By Dr. Kerry Kriger
SAVE THE FROGS! Founder & Executive Director

Ask most people to picture an amphibian and they’ll think of a frog. Frogs croak, they leap, they appear in folklore and fairy tales, and they tend to make themselves known. Salamanders, by contrast, are masters of disappearance. They slip beneath logs, press themselves into the damp soil of riverbanks, and spend most of their lives in places human eyes rarely go. It is precisely this cryptic existence that has made them so easy to overlook — and so vulnerable.

That invisibility has a cost. While amphibians as a whole are among the most threatened vertebrates on Earth, salamanders occupy a particularly precarious corner of the crisis. Roughly 60% of the world’s approximately 829 known salamander species are at some level of extinction risk, threatened by the familiar cascade of habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, and emerging infectious diseases. Yet they receive a fraction of the conservation attention directed at frogs, and a vanishingly small share of the public awareness that drives conservation funding and policy. The IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group has been working for years to close that gap — through Red List assessments, regional working groups, and dedicated task forces like the Eastern Asian Salamander Task Force — and it is this scientific foundation that makes the moment ripe for something more.

This March 28, the world will observe the first ever World Salamander Day

The date was chosen deliberately. Late March marks peak salamander migration season across much of the Northern Hemisphere, when species like the Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) and the Marbled Salamander (Ambystoma opacum) emerge from winter retreats and travel — sometimes across busy roads — to reach breeding pools. Communities in the United States and across Europe have organized “salamander brigades” for years, carrying animals safely across pavement on rainy spring nights. World Salamander Day is an opportunity to amplify that grassroots tradition into a global movement.

The inaugural day will feature events on multiple continents. SAVE THE FROGS! India will host an online event celebrating the Himalayan Salamanders, with researchers and conservationists presenting on the ecology and protection of these high-altitude species. SAVE THE FROGS! Mexico will bring the celebration into the community at the Natural History Museum of Villahermosa, Tabasco, with four hours of art, presentations, and family activities — a reminder that conservation literacy grows when it reaches children and families, not only scientists.

Also joining the program will be Dolores Sanchez, a SAVE THE FROGS! grantee whose work has focused on educating fishing communities in Illinois about mudpuppies (Necturus spp.) — fully aquatic salamanders that are frequently misunderstood and killed by the people who share their waterways. Her colleagues from an amphibian sanctuary in Puebla will present in Spanish, ensuring that Spanish-speaking audiences receive conservation messaging in their own language. And from northern California, the Chileno Valley Newt Brigade will share their on-the-ground efforts to prevent road mortality among newts during the breeding season migration.

The Amphibian Specialist Group’s own Dr. Amael Borzee will round out the program with an overview of the ASG’s current salamander research, ongoing conservation initiatives, and the state of salamander Red List assessments — providing the scientific context that ties these local stories into the global picture.
Salamanders have survived for more than 160 million years. They have persisted through mass extinctions that erased entire lineages. What they have not been built to survive is the pace of change in the modern world — the fragmentation of forest corridors, the warming and drying of mountain streams, the spread of Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) across previously untouched populations. They need advocates. They need visibility. And they need a moment each year when the world stops and pays attention.


March 28 is that moment. We hope you’ll join us.

For event details and registration, visit worldsalamanderday.org/day-2026. To learn more about the initiative, visit worldsalamanderday.org.