I stumbled over one of the little Fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) fellows this very morning when I was doing my woodpecker monitoring round. And boy, do I love them! It’s a sad kind of love though. When I moved into the area, nearly 20 years ago, they were ubiquitous in the local Harz mountains. Climate change with less precipitation and more heat and especially the Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Salamanderpest) fungus decimated the beautiful salamander heavily. The chytrid fungus has only been described scientifically in 2013. In the past ten years, the fungus has killed 98 percent of the population in the federal state of Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), This brings the little guy to the brik of extinction within only ten years.
It’s our shoes and our dogs who trasmit the disease. So please desinfect your shoes regularly and keep your dogs leashed when in Salamander area.