In Bucks, volunteers await duty as salamander escorts

On a warm and wet March night, Devich Farbotnik was heading home to Quakertown on a back road when his headlights caught something shiny spilling across the macadam.

He hit the brakes.

Farbotnik, an environmentalist, quickly realized that he had chanced upon - luckily, without also flattening - a surge of salamanders in the heat of their annual breeding rite. Jumping out of his truck, he kept oncoming traffic at bay as he shepherded the slithery paramours from one swampy side to the vernal pool on the other, there to hook up.

A half-dozen mating seasons have passed since then in upper Bucks County, and Farbotnik, now 31, has presided as crossing guard at each. On the first mild, rainy evening of late winter or early spring, he heads for the 518-acre Quakertown Swamp, a favored haunt of not only salamanders but also frogs, toads, birds, and muskrats.

During the salamanders' few nights of canoodling, he posts himself at the tiny amphibians' most beaten paths on rural roads through the swamp in East Rockhill and Richland Townships.

Upwards of 1,000 salamanders might be out and about. "Just one person going through at the wrong time," he said, "could kill a lot."

This year, Farbotnik will get some help.

The Doylestown-based Heritage Conservancy and a brigade of volunteers are planning to set up amphibian-crossing signs at five locations where the salamanders - eight documented species ranging from three to eight inches long - typically traverse the roadways, along with frogs and toads. The seasonal pools become nurseries for their fertilized eggs.

Similar amphibian rescues have taken place in the city's Roxborough section, in Chester County, and Delaware Water Gap. Approached by Farbotnik and Laura Baird, a resource protection specialist for the nonprofit conservancy, township supervisors agreed to provide highway assistance. In Richland, roads will be closed, except to locals, on crossing nights. In East Rockhill, the township has promised to reduce traffic.