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AUSTIN, Texas— The Center for Biological Diversity and Save Our Springs Alliance today filed a notice of intent to sue the Texas Department of Transportation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over an Austin highway construction project’s threats to the federally endangered Austin blind and Barton Springs salamanders. The conservation groups recently learned that the MoPac Intersections Project has exposed at least 21 underground caves, sink holes and other karst features that provide habitat for the endangered salamanders. There is a high risk that construction will pollute the two species’ habitat by introducing silt and pollutants to the subsurface. The...

The City of Kitchener has closed part of Stauffer Drive so that a colony of salamanders can cross safely from one side of the street to the other. Jefferson salamanders, which live in the forests on either side of the road, are protected under Ontario's Endangered Species Act because their populations are in decline across the province. In Kitchener, the salamanders that live in the Doon South area face one particular threat: traffic.

A scavenging immune system cell that helps limbs regrow in salamanders brings hope that humans will one day be able to mimic the animal's amazing regenerative powers, say Australian researchers. The findings by Dr James Godwin, of the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute at Monash University, and colleagues, are published in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Salamanders (axolotls) are unique amongst vertebrates in being able to repair their hearts, tails, spinal cord and brain, and even regrow whole limbs during adult life, says Godwin. He sees their "perfect regeneration" as a holy grail. "We're trying to...

Scientists have stumbled across the first example of a photosynthetic organism living inside a vertebrate's cells. The discovery is a surprise because the adaptive immune systems of vertebrates generally destroy foreign biological material. In this case, however, a symbiotic alga seems to be surviving unchallenged — and might be giving its host a solar-powered metabolic boost. Algae cohabit with salamander embryos in their eggs — and inside their cells.T. LEVIN/PHOTOLIBRARY.COM The embryos of the spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) have long been known to enjoy a mutualistic relationship with the single-celled alga Oophila amblystomatis. The salamanders' viridescent eggs are coloured by...

Tissues in axolotl amputees regenerate themselves by “memory” Given a chance to regrow a limb, salamanders don’t change a thing. Since the 18th century, scientists have puzzled over how salamanders regenerate amputated limbs and have looked for clues to regrow human limbs. Researchers thought they knew part of the answer: Cells at the wound site would lose their identities as they turned back their developmental clocks to become pluripotent stem cells — capable of developing into many cell types in the body — and then recreate the lost limb. But a new study published July 2 in Nature and led...

NEW HAVEN, Vt. – The black salamander with yellow spots sat on the roadside in the dark, ready to make a go of it. But it was not on its own. It got help from an escort — one of 45 people who volunteered on a recent night to carry salamanders, frogs and newts across the road during their annual migration to mate. ... From rural Vermont to urban centers like Philadelphia, human escorts, called bucket brigades in some places, help amphibians make it to their mating areas without getting squashed by cars. It's part education, part conservation, and part...

Tunnels to prevent carnage of Canadian salamanders Mon Aug 27, 6:45 PM ET A long-toed salamander is shown in this undated handout photo. Canadian researchers know why the salamander crossed the road, and now they hope to fix things so it won't have to. The federal parks agency plans to install tunnels under a stretch of highway at a cost of about C$40,000 (19,000 pounds) to end years of carnage among the long-toed salamander of Waterton Lakes National Park in southern Alberta.     CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Canadian researchers know why the salamander crossed the road, and now they hope...

The eight salamanders found on the site of the new Ann Arbor high school are not endangered Smallmouth Salamanders [Ambystoma texanum] as originally thought. Instead, they are hybrids, part Blue-spotted Salamander [Ambystoma laterale] and part Jefferson Salamander [Ambystoma jeffersonianum], said James Ball, a York Township research scientist in herpetology who did some of the testing on the amphibians. Neither the Blue-spotted nor the Jefferson Salamander are on the threatened and endangered species list in Michigan, and hybrid salamanders do not qualify as threatened or endangered in the state, either. District officials, who learned of the salamanders' lineage on June 8,...

Missouri's status as the only state with both subspecies of hellbender could be in jeopardy. Jefferson City, Mo. - infoZine - Pity the hellbender. For years, its numbers have been dwindling in the face of indiscriminate killing, illegal collecting and changes in the streams it inhabits. Even its love life has been affected. Now it faces a new tribulation, physical deformities. What's an amphibian to do? This one is getting help from the conservation agencies. Missouri is the only state that has both hellbender subspecies-Ozark and Eastern. To the average person, they are indistinguishable. Both are endangered in Missouri. The...

Save Some Salamanders Wednesday, June 15, 2005: Lawrence, Kansas - CNAH - NEWS RELEASE The Center for North American Herpetology Lawrence, Kansas http://www.cnah.org 16 June 2005 SOS FIGHTS FOR A NEW SALAMANDERAustin environmentalists want federal officials to put the Tonkawa Springs Salamander on endangered list Modified from an article by Stephen Scheibal American-Statesman Staff 14 June 2005 An Austin environmental group has asked federal officials to add the Tonkawa Springs Salamander (Eurycea tonkawae) to the list of endangered species, potentially creating new development controversies along the Travis-Williamson county line. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces the Endangered Species...

EAST BRUNSWICK — Why did the salamander cross the road? In the township’s case, it’s to get to the vernal pool on the other side and mate. March is when the spotted salamanders that live in East Brunswick make their annual trek across Beekman Road for the purpose of procreating. And the town has taken notice — in fact, so has neighboring South Brunswick — by agreeing to shut down the road to make sure the small critters make it safely across. David Moscowitz, of the East Brunswick Environmental Commission, said the town was able to get its neighbor to...

Amphibians face a bleak future Worldwide survey reveals a third of all species are in danger.The world's frogs, newts and toads are dying. They are being over-harvested for food, their homes are being destroyed, and most worryingly, entire species are disappearing for no apparent reason. That is the conclusion of more than 500 herpetologists around the world, reported in Science today. Although it has been known for some time that many amphibian species are in trouble, this is the first global assessment of the group's status. Similar surveys of mammals and birds have been completed, and they were not short...

Mr D'Agata received a rare and special -- albeit mysterious -- gift on his porch from what was Hurricane Isabel Friday. About 10 a.m. he was sitting on his porch reading a newspaper when he heard a sudden burst. "I thought it was hail and I said to my wife, ‘Ginger, it’s hailing,’" he said. "I went back to reading my paper and then I saw the things were still there and were not melting. I went out and saw hundred of these white things." The ‘things’ appeared to be eggs of some sort, the size of a pearl, he...