BATTLEBORO REFORMER (Vermont) 16 August 03 Residents help save annual migration (Toby Henry)
Brattleboro: Why did the spotted salamanders cross the road? For more than 3,000 of them and other amphibians during this spring's mating season, it was because they were carried across busy roadways by volunteers from the Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center.
Hollis Burbank-Hammarlund, the center's executive director, said that dozens of local volunteers escorted a total of 3,309 frogs, toads and salamanders across roads to vernal pools in March and April. She said that volunteers were dispatched to about 10 known "critter crossing" sites located in Westminster, Westminster West, Brattleboro, Putney and other towns. The amphibians that were escorted to safe havens included some 2,100 spotted salamanders, 40 Jefferson salamanders, more than 700 wood frogs and spring peepers and 71 American toads.
Despite this effort, she added, the mortality rate was still very high. Volunteers counted nearly 350 amphibians, including 168 spotted salamanders, crushed by passing vehicles. This is the first year that the center has kept such data on local amphibian death rates.
"The rate is still very high," she said, "and that's just the mortality rate that we recorded while we were out there."
"But it's nice to know that over 3,000 were saved," she continued. "Without our volunteers, the mortality rate would have been much higher."
Over the past several years, the mating season for the relatively large, dark-colored yellow spotted salamander, a member of the mole salamander family, has been receiving increased attention from the public, the media and conservation organizations like BEEC and the Grafton Nature Museum. The salamanders, as well as some of their amphibian cousins, typically choose the first heavy rain of the spring season after the snow has melted to seek out vernal pools in which to mate. The event has become known as "Big Night," and last year, many of the spotted salamanders in Windham County crossed roads in mid-April.
A late winter snowfall, however, left snow on the ground during the waning days of March, and volunteers found themselves called to duty as they saw the salamanders skittering across snow to lay their eggs in vernal pools and ponds that still had ice on them.
Residents help save annual migration