/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/9a/2e/9a2e8e4c-172d-4fc8-9a6d-68df1a1ae3a8/smithsonian_fullres-1778_web.jpg)
Why Has This North Carolina Town Embraced a Strange Salamander?
The city of Boone has put a giant mural of the eastern hellbender downtown and its residents often imbibe a local Hazy IPA named after the amphibian
:focal(1000x667:1001x668)/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/9a/2e/9a2e8e4c-172d-4fc8-9a6d-68df1a1ae3a8/smithsonian_fullres-1778_web.jpg)
Eastern hellbenders are bizarre-looking creatures. As North America’s largest salamander—growing up to two feet long and living up to 30 years—their size only amplifies their odd appearance. Long, flat bodies and wide, oblong mouths, which they use to suck in food since they have no teeth, appear even more monstrous when juxtaposed against extra flaps of slimy muck-colored skin. The species has rightfully earned the nicknames lasagna lizard, snot otter and devil dog. And yet despite the eastern hellbender’s appearance, the salamander has its fans.
With only 20,000 residents, the town of Boone, North Carolina, has embraced the eastern hellbender. Boone has unofficially elected the native hellbender as its community symbol, and the area’s love of the species has inspired hospitality concepts and even local craft brews. Last summer, the Boone leadership commissioned a vibrant mural in the heart of downtown. The mural was a collaboration between several dedicated organizations, including the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Boone Town Council, who wanted to raise awareness about the hellbender’s uncertain future.
“The mural and works like it reminds viewers about the importance of protecting our rivers and streams,” says Andy Hill, Watauga Riverkeeper and high country regional director of MountainTrue, a nonprofit environmental organization based in Asheville, North Carolina, not far from Boone. For Hill and many others living in the region, the salamander has become an icon of the area’s fragile aquatic ecosystems, a poignant symbol of the area’s environmental stewardship and conservation efforts.
“Hellbenders are an indicator species,” he says. “They are an indicator of water quality. And so, the salamander has become a symbol of the area and has captured public’s attention for biodiversity.”
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/cd/bc/cdbc1974-42e0-4d5d-97a3-04a49f354c4e/willis_hellbender_mural_reveal-60_web.jpg)
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates the population of eastern hellbenders, which have a geographic range extending from New York south to Alabama and west to Illinois, has dropped by about 70 percent since the 1970s. September 2024’s devastating Hurricane Helene didn’t do this struggling species any favors in North Carolina, a longtime salamander stronghold. A Category 4 storm, Hurricane Helene was one of the most disastrous storms in North Carolina’s history—destroying habitats for the area’s diverse salamander species by dumping sediment, road runoff and debris into the river system. At least 65 distinct salamander species have been identified in the state, with most inhabiting western North Carolina.
Of course, salamanders aren’t the only animals facing problems. “Twenty-five percent of freshwater species are endangered,” says Hill. “Things like fish, freshwater muscles, and yes, especially the salamander.”
And what’s vital to the hellbender also happens to be important for humans: clean water. Boone, and the Appalachian Mountains generally, has become known for all kinds of water recreation, including fishing, boating, kayaking, whitewater rafting, and even snorkeling. “We have so many colorful freshwater fish here,” says Hill. “You’d think you’re in a coral reef on the Caribbean.”
Starting in 2023, the state put together the Blue Ridge Snorkel Trail, a set of curated snorkel sites throughout North Carolina’s mountain rivers. New snorkel sites are slowly being added. Meanwhile, five sections of the New River Paddle Trail in Boone offer the ideal places for self-guided canoe rides. These and other recreational opportunities make clean water important to the area’s financial bottom line, as tourism has now replaced the area’s long-gone coal industry.
And where there are hellbenders, there’s cool, clean water. “This is because hellbenders breathe through their skin, which makes them so vulnerable to sedimentation, pollution, poor water quality and chemicals or toxins in the water,” says Lori Williams, a biologist and hellbender expert with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. Warm, polluted water for hellbenders is like us breathing hot, smoke-filled air. “Hellbenders are our ‘canary in the coal mine,’ to use the cliché,” she says. “Where hellbenders are thriving, we can be assured the river is rather clean and safe for people, for trout, and for all the other fish and wildlife that depend on it.”
This past December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed adding the eastern hellbender to the endangered species list. Protection would prohibit harming, harassing or killing the species, and require that federal agencies and the service work together with the animal’s conservation in mind. The eastern hellbender is largely being considered because of threats from sedimentation, water quality decline, habitat destruction and direct mortality, especially after Hurricane Helene. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “Of the 626 known historical populations, 41 percent are believed to be extirpated, and another 36 percent are declining.”
In winter 2024, when the states worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to assess the eastern hellbender for federal listing under the Endangered Species Act, says Williams, North Carolina had, by far, the most streams with a recent hellbender record, which was 179 individual streams. “That was the number of streams assessed for North Carolina in 2024. Of course, it was pre-Helene,” she explains. “This storm could have been the eastern hellbender’s extinction event. I think there’s a very good chance for that.”
At its January 2025 meeting, the Boone Town Council supported listing the eastern hellbender under the Endangered Species Act. The council stated in a resolution that Hurricane Helene has damaged the natural environment across Appalachia by polluting essential habitats that will require governmental investment to remedy. The council went on to comment that it has consistently sought to protect habitat for the wildlife in the town, and it emphasized how the animal has become a part of the town’s cultural identity: “The eastern hellbender has become a symbol for the town, region and community, representing our identity, resilience and commitment to environmental action.”
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/94/7c/947c8a32-52fe-4468-92a0-360ffabde4a8/smithsonian_fullres-1899_web.jpg)
Not far from Boone, officials in Buncombe County—an area even more devastated by Hurricane Helene—followed suit, passing a similar resolution about the hellbender in early February. Cities rarely if ever go to these lengths to support a declining species, says Hill. “But Boone, North Carolina, has made it one of their missions to protect the species,” he adds.
Aside from the community support, organizations in the area and across the state are restoring vital ecosystems for the hellbender and other animals. MountainTrue recently oversaw the removal of a dam, called Shull’s Mill Dam, along the Watauga River, allowing the waterway to run free for 78 miles—from its headwaters on Grandfather Mountain near Boone to Watauga Lake in eastern Tennessee. “Such obsolete dams reduce water flow and increase water temperature because free, cold water from headwaters aren’t flowing downstream,” Hill says.
Restoration after the dam removal also included reforestation of native trees and shrubs along riparian zones. Those areas along the edge of waterways are critical for maintaining low sedimentation, capturing and reducing road runoff, and thus keeping the hellbenders happy. Meanwhile, the New River Conservancy, outside Boone, shared in a Hurricane Helene six-month report that volunteers with the organization successfully planted 33,968 trees and shrubs along the area’s riverbanks.
Volunteers at the same organization have completed 108 separate water quality studies in the last six months on the New River and its tributaries to test for a variety of bacteria and pollutants. “We’re doing this not only to track how the recovery is going after Helene, but also to keep an eye on pollutants that could have an impact on the ecosystem and the hellbender,” says Andrew Downs, New River Conservancy’s executive director.
And this June, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, says Williams, plans to use a special method to rapidly detect surviving hellbenders now that the area has had time to recover from Hurricane Helene. Using environmental DNA, whereby scientists take water samples from downstream currents and look for traces of eastern hellbenders, the organization can determine where to send divers to look for the creatures. If researchers find, for example, a stream’s sole survivor, they can relocate it to an area where more hellbenders are found, increasing chances of breeding.
Hellbenders have survived record-breaking storms before. “We had Tropical Storm Fred come through in 2021, and it dumped over 20 inches of rain,” says Williams. “The storm changed the composition of those rivers, how wide they were, how they looked.” But researchers say that part of this survival was due to the state’s protected national forest system that contains most of the area’s hellbenders. In protected forests, trees remain near the riverbanks, cleaning the water and preventing soil erosion, sedimentation buildup, and other problems for the hellbenders. More trees along riverbeds also mean they can act as carbon sinks, pulling in carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. But according to Williams, Fred may have been a 1,000-year flood event. “However, these floods and hurricanes are coming every five years or ten years now,” she adds.
Hence, the eastern hellbender should be added to the endangered species list, says Hill. This reclassification as endangered would provide critical protection to the species whose most significant habitat in western North Carolina and Tennessee was left in tatters after Hurricane Helene.
Getting an animal listed takes a lot of time and effort. But when other conservation tools have failed, says Williams, a federal listing may be what’s left in the toolbox that will save a species. “It takes agency staff and resources, both of which are diminishing these days across the whole spectrum of wildlife and natural resources agencies,” says Williams. Listing can also come down to political will, support through crucial levels of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and public support.
“Hellbenders are an indicator species. As they go, so does this complex ecosystem that we all benefit from,” says Hill. “Many Boone residents have been passionate about listing the animals for decades. I am hopeful that it will happen.”