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State biologists seek sightings of hellbender salamanders in High Country waters

Image of a hellbender by Lori WIlliams courtesy of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

The waterways of the Appalachian mountains including the High Country are home to North America's largest aquatic salamanders. But few are ever seen in the wild. 

Hellbenders — also known as snot otters — are elusive creatures that blend in with the rocks of quick-moving streams. And when people are lucky enough to catch a glimpse of them state wildlife scientists want to know.

For more than 10 years, they've been asking people to report sightings of hellbenders, and the effort is helping biologists understand them better. 2020 was a record year with almost 250 reported sightings.

Wildlife diversity biologist Lori Williams says the salamanders are an important bioindicator of how healthy the waterways are. That's because small changes in water quality can have an impact on their numbers.

“Where hellbenders are doing well, the populations are doing well, then that tells us that's a really healthy river system,” she says. “It's got clean water, lots of oxygen, cooler temperatures. It's good for the trout, it's good for all the other animals that live in that system. And ultimately that's good for people.”

Fully grown hellbenders average almost a foot and a half in length. Williams says there's a myth that the giant salamanders are a threat to the area's trout population. She says they are primarily bottom feeders and despite their size aren't equipped to catch large fish.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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