Stanford developers shouldn't get attached to their plans just yet. If the California tiger salamander gets federal protection, Stanford may have to go through another round of land negotiations and make yet another series of revisions.
Wildlife officials already have designated 500 acres of campus land, primarily around Lake Lagunita, as a tiger salamander zone, but that area could be expanded to include the entire campus. The salamanders have been found all over campus, from the Foothills to Wilbur Hall.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could add the salamander to its list of endangered and threatened species in the next few years. The salamander has been classified for listing since 1994, but has waited its turn as higher-priority species came up for consideration first. Any change in the salamander's status is particularly important to Stanford since it has the only reported population left on the San Francisco Peninsula.
Listing the species as endangered could mean a "potential train wreck" to future development plans at Stanford, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife senior biologist David Wright. The service "is concerned about proposed development activity at Stanford," says Wright and warns that if the salamander is listed as endangered, the University will have to complete a rigorous Habitat Conservation Plan. The University would need a land-use permit that designated ways to mitigate the effects of any development on the salamanders' viability. Both current activities and proposed activities would be reviewed.
Alan Launer, a research associate for the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford, '81, MS '82, predicts that "if the feds come up with something, we may have to turn around and go through land negotiations all over again."
The salamanders, although they are only eight inches long, require "hundreds of acres to be viable . . . and it can't be a parking lot or a manicured front lawn," according to UC-Davis evolution and ecology professor H. Bradley Shaffer. They need open grassland--and lots of it. The salamanders like to roam. After leaving the pond where they hatched, they will travel up to a mile to find the perfect burrow, where they'll typically live for a couple of years. Then they go back across the land to their water home. After laying their eggs there, they return to the grassland.
This migratory lifestyle has worked for the California tiger salamander for three million years, but without significant remedies, says Launer, "I don't think they're going to make it for another 20 to 25 years." The salamanders are threatened both by increased land development and new species of fish and salamanders introduced to their native habitat. Launer says the tiger salamander population at Stanford could range anywhere between 1,500 and 7,500 adults.
The extinction of the tiger salamanders would likely affect a whole host of species in their water communities. The salamander is usually the top predator in its water home, and without it, mosquito larvae and other water inhabitants it feeds upon could increase in number.
Current efforts to protect the species--such as construction of special ponds and pass-throughs--haven't been proven effective. The University will continue to experiment with pond building, and it's set to prepare at least one tunnel under Junipero Serra Boulevard next year to ease the salamanders' road crossing. But, according to Shaffer, "the main solution is to simply recognize that you have to have the habitat intact."
Jennie Berry, '01
