Recently, Wild South joined the NCWRC and others in search of hellbenders in the Tuckaseegee River. These surveys yielded more than a dozen hellbenders.  The purpose of these surveys is to document where hellbenders occur and to collect data on the quality of their habitats and the status of their populations.

Physical Description

 Adult hellbenders range in size from 12-29 inches (30-74 cm) and vary in color from grayish to olive brown and occasionally entirely black. Individuals usually sport dark mottling over the back and upper sides.  Several loose flaps of thick wrinkled skin, which serve a respiratory function, run laterally along either side of the animal.  Flattened head and body, short stout legs, long rudder-like tail, and very small beady eyes.  Juvenile hellbenders are born with gills but when they are 4” – 5” inches in length and 18 months of age they loose their gills.  Juvenile hellbenders develop for two more years until they reach sexual maturity at approximately 4 years of age.

Distribution & Habitat

In general, hellbenders only occur in Gulf of Mexico drainages, or those streams that eventually flow to the Mississippi River. One exception is the Susquehanna River in New York and Pennsylvania, which flows east to the Atlantic Ocean.  Today, hellbender populations generally occur in small pockets of habitat and the most abundant populations are now restricted to mountainous areas with little human settlement.  The last great hellbender streams likely occur in a narrow region of rugged mountains extending from eastern West Virginia south through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and ending in north Georgia. A small area of northwestern Pennsylvania also harbors several good watersheds.  Hellbenders require clean, well-oxygenated, cool, fast flowing streams and rivers with large rocks to hide under in the daytime.  An important physical characteristic of these habitats is the presence of riffle areas and abundant large flat rocks, logs or boards which are used for cover and nesting sites.

Life History and Diet

Hellbenders are the largest salamander native to the North America and the third largest in the world.  The largest hellbender ever recorded was nearly two and a half feet long.  Hellbenders breathe entirely through their skin!  They have lungs, but rely on the thousands of capillaries found in the fleshy folds of skin along their body and legs to get oxygen from the water.  Hellbenders have a long lifespan. The oldest known hellbender in captivity was 29 years and individuals in the wild likely live that long or longer.  Because they live so long, the removal of adults from the wild can cause populations to dwindle.  At night they come out to forage for crayfish, fish, worms, tadpoles, and insects.  They will also eat small fish, invertebrates, and other hellbenders.

Extinction Pressure

Hellbender populations have drastically declined throughout their range, mainly because of declining stream quality, pollution of their aquatic habitat, damming of rivers and streams, which eliminates critical riffle areas and lowers the dissolved oxygen content, and the siltation of streams and rivers resulting from agricultural practices and construction work (e.g. bridges and roadwork).  An additional problem is the unintentional or intentional and senseless killing by fishermen who accidentally catch hellbenders and erroneously fear that they are venomous.

Conservation Status

Hellbenders are listed as a Federal “Species at Risk.”  There is concern about the future of the hellbender in North Carolina (where it is listed as a species of “Special Concern”) because of its sensitivity to damming of rivers and streams, deforestation contributing to silt in their habitat as well as agricultural and pesticide runoff.