I did several semesters' worth of biology fieldwork in college that involved handling many of these guys, under the guidance of a professor who was obsessed with them. Their toxicity was discussed more as a point of interest rather than an immediate danger. We always wore gloves when handling them, but the rationale was more for the newts' protection rather than our own. I never heard of there being a newt poisoning incident during the past decades of this professor overseeing similar fieldwork. Of course, eating them was out of the question.

I think the article is exaggerating quite a lot

> It’s so toxic that the poison from a single newt can easily kill several adult humans. You could literally die from licking this newt, just once.

TBF there is one death reported in Oregon from someone eating an entire newt in 1979, but they aren’t as bad as the article would have you believe. Many of us have handled these newts. There would be a lot more dead people if licking is all it took.

> A 29-year-old man drank approximately 150 mL of whiskey at about 11 AM July 9, 1979. At 6 PM he swallowed a 20-cm newt on a dare. Within ten minutes he complained of tingling of the lips. During the next two hours he began complaining of numbness and weakness and stated that he thought he was going to die. He refused to be transported to a hospital and was left alone for 15 minutes and then experienced cardiopulmonary arrest

Yes, I must have played with these newts at least a couple dozen times as a child, they were under every leaf and log in the forest and near streams where I grew up.

I live in the PNW and I see hundreds of garter snakes, some newts, but never a Rough-Skinned Newt. I had no idea such a creature was around here.