SANTA CRUZ (February 2010) -Amphibians are a scarce sight these days, and their numbers continue to dwindle worldwide. That’s why I was absurdly pleased to discover salamanders living in my downtown garden, years ago.
Our salamanders aren’t much to look at. They’re small and brown, with whiplike bodies and legs so short they could almost be mistaken for worms.
But as a gardener and an environmentalist, the survival of these creatures reassures me. If these sensitive natives can thrive alongside my family, our backyard parties and our kitchen garden, it seems that we must be doing something right.
Luckily, doing right by the salamanders often dovetails with taking the path of least resistance in the garden.
Salamanders don’t take kindly to pesticides and fertilizer sprays, rototilling, tree-trimming or even the compulsive raking inflicted by neat-as-a-pin gardeners. They prefer a laid-back approach to garden maintenance, one that allows shaggy borders and untamed corners where twigs and bark are left to crumble where they fall.
Salamanders also prefer that you stay out of the garden during the rainy season. That’s right, you stay warm and dry, the salamanders frolic unmolested in the rainfall, and everyone’s happy.
SCOUTING FOR SALAMANDERS
On the other hand, if you want to scout your yard for salamander action, this is the time of year to go looking.
“This is a good time to see salamanders,” said Chris Lay, an amphibian expert and Museum Scientist and Curator at the Museum of Natural History at UC Santa Cruz. “A lot of them spend most of their time underground, and they wait for the wet weather to come above ground and breed.”
The two salamander species Santa Cruz residents are most likely to find in their yards are the California Slender Salamander - the worm-like variety living in my garden - and the Arboreal Salamander, which is larger, leggier and able to climb trees.
Both species hunt the bugs and worms that live beneath decomposing bark and branches. Searching for salamanders is no more difficult than tiptoeing through the unkempt corners of your yard and peeking under planters, scrap wood and flagstones.
Be aware that spiders, centipedes and scorpions also hide in these places, and remember to gently replace the object you're looking under.
BURROW OR CLIMB
Slender Salamanders retreat beneath ground when the rainy season ends, and lay their eggs in caverns as deep as three feet below ground, meaning that putting off weeding, raking and other disruptive garden work until late spring will aid salamander survival.
Arboreal Salamanders lay their eggs in moldy crooks and crevices of old trees, which means that a lax approach to tree maintenance is also good for biological diversity.
Both species are lungless and breathe through their skin. Amphibians’ porous skin makes them keenly sensitive to pesticides and other chemicals, and may be one of the reasons their populations are in decline.
DIRT TRUMPS SANITIZER
“It’s probably OK to pick them up, but you never know what people have on their hands, like hand sanitizer and such,” Lay said. “An instructor of mine used to tell us to just rub some dirt on our hands before we handle them.”
Slender Salamanders are small and gentle, but a big Arboreal Salamander can bite hard enough to draw blood, if provoked.
A third local species, the Santa Cruz Black Salamander, is known for wrapping its prehensile tail around your fingers. But the Santa Cruz Black is so rare that Lay has never heard of anybody finding one in a suburban backyard.
BENIGN NEGLECT
Perhaps our salamanders have survived all of these years because they like the green-around-the-edges look in our yard. We’ve traditionally left the area by the compost bins and fruit trees undisturbed to accommodate the salamanders, and other resident critters. When we find salamanders, they tend to be alone or in pairs, curled up beneath planter boxes or scrap wood.
But last spring I poked a pitchfork into a compost pile, and uncovered a fist-sized ball of salamanders making merry in the horse manure. The startled creatures froze for a moment, then slithered off with amazing alacrity, considering their stumpy little legs.
I carefully re-covered the compost pile and let it sit until summer, at which point the salamanders had all decamped for the season.
I often think of our Slender Salamanders as, well, “ours.” But in fact, they were here for millennia before we arrived in their backyard. And sadly, our presence has been less than benign. Over the decades too many of us have stripped the nature from our backyards, leaving them neat and barren landscapes of concrete and lawn.
Yet somehow, despite more than 130 years of human residence in this old house, the salamanders in the yard have stuck it out, and even thrived. It’s a small miracle, and it comforts me.
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