[gentle calming music] - [Caitlyn] They're adorable.

They're now a threatened species, but they're endemic to North Carolina, in the Neuse River.

And it's something that not everyone has gotten to see before.

- [Brieana] There's a lot of excitement, when we pull up the trap, and there's one in there.

Not just because, "Oh my God.

I'm seeing this awesome creature."

But because this is a threatened species.

So when we see one, it's just all the more exciting because, "Wow.

It's around."

[gentle calming music] - [Narrator] It only lives in sections of the Neuse and Tar rivers, and their tributaries, that are in rural wooded areas.

You won't find it anywhere else in the world.

But when it's found, it's considered, - I think they're really charismatic.

- I think they're charismatic.

- Once you see them, they're very charismatic.

- [Eric] What's was the code again?

It's a male, going into the breeding season.

So if you translate that to water temp, it's like 18 Celsius.

- [Narrator] It is the Neuse River waterdog salamander.

Yep.

Those red gills fluttering in the water, the tiny legs and what appears to be a smiling face, all make for a charismatic creature.

It's also a threatened species.

- [Eric] Salamanders because they have really permeable skin and they spend a lot of time, or at least portions of their life around the water.

They're really affected by things like water quality.

And so if the water quality in a particular area begins to degrade, they're going to be one of the first species, to respond to that.

Because they'll take in whatever toxins, whatever pollutants are in the environment, and that'll negatively affect their health.

- [Narrator] Neuse River waterdogs have been studied, on and off, for the past 50 years.

- [Eric] 38 grams.

- [Narrator] Eric Teitsworth is the third generation of scientists to pick up the study.

- [Eric] When we actually catch a waterdog, we are taking some basic measurements, things like length, weight.

We're also marking them and taking photographs, so that if we were to recapture an animal, we would know.

And recapturing animals gives us some information towards knowing how healthy the population is.

How many individuals are actually out there.

We're also taking tissue samples, so that we know how populations are connected to one another, within their potential range.

And sort of more broadly out from just, what information are we getting from each salamander.

We're also trying to get information on the habitat, where we're catching them.

What's different from this place, where we've just caught two individuals, versus somewhere like the main sum of the Neuse River in Raleigh.

Where we're just not able to catch them anymore.

Is there something that's important about the habitat, that's being reflected in where these things do and do not occur?

- Looking at this, I'm thinking, moving water.

- [Eric] Mm-hmm.

- Pretty sheltered.

There's a tree there.

This would probably be pretty decent habitat, I would think.

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

This is great habitat.

This is kind of what you're looking for.

A place with a nice flowing current.

You have lots of structure inside the streams.

[water whooshing] Like I was mentioning before, where you have sticks and logs and leaf packs over here.

Places where the waterdogs can both hide as they're growing.

But then also you have places where they're able to lay their eggs, and that's crucially important, we think.

Photos 77 and 78.

[gentle calming music] - [Narrator] The charismatic salamander is not only a threatened species, it's also what scientists call an indicator species.

It is sensitive to changes in the environment, and when there's a disruption it's one of the first species to disappear.

- [James] Even if someone may not care about a salamander, if you think about it, they are very indicative of water quality.

So that's the stuff you're playing in.

Your kids are playing in.

You might be drinking it.

And if they're declining, due to something going wrong in the water, what does that say about the water quality around here?

- [Narrator] Waterdogs spend their entire life in the water.

They can live for 20 years.

- [Krishna] It's sort of this accumulation of stressors, environmental contaminants that can cause damage, and sort of effect reproduction, affect all of these things.

We're finding that they're not found in a lot of the locations that they were previously found.

Where there's now a lot of, again, what we call stressors.

So things that are coming into the water system.

Runoff or all these other things that could influence the water quality.

- [Narrator] The project is monitoring 40 traps.

And while there's more study to be done, [water babbling] one of the early findings is that heavy water runoff, from urban areas, poses one of the biggest threats to the Neuse River waterdog.

- [Eric] The flow.

The rate at which water is coming down in the stream or river is really important for waterdogs and for a lot of species.

[water babbling] So if we have a whole bunch of trees, a whole bunch of natural environment, the water that's running off from say, from a road or just from rainfall, is kind of trickling into the system, right?

It's not causing some huge push of sedimentation and all these other things.

[water babbling] But once that area gets developed, we get this huge increase and there's all of this water that can come flushing down the system.

And that can have a really negative effect on species.

- [Narrator] And fast moving water, either scours the stream bed or berries it in silt.

- [Jennifer] So the us fish and wildlife service has developed a recovery outline, which we'll then use as a template for recovery planning.

[gentle calming music] And we need to reduce threats.

That's probably the biggest thing, that humans can help do besides protecting land, is reducing threats.

And so that means reducing sediment going into the streams.

It means reducing the nutrients that go in the streams.

- [Eric] Environments that have been more disturbed by development or maybe excessive runoff going into the stream.

That tends to wash out or even bury all of this structure in the stream that waterdogs really need to survive.

And when it's just becomes that sort of desolate sandy environment, where there's much fewer places to hide, that seems like what's really the problem here.

[gentle calming music]