Eastern indigo snake price11/3/2023 ![]() It immediately begins exploring, moving steadily through Clark’s hands. Grabbing the cardboard tube, he gently tips the little snake onto his outstretched palm. “Here we go,” says Nick Clark, a snake specialist at the OCIC. The species is declining almost to point of disappearing in the western portion of its range. When tortoise populations crashed in northern Florida, indigo snakes soon followed. ![]() Gopher tortoises excavate deep burrows, which indigo snakes and more than 350 other Florida species depend upon to stay warm during periodic winter freezes. Habitat loss and fragmentation are the major culprits, as is the case with the decline of another emblematic Florida reptile, the gopher tortoise. “The species is declining almost to point of disappearing in the western portion of its range,” says Stevenson. Once widespread throughout the southeast, today indigos are only found, with difficulty, in peninsular Florida and southern Georgia. “They’re also good looking and have always had a following amongst snake enthusiasts.” “They have had an interesting history because of their docile temperament, they virtually never bite people even when picked up in the wild,” says Dirk Stevenson, the fire forest initiative director at The Orianne Society and an expert on indigos. And like lions, indigo snakes are apex predators, devouring just about anything they can overpower, including small alligators, turtles, small mammals, birds, and even rattlesnakes. Pound-for-pound they need as much territory as a lion - males patrol more than 1,200 acres - which is the largest home range of any North American snake. The longest nonvenomous snake in North America, indigo snakes can reach lengths of more than 8 feet. Below their large, dark eyes, a vibrant scarlet-orange wash lines their throats and chins. Jet-black, iridescent scales cover their bodies, glistening like an oil slick in the sunlight. Sandhills, Snakes, and Gopher TortoisesĮastern indigo snakes are unmistakable against the palette of greys, greens, and browns of Florida’s pinelands. ![]() The partnership is part of an effort to return the snakes to a part of their former range - the Florida Panhandle - an important step for a species in trouble. Next year, this little snake and 19 others here at the Orianne Center for Indigo Conservation (OCIC) will be the first indigo snakes ever reintroduced to Florida, at The Nature Conservancy’s Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve. Staring up at me, he scents the air with his tongue. Nick Clark rolls one of the drawers open, and peeking out from the tip of a cardboard paper-towel roll is a young eastern indigo snake. The crisp label on the edge of each tray reads: D. Something’s moving - I can hear soft bumps and faint slithering coming from the stacked rows of 70-odd bins in the center of the room.
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