The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium and the Wilds released more than 100 giant, rare salamanders into Ohio waterways this summer.
Eastern hellbenders once hid in streams across southern and central Ohio, but decades of habitat loss and water pollution have left the species endangered in the state.
“They're gone from western Ohio, where we’ve removed all the forest cover and our streams are not in as good of shape,” said Greg Lipps, a conservation biologist with the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. “So they’re mostly just in eastern Ohio now.”
He said surveys from the early 2000s show the species’s relative abundance had decreased by about 82% in Ohio streams compared to just 20 years prior.
Now, Lipps is part of a statewide initiative aiming to reverse the trend.
What are eastern hellbenders?
Eastern hellbenders are North America’s largest amphibians, sometimes reaching more than 2 feet long.
They’re the color of stones at the bottom of streams and their bodies are compressed and flat.
“That works for living under big rocks,” Lipps explained.
They have small eyes because they don’t need to see much in dark spaces underwater, and they’re slimy because they breathe through their skin.
Their wrinkled, prehistoric appearance has earned them a plethora of nicknames, like mud devil, Allegheny alligator, walking catfish, old lasagna sides and snot otter.
The Ohio Hellbender Partnership
Since 2010, a collaboration of Ohio zoos, academics and governmental organizations have been working together to recover eastern hellbenders.
Lipps says Ohio zoos collect hellbender eggs and raise them in a protected environment, before releasing them back into the wild. The effort also includes restoring the salamanders’ habitat.
So far, the group has raised and released over 2,000 eastern hellbenders into Ohio waterways.
Now, there are signs this work is paying off. In 2023, one of the zoo-raised salamanders was found with a nest of his own.
“So we got to see that full cycle. It’s very exciting,” Lipps said. “But, of course, there’s still a lot more work to be done.”
For Ohio’s ‘snot otters’ to have a lasting future in the state, he says there needs to be a focus on protecting and restoring streamside forests.
“Personally, I don't want to live in a world where there isn't hellbenders,” he said. “I think it makes Ohio a much richer place that we have these primordial creatures still running around in our streams.”
