Ohio __top__ - Hellbender Campground

I looked back at Roy. He was smiling.

We stopped at a riffle, where the water ran clear and fast over a bed of smooth cobble. Roy pointed to a large, flat rock. “Lift that,” he said. hellbender campground ohio

When I finally visited last September, the leaves were just beginning to turn. Roy, now in his seventies, met me at the gate. He was wearing a baseball cap that read “Hellbender Hugger.” I looked back at Roy

By 2015, the creek had turned from lifeless to merely struggling. By 2018, the first wild hellbender nest in over thirty years was discovered under a slab of sandstone just downstream from campsite #7. Roy pointed to a large, flat rock

Then, in 2008, a coalition of the Ohio EPA, the Columbus Zoo, and local volunteers began a slow, painstaking restoration. They installed limestone weirs to neutralize the acid. They planted thousands of willow stakes along the banks to filter silt. And they started a head-starting program: raising hellbender larvae in tanks until they were big enough to avoid being eaten by fish, then releasing them into the creek.