A red-shouldered hawk lets loose a shrill call overhead. The sound reverberates through the 90-acre West Branch Nature Preserve in Davidson.
“Another hawk just landed next to that hawk,” says Chris Matthews, the nature preserves and natural resources director at the Mecklenburg County Parks and Recreation Department. He points through a gap in the canopy, where a second hawk shuffles next to the first.
The hawks perch together, looking over the 30-acre wetland at the center of the preserve. Neither bird would be here without this expansive protected area, surrounded on all sides by suburban development.
“He or she was calling, and he or she just showed up,” Matthews said. “No cellphone needed.”
West Branch is one of the county's most biodiverse areas, according to Lenny Lampel, the natural resources supervisor for the Mecklenburg County Parks Department.
“Pretty much every reptile and amphibian species that we have documented before in Mecklenburg County, has been documented here,” Lampel said.
One such amphibian is the spring peeper. A solitary peeper lets loose its eponymous call from the water’s edge, a few yards away from where Lampel is standing.
At the height of mating season, the ballads of peepers and upland chorus frogs fill the woods. Matthews called it “a cacophony of sound.” But on the other side of the county, those same eager chirps were nowhere to be found in the Flat Branch Nature Preserve near Ballantyne.
“We've had development happen in or in and around our property,” said Matthews, referring to Flat Branch. “We weren't able to get there soon enough.”
Construction severed the flow of water to Flat Branch, spelling the demise of creatures, especially amphibians, that rely on a steady supply of water to create habitat.
“We used to have a fairly robust population of salamanders down there,” Matthews says. “We just do not have them anymore.”
Mecklenburg County commissioners granted the Parks Department a $50 million budget for land acquisition over the last two years. But with the price of land increasing amid continued urban development, Matthews and his staff are racing against the clock.
Inside West Branch, a panorama of tulip trees, sweetgums and shagbark hickories rise from the wet soil, the flooded landscape dappled with sedge tussocks and rushes. A downy woodpecker flits between the standing dead trees, or snags.
“Even dead trees standing in a wetland area are important,” Lampel said. “That's where great blue herons will usually start to nest, and other birds as well will nest on top of some of those dead trees.”
Dead trees are prime real estate for many species, even after they fall. Matthews rolls over a dead log about knee height in diameter. Underneath, a spotted salamander squirms, agitated by the sudden light.
“This salamander was probably down in the water a month and a half or two months ago, laying eggs,” Matthews said.
After breeding, the spotted salamander roams upland and lives under leaf litter and fallen logs, where it feeds on small invertebrates like worms and ants.
“If you're losing those extensive areas of upland habitat around the wetlands,” Lampel said, “you end up losing those species as well.”
Urban sprawl isn’t the only human impact on local biodiversity. Climate change is making it more difficult for some species, like the spotted salamander, to survive.
“Weather conditions are so variable right now, whether it’s extensive wet periods or extensive dry periods, but if their timing is off — we hit this weird dry period, and they just dry up really quickly, you’re losing all of the young for that year."
This weather pattern — intense rainfall, bookended by long dry spells — is becoming increasingly common, according to Jack Scheff, an assistant professor of geography and earth sciences at UNC Charlotte
“[Climate change] tends to lead to precipitation happening all at once real quick and then waiting longer for the next rainstorm,” Scheff said.
Our log-dwelling salamander relies on large, unfractured forests and a stable climate to thrive. In turn, the red-shouldered hawk needs the salamander and other critters. In urban areas, they all depend on humans for protected spaces like the West Branch Nature Preserve.
“They’re here because it’s here,” Lampel said, “because it's protected.”
