“Although widely distributed along BC’s coast, the northwestern salamander is a fairly elusive salamander. This relatively large and charismatic salamander is often found hidden at the base of ferns, underneath vegetation and logs, and in burrows. On Vancouver Island I’ve regularly encountered western red-backed salamanders and rough-skin newts while exploring coastal forests, but I’ve rarely encountered the much larger northwestern salamander. More often, I’ve come across their beautiful, globular, gelatinous egg-masses stuck to fallen branches in rainforest streams. In fact, thousands of tourists from around the world look in wonder each year at some very prominent egg-mass blobs of this species along the popular Big Trees Trail on Meares Island near Tofino, at a heavily traversed stream-crossing along the famous old-growth forest boardwalk trail. However, few tourists realize quite what they are looking at – that the impressive egg-masses will eventually become equally impressive adult northwestern salamanders, complete with swollen poison glands behind their eyes.”

Ken Wu, Executive Director, Ancient Forest Alliance.