The Klamath bioregion is particularly rich in amphibians, including the most recently discovered salamander in North America. Rather than try to protect the new species, however, the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) has been working to allow more logging in the few old-growth forests that shelter viable colonies of the salamanders.

Scott Bar Salamander (Plethodon asupak) Photo: Eugene Weir

The Scott Bar Salamander (Plethodon asupak) has been probably been living in talus slopes beneath old forest canopy in the mountains around the lower Scott River, a tributary of the Klamath, for millions of years. But it was only in 2005 that scientists showed how different these small, skin-breathing amphibians are from their cousins, the Siskiyou Mountains salamander (P. stormi), which are found to the north into Oregon's Applegate Valley. Genetic analysis shows that the Scott Bar salamander is actually more closely related to the Del Norte salamander (P. elongatus), which lives downstream on the Klamath, and looks rather different.

Because the Siskiyou Mountains salamander is listed by the state of California as a threatened species, the California Department of Forestry (CDF) and Department of Fish and Game (DFG) required a series of logging plans to avoid logging salamander habitat. When the even more rare and imperiled Scott Bar salamander was designated as a new species, however, DFG decided that because the new name wasn't on its list of threatened species, they did not require protection. So DFG told CDF it could allow the salamander habitat to be logged.

DFG's efforts to encourage logging in salamander habitat raise the chilling prospect that a newly discovered species, which may exist on fewer than 300 acres of occupied habitat, could be put at risk of extinction by a single logging operation. EPIC and our allies at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild) sued DFG and CDF. CDF immediately reversed course to keep the mitigations in place---but DFG has refused to protect the Scott Bar salamander. (We filed a petition to force the agency to face the evidence.)

Worse still, DFG is actively trying to remove the Siskiyou Mountain salamander from the state list of threatened species, even though leading scientists have sharply criticized the proposal and agency staff have admitted that the single study on which their case is based is "not a scientific study."

In part because we can't rely on the state DFG, we have also asked the federal FWS to protect both the Siskiyou Mountain and Scott Bar Salamanders under the federal ESA. This April 26, we learned that the feds decided not even to conduct a status review to see if listing is merited. Their logic? The Siskiyou Mountain salamander is protected under the California ESA, and the Forest Service should protect some habitat on federal lands under the Survey and Manage program.

Now, as we just noted, Cal DFG is trying to take the Siskiyou Mountains salamander off the state list, and won't put the Scott Bar salamander on that list. So that's not much protection. And while it's true that---thanks to our recent legal win---the Survey and Manage program has for now been reinstated on Forest Service lands, the Bush Administration clearly intends to remove the program again.

Stacks of recent research show that our frogs and salamanders face a host of threats from logging to climate change to invasive fungal disease. But the salamanders' stories raise troubling questions about whether the agencies which are supposed to protect them will do so. While we are confident that we will prevail in legal challenges to the agencies' blatant disregard for science and fact, species like these deserve better protection than can be provided by agencies which have to be sued at every turn.