Hello!

My name is Chrissie Klinkowski and I’m a wildlife biologist. Nice to meet you!

Mitchell Drive Newt Patrol is a small “newt patrol” Project given our 0.5 acre seasonal pond.

Newt patrols and salamander bucket brigades have been going on for decades- what I do isn’t unique. In fact, there are a number of other folks doing similar things right now in CA, which is awesome. We’re all trying to save the newts and get undercrossings built.

This Project really started in Jan 2021 when my husband and I moved into the Mitchell Drive neighborhood and started seeing CA newts, Sierran treefrogs/Pacific tree frogs, and either roadkilled or mortally wounded amphibians on the road as they attempted to cross the road to and from their breeding pond at the corner of Hwy 9/Mitchell Dr. What we do is get these amphibians off the road (just out of harm’s way) during commute hours.

We don’t do full-time survey coverage of the road because I work full time. To find the little guys we do hourly transects during rain events, and I stay longer if it’s a busy movement night (lots of rain and a full pond). But, the numbers I am reporting here aren’t exhaustive, it is more akin to someone doing transects on the road during commute hours, sometimes in a golf cart our “Newt Rover.” :-)

I follow the Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force guidance and handle safely for the herps.

We started with education and awareness, hoping that would fix it. Spoiler, it didn’t. I live on this road and I am a member of the road association so, at my first annual meeting I obtained permission to post a permanent newt and frog crossing sign on the road. Now, that may work for people new to the road, but people often get “sign fatigue” and stop seeing the sign after a while.

In 2023 we paid for large sandwich boards with specially designed as “cute” newt crossing signs. We intentionally only put these up near or during rain events during commute hours to raise awareness, reduce sign fatigue, to alert new people driving the neighborhood, and try to get people to pay attention to the road and avoid newts.

We have mostly CA newts at Mitchell Pond. We definitely have a lot of newts where the line seems perhaps blurry and appear “hybridish” with rough skinned newt-like tendencies .

Anecdotally, numbers of amphibians in this population have declined significantly. Neighbors who have been here 30+ years say that the amphibians “used to be everywhere.” They said that “the tiny babies and adults blanketed the road…”.

After a couple years of drought and then the extreme winter of 2023 with 100” of rain plus losing 100s of breeding age adults to roadkill in 2023 (and the 50 years prior), II’ve seen maybe a dozen young of year in 2023 so far and tiny baby young of year so far for the 2024 season in February ‘24. We have a lot of amphibians on Mitchell, but it’s not what it was on 2021 when I moved in… And so I believe this population is at local risk due to increased vehicle traffic and the time the animals move.

The pond is bordered by a home on one side, highway 9 on the other side, and some uplands on a large private property. Mitchell Dr is where many are crossing and this is immediately next to the school formerly known as Redwood Elementary (not an active school but it could be anytime now).

Re: Highway 9. Anecdotally, no newts have been seen alive or dead on Highway 9 (Caltrans road). In mid-Jan ‘24 I actually saw a tree frog hopping across highway 9 - going from the uplands with the pond to Camp Harmon , but I haven’t ever seen a dead or live newt on Hwy 9 here.

Newts here face several threats.

1. Being killed by cars while going to and from their breeding pond.
2. A roadside drainage gushes water for the newts where the closest spot is to cross to the pond. This drainage is often impassable due to heavy water flows. The newts get carried down to the intersection of Mitchell Dr and Hwy 9 with a curb or they get swept downstream, possibly into a culvert to the San Lorenzo river. This is a barrier when they are heading to the pond. When they return from the pond, the heavy flows can prevent the newts from crossing- making them turn around and cross the road a third time and risking becoming roadkill.
3. The newts that avoid the gushing roadside drainage are crossing on a hill where vehicles can’t see over when they drives
4. Redwood trees drop debris in the road and the newts look like debris, which is helpful when you’re trying to avoid being eaten by garter snakes or blue herons, no help to cars.
5. Garbage trucks, friends who don’t know about newts, people who can’t see the newts while driving, and people who don’t care are all threats.
6. The breeding pond is on private land.

7. Amount of rain. Too much and too little are both problems.
   7a.Drought will cause the seasonal pond to dry down too early. But, we seem to have newts that breed quick. Since the first rains in 2023, we have had our first young of year in Feb ‘24.
   7b. Culvert in the pond. There is an overflow culvert in the pond to prevent highway 9 from flooding. It channels water under Hwy 9 to the San Lorenzo RiverS We get a lot of rain in Boulder Creek (100” in 2023) and the culvert from the pond flows directly to the San Lorenzo river. I would not be surprised if newts from this pond are related to San Lorenzo river newts. But, eggs and adults and tiny babies may also wash downstream.

The main problem is timing. When conditions are right, the amphibians come out during commute hours (dawn and dusk to 9pm) in large numbers, which puts them in direct conflict with neighbors coming home from work, garbage trucks, and Amazon/ups drivers as well as friends visiting. If many amphibians are on the road at one time, even one vehicle can do substantial damage to large numbers. On one night, one car smashed three while I was getting one off the road. The fourth one, was in an unken reflex and had just been missed by the tire. They just don’t have defenses to cars.

Only 25 houses are on this road but each house has approximately 3-4 cars and multiple drivers, some houses have extra units with extra cars. Then you add in visitors, ups, Amazon, fed ex, USPS, propane delivery trucks, utility worker trucks, construction vehicles, landscapers, tree crews, etc. It adds up. And only one car can crush a dozen . There is only one way in and out of the neighborhood so all the cars must go down the same stretch of road where the amphibians are also crossing- so someone who stopped at home to grab something during commute hours can drive by the breeding pond 4x. And it’s clear this is what the video game Frogger was based on. .

The good thing is, these problems are all solvable and we can save this local population from extirpation before it is too late.

1. We need several undercrossing structures. This could be something similar to cattle guards dropped in the road (personal communication with expert Cheryl Brehme) or similar. This depends on what happens with the drainage and fencing. (Need feasibility study and engineering drawings).
2. We need to address the roadside drainage to allow safe passage through or add several tiny over crossings over this drainage into the cattle guards (we need a hydrology study).
3. We need to find out how many cars cross the road per day. (Traffic study or camera traps)
4. We need guided fencing to guide the newts to the crossings.
5. We need in perpetuity protection for the crossings to make sure they get cleaned.

We have some stuff going for us too:

1. I’m a wildlife biologist
2. Most neighbors care about the newts, many move them off the road ahead of their cars.
3. The pond is the drainage for the neighborhood- it is a NWI pond that is fed from a series of interconnected drainages which are somehow called a NWI river that starts on my property and goes through my neighbors houses and end up in the pond. It isn’t at risk of going anywhere and the landowner maintains it by mowing, usually when it is dry.
4. Private road. I am a resident of the neighborhood and a dues paying and voting member of the Mitchell Dr Road Association.
5. Easements- only PG&E and SLVWD.
   
6. I’m working on getting grants, I have a fiscal sponsor.
7. No discretionary actions are needed to work on the road. This crossing is a CEQA-Exempt Project. When I get funding it is just a simple vote by the dues paying members of the road on which option we want to use. We would do scoping meetings and present an options analysis.
8. The road shoulders for the length of what seems to be the main corridor of movement is owned by a single private landowner in an already dedicated separate parcel (separate from the home). The road shoulders are mowed by the landowner which is a constant effort for them. It could be beneficial for the landowner to have this parcel purchased by a Land Trust or just maintained in a CE of sorts so they don’t have to mow it every year but still get the option to park there if they wish.
9. Redwood elementary isn’t an active school. Newts and frogs use it as a crossing now. May be potential to work with the school district on land. The school was created due to eminent domain from a parcel that was owned by the family who owns the property with the pond.

We started out just moving amphibians out of harm’s way and not recording the data or taking thorough photos due to time constraints. I also have a full time job as a wildlife biologist and I do wildlife rehabilitation and also have friends and family and a life. I’m slammed. But, I figured I had to start recording data on paper datasets and taking photos if I wanted to get a crossing built so I started recording data on data sheets in Feb 2023 and manually entering latitude /longitude.
At that time I didn’t have location settings available on my phone so I set up stations along the road and referenced each newt to the closest station. For frogs I just used a clicker to tally them.. But, since I got location settings on my phone in summer 2023 I now am able to easily snap a photo and import the location into iNaturalist. And, that’s all why this project appears to start in Nov. ‘23- it’s just not been on the internet.

I’m not getting photos of everything on the road, just getting off the road. In my mind it’s more critical to get them off the road or on the other side of the flowing drainage ditch than it is to get the best photo.

Basically, we just continue to do our best to patrol and get these little guys out of harm’s way, get the word out, and I am currently seeking a graduate student or a researcher who is interested in taking on this project… Parallel path I am working on getting an amphibian undercrossing built on this private road, but this is a long path ahead. I would be happy to significantly help a grad student out with a research project here. If you’d like to take it on, please contact me at chrissieklinkowski@icloud.com and I’ll show you around.

The next steps I believe I need are to do a feasibility study and obtain engineering drawings/hydrology study. So, I’m paying a grant writer out of my own pocket so I can apply for grants. Talking to experts, it sounds like a couple of cattle guards placed throughout the road with directional fencing woukd work- but we will have to also address the roadside drainage down Mitchell and down Highway 9. So I guess I should contact Caltrans.

Onward!

Cheers,
Chrissie

Field Notes:

2023-2024 -
I recorded (video) key area of water flows down Mitchell, showed
how bad the roadside ditch is (total barrier to movement when there are large rain events). We noted fewer newts and treefrogs heading to the pond this year than in 2023. The pond is quieter than last year’s frog chorus. This year, like last year, the pond filled up in December. Newts coming through the adjacent the closed Redwood Elementary School + their associated (and neighboring) upland grasslands. This is the second year I found tiny 1g baby juveniles during the 3rd week of March- mostly found near the back side of Mitchell. We don’t see many juveniles during the year and we don’t have a large pulse of juveniles here. The grass is very tall around the pond around March dispersal time, potentially currently acting as a barrier to movement. Newts may also be leaving the pond through the culvert that flows into the pond- up the drainage system that goes throughout the neighborhood. We found about 75 dead newts in 2023 season- most were adults, a few juveniles. This is a lot of roadkill considering I only handled 160 newts in the fall to winter. Newts may be coming from grassland area next to the pond one one side or down the roadside drainages that interconnect the neighborhood over a mile. Data logger -humidity/temp- started in April 2024.
Fall 2022- Spring 2023-rain flows were high with huge storms- 100” of rain- big storms. Lots of overflow of water from the breeding pond into San Lorenzo River and lots of eggs and amphibians likely washed downstream. less ↑