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Squaw Run Creek home to fewer critters Continuing survey finds tiny stream holding its own in some spots Monday, August 16, 1999 By Don Hopey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Lift up rocks.
See what jumps, crawls or slithers out from underneath. If you're lucky, and possessed of quick hands and a low squirm factor, you can grab, measure and "sex" a snake.
Or maybe a salamander or a frog.
That pretty much sums up the big fun, if not the import, of the Pittsburgh Herpetological Society's ongoing wet-feet, bent-at-the-waist study of the reptile and amphibian populations in and along tiny Squaw Run Creek in Fox Chapel.
Started five years ago by Herb Ellerbrock, the Herpetological Society president and a Pittsburgh Zoo reptile keeper, the Up the Creek Conservation Project has documented what is probably a region-wide decline in snakes, salamanders, frogs and toads along the creek.
And despite what those of you with crawling skin are thinking, that's not good.
Reptiles and amphibians are particularly good indicators of an area's ecological health, so a decline in their numbers means environmental problems that could affect other species, even humans.
Ellerbrock and his herpetological colleagues have monitored water quality, done baseline species counts and made small natural habitat modifications in an attempt to maintain the biological diversity along the creek.
They've found that the creek still holds good water, but there's not nearly as much life wriggling in the stone-flattened mud and leaves along its banks.
Ellerbrock, 52, a native of the nearby river town of Sharpsburg, remembers when it was much different.
"I've been lifting rocks along Squaw Run since I was 7 years old," he said. "As a kid, I could come here and in just an hour find 30 or 40 snakes and turtles and frogs. Now there's a lot less of those and a lot more people.
"A couple of summers ago we found five dozen golf balls and six dozen tennis balls."
The "crick," as Ellerbrock refers to Squaw Run in his best Pittsburghese, is just six miles long but a study in contrasts.
It bubbles clear and relatively pure through leafy Fox Chapel estates and a country club golf course and a private school before it is joined by Stony Camp Run near the pristine Trillium Trail. Then it flows along the edge of a couple of softball fields, and swings by tennis courts and a picnic pavilion in a community park before cutting through housing developments and past a home improvement store and a gas station in O'Hara on its way into the Allegheny River.
Its selection five years ago as a study site was a case of chance meeting opportunity.
"I was born and raised in the area, so I thought it would be a good place to visit on a herpetological field trip," Ellerbrock said. "I brought society members out one afternoon figuring we'd all see some interesting things but all we found was one snake and four frogs."
Finding out where all the critters had gone and why became a quest, and Ellerbrock got the Pittsburgh Zoo to help. The Up the Creek Project, a 10-year assessment and habitat enhancement program, is one of 22 conservation programs -- ranging from a study of fragmented lemur populations in Madagascar to preservation efforts on behalf of the Andean Mountain tapir in Ecuador -- that the zoo helps fund worldwide.
"Herp" members set to work doing a baseline water quality study at 10 locations along the creek, later adding two more on Stony Camp Run near the Trillium Trail. They did a species inventory every weekend for the first two years, combing the creekside and tilting up flat, flagstone-sized habitats. They also set "pitfall traps," made from old coffee cans placed deep in the mud. The members put garden edging material in the ground so that it would guide specimen animals into the cans.
"The pitfall traps worked really well. We got a lot of salamanders and frogs," Ellerbrock said. "Now we have a good idea what's in the area and what the area can support."
The species inventory found common water snakes, queen snakes, eastern ringneck snakes, northern brown snakes and the shed skin of a black snake. Though once plentiful along the creek, only six garter snakes were found.
The salamander count included populations of dusky, redback and longtail salamanders. A few spotted salamanders -- at four to five inches long the biggest species in the area -- were found in the spring.
Wood frogs, bull frogs, green frogs, spring peepers and American toads were also counted.
The census found no mud puppies, hellbenders, or slimy salamanders, though all had existed on the creek in the past.
"We've lost some species, no doubt about it, but the upper and middle parts of the creek should be able to hold on to what they have. There's enough food in the creek, including minnows and an abundance of crayfish and water skipping spiders," Ellerbrock said. "As long as there's no major development above here it should maintain itself."
He's less optimistic about the more commercialized, populated, lower end of the creek, from the Fox Chapel park pavilion to the Allegheny River.
"Where the home improvement store is used to be a vacant lot and a pony track and I played there all the time," he said. "I remember seeing guys come out and collect specimens for the Carnegie Museum. There were a lot of animals, but that was then."
On a recent Sunday, Ellerbrock and a handful of colleagues meet at the optimistically named Salamander Park, off Squaw Run Road, for an afternoon of species survey work on a middle section of the creek.
Ellerbrock and his wife, Dolly, climb out of a Honda Civic bearing an "Iguana-5" license plate. Each holds a golf club that has been cut and home customized at the hitting end with a big hook -- perfect for lifting rocks or pinning snakes.
Though the outing is something of a busman's holiday for Ellerbrock, who's worked at the zoo for 37 years, he still revels in both the creek wading and the prospect of new discoveries.
He leads the small band up a path, over a log and into a shallow riffle -- they're all shallow because of the drought -- where they get their feet wet collecting water samples. Ellerbrock does a series of field tests for chlorine, pH and nitrates, and proclaims the results "good."
A couple of years ago, water samples showed higher levels of chlorine than had previously been registered in the creek. Ellerbrock turned over the information to municipal authorities, who found and fixed a previously unknown water line leak.
Before Ellerbrock has finished his field tests, other members of the group have fanned out in the creek and are lifting rocks along its banks. In the highly competitive sport of rock lifting, it's much better to be first.
They move up the creek, finding nothing, then walk along a boggy path to Salamander Pond, which, because of the dry weather, doesn't hold enough water to float a bathtub boat.
More rock lifting and log rolling. Dolly Ellerbrock tells about how two years ago, they had to amend the species census after a big mallard walked out of the pond and grabbed three wood frogs waiting to be sexed and released from a pitfall trap.
"That duck just came in before I knew it and flew off with those frog legs still dangling from its bill," she says, before bending to pick up some litter and tucking it into a plastic bag. The group picked up 700 pounds of trash the first summer on the creek -- not counting a car engine -- and continues its "habitat enhancement" efforts.
Although the census was completed three years ago, monthly surveys are conducted to ascertain that the creek remains in good shape.
"We're out here to determine if the habitat is supporting the populations we've identified," she says, "or whether we might need to enhance the habitat or even reintroduce some species."
The first find of the day is by Herb Ellerbrock, who discovers a baby spotted salamander, no more than two inches long, under a rock in an area strewn with wood chips, near what was the head of the pond.
When he calls out his find, the others come running.
"It was really tough to see next to the wood chips," Ellerbrock says, in much the same way a fisherman might describe how he hooked and landed a trophy trout. "It didn't move. I saw the coloration first."
Herp society member Jean Matuschek, who allows eight iguanas, one 2 1/2-foot long Savannah monitor, an Asian water dragon and nine assorted snakes to share her family's home in Penn Hills, records the salamander find in a notebook.
"We keep records of the species we find. We report our water quality findings, species count and location to O'Hara and Fox Chapel," Ellerbrock said. "Hopefully, we're doing some good."
He puts the salamander back under the rock where he found it and the group, widely spaced, moves upstream into a stretch that has been rechanneled as part of a flood control project. Head-high walls of "rip-rap" -- limestone rocks enclosed by chain-link fencing -- line one bank.
"Sometimes, when we're out on this section you see water snakes jumping off the top of the rip-rap in front of you," says Ben Atkinson, a 20-year-old college student from Butler.
No water snakes leap off the wall this day.
But just up creek from the wall, Atkinson lifts a rock and finds a regina septemrittata -- a greenish-brown queen snake, maybe eight inches long, with cream-colored stripes down its sides. Dan Matuschek, a society member from Penn Hills, sexes the snake by gently bending back the tail area to pop its hemipenes, indicating that it is a male.
After everyone takes turns holding it, it is released.
Up the creek, Atkinson finds another queen snake, this one bigger, about 13 inches, that bolts into the water at his feet. As the murky water begins to clear, Ellerbrock grabs it.
It is the last critter capture of the afternoon. The total: one salamander, two snakes, a softball, two golf balls, two flushed deer and a bag full of litter.
"Not very good," Ellerbrock says, "but some days are better than others."
As the group heads back down along the creek to their cars, their shoes noisily squish out water with each step.
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