Scientists Seek to Preserve the Elusive 'Snot Otter'

redstate.com

One time, when I was eight or nine years old, I was wandering up and down the banks of eastern Iowa’s Wapsipinicon (Wapsie) River, exploring while my grandfather was fishing. While walking along a muddy section of riverbank, I saw something wriggling in the silt and caught it. It was a curious beast, like a salamander, but it still had its feathery gills that normally only juvenile salamanders wear, and this one was big, maybe six inches long. I took it to show to Grandpa, wanting to know what it was.

“It’s a mud puppy,” he told me. “It’s harmless. Best let it go.” So I did, and later in my career, I would see these things in streams and rivers from time to time and let them go unmolested, remembering Grandpa’s words. The mud puppy, like other salamanders, is an amphibian, and its life cycle is irretrievably tied to the water.

There is another, larger salamander in the United States, one that lives in a narrow range in the southeastern states. This one is called the hellbender, but it is also known as the grampus, the devil dog, the lasagna lizard, or – my favorite – the snot otter. Apparently, the snot otter populations are dwindling, and some intrepid biologists are working to help the hellbender sala-meander back to its former numbers.

“Hellbenders are difficult to find,” says Andy Hill of the conservation organisation MountainTrue, where he is High Country regional director and Watauga riverkeeper, the key protector, watchdog and spokesperson for the Watauga River watershed. “They’re perfectly camouflaged. We try to get into the mind of a hellbender – we identify quality habitat and look for clear, cold-running water. We look under every rock and crevice. You train your eye to look for movement – a blinking eye, a flash…