Will The House Let Down The Students, Thousands Pushing For Designating The Hellbender?

This is it, the final 3 scheduled days of voting session this year.  Any bills not making it the Governor’s desk will die and have to start over.

High School students from the 43 counties in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed have been pushing to have the Eastern Hellbender designated the state amphibian and clean water ambassador for the last 2 years

The effort has gained national media attention in the Wall Street Journal and other outlets.

Hellbenders have been called a “natural barometer” of good water quality.  They can only live where the water is clean.

The Senate overwhelmingly passed Senate Bill 658 (Yaw-R-Lycoming) on November 15, 2017.  There has been no action in the House since then.

As environmental issue go, this one doesn’t seem to be too tough.

Over 6,400 people signed a petition from all over the state to urge the House to act.

Will the House let these students down and force them to start over next year?

Let’s hope not.

Click Here to contact your House member to get them to act NOW!

Background On Hellbender

Much of what remains of a depleted hellbender population in Pennsylvania can be found in waters within Northcentral Pennsylvania, although recently a Hellbender was found in the Kiski River in Parks Township, Armstrong County.

Without help and more clean water, the Eastern hellbender could disappear.

Hellbenders survive where there is cold, clear, swift-running water. They prefer rocky streambeds. Their spongelike bodies allow them to squeeze into crevices which they use for protection and for nesting. The slimy salamanders feed at night, primarily on crayfish.

Folds of wrinkled skin provide a large surface through which they draw most of their oxygen.

The presence of streamside trees or forested buffers stands out among factors that enable hellbenders to survive.

A lack of forested buffers along Commonwealth waterways allows waters to warm, polluted runoff to enter rivers and streams, and silt to build up in streambeds. As a result, habitat has been degraded and hellbender numbers were decimated in streams where they were plentiful as recently as 1990.

The high school student effort on behalf of the Hellbender began in the summer of 2016.

Student leaders installed hellbender nesting boxes in the upper Susquehanna, and sampled streams for the presence of hellbender DNA.

They gathered support for the hellbender designation from conservation groups, and visited the State University of New York (SUNY) Lab in Buffalo, N.Y. to learn about DNA testing. They also went to the Buffalo Zoo to see hellbenders up close.

The students are collaborating with Dr. Peter Petokas, noted research associate at the Clean Water Institute at Lycoming College in Williamsport. Dr. Petokas has studied hellbenders for more than 10 years and has captured and microchipped over 3,000 of them.

The Western PA Conservancy has also been conducting Hellbender research.

Click Here to watch a video about hellbenders.