Amphibian Advocate —Eastern Hellbender
Hello and thank you for returning to Amphibian Advocate for week two of what will be many weeks of tirelessly quippy blogging. This week I’ll be covering the Eastern Hellbender, an amphibian of particular interest to me as a Pennsylvania resident and hobby waterways conservationist (as it is the Pennsylvania State Amphibian and it calls some of PA’s coldest and most rapid waterways home!)
Eastern Hellbender — An “Ugly-Cute” Poster-Creature for Waterways Conservation
The Eastern Hellbender and its cousin the Ozark Hellbender are the proverbial last men standing. They are the only living members of their genus Cryptobranchus (or “hidden-gill” — we’ll get to this later) and they play a very important role in the ecosystems they inhabit. Hellbenders are an indicator species: an organism that is used to indicate the ecological viability of its habitat or greater distribution range. Conservationists study indicator species like the hellbender to learn more about the health of the environments they live in, but with hellbenders facing nationwide population decline due to climate change, water pollution, and dam construction that prohibits the flow of water to their homes, their days may be numbered.
Taxonomy
According to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Eastern Hellbender is a species of giant salamander that ranges in size from 10–24 inches in length. Eastern Hellbenders are muddy brown in color and have four stubby legs and a long tail which they can use like a rudder when swimming. Their bodies and heads are flat and covered with loose skin, with skin folds running the length of their bodies shoulder to hip. These skin folds are what make hellbenders unique, because unlike other salamanders that lose their gills in adulthood and breathe air on land, hellbenders breathe through their skin and use their lungs mostly for buoyancy regulation. The skin folds increase the hellbender’s surface area, meaning easier breathing.
Habitat and Distribution
The Eastern Hellbender thrives in the fast-moving, cold waters of eastern United States. According to The Orianne Society’s page on the Eastern Hellbender, they are restricted to habitats with especially clean, highly oxygenated water. Because Eastern Hellbenders breathe through their skin, they are highly susceptible to pollutants. Eastern Hellbenders are nocturnal predators whose diet consists primarily of crayfish, and they spend much of their time out of the direct sunlight under rocks or large stones.
The distribution of the Eastern Hellbender ranges from southern New York to northern Mississippi, where they are found in major rivers and their tributaries (according to Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources).
Conservation Status
For over a decade, hellbender defenders across the United States have been lobbying for an increase in conservation status for the Eastern Hellbender, which is officially recognized as “Near Threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as of 2004 (see IUCN page for accurate distribution map), but has seen significant decline across its known range since with little hope for improvement. As the result of petitioning, the USFWS conducted an in-depth study of Eastern Hellbender populations in 2018 with the intention of determining whether or not they needed to be reclassified as “threatened” or “endangered”, but their study was inconclusive and it was determined in 2019 that there would be no change in conservation status for the Eastern Hellbender (read the full report here).
On March 4th, 2021, the Center for Biological Diversity issued a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Department of the Interior and the USFWS for denial of protection for the Eastern Hellbender, stating that the USFWS’s denial of protection and increase in status for the Eastern Hellbender was unlawful under the Endangered Species Act (commonly known as the ESA). The fight to see this notice through to a trial is still active, and I as the author of Amphibian Advocate will be keeping my finger on the pulse of this story and promise to report any updates in the status of this potential lawsuit.
What Can You Do?
In 2019, Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf signed Senate Bill 9, which designated the Eastern Hellbender as the Pennsylvania state amphibian. The creation of this bill and its signing were the result of a campaign by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Student Leadership Council who advocated for waterways conservation across the commonwealth of PA with the hellbender as their mascot (see the official press release here). It was this grassroots effort that brought the Eastern Hellbender to my attention originally, and it is this effort that speaks volumes about the power of a small group of like-minded individuals.
I strongly recommend that anyone reading this blog post provide the Center for Biological Diversity and their partners the Waterkeeper Alliance a signal boost in their fight to protect the Eastern Hellbender. The Waterkeeper Alliance can be found on Medium as Waterkeeper Alliance, on Twitter as @waterkeeper, and on Instagram as “waterkeeperalliance”. I also recommend following the Youghiogheny Riverkeepers, a subdivision of the Mountain Watershed Association, who helped conduct research on the Eastern Hellbender in Pennsylvania and keep hellbender habitats clean and healthy. Profits from their Territory Store go directly to help fund conservation efforts in the Greater Youghiogheny area, protecting hellbenders and other wildlife near and dear to us all.
