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Science Lesson: Sending ancient salamanders back home is slippery business
Team members from TSU, the Nashville Zoo, and the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency scout out river rocks for release of the captive hellbenders. Photo by Joan Kite Inset photo: A hellbender in the wild peers out from under a river rock. Photo by Bill Sutton
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Science lesson:
Sending ancient salamanders back home is slippery business
By JOAN KITE
For Environmental Science Professor Dr. William Sutton and his graduate student Marley Machara, restoring populations of Eastern Hellbenders to a river in Middle Tennessee has been an almost Herculean event.
Between extreme heat brought on by climate change, local predators, sudden diet change, and other unexpected environmental factors, the giant salamanders, initially born and raised in the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere, weren’t surviving the move back to wildlife.
Of the 29 hellbenders released in 2021, only three have survived as of late July. Of those released in 2022, the numbers have been better, but the scientists are waiting for fall to arrive before they issue a verdict.
Hellbenders, the largest salamanders in North America, have been on the planet for more than 150 million years, but are now an endangered species thanks to degradation of their
