Endangered Salt Creek tiger beetle numbers holding steady near Lincoln

An endangered insect, whose history is intertwined with humans, is maintaining a precarious existence near Lincoln.

On a hot, muggy morning in a marshy area on the north side of town, a chorus of birds and bugs greet some human visitors. Through the tall grass, Shaun Dunn and Andrea Malek of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission make their way, searching for Salt Creek tiger beetles.

The endangered beetles are most likely to be found by the creek of the same name meandering through the saline wetlands, according to Dunn.

“You see these mud flats that are real close to the water? That's the perfect habitat for Salt Creek tiger beetle. Now, as we go upland here, we'll see other species start to mix in a little bit, but we know when we see the species right here down by the water, most likely it's going to be Salt Creek tiger beetle,” he said.

Malek explains how the Salt Creek variety, and others, earned their name.

“The tiger beetles, they make a little hole, and they sit down in it, and wait for insects to run by, and then they jump out and drag them in. That's why they're called tiger beetles, because they're very voracious,” she said.

And Dunn explains why they’re walking around to count them, rather than using a far easier technique.

“You can come out at night and put up a really bright light, and all sorts of insects will come to that, including probably Salt Creek tiger beetle," he explained. "But we don't want to do that, because that disrupts what they're doing. It pulls them away from laying eggs, from mating, from feeding. It also opens them up to predation, so you get a whole bunch of insects near a light, all of a sudden toads start showing up, and birds start swooping down and eating them. So we try not to disturb them, and we basically walk a lot of these areas and just kind of count as we go."

Suddenly, Malek exclaims that she’s found one. Dunn comes to take a look.

“Right there,” Malek points out.

“Oh yeah – There he goes,” Dunn replies.

The numbers in the official count, conducted yearly, have fluctuated since the beetle was listed as endangered about 20 years ago. Five years ago, 276 were counted. In 2023, a dry spring reduced the count to 92. Last year, there were 179, and this year, 169. Dunn says they’re hanging in there, but a couple of bad years could doom them to extinction.

But why does it matter? And what would he say to people who say they’re just bugs, anyway?

Dunn laughed.

“That's a very common thing that we get, and I tell them not to focus on the beetle,” he said.

He pointed to an area where the steep creek bank has been pared back, exposing the unique, salty soil and replicating the kind of mud flats that existed before Lincoln was developed.

“The beetle is just one tiny part of this really cool, unique habitat that we have here in Nebraska," he explained. "These areas are used by more than 600 species of insects, hundreds of species of birds, raccoons, foxes… I see turtles basking along these mud flats here. We've seen an increase in other insect types too, so creating this type of habitat also creates habitat for other species as well."

Dunn said it’s a habitat that people have used – and changed – over time. And that history is related to the reason the Salt Creek tiger beetles are here.

“Lincoln was founded here because of the salt in the area, and… one of the problems was all of these creeks came together essentially very close to downtown, and as part of that, the idea was, well, we want to get the water out of the city as fast as possible, because Lincoln had a lot of floods in its early years, and so, because of that, the Army Corps of Engineers came in," Dunn explained. "They deepened, widened, and straightened a lot of the creeks that run through (the) city of Lincoln."

That got rid of some mud flats. And people added other reasons for eliminating wetlands.

“Those tend to get filled in because people don't like standing water, you get mosquitoes and the idea of diseases coming along with that, but also it doesn't make for good farmland, or the cattle don't like using that, or it's not good to build houses on," Dunn said. "So a lot of those areas are drained, they're artificially filled in, and then you lose some of that original habitat, and that's not to say that it's necessarily a bad thing, it just happens to not be good for the tiger beetle."

With the remaining critical habitat largely in private hands, Dunn works to reassure property owners.

“They're like, ‘Well, I've got this salt flat here, I'm worried that the tiger beetle is going to get on there, and you guys are going to make me always keep that as a saline flat.’ And we can't do that, that's their private property, we have nothing to do with that. But what I like to point out is that, ‘Hey, keep doing what you're doing, because you have the beetles there, I want you to continue doing that.’ I really try to strike a balance with them, and hopefully they understand better that we're all on the same team,” he says.

We’ll get another glimpse at how that team is doing at protecting the Salt Creek tiger beetle – and other species – when the beetles are counted again next year.