Endangered salamander to get car-free spring migration routes in Burlington and York region
Burlington has closed a section of King Road every spring since 2012 to help Jefferson salamander who live along the Niagara Escarpment make the nocturnal trip to their vernal pools.
King Road is closed from North Service Road to Mountain Brow Road starting Wednesday, until April 9.
Meanwhile, York Region says from March 24 to May 2 drivers can expect intermittent overnight closures of Stouffville Road, between Bayview Avenue and Leslie Street, which runs through the Oak Ridges Moraine to help the migrating salamander.
David Lawrie, a research scientist with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, told the CBC in 2023 that because they're small, slow and prefer to travel on dark, rainy nights with poor visibility, a high percentage of salamanders get squashed by vehicles en route.
The greyish, blue-speckled amphibian spends winter in abandoned rodent burrows, rock crevices or other moist pockets below the frost line until their spring emergence.
The salamanders, who live for up to 30 years, tend to capitalize on a warm rainy March or April night to make the journey to their breeding ponds, often the same one where they were born.
Environmentalists opposed to opening up protected Greenbelt lands for development have often cited the endangered salamander as one of the species most threatened by southern Ontario's urbanization.
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City data suggests 'stark decline' of waterfowl on Toronto beaches during summer, expert says
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Questions about long-term impact According to Marc Cadotte, a biology professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough who has independently reviewed the data, the counts show a "stark decline" in the number of birds on waterfronts. If the city's deterrents are successful, Cadotte wonders whether they result in a loss of habitat for the birds. "Are they moving to other places in the city, or do these deterrents impact populations in the long-term? Wild animals consistently lose habitat with urbanization, and if we further drive them out of usable habitat, we are magnifying our impacts," he said. "This is more of a case of classic human-wildlife conflict, and the usual outcome is that wildlife lose." Asked about the possibility of population decline, Mahesh Patel, manager of health protection at Toronto Public Health said measuring the number of birds in an area can be challenging given their constant movement and that the data should be taken as a snapshot in time. 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