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 (50,855 acres proposed in 2011)

RECOVERY PLANS: 2015 — draft (Santa Barbara County population); 2016 —draft (central California population)

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.

Photo © Frank Schleicher