California Tiger Salamander - Metapopulation Areas

Excerpt from Recovery Plan:

The Santa Barbara County California tiger salamander is found in six metapopulation areas: (1) West Santa Maria/Orcutt, (2) East Santa Maria, (3) West Los Alamos, (4) East Los Alamos, (5) Purisima Hills, and (6) Santa Rita Valley (Figure 1) (USFWS 2009). For the purposes of this recovery plan, a “metapopulation” is defined as a set of local populations or breeding sites among which dispersal is possible, but not routine. The “metapopulation areas” displayed on the maps in this plan (Figure 1; see Appendix D for maps of individual metapopulations) encompass both currently occupied, and potentially occupied suitable habitat for each metapopulation for regional conservation planning purposes. Critical habitat for the Santa Barbara County California tiger salamander has been designated within portions of each of the six metapopulations (USFWS 2004b). Each of the six metapopulation areas for the Santa Barbara County California tiger salamander contain breeding ponds for the species and are described in detail in USFWS (2009) and summarized in Figure 1 and Table 1.