Their stronghold is - or was - one of the Santa Rosa's fabled fan palm oases, where canyons funnel water into narrow spots, geology forces it to the surface, and an overhanging canopy of foliage keeps the humidity a bit higher than it would have been. Which is not a useful trait in the desert.ĭesert slenders avoid desiccation by sticking to sections of canyons where there's a bit more moisture. A member of the plethodontid or lungless salamander family, desert slenders breathe through their skin - which means they need to keep their skin moist in order to facilitate the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, which means that if they dry out they suffocate. Most of them don't have the water conservation chops necessary to thrive in the California desert - especially in the canyons ringing the Coachella Valley, one of the hottest places to be found in our deserts.Īnd at first glance, the desert slender salamander - Batrachoseps major aridus - wouldn't seem like an exception. Some of their amphibian cousins have adapted to arid lands, the prime example being the spadefoot toad, which seals itself into a pocket of soil to outlast drought, emerging to feed and mate when it rains.īut salamanders are suited to moister environments. Salamanders aren't the kind of animal one usually associates with deserts. Still, wildlife biologists aren't ready to declare it extinct. The desert slender salamander, declared endangered soon after its discovery in 1969 due to its restriction to two tiny canyon bottoms in the Santa Rosa Mountains, has not been seen in the wild since the 1990s. One of the California desert's most unlikely inhabitants is missing. The Desert Slender Salamander | Photo courtesy US Fish & Wildlife Service
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