Whit Gibbons, Herpetologist and Author
Over the eons, millions of species have gone extinct naturally. Today, species headed toward extinction are generally helped along their way because of human activities. Enter the tuatara, an odd exception to the rule. Unlike most pending extinctions around the world, when the last tuatara is gone, humans will not be to blame. Most tuataras disappeared long before our time.
The following questions relate to the most popular bird on dinner tables for three major holidays.
Q. I have heard that wild turkeys are declining throughout the country. Is this serious? If so, who is addressing the problem?
I recently heard Bill Hopkins, professor of fish and wildlife conservation at Virginia Tech University, give a talk about hellbenders, giant salamanders that can reach a length of more than 2 feet. They live in cold-water trout streams in several eastern states, historically ranging from southern New York, west into Missouri and Arkansas and south to northern Georgia and Alabama. Sadly, hellbenders have disappeared from more than half of the streams where they once thrived, a cause for grave concern. Hopkins’s research demonstrates how these extraordinary salamanders serve as indicators of water quality, thus functioning as sentinels of the environmental health of a stream.