It's PRESUMED extinct. Richard Highton reported possibly seeing specimens in a recent search, but they escaped. No-one has ever searched under "ideal" wet spring conditions. There also doesn't seem to be any good reason they WOULD be extinct, nor why they would have been restricted to the one location to begin with. There are plenty of reasons they wouldn't be found apart from actual extinction, and most of them amount to not searching properly.
IUCN lists it as extinct. They usually don't go out on that limb unless they're pretty sure.
And searches have been done on 1 March 1991; 23 April 1991; 17 July 1991; 4 June 1992; 20–21 May 1994; 14–16 December 1994; 8 and 20 February 1995; 11 and 23 March 1995; 3 and 13 April 1995; and 27 February 1997. That's 14 different searches. In Mississippi, it's pretty wet in February and March, and sometimes into April. I'm not sure why this wouldn't be 'ideal' or how many more searches you'd need to convince you otherwise.
Plethodontids are not known for their elusiveness. They're not, by nature, all that hard to find. They don't burrow, they rarely retreat too far underground. And Highton said he
might have caught a glimpse of one. Anyone who has ever been field herping knows how difficult it is to ID a salamander to a species level from a split-second glance. It's just impossible, especially in a genus where all members look fairly similar. I don't buy it.
Regardless, Jasper Co. is 7 hours the other way of where John is headed.
