Armed with a yellow and a black crayon, a 9-year-old conservationist recently helped persuade an Alabama university to rethink building a sprawling sports facility on a critical spotted salamander habitat.
Inside Climate News reports that Samford University in Birmingham planned to construct new sports fields near an upcoming commercial development in the town of Homewood. But the proposed site overlapped a vital spotted salamander habitat — an amphibian so beloved in Homewood that the community has hosted a yearly salamander festival for the past 20 years. The plan sparked strong opposition from environmentalists and residents alike.
An especially impassioned defender of the spotted salamander is 9-year-old Ruby Banta, who sent a crayon-colored appeal to the local city council to help save the key salamander site.
"This was the salamander's habitat first," Banta told Inside Climate News after a soccer game. "It's not a college habitat."
Banta, who owns a pet lizard named Popcorn, first heard about the planned sports facility after reading a news article over her mother's shoulder. She then told her third-grade teachers about the situation, with the educators assigning a class project to write to the local city council. Banta carefully drafted her appeal, complete with a crayon-drawn picture of a black-and-yellow spotted salamander.
"Please don't build there," Banta wrote, adding, "That is their home."
This wasn't Banta's first foray into salamander conservation. During the amphibian's mating season, she went out on a rainy night — in her pajamas, no less — to help salamanders safely cross a roadway to a vernal pool to lay eggs.
"We had to help them cross because it's a pretty big road," Banta told Inside Climate News. "So we have to protect them."
As Inside Climate News reports, salamander species are a particularly at-risk amphibian group, with three out of every five species threatened with extinction. Although global spotted salamander populations are considered stable, many local subpopulations are in decline due to habitat loss, according to the National Wildlife Federation. Protecting these localized pockets of salamanders is crucial in protecting the complex and vulnerable ecosystems in urban-adjacent areas.
Thanks in part to Banta's efforts, Samford University now plans to build the sports fields further west on the commercial property to avoid the habitat. Samford University President Beck A. Taylor said in a statement to Inside Climate News that the community was key in helping the university reconsider its plans.
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Definitely 🙁 "The largest concern that was voiced was ecological damage, not just the salamanders but also the watershed and other related issues," Taylor said.
Megan Gibbons, a biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and one of the many community members who opposed the original plan, told Inside Climate News she was pleasantly surprised by the outcome.
"I expected this would be an uphill battle that would end in disappointment," Gibbons said. "But this is a rare win for the environment."
She added that victories like the one in Homewood are essential for reversing a "pattern of habitat loss and destruction" and promoting more environmentally responsible development.
"You can name any animal or plant, and if they're in trouble — if their populations are in decline — the main reason is probably because of unbridled development," Gibbons told Inside Climate News.
She added, "It's a constant battle, but we have to show up to the fight."
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