Helping creatures cross roads

PEPPERELL, Mass. - Think of them as crossing guards for some of New England's amorous amphibians.

Jeanne Nevard, a Pepperell resident, gathers a small, loosely organized group of volunteers that every spring keeps an eye on the weather. They're on the lookout for relatively warm, rainy nights, about an hour after sunset that signals the great salamander migration each mating season. It's a sort of underwater bacchanal in your backyard.

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Mostly yellow spotted salamanders, and a few of their rare blue spotted cousins, make their way from their upland homes, from under logs and leaf litter, to low-lying vernal pools. There they gather and the males drop spermataphore packets, females use them to fertilize their eggs, lay their eggs, then they all make their way back to their normal habitats.

The problem, as Nevard sees it, is that too often roads have been built in between the salamanders' homes and destinations, and they're not exactly adept at using crosswalks.

That's why on Friday night - which was 49 degrees and rainy - and nights like it during a few weeks each spring, Nevard can usually be found wearing a reflective vest, armed with a flashlight and accompanied by her golden retriever, MacKenzie, driving slowly along roads near vernal pools.

When she spots a salamander, which is difficult since they resemble 6- to 8-inch sticks, she pulls over, hops out of the car and moves the animal from one side of the road to the other. Sometimes she finds a dozen or more.

"I call it salamandering," Nevard said. "It's kind of aerobic."

Paula Terrasi, a former wildlife biologist, said the migration is an important part of the salamanders' life cycle, so it's good that groups in many New England towns spend time salamandering.

"I'm just one of the many people who enjoy doing this, who like to be outdoors," Terrasi said. "And it's fun. It's good for the kids to see what's going on. It's just one species that we have to be careful with, that we have to protect."

Nevard is trying to raise more interest in salamandering and a series of recent e-mails and Web postings brought more volunteers than usual Friday, but the real key, she said, is getting through to drivers.

Nevard said the way she sees it, it only takes a couple hours of her life but makes a world of difference to the animals.

"My hope with all this is that people slow down and, if they see something in the road, go around it and, ideally, pick it up and move it," she said. "People don't know they're out there. They have a right to live their lives. These animals that are indigenous to this area and should be able to live here and they should be protected."