Restoring water quality for Black Warrior waterdogs

Black Warrior waterdogs don’t ask for much from this world. Clean, cool streams, rocky crevices for shelter, small aquatic invertebrates to eat — that’s enough to keep these dragonesque aquatic salamanders alive.

But for this endangered species to survive long-term, individual waterdogs also need to occasionally rendezvous with others of their kind, ones who aren’t too closely related.

These unique amphibians, easily recognizable by flattened heads and frilly external gills, evolved in a relatively small geography of what is now northern Alabama. Only a few hundred individuals are thought to exist. With populations this small and isolated, habitat fragmentation and the resulting lack of genetic diversity can spell doom for the entire species.

Waterdogs evolved in rocky, swift-flowing streams. Their angular, flattened bodies allow them to negotiate currents and work into crevices and under rock slabs. They depend on this three-dimensional habitat throughout their life cycles, from egg stage through early development and reproductive adulthood.

Human activities in these sensitive areas can send plumes of sediment and chemical pollution into streams and rivers. Residential development, coal mining, timber operations and poultry farming can all degrade water quality and destroy in-stream habitat.

“Road culverts and derelict dams can be improved or removed, enabling waterdogs to roam from home to find appropriate mates,” said Joseph Apodaca, executive director of the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy. “But a big stretch of inhospitable stream habitat might as well be a brick wall — they can’t move through.”

In 2022, NFWF awarded more than $371,000 to the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy to restore water quality and reconnect habitats for salamanders, turtles and fish in the Black Warrior-Tombigbee watershed of Alabama. The group will address barriers such as low-head dams and culverts to reconnect 150 miles of stream. The project also will re-vegetate and stabilize about a mile’s worth of stream banks and riparian forest buffers.