The Laramie Salamander Migration Initiative has begun its fourth annual salamander watch, wherein volunteers help Western Tiger Salamanders cross the road.
On rainy nights in spring, the salamanders emerge from their burrows in backyards and migrate to Labonte park to breed in the pond. During this time, the salamanders must cross 9th Street, which results in many of them being run over by vehicles.
“We don’t know what the loss of that population would be without human intervention, but there’s some studies that show between 40% and 90% of a population can die by car mortalities,” said Brett Addis, the associate director of the UW Biodiversity Institute.
The Laramie Salamander Migration Initiative is a public outreach and citizen science event to inform Laramie residents about amphibian migrations.
“A lot of folks don’t realize that amphibians migrate, and they may not even realize that we have a migration,” said PhD candidate Melanie Torres.
Torres, who has been working with Western Tiger Salamanders for over 10 years, says she and some friends had been assisting Laramie salamanders long before the Laramie Salamander Initiative was started in 2020.
“My friends and I were some of the first to help salamanders move across 9th Street. A previous graduate student Cody Porter was taking some preliminary data and was starting to figure out salamander movements and migrations once he saw salamanders getting spotted on 9th Street,” Torres said. “A bunch of us graduate students would rally the first rain of the new of the year that was above 35 degrees. We would all go up and down with buckets and move the salamanders.”
“Then Mason Lee from the biodiversity Institute started the Laramie salamander migration initiative, and she was able to recruit myself and a few other of us amphibian folks to help with the migration and to make it a really awesome community event,” she said.
Mason Lee says that the greatest challenge facing the group is predicting when the migrations will occur and assembling their forces in a timely manner.
“Any sort of rainy moist night in the spring is fair game, but we’re sending out emails on the big nights. because that’s when we need the most help. But it’s hard to know when it’s going to happen,” Lee said.
According to Lee, there are two main migration events, and a collection of smaller events made up of stragglers. The first event is led by the male salamanders, who make their way into the Labonte Pond to claim territory. The female salamanders come in the second event where they will mate with the males and lay their eggs in the sediment.
Lee and Addis encourage anyone that would like to help with salamander migration to visit the Biodiversity Institute online.
“We do have a training that they need to watch so that they can make sure that they’re following all of the protocols to keep the salamanders safe, to keep themselves safe and to allow us to collect all of the data that we need to monitor them into the future,” Addis said. “Or, if you find a Salamander, you should report it on our website; we have a report-a-salamander feature so that we can track that information when we’re not out there.”
“If you live in a house that has window wells, check the window wells during the spring to make sure that salamanders aren’t getting trapped down there,” Lee said. “And don’t drive on rainy spring nights. If you have to drive on a rainy spring night, check the road as you’re driving because they could be anywhere.”
For more information visit www.wyomingbiodiversity.org
