HENDERSON COUNTY, North Carolina — Once again, I found myself staring at a crack in a large rock on the side of a mountain. It was June, and rainy, and I was searching for a glossy amphibian called the Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander. These animals, about the length of a human finger, are black with splotches of mint green. That makes them nearly invisible against the lichen-covered rocks they typically hide in.
I had previously traveled here — to this very rock — in the spring of last year for a story about the salamanders of southern Appalachia. They are spectacular. With somewhere around a hundred species, the region, and particularly western North Carolina, near Asheville, is a global salamander hot spot. It has a higher concentration of salamanders than anywhere else in the world.
At the time of my 2024 visit, some of Appalachia’s salamanders, including the Hickory Nut Gorge green, were already in trouble. These amphibious animals have an incredibly small range — they’re found only in one valley, the Hickory Nut Gorge, southwest of Asheville. Commercial development, logging, and other threats shrank their population from as many as tens of thousands to just 300 to 500 individuals total, according to recent estimates. In 2021, North Carolina listed them as endangered and, in 2024, federal officials said protection under the Endangered Species Act may be warranted.
Then came Hurricane Helene.
The storm, which struck North Carolina in late September, killed dozens of people. It destroyed thousands of homes, many of which are still in pieces today. But it also took a severe toll on the state’s wildlife, the species that make southern Appalachia so unique. Record flooding, landslides, and even some of the recovery efforts have drastically changed the landscape that salamanders rely on. This sudden destruction of habitat — some areas look as though they’ve been clearcut — is pushing the region’s most endangered species even closer to extinction.
So this June, I came back to witness a rescue mission. Flooding from Helene uprooted the forest around one of the only known breeding populations of Hickory Nut Gorge green salamanders, which makes up a significant portion of the entire species. It’s not clear whether they will survive without trees or withstand another severe weather event. Government forecasters have again predicted an above-average hurricane season this year and central North Carolina has already faced deadly flooding from the remnants of storm Chantal, which struck parts of the state earlier this month. In the long term, warming from climate change is expected to intensify both hurricanes and flooding.
Now, to save this population of greens — and perhaps the entire species — scientists are working quickly to bring a number of them into captivity. It’s a strategy that’s increasingly common in a heavily altered world: To save animals from blinking out, scientists have to build backup populations and manage them under human care.
Months after Helene, parts of North Carolina are still wrecked
If you’re just passing through Asheville, it’s hard to imagine that less than a year ago the city was hit by one of the worst natural disasters in state history. Downtown is bustling. The River Arts District — which was under water just months ago — looks like any trendy area with busy restaurants and bars.
But if you look more closely, signs of Helene’s devastation start to appear. Some sidewalks are missing pieces. Piles of dead trees fill empty lots. There are construction vehicles everywhere. And in some areas the damage is impossible to miss. In a charming district called Biltmore Village, which abuts the Swannanoa River, only the skeletons of some buildings remain, their insides rotted out or washed away.
Even against this backdrop, however, Hickory Nut Gorge still looks worse. Carved by the Broad River, the steep valley of the gorge is harder to access and less populated, and so cleanup has been slow. The original road connecting the gorge’s small towns, which were once local tourist destinations, doesn’t exist anymore — it was swallowed by the river. You can only reach the gorge now on a temporary road that doesn’t show up on Google Maps.
Homes and inns are broken in half, still unrepaired. Cars and small buildings look like they’ve been tossed around like toys in a kid’s room.
The flooding here that destroyed human infrastructure also wrecked the forests that blanket the ravine. Downpours triggered mudslides, unearthing boulders and uprooting trees, ultimately leaving large chunks of the gorge deforested.
That’s bad for salamanders, and especially for the Hickory Nut Gorge green, said JJ Apodaca, executive director of the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, an environmental group. Greens are lungless — they breathe through their skin. But that bit of biological magic requires water, so it only works if their skin is moist. That’s why they live within the cracks in rocks on the forest floor: The shady canopy above helps keep their habitat cool and moist. Without shade, they dry out. Plus, greens spend part of the year in trees, where they feed on insects like ants and beetles.
None of this works without trees. And today, much of this habitat is treeless.
Researchers are still assessing the damage, but early estimates by Apodaca, a salamander scientist, suggest Helene destroyed as much as 30 percent of the greens’ total habitat in the gorge. According to the North Carolina Forest Service, the storm damaged more than a quarter of all forested areas in North Carolina counties that it passed through.
One especially destructive blow is visible from the new road through the gorge: High up on the ravine, a large section of forest is missing, leveled by floodwaters or a mudslide. That bald spot is exactly where a population of breeding greens resides — and it’s where this rescue mission has been taking place.
A rescue mission for a very rare salamander
Thunder gurgled in the distance as Apodaca and I hiked into the gorge late one afternoon. Apodaca has a soft spot for the Hickory Nut Gorge green — he was part of the team that first described this animal as a new species in 2019. “They’re just cool,” he told me, before explaining that they’re visually striking, lungless, adapted to live in rock cracks, and skilled at climbing trees.
After parking on the side of the road that wasn’t on Google Maps, we waded across the Broad River — the water was calm and the color of chocolate milk — and then hiked into the woods. The easiest path uphill was through the large patch of forest cleared out by Helene’s floodwaters. The ground was muddy and rocky, like the bottom of a river.
It took us about 20 minutes to reach a large granite outcropping that Apodaca calls Party Rock, so named because it’s where loads of greens normally hang out. The boulder, which was lined with several thin crevices, used to be shaded by the forest canopy, but now it’s exposed to direct, harsh sunlight that’s drying out the rock.
This spring, once the gorge was accessible and he obtained permits, Apodaca began a rescue operation for the greens living in and around Party Rock. The plan was to bring about two dozen animals into captivity — animals that might otherwise die in the wild — as a sort of insurance policy for the species.
“The writing was on the wall,” said Lori Williams, a conservation biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, the state wildlife agency, who’s involved in the rescue. “We knew we were racing against time to do something.”
So far Apodaca has rescued 15 individuals, mostly from Party Rock, which he brought to the North Carolina Zoo. Apodaca has a permit to collect another 10 salamanders. That’s why we were here now. According to Apodaca and Williams, 25 salamanders is enough to establish a breeding population, but not so many that it will further endanger the wild population.
“The fact that we’ve pushed this species so close to the edge makes it really hard to sit back and do nothing once something like this happens,” Apodaca told me. “It’s just to the point where we have to do something now or we’re gonna lose a species.”
Apodaca and I spent hours at Party Rock, staring into cracks with a flashlight. We spent so long doing this that I started seeing cracks even where there were no cracks. Every time my brain sensed movement I’d feel a jolt of adrenaline. But 10 times out of 10 it was a giant, leggy camel cricket. Party Rock was a bust.
As the afternoon dragged on, we searched other boulders and explored some newly opened caves, which are good spots to find greens because they’re cold and damp, Apodaca said. At one point I army crawled into a tight opening and when I looked up, careful not to ram my head against the ceiling, I saw a different salamander species staring back at me — a crevice salamander. It was black with cool blue spots. It stood frozen, and I was suddenly very aware that I was an intruder in its home.
We came across several more crevice salamanders. I managed to cover myself in poison ivy. But we found no greens. Apodaca was still 10 individuals short of his quota.
It could be that we were too late in the season, Apodaca said. As spring warms to summer, the heat drives the salamanders deeper into their crevices. But another, more troubling explanation is that not many of the greens here survived the damage from Helene, and Apodaca has already captured most of those that did. “This site is probably gone,” Apodaca told me.
Apodaca plans to return to Party Rock in the fall to try and collect more individuals, though he’s not sure if they’ll be able to hold on that long. For now, the captive population relies on just 15 greens — all but four of which are male.
A conservation insurance policy
In a small windowless room at the North Carolina Zoo, several containers labeled with masking tape sat atop a folding table. They were made of thin plastic and shaped like circular cookie tins.
Each container, though unremarkable, held something precious inside a bit of damp paper towel: a Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander. Their green splotches looked even more vibrant up close, like they had caught crossfire in a paintball match. Their eyes bulged from their heads and their hands, painfully adorable, had tiny digits that looked like ET’s fingers, but in miniature.
These salamanders — which are now in quarantine, away from other amphibians at the zoo — may hold the key to the future of their entire species.
The goal is to breed these individuals in captivity, said Dustin Smith, the curator of reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates at the zoo, which is also involved in the rescue operation. And luckily, the four females they have in the collection were already pregnant when they were captured and each carrying a dozen or so eggs.
On the afternoon I visited the captive salamanders with Apodaca, Shaina Lampert, a research associate at the zoo, took out what looked like a very old laptop. It was a miniature ultrasound machine. A cord connected a small probe to the machine, which she gently ran over the belly of one of the female salamanders. Several black circles appeared on the screen: eggs. “This is the next generation of this species,” Apodaca said.
Ideally, the females will soon lay their eggs, the captive population will grow, and the team overseeing the rescue mission will return some of them back to the wild, Williams said, assuming there’s high-quality habitat left in the gorge. That’s still unclear.
But ultimately, the success — or failure — in saving the Hickory Nut Gorge green will go largely unnoticed. These animals live in a remote region, tucked away in crevices; they’re hard to find even for the few people who know what to look for. Why then does it matter that we save them?
Like any salamander, like any animal, the greens play an important role in their ecosystem, as both predator and prey. They help limit the number of insects, including those humans don’t like. That’s been shown to help keep carbon locked up in the forest that might otherwise contribute to climate change. They’re little climate heroes.
It’s not a stretch to say that without salamanders, forest ecosystems in southern Appalachia could collapse. And those are the ecosystems that provide water to towns and attract tourists that fuel the local economy.
But more than that, Apodaca says, these salamanders simply have a right to exist. That’s why he’s fighting to protect them — why he’s been hiking into a disaster zone week after week.
“I can’t make you care more than I can convince somebody that doesn’t care about art that the Mona Lisa is priceless,” he said. “You either relish in nature and view the world that has a right to exist beyond us, or you don’t.”
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