Species-Specific Management (SSM)

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General Recommendations for Reptiles and Amphibian Management

The wild snakes, lizards, and turtles are "wildlife" and may be managed for food for other populations, as essential components of ecosystems, and as distinctive resources, much sought by people seeking to observe and learn of and experience all forms of the wild faunal resource. Some may become pests or be dangerous to people and livestock, thus objectives of biodiversity may come into conflict with other faunal resource objectives.

This section attempts to provide information and advice for managing wild amphibians and reptiles. They are often called "non-game" by some agencies and academic programs. Frogs, toads, and salamanders are "wildlife" and they may be managed as essential components of ecosystems, as foragers within ponds and wetlands, and as distinctive resources that are much sought by people to add them to their "life lists" and to learn of and experience all forms of the wild faunal resource. In the same way that grain crops are raised for some game animals, amphibians may be increased in the wild, i.e., "managed,", to supply feeding opportunities to foraging wildlife such as raccoons, snakes, and raptors.

Rather than describing community or system level work with wild creatures, it presumes that the landowner or some person has a species of great interest and wants to keep it at present levels of abundance or to change that abundance. "Wildlife" is far too broad a term to have meaning for management. To manage "for" some animals will require managing "against" others. Modern management within public land-management groups, often said to have an objective of "maximum biodiversity", can only be achieved by trying to have no species lost, as long as possible a species list (also said to be "richness" (or total species minus 1.0)), and unspecified numbers or density of each species. The biodiversity requirement is very complex, difficult, costly, and often creates between-species conflicts that cannot be resolved. Currently, the only known strategy for achieving area-wide diversity (such as for a Ranger-District size area) is to have equal acreage of each age-class within each forest type. (The assumption being that species are more age related than related to the type (the dominant tree species); that species are strongly related to ecological conditions deflected in "type" and that over time as the areas age, they will come into (and go out of) age classes suitable for the species. The large area is too large and complex for intensive management of desirable arrangement and positioning of sites. Natural dispersion is assumed adequate. Species specific exceptions, where known, can be implemented. Often wildlife resource management or faunal resource system management is seen as a way to get more animals (as in game management) but it also includes stabilizing populations as well as decreasing them (such as when they become pests, disease carriers, or of danger to recreationists).

Stopping Illegal Action

Throughout the region, illegally collecting and selling wild reptiles and amphibians is increasing. Such poaching can be dangerous to populations. Even though there is illegal trade in almost all forms of wildlife, the reptile and amphibian market has been, and, by some estimates, still is one of the fastest growing areas of poaching. Trade includes Americans as well as Europeans and Asians who are willing to pay high sums even for common species taken from the United States, such as common snakes, toads, salamanders, and frogs as well as endangered species. Collecting such animals may be a status symbol, a hobby, or only a business. The activity is illegal and stopping it is a top priority management need.Debates continue about the ethics of having biodiversity objectives which logically include protecting or managing to achieve increasing poisonous snakes on areas devoted to high-intensity recreation and wildlife viewing.

Regional Analyses

In the southern Appalachian forests there are two threatened and endangered amphibians, Plethodon nettingi, the Cheat Mountain salamander, and Plethodon shenandoah, the Shenandoah salamander. There are no other listed salamanders or reptiles (Southern Appalachian Assessment, Terrestrial, Technical Report, Report 5 of 5, 1996, 286pp., prepared by federal and state agencies coordinated through Southern Appalachian Man and Biosphere Cooperative).

In West Virginia, for example, there are 87 species of reptiles and amphibians, 34 of which are salamanders.

From this same report, the following have been extracted from a list of 366 species thought to have viability concerns:

Fortunately there is only one species believed to be at risk. The population may not be viable. This is the Northern pine snake (Pituophis m. melanoleucus). A second link.

An Approach

Herein, each species is treated as a system. There have to be objectives, the more precise the better. Information is needed. We have attempted to reduce these to the bare minimum, the need-to-know versus the nice-to-know. We need more and better observations and field research and suggest observations be forwarded to the author for transmission to a data center or to the web site Nature Seen. Processes are fairly straight-forward and are typically plantings and cultural action to be taken on the land. They are explained in some cases. Feedback is simplified here and usually means watching the population or its effects to see if the actions taken do what you want them to do. Then as part of feedback itself, if the animals do not respond as intended, then incumbent upon the systems-oriented manager is that he or she change the tactics, the objectives, seek more information, or evaluate the monitoring procedure itself. Feedforward means keeping an eye on the future and taking action now (or not) to respond to the likely change. For example, not building a waterhole for animals if a nearby golf course will build one within a year.

We have generalized management for most of the salamanders and have included specific management for a few reptiles. Some work is underway to add to the materials here. Experts and students working with them are encouraged to submit materials for inclusion in Species-Specific Management or to suggest links to species-specific works with a managerial emphasis similar to the text made available here.

The ecological communities with which each species of salamander is associated is not well known. Age of the forest community is probably more strongly related to species preference or suitability than forest type. The effects of forest disturbance (thus on age and structure) on salamander populations needs to be well understood before management can be prescribed precisely. Such studies are difficult. Populations are small (3 to 49 per 50 x 50m plot in western North Carolina; generally 1 per m), naturally variable between years, and highly subject to off-site influences (such as nearby pond water depths). Species richness is greatest within hardwoods. Salamander richness and abundance tend to stabilize in hardwood forests older that 50 years. Petranka et al. (1991) found five times more animals and twice as many species in mature forests campared to recent clearcuts.Clearcutting within pine types has little effect on salamanders; few occur there. In general, the silvicultural practice of hardwood clearcutting opens the forest canopy, increases light penetration, increases soil temperatures, and increase water loss from the soil and litter. Daily fluctuations in temperature and humidity increase. Populations are a function of shadow lengths, solar angle, aspect, and height of edge trees. Available food supplies (arthropods, worms) decrease. Suitable egg environments decrease. Migration patterns are shifted. Depending on species, the extent of the clearcut area, and the rate of understory vegetation recovery, and the persistence of deep litter the populations of some salamanders may recover within a few years but 50-70 years is required to return to predisturbance levels. Silvicultural practices which minimize site disturbance and evaporative losses seem best for salamanders. Petranka et al. (1992) raise the question of whether alternative harvest methods would reduce salamander losses. Selective cutting may have less impact on local salamander populations than clearcutting (shade, litter, etc.) but in order to harvest a specific volume of timber, more area must be cut than in clearcutting. How to make the tradeoff for amphibians is not clear.

To forego a type of logging efficiency, say to increase logging costs by $1000, in order to benefit (or fail to diminish) reptiles or amphibians within a logging chance, then the rational manager will seek to justify the action by accumulating expected present-discounted gains from the presence of these managed animal populations over the expected life of the re-generated forest in the same area. Justifying the asserted costs will be difficult. A robust but complex gains algorithm can be developed. Costly to develop and requiring a site-specific computer run, whether such an analytical system will be regularly used for many large actions on many areas needs to be clearly seen before such effort is undertaken.

Amphibians

See Conservation Management Institute and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Look specifically at the management section for each species.

The Army Corps of Engineers, Waterways Experiment Station (WES) provides a set of habitat management guidelines for threatened and endangered species of amphibians.

The Virginia Fish and Wildlife Information Service has information on many species of the southern Appalachian forest.

A link to Biobots was created in April, 2000. It is the source of most national biological information.

A link to a database on reptiles and amphibians of the US and Canada is now available (4-23-00).

A link to the U.S. Man and Biosphere (MAB) data base is available (March, 2000).

A link to general information about MAB is available and the email address is mabres@aol.com (for information about MABFauna,MABFlora or MABNet databases)

A link to the International Biodiversity Observation Year (IBOY)2000-2002 is available. IBOY uses MAB's BRIM which is said to be the world's largest publically accessible database of vascular flora and vertebrate fauna species inventories of protected areas (637 sites in 86 countries)

Another endangered species list is available.

A related site supplies information on threatened and endangered species effort with the DoD, Dr. Fischer.

For amphibians also see the local links at the bottom of the file on box turtles.

You can help scientists monitor amphibians in the area by contacting The North American Monitoring Program , Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, 12100 Beech Road, Laurel, MD 20708or Frog Watch.

The Army Corps of Engineers, Waterways Experiment Station (WES) provides a set of habitat management guidelines for threatened and endangered species of reptiles and amphibians.

A link to Fishbase , a potential resource for information on fish foraged upon by reptiles was established on January 31, 2000.

Other information can be gained on reptiles.

Raymond, L.R. and L.M. Hardy. 1991. Effects of a clearcut on a population of the mole salamander, Ambystoma talpoideum, in an adjacent unaltered forest.(Notes) Source unknown ? :509- 512

Petranka, J.W., M.E. Eldridge, and K.E. Haley. 1992. Effects of timber harvesting on southern Appalachian salamanders. Bioscience ? 363- 370

Pough, F.H., E.M. Smith, D.H. Rhodes, and A. Collazo. 1987. The abundance of salamanders in forest stands with different histories of disturbance. Forest Ecol.and Manage 20: 1-9

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Last revision July 24, 2002.