Joshua Ginsberg 0:00
Said, modern science requires large collaborations, and our Hudson River work has had many collaborators, particularly over the years the Hudson River Foundation and the Department of Environmental conservation's Hudson River Estuary Program. We have engaged with Hudson River Estuary Program in many different ways. Stuart Findlay, who's here today, served, still serving as the chair of their science committee, yes, for many years now, and it's a pleasure to have a staff member of that August state organization here tonight, Laura heedy is the lead on their conservation and land use team through a partnership with Cornell University, where she has an appointment, and their Department of Natural Resources, again, Cornell is another long term collaborator. They forgave us for stealing gene likens from their faculty 43 years ago, and we've done a lot of great work with them. Laura has over two decades of experience working to move forward understanding of biodiversity in the Hudson Valley, and she does remarkable work with local towns and provides innovative approaches to helping develop partnerships and assisting the communities of the Hudson Valley. Real do really do better management and planning initiatives, but her heart is on rainy nights, and particularly warm rainy nights, not cold rainy nights, although in the spring sometimes you get cold ones, because she is the founding manager of the amphibian migrations and road crossing projects. I know from personal experience that somewhere between March and late April, I can never get a hold of her because, you know, she's got a day job, and then she's out at night doing what she will tell us about. She has a master's degree in Biology from Idaho State and a Bachelor's of Science in environmental science from Rutgers, another long term Carey collaborating institution. And with that, I will say, Laura, it's such a pleasure to have you here as a speaker, because you're a regular in our audience as well. So thank you, Laura.
Laura Heady 2:34
Can you hear me all right? Thank you, Josh. Thank you Laurie and everybody at Cary Institute for inviting me to speak with you all tonight, and everybody who's online as well. I appreciate you all being here, and I'm excited to talk about one of my favorite groups of animals. And I will, right off the bat, just address one of the questions that came in in somebody's multiple registrations, was, What is my favorite amphibian? And if you know me well, you know I don't like to choose favorites. However, I will just divulge right off the bat something I don't share publicly very often. My favorite animal body part is the salamander elbow, and you can see it right there in the photo, and it's very clear why that is and and for those of you who maybe were born too late. I love a rainy night. That's a nod to Eddie Rabbit's famous 1980s hit. Check it out if you don't know it. It I kind of dreamt that Carrie would be blasting it as I came up at the podium, maybe next time. So for tonight's presentation, I'm going to give you a little bit of context and a few fine print disclaimers. I'm going to talk about habitat and migrations of this group of amphibians. I'll talk about seven of these amphibians that I'm going to highlight tonight, and then I'm going to share a little bit of the community science work that we're doing, and the outcomes that are coming from that project, from this volunteer work, and then a little bit about what you can do. And so the first disclaimer I'm going to give you, just in case you want to leave, is, I'm not a herpetologist, so I just want to put that out there right off the bat. I might be disappointing and but I'll explain why and what I do do. But as Josh mentioned, I'm with the Hudson River Estuary Program, which is a watershed program within the New York State DEC and we have a number of staff working on different teams to achieve the goals that are listed on this slide and the work that I'm involved in, while biodiversity conservation really supports all of these goals, specifically, I'm responsible as well as my two colleagues on Our conservation land use team for the conserved natural areas goal, and all of our work is outlined in a five year action agenda. If you want to do a deeper dive into our program, that's all on the DEC is website, but I wanted to point out a couple more disclaimers. So when you think about amphibian conservation, you might think, oh, you know, a wildlife agency that makes sense. Well, we're not part. Of the Bureau of wildlife at the DEC so we're not actually responsible for managing wildlife, or monitoring wildlife, or even managing wildlife management areas. And even though I'm with Cornell, as Josh said, I'm not an academic researcher, so I don't get to do the deep dive into the science. So when you have one of my conservation heroes like Dave Strayer here to give you a talk. You know, he's able to really dig into the science in ways that I can't. But what I do and what our team does, is we're really trying to work with partners to better understand what are the conservation priorities in the estuary watershed? How do we share that with communities in a way that's useful? So whether you're a municipal planning board official or if you are a land trust, how can we help you understand what are the priorities for conservation in the Hudson Valley? And then we deliver extension in the traditional kind of college, you know, University Extension program, and we do a lot of outreach and training workshops, technical assistance and grants and so forth, to help build the capacity of municipalities to use that science based data for planning and what that looks like. Well, first, let me, let me share one other challenge we have. Is what I describe as the complex decision making landscape of the Hudson Valley. So the map on the right shows the green portion is the watershed. That's what drains into the tidal portion of the Hudson River, which is about 150 miles from New York City all the way up to Troy, where the dam prevents the tidal action of the river from going any further north. And in that corridor, we have about 10 counties. We have 10 counties, but the watershed doesn't follow the boundaries Exactly. However, our decision making right follows political boundaries. There's almost 260 municipalities in that area, and every one of those municipalities is making decisions about land and water. And we also have about 90% private land ownership, so all those private landowners are making decisions. So when we think about species like amphibians that require habitat complexes, and they don't care about property boundaries and political boundaries, this is very complicated, and these are all the decision makers that I like to consider job security, because we're trying to help all of them make better decisions. And I also point out, while we're only 13 and a half percent of the land area of New York State, we have more than half the population, and we're also source of pride, the most bio diverse part of New York State, and just looking at amphibians alone, because that's the topic for tonight. 85% of the 33 amphibians that we have in New York State have part of their range right here in the Hudson Valley. So we have a tremendous heritage that we want to be helping to conserve. And what does success look like for our team is when we get municipalities to get engaged in the process of inventorying their natural areas and habitats and then taking steps to plan and develop policies to conserve those priorities. And so it might look like everything from open space plans to maybe even wildlife connectivity plans, which town of Bedford has recently tackled critical environmental areas, other policies like wetland protection and even maybe conservation financing, where local communities are protecting open space through through some actual funding. And that's all I'm going to talk about, that part of my work for tonight. If you want to learn more about that, I encourage you to visit our website, on the Cornell website, where we get into lots of biodiversity resources, examples of conservation planning. That's the QR code, and we're going to be sending it out with the follow up email after tonight. So what I'm here to talk about tonight forests, and in particular, forest amphibians. And one thing I'll point out right off the bat that's really important for forest amphibians is the forest floor, and having that thick leaf litter, having fallen logs, having rocks and stones, and all the places that they need to hide, and these micro habitats that create micro climates so important. And I'm going to focus on a set of species that live in the forest, and I'm going to spend a lot of attention focused on the ones that breed in vernal pools. So what is a vernal pool? I like to have this one fun slide to think about the synonyms for vernal pools, depending on how you want to characterize them, or what your purpose is. Hudsonia, that does a lot of work in the Hudson Valley, has referred to a vernal pool as an intermittent woodland pool, which more accurately, kind of describes it's in a forest setting, and it's ephemeral in nature, only filled some of the time. They also miraculously show up in the spring. So some people refer to them as spring pools, a more technical, legal a definition might be a seasonally ponded isolated wetland. Down south, they call them hog wallows, and in Massachusetts, they're wicked big puddles. They're also the underdogs of the wetland world. When we think about their legal protections, they're often the ones that slip through the cracks, because they're either too isolated to get federal wetland protection, there might be too small to get state protection, and fortunately, a lot of communities in the Hudson Valley have stepped up to protect. Through local measures. They're also considered disappearing ponds, in part because they do vanish off the landscape when they dry up in a typical year, in the summer, but also disappearing because a lot of people might see a vernal pool like this in the photo and think, oh, that's just a mosquito breeding ground. I'm going to fill that in, or they might try to, you know, dig it out and make it an ornamental pond. These are all things I would discourage doing, because these are actually incredibly important, valuable habitats in the forest. So what makes a vernal pool different from all the other wetland types? Because how many of you, when you think of amphibians, you think of water? All right, well, hopefully we're going to switch that tonight, because actually the name amphibian refers to the fact that they need both land and water. And whereas, you know, a lot of people might think, oh, a frog can just go in any old wetland, as long as there's water, there's actually differences between the properties of, say, a marsh or a beaver pond, a hardwood swamp or even a bog Lake, you know, the pH of the water, the depth of the water, whether or not there's a canopy of vegetation, or if it's open low vegetation. So there's all these different characteristics. And actually, the species that use these have often adapted to the conditions that are right for them in these and that's true of vernal pool. So what is a vernal pool? It is seasonally flooded, you know? And again, these are always the typical years, right? If there's one thing I love about nature, it always reminds us we don't know everything, right? Not everything is black and white, but generally they're small, maybe only an acre or so on average, they're generally shallow, just a few feet deep. They are sitting in an isolated basin. So if you can imagine almost a depression in the forest, it's like a bowl, and that holds snowmelt, it holds rainfall, and generally it dries up in the summer, because there isn't a steady flow of water going in and or leaving it. And because there's not that steady flow of water, and it dries up, they're fishless. And because they're fishless, they provide really critical habitat for amphibians, because while there still are predators, there isn't a steady predation of fish feeding upon the eggs and the tadpoles and the salamander larvae that are in these pools, which I'll talk about in a minute. And the other thing
Laura Heady 12:18
that's important to think about with the vernal pool breeding species I'm going to talk about tonight is that tonight is that they do live in the forest, so they maybe are in those vernal pools for like, two weeks out of the year. But a lot of people think, Oh, if we protect vernal pools, we'll protect amphibians. What about the 50 weeks of the year that they're not in the pools and they're in the forest? And that's what we're really trying to, you know, educate a lot about, is that they need, actually, a complex of habitats, because they travel across the landscape. They spend a lot of time in the forest, and they need to be able to move from the forest to the vernal pool to courtship and breed, lay eggs, and then they need to go back to the forest for the rest of the year, and that requires some connected landscapes that are safe enough to move about. So what does this look like. This is not to scale. This is a very simple schematic to give you a sense of what an explosive night of migration is like. They generally occur on, as Josh mentioned, rainy nights, we always used to say, early spring. It seems to be happening often in late winter as well. It happens after the ground is thawed. So a lot of these amphibians, particularly the salamanders, are underground. And so while the conditions might feel warm and toasty up, you know, warm 40 degrees above ground, if the ground is still frozen, that's still, you know, not breeding time for them. So they're, they're, they're, they're really queued in on the ground, being thawed and the air temperatures after sunset, these migrations happen at night. They're nocturnal, and they need to be very wet, either raining or very high humidity. Because, as you know, amphibians have very moist skin. They need to keep moist because that's how they're breathing, and they're very sensitive to the surroundings around them, and so they need that wet condition. And I often get asked year after year, particularly by reporters, so when is the migration going to be, because they want to come out and report on it, but we don't know when the migration is going to be, because it really depends year to year, when we get those right conditions, when the ground is thawed. One year, I was so puzzled about whether or not the ground was thawed, I was calling anybody I could think of, till I finally called a farmer and a friend, and he let me know that his friend had buried a bull and that dead bull just for the record, and that and that, by digging up for to bury the bull, realized that the ground was not frozen. So that was how I found out. But again, as I mentioned, I'm not a researcher, so I don't have probes out in the soil figuring out whether it's frozen from year to year. But in any case, when these conditions all line up, you might get a big night where you get hundreds, if not 1000s, of amphibians moving from the forest to congregate in vernal pools and but it's not always a big night, as they're often called. More often I see. Splatterings of, or smatterings, rather, of, hopefully not splatterings, smatterings of amphibians moving when the conditions are good. You know, for example, if it's been particularly dry for a long period of time, but it's warm enough, and they're just waiting for that rain to come, to go and congregate at the pools, then we might see a big night. But if it's like kind of just mediocre conditions, we might see it sprinkled out over a few nights. And in the Hudson Valley, this is generally occurring in March, but we've seen it as early as late February, and we've seen it extend into early April. And it really depends on where you are in the Hudson Valley. So for folks up on the Rensselaer plateau, they may see it happening a lot later than the folks down in Westchester County, for example. And so fortunately, you know, some migrations happen deep in the forest. You know we're being this is, you know, tonight is in partnership with the Catskill s science collaborative. And so in the Catskills, right, where we don't have a lot of roads, hopefully, these amphibians are able to migrate through the forest safely. Same thing with large preserves, you know, even probably the Cary campus, but in a lot of places in the Hudson Valley, the migrations are actually having to these migrating amphibians have to cross roads, and unfortunately, there's really high mortality on these roads, which I'll share a little bit of our data later. And so that's part of the reason why they're so vulnerable, because not only are they crossing roads on these journeys, because some of them travel, you know, quite a distance, you know hundreds of feet, if not, you know quarter mile. And they're small, but also because they're explosive, meaning they all leave around the same time. So you figure this time of year, you have these amphibians, the salamanders in particular, are hunkered down in burrows underground. When it's this cold, they're probably below the frost line, and they're just waiting for these cues that will signal that it's time to leave and congregate at the pools. And I once compared this to speed dating, right? If you showed up for a speed dating night like two weeks later, it's not going to be so successful. You might not meet anybody at the speed dating night. This is like speed dating for the amphibians, where they all want to get there the same time, and if the females show up at the pool three weeks after the males, they're not going to probably be successful in breeding. And so that explosive nature of them all getting there at once has to do with wanting to be there at the right time for courtship and breeding. But it's also, I heard the term, it's like a race against dryness. So you figure these pools are drying up in the summer, and the adult salamanders and frogs need to get to the pool breed, lay eggs, and then they adults leave. They go back out to the forest, but the eggs are left in the pool to develop maybe month, month and a half, they'll hatch into a little larvae. Those might take a couple of months before they grow legs and they can actually leave and become terrestrial and move out into the forest. And all this has to happen before the pool dries up. And you know, we've had erratic weather. Drought is a condition that we see more and more. And so it behooves these amphibians to get into the pools as early as they possibly can. So that often means there might be ice still on it, and as long as there's a moat of open water, they'll get in there because they're very tolerant of cold temperatures, not, you know, incredibly cold they are, you know, basically mimicking the temperatures of what's in their surroundings, because they're not warm blooded like we are, but because they're all moving in such huge numbers in these kind of relatively cold conditions, they're very vulnerable when so many of them are moving across roads. And it doesn't take much traffic to cause a lot of mortality in during these migrations and road crossings. And so here's a sense of what that looks like. This was a spotted salamander I've videoed in Ulster County during migration. If you could imagine this maybe eight or nine inch salamander, and there being 100 of them on a road moving that slowly, and one car comes through, it can actually cause a lot of damage and and it's been seen where local populations can really, you know, suffer from having just the road mortality impacts. So, but let's talk about something happier. So I'm going to talk about these seven species of forest amphibians tonight, and these two are not vernal pool breeders, but I need to talk about them, because they're probably the ones you're used to seeing the most. And I'm going to start with Eastern Red back Salamander. How many of you have seen one of these? Yeah, you pretty much flip up any log or rock and you'll find one. And they're, you know, characteristically, they have that red stripe, that red back. But there is also a lead back version, and there's also, like often in nature, a lot of variability. But these are found throughout New York. So how many of you are from the Catskills seeing? This is the Catskills program, just a handful there. So they're all over New York. But these are 100% terrestrial, so they don't even need water for the breeding stage of the. Their of their life cycle. They breed in they mate in the fall, and the females lay eggs in the summer, like under a log or a stone, and then they actually guard them until they hatch. And they hatch as little mini adults. So they're very different from some of the other species I'm going to talk about tonight. But what's the reason I wanted to include them, is they are the most abundant Salamander. And there's been a lot of research on this dating back to Hubbard Brook, I think, in the 1970 around 1970 but more recently, studies showed, once again, that, not only they as abundant as we once thought, they're more abundant. And where are my reading glasses? I'll read this to you that they found the the numbers are even higher than expected. The study authors estimated an average of 5300 salamanders in every patch of forest the size of a football field. So when you think about food webs and food cycles in the forest, we're talking biomass of salamanders greater than the biomass of like deer and they are eating invertebrates, you know, insects in the forest floor. They become prey themselves. So it's a very important part of our forest ecosystem. So that's why they deserved honorable mention tonight, as one of our important forest amphibians. The other one that I have a feeling you see, how many of you have seen a newt walking around. Yes, almost everybody.
Laura Heady 21:23
So what I like to point out about newts that I've learned from other workshops and lectures I've held is not everybody realizes that they are the same species as the newt we see in the water. So newts are also or red spotted newts, just like the red back Salamander. They occur across the state of New York. They're probably the most familiar or observed Salamander. And these terrestrial juveniles, like you see in the photo, are called Red F's, or F's, and the adults are aquatic. So here is three photos. These are all the same species. I happened to catch this one adult that still had that kind of little bit more rougher, dry skin of the juvenile, but you can see it's starting to morph into an adult. And the way you can see that is see how the difference the tail here is so round, and this tail is very flattened because it's preparing to be in the water where it needs a rudder right to swim. Even the toes are looking a little bit more webbed. And eventually this is what the adult looks like. So what happens is the aquatic you know, the eggs are laid in water. The juveniles develop in the water. When they leave, they are the terrestrial form, and they can stay that way for up to seven years, where they're on land in that form. And then they eventually, when they reach sexual maturity, they become the fully aquatic version. And they can even come back to being terrestrial if their aquatic habitat is stressed. So very fascinating. But that transformation, I mean, there's so much we can learn from amphibians. It's really incredible. Okay, so those are the two I wanted to touch upon before I get into our vernal pool, amphibians, which include these four on the right, and then the four Toad on the left, I'll talk about as well. They're not what we would consider an obligate vernal pool breeder, but the other four are starting with the very charismatic wood frog. So wood frog is also found throughout New York. Wood frog is found above the they're all the way up in Alaska and Siberia, like, that's how cold tolerant they are. I was in Alaska on a boardwalk trail through a wetland while I was traveling there, and there was a kiosk about wood frogs. And I was like, what I didn't I knew they were amazing, but I didn't know they were that amazing. And they have this ability to tolerate freezing. They overwinter in leaf litter. So unlike many frogs that over winter in water to survive the cold temperatures, they actually stay in the leaf litter, and they are a very synchronized vernal pool breeder. So when we think about big nights like wood, frogs are one of the earliest to leave their overwintering sites and get into pools for breeding, and they might only be there for a few nights, and they blend very well with their environments. No wonder they're a wood frog. They blend with the woods, and the only time they're really in water is during breeding season, and the males will just hang out, waiting for females, and they will sing. And if you don't know the call, this is wood frogs quacking along with spring keepers. And this was a rainy night, if we think about the rhythm of amphibians on a rainy night, this was while I was out looking for the migration this wood frog was on its way from the forest to the vernal pool. Something really I have found interesting, just in terms of their freezing during the winter and then defrosting is first, just without getting too deep into the physiology, basically they have a natural sugar anti freeze that gets concentrated and forces will. Water out of their organs and their cells, so that only the spaces between their cells have water that freezes, and otherwise everything just shuts down and they become completely frozen, and they can stay in that state for quite some time. But when they are frozen, which I forgot to put the credit, that's a photo from, I think maybe National Geographic, I forget, but when they're frozen, they take that posture of kind of tucking in like that, with their limbs drawn in close to their body, and that helps, kind of prevent dehydration. Well, I often see them very early in the migration, hopping on the roads, and their feet are still tucked under. And it wasn't until I started looking back at old photos, I realized how many of my wood frog photos had that. So it's like they are so ready to breathe that they're barely, probably fully, like defrosted and ready to move, and they're already moving. And the next photos will really show you what they've got on their mind. So these are three wonderful photos from volunteers of our amphibian migrations and road crossings project. And this little, skinny male was probably like, you know how many worms were out on the road on a rainy night? He's like, I'm going to have a snack before I get to the speed dating. And then this one was not even waiting for the water to start, amplexus. And this one didn't even care what species. So they they're very much ready, as I mentioned, that race against dryness, they're ready to, like emerge from this winter state and get moving on and get started on breeding. And so this is a great segue to now talk about spotted salamanders, which don't normally breed with wood frogs. So spotted salamander is our most common of the vernal pool breeding salamanders that belong to this group that we can refer to as mole salamanders, because like moles, they like to burrow underground, and generally they're actually even though they have long toes and they can dig, they often use existing burrows from small mammals, as well as the channels that are created From tree roots. And they are also found throughout New York. So they are also up in the Catskills, and they are also, as I mentioned, a vernal pool breeder. And they're quite large. I love this photo of a mom and her daughter's hands. They're holding this large Salamander. I have a women's size 10 shoe, and they're almost as long as my foot. And every year, even though this is 20 years now, I've gone out during migration every year, I'm like, wow, they are so big. It's really impressive the size that they are. But they're a beautiful salamander that looks like something that Dr Seuss would have come up with, with those yellow polka dots. And all the yellow polka dots are unique to the individual. But what's fascinating about their breeding cycle. And what they do is that they actually the males show up and do what's called a congress, and they all gather in vernal pools and try to and they actually usually arrive first, but they eventually are trying to get a female attracted to the little packet of sperm that they've left on the bottom of the vernal pool. And this is typical, you know, night of wood frogs and spotted salamanders all in the pool together. And so when you see a woodland pool, and you think, oh, that's just a big old puddle, you know, it is teaming, literally teaming with life. The amount of food in here for like a spotted turtle that might come walking along, barred owls, turkeys, you know, a number of different animals take advantage of this abundance of food that's there. And then, just to remember, too, after they lay eggs, and those eggs hatch and those young climb out of the pools, it all started with the leaves at the bottom of the vernal pool. That was the beginning of the food chain. And now all that energy of the leaves that had fallen in and got chewed up by little invertebrates in the water, and those invertebrates got chewed up by salamander larvae and frog tadpoles, and then those grew into, you know, four legged animals that carried that energy out into the forest. It's an amazing cycle of energy and food web in the forest. So let's bring it back to the Catskills. So I don't get to spend a lot of time looking for vernal pools in general. That's not part of my job. But I do like to hike a lot in my free time, and I was never seen a vernal pool in the high peaks. And I am a Catskills 3500 certificate holder. And in 2021 I was doing a high peaks hike during a beautiful time of year, and I felt like I had to show you this, because I think in the winter, we're all in. Everybody needs to see this right now. But the I was so surprised. In the saddle between two high peaks, there was this vernal pool up really high elevation. And of course, I was like, wait for me. And I looked closer, and sure enough, there were spotted salamander eggs and wood frog tadpoles in that in that pool. So when we think about some of these amphibians you know, that occur across the state of New York, they're maybe not as diverse in the high elevations of like the Adirondacks or the Catskills. So I was really excited to see them here, certainly in the Catskills in like the Delaware Water, sorry, Delaware River drainage and some of the lower foothills, there's more. But you know, there they are up at this high elevation, one of the other challenges that face vernal pool breeders is when the pools are a little bit too acidic, and so that is one of the potential reasons why they might not be as suitable for habitat in some places. Okay, moving on to the next of the mole salamander species that use vernal pools, and that is the complicated Jefferson salamander, Blue Spotted Salamander, complex. And this is another beautiful, large salamander found throughout New York, but not as common as spotted salamander, also vernal pool breeder, but they are known to go out even earlier than spotted salamander, and in the past, a long time ago, there was hybridization of these two species that led to all females, which they're now referring to as unisexual individuals with, like, multiple sets of chromosomes. It's very complicated that could be a whole night of a different lecture for another night, but, but as a result, we refer to them as the Jeff Blue Spotted Salamander complex. And even, you know, trained herpetologists would be, would have
Laura Heady 31:21
a hard time knowing in the hand what they have without some genetic testing. So speaking of in the hand, just for comparison, since you've seen the other salamanders, you'll see this one again. It's still kind of a stocky amphibian. It has a broad head, but it's not quite as long as a spotted salamander. And then this was some footage I took back in New Paul's some years ago that shows, indeed, Jefferson salamanders traveling to the vernal pool over snow and up in the Susquehanna River Valley. They actually saw them digging through substantial snow. So and they have very long toes. You can even see them there. So they're very good at digging. But can you imagine this pace going for a quarter of a mile? You know, it's just impressive. And so if you, you know, don't love their elbows, you do now, hopefully, and also, you know, respect that they're trying to navigate our landscape in the Hudson Valley, right and roads and yards and all these places where they might be facing desiccation, you know, they really need to stay moist, or, you know, curious dogs or cat cats and so forth that are out on the on in people's yards and parking lots and everything else that they have to contend with. So the next mold salamander that I want to share with you is the marble salamander, and quite a pudgy, adorable salamander, also part of that mole salamander group, also a vernal pool breeder. However, they breed in autumn, so their life history is very different, and they're New York is part of like, the northern limits of their range. So they're more of a southeast species. And what's fascinating about them with their breeding in the fall? Well, first, let me just show you a couple of other pictures of how cute and pudgy they are. The females actually tend to have more of the silvery gray barring, and males have more of the white barring. I wouldn't judge that through these photos, because, you know, photos, it's hard to tell color sometimes. But this is a photo I stole from, I think it was the Virginia government website. But this gives a sense of what happens with their species breeding. So whereas the other amphibians are in the water, they're depositing their eggs in the water. The you know, they hatch underwater. The marbled salamander has a little bit of a different adaptation. So they go to this depression, the vernal pool depression in the fall, late September, October, in New York generally. And while it's dry, they lay their eggs in the kind of the margins of the edges of the pool, and they guard them like she's doing here. And they rotate them a little bit, and they basically wait until it rains, and when the water inundates, the marble salamander eggs, they will hatch, and they will remain in the pool over the winter, under the ice. And that means in the spring, they have a little bit of a leg up, or a tail up, a fin up against the other salamanders that are going to be just hatching out, and they're going to be smaller. And so these marble salamander larvae can then start feasting on the spotted salamander larvae. They're much smaller, and so it's an advantage to have a different place in the food web, right within the pool. However, you think, Well, why isn't everybody doing that? It's risky, because if they lay their eggs too high up in the margins of the pool, and they don't get inundated, they never hatch. If they drop them, you know, too low, and maybe they're just like a little bit of rain, they hatch, and then that little bit of rain dries up, then they also won't survive. So it's risky, but like all things with payoff, you know, we take a gamble and maybe we get a payoff. So that's the interesting life history strategy of marble Salamander. They are a species of conservation need. New York of concern, because there aren't a lot of them. But again, we're at the northern limits of their range, so they're not statewide, so there's not as many of them. Okay, the last forest amphibian I want to talk to you about is the four toed salamander, a very petite little salamander, only maybe a couple inches. I'm amazed that our volunteers who go out on roads during migration actually see them, because they are almost like a worm. They can be so small, but and they're only found patchily in New York State, and actually throughout their range. And part of that might be that they're hard to detect, which I'll talk about in a minute. So again, they're not a vernal pool breeder, per se. They can breed in a vernal pool, but what they do is they lay their eggs in moss that's at the edges of like a beaver pond or a marsh or a vernal pool, and those eggs will drop into the water and hatch in the water. They also mate in the fall, but the females store the sperm, and then they actually go and lay their eggs in late winter, early spring, which coincides with the vernal pool breeders that are also migrating that time of year. So we see them out during migration, and because they're a species of concern, it's something I like to make sure everybody's aware of that they're out there on the landscape. And I'll point out a few features. For one, they have this constriction at the base of their tail. You know, salamanders can lose a limb and regrow them. Yet another reason respect right of the vernal of amphibians. They can freeze right. They can regrow body parts. They're amazing. And they also only, these guys only have four toes on their hind feet. Most salamanders have five and And what's fascinating about the tail situation. This is something I found on a migration night that is a tail still moving. I know I should have warned you to close your eyes if that's unappealing to you. But this is a defense mechanism so that, if it barely, I mean, all salamanders can drop a piece of its tail if, like, a predator has provoked it and it wants to kind of leave a decoy. And, you know, they can regrow their tail so they get out of there, and the Predator sits with the tail, the four toed salamander with that little constriction of the base of the tail. They actually drop their whole tail pretty easily. And so it was, what was really fascinating to me is the night I saw that one another volunteer somewhere else saw a drops tail on the same night, so that was pretty wild. But anyway, so fort Toad salamander, what I think is really interesting about four toed salamander is so they are a high priority species of greatest conservation need in New York. That is from the New York State Wildlife action plan. And that plan, it's just come up with new species assessments in 2025 and in the description of this species, it says it's challenging to find, and estimates of abundance and population trends remain unknown. That's partly because there isn't statewide monitoring. And so back when the New York State herp Atlas, the reptile and amphibian Atlas, was done, which broke up the entire state into 979 survey quadrangles, they found only 76 of those, almost 1000 squares, had presence of four toed salamander and then since 2000 they were able to add 28 new quadrangles to that known distribution, in part using eight, using data from our amphibian migrations and road crossings project. And so that just demonstrates the value of volunteers being out during these migration nights and seeing them and documenting them. Because prior, we did not know those locations, in those places, you know that these The species was in those locations. And then additionally, the data that people have shared with through iNaturalist has added 20 more. So the question is, are they actually rare, or are they just very difficult to detect? Some states have actually started taking them off those the greatest conservation need lists. So I think this is an interesting opportunity to think about how a volunteer project can support what we know about, you know, species like amphibians. So I wanted to talk to you about our amphibian migrations and road crossings project, which focuses on these species. It is, you know, I think you've probably had other lectures here talking about community science. I think of the very traditional sense of community science being a research project where somebody has a research hypothesis and they get citizens or community members to help collect data to answer those questions from that research. This wasn't really designed like that. This was really to raise awareness about the importance of these habitats, which is why I'm here tonight, and also to help people understand the impact of our land use decisions when we disconnect habitat with something like a road or development. Also, hopefully, we're providing a rewarding volunteer experience, and we're connecting people to nature. And also, because we have 1000s and 1000s of miles of roads in Hudson Valley, and these migrations are only happening in a few nights every season by having volunteers. Years out, we can learn where are salamanders crossing roads where there's high mortality. We can try to reduce mortality by volunteers helping move them across the road. And we can also identify conservation opportunities, which I'll come back to. We can also maybe share our data for to researchers who are asking questions. And one of my dreams this is for all the social scientists who want to collaborate, is whether or not involvement in this project will help build support for local conservation initiatives. So you know, if you go out and you help this amazing eight inch salamander cross a busy road, will you then go show up at your town hall and support the open space plan that the town wants to create to try to protect wetland and forest habitat. So here's just a look at some of the data. The data that have been collected by our volunteers. Give you a chance to look at that
Laura Heady 40:50
they've seen we've had more than 1000 people involved in the program, and not everybody. You know, some people have come and done it once, and that was enough for them. Some people have been doing it for many years. I know there's some volunteer volunteers in the room tonight, and I thank you. We've had more than 2000 surveys delivered by volunteers. 19 at least, species observed. They've helped more than 50,000 amphibians cross roads. And sadly, of the 83,000 or so that have been counted and documented by volunteers. Almost a third have not made it across the road. So you can see how road mortality, along with disease, habitat loss, you know, pesticides and herbicides and insecticides, all the different things that are affecting amphibians globally, road mortality is one, but I also feel like it's something that's within our sphere of influence. It's something we can have an impact on. And I'll just point out, you know, some of the species that we expect to see, volunteers are going out at the right time. Our data show that they're seeing the species we're targeting, like wood frogs and spotted salamanders. We're seeing fewer Jeff blue and that might again, because they're starting out their migration even earlier. And we might need to encourage volunteers to get out, maybe even before it's 40 degrees, when it feels a little bit too cold, just to see if we're not catching the very beginning of the migration. And as we would expect, marbled salamander is like the golden ticket in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, because they breed in the fall. So we wouldn't expect them to be out when we're out in February, March and April. So only 12 people, or only 12 marble town manners have been observed in the since 2009 and one way we're going to be using the data, we've already started piloting this project, because, again, if you think back to where I started with conservation planning, we want to be able to take the data that have been gathered by volunteers and figure out, okay, if we're seeing, you know, for volunteers are seeing hundreds of salamanders on these particular road stretches. They must be associated with vernal pools and forests. So we've been partnering with the New York Natural Heritage Program to actually John Vanek, who gave the talk as part of this lecture series on snakes. He was one of the great collaborators on that project to try to model where the forest and vernal pool is associated with where we're seeing kind of hot spots of vernal pool amphibians. So I'm very excited. We're revisiting that project this year, and hopefully we'll have something we can share with decision makers to help advance conservation of the habitats associated with these species. So to wrap up, what can you do? Well, first, if you're interested in volunteering, I would just encourage you, and we're going to send out information. There's actually a fact sheet in the lobby our amphibian migrations and road crossings project that is for the Hudson Valley. We have lots of trainings coming up. And you can also subscribe to get email alerts about when the migration is coming. And I update different opportunities available to you. And also, I'm so thrilled we have about 16 partners now throughout the Hudson Valley. They're helping us implement the project locally, and you can connect with volunteers potentially that way in your area. But if you live beyond the Hudson Valley, Brett Amy Thielen is wonderful conservationist at the Harris Center in New Hampshire keeps an other crossings brigades list that has all different opportunities throughout New England and other places, even in New York that are hosting migration opportunities. And again, one thing you could do if you don't want to go out in the cold and rain and handle salamanders is just don't go out and drive on rainy nights, when, if you can avoid it in late winter, early spring. What else can you do? You could get involved in your local municipal planning and conservation efforts. Maybe get involved in the conservation Advisory Council, the open space planning committee, the planning board. You know, we've been funding through the Estuary Program, lots of natural resource inventories in Dutchess County, for example, one of them just got kicked off in Red Hook this year. So getting involved in that process, showing up at meetings, supporting these kinds of initiatives, so important. This is, you know, basically this is what happens when we don't plan forest that we might think is protected. Slowly get chewed up, as we call a death by 1000 cuts, if we don't proactively think about what are the places that are important, and how can we conserve them proactively and not reactively. One other new initiative that just started from the New York Natural Heritage Program is New York pools, and this is a project that is going to be using remote sensing like maps and air photos to predict locations of vernal pools, because they don't really show up easily on maps. We don't have a great map of vernal pools in New York State, or really only a few places to have them, and so they're going to be using these predicted locations and engaging volunteers to go out and validate them and also engage local landowners if you want to have your vernal pool monitored and potentially protected. You can engage with this project, so there's the QR code if you want to get involved in that. Or you can email Ashley Ballou at the Heritage Program, or reach out to me, and I can connect you as well. And then, what else can you do if you're a landowner or a land trust staff person, or you have a little property, I would just encourage you to leave habitats and micro habitats undisturbed. I know there's a trend to have clean woods, and clean woods are ecologically a desert. And this spotted salamander is so classic, it's hunkered down in some nice moist wood that was left on the forest floor. And they those fallen logs act as sponges. They hold so much water, so even when the forest feels very dry, there's refuge for these salamanders that need moist conditions under these logs. Same thing with leaf litter, right? Keep leaf litter, you know, even if you have a small problem, I have a quarter acre, I leave leaf litter as much as I can, because it's just, it's micro habitat that's so important for insects. And I even get wood frogs, little, tiny wood frogs, when they're emerging in the summer, hopping through my yard on their way from wherever they were in a vernal pool to a forest in my neighborhood. And if you can, you know, if you have a vernal pool, learn about it. Don't fill it, don't dredge it, don't put fish in it. And if you know, to the extent we can, we want to avoid things like salt and insecticides. These are two photos to show you what salt impacts road applications are having on wood frogs. The wood frog on the left is a gravid female, meaning She's full of eggs. The frog on the right is bloated from salt. And this has been some research being done in Connecticut. And you know, there's concerns that this salt bloat slows them down. It affects their ability, you know, to move away from predators, for example. And there's concern about the lingering effects of salt, which I know Carrie's also been involved in research related to that. And then, what can you do? I mean, I may be quiet, but I'm a great conservation starter. I like to say that about salamanders. I mean that smiling face, if we all just can leave this room tonight and tell two more people about the importance of these amphibians, how incredible they are, their habitat needs, and what we all can do. I think we can collectively, you know, be part of Team Hudson Valley in conserving biodiversity that we have here. So that's all I have. I know I went over time, but it's such a great topic. Oh, and I will make one plug, which John Vanek, when he talked about reptiles, he mentioned this really great guide for reptiles and amphibians in New York state, by James Gibbs, at all, including Al breish, our retired state herpetologist. This is just a great resource. It's one of the few, only for New York State specifically. And so there's amazing information about how all of these species I talked about and many more occur in New York state. So anyway, thank you so much, and we can take some questions. I hope Great.
Laura Heady 48:38
Yes, I will. Are you going to ask the question to me? Oh, there's one way in the back, what exactly is the difference
Laura Heady 48:53
between a salamander and an edge and an EFT? Well, they're both. It's a salamander. The Red after is just the juvenile. Oh, sorry. The question was, what is the difference between a red EFT and a salamander? And so the Newt is a species of salamander, and the red EFT is just the term for the juvenile phase that's terrestrial, completely terrestrial. And basically, when it becomes sexually mature and it becomes that aquatic adult stage, it's just no longer called an EFT. It's basically like, you know, calling it a teenager, I guess red F does salamander speak for teenager? Are we gonna do your questions or more from the audience? Yeah, sure. But when
Unknown Speaker 49:32
people talking about observations,
Speaker 1 49:42
that of these programs that you know in New York
Unknown Speaker 49:50
ever slowed down or retimed
Laura Heady 49:52
a developer's Wow? So the question was, right? Basically, I guess, have these kinds of projects. Informed change to a proposed development, has it put a halt on a project?
Speaker 1 50:08
Postponement? Something? Yeah, they can either take, okay, we know we're supposed to have all these wetlands protected.
Speaker 2 50:18
We have people to monitor something. How? Cut something that then
Unknown Speaker 50:27
they'll get fined.
Speaker 2 50:28
Then time goes on, then they build has anything effectively given them some sort of reason to hold off a month or
Laura Heady 50:37
two, move a project over, right? So the question is about like, adapting or preventing development because of known important habitats and so forth. So I can't get too into the weeds. I don't I'm not involved in permitting. No. But what I will say, and this is what the approach that we're trying to encourage communities to take with conservation planning, is to not wait until you're trying to save something at the site plan level of planning, to me, that's like tossing the basketball half court at the last second of the game. If you know that you have vernal pool habitat complex is an important forest, if you can, you know, as a municipality, can work toward creating, like conservation overlay zones, or working on, you know, conservation financing that can preserve the open spaces you care about. Like, that's the best way to proactively do that. Otherwise, it's going to be a negotiation, right with, you know, okay, the as of right number of houses that could be on a site. How do we reconfigure those to maybe protect some places? But it ends up also becoming difficult to save the places that we want to be connected to, the way they need to be ecologically. So there have been successes. You know, there are procedures in place in some municipalities where they have more of a interactive kind of discussion, or they have certain procedures that project sponsors know this is the way it's going to be in this community. And we do have some examples of kind of the conservation planning side of things. On our website, we don't get involved in there's 260 municipalities. Each one of those has so many projects. Yeah, because New York State is home rule, it really trickles down to what the local municipality can do. And some municipalities, like town of New Paul's, has a wetlands law that includes vernal pools. For example,
Joshua Ginsberg 52:24
The New York State Department of Environment conservations, EPF, the Environmental Protection Fund, has lots of money to buy land. Sure, there's that too.
Laura Heady 52:35
And also, I'll just say, end our article. 24 I didn't get too in the weeds on the regulations, because I'm not a regulatory Dec person, but article 24 wetland protection in New York State, which traditionally was protecting 12.4 acre wetlands and greater in 2022 there was an update that only went into effect in 2025 this year, and the DEC is working on a new policy that will have about more than a million acres of More wetlands that need to be regulated now by DC, but there will be vernal pools included in that, but not all vernal pools. So that's a whole other topic of discussion, but it's a step in the right direction.
Joshua Ginsberg 53:10
So I've got a question in two parts from the virtual audience. The first part of it is, if you've got a road that's closed off at both ends, is it a good idea to pick up the herbs and the amphibians. Or, I think what they're really trying to say is, there, do we need cost to hold, you know, right to handling them? And then the follow up is, if you are going to handle them, how do you know which way they're going? Right?
Laura Heady 53:34
So I don't need to repeat you right, because you're in your mind, okay, great. So, right? So if, in the event that there is a successful road closure and the threat of mortality from cars is no longer an issue, then certainly I think it's safe to go and observe carefully, because you really have to be careful where you're walking, but not to have to handle them. That's fine. You know, people often ask, is handling the amphibians detrimental? And we often say the impact of cars is far more detrimental, but we do, you know, caution anybody when you're handling an amphibian to help it move across the road. Handle them extremely carefully. Don't grab them by their tails. You know, hold if you're not comfortable holding them, get somebody else to do it. Do it with clean hands. No, you shouldn't have anything, anything chemical on your hands, or hands should be wet, and you should hold them for as little as possible, just move them in the direction they're going. Is that the second part of the question? Right? How do you know which direction they're going? Because they know what direction they're going, so just whatever way they're heading. Don't second guess. The smarts of an amphibian that can freeze and regrow a limb, they also know where they're going. Yeah. Do you have an oh another from Sure, yeah, hi for
Unknown Speaker 54:44
Department of Environmental Conservation
Speaker 3 54:51
to reach out to like indigenous groups or like First Peoples organizations and groups to kind of come.
Laura Heady 55:00
Operate? Yeah, I mean, there's a whole office of Indian Affairs. Oh, sorry, repeat the question. The question was, has the DEC reached out to indigenous groups? And I don't want to speak for, you know, DEC, but there is an Office of Indian nations, and for all, like, for example, we just, as I mentioned, we just updated our five year action agenda, and there was, you know, an opportunity to get review from indigenous partners. My colleagues, who do a lot of environmental and public programming at nori point, have invited also indigenous groups to come visit from the Midwest that you know, formerly had, you know, their homes here, and to try to do outreach and engage, you know, the public too, just to and to be able to have a home visits as well. But there, yeah, there's a whole, you know, and I'll share so what I've done, because I do work a lot with municipal officials, and I think there's a disconnect from what we know today and how we think about land use, and what had happened historically is I had partnered with the neighbors of the Onondaga Nation to come down and do a training on witness to injustice and about the displacement. And they kind of go through a whole amazing moving exercise to really help people understand the history in New York about displacement. And if that is of interest, I recommend folks looking into the neighbors of the Onondaga Nation, because they do have programs like that that they offer. Thank you for your question.
Joshua Ginsberg 56:30
Sure. One more virtual audience. What steps can park stewards or Land Trust take to improve Park environments for amphibians?
Laura Heady 56:40
Sure, and I would add to that, homeowners too, right? And so some of what I already talked about, you know, again, leaving leaf litter, leaving fallen logs. You know, there's some best management practices and best practices for timber harvesting in forests where there's vernal pools, or, you know when to cut, and you know to make sure you leave enough intact forest habitat, because a lot of these species really rely on large, connected forests, you know, avoiding, like, driving any kind of heavy machinery through vernal pools, leaving fallen logs and fallen branches in vernal pools, because those often are attachment sites for the egg masses, for example, again, just avoiding cleaning up, you know, as much as we can, and as you know, and planting natives and keeping, you know, a complex, you know, plant community that includes everything from herbaceous to shrubby to trees. You know, having that complex system of native plants, keeping, you know, leaf litter, keeping things a little messy, I think, and then for park management managers who might be building trails to encourage, you know, recreational use. Many years ago, when I worked for the Student Conservation Association managing the AmeriCorps program in the Hudson Valley, we all took a training in trail building. And one of the things I learned that was so fascinating is that trails aren't just meant to direct people where you want them to go. They're to direct people away from where you don't want them to go. And so if you have sensitive habitat and you don't want people tromping through and walking up to the margins of a pool, have the trail go, you know, in a different direction, and maybe create a boardwalk or somewhere where they won't be impacting soils and won't be impacting, you know, certain times of the year there are amphibians congregating around the pools as they're either entering or leaving. I know one of the questions, if I can go off on a minute, one of the questions that somebody submitted from the registration too, is, is there any harm in walking in forests during the winter? And I would say no, but because either the frogs are frozen or the salamanders are way underground. So when it would be more of a concern, really, is approaching vernal pools during that mating season, when there might be more activity close to the pool margins, but once they get out into the forest. I mean, how many of you have seen spotted salamanders? Right? Not many like they're pretty much subterranean, and that's why we don't see them. So there's not a lot of impact you're going to have probably walking around. But that is what's amazing about getting out during migration. Migrations, because all these amphibians that are very elusive are suddenly all out on the road at the same time. So they're vulnerable, we can help them, and we also get to see, you know, maybe six or seven species on a single night.
Joshua Ginsberg 59:14
Well, I think that probably is a good place to end. Okay? And thank you very much. Sure. Thank you. Applause.
