Is the Chinese Giant Salamander Extinct? Wild Survey Results

What did the wild surveys find?

Between 2013 and 2016, a team from the Zoological Society of London, Chinese universities and research institutes carried out what may have been the largest wildlife survey ever conducted in China. They searched for giant salamanders in streams across 16 provinces, covering much of the species’ historical range, and interviewed 2,872 local people about sightings, catches and trade.

The results, published in Current Biology in 2018, were stark. The researchers concluded that populations of this once widespread animal were critically depleted or extirpated, meaning locally wiped out, in every area they surveyed. Where salamanders were found, there was evidence that many were escaped or released farm animals rather than members of original wild populations. Interviews showed that illegal poaching was common.

A companion genetic study published the same year showed that the “Chinese giant salamander” is not one uniform species but several deeply separate lineages, some of which may already have disappeared from the wild.

Is the situation hopeless?

Not quite. Later work has added some hope. Small wild populations have since been documented in a few places, such as protected streams in Hunan Province, and a 2022 study found a genetically distinct wild population in Jiangxi Province that was later described as a new species, the Jiangxi giant salamander (Andrias jiangxiensis). Some researchers also argued that the 2013–2016 survey could not cover every remote stream.

Even so, scientists agree that wild giant salamanders are now very rare, highly fragmented and still declining. The IUCN Red List classifies the Chinese giant salamander as Critically Endangered, the highest threat category short of extinction in the wild, and estimates a decline of more than 80 percent since the 1950s.

Why have wild giant salamanders disappeared?

Overharvesting

The main cause is demand for giant salamanders as luxury food. Wild animals were caught in large numbers from the second half of the 20th century, both for restaurants and to stock farms. Prices for wild salamanders are high and penalties have been low, which has kept poaching profitable.

Habitat loss and pollution

Giant salamanders need clear, cool, fast-flowing mountain streams with rocky crevices. Dams, mining, deforestation and silt from erosion have degraded or blocked many such streams, and pollution reduces the oxygen the salamanders absorb through their skin. Warming water is a further risk, because the species stops feeding at higher temperatures and cannot survive water near 35 °C (95 °F).

Disease

A ranavirus, sometimes called Chinese giant salamander iridovirus, has caused deadly outbreaks on farms, and untreated farm wastewater and released animals can carry it into wild streams. Disease is a growing threat to amphibians worldwide, as explained in Why are amphibians declining?

How farming complicates the picture

Giant salamander farming grew rapidly in China from the 2000s. In 2011, registrations showed about 2.6 million giant salamanders on farms in Shaanxi Province alone, far more than the estimated wild population of the whole country. In that sense the animal is in no danger of disappearing completely.

The problem is what kind of salamanders the farms hold. Genetic studies found that the large majority of farmed animals come from one lineage, originally from the Yellow River basin. For years, governments and farms released captive-bred salamanders into rivers to “restock” them, often without checking their origin. These releases have spread one lineage into the rivers of others and allowed lineages that had evolved separately for millions of years to interbreed.

Released animals can also introduce disease, and farm demand for fresh breeding stock has encouraged more wild capture, because many farms have struggled to breed second-generation animals. Farming has therefore not yet taken pressure off the wild populations.

What is being done?

Wild giant salamanders are protected under Chinese law and listed on Appendix I of CITES, which bans international commercial trade. China has set up more than a dozen nature reserves in the species’ range since the 1980s, and some dams have been fitted with ramps so salamanders can move past them.

Scientists recommend a clear set of next steps: identify and protect the last genetically pure wild populations, stop releasing animals of unknown origin, screen captive animals genetically and for disease, and build separate breeding programs for each lineage and species. Zoos in Europe and elsewhere, including ZSL London Zoo, which cares for giant salamanders seized from an illegal shipment in 2016, support this work through research and breeding.

Other giant salamanders

The Chinese giant salamander’s relatives face similar pressures. The South China giant salamander (Andrias sligoi) is also Critically Endangered, and it is unclear whether any wild populations survive. The Japanese giant salamander is listed as Vulnerable. In North America, the hellbender is Vulnerable and declining, a story told in Is the hellbender endangered? Together they show how even the largest and oldest amphibian lineages can be pushed to the edge.