A salamander
sanctuary, by Megan Hirt
Hundreds of
beady eyes beamed back at Brian Stiehler, CGCS, as he stood by a stream at
Highlands (N.C.) Country Club on a clear, damp night in June 2009. The
superintendent was accompanying a researcher from the University of Missouri, in
town to survey salamander populations on the western North Carolina course.
Because the amphibians are nocturnal, effective investigation required a cloak
of darkness.
“He shined a flashlight out on the stream, and it was incredible — just all these eyes sticking out of the water,” says Stiehler. “I had no idea there would be that many salamanders. It was an a-ha moment. I look at them in a completely different way now.”
The 20-year
GCSAA member had always known some sizable number of salamanders called
Highlands home. After all, the 18-hole course sits just outside Great Smoky
Mountains National Park, often billed as the Salamander Capital of the World.
Highlands’ 200 acres of Appalachian temperate rainforest — complete with 96
inches of annual rainfall — are indeed hospitable habitat for salamanders and a
host of other organisms, from mammals to mildews. Throughout his 16 years at the
club, Stiehler has even had a handful of encounters with the stealthy,
slender-bodied creatures during daylight hours. That summer’s night sighting
along the stream, however, proved illuminating — as would the findings of the
research efforts tied to it.
Published in
the May 2014 edition of the journal Landscape and Urban Planning, the
study, conducted at 10 North Carolina golf facilities over several summers,
examined the impact of the courses on stream salamanders by taking stock of
salamander abundance and diversity upstream of fairways, in sections of stream
passing through fairways, and downstream of fairways.
“No results are
sometimes good things,” says Bill Peterman, Ph.D., co-author of the study and
now an assistant professor of wildlife ecology at Ohio State University. “In
this case, we couldn’t discern any difference upstream vs. downstream — they
were, in most regards, identical in terms of population and diversity.” This
suggests, says Peterman, that, contrary to common opinion, golf courses and the
practices used to maintain them are not inherently hindrances to wildlife
conservation and biodiversity. On the tracts of stream on the fairways
themselves — which lack tree cover and certain other characteristics salamanders
prefer — the researchers did observe a drop in abundance, yet diversity was
comparable.
What lends
these findings heightened significance is that salamanders are what’s known as
an “indicator species.” Given their blend of aquatic/terrestrial living along
with their high sensitivity to contamination of and changes to their habitat
(destruction, fragmentation), they serve as a good gauge of their ecosystem’s
overall health. The lungless family of salamanders Peterman and his colleagues
focused on in North Carolina is a particularly telling barometer, as they
breathe exclusively through their skin, which elevates their vulnerability to
their surroundings. (Researchers found no negative effects from herbicides or
pesticides downstream of the golf courses.) A consistent, healthy presence of
salamanders thus makes a compelling case for the health of the ecosystem both
upstream and downstream of the golf courses.
For Stiehler,
the study’s revelations and the experience of participating in it have fostered
a stronger commitment to environmental stewardship, and just a few tweaks around
Highlands have helped optimize the space for salamanders. Stiehler no longer
removes the leaves and other minor plant debris that collect in Highlands’
streams, as researchers noted a correlation between the salamanders’ abundance
and diversity and the leaf litter depth and amount of woody debris in and around
those course features. The accumulation provides shelter and attracts the small
invertebrates that salamanders forage on. (Don’t underestimate salamanders’
existence on your course: For every one you might glimpse during daytime,
Peterman says five to 10 are likely lurking undetected in the
vicinity.)
At Highlands,
well-known best management practices such as keeping applications on target and
establishing buffer zones now have a tangible “why” attached them — the beings
behind all those beady eyes. “Salamanders are what make this place special,”
Stiehler says. “I always thought everything I did was environmentally friendly,
but you never really know until you understand all the dynamics. Superintendents
have to see the big picture, because we have the ability to affect a lot of
things outside of what we’d consider our everyday jobs.”
Stiehler’s
big-picture takeaway? Let landscapes remain natural whenever feasible, allowing
what he dubs the “disorganized beauty” of something like an untidied stream to
shine through. “We have this perception that everything about golf courses is
man-made,” Stiehler says. “In trying to have everything so perfect, we’re trying
to recreate something that’s not natural. We can just accept that some things
are how they are, and that they’re like that for a reason.”
Source: Mackey, Mark J., Connette, Grant M.,
Peterman, William E. and Semlitsch, Raymond D. Do golf courses reduce the
ecological value of headwater streams for salamanders in the southern
Appalachian Mountains? Landscape and Urban Planning125(2014): 17-27.
doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2014.01.013