Rare yet resilient salamander marks 16,000th species in Photo Ark project

They say every generation thinks it's the end of the world. But the Santa Cruz long-toed salamander has been staring at oblivion since 1967

That’s the year the amphibian was listed under the Endangered Species Preservation Act, the legislation that preceded the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

Restricted to two coastal counties south of San Francisco, these three-inch salamanders rely on seasonal pools and wetlands that are shrinking due to climate change, agriculture, and human development. Scientists believe the subspecies’ entire range spans just 15 miles.

Despite this, the plucky creature has somehow, miraculously, survived. It’s that resilience that has earned it milestone status with National Geographic’s Photo Ark project.

“It’s a very overlooked species,” says Joel Sartore, National Geographic Explorer, photographer, and creator of Photo Ark, which aims to document at least 20,000 species living in zoos, aquaria, and captive-breeding sites around the world. (Read why Sartore founded Photo Ark.)

“We use black-and-white backgrounds to not only eliminate distractions, but to give all animals an equal voice,” says Sartore, who founded the project in 2006. “That salamander is every bit as big and glorious as a tiger in these photographs. They’re all the same size.”

The Santa Cruz long-toed salamander was chosen as a way to “introduce it, to show people how amazing this animal is, and how it’s hung [on] through time,” says Sartore. 

Though it's unknown how many salamanders remain in the wild, there are likely very few left.

Goldilocks habitat

These salamanders, which live up to a decade or more, can’t exist without wetlands. For starters, without water, their eggs dry out and die. But also, when those eggs hatch and become tadpoles, they need to find tiny aquatic animals, such as copepods, to eat in the seasonal ponds and marshes. 

“If the [water sources] don’t last long enough for the larval salamanders to complete their development, then we lose an entire generation of salamanders,” says Eric Palkovacs, a freshwater ecologist and part of the team at the University of California Santa Cruz working to save the species. (Meet the Miami tiger beetle, the 15,000th species in the Photo Ark.)

However, too much rain can also be a problem.

“If the ponds hold water over the entire year, then they’re vulnerable to getting invaded by several invasive species, like bullfrogs or mosquitofish,” both of which like to eat salamanders, explains Palkovacs.

“So we need this sort of Goldilocks kind of situation where it’s not too wet and it’s not too dry,” he says.

And this is where climate change comes in. In California, precipitation patterns are becoming more extreme in both directions, with several years in a row of drought followed by several years of very wet winters, Palkovacs says. 

The difficulty doesn’t end there: Once tadpoles turn into adults, they need healthy upland oak forests, which are often cleared to make way for agriculture and housing developments. This human activity also fragments salamander habitat, making it less likely for adults to find each other and breed.

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Humans step in

Without some sort of intervention, Palkovacs says, even such a hardy species was headed for extinction. That’s why, in 2020, people stepped in to help.

In a partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Palkovacs and his colleagues began catching a handful of adult Santa Cruz long-toed salamanders each year as they made their way back to the breeding ponds. 

Then, the scientists put the amphibians into artificial ponds stocked with sediment and wild vegetation and housed on the UC Santa Cruz campus.

Not only did this allow the scientists to help the salamanders reproduce under controlled conditions—the right amount of water, protection from predators—but it’s also allowed the team to create crosses between populations that are no longer connected, potentially adding some genetic diversity into the wild once they're reintroduced. (Learn about how scientists are fighting a deadly amphibian fungus.)

So far, the team has returned about 3,500 of these captive-bred amphibians to their native ponds. The next phase, using genetics to track whether such reintroductions are indeed forming more robust populations, is in the works.

In the end, the goal is to create a framework that can be used to help save other species from the brink, says Palkovacs.

“The fact that there's a team of people that have been working for years to save [Santa Cruz long-toed salamanders], and they really care deeply, that inspires me,” says Sartore. “It gives me hope.”

It also hints at the bigger picture, he says. After all, working to combat climate change could stave off the extinction of countless species he’s photographed over the course of Photo Ark’s lifetime. He's also watched some disappear, such as the Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog and the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit.  

“We’re all tied together” 

“The fact that there's a team of people that have been working for years to save [Santa Cruz long-toed salamanders], and they really care deeply, that inspires me,” says Sartore. “It gives me hope.”

It also hints at the bigger picture, he says. After all, working to combat climate change could stave off the extinction of countless species he’s photographed over the course of Photo Ark’s lifetime. He's also watched some disappear, such as the Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog and the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit.  

“Climate change is reaching into every corner of the globe, and it affects a little salamander on the coast, just as it affects us with record heat waves,” says Sartore. “We're all tied together.”