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QuickTake:
The presence of giant salamanders has long signaled the health of an ecosystem. New data show from Oregon State University shows how these amphibians are responding to wildfires and runoff. Their struggle mirrors the broader challenges facing the McKenzie River watershed, the region’s primary drinking water source, as it contends with wildfire-related debris.
Above the Willamette Valley, salamanders once swam abundantly in mountain streams. But their presence has dwindled as wildfires have scorched forests.
These small waterways, home to the rare coastal giant salamander, wind through the Blue River before merging with the McKenzie River — the sole drinking water source for 200,000 people in the Eugene area.
Salamanders serve as a barometer of ecosystem health, because they usually decline in tandem with a deteriorating environment. Now, as wildfires muddy waterways with debris and sediment-filled runoff, scientists say monitoring them is more critical than ever.
It’s why for nearly three decades, Oregon State University researchers have tracked salamander populations, until the Lookout Fire tore through the H.J. Andrews Forest in 2023, abruptly halting research and consuming a trove of living data. The fire burned 25,754 acres, including parts of the Willamette National Forest and nearly 68% of the 15,800-acre H.J. Andrews Forest.
Last July, a team of freshwater ecologists was granted access to the 40-square-mile burn zone bordering northwest Lane County. They returned to the charred banks of Lookout Creek, north of McKenzie Bridge, where the air still carried a faint scent of smoke. Dressed in gray waders and battery-powered backpacks, they stepped into the frigid stream and used a stun rod to send a mild electric charge through the water — enough to temporarily immobilize salamanders without harming them.
One crew collected trout and salamanders from the stream in areas of fast and slow-moving water. They put them into buckets and took pictures and measurements. A second group collected food by gently pumping their stomachs, said Emilee Mowlds, an OSU assistant faculty researcher.
Freshwater technicians use a mild electric current to temporarily stun and safely capture salamanders for research. (Credit: Ashli Blow) 
A young salamander swims alongside a trout for measurement. (Credit: Ashli Blow) 
Emilee Mowlds, an assistant faculty researcher at OSU, uses a laser to measure the width and depth of a stream. (Credit: Ashli Blow) 
An OSU student examines stream sample. (Credit: Ashli Blow) 
Researchers collect insects from the stomachs of salamanders and trout to study their diets and food availability. (Credit: Ashli Blow) 
A team led by Ivan Arismendi, associate professor of ecology and conservation at OSU, pumps stomachs and collects samples for research. (Credit: Ashli Blow) 
Ivan Arismendi, associate professor of ecology and conservation at OSU, takes notes for research. (Credit: Ashli Blow)
While coastal giant salamanders are the biggest of their kind in the state, growing up to 14 inches long, they can be elusive. Before doing stream research, Mowlds didn’t know where to look, but now she knows how to spot them in secluded pockets of cold waterways.
“They just have this derpy face, kind of flat, like Barney the dinosaur,” Mowlds said, describing young salamanders when they are water-bound and lungless, with frilled gills and a tail fin. As adults, they develop marbled skin and a body that looks like a hybrid of a frog and a newt.
Over the past few months, Mowlds and a team led by Ivan Arismendi, associate professor of ecology and conservation at OSU, have been analyzing the data in the lab. At first glance, they found an unsettling drop in the salamander population after the wildfire. But they also see it as part of a cycle that reflects the species’ ability to withstand disasters over time.
‘Wait-and-see game’
Salamanders are remarkably resilient, capable of transforming when it means a better chance at survival.
“They can be terrestrial. They can be aquatic,” Arismendi said. “They can go into holes in the sediment during rain and will go really deep. So that eventually may happen with fire.”
But that wasn’t the case during the Lookout Fire, raising concern for Arismendi. Preliminary results suggest the salamander population in 2024 has dropped to half of what it was in samples collected in 2022, before the wildfire.
As top-of-the-food-chain predators in waterways, the salamanders keep ecological balance in check through their meals, by eating insects and small fish.
They share that role with coastal cutthroat trout, coexisting like apartment neighbors. Trout patrol the upper waters, feeding on surface flies, while salamanders hunt along the rocky stream bed. Given their shared habitat, Arismendi also surveyed the trout and found their population had increased after the fire — a discovery still under study but possibly linked to their ability to move quickly and adapt to fire-altered habitats.
For salamanders, however, these same conditions may have disrupted their access to food and places to lay their eggs.
The species has a history of cycles of decline and recovery, however.
“For me, this is a wait-and-see game for salamanders,” Arismendi said. “It’s just they went to the lowest point so far. I believe that these animals have been around for thousands, millions of years under such a fire condition. [Their recovery] response is not as immediate as [that of] other animals.”
Arismendi’s hypothesis is grounded in his long-term dataset, which includes observations of how salamanders responded to a historic flood in 1996 that drastically reshaped their habitat. As torrents of water, woody debris, and rocky silt surged downstream, populations initially collapsed — much as they did after the fire. But over time, their numbers stabilized, only to be disrupted again by a drought in 2014. The cycle repeated.
Washing down to the valley
How salamanders respond in this cycle could have far-reaching implications for water quality in waterways that reach far downstream.
From the western slope of the Three Sisters, ground water and snowmelt drains from the mountains into the McKenzie watershed, eventually flowing through the Willamette Valley. Along the way, pollution — natural and human-made — becomes part of the mix.
Because the McKenzie River supplies drinking water to the region, the Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) tracks quality problems across the entire 90-mile stretch of the river. In its 2024 McKenzie Watershed Report, published in mid-March, the utility reported that while water quality remains excellent, challenges persist.
One of the primary threats to water quality upriver is wildfire and sediment, especially after rainstorms, according to EWEB’s report. High-intensity burns can send charred trees, eroded minerals, rocky debris, and ash tumbling into waterways. This sediment can block streams, strain treatment facilities, and, if left stagnant with warm water, trigger algae blooms.
“There’s no moisture to anchor things, and there’s not a spongy soil surface, so the soil is just all really bare,” said Elizabeth Goward, community engagement manager with McKenzie River Trust. “If you take your garden hose out on your garden bed, and you turn it on and you leave it, it’s going to dig a hole, because all that sediment and soil is actually flowing away with your water. That’s what is happening with our rivers. These large wildfires are burning to an intensity that makes it so all the stuff that makes up a forest floor gets into our river quickly.”
Such a wipeout happened during the widespread destruction of the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire, when runoff from the wildfire fell into the McKenzie River. It also happened last year, months after nearly 5,000 acres burned in the North Willamette Complex. By November, water samples from Hendricks Bridge County Park in Springfield showed elevated levels of organic material that had traveled downstream, likely from recent wildfire activity.
This muddy water needs to be filtered for clean drinking water. For McKenzie River Trust and EWEB, work focuses on healthy waterways before it reaches treatment facilities. How the natural world — and all its residents, like salamanders — respond signal whether those efforts are working.
“What can the life of a coastal giant salamander tell us about our own lives, right?” Goward said. “What is the parallel as we’re occupying this place together? What is its fragility? These immediate indicator species form relationships with a place and when that place gets disturbed, they respond really quickly.”
Reporting for this story was made possible with a fellowship from the nonprofit Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources.
