Indigo Snakes re-introduced to Conecuh National Forest
One effort the Forest Service is tasked with is helping threatened and endanger plants and critters. You may have heard about something being re-introduced to your favorite national forest. In my part of the country, Arizona and New Mexico, the big re-introduction was and is the Mexican Grey Wolf (they aren’t doing as well as hoped but that’s another blog).
The Conecuh National Forest is re-introducing the Indigo snake, through the release of juvenile snakes (the second release occurred a month or so ago), to the forest’s Longleaf pine woods. Why? The indigo snake, lustrous, glossy, blue-black, non-venomous snake, is North America’s largest native snake, and as the top predator, plays an important ecological role in the Longleaf pine woods eco-system. It is sound to me as if the Forest Service is acknowledging they can only do so much and must look to Mother Nature to complete the effort.
Each Indigo snake released has been give a passive integrated transponder tag for permanent identification. If you find one of these beautiful creatures in the wild, enjoy looking at it, but do not touch, and maybe you could let the Conecuh folks know about your encounter. If the snake is hurt or dead, definitely contact the Conecuh National Forest staff with this information as soon as possible.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2012 at 4:39 am and is filed under conservation, Forest Service, national forests, national grasslands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
