Summary

Description

This report discusses the status of the Indigo Snake and efforts being taken to repopulate habitat. The Eastern Indigo Snake Drymarchon couperi was listed as a Threatened Species in 1978, under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The state of Florida also lists this species as Threatened. Eastern Indigo Snake population declines have been attributed mainly to a loss of habitat, with additional losses due to commercial exploitation and incidental death due to the gassing of Gopher Tortoise Gopherus polyphemus burrows by rattlesnake hunters. Eastern Indigo Snakes formerly ranged in portions of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina and throughout Florida. Stable populations of this snake require large tracts of undisturbed land and with continuing development in the state of Florida available lands to harbor viable populations are ever decreasing. In 1976, researchers at the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Alabama Cooperative Research Unit, Auburn, Alabama initiated efforts to reestablish populations within this species former range and continued as part of the Endangered Species Recovery Plan after it was listed 1978. St. Vincent Island was selected as a site for establishing a population based on its relative isolation, 4990 ha 12,360 acres of available habitat see Speake et al. 1978, resident Gopher Tortoise colony, and prescribed fire program. Although St. Vincent Island is within the historic range of the Eastern Indigo Snake, none had been previously recorded from the island.