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The Klamath-Siskiyou region is world renowned for its rich biodiversity; some of the plants and animals that live here, and nowhere else, are among the most majestic in the United States. Several — like the Siskiyou Mountains salamander and the Scott Bar salamander — have very small home ranges, and logging of old-growth trees in their habitats, along with the increasing risks of forest fire, mining, and construction, put these species at grave risk of extinction.
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE
PROTECTION STATUS: Not listed
PETITIONED: 2004
RANGE: Siskiyou Mountains salamander: roughly 203,000 hectares in three counties in extreme southwestern Oregon and northwestern California; Scott Bar salamander: small area of the Siskiyou Mountains near the confluence of the Klamath and Scott rivers, a few miles east of the Siskiyou Mountains salamander
THREATS: Habitat loss through road building, mining, recreation, and dam construction
POPULATION TREND: The populations of these salamanders are declining.
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SAVING THE SCOTT BAR SALAMANDER
The Siskiyou Mountains salamander and the Scott Bar salamander have the smallest ranges of any western salamanders in their genus, occupying a small area on the Oregon-California border in the Klamath-Siskiyou region. Narrow habitat specialists, the salamanders are primarily found on rock-covered hillsides in the shade of old-growth forests. These habitat requirements make them highly sensitive to logging, and studies across the country prove that cutting always precipitates their decline or disappearance.
The Siskiyou Mountains salamander was once protected under the Survey and Manage Program, a provision of the Northwest Forest Plan established for unprotected species that are dependent on old-growth forests. The program employed a “look-before-you-leap” strategy that required the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to survey for old-growth species and create logging buffers around where the species were found. But in March 2004 the Bush administration eliminated the program, leaving the Siskiyou Mountains and Scott Bar salamanders, among hundreds of others, without protection. Along with our allies, the Center filed a petition to protect the Siskiyou Mountains and Scott Bar salamanders under the Endangered Species Act on June 16, 2004. After several lawsuits, in 2007 the Service announced that listing for the salamanders may be warranted. But the final rule, published the next year, declared that neither species merited listing.
The loss or decline of salamanders from forest ecosystems has important consequences up and down the food chain. Salamanders play a key role in forest nutrient flow, regulating the abundance of soil invertebrates that are responsible for the breakdown of plant detritus. They’re excellent indicators of ecosystem integrity and biodiversity because they’re relatively easy to sample and are sensitive to manmade ecological changes; their loss from forested stands is indicative of changes that will likely affect a broad array of species.
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Contact: Noah Greenwald
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