RSS
Home
A peaceful winter for the Butano banana slugs
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Picture him three stories tall and angry (Photo credit: S.McIntire)
The banana slugs are preparing for a winter without us. Same goes for the newts.
The California Parks and Recreation Department closed Butano State Park’s entry gate last Sunday for several months due to the current state budget cuts. So the wildlife of Butano will have the rainy season in this Redwood forest all to themselves.
And they might appreciate it. The cool and wet of the winter is when they like to come out. So rather than dodging hiking boots and car tires, they’re going to have the run of the place.
The bright yellow banana slugs (Ariolimax) are already making the most of it. They’ve come out of the underbrush. They're hanging out on the downed rotting trees, searching for their next mushroom meal, and taking their own sweet time across the hiking paths.
The newts are another story however.
“It’s still early in the season,” said Supervising State Park Ranger Michael Grant on the amphibians’ annual Butano show and affinity for wet weather. “It’s funny; they must have some sensitivity to barometric pressure changes or something because right before it starts to rain, you’ll see them out there.”
Newt crossing (Photo credit: S.McIntire)
Winter is the breeding season for newts, and in Butano this is noted to be quite a spectacle. In many ways this is the highlight of the winter season for visitors here as the slow, shy, but friendly looking newts come down from the hills and out from their forest cover toward Little Butano Creek to find a mate.
This mini migration across the main park road and roads in the region can lead to tragedy however as the occasional meeting between asphalt and car tire never ends well for either newt or slug. Park staff make a point of warning both hikers and drivers to be on the lookout as they travel to try and minimize such mishaps
“I’ve gotten really good at spotting them on the road,” Grant said. “When I’m driving and I see one I’ll stop and move it off the road.” He reported seeing as many as 20-30 newts a day trying to cross the road during the breeding season, although the park officially discourages visitors from handling or having any contact with either newts or slugs. Newts for example excrete toxins on their skin, and banana slugs are highly sensitive to the salts which they could pick up from our hands.
Which of course begs the question, with Butano now closed for the winter, might the slugs and newts flourish without us traipsing around?
“Well, they’re pretty tolerant of humans already,” Grant said, noting that such negative encounters are relatively infrequent
Relatively.
“Sometimes, driving down Cloverdale road on a rainy day,” said Grant, “I just don’t want to look.”
Of course there are other locations in which to see banana slugs and newts. Many other Santa Cruz Mountain parks remain open. Nearby Big Basin Redwoods State Park for example is rich with both, or try The Forest of Nisene Marks further south.
But Butano’s remoteness and its recent closure make for the poignant story of the park’s winter without . . . us.
Butano State Park comprises the valley and steep, heavily wooded hillsides around Little Butano Creek. The park hosts a diverse collection of distinct ecosystems including the dense redwood forest hugging the creek bed. It is an environment of primeval beauty, a ‘land that time forgot’ fern and redwood forest. It is a vertical spectacle where shafts of sunlight give that sense of cathedral within the forest. Butano hosts miles of hiking trails plus numerous camp sites and picnic areas.
Butano State Park is located 4 miles south of Pescadero with the park entrance on Cloverdale Road. Or it is accessible from Gazos Creek Road from the south. It is slated to open again to the public in May 2010.
For more info: On banana slugs. On newts. On Butano State Park. On State Parks in and around the Bay Area. To help support Butano State Park, please contact the San Mateo Coast Natural History Association, or the California State Parks Foundation.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
