Eastern indigo snakes are apex predators, nonvenomous snakes that eat venomous snakes. You would expect an animal that can subdue and consume an eastern diamondback rattlesnake to be unapproachable, but to humans, they're quite docile. Because they make good pets, and because they've lost a lot of habitat, they're disappearing from much of their range in the American southeast. They are federally listed as Threatened. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in Florida has been working to bring them back to the Florida panhandle.
WFSU's Gina Jordan talks to Katherine Ricketts, manager of TNC's Apalachicola Bluff and Ravines Preserve (ABRP). The Nature Conservancy and its partners have been releasing indigo snakes on the Preserve since 2017. In Alabama, Georgia, and north Florida, where temperatures dip below freezing, indigo snakes need places to stay warm in the winter. They find this shelter in gopher tortoise burrows, which are typically found in longleaf pine ecosystems. ABRP's restored sandhill habitat, a type of longleaf pine ecosystem, has a healthy gopher tortoise population, which is why it was chosen as a release site.
Joining Gina and Katherine in the studio is WFSU Ecology producer Rob Diaz de Villegas. He has covered the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Regions, and indigo snakes, for years, and has even released a couple himself.
