Climate change poses challenges to Eleven Point’s Ozark hellbenders and trout, feds say - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Study probes climate change effect on popular Missouri river
The Eleven Point River, seen in October 2021, doubles in size at Greer Spring, just downstream from where this photo was made.

JEFFERSON CITY — Visitors to the Eleven Point River, as well as the giant Ozark hellbender salamanders living there, may be affected by increasingly hot temperatures and extreme flooding events attributed to climate change.

A new comprehensive management plan for the federally protected Eleven Point Wild and Scenic River, released by the U.S. Forest Service in May, devotes a section to challenges posed by climate change, including possible shifts in visitation patterns, heavy rain and floods, and potential habitat loss.

State and federal officials say Ozark hellbenders are particularly threatened by major flood events, which can move the rocks and boulders under which the salamanders live, wiping out their habitat.

That’s bad news for the state of Missouri and wildlife enthusiasts. Legislators designated the Ozark hellbender the state’s official endangered species in 2019. The Missouri Department of Conservation, the St. Louis Zoo and other partners have worked for more than two decades on a captive breeding program to restore the population.

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The Forest Service plan says changes in water quality could stress certain species, and that growth of terrestrial and aquatic invasive species “may outpace organizational capacity to manage, partially due to limited access to streambanks.”

In a statement to the Post-Dispatch, the Forest Service said the federally endangered Ozark hellbender and non-native trout present in the park “could potentially be adversely affected by increased temperatures.”

For humans, the plan says hot weather and changing hydrology “will affect where people can camp and the ease with which they can move through the water.”

It adds that “visitor use may increase in spring and fall with changes in weather” and that higher temperatures and heat advisory days “may increase visitor exposure to unsafe conditions.”

The Forest Service’s management plan for the Eleven Point is the first update since 1975. Congress protected 44 miles of the river, in Oregon County, in 1968.

Cody Norris, spokesman for the Mark Twain National Forest, said the management plan’s statement on heat advisory days doesn’t necessarily mean fewer people will visit the river during extreme heat.

He said people will need to be aware of the danger, and take precautions such as hydrating and reducing sun exposure.

“Perhaps more people would visit a river during extremely hot days in the summer because they have time and desire to get outdoors, but they don’t think it is safe to hike in the heat,” Norris said.

Jeff Briggler, the Missouri state herpetologist, said that with regard to the hellbenders facing extreme heat, spring-fed streams create a “buffer” effect.

“I don’t think a few degrees is gonna push hellbenders to the brink,” Briggler said. “I think that water is very buffered by those spring influences. And I think that potential impact will be minimal. Now if the springs start increasing in temperature, that’s a different story.”
A two-year-old juvenile Hellbender salamander is seen in a captive breeding program at the St. Louis Zoo on Nov. 3, 2022.

Briggler said a major threat to the hellbenders is heavy rain events “that seem to be occurring at more rapid paces now.”

The impact can be especially pronounced in “huge” rain events, such as 2-3 inches in a very short time over an area with no riparian protection— a system of trees and other vegetation along the riverbank that filters water and slows its flow.

Briggler pointed to flooding in southern Missouri in 2017.

“Especially the North Fork drainage, the Bryant Creek drainage — they had (a) catastrophic flood,” he said.

Briggler said the flood damaged “the bed load on the bottom of the river, and it moved rocks the size of cars and the habitat these animals need. And we did see a dramatic decline in hellbender populations.”

Trisha Crabill, threatened and endangered species coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said that with extreme floods being able to move large rocks downstream, “if there’s a hellbender underneath, say a 2-meter-long rock, and it gets moved downstream, there’s gonna be injury, mortality, (and) disruption of breeding behavior.

“The flooding is likely going to affect the species — at least that’s what we’re expecting,” she said. “One thing that we know — you can’t go wrong with — is trying to increase riparian protection.”
The Saint Louis Zoo is raising Ozark Hellbenders, which grow up to about two feet long, all the way from eggs until they are ready to be released into the wild. An Ozark hellbender salamander is kept by biologists working on a captive breeding program for the St. Louis Zoo, as seen in a 2004 image. Photo by Teak Phillips of the Post-Dispatch The Missouri Department of Conservation announced April 13, 2023, that the first zoo-reared Ozark hellbender has successfully fathered a clutch of eggs (pictured) on the Current River. MDC partnered with the St. Louis Zoo and other agencies to restore threatened hellbender populations to Missouri. The first zoo-raised Ozark hellbender to successfully reproduce in the wild pictured above, is held by Missouri State Herpetologist Jeff Briggler. The animal was raised from a clutch of eggs at the Saint Louis Zoo and released on the Current River in 2019.