WATAUGA COUNTY—Ben Dalton broke the glassy surface of the Watauga River, spit out his mouthpiece and gasped for breath. All morning, Dalton, a state wildlife biologist, and two other snorkelers had been scouring the river bed, trying to rescue as many eastern hellbenders as they could.

So far, they had not saved a one.

“They just hunker down and press themselves against the sides of the rock,” Dalton said, in a nasal voice through his snorkeling mask. He wielded a “tickler,” which resembled a long, yellow pipe cleaner. “I’m going to try to goose the hellbender and see if it will shoot out the front.”

Glistening in a sleek wetsuit, Dalton is thin, lean and agile, much like the hellbenders he was trying to rescue. In early July, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with support from American Rivers and MountainTrue, would begin staging heavy equipment nearby, the first step in dismantling the Shull’s Mill Dam, southwest of Boone in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The dam, which once powered a timber mill, has fragmented and degraded the giant salamander’s sensitive habitat.

Dalton is accustomed to the mercurial moods of amphibians. His biology career has taken him to Missouri, where he studied the Ozark Zigzag salamander, to Puerto Rico, where he observed Coqui frogs, and now to the mountains of North Carolina, where he’s trying to outwit a hellbender.

“If hellbenders don’t want to come out,” Dalton said, “it’s really hard to get them out.”

Throughout their range in the eastern U.S., the number of hellbenders is plummeting. In some states, like Ohio and Indiana, they are listed as endangered. North Carolina has the most hellbenders of any state in their range, but even here, they are classified as a species of concern: vulnerable, and without interventions, en route to becoming threatened or endangered. So precarious is the species in North Carolina that it is illegal to take, possess, transport or sell hellbenders or attempt to do so.

“They’ve survived millions of years,” said Lori Williams, a biologist with the state Wildlife Resources Commission. “Something has changed now.”

Williams has devoted much of her career to salamanders, especially the hellbender. The Wildlife Society named her Biologist of the Year in 2020 for her conservation and monitoring of their habitats.

She’s seen how in western North Carolina, extreme weather, the result of climate change, is altering the hellbenders’ habitat. When it floods, the force of the water can wash them out of the river. In 2021, after the catastrophic Tropical Storm Fred, Williams said, “we found dead hellbenders near Asheville.”

As recently as last fall, 15 mountain counties experienced severe drought conditions during a stretch that ranked among the top five driest periods on record, according to the State Climate Office. When stream levels drop, the hellbenders’ eggs are exposed to predators. Even full-grown hellbenders can be plucked from the water by river otters and bald eagles.

Dams, like the one at Shull’s Mill, compound the effects of climate change on aquatic habitats. Without a free flow of fresh water, oxygen levels drop and river temperatures rise; both are detrimental to the hellbender, which needs cool, oxygenated water to survive. Sediment accumulates behind the dam, covering and suffocating critical food sources and breeding grounds.

But now, the dam will be demolished.

“Some little ones will die,” Williams said, sounding resigned. “But it’s important to save the breeders.”

Williams had tucked her brown hair beneath a gray-and-white cap emblazoned with “NC Wildlife Resources Commission.” Wearing a black wetsuit, she, too, was prepared to join the search. She turned and asked the rescue team to prepare to return and dive that night, if necessary. That’s when the hellbenders, who are nocturnal, would come out to feed on crayfish, their preferred food.

“I don’t want to leave any animal behind,” Williams said.

Thwarted wanderlust

At midday, the scuba tanks arrived, which would allow the rescue team to remain underwater longer. With waterproof flashlights, the divers could seek out the hellbenders, which blend in with their surroundings: Rust-colored with black spots, stubby legs that end in padded pink toes and with a shovel-shaped tail, hellbenders appear prehistoric.

“Hellbenders are beautiful,” Dalton said. “They’re perfectly adapted to their environment. But what’s really fascinating is that they can help tell us about the health of the streams.”

Hellbenders are an indicator species. If climate change alters the river levels and temperatures, if trees are cut along the banks, if sediment enters the water from urban runoff, the number of hellbenders will decline.

Dr. Mike Gangloff, a professor of freshwater conservation biology at Appalachian State University, has been monitoring the health and number of hellbenders in North Carolina for more than 15 years.

In the headwaters of the Watauga River, the hellbender density is the highest in the state, “like they were 500 years ago before we changed our rivers and the landscape.”

But the worrisome trend, Gangloff said, is “we’re not seeing as many middle-sized animals.”

The proliferation of exurban luxury housing developments is degrading the water quality. These communities often have their own wastewater leachfields that discharge into the river, Gangloff said.

Private fishing clubs with state permits are stocking the river with large fish, Gangloff said, which can prey on the hellbender larvae. “When we relocate the hellbenders, we put them where there are fewer ginormous fish,” he said.

And when it’s time to mate, hellbenders have wanderlust, which dams thwart. “They need to travel,” Dalton said. “They need large, continuous spans of river to breed.”

The rescuers donned their scuba tanks and plunged into the river. They split off, some swimming toward a boulder and others heading for the dam.

The Shull’s Mill dam has been abandoned since the Great Flood of 1940, which drowned and buried areas of western North Carolina in water and mud. Over the past 84 years, the dam has eroded and in one spot has been breached. A keyhole in the concrete allows some water to gush through like a firehose, while behind it lie slicks of sediment, a tangle of rebar and chunks of tree trunks and concrete.

“The hellbenders can’t make it through the dam, even though it’s been breached,” said Andy Hill, Watauga riverkeeper and High Country regional director with MountainTrue. “What we’re seeing is isolated thriving populations, but they’re not thriving throughout the system in a continuous way.”

There are more than 28,351 dams in North Carolina, according to the Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership. Most of them are privately owned, and many have been abandoned. “A lot of these structures are remnants of the historical past,” said Erin McCombs, Southeast conservation director with American Rivers. Sixty-three dams have been removed in North Carolina, gaining 5,593 miles of reconnected rivers and streams—equivalent to two trips across the continental United States.

Dam removal won’t eliminate the effects of climate change, but it can mitigate them. Water temperatures decrease, and when stream banks are replanted with native trees and plants, they’re better equipped to trap sediment when the inevitable flood does occur.

Three years ago, the removal team dismantled the Ward Mill dam, also along Watauga. Unlike Shull’s Mill, the Ward structure was intact, and a tall, wide table of sand had amassed behind it. Now that segment of the river flows freely and its conditions are optimal for the relocated hellbenders.

“Rivers know how to be rivers,” McCombs said. “And when they are healthy, all life that depends on them benefits.”

‘I Got Him!’

The hellbender was cornered. But his removal required the rescue team to use pry bars to lift the boulder so Dalton could dive beneath it and retrieve him.

“Give me a foot of space,” Dalton told the rescue team. “Make sure you have a good hold. If you can’t hold that rock for 15 seconds or more, I won’t go.”

Dalton dove. The team lifted the rock. Other rescuers readied large nets.

After what seemed like an interminable length of time, Dalton bolted from the water.

“I got him!” Dalton said, hoisting the hellbender as if it were a newborn baby.

Hellbenders feel cool and wet, similar to Jell-O, yet tough and sturdy, like a well-toned bicep.

Dalton placed the hellbender in a mesh bag. Hannah Woodburn, a staff scientist at MountainTrue, gingerly removed him and placed him on a scale—about a pound in weight and a foot in length. A brief wave of a wand indicated he had never been tagged by biologists.

Meanwhile, Lori Williams of the state Wildlife Resources Commission counted his toes—he had all of them—and scanned his body for scars—he had none.

“He’s not yet mated,” Williams said. “This will be his first season to fight.”

Williams injected a tag into his tail. And Woodburn placed him in an aerated cooler full of water until he would be relocated 12 miles to a different segment of the Watauga that afternoon. Scientists temporarily place hellbenders in wooden crates to allow them to calm down and get their bearings.

Near the dam, a diver yelled: “I got another one!”

It was a male, who had a bruised rear right foot and a missing toe on his back left.

And then another, and another. Over several days, the rescue team relocated eight hellbenders out of harm’s way.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife has begun chipping away at the dam and should be finished by mid-July.

“This will serve as a climate change mitigation measure,” said Hill, the Watauga riverkeeper. “The river will meander once and again and find its own path. You’re allowing the river to flow free.”

If you see an eastern hellbender in the wild, they should be left alone and reported to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. Send the location, a photo if possible and other details to Lori Williams, a wildlife diversity biologist with the Wildlife Commission, at [email protected].

SOUTHPORT, NC (WWAY) — Thousands of people came out Thursday morning to enjoy Southport’s annual Independence Day parade, which is all part of the North Carolina 4th of July festival.

This is the 52nd year that Southport has held the official North Carolina 4th of July Festival, though celebrations in the city date back as far as 1795.

Thousands lined Moore and Howe Streets to see the parade, with Harper Vick being just one of the attendees.

“I feel like a lot of people are usually down here for it, so it makes it more special cause like, there’s like a lot more stuff going around,” Vick said.

Lots of people took part, including the South Brunswick High School Marching Band, newly-crowned Miss North Carolina Carrie Everett, and North Carolina Secretay of State Elaine Marshall.

Southport resident Chris Propst has been coming to the parade for years with his parents.

He said it’s quite the place to celebrate our nation’s birthday.

“Ah man, everybody here is just so nice and welcoming,” Propst said. “It’s so many vendors here, lots to do, lots of stuff for the kids. They do the downtown stuff, I mean it’s just nice.”

“We’ve been visiting down here, we’ve been coming to the parade since he was young, we always been here, vacationed here every year,” Chris’s mother Shari said. “So vacation, they go fishing and its just a nice community to be a part of.”

Mike Dolan is a Vietnam veteran. He’s been coming to the parade for years as well and said he always looking forward to one thing.

“I always love the high school bands because the enthusiasm of the young kids, you can’t top that,” Dolan said.

Along with the parade, the North Carolina 4th of July festival attracts thousands to the area, providing an economic boost for local business owners.

Big plans are in the works for the North Carolina Museum of History, currently undergoing a years-long renovation.

The Museum of History at 5 E. Edenton St., directly adjacent to the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, is always a worthy visit for families, even in the midst of renovations.

Staff members tell WRAL News 80,000 students visit the museum during each school year. A visit to the museum is not something you can rush; it takes time to appreciate all that the state has lived through.

RaeLana Poteat, the museum’s chief curator, said the popular, 20,000 sq. ft. Story of North Carolina exhibit at the museum transports visitors through time, from Blackbeard the Pirate through the Civil War and beyond.

Every great story, however, needs fresh perspectives.

“This is our flagship exhibit, the Story of North Carolina,” Poteat said. “We, over time, just want to make sure that we are telling a great story of all North Carolinians and coming up with a new exhibit that people will enjoy as much as they’ve enjoyed this one.”

The Story of North Carolina experience on the museum’s first floor will accept visitors through Oct. 7, when the history museum will entirely close to the public. Digital experiences will be provided while the museum is redesigned.

In June, the “Sports Hall of Fame” exhibit on the third floor closed for renovations. Katie Edwards, curator for popular culture at the museum, said that exhibit opened when the building opened in 1993, and not much has changed.

Edwards said North Carolina sports legends like Hall of Famer Buck Leonard, one of the first baseball players in the Negro League, deserve better.

“You know, it’s quite a bit of dated technology, and we’ve run out of space,” Edwards said.

The exhibit’s trophies, banners, jerseys and uniforms were all taken down and will be safely stored until the state’s stars of yesterday are honored in a new way.

“We’re getting our thinking caps together about how we can present these artifacts, and we’re going to preserve these artifacts forever and tell their stories for future audiences,” Edwards said.

Renovations at the Museum of History won’t be completed for two to three years, staff members say.

According to the museum, the project is made possible through funding authorized by the North Carolina General Assembly and Gov. Roy Cooper.