From UF/IFAS
In Summary:
As warmer weather increases wildlife activity across Florida, UF/IFAS is highlighting the Eastern indigo snake, a federally protected, nonvenomous species that plays an important role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. The new Ask IFAS Extension Wildlife of Florida Factsheet is now available in both English and Spanish, helping residents learn to recognize and protect the species. Experts say conserving indigo snakes also helps preserve longleaf pine habitats, wetlands, and gopher tortoise burrows that support numerous other native species.
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As the spring brings warmer temperatures and longer daylight hours, wildlife across Florida becomes more active. That includes the Eastern indigo snake, a protected, nonvenomous species that’s also North America’s longest black snake.
Related: UF study finds hurricanes can both devastate and help wildlife populations.
Though large-bodied and often misunderstood, this native snake -- also known as the blue indigo snake, gopher snake, and blue bull snake -- is harmless to people and plays an important role in Florida’s ecosystems.
“The genus name Drymarchon means 'forest ruler,' and these snakes really do reign over a remarkable range of Florida habitats,” said Hance Ellington, assistant professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at the UF/IFAS Range Cattle Research and Education Center in Ona. “Protecting them also protects the longleaf pine, scrub, and gopher tortoise burrows that many other species depend on. The best thing the public can do is replace fear with understanding."
To help residents recognize them from afar, understand what makes them beneficial, and where they are most often found, UF/IFAS experts are spotlighting the ASK IFAS Extension Wildlife of Florida Factsheet: Eastern Indigo Snake, also now in Spanish.
With its glossy, blue-black coloring and reddish chin and throat, it spends most of its time moving quietly through natural habitats and sheltering underground. In Florida, the Eastern indigo snake lives in habitats including sandhills, hammocks, scrub areas, and longleaf pine flatwoods, which contain burrows created by gopher tortoises where they hide for protection from weather and during nesting. They also rely on hollow logs for nesting.
In northern Florida, these snakes spend most of their time underground, but in South and Central Florida, they remain active year-round, shifting to wetlands during the hottest times of summer.
Eastern indigo snakes mature slowly and move across landscapes, sometimes traveling hundreds of acres to find food, shelter, and mates. They breed mainly during cooler months, with eggs laid during spring, often underground.
Their diet includes a variety of rodents, frogs, birds, and reptiles such as snakes, yet scientists describe their behavior as generally calm. Because of its diet, the species plays an important role in keeping wildlife populations in balance.
Once common across the Southeastern United States, the Eastern indigo snake population has declined due to habitat loss from development and to people often killing the species out of fear or misunderstanding. Today, federal laws protect the snake and prohibit people from harming or disturbing it. Conservation efforts focus on protecting its habitat and helping people recognize the Eastern indigo snake as a helpful, native species.
Want to help protect them? Ellington gives three tips for the public:
- Give them space. Eastern indigo snakes are federally protected under the Endangered Species Act. Observe from a distance and never handle, harass, or kill one.
- Protect their habitats — and the gopher tortoise burrowed within them. These snakes travel across large areas and depend on a mosaic of longleaf pine, scrub, flatwoods, wetlands, and tortoise burrows that serve as critical refuges. Supporting conservation of these connected landscapes directly benefits the species.
- Report sightings to the FWC Florida Rare Snake Registry, ideally with a photo taken from a safe distance.
ABOUT UF/IFAS
The mission of the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) is to develop knowledge relevant to agricultural, human, and natural resources and to make that knowledge available to sustain and enhance the quality of human life. With more than a dozen research facilities, 67 county Extension offices, and award-winning students and faculty in the UF College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, UF/IFAS brings science-based solutions to the state’s agricultural and natural resources industries and all Florida residents.
For more information, go to ifas.ufl.edu.
