ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In coastal northern California, a group of volunteers spends every night - from late fall through winter - as crossing guards. Not for children - they are escorting migrating salamanders across a rural road. Their goal is to win a permanent safe passage for these little amphibians. Reporter Stephanie O'Neill has the story.
STEPHANIE O'NEILL, BYLINE: Sally Gale is a Marin County rancher who's helped save thousands of Pacific newts - a type of salamander that, herpetologically speaking, is awfully cute. Snout to tail, they're about 6 to 8" long. They're a rich, reddish brown on top with a bright orange underbelly and, says Gale...
SALLY GALE: They have cute little eyes that kind of bug out. They kind of look like a cartoon character.
O'NEILL: But newts are slow movers, and for this otherwise healthy population of them here in Marin County's Chileno Valley - about 50 miles north of San Francisco - that spells trouble. Starting in late fall each year, these nocturnal migrators must cross a public road that divides their forested hillside habitat from their spawning ground at a nearby shallow lake. And at night, when pickup trucks and cars come zipping along this mile-long stretch of the road...
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DRIVING PAST)
O'NEILL: ...Many of the newts get squashed. For Gale, whose ranch is a couple miles away from the lake, seeing so many dead newts on the road was just too much.
GALE: And that's really what got me started. I couldn't stand seeing all those dead animals.
O'NEILL: So six years ago, with help from a close friend, she launched the Chileno Valley Newt Brigade.
GALE: How's it going, people?
UNIDENTIFIED MEMBER #1: Good, you?
UNIDENTIFIED MEMBER #2: I saw, I think, three adults.
GALE: Ooh.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MEMBER #2: And two babies.
O'NEILL: Now about 80 strong, the grassroots group has to date carried to safety more than 22,000 Pacific newts and a host of other nocturnal amphibians and reptiles.
CHRISTINE: Does somebody have a radio? This is Christine, over.
SOHNI YAYLIAN: I have one, Christine. This is Sohni, over.
O'NEILL: Suited up with walkie talkies, high-powered flashlights and wearing reflective vests to keep themselves safe from cars, the brigadiers patrol the migratory mile - a team of about 10 assigned to each night of the week. Some trek solo, others work together, flashlights sweeping the ground in front of them as they search for and ferry to safety anything trying to crawl, wiggle or hop across the road.
CRAIG: Yeah, I got, like...
LAUREN: See a newt?
CRAIG: ...Eighteen on that end. I don't remember what everybody else has got, but there's, like...
O'NEILL: On this night, baby newts that just a while ago were legless tadpoles with gills and fins leave the lake and head to the hills. They'll spend the next five years in the moist forest maturing before returning to spawn. And crossing in the opposite direction, adults heading to breed at the lake, like this hefty guy.
CRAIG: He's big.
LAUREN: He's big.
KILEY: Look at that chunk.
(LAUGHTER)
LAUREN: He's well-fed.
(LAUGHTER)
O'NEILL: Each rescue is documented with a photo and information about the newt the team uploads to the citizen science app iNaturalist.
Gary Buciarelli is a wildlife biologist with the University of California at Davis. He applauds the brigades' work and says humans can learn a lot from newts. Among their most notable superpowers, they can regenerate fully functional limbs, organs and tissue whenever injured.
GARY BUCCIARELLI: And then, also, they live really long. A lot of people don't know this, but these newts can live 20, 30 years, easily.
O'NEILL: And perhaps much longer, Bucciarelli says, especially if they don't get mowed down.
LAUREN: Oh.
KILEY: Was it an adult?
LAUREN: Yeah.
O'NEILL: Ugh. So sad.
But not every casualty leads to death. Because of those regenerative abilities and the new brigade escort, another newt they find stunned in the road with a bloodied, mostly severed tail, just may survive.
YAYLIAN: If it's just the tail, he can regenerate it.
CINDY: You're all right, bubba.
YAYLIAN: So I'm going to go put him over there and we'll hope for the best.
O'NEILL: In addition to saving lives each night, the brigadiers collect important data. Sohni Yaylian is the Sunday night brigade captain.
YAYLIAN: We GPS every one of them so every single observation that we make on iNaturalist, we know the position of the newt.
O'NEILL: And that data is helping inform a study the newt brigade has commissioned with financial help from the state grant to examine road modifications that may one day provide the newts and other small creatures safe migratory passage. But until then, Sally Gale says the Chileno Valley Newt Brigade will be there to ferry newts, frogs, toads and turtles safely across the road.
KILEY: Hello.
YAYLIAN: Over.
GALE: Anything happening back there?
O'NEILL: For NPR News, I'm Stephanie O'Neill in Marin County, California.
(SOUNDBITE OF MELANIE MARTINEZ SONG, "VOID") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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