By Cooper Peterson

The return of Eastern Indigo Snakes in response to protecting the longleaf pine forests.

The longleaf pine forest is a unique type of forest throughout the southeastern United States and contains many types of reptiles and amphibians not found in other parts of North America. Following the thawing of the ice age, this type of forest sprung up across the coastal plain and can be found from Virginia to Florida and parts of Texas. Longleaf pine was described as beautiful and bountiful in the mid-sixteenth century by Spaniard explorers and Native Americans. It’s pinewood was key for construction of early colonial settlements such as Jamestown, Virginia.

As more colonies were built up in North America, the longleaf pine was altered by man. These changes put reptiles such as the eastern indigo snake which live within at great risk. Wildfire commonly occurs in longleaf pine so that undergrowth can be cleared out naturally. When humans built towns and cities, they actively prevented these fires. Therefore, the undergrowth grew up and prevented reptiles from digging dens and hunting prey as they once did. These alterations by man became so bad that species such as the eastern indigo snake became extremely rare; it was thought that this once-common species would become extinct. But upon closer inspection, there are glimmers of hope nesting in the undergrowth.

The Eastern Indigo Snake (Drymarchon couperi) is jet-black and glossy blue, a mild-mannered and non-venomous serpent. Eastern Indigos were once a common sight across Alabama,  Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida, but in 1978 they were listed as federally threatened. They were one of the first entries into the Federal Endangered Species Act. Captive breeding programs have gained notoriety in Alabama (Conecuh National Forest) as well as in Florida (Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve) where history is in the making. From 1976 through 1987 an indigo snake recovery program was held at the Alabama Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit at Auburn University. This program aimed to restock local snake populations by bringing adult snakes from zoos and federal confiscations and breeding them on protected land.

By 1986, a total of 318 snakes were reintroduced via captive breeding programs across sites in Alabama. Despite this, eastern indigo were unable to reproduce in the wild due to poor quality habitats. Yet these programs kept trying; they called for public aid to restore the longleaf pine. Nature reserves that are protected by groups such as the Alabama Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit are managed carefully to maintain healthy, high-quality habitat that can foster species such as the eastern indigo. Strategies such as clear-cutting and controlled burns allow for parts of the longleaf pine to regenerate naturally while not posing risks to nearby human settlements. The Eastern Indigo Snake Reintroduction Project collaborated with private, public, state, and federal parties to preserve National Forests such as Conecuh and reintegrate the eastern indigo. Although Alabama had no eastern indigo sightings since the 1950s, in January of 2020, a wild sub-adult eastern indigo was captured and confirmed to be an offspring of a series reintroductions that occurred from 2000-2010. This find was a pivotal piece of evidence that these programs’ strategies are effective, and that hope is not lost for the longleaf pine nor the eastern indigo snake.

The momentum gained from this successful reintroduction in Alabama’s Conecuh have led to other programs weighing in support to conserve these snakes. The USDA Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources implemented federal and state programs to reintroduce species following major preservation of the longleaf pine forests. Other states have joined the programs with success as well. Eastern indigos had not been sighted in Florida since 1982. However Zoo Atlanta, the Tampa Zoo and Central Florida Zoo have joined together with The Orianne Society to reintroduce 12 zoo-reared indigos into Florida’s Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines nature reserve. Alabama and Florida are the only two reintroduction programs that have had success with eastern indigo snakes and will undoubtably pave the way for further successful programs for this snake in other regions. Despite several decades passing with a once-common snake going unnoticed, it was the collaboration between organizations, federal authorities and the public that permitted the longleaf pine and these snakes to begin flourishing once again.

REFERENCES

An Apex Predator Returns. (n.d.). The Nature Conservancy.Available from https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/florida/stories-in-florida/paradise-regained/ (accessed April 12, 2020).

Eastern Indigo Snake. (n.d.). The Nature Conservancy. Available from https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/animals-we-protect/eastern-indigo-snake/ (accessed April 12, 2020).

Eastern indigo snake makes a comeback in Alabama | US Forest Service. (2019). Available from https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/sustain/eastern-indigo-snake-makes-comeback-alabama (accessed April 12, 2020).

Godwin et al. (2011). Reintroduction of the Eastern Indigo Snake (Drymarchon couperi) into Conecuh National Forest. Available from https://www.outdooralabama.com/sites/default/files/Research/SWG%20Reports/SWG%20Indigo%20Final%20Report(2011).pdf (accessed April 12, 2020).

Godwin et al. (2008). Captive Propagation of the Threatened Eastern Indigo Snake for Reintroduction into Alabama. pdf (2008). Available from https://www.outdooralabama.com/sites/default/files/Research/SWG%20Reports/Indigo%20SWG%20final%20report(2008).pdf (accessed April 12, 2020).

By Laura Pinover

What You Need To Know

We’ve all seen the stickers, “The Three R’s of Life: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” and “Recycling is sexy!”. Have you ever thought about recycling wastewater? Seems like a genius idea, right? Used water goes back to a treatment plant and then is filtered right back into our toilets, bathroom sinks, and irrigation practices. However, studies are now showing that recycled wastewater doesn’t always filter out emerging contaminants (EC’s).

The Science

Emerging contaminants are synthetic or natural chemicals, such as Estrogen, and can’t always be filtered out by wastewater treatment facilities. Dr. Odette Mina, a researcher at Penn State University, studied how irrigated wastewater that contains EC’s effects vernal pools. EC’s that contain hormones get into our wastewater from the shampoos, detergents, cosmetics, and prescriptions we use in our homes. Vernal pools are freshwater pools that fill with water in the spring and only last a couple of months before they evaporate. They provide crucial breeding habitat for multiple species, including high numbers of amphibians. Up until recently, we did not know how to detect low concentrations of emerging contaminants. The only studies to explain the effects dealt with high concentrations of EC’s. Dr. Odette Mina and her team used advanced technology in their lab at Penn State and decided to see what effects low concentrations of EC’s in irrigated wastewater would have on vernal pool sites. The team discovered that hormonal emerging contaminants in wastewater, can last up to 20 days in environments. Longer lasting EC’s have the ability to cause endocrine disruption to amphibians breeding in vernal pools.

What’s Next?

The research Odette conducted concludes that we need to take into consideration where we are using our wastewater. With a push for recycled wastewater all throughout the environmentalism/sustainability movement, we need to assess where it is safe and unsafe to use irrigated wastewater at freshwater ecosystems. We should assess what freshwater ecosystems are close to irrigated wastewater agricultural areas and how they may be affected. Refining our wastewater management practices can help filter out more EC’s. Advocating for advanced technology in our wastewater treatments plants can help reduce the risks our freshwater ecosystems are faced with.

What YOU can do!

Hold local governments accountable for their spending when it comes to your local wastewater treatment facility. Check to see if the products you use at home contain synthetic hormones. If they do, look for natural alternatives that are safer for our environment.

By Chloe Sardonis

Forests are crucial to maintaining water quality, air quality, storing carbon, providing habitat, and providing us with a valuable resource: wood. There are ways to manage forests in such a way that we meet the needs of the landowner while focusing on new growth and the establishment of future forests. When forests are managed sustainably, a landowner can produce wood (yes, which means cutting trees) while also supplying the world with the services listed above. Forest management is more and more geared towards healthy forests, and healthy forests are being realized as a tool to fight climate change. However, while managing forests for the benefits of the forest and the health of the trees is great, we also need to think about the impacts of our forest management on the species that depend on them. Dr. Marlyse Duguid, director of the Yale Research Forest, has set out to answer the question “How does forest management affect non-target organisms?” Every organism has its own habitat needs and requirements, and while some requirements overlap, some are completely different.

Let’s look at the Eastern Red-backed Salamander and the Eastern Newt. Two salamander species that at first glance might seem like they are pretty similar. As a juvenile, the Eastern Newt (called a red eft during this life stage) and the Red-backed Salamander both live in our northeast forests. They are around the same size and they have a similar diet of invertebrates. If we were to cut trees in a way that is great for the forest, will it be great for salamanders? Do all salamanders respond to forest management the same way?

Yale Research Forest has been managed in a way that allow for these questions to be answered. The unique study site they have there is called a chronosequence. This is a set of sites within the forest that are ecologically similar but are all at different stages of the same type of management. This means they have one site that has just been cut in a specific way, one site that has not been cut at all, and sites in between that range from a year since the cutting to 25 years since the cutting. Essentially this allows Dr. Duguid and other researchers to look at the forest’s response to these cuttings over the course of time, except they can see it all at once!

I spoke to Dr. Marlyse Duguid, a forester, botanist, horticulturist, and ecologist, as well as being the Director of Research at the Yale Research Forest. She explained a chronosequence is not a perfect system, but it uses time as a proxy and allows for researchers to measure habitat for any forest species including birds, understory plant communities, and amphibians. Last summer, Dr. Duguid published a paper with Angus Mossman, Max Lambert, Mark Ashton, and Jessica Wikle that used the research forest to study the effects of a timber harvest on our two salamander species from above, the Eastern Newt and Red-backed Salamander. Using the Yale Research Forest, they were able to count the numbers of each species at each one of the sites, starting with immediately after the harvest and working up to 25 years after. They could then compare those numbers with the site that had never been cut.

The results were clear, not only does forest management have an effect on amphibians, it effects these amphibians on a species level. Both types of salamanders had their lowest numbers immediately after the timber harvest, although the Red-backed Salamander’s populations had recovered to even higher numbers 25 years after the timber harvest than they were in the uncut area. The Eastern Newt, though, fared differently and even 25 years after harvest, they still didn’t have the population numbers that they had in the uncut site.

If these differences can occur between organisms that are relatively alike, I was curious how a forester can think about management and consider everything at once, like the trees, the forest as a whole, all the different types of animals, etc.? With this background, Marlyse was the perfect person to ask how one measures what is “good” for the forest, or even what we are referring to when we speak on the “good of the forest?”

 “If you were just managing for carbon, you might just grow eucalyptus everywhere. You want a diverse portfolio of values.” Marlyse explained.

“You can’t serve every value.” Marlyse continued. She went on to say it was okay to stack values. There are so many different services provided by forests, that you have to choose what your values are when managing and be sure to not manage everything the same way.

As we saw in the research on salamanders, what is good for one species is going to be hard for another. Humans have to make these decisions and this research helps to inform management. For this reason, Dr. Duguid chose to publish this paper open access. It was more expensive, but she believed, because this paper is management-based, it should be accessible to everyone.

This study demonstrated that forest management affects the organisms living within the forest in different ways. Dr. Duguid emphasized that this study only looked at one small window of time and, even still, the results were clear. More research could be done for this and other amphibian-related forest-use studies.

With many challenges present for both the woods and the organisms in the woods, such as climate change, invasive species, pests, etc., forest management will need to be aware of the gives and takes of operations to continue providing the services we desperately need. While doing that, we can’t forget about the tiny creatures beneath the dead leaves and logs on the forest floor. Yale Research Forest and the work of Dr. Duguid can help us to understand our impacts in the forest beyond the trees.

The article, titled “Two salamander species respond differently to timber harvests in a managed New England forest” can be found at https://peerj.com/articles/7604.pdf.

Photo credits:

Top Left- Eastern Red-backed Salamanders from Virginia Herpetological Society

Top Right- Eastern Newt from Vermont Fish and Wildlife

By Geena Zick

When you hear a species described as Endangered, do you immediately believe it? What about if you heard a species was common and of Least Concern? How do you know species are categorized correctly? For example, tigers are categorized as Endangered. Of course, this is true, many people have heard it. Tigers are extremely charismatic animals, meaning they are cute and therefore, popular. There is a huge amount of data about them because people care. This large amount of information on tigers makes it easy to categorize them correctly. But what about animals that aren’t as charismatic? Is there enough information on them? Can they actually be categorized correctly?

What is the IUCN?

The International Union for Conservation of Nature’ s (IUCN) Red List describes itself as “a critical indicator of the health of the world’s biodiversity” (https://www.iucnredlist.org/). The threat status of an animal or plant is established by the IUCN. This means that the IUCN has a huge influence on conservation efforts for certain species. Because of this, it is vital that each species is categorized correctly. Although they have categorized many species correctly and have been a huge conservation help, there are still many species that are under-researched and under-funded. Species with a lack of sufficient data are categorized as Data Deficient. The IUCN discourages scientists from describing species as Data Deficient. The IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria: Version 3.1 states, “It is important to recognize that taxa that are poorly known can often be assigned a threat category on the basis of background information concerning the deterioration of their habitat and/or other causal factors; therefore the liberal use of ‘Data Deficient’ is discouraged.” Discouraging the use of the Data Deficient category is, regrettably, encouraging the use of misinformation. This can be a problem for species conservation as described by Dr. Mark D. Scherz and team in the journal Plos One.

An Example on Torrent Frogs

Dr. Scherz is a herpetologist who specializes in the taxonomy of frogs in Madagascar. Taxonomy is the naming and categorizing of species. He became obsessed with Madagascar and visited for the first time when he was 14 years old. His recent article digs into the naming and classification of torrent frogs. Torrent frogs are frogs that live around waterfalls or other fast flowing areas. These frogs have historically been listed as only two species, named Mantidactylus lugubris and Mantidactylus cowanii. Dr. Scherz and his team collected specimens from these species, sequenced their DNA and assessed this new data. After assessing the DNA sequence data and anatomy of the frogs, Dr. Scherz and his team have described two “new” species of torrent frogs, named Mantidactylus atsimo and Mantidactylus petakorona, that have been lumped into the already named species. Lumping these 4 species into only 2 names misconstrued information on the status of the frogs. Mantidactylus lugubris was considered Least Concern and was thought to live all over eastern Madagascar. However, once the new species were assessed separately, it was found that M. lugubris is only found in the central east of Madagascar.

A torrent frog, Mantidactylus cowanii, in the field. Photo from Plos One

Bigger Implications

The idea that the IUCN is not as accurate as it seems has huge implications for conservation. For one, taxonomy is crucial for species-specific conservation. The Red List takes years to update species and add new ones. This timeline can slow the process of saving these species. Additionally, the IUCN has a direct influence in the United Nations. This means they have a large amount of control over where the money is going and therefore, which species are going to be conserved. The IUCN’s system needs to be updated by creating more inclusive guidelines and having faster turnaround times, but they are still the best organization out there for categorizing species by their level of conservation need.

What Can the IUCN Do?

When asked if the IUCN has updated these frogs yet, Dr. Scherz explained, “there has not been an update yet, every 4 years all frogs are assessed region by region. This system is lacking because no one feels responsible to update animals immediately.” Dr. Scherz expressed his desire for the Red List guidelines to be reassessed. There is no doubt that it is difficult for one organization to create guidelines to assess all species. The current guidelines seem to be oriented towards large mammals and birds. For example, Criterion B suggests that populations with larger geographic distributions are at a lower risk of collapse. However, a small geographic distribution for a large mammal may be a huge distribution for a small frog. Dr. Scherz suggested, “they could correct the area for body size.” For example, a species can currently be listed as Vulnerable if their distribution is under 20,000 km². Such thresholds could be smaller for smaller animals. Scherz also suggested creating a specific set of criteria for amphibians. The most recent edition of the IUCN guidelines for categories and criteria came out in 2012. It might be time for an update.