Saving Salamanders with Citizen Science

If you find a dead or sick salamander in the wild, please take pictures and upload them to this iNaturalist project as soon as possible! Here are some important things to remember:

1. Species identification is NOT necessary. If you cannot identify the type of
salamander because they are too long dead, or simply because you don’t
know salamanders, that’s ok! All dead salamander photos are important.

2. If your salamander is not dead, but looks like it has weird skin sores or marks,
we also want you to take a photo and report these.

3. Your photos don’t have to be pretty and you don’t need a fancy camera! Feel
free to use the camera on your phone. A blurry picture is better than no picture.

4. Record this simple information along with your photo:
a. Date
b. Location
c. Number of dead salamanders you saw (i.e. if you find a pond with 20 dead
salamanders, you might only take a picture of a few, but can report 20)
d. Species (your best guess is great, but it’s ok if you have no idea–just call it
a salamander)
e. Suspected cause of death (i.e. was it hit by a car, stepped on, partially
eaten by an animal? etc.). Please always make a comment in the
description box about this observation. If you tell us there was no obvious
reason why it was dead, this is very helpful because we can rule out non-
disease factors like roadkill, predation, etc.

Thank you for being part of this project! If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at [email protected] less ↑