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Salamanders are our Friends

Column by Bob Mount as it appeared in the November 8, 2006 edition of The Opelika-Auburn News

Ralph Jordan Jr. is the newly elected president of the Auburn Alumni Association. I first became acquainted with Ralph in 1966, when I returned to Auburn to join the university faculty.

The movers were unloading the furniture into our newly acquired house on Brookside Drive when a youngster on a bicycle rode up and asked me, “Are you Dr. Mount?”

I told him I was and he said, “I hear you’re interested in snakes, and I am too. I’m Ralph Jordan and I live a few blocks from here.”

I asked him if he was related to Shug Jordan. “Yes sir,” he responded, “he’s my father.” Ralph visited me frequently in my quarters in Funchess Hall and after his enrollment as an AU student he became caretaker of the snakes in my “snake room.” He accompanied me on the numerous field trips I made in my research on the habits, habitats and distribution of the reptiles and amphibians of Alabama. He swam quite a few rivers with me, including a lower stretch of the Choctawhatchee River; not far from where AU professor Dr. Geoff Hill and his students discovered a population of ivory-billed woodpeckers.

Only once do I recall a somewhat scary incident while Ralph and I were river-swimming. It was when we were swimming down the Choctawhatchee. Two men in an outboard motorboat were approaching us from down stream. Only our heads were visible above the surface.

We heard one of the men in the boat say to the other, “What the hell are those things floating down the river?”

“Damned if I know, but get the rifle,” said the other. We began waving our arms and hollering, “Don’t shoot.” The motorboat passed by and we waved at the men. I’m confident the men never understood why two people were swimming down the river, miles from any landing, unless they were attempting to escape from the police.

Ralph earned his B.S. degree and began working toward a master’s degree under my direction. His research required him to investigate the habits, habitats and distribution of the red Hills salamander, an elusive critter known to exist only in relatively undisturbed forests in a narrow band of semi-mountainous terrain in southern Alabama.

Ralph concluded that because of the salamander’s rarity and shrinking habitat due to clear-cutting, it should be listed as a threatened species.

The proposal elicited howls of protest from commercial forest industries. Making matters worse was a front-page article in the Mobile Press-Register with the headline, “Salamander could halt timber harvesting in south Alabama.”

Every other newspaper in south Alabama echoed the warning that the timber industry in the area would be imperiled if the salamander was listed as threatened.

It took six years, and the cooperation of International Paper Company, to resolve the controversy. The salamander was listed; the timber industry was not imperiled.

Meanwhile, the Red Hills salamander remains a fascinating component of Alabama’s diverse fauna, and thanks largely to a group of elementary students and their teachers at Fairhope, it is recognized as Alabama’s “state amphibian.” Even better, neither Ralph nor I feel the need for bodyguards when we visit south Alabama.