Boundaries
by Jack Nisbet

Jack Nisbet is the author of The Mapmaker's Eye, Sources of the River, Purple Flat Top, Singing Grass, Burning Sage and Visible Bones. His newest, The Collector, is due out in October.

Finding Tigers
October 2008

On a June morning some years ago I sat above a very isolated pothole lake on the Columbia National Wildife Refuge outside of Othello. The tiny lake, no more than a hundred feet across, was situated in a deep hole surrounded by basalt cliffs and scree slopes; the faint breeze that blew did not reach its surface at all. And yet the top of water appeared to be cooking at a slow simmer.

"Just keep watching," a biologist said when I tried to pour some questions out to him.

It took me ten minutes at very close range to realize that the thousands of tiny circles that rippled the lake were not being caused by feeding fish or a phantom rainstorm. Each pool came instead from the head of a tiger salamander. Each unmistakable tiger, striped and robust, rose from the depths to break the surface, opened its mouth for a gulp of fresh air, and then sank back into the water.

"They're learning how to breathe," the biologist said.

The salamanders had hatched from eggs in this little lake. Their larval form, like the tadpole of a frog, swam freely and respirated through feather-like external gills. Now these larvae were in the process of metamorphosing into their adult stage. They were losing their gills, and had to learn how to inflate their lungs in order to stay alive. Soon they would crawl out of the lake onto land, where they would spend most of their adult lives underground.

The idea of transformation took me back to an old springhouse at my cousin Mutt's hunting lodge in South Carolina. That was where, at age seven, I saw my first tiger salamander. It was a very humid afternoon in October, after a night of steady rain. When I went there to dip out some water, a salamander stared at me from a flat rock at the edge of the cool clear spring. The animal's mustard and olive colors were fragmented by inky black stripes that even then seemed uncommonly beautiful. Its eyes looked like tapioca pearls stuck on each side of its head. The tiger did not move while I filled my bucket and slowly retreated. I was entranced, and forever after associated these salamanders with the hot, sticky South.

"Do these things really belong here?" I asked my lake companion.

"I didn't used to think so," he replied. "I mean, if you go down to the Pasco city park at this time of year there's often a pickup truck with North Dakota license plate flashing a big sign that says FRESH BAIT: TIGER SALAMANDERS $5.00 A DOZEN. For a long time most biologists just assumed they had been introduced out here by fishermen."

My friend stood up and turned a circle in the endless shrub-steppe around us. We had walked a long way to reach this lake. "But they keep showing up in the darnedest places."

Tiger salamanders are the largest still-water salamander in the world; their chunky bodies can grow more than a foot long and some animals have been known to live upwards of 20 years. They are also the most widely distributed salamander in North America, stretching from the valley of Mexico north into British Columbia, from the humid Carolinas to the shrub-steppe of eastern Washington. But their range contains perplexing gaps that mystify biologists who would like to know what these ancient creatures are really up to. Northeastern Washington and southeastern British Columbia make up one of the most interesting parts of the tiger salamander range map -- a few scattered sightings within much larger blank spaces.

Part of the problem is that tiger salamanders fall into the group called mole salamanders for good reason: they have secretive, underground, nocturnal habits. People are only likely to bump into adult mole salamanders during rainy periods around the spring and fall equinoxes: those gray weeks that sometimes descend on the north Columbia country in April or October. In April, adult mole salamanders make their way back to the puddle or pond where they were born, and that is when they cross roads, fall into ditches, or crawl up on your porch. Perhaps due to similar day length and temperature, or wandering first-year adults, or something biologists cannot yet explain, a similar dispersal happens in the fall. When things gets wet, mole salamanders start to move around, and people begin to notice them.

Most of the salamanders that kids pick up in our area are long-toed salamanders. These mole salamanders are slender, usually no larger than your little finger, and sport a colored stripe down their back that may range from dark green through orange and yellow. Long-toed salamanders are interesting in themselves, because amphibian populations are proving to be a bellwether of larger ecological conditions. It is only every once in a while that the salamander in somebody's basement turns out to be a tiger.

Lisa Hallock, head of the Washington Natural Heritage Program for the State Department of Natural Resources, has spent much of the past few years constructing an atlas that tracks reptile and amphibian ranges. During that time she has watched the sightings of tiger salamanders leapfrog slowly north from their known range in the Columbia Basin into the wilds of British Columbia. "Each mark on the map says ÔThis is what we know,'" says Hallock. "But what we're interested in as biologists is whether the atlas agrees with what people really see where they live."

Chris Loggers, biologist for the Colville National Forest, picks up the search from there. Over the past few years he has enlisted the help of students from a variety of Ferry and Stevens County schools to be on the lookout. He distributes a poster with clear photographs of tiger and long-toed salamanders. The poster contains a map of our area showing potential tiger salamander habitat marked with historic, recent, and unconfirmed sightings. Loggers faithfully checks out all the leads he hears about, and updates the poster annually. He's also very clear about his goals for the project.

"We want to get kids out in the woods, looking around," he says. "We want them to see what's here, and to help us see what's here. This is an animal that we once thought was introduced to our area. Then we thought it was very rare. Now, as more people look for it, we are beginning to realize that it might be an important part of the local scene.

"The project also teaches the difference between anecdotal and scientific knowledge. Someone might call and tell me they have a tiger salamander in their spring box, and do a good job of describing it. But unless an expert can see the animal, or look at a clear photograph, we can't include that mark on the map."

So now that it's October, and the temperatures are starting to cool down, and the bone-dry summer is starting to break, you might want to pay attention to what's on the ground. Keep in mind that most of our local tiger salamander sightings are clustered around Colville and Republic, just like school kids. Try to understand why Hallock and Loggers have never received a verified report of one from Pend Oreille County, even though it seems like a logical place. Try to picture tiger salamanders as an integral part of the local ecosystem, like salmon and eagles, except that they have been around here for much, much longer. They are the old ones, and they have things to tell us if we listen.

For more about the life history of tiger salamanders, check out the Boundaries column of January 2003.

To view the range of Washington's wonderful snakes, turtles, skinks, frogs, toads, and salamanders, and to see pictures that will help you identify them correctly, google Washington Herp Atlas.

If you see a tiger salamander, please contact Chris Loggers at the Kettle Falls Office of the Colville National Forest at 738-7727 or loggersc@hotmail.com.

Chris Loggers' tiger salamander sighting posters are in schools all around Stevens, Ferry, and Pend Oreille County.

Illustration by Emily Nisbet.

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