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DOUGLAS BOSLEY

Trinity Alps Salamander

Mezzotint

12" x 12"

2016

Somewhere within the Trinity Alps Wilderness area of Northern California reportedly lurks a gigantic salamander. Witnesses from the turn of the century describe this monster as being mottled brown and ten feet in length. Despite such fantastic claims and several unsuccessful field expeditions to search for the creature, it is reasonable to suspect that such a species could go undiscovered. The Trinity Alps range is host to several known species of salamander, including the Pacific Giant Salamander (Dicamptodontidae), and the ecology of the region could support salamanders from the Cryptobranchidae family. Salamanders are fickle and sensitive creatures, only emerging from their hides under specific conditions that are not always understood; it is entirely plausible that one could go unnoticed. Several scenarios for explaining the existence of a giant salamander in the Trinity Alps are equally plausible: it could be a larger subspecies of an identified salamander, an instance of a Japanese or Chinese giant salamander that escaped captivity, or this species of giant salamander could have already gone extinct. Sadly this last scenario is all too common for the times in which we live; so many species are going extinct so quickly that we often do not even have common names for them when we are fortunate enough to witness and describe them at all.