Monitoring Methods Stream Salamanders

Regarding the methods for stream salamanders, the most convenient one is an active search during the day turning cover immediately along the edge of the stream.  It is easier to look for and catch the adults than the larvae, so one should look on land not in the stream.  Pieces of cover that are partially in the water and partially on land are good to check.  As I mentioned, the soil underneath the cover should be very wet (saturated soil).  

For the more adventurous an active search along the stream edge on a rainy night should reveal some adults moving around on the surface, so you should not need to turn cover at night.  

You would not use minnow traps for stream salamanders in the normal way.  What some people use though are leaf bag traps.  They put out mesh bags (onion bags for example) full of leaves in the streams.  The larval salamanders (adults should be on land) then crawl in among the leaves, and the researcher comes along, pulls out the leaf bag, and then sorts through the leaves looking for salamander larvae.  I have never used that method but it is one that I hear about.  It also means you have to be able to identify the larvae.  That is harder than identifying the adults.

You could also put artificial cover along the edges of streams and check them, but that would be for a longer-term study.