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With its wide mouth charmingly outlined in yellow, the California tiger salamander always looks like it’s smiling. But this beautiful amphibian is a discriminating species that can only thrive in unique — and now extremely rare — habitats. As California’s vernal pools, grasslands, and oak woodlands disappear, the tiger salamander has fewer and fewer reasons to grin.
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE
PROTECTION STATUS: Endangered (Sonoma and Santa Barbara populations); threatened (central California population)
YEAR PLACED ON LIST: 2000 (Santa Barbara population); 2003 (Sonoma population); 2004 (central California population)
CRITICAL HABITAT: 11,180 acres designated for Santa Barbara population in 2004; 199,109 acres in 19 counties designated for central California population in 2005; 0 acres designated for Sonoma population in 2005
RECOVERY PLAN: None
RANGE: Central California and California’s Santa Barbara and Sonoma counties
THREATS: Habitat destruction by urban and agricultural development, habitat fragmentation, pesticides, hybridization with nonnative tiger salamanders, introduced diseases, and predation by nonnative species
POPULATION TREND: Surveys showed that by 1993, the California tiger salamander had been extirpated from at least half of its historic localities. By 2004, only six tiger salamander metapopulations within 48 breeding ponds remained in Santa Barbara County; by 2005, only seven viable breeding sites remained in Sonoma County.
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SAVING THE CALIFORNIA TIGER SALAMANDER
The California tiger salamander can’t change the distinctive biology and life history that make it dependent on ephemeral vernal pools for breeding. But in recent decades, the availability of suitable salamander habitat has changed. Ninety-five percent of California’s vernal pools have already been lost, and at least 75 percent of the salamander’s former stomping grounds throughout the state have been eliminated. The species’ plight is particularly extreme in Sonoma County, where 95 percent of remaining salamander habitat is threatened by development. The Santa Barbara population, despite having been listed as endangered in 2000, is still on the verge of blinking out.
The Center has advocated hard to prevent this species’ extinction — to protect the California tiger salamander under federal and state Endangered Species Acts and to force designation of critical habitat. Thanks to our actions, the Sonoma and Santa Barbara populations have been federally listed as endangered, the central California population is considered threatened, and central California salamanders have been granted critical habitat. The California Fish and Game Commission has been ordered to accept the Center’s 2004 petition to list the entire species statewide.
However, the critical habitat designation for the central California population — made in 2005 under the influence of former disgraced Interior Department official Julie MacDonald — illegally reduced critical habitat from 399,666 acres to 199,109 acres, excluding areas essential to the population’s recovery. In the same year, the Sonoma population’s critical habitat was completely eliminated. The Center submitted a notice of intent to sue the Bush administration over these and 53 other wrongfully made Endangered Species Act decisions in 2007.
Numerous toxic pesticides known or suspected to harm amphibians are used in or near California tiger salamander habitat. The Center is challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s registration and authorization-for-use of 46 toxic pesticides in and upstream of habitats for San Francisco Bay Area endangered species, including the California tiger salamander. We continue to monitor and oppose harmful chemical pesticide use in California through our Pesticides Reduction Campaign.
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Contact: Jeff Miller
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