I’m fully behind these efforts to bring back the hellbender, North America’s largest salamander: as big as a grown man’s forearm.
https://leeduigon.com/2016/12/31/the-return-of-the-hellbender/
These salamanders need to live in clear, clean, cold, swiftly-running streams–so you can see how they might be in trouble. Wherever there’s a healthy hellbender, there’s a healthy stream.
I think we need more babbling brooks and less babbling politicians cutting deals with developers–don’t you?
Hi, Mr. Nature here, with the biggest salamander in the Western Hemisphere–the hellbender.
All my life I’ve wanted to handle one of these. As a boy I spent many an hour turning over rocks in streams, trying to find a hellbender. But they don’t live in New Jersey. I guess I was hoping for a stray. The only salamanders I ever found were little ones; but the hellbender can grow up to two and a half feet long.
Hellbenders need fresh, clean, cold, swiftly-running water–which is getting harder and harder to come by. I know some of you don’t like cold-blooded slippery critters, but these salamanders are something special. Their only close relatives are the giant salamanders of China and Japan, which are several times the size of a hellbender. Now that would really be something to see!
Not all of God’s stuff is cute and cuddly; but it’s all way cool.
Hi, Mr. Nature here, with a very rare and very impressive animal: the Japanese giant salamander. It’s related to our own America hellbender, which is a whopper in its own right: but this critter gets two or three times as big. A full-grown Japanese giant salamander is almost as big as you are. Not quite like the little redbacks you can find in your back yard!
There are also giant salamanders in China. Outside of the inevitable habitat loss and degradation, the biggest threat faced by these creatures is schmendricks who like to eat members of endangered species because it makes them feel like big shots. Whatever they have to say on Judgment Day had better be good.
All right, I know some of you get the creeps from looking at these animals. But they are part of God’s creation, they certainly do us no harm at all, they are rare and difficult to find–and they are worthy of our admiration, because they are the work of Our Creator’s hands.
I don’t know about you, but they leave me in awe of God’s vision.
The Toledo Zoo is working to re-establish America’s biggest salamander in the wild, through captive rearing and release.
Hi, Mr. Nature here–and I am a hellbender fan. You’ve gotta love a salamander that starts out looking like a little black newt that you might buy in the pet store, yet can grow to the size of your hand and forearm. In fact, it has a close relative in Japan that can grow to the size of a 12-year-old boy.
But the hellbender needs to live in cold, clear, clean, swiftly-running water, and streams like that are getting hard to find. Progress, you know! Gotta build them condos everywhere! Happily, a lot of private property owners in Ohio are getting behind the zoo’s efforts to conserve the giant salamander.
Some salamanders are gorgeous in bright colors. The hellbender is not. Some salamanders are cute. Most definitely, the hellbender is not.
What the hellbender is, is just way cool. Only God could create something as cool as this. If you find this animal ugly, maybe even a bit scary–well, it’s still way cool.
I am glad conservationists are working to actually conserve this salamander.
If only our leaders who call themselves conservatives would actually try, at least, to conserve our culture… we might have a chance.