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Western Tiger Salamanders

The Western Tiger Salamander is Saskatchewan’s only salamander species. They are amphibians spending part of their life on land, and part in the water. Adults may vary in size from 3 to 9 inches. Breeding takes place in water, eggs are laid, and the emerging larvae (at first less than an inch in length) grow rapidly. Adults return after spring run-off to water breeding habitats in late April and in May. Eggs are deposited in a row along underwater stems of grass or reeds. Larvae have prominent gills on either side of their heads, some emerging, sexually mature adults will retain gill stubs but these soon resorb. The salamander’s “stripes” have given it its name. Terrestrial adults have a blotched, barred or reticulate pattern of yellow or off-white on a dark background. The Western Tiger Salamander, consisting of several subspecies, is now classified as a separate species from the Eastern Tiger Salamander.

Western Tiger Salamanders have a wide distribution in arid, semi, or seasonal arid interior regions of western North America.

Habitat: Western Tiger Salamanders occupy a variety of open habitats, including grasslands, parkland, subalpine meadows, and semi-deserts. Key habitat features include crumbly soils surrounding semi-permanent to permanent water bodies lacking predatory fish. These terrestrial Western Tiger Salamanders burrow actively into the soil or utilize small mammal burrows for refuges and over-wintering. People have been amazed at the depths in the soil where salamanders have been uncovered. At a time when many homes in town were served by dugout cellars rather than finished basements residents often shared the space with a few too many salamanders. It wasn’t uncommon to discover one in the potato bin!

Breeding habitats must hold water for the 3 to 7 months required to complete larval development. Juveniles migrate en mass from breeding sites into terrestrial habitats in late August or in September. On a rainy night especially, Saltcoats residents and visitors alike expressed disbelief at how lawns and streets were alive with salamanders. Hundreds of squished dead salamanders would welcome morning flocks of gulls to a rich smorgasbord. Both larvae and adults are carnivorous and feed on a wide range of small prey such as snails, mosquitoes, and other larvae. Many classrooms in the community have hosted one or more adult salamanders for up to three years in a moist terrarium feeding it flies, bits of raw meat or fish.

Population sizes and trends are poorly recorded. The numbers of adults may vary considerably among sites and years. It is known that continued habitat loss, habitat alteration, and introduced species threaten the persistence of populations of salamanders – as it does so many species of flora and fauna.

We are coming to know more clearly how interdependent we are as living creatures sharing planet Earth with other species. Increasingly it is noted that humans suffer mentally and socially as their connection to the natural world decreases. Many scientists have urged us to see how the health, or lack of it, specifically of the world of amphibians such as the Tiger Salamander, is an accurate barometer measuring the environmental health of planet Earth – and of each of us, all of us!

Threats and Limiting Factors

Tiger salamanders face the same pressures and threats as other amphibian species with separate requirements for terrestrial adults and aquatic larvae. Over much of the species’ Canadian range, there are immense pressures from loss, degradation and fragmentation of habitat. In the Prairies, a change has occurred in land use from grazing and low-scale agriculture to large-scale farming and conversion of habitat to accommodate growing urban populations and the expansion of mining, oil and gas, and even recreational developments. In many areas there has been rapid habitat loss due to developments with associated pollutant run-off. Fish stocking for recreational fishing, aquaculture, and mosquito-control can also have severe impacts on tiger salamanders.

Anderson Lake has been known as a breeding habitat for the Tiger Salamander. The annual fall phenomenon has been talked about and wondered at throughout the decades from the earliest agricultural settlements to recent decades. Presumably, the lake was a salamander hatchery for decades before this settlement. We still see occasional Tiger Salamander, but we don’t know when the numbers started to decline, nor can we identify the causes of the decline.

One story is remembered that two lads were paid by a local plumber to haul several five-gallon pails full of salamanders out of Nellie Moffat’s basement before he would go down and fix the furnace.