Category Archives: Florida

USFWS: No More Snakes on Planes

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“The US Fish and Wildlife Service has finalized a rule that would ban the importation and interstate transportation of four nonnative constrictor snake species,” a press release from the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced today. The four snake species are: the Burmese python, the yellow anaconda, and the northern and southern African pythons.

The four species of snakes are listed as “injurious species” under the Lacey Act.

The press release notes: “The Burmese python has established breeding populations in South Florida, including the Everglades, that have caused significant damage to wildlife and that continue to pose a great risk to many native species, including threatened and endangered species. Burmese pythons on North Key Largo have killed and eaten highly endangered Key Largo wood rats, and other pythons preyed on endangered wood storks.”

Burmese pythons eat alligators. ‘Nuff said?

Florida’s congressional representatives have wanted the ban for years, says an article from the McClatchy news syndicate. A powerful pet snake lobby has stood in the way, the article says. Who would have thought that a story about nonnative snakes would require “following the money”?

Read the entire article — which includes a lovely graphic — here.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service release says that the ban of five more big, nonnative snake species is on the horizon. Read the entire press release here.

The service also gets in on “following the money.” Its handout on the cost of large constrictor snakes is here.

Photo: A Burmese python and an American alligator duke it out in the Everglades. Photo by Lori Oberhofer, courtesy National Park Service

USFWS: No More Snakes on Planes

Posted on by
1

“The US Fish and Wildlife Service has finalized a rule that would ban the importation and interstate transportation of four nonnative constrictor snake species,” a press release from the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced today. The four snake species are: the Burmese python, the yellow anaconda, and the northern and southern African pythons.

The four species of snakes are listed as “injurious species” under the Lacey Act.

The press release notes: “The Burmese python has established breeding populations in South Florida, including the Everglades, that have caused significant damage to wildlife and that continue to pose a great risk to many native species, including threatened and endangered species. Burmese pythons on North Key Largo have killed and eaten highly endangered Key Largo wood rats, and other pythons preyed on endangered wood storks.”

Burmese pythons eat alligators. ‘Nuff said?

Florida’s congressional representatives have wanted the ban for years, says an article from the McClatchy news syndicate. A powerful pet snake lobby has stood in the way, the article says. Who would have thought that a story about nonnative snakes would require “following the money”?

Read the entire article — which includes a lovely graphic — here.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service release says that the ban of five more big, nonnative snake species is on the horizon. Read the entire press release here.

The service also gets in on “following the money.” Its handout on the cost of large constrictor snakes is here.

Photo: A Burmese python and an American alligator duke it out in the Everglades. Photo by Lori Oberhofer, courtesy National Park Service

Google Maps for Cit Sci Apps

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The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is using a Google Maps application to gather basic information about the locations of fox squirrels in that state. Fox squirrel distribution is patchy, and there hasn’t been a distribution survey since 1997.

See the form here.

University of Florida wildlife ecology graduate student Courtney Hooker, who is overseeing the survey, was inspired by another Google Maps application that she had used herself: The South Carolina-based Center for Birds of Prey’s swallow-tailed kite project.

See that form here.

Hooker says the fox squirrel application has worked well since going on line in August 2011. “Most people are familiar with Google Maps, since they use it to get directions,” she says. The project has received over 600 reports so far, and has received a lot of media coverage.

Although the directions for logging a fox squirrel sighting on the site is only three short steps, Hooker says that she may make them even shorter and simpler. Many people aren’t reading them. Also, she prefers the way the swallow-tailed kite map allows users to right-click on the location they saw the bird. The fox squirrel map asks users to drag a red balloon to the site, which is a little confusing. 

Hooker says that part of the success of the project is due to the fact that the fox squirrel, which is twice the size of the familiar gray squirrel, is such a striking species. “It’s an identifiable species and it’s a beautiful species. People tend to remember it.”

One of the few questions on the sighting form ask if the observer is a wildlife professional or not. Hooker was curious to see if a particular group was more responsive to the survey. So far, she says, about 95 percent of the respondents have been citizen scientists.

Many of the reports have been acommpanied by photos, she says, so Hooker has been able to confirm that they are indeed fox squirrels and not another species.

Hooker says that while the project is expected to help state biologists better understand the distribution of the fox squirrel throughout Florida, it’s also helped educate the public. “Some people have said that they had never seen one before.”

The Florida Wildlife Commission press release.

An article from TampaBay.com
And another article from Florida Today.

Photo: Fox squirrel, courtesy of Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Why Did the Turtle Cross the Road?

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bog turtle

Actually, “Where are the turtles crossing the road and getting hit by cars?” is the focus of a Massaschusetts citizen science research project, and it is one of several turtle research projects going on in this year of the turtle. For more info, read this article on the Massachusetts turtle road-crossing project in the Springfield Republican.

Here are seven other sources of information on turtles and turtle research:

Maryland Amphibian and Reptile Atlas (MARA), a five year project that began in 2010 and will end in December 2014.

The USA Turtle Mapping Project is being run by the US Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station. It is focusing on seven species of freshwater turtles and tortoises to find out their current ranges.

Not surprisingly, PARC, the creator of Year of the Turtle has a list on its Web site of turtle citizen science projects. It’s a PDF. Here are some of the US-based land- or freshwater turtle projects on the list that aren’t already mentioned:
Blanding’s Turtle Research – Great Meadows, Massachusetts
Gopher Tortoise Tracker – Volusia County, Florida
Lake George Turtle Monitoring Program – Lake George, New York
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences Neighborhood Box Turtle Watch
Western Pond Turtle Presence, Absence Monitoring Project -Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, California
Texas Turtle Watch 

Another resource on the PARC Year of the Turtle site is an Excel spreadsheet of 87 relocation, reintroduction, translocation, and headstarting projects. Turtles make up more than half of these projects, the rest are for other reptiles and amphibians. The idea, the site says, is to allow scientists running similar projects to get inside information on what worked and what didn’t so future projects can build on the past.

When it comes to turtles, the news is pretty bad, but it’s not all bad news. In June so many diamondback terrapins headed upland from Jamaica Bay in New York City that a runway at Kennedy Airport was closed. Here’s a news story, and background information from the journal Science.

We don’t normally cover research outside the US, but since we gave wildfires in the West so much coverage earlier this year, and because it is the year of the turtle here’s an exception. A paper in the journal Biological Conservation says that a species of tortoise in Spain can withstand wildfires every 30 years or so and still maintain its population levels. Read an article about the study in Science Daily, or the whole paper in Biological Conservation (or rather, read a free abstract and pay for the whole paper).

Finally, don’t forget our mini round-up of box turtle data earlier this year. You can find that post here.

Photo: Box turtle Credit: Laura Perlick, courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife

Short Commute for Florida State Biologists

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A major colony of roseate terns, a state and federally listed threatened species, is located on the roof of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in Marathon, Fla., in the Florida Keys. It contains about 67 nests. The colony has been there since 1996, making monitoring the colony an easy day in the field for the state biologists working in the building below.

Read more in this article in the Florida Keys News/Marathon Free Press.

Photo: Alcides Morales, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Florida may delist black bears

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In June, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will decide whether to remove the black bear from the state’s threatened species list, a move that would open the door to hunting them. There are some interesting statistics buried deep in the Orlando Sentinel article, including that 8 percent of the bears in the WekivaOcala corridor are hit and killed by cars each year, on average.

Read the whole article in the Orlando Sentinel here.

A press release from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission from last November about the delisting process is here.

Photo credit: Waverley Traylor, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service