Hartford
“Oh, my goodness,” he remembers telling the 26 people who were gathered around him as part of an educational vernal pool walk that Bouton was hosting on April 28 on behalf of the Hartford Conservation Commission in the Hartford Town Forest off Reservoir Road.
“This is a special treat,” he observed.
Bouton’s eye had been caught by one salamander in particular, larger than the others and the only one in the bucket that had no spots.
He pulled it out and held it up for the crowd to see, telling them he was pretty sure they were looking at a Jefferson salamander, a species that is listed as being of special concern in both Vermont and New Hampshire, and that had never before been documented in the town of Hartford.
Bouton wasn’t sure — there was a chance that the salamander actually belonged to a different, also-rare salamander species that clones itself asexually — but when he sent pictures of the critter to some salamander experts from the University of Vermont and the Fish and Wildlife Department, the herpetologists confirmed that it was indeed a Jefferson (named for Jefferson University in Pennyslvania).
Jefferson salamanders are more common in the southeastern United States; the chillier the climate, the more rare they get. That’s why officials in the Twin States have categorized them as a species of special concern, which makes them notable but carries no legal protection. In Canada, it is threatened, and in Ontario, it is considered endangered.
Bouton, a former Windsor County forester, said that the Conservation Commission vernal pool walks, which have turned up somewhere between 500 and 1,000 salamanders over the past decade, had never yielded a Jefferson before.
Steve Faccio, a conservation biologist who co-founded the White River Junction-based Vermont Center for Ecostudies, said Jeffersons are more sensitive to forest fragmentation than other salamanders, and that the find in the 432-acre town-owned property was news to him.
“I did an inventory at the Hartford Town Forest probably 10 years ago, and did not find any there,” he said. “I put out some traps, and I did pretty good egg mass surveys in the pools and didn’t find any.”
The large, dark gray or brown salamanders come to vernal pools to breed, and then live out the rest of their lives in small tunnels, mostly within roughly 750 feet of the pool.
The salamanders play a vital role in the ecosystem as part of an underappreciated nutrient source for a variety of woodland species: vernal pools, and the amphibians that inhabit them, Faccio said.
In any given forest, the creatures that crawl out of vernal pools represent more biomass — and therefore more calories — than birds and mammals combined.
“Not every (species) likes to feed on salamanders, but those that do need them,” he said. Species that feast on salamanders include barred owls, mink, raccoons, red-shouldered hawks, garter snakes and, surprisingly, chipmunks.
Some species, like broad-winged hawks, seem to time their annual migration to the Upper Valley to the emergence of the amphibians, Faccio said. Jefferson salamanders extend the buffet time, because they tend to come out a bit earlier than their spotted salamander cousins, he said.
The Jefferson, which also has an identified breeding population in the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Park in Woodstock, is one more reason for the town to manage its forest well, Bouton said, adding that the discovery could help to drive future conservation plans.
“Because this is a rare critter and we know it isn’t a very large population, this gives us a responsibility to protect its habitat so that it has a chance of mating and keeping that population going,” he said.
Bouton said conservation officials might consider limiting foot and vehicle traffic on trails within 750 feet of vernal pools, and also work to identify other populations in the area’s wetlands that might be connected to this one by a wildlife corridor.
The find also is a reminder that the town’s natural resources continue to be something of a mystery, even to those who are paying attention, Bouton said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to find something else unusual in the town forest,” he said. “Almost every time I go out it’s a rare learning experience. Something always surprises me.”
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.