Jefferson Salamander

The Jefferson salamander is a mole salamander native to the northeastern United States and to southern and central Ontario and southwestern Quebec, named for Jefferson College in Pennsylvania. It is slender, with a wide nose and long toes, colored dark gray, brown, or black above and lighter toward the front, with some individuals showing silvery or blue flecks along the sides, and it measures 4.3 to 7.1 inches long. It spends most of the year as a nocturnal burrower in deciduous forest with rich sandy soil, emerging in early spring to breed in fishless ponds and vernal pools. Globally it is least concern, but it is listed as endangered in Ontario since 2011, threatened throughout Canada, and state threatened in Illinois.