? Yep. That… and
there’s more along here… that’s a pitcher plant. These are insect
eating plants and there’s another one called sundew here… here’s
some right in here…”

(sound under)

But like many wetlands throughout the country, this wetland has
been invaded by a plant originally found in Europe and Asia.

Purple Loosestrife was introduced as an ornamental plant.
It was a
beautiful addition to gardens, but once it took
hold in the environment,
it out-competed native plants.

Frogs, birds, and insects have relied on these native plants for
thousands of years. Purple Loosestrife is crowding out their habitat.

“We’re going to get a lot more shade with this loosestrife.. and so
these plants that are on these hummocks here…
these little insect
eating plants and so on… just can’t tolerate that shade, so we’ll
probably lose ’em unless I can keep it open here… and I am trying
to keep some of it open.”

The plant spreads quickly… that’s because one plant can produce
more than two million seeds that spread with the wind, like dust.

So when it moves into an area, it often takes over creating a thicket
of purple with a dense root system.

Land managers have seen populations of ducks, and turtles
disappear when loosestrife takes over…

And research has shown that the plant can reduce some frog and
salamander populations by as much as half.

So land managers wondered what to do to stop the spread of this
weed.

They initially tried to control the plant by digging it up… or by
applying herbicide to each plant.

Trying to kill the plants one by one is hard work… especially
considering how abundant purple loosestrife is.

But researchers have hope because of a bug.

(Sound of volunteers planting loosestrife)

Volunteers have gathered here in Ann Arbor, Michigan to plant
purple loosestrife.

They’re putting dormant loosestrife roots into potting containers and
adding fertilizer.

(more sound)

When the plants leaf out they’ll be covered with a fine mesh net and
become home to a leaf-eating beetle known as galerucella.

And galerucella loves to munch on purple loosestrife.

The volunteers are creating a nursery to raise more beetles.

Once they’ve got a bunch of beetles growing on the plant… they’ll
take it to a nearby wetland… and the bugs will be released into the
wild…

(sound up)

Linda Coughenour is a member of the Audubon Society.

Her group is working with state and local agencies to raise and
release these beetles.

She says tackling purple loosestrife invasions is a big task – and
governments need help from volunteers to deal with the problem:

“This is a serious problem throughout the entire Great Lakes
wetlands… it has migrated from the East Coast to the Midwest…
so, uh.. the problem’s just too big – so they thought up doing this
volunteer project and they’ve enlisted people all over the state… and
we’re just one of those.”

Volunteers have have been releasing their beetles into this wetland
for few years now and they’re beginning to see progress:

“It’s going really well… for a while we got off to a slow start, but for two
years now we’ve found evidence that the beetles are reproducing on their
own. We see little egg masses, we see larva that are starting to eat
the plants, we see adult beetles on the plants that have wintered
over. And that’s the thing, to get them to do it on their own.”

But releasing a foreign species into the wild is always a concern.

There are a number of examples of bugs released into the wild to
eliminate a pest, but ended up causing a problem themselves.

But before importing a bug that will prey on plants – the federal
government requires testing to make sure it won’t eat other plants.

The tests have been done.

And researchers feel that this is an extremely finicky bug…

Berndt Blossey is a specialist on invasive plants and ways to control
them.

He says the beetles were tested on native plants before they were
allowed to import the bugs:

“And it was shown there that they will not be able to feed and
develop on the plants. They will occasionally nibble on them, but
they will not be able to develop on them and they usually move off
after they have taken a bite, and they move off to other plants.”

The leaf beetle is not the only bug researchers are importing.

They’re also importing two other beetles known as “weevils.”

One that feeds on loosestrife flowers, and one that feeds on its root
system.

Blossey says more than one bug is needed to keep the plant from
growing back:

“Loosestrife will rebound from resources in the root stock. If you
have the root feeder in the system as well, these fluctuations will be
dampened, so loosestrife will not be allowed to comeback to higher
levels.”

(sound of wetland up)

People who admire the diversity of plants and animals in wetlands
like the idea of keeping purple loosestrife in check.

Roger Sutherland welcomes the bugs.

He believes they’ll help him keep this wetland open for the plants,
birds, and insects he’s come to know over the years:

“We know that the purple loosestrife will probably always be here.
But if we can bring it down to a manageable level, where you’re going
to have a pocket here and a pocket there… and you can kind of
maintain the integrity of this wetland system… then you can’t ask for
anything more than that.”

And researchers say that’s the goal.

To help these wetlands reach a balance… so that plants and animals
that have evolved to rely on these wetlands for thousands of years…
can continue to do so.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.

Small Wetlands Drowning in Development

Small wetlands such as the one pictured above often dry up during the summer. These 'ephemeral wetlands' are home to all kinds of frogs, salamanders, reptiles and aquatic life that depend on this specific kind of habitat for their survival. Photo by Lester Graham.

Biologists are becoming concerned about the disappearance of a habitat for wildlife that can be found in rural areas, in sprawling suburbs, and even in big cities. The Environmental Protection Agency is trying to get city planners, farmers, and developers to stop draining small marshy areas that biologists call ephemeral wetlands. The EPA says in the rush to save big areas of wetlands these small temporary wet spots have been overlooked at the expense of some unique wildlife. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:

Transcript

(Frogs sound)

There’s still just a bit of ice along the edges of this little pool, but it’s a warm day, the ice will soon melt, and the frogs sound as if they’re rejoicing. In the coming weeks, this shallow little pond will become a chorus of different kinds of frogs and host a dance of mating salamanders. Many kinds of amphibians and reptiles are drawn to wet spots like this one to mate and reproduce. And. there’s a bit of a rush to their reproductive activities. More than likely by middle or late summer, this little pool will be all dried up. Actually, that’s good because it means fish can’t survive here, fish that would eat the young of many of these species. So a lot of these frogs and salamanders and other creepy-crawly things do really well here while its wet.

Ed Hammer is a biologist with the Environmental Protection Agency. He says these temporary, or ephemeral, wetlands are usually pretty small… most under two acres in size…some so small you could jump across them. But they’re really important to aquatic life such as fairy shrimp and clam shrimp, which can survive, and even need dry periods. And certain species of frogs and other amphibians who use the wetlands for breeding.

(Frogs fade out)

“They’re extremely productive. We have some of these smaller wetlands in our area in the Chicago region that in a quarter acre of size can produce hundreds and hundreds of salamanders and leopard frogs in a good year when the water holds out. They really depend on those habitats being there every few years at the very least.”

And Hammer says the productivity of the ephemeral wetlands helps other species.

“Salamanders and frogs are fed upon by a multitude of other organisms like turtles and snakes and on up the food chain and then, you know, owls will feed on them. Raccoons and skunks and fox and all up the food chain they’ll be fed on. So they’re an extremely important food source.”

The temporary wetlands are also important to many migrating birds such as pintail ducks and little green herons. Paul Zedler is a professor of environmental studies and scientist at the University of Wisconsin arboretum.

“Imagine you’re a bird, a shore bird, looking for habitat in which to forage. Then ephemeral wetlands, while they’re there, can be an excellent place for resting and feeding.”

Zedler says the ephemeral wetlands are amazing to him because of the wet then dry cycle to which so many animals have adapted.

“It’s like instant ecosystem. Like, add water and you get an ecosystem. People who, once it’s pointed out to them, invariably think it’s pretty darn neat.”

But a lot of times, the people who own the ephemeral wetlands don’t realize that area that gets swampy in wet years is a thriving habitat. Ephemeral wetlands are often drained to plant crops, or bulldozed deeper to build storm water retention basins for housing developments, or the surrounding woodlands are cut down eliminating the habitat where many of the frogs and salamanders live the rest of the year.

They’ve disappeared so quickly that some species that depend on ephemeral wetlands are in danger of disappearing too. Gary Casper is with the Milwaukee Public Museum. He’s been studying a certain turtle called Blanding’s turtle to see why its numbers have dwindled so much.

“Blandings turtles look kind of like those old German helmets from World War II and they have a really bright yellow chin and throat with a real long neck. They’re a threatened species in Wisconsin and threatened or endangered in several other states.”

Casper has been watching Blanding’s turtles to see what makes them tick, where they like to live and eat.

“And after looking at the data from seven years of radio tracking, it’s quite clear that they strongly prefer these seasonal, isolated wetlands probably because they provide much more food for them.”

And so they join a host of other critters such as gray tree frogs, marbled salamanders, fishing spiders, wood ducks and others who heavily depend on the ephemeral wetlands.

The EPA is publishing pamphlets and holding seminars to teach state and local officials and those folks interested in preserving wildlife habitat…hoping they’ll spread the word about the value of the seasonal ponds, or mud puddles so that private landowners will keep them around.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Tag: salamander

Searching for Salamanders at Old Nuke Site

Transcript

Related Links

Bioblitz: Bugs and Birds in Your Backyard

Transcript

Related Links

Bugs Released to Munch on Invasive Plant

Transcript

Related Links

Small Wetlands Drowning in Development

Transcript

Related Links