![]() ![]() Once they laid their eggs, they were returned to the spot from which they were removed. Gravid female indigo snakes (gravid, rather than pregnant, is the term used for animals that lay eggs) were first captured from wild populations in Georgia. ![]() In addition, gopher tortoises have recently become officially recognised as a high priority for conservation thanks to their role as a longleaf pine ecosystem keystone species.īut how do you go about saving a species anyway? In 2010, it became illegal to gas gopher tortoise burrows. Reintroducing the indigo snake into a severely degraded ecosystem is a fool's errand, but lots of work in recent years has gone into conserving parts of the longleaf forest that are still intact and to reclaiming areas that have become overrun with other tree species. They remain inside the burrow, where they suffocate. The rattlesnakes reliably flee the burrows upon gassing, but the indigo snakes and tortoises do not. The rattlers also rely on gopher tortoise burrows for shelter, which led people to gas the burrows in an effort to smoke them out. But as the forest was altered, gopher tortoises began to decline, which in turn led to a decline in indigo snakes.īoth gopher tortoises and indigo snakes were also collateral damage in the targeted killings of eastern diamondback rattlesnakes. Gopher tortoises excavate deep burrows in the ground to avoid freezing during the cooler winter months, and indigo snakes evolved to take advantage of those burrows, cosying up to the tortoises as temporary roommates during the most frigid parts of the year. As the forests disappeared, so did their inhabitants, including one cold-blooded reptile of great importance to the indigo snake. Image: FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Instituteīut the last century and a half of human development has seen the longleaf pine ecosystem become increasingly degraded and fragmented, with much of the forests' historic range converted for agriculture and urban development. Without gopher tortoises to keep them warm in the winter, indigo snakes declined. "Longleaf pine ecosystems may be North America’s least appreciated repositories of biodiversity," wrote Bruce Means, an ecologist who has been working in the Florida panhandle for more than forty years. This was at one time among the most biologically diverse terrestrial ecosystems outside of the tropics. Longleaf pine forests once covered nearly 150 million acres and swept through nine US states, from eastern Texas to southern Virginia. That's in part because the indigo snake is inextricably linked to the ecosystem in which it evolved. But as is so often the case in wildlife conservation, things aren't quite that simple. ![]() At first, conservationists thought they could re-establish the species in Alabama simply by rounding up some snakes from other places and releasing them into southern Alabama's Conecuh National Forest. In 1978, the species was classified as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act. Though the indigo snake hangs on to existence in southern Georgia and some parts of Florida, it has vanished from southern Alabama and Mississippi. The beautiful creatures, jet black with a hint of blue, are fairly docile and completely harmless to humans.īut the last time an indigo was seen in Alabama was in 1954. The eastern indigo snake Drymarchon couperi, the longest native North American snake, once slithered along the forest floors there and helped control the rest of the snake community with its eating habits – dining not just on copperheads, but also on the venomous cottonmouths, rattlesnakes and others. Copperhead snakes are the most commonly encountered type of snake in the southern parts of the US state of Alabama.
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