Ellicott Slough National Wildlife Refuge is located in Santa Cruz County, California

Santa Cruz County, California

Santa Cruz County is a county located on the Pacific coast of the U.S. state of California, on the California Central Coast. The county forms the northern coast of the Monterey Bay. . As of the 2010 U.S. Census, its population was 262,382. The county seat is Santa Cruz...

 within the Monterey Bay

Monterey Bay

Monterey Bay is a bay of the Pacific Ocean, along the central coast of California. The bay is south of San Francisco and San Jose, between the cities of Santa Cruz and Monterey....

 area. The refuge, established in 1975 to protect the endangered

Endangered species

An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...

 Santa Cruz long-toed salamander

Santa Cruz Long-toed Salamander

The Santa Cruz long-toed salamander is an endangered subspecies of the long-toed salamander, which is found only close to a few isolated ponds in Santa Cruz County and Monterey County, California. It has a black body, broken yellow or orange irregular striping along its spine, and a tail fin well...

, supports two of the eight known breeding populations of the salamander.

The threatened

Threatened species

Threatened species are any speciesg animals, plants, fungi, etc.) which are vulnerable to endangerment in the near future.The World Conservation Union is the foremost authority on threatened species, and treats threatened species not as a single category, but as a group of three categories,...

 California red legged frog and the California tiger salamander

California Tiger Salamander

The California tiger salamander is a vulnerable amphibian native to Northern California. Previously considered to be a Tiger Salamander subspecies, the California tiger salamander was recently designated a separate species again...

, a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act

Endangered Species Act

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is one of the dozens of United States environmental laws passed in the 1970s. Signed into law by President Richard Nixon on December 28, 1973, it was designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a "consequence of economic growth and...

, have been observed on the refuge. Current management efforts focus on enhancing both wetland

Wetland

A wetland is an area of land whose soil is saturated with water either permanently or seasonally. Wetlands are categorised by their characteristic vegetation, which is adapted to these unique soil conditions....

 and upland

Highland (geography)

The term highland or upland is used to denote any mountainous region or elevated mountainous plateau. Generally speaking, the term upland tends to be used for ranges of hills, typically up to 500-600m, and highland for ranges of low mountains.The Scottish Highlands refers to the mountainous...

habitat for the Santa Cruz long-toed salamander.