Here at Wild South, we are working with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission monitoring local populations while also working to survey new sites for potential populations.  This information will be crucial in determining where this species should be protected and how the surrounding lands should be managed.  Wild South has also played a pivotal role in funding research on the green salamander’s secretive arboreal lives, helping prove the species’ use of trees for both foraging habitat and cover. 

Physical Description

Adult green salamanders typically measure from 8 to 14 cm in length.  They are easily identified by the greenish lichen colored patches on their flattened black body.  This coloration acts as superb camouflage in their rocky, lichen-covered homes.

Distribution & Habitat

Green salamanders are found along the Appalachian Plateau from southwestern Pennsylvania south to central Alabama with an additional disjunct population found in the southern Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina.  In North Carolina, the green salamander has two distinctly separate populations, one in the Blue Ridge escarpment and another in the Hickorynut Gorge area.  Across their range, these salamanders occupy one of the narrowest niches of any salamander species, residing almost solely in small, moist (although not wet), clean (containing neither sediment nor moss), horizontal crevices in rock outcrops.  They are also infrequently found residing and/or foraging in trees.

Life History and Diet

Breeding generally occurs every two years during late spring/early summer beginning in May.  Females lay their eggs (approximately 15 - 20) on the ceiling of a suitable rock crevice and attend them, not leaving even to eat, until they are hatched.  In some areas of their range, female green salamanders are known to lay their eggs beneath tree bark on rotten logs.  The green salamander’s diet is largely a mystery to science although they are believed to feed primarily on invertebrates both in and around their rocky homes and up in the surrounding trees.   Green salamanders can live up to 10 years in the wild.

Extinction Pressure

From the early 1970’s to the late 1980’s, green salamander populations in the southern Blue Ridge Mountains experienced a population crash so severe that some scientists familiar with the species feared that it might have been wholly extirpated from the region.

Although the direct causes of the population decline are unknown, some suggested reasons include acid precipitation, habitat loss and fragmentation, climate change (include recent severe droughts), over-collection for the pet trade, destructive logging practices, and the near extinction of the American chestnut (a tree largely correlated with green salamander presence in the past).

Conservation Status

The green salamander was designated as a federal species of concern by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 1987.  In 1990, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission designated the state’s green salamander population as endangered at the local level, offering them protection from collection within the state.  The South Carolina Wildlife and Marine Resources Department considers green salamanders as “Species of Concern” while the Georgia Department of Natural Resources has listed them as “Rare.”  Neither of these state designations (nor the federal designation) offers the species any legal protection.  Due to a recent genetic distinction between species of the green salamander group, it is expected that the USFWS will once again be reviewing the species’ status for federal protections.