Science | November 7, 2024

Hurricane Helene Battered the ‘Salamander Capital of the World’ With Floods and Landslides. Will the Beloved Amphibians Survive the Aftermath?

The storm decimated a region rich with dozens of species already struggling with habitat loss and disease

A Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander rests on a log. JJ Apodaca

Daily Correspondent

When Hurricane Helene hit Valle Crucis in North Carolina, the creek across the Watauga River was already overflowing from 11 inches of rain, according to local resident Jessica Valky-Bryant. The swollen creek then went over its banks, flooding and destroying Valky-Bryant’s private road. Trees and mud puddles were everywhere.

“In the 14 years we have lived at our current house, we had never seen the creek meet the river the way it had,” Valky-Bryant says.

As she walked along the road, surveying the damage, her oldest daughter, Tëghan Bryant, 14, came running over with cupped hands. “I found a new salamander! And it’s spicy!”

Sometimes, among the rocks in their flower garden or the banks of the creek, Valky-Bryant and her daughters found blue-spotted salamanders or orange eastern newts, but this one was different. It had gills and was a dark greenish brown with a splotchy pattern on its back.

On the second day of rains, about 150 miles northeast of Valle Crucis, in Shawsville, Virginia, Andrew Kepich found a gleaming red salamander in a puddle of residual water in his leaky basement. And around 35 miles to the west of Valle Crucis, in Elizabethton, Tennessee, James Pierce caught his cat trying to kill a cave salamander in the mud tray for his boots.

The “salamander capital of the world” lies in an area along the southern Appalachian Mountains in the southeastern United States, where estimates suggest around 100 salamander species live. In late September, when Hurricane Helene swept through the Southeast, it knocked out power, disrupted water supplies and devastated entire communities. As locals banded together to recover, images of dead hellbender salamanders surfaced on social media, leaving many wondering about the hurricane’s impact on these iconic creatures.

Hurricane Helene Flooding — Hurricane Helene caused massive flooding and damage across western North Carolina. Steve Exum / Getty Images

Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm, traced a disastrous path of more than 600 miles from Florida to Tennessee—and has become one of the deadliest storms in North Carolina, with over 100 reported deaths and many still unaccounted for. Some estimates say that the storm caused $250 billion in damages to the Southeast. For salamanders and many other amphibians, the impact remains uncertain, and it will take time for conservationists to resume monitoring efforts.

“The biggest-scale issue that I’m worried about is that the southern Appalachians is just such an area of high endemicity,” says JJ Apodaca, a conservation biologist in Asheville, North Carolina, and the executive director for the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, “and a lot of those species are in extremely small ranges.”

Many species of salamanders are endemic to the Appalachian Mountains, meaning they don’t exist anywhere else in the world. One of those, the Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander, was identified in 2019 and lives along a 14-mile gorge in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains—one of the areas with severe flooding that wiped out the town of Chimney Rock. Scientists believe these green-splotched creatures are already threatened with extinction, with only around 200 to 500 of them left in the wild.

The species needs rocky outcrops to survive, and the area faced hundreds, if not thousands, of landslides, according to Apodaca. “If any of their populations were lost because of the landslides, that’s just a tremendous loss for the species,” he adds.

This rare species might not be the only one being swept away. Lori Williams, a wildlife biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, reports having received accounts of as many as 40 washed-out hellbenders in a single area, with sightings coming from the Upper French Broad River, Nolichucky River and Watauga River. These hellbenders are often found amid the massive debris piles left behind by the flood.

The eastern hellbender, one of the largest salamanders in the world, is listed as “special concern” at the state level. Conservationists believe they also warrant protection on a federal level. In 2019, the species was considered for and denied protection by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because the population in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee was faring well, explains Tierra Curry, a scientist and endangered species co-director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

“And those are the very populations that just got hit so hard by Hurricane Helene,” Curry says.

For hellbenders and many other aquatic-breeding salamanders, clean water in the rivers is essential. Without clean water, the animals become vulnerable to pollutants, and sediment can choke hellbenders and even bury their eggs in riverbeds, endangering their numbers. Now, floods have added sediment and pollutants into the rivers. Dirt coats the river bottoms, and sewage and heavy metals drift in the currents.

The hurricanes arrived in the middle of the hellbender breeding season. These creatures had recently laid their eggs, some of which might have even hatched, says biologist Ben Morrison, the Coastal Plains Program coordinator for Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy.

For hellbenders in areas that had some of the worst flooding, it seems unlikely that any of their young survived this year, Morrison says.

In the past, when populations had larger numbers and more habitat, natural disasters weren’t “as big of a deal,” Morrison says. The habitat wasn’t as degraded, and affected populations could receive new individuals from nearby populations. Now, when a natural disaster hits an isolated population, it compounds with other threats the animals already face, leading to declines.

In a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in late September, Curry and other scientists argued it was essential to put the eastern hellbender on the endangered species list.

“If you protected them, it would protect habitat for so many other animals that share their habitat,” she says, adding that cleaning up rivers for hellbenders would also help freshwater mussels, crayfish and endemic fish.

Around the world, at least 2,000 species are considered at high risk of extinction due to natural disasters, according to a study published in June. Reptiles and amphibians top the list of affected creatures, and hurricanes are the natural disaster that affected the most species. “Species with limited ranges are particularly vulnerable,” says Fernando Gonçalves, a biologist at the University of Zurich who worked on the study.

Northern Red Salamander — A northern red salamander stands out amid a green backdrop. Eitan Grunwald

He adds that amphibians are among the most affected species, but also the least studied, due to their small ranges. And since they choose specific habitats that have a series of ideal conditions—based on factors including temperature and humidity—they can also end up being affected by changes in their microclimates after such events, Gonçalves says.

Disturbances like hurricanes and wildfires can pose threats to wildlife, but Joshua Hall, an ecologist at Tennessee Tech University, highlights that such events can also have surprising benefits for the natural world. Research indicates that fires, for instance, can act as an “agent of renewal.” Ecosystems in the Southeast thrived from periodic fires that rejuvenated the soil by returning to it the nutrients tied up in plants, promoting the growth of new vegetation. Similarly, tornadoes and cyclones can create opportunities for wildlife; when a tree falls during a storm, the hole left behind fills with water, providing a breeding ground for frogs.

However, Hall emphasizes the increasing storm intensity and frequency, coupled with habitat isolation, pollution and disease, present larger challenges for these ecosystems. “The combination of those things could really wipe out a population,” he says.

Scientists say that to ensure the survival of salamanders in Appalachia it’s crucial to create large and resilient populations from existing ones. This approach will better prepare salamanders to withstand diseases and natural disasters.

“Our species are our natural heritage,” Apodaca says, “and are so vitally important to who we are as a region.”

As for the salamander Valky-Bryant and her daughter found near their home, they carefully released it back into the creek after the waters had calmed down. She says, “Hopefully, the little one fared well in the waters.”