Tishomingo State Park, at milepost 304 of the Natchez Trace Parkway, is the stronghold of Mississippi's green salamanders, an Appalachian species at the southwestern edge of its range. In the state they are known only from outcrops of Hartselle Sandstone in Tishomingo County, where they live in deep rock crevices and under overhangs in mature forest, and seven of the nine sites reported before 2017 lie inside the park. Mississippi ranks the species critically imperiled, and a 2025 study put its known range in the state at about 7.9 square kilometers; in all 13 states where it occurs it is ranked vulnerable or worse.
From 2017 to 2023, Millsaps College and Mississippi Museum of Natural Science biologists made 180 surveys at 32 outcrops and found green salamanders at 78 percent of them, including 17 outcrops where the species had never been recorded. They documented breeding at 19 outcrops, with females beginning to brood eggs between late July and early August, and estimated at least 15.7 kilometers of outcrop habitat statewide. Encounter rates were 2.7 times higher on public land than on private land, and an outcrop beside intact forest on Natchez Trace Parkway land produced about ten times the rate of one below a timber harvest from around 2000.
The salamander is listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN and was the subject of a 2015 federal finding that listing may be warranted. At least 63 were collected in the park from 1956 to 1967, which the 2025 study suggests may help explain a long decline at one historical site.
Getting there
34.6058, -88.1914
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
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