On the prowl: Nessie the tiger salamander becomes ambassador for Prairie Wildlife Rehab Centre
Nessie will help young students learn about amphibians, difficulties wildlife faces
A tiger (salamander) was on the prowl in the CBC studio with Information Radio host Marcy Markusa Friday morning.
Nessie is the first salamander to become an educational ambassador of the Prairie Wildlife Rehab Centre.
The amphibian will travel to classrooms throughout the province to help teach young students about her species, and the differences between them and reptiles such as lizards, turtles and snakes.
Nessie also will help teach people about the difficulties wildlife face in Manitoba.
There are different subspecies of tiger salamanders in Manitoba: the grey tiger and east tiger. The grey tiger salamander population in Manitoba is stable, but the east tiger salamander is endangered in the province, said Caroline Fillion, education co-ordinator and facilitator of the Prairie Wildlife Rehab Centre.
"We don't know if Nessie is an east tiger or a grey tiger, because they're quite similar looking; it's a difference in pattern," Fillion said.
Nessie was taken to the rehab centre about a year ago by a teacher whose young students had found the salamander in a dried-out pond.
When she was found, Nessie was at the juvenile stage of her life, Fillion said. By that time, salamanders develop gills that let them breathe under water, like fish.
The rehab centre took care of her over the winter and had planned to release her last spring, but they were told the pond Nessie came from had been filled in, plus no one would tell them exactly where it was, she said.
This is an issue because when salamanders became adults, they spend much of their time on the land, but females will return to their pond to have babies.
"We can't return her to the wild because of that," Fillion said.
The rehab centre also cannot release Nessie in a new location because she might introduce bacteria that is foreign to that area.
Nessie belongs to one of four species of salamanders that live in Manitoba, but Fillion said people likely won't see them because one species lives in the water, and the other three live in borrows underground and are mostly nocturnal.
Nessie is not the only educational ambassador of the Prairie Wildlife Rehab Centre: there are owls, snakes, a raven and a fox.
with files from Information Radio