Marquette's Presque Isle Park closes road for a month so salamanders can cross

Keith Matheny
Detroit Free Press

A Marquette city park is closing a portion of its lone road for a month to help out some local residents: blue spotted salamanders.

The salamanders spend the cold, snowy, Upper Peninsula winters underground. Then every spring, almost in unison, they make their way to nearby pools, where they mate and lay eggs. But at Presque Isle Park, that means crossing Peter White Drive, the solitary roadway looping through the popular 323-acre, forested park on a peninsula jutting into Lake Superior.

Eli Bieri, a biology student at nearby Northern Michigan University, studied the blue spotted salamanders as part of his research, going out nights with student volunteers in the spring to count and tag the amphibians.

A blue spotted salamander makes its way across Peter White Drive in Presque Isle Park in Marquette, MI, in this April 4, 2020 photo. Hundreds of the salamanders were being killed every spring by cars as they emerged from underground and made their way to nearby breeding pools, until the city agreed to close the relevant portion of the road in the spring while the salamanders migrate.

"We would see thousands and thousands of salamanders crossing the street in just one night," he said. "It was really amazing — until we see cars zip by and squish salamanders. That really troubled me — it kept me awake at night."

Bieri counted the road-killed salamanders on that stretch of Peter White Drive in the spring of 2019, and found 429 carcasses. "And their carcasses are popular food for seagulls, foxes and raccoons, so we probably missed a few," he said.

That's 10% to 20% of the park's blue spotted salamander population, according to Bieri's research — an alarming number that risks permanently depleting the park's population, he said.

He enlisted the help of the Superior Watershed Partnership and Land Conservancy, a local nonprofit organization involved in conservation and public education projects.

"Blue spotted salamanders are not an endangered species, but their range is so small," said Tyler Penrod, a program manager with Superior Watershed Partnership.

"If we lose them in Presque Isle Park, you can kind of consider them gone forever. You would have to reintroduce new salamanders to reestablish a population. And that's a road we don't want to go down. It's easier to just shut down a road for a couple of nights in the spring."

Penrod reached out to Marquette city officials, and last spring got the relevant stretch of road within the park temporary closed to evening and overnight vehicular traffic — when the emerging salamanders are on the move. The result: only three road-killed salamanders were counted. "Those were probably from bicycles or people inadvertently stepping on them," Bieri said.

With that success demonstrated, city officials are doing the same this year. From March 15 to April 15, the park's road in the stretch where the salamanders cross will again be closed to motorized vehicle traffic overnight.

The park road is typically closed for the winter and fully reopened in May, when the snowpack melts and city crews have had time to do maintenance, said Jon Swenson, director of community services for the city.

"Closing this portion where the salamanders cross was only a small additional closure to the traditional seasonal closure," he said.

Blue spotted salamanders are native to North America, with habitat ranging from the Atlantic Coast to the Great Lakes and up into parts of Canada. Adults reach from 4 to 5.5 inches, with bluish-black skin and distinctive bluish-white spots on their bodies.

The salamanders spend the warmer months of the year living under the forest leaf cover or logs. For winter, they burrow into the ground.

"They've been recorded up to 8 feet underground," Bieri said. "They go below the frost line and ride out the winter that way."

In springtime, as the ground begins to warm and rains come, the salamanders emerge in coordinated fashion and make their way to the park ponds where they will breed, less than 1,000 feet away. But spring in Marquette is a relative term.

"You'll see them climbing over snowbanks and enduring freezing rain conditions," Bieri said.

The salamanders play an important role in Midwest ecosystems. As amphibians, starting out life living in and breathing water before developing lungs and moving to land as adults, they're a staple food source for fish, small mammals, birds and reptiles.

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Closing Peter White Drive to vehicle traffic for the month means park-goers have to trek by foot or bicycle about a quarter-mile to popular Sunset Point on Lake Superior. A few patrons grumbled, but most have been very supportive, Penrod said.

"We've demonstrated this is successful in preventing hundreds of unnecessary deaths of these salamanders," he said. 

Now, area residents are coming out on cold, rainy spring nights, wearing raincoats and headlamps or carrying flashlights, to take in the blue spotted salamander parade (look but don't touch, Bieri said).

And there's an effort to create "eco-passes" under the relevant stretch of road in the park, giving salamanders corridors to cross underneath the roadway without closing it every spring.

The spring road closure, and the resulting near-elimination of road-killed salamanders, is a success story, Bieri said.

"The goal is to apply our science to wildlife management," he said. "To be able to see in-person the science applied to successful management practices was very satisfying."

Contact Keith Matheny: 313-222-5021 or kmatheny@freepress.com.