Informative Essay On Salamanders

Last Thursday I attended a talk about protecting Ohio’s Giant Salamander also known as the Eastern Hellbender. During this talk I learned a lot about the hellbender and salamanders in general. We were also informed about what is hurting these creatures and what we must do to stop it. Lastly, I was able to learn enough about the hellbender to make an informed opinion about them. The Eastern United States has one of the highest populations of salamanders of anywhere in the world. It is a hot spot for fresh water organisms. One of these salamanders comes from the family cryptobranchidae. This family only has three remaining species in it. Two of these are the Chinese and Japanese Giant Salamanders which are found in Asia and the third is the Eastern Hellbender found in Ohio. The hellbender is completely aquatic and can grow to be 27 inches long. It feeds on crayfish and goes through a partial metamorphosis while maturing. They are mature when they reach 35 centimeters in size, but that can take 6 to 8 years. They are extraordinary long lived creatures and can reach 70 years of age. They live in streams or rivers, but they need big rocks because they make their homes under them. They do not leave their rock patch, instead they stay there for their entire life. These creatures have almost no predators once they reach …show more content…
In 2006 through 2009 his experiments were redone. Hellbenders were only found in 11 of the 24 waterways that they looked in and they concluded that there was an 82% decline in their numbers from the 1980s. Another disturbing thing that was discovered was that in most habitats they only found full grown adults and no babies. They concluded that the increase in silt in the waterways was hurting the babies because it was filling in the cracks in rocks they would use for protection. It was after this that the Ohio Conservation Plan went in to