Salamanders in Northern California

[Deadly_Kermit]

I Just got back from a short trip to the north coast. I got a chance to do a little herp-hunt'n while I was up there so I thought I would share the findings!

We spent very little time looking before we started finding salamanders, they seem to be doing very well (at least the species that we found).

We found:
-Painted Ensatinas
-Oregon ensatinas (didn't get pics of these guys but they were everywhere)
-California Slender salamanders
-A Pacific giant salamander (Awesome!)
-Black or Wandering salamander (not sure which this is, any guesses...)

We only found one Wandering/Black salamander and one Pacific giant, but the rest were abundant. It is good to see that the populations are doing well. I wish I had more time to look around and see what I could find!

The Pacific giant was undoubtedly the best find on the trip. I hadn't ever seen one in person before. This guy was truly a giant, measuring about 9 inches overall. Beautiful animal!

 

[hypnotoad]

so beautiful.
I can't believe nobody's commented on this post from 7 months ago. We get fixated on exotic herps from around the world but we need to remember we have a lot of fantastic critters in our back yard. Especially amphibians. These things are the bridge between aquatic and terrestrial vertabrate life and they're dying!!!!!!!!

Awesome pose dude