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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. The Oregon Zoo isn't just a place to view exotic animals; it's an active research and conservation center. Crater Lake isn't just one of the most picturesque places in the world; it's a vibrant and unique ecosystem unlike most other places on the planet. So what do these two things have in common? The Oregon Zoo is working feverishly to save a species of newt that exists only at Crater Lake. Today on the show, you'll meet a top biologist at the zoo who, along with her team, has set up a lab to mimic Crater Lake's unique environment, all in service of saving the rare Mazama newt. Then, at the end of the show, you'll hear why a longstanding crime prevention organization in Oregon, Crime Stoppers, has had to close its doors. Julia Low is a conservation propagation specialist with the Oregon Zoo. Julia, thanks so much for coming on to talk with us.
Julia Low: Thank you for having me.
Dunne: Let's start with this. Tell us about the Mazama newt and what makes it special.
Low: The Mazama newt is a subspecies of the more commonly known rough-skinned newt. It is found nowhere else on the planet except Crater Lake National Park, and only in the water within the caldera, not the park itself.
Dunne: Wow, OK. So what's the outlook for the newts right now in Crater Lake?
Low: The outlook isn't looking great. Researchers have conducted an annual snorkel survey in the lake for about 20 years, checking specific sites where they remove rocks by hand and look for the newts. They've noticed a significant decline over the last 10 to 15 years, and as of this summer, no newts were found in the survey.
Dunne: Wow. So what do we believe is happening to the Mazama newt?
Low: About 100 years ago, several fish species that weren't native to Crater Lake were introduced, and signal crayfish were introduced to feed them. The signal crayfish are now taking over the lake. They consume all the benthic invertebrates, and they consume the Mazama newts. Basically, they'll feed on anything they can catch or that happens to reach their mouths, and they can multiply rapidly to a point where no other life can occupy the same space. The surveys show that wherever there are signal crayfish, there's a reduced supply of the food the Mazama newt eats: snails, amphipods, mosquito larvae and other invertebrates. And wherever there are crayfish, there are no Mazama newts. This summer, researchers found crayfish at every site they studied, and no newts.
Dunne: Wow, OK. I'd imagine the Mazama newt never developed any defensive capabilities against a predator like the crayfish.
Low: You're correct. The Mazama newt is unique in that it doesn't produce the toxin that other rough-skinned newts produce to protect themselves. It's called tetrodotoxin, and it occurs at high levels in the rough-skinned newt. We've heard stories of garter snakes evolving the ability to eat rough-skinned newts because the toxin doesn't affect them. But the Mazama newt evolved in the lake as the top predator, so it never needed to produce the toxin. It's also expensive for an animal to produce. Crater Lake has a very low nutrient level, so the newts probably don't have the resources to produce it, and they don't have the need to. The newts are fairly quick, but the water can be extremely cold, down to 35 or 36 degrees in winter, and cold-blooded animals slow down in those temperatures. The crayfish can remain active in colder water even when the newts slow down.
Dunne: I see. So what impact might it have on Crater Lake if the Mazama newt continues to decline and maybe disappears altogether?
Low: Everything in that lake evolved to work together and create this biologically sound system that produces life. Once we start losing the pillars that create that life, it starts to crumble. When the newts no longer exist in the lake, and the snails and other benthic invertebrates are wiped out by the signal crayfish, we can expect Crater Lake to start turning green. This lake is known for being crystal clear, one of the clearest and bluest on the planet, and we're already starting to see that clarity degrade in certain areas. We're hoping to restore that balance by removing the crayfish and reintroducing the newts, and preserving the lake as it evolved.
Dunne: Let's get into that. Talk about the strategies and the program you and the Oregon Zoo are undertaking to save the newts.
Low: The first step was bringing newts into the lab. To do that, we had to create a very unique environment simulating one of the most unique places on the planet. Crater Lake has crystal-clear water, some of the purest on the planet, so to bring these animals into our lab, we needed to recreate that environment. We worked with our life support systems team, which built a rack system, a high-tech water quality system that simulates Crater Lake's water. We also have large chillers in our lab that keep the water at the same temperatures Crater Lake experiences through the seasons, about 38 degrees in winter and a peak of about 62 degrees in summer, gradually rising and falling to simulate the seasons. Once we had them in the lab, the next step was learning about their feeding and social behaviors. What's unique about the Mazama newt is that it lives in a lake covered by snow eight or nine months of the year, so little research has been done on the species specifically, because researchers have only about three months a season to study it. We're trying to answer basic life-history questions about this animal. One is the bioenergetics of a Mazama newt: what does it need to consume, and why? We work with our nutritionist at the zoo, offering the newts a wide variety of food items and tracking what percentage of their body weight they eat and what they prefer. She then does a nutritional analysis. That matters because when we reintroduce these animals to the lake, we need to make sure they'll have plentiful food and know what types they need. At the same time, researchers at Crater Lake are studying the invertebrates available in the isolated pools where we hope to reintroduce these animals. Our part in the lab is to rear these newts, learn as much as we can, and hopefully breed them and produce genetically viable offspring that can be reintroduced to the lake. We're working with several universities doing genetic studies on the newts to help determine which animals should breed with each other, to make sure the offspring will be a viable next generation in Crater Lake. Scientists and biologists at Crater Lake are also identifying places where these animals can be released. We believe we've identified a small pool, small compared with Crater Lake itself, where these animals can be released and monitored, so we can test our release methods and survival rates. Students from Southern Oregon University will spend the next two years studying that pool to determine what food sources are available, the crayfish density, and how many trout remain there and might affect the newts when we release them. Our other partners are crayfish experts from across the country. Managing the crayfish, removing them safely and effectively so we can reintroduce the newts, is our biggest challenge. It's not just one piece; we all have to work together as one large partnership, and we're looking at a long road ahead. This isn't something we can fix in a year or two. We're committing to decades of work to help restore Crater Lake to what it was before the crayfish arrived. That's the snapshot of it.
Dunne: That's your ultimate goal, right, however long it takes, to make Crater Lake look like it did over 100 years ago before the crayfish got there?
Low: That is our ultimate goal. It will most likely never be eradication, but we want the crayfish managed so the rest of the life that existed in Crater Lake before the crayfish is back in balance.
Dunne: It sounds like a very big project. Crater Lake is beloved not just by Oregonians but by the entire nation, and imagining it becoming a green, algae-filled lake is disturbing.
Low: It's very disturbing. But when we look at our environment as a whole, we have to think about every piece of life that makes it what we love. Crater Lake is an incredibly beautiful place that's in trouble, and I feel fortunate to work for an institution with a history of putting in the time and effort. We work with other threatened and endangered species here at the zoo, and we've been in some of these projects for 20 or 30 years. When the zoo commits to something, we put in the time, and I know this is a project we'll be working on for 20 or 30 years.
Dunne: So Julia, talk about some of the successes you've had in the lab. Talk about the breeding program.
Low: When we reached out to partners who are amphibian and newt experts, we were told to expect about five years before we'd see success. Within nine months, we had our first successful breeding of Mazama newts. We now have 26 Mazama newt larvae growing, and they'll be the first generation we hope to release back to Crater Lake. It's very exciting.
Dunne: She is Julia Low, conservation propagation specialist with the Oregon Zoo, talking about the Mazama newt. Julia, thank you so much for coming on and talking with us.
Low: Thank you very much for the opportunity.
Dunne: As we finish out the show today, we're going to talk with the current and last head of Oregon's Crime Stoppers, as the decades-old organization closes up shop. Henry Groepper is the chairman of Crime Stoppers of Oregon. Henry, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us.
Henry Groepper: Well, thank you for having me.
Dunne: Remind folks what Crime Stoppers is and what it's been doing in Oregon since the 1980s.
Groepper: It started here in 1983. The original program was the brainchild of a detective in Albuquerque who had a complicated homicide case. He went to the media and said that if he talked about the case, maybe someone would know something. He did, and about 20 minutes after the spot aired, someone came forward and said they'd seen people running from the scene. In 1983, it was simply a phone on a desk with no caller ID and no recording, and I would answer it. I was the Crime Stoppers coordinator at the time. I was a police officer, and I was the link between the Crime Stoppers program and the citizens, we call them tipsters, and the media. They're not police informants; they're tipsters. The issue that came up recently is that the company that handles data for Crime Stoppers programs across the United States and Canada, there are approximately 400 of them, had a data breach. What that involves, we're still waiting to find out; they're supposed to give us a report. But what happened is that Crime Stoppers started small and grew bigger. We had a lot of media involved. Back then, stations were required to give us public service time, and at one point we had about 11 radio stations, all the TV stations, and even The Oregonian involved. I remember getting a printout once of how much free media we received in a year, and it was over $200,000.
Dunne: Maybe you could give us some context. How many tips did the tipsters, who called in or used the app, provide, and how much did that lead to police solving crimes and making arrests?
Groepper: That's really increased over time. There was a period, in the late 1990s and into the 2000s, when we had a lot of tips and solved a lot of cases, but we don't know why things have slowed down. We've tried to stay modern. We changed the logo and came up with brochures. For a few years we had a campus Crime Stoppers program: the school police here in Portland had their own agency assigned to the school, and at the time, the superintendent and the school board thought a campus Crime Stoppers program was a great idea. We made posters with a special number students could call anonymously. The first tip involved a young man in a high school who carried a gun and drugs he sold in his backpack. Then the school police changed, there was a change in the superintendent's position, the school board changed, and campus Crime Stoppers just went away.
Dunne: You've announced that you're dissolving the organization. Talk about that. Was there a moment recently when you and the organization decided it was no longer viable in Oregon?
Groepper: The board of directors, there are 10 people on the board of Crime Stoppers of Oregon, has been together a long time. One member has been there 40 years, I've been there 43, another has more than 30, and the rest have 15 to 20. But the tips have been going down, the arrests have been going down, and the money we've paid out in rewards has decreased. Looking back over the last five years, we've only solved eight cases. In the heyday of Crime Stoppers, we'd solve that many, or double it, in a single year. Why? I don't think there's an easy answer. Maybe it's just gotten old. We'll deal with the data breach, but I think that was the knockout punch for our board. You could see the enthusiasm fading. They'd really been into this, but the question was, why aren't we solving crimes and paying rewards? The data breach was the final thing they couldn't deal with.
Dunne: Henry Groepper is chairman, until the end of this month, of Crime Stoppers of Oregon. Henry, thanks again for coming on, and thanks for all you've done for the state.
Groepper: Well, thank you very much.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at klcc.org. Tomorrow on the show, we'll talk with an organization focused on the federal budget deficit, which explains how President Trump's pledge to give every adult $5,000 to vote Republican in the midterms would crater our federal budget. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
