Saving our salamanders

A heartwarming story in the Guardian describes how a Brit is building ramps for giant salamanders near Daisen, one of Japan's Hundred Mountains. And a longer article along the same lines appeared in the Japan Times just today. It seems that the new ramps will help the beleaguered amphibians to overcome the man-made dams which are destroying their habitat.

For beleaguered they certainly are, these giant salamanders (Andrias japonicus). Last year, says the Guardian, an international conservation body changed their status from “near threatened” to “vulnerable”. And they have long been under pressure, as a glance at Walter Weston’s Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps reveals. Here is a vignette from the mountaineering missionary’s ascent of Jōnen-dake in 1894:

At 3 P.M. we reached the first snow, at a height of 7,200 feet, at a spot where, in a gloomy ravine, dark cliffs rose steep and forbidding on either hand. No sooner was the word to halt here given, than at once our hunters threw down their packs and fell to prodding about with their sticks in the boles and crannies of the broken rocks in a state of wild excitement. They told us they were searching for a particular sort of lizard called san-shō-no-uwo, which this stream produced to perfection.

 When caught, skewered on long sticks, and dried, it is highly esteemed as a cure for various diseases of children. In China it is also much valued in the native pharmacopeia, and goes by the name of the "stony son of a dragon". In an advertisement drawing attention to its uses in a native Shanghai newspaper some time ago, it was stated that the medicine made from it was "not only unusually effective against the plague, but it is also infallible against different kinds of cholera, typhus and typhoid fevers, ague, diphtheria, liver and stomach aches, vomiting, diarrhoea, colic, apoplexy, sunstroke, asphyxia, tetanus in children, surfeiting, small-pox, malaria, all sorts of tumours, and inflammatory poisons, &c."

Presumably Weston's hunters were looking for the small variety of mountain salamander - incidentally, these are still occasionally served up in remote mountain villages, skewered on long sticks and baked in honey glaze. Delicious, you know. As for their larger cousins, Weston seems to know of these only by hearsay:

Chief of all reptiles of this class, however, is the Giant Salamander (Cryptobronchus Japonicus), found chiefly on the west or south-west spurs of this range (as well as in some other parts between 34° and 36° N. lat.). It appears to chiefly prefer the clear mountain streams of granite and schist ranges at a height of 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the sea. It feeds chiefly upon trout (in which those streams abound) and upon the larvae of insects and the smaller batrachians. Its flesh is valued chiefly for its medicinal uses and for keeping the water clean in wells. The largest specimens, five feet long or so, are brought to the principal cities, where they are found as curiosities in the naturalists' shops. 

Whilst near relatives are found in China and in North America, its closest kinsman of all is the one whose remains were found by Scheuchzer at Oeningen. Owing, however, to its weak reproduction and limited distribution, it will soon follow its departed cousin, that homo diluvia testis, and at no distant date will cease to form part of the living fauna of Japan.

Let's hope that Weston's gloomy prognosis is unfounded. Alas, it's not just the giant salamanders that we have to worry about. The header photo in this post is borrowed from Natural Monuments of Japan, an opulent volume published by Kodansha in 1995. Giant salamanders are in there because they have "special natural monument" status. 

The book’s yokozuna-like heft testifies to the extraordinary variety of flora and fauna that makes Japan a so-called biodiversity hotspot. The question, though, is whether this volume would be equally weighty if Kodansha were to bring out an updated edition in 2095? We hope that both the venerable publishing house and the giant salamanders will still be around then.

References

M Kato, M Numata, K Watanabe and M Hata (eds), Natural Monuments of Japan, Kodansha, Tokyo (in Japanese), 1995．八幡野八幡宮・来宮神社社叢．加藤陸奥雄，沼田眞，渡部景隆，畑正憲（編）日本の天然記念物, 講談社，東京．

W Weston, Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps, J Murray, London, 1896.

Postscript

The idea of ramps for giant salamanders put Project Hyakumeizan in mind of a marvel closer to home: the famous cat ladders of Bern, Switzerland. Another ingenious solution for our animal friends....