Biologists from the US Geological Survey are looking for salamanders throughout the country, checking to see if a fungus from abroad is decreasing the domestic salamander population.
Earlier this year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) banned the importation and state transfer of 201 salamander species because of news that the fungus Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) has been spreading and killing amphibians around the world. While there have been no reports of Bsal in North America, officials are on the lookout as they fear this fungus could be the biggest threat since the white-nose syndrome outbreak currently endangering US bats.
Salamanders are often overlooked in nature, but they play a big ecological role that makes their conservation important. They are responsible for insect control and are prey for larger animals. A decline in their population could even affect soil quality and climate change. In Europe, Bsal has wiped out amphibians in a matter of years, making this an urgent issue for the United States.
“Very few animals are left,” Belgian professor An Martel said. Martel was the first to discover Bsal’s impact on Dutch salamanders.
It has had a huge impact. The populations where the fungus is present are almost gone. We don’t find any salamanders anymore.
FWS director Dan Ashe said in a statement regarding the January ban, “The Bsal fungus has the ability to devastate our native salamander populations, and we are doing everything in our power to protect and preserve these essential amphibians for future generations.”
The USGS and FWS are combining efforts to make sure their efforts at combating Bsal is working. They aim to analyze 10,000 salamanders across North America to make sure the fungus is not present in any local species.
“We have the highest biodiversity of salamanders in the world,” assistant FWS Fish and Aquatic Conservation director David Hoskins said. “We were concerned that once the fungus reaches the United States – if it was introduced into wild populations – it could become established and spread and potentially wipe out important species of salamanders.”
So far, results have been good. Evan Grant, biologist and coordinator for the USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative in the northeast, says the national survey of newts, which are in the same family as salamanders, is halfway to completion. Around 1,000 salamanders have been studied so far, with no Bsal cases identified yet.
More than 2.5 million salamanders have been imported from Asia to the US since 2004. It is believed that these importations to Europe caused the Bsal outbreak there, which the US is trying to prevent in North America. Canada is similarly putting up defensive measures against this new biological threat.
