The Bronx may not be the first place that comes to mind for saving threatened species, but for the eastern hellbender salamander, it's working out just fine.

That's the word from the Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronx Zoo, which just oversaw the release of 38 juvenile hellbenders into their native habitat in western New York State.

From Scientific American:
The release is the latest step in an effort to help boost the wild population of the eastern hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis alleganiensis), a threatened subspecies of giant salamander that is not yet endangered but faces a shrinking population and what appears to be a dangerously low birth rate in the wild. "We don’t have a lot of recruitment of young animals," says Don Boyer, the Bronx Zoo's curator of herpetology, who has watched the hellbenders grow since he joined the organization two years ago and who took the recent journey to western New York for the animals' release. "It seems like the younger stages of the hellbender are more vulnerable," Boyer says. "The head-starting, while it's not a solution, may help get the hellbenders through that critical juvenile phase and put them back in the system."
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Photo: Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation Society