In Spotlight: Gopher Tortoise, Eastern Indigo Snake & Gopher Frog
|
Over millennia, the longleaf pine ecosystem has evolved with fire and thus relies on it to sustain and rekindle life. This fire-adapted community shares unique and unusual interdependencies amongst its inhabitants and is home to some of the most imperiled species in the world. I recently caught up with Mr. John Jensen, the lead herpetologist for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (GADNR) to talk about some of these species. I had a fascinating conversation with him about the world’s most hospitable tortoise, the largest non-venomous snake in North America, and a rare species of frog; apparently they are all roommates! I would like to thank Mr. Jensen for making time for this interview and for sharing his knowledge and field experiences with us.
The interview has been divided into six segments -
The interview has been edited and condensed. Please scroll down to read the transcript of the interview. |
John B Jensen
Senior Wildlife Biologist
Ayesha Siraj
Interviewer
Senior Wildlife Biologist
Ayesha Siraj
Interviewer
Introduction
Ayesha: Thank you so much for you time. I really appreciate having this opportunity to interview you.
John: You are welcome!
Ayesha: When I first started researching the species that you specialize in, I came across an article that highlighted your work and contributions in reptiles and amphibians conservation. The article was also talking about how you had a change of career path from geology to biology and I was curious how that came about?
John: Well, I was like a lot of people when I went to college. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. So when I got to the University of Iowa, I took a variety of intro classes and really enjoyed my geology class and decided to pursue it as a major. One of the requirements for the geology major when I transferred to Auburn was I needed to have two minors that had to be in the field of science, math, or engineering. I had always been interested in wildlife so I said I'll double minor in zoology and be a paleontologist. So I took 30 hours of biology class right before I graduated with geology, and I fell in love with it. And it was almost immediately after I graduated and got a job in hydrogeology that I realized I really did not like it. So I decided to go back to school and I got my degree in biology. And that was it and I don't regret any of it. I enjoy my career. It changed my life.
Ayesha: Can you tell us about your role at Georgia Department of Natural Resources (GA DNR)?
John: There are around 165 reptiles and amphibians in Georgia, and I'm the lead herpetologist. A herpetologist is a person who studies reptiles and amphibians. With the exception of alligators and sea turtles, I'm involved with pretty much all reptiles and amphibians in the state, to some degree. Most of my work focuses on rare and declining species.
Ayesha: Given that there are so many species of amphibians and reptiles in Georgia, how do you evaluate which species are at risk of becoming rare? Are there any markers in the environment or is there baseline data that helps assess the risk?
John: Yes a lot of it relies on baseline data, species distribution, literature, and museum collections from way back when they documented the occurrence of a certain species in a county or a state. So we have baseline information about where a species used to occur and how common they used to be, and then we can evaluate how it is doing today to see trends and changes. Not just for amphibians and reptiles, but for all of our wildlife, habitat loss, disturbance, and alteration are the greatest threats to them all. For species that have specific habitats that are particularly imperiled, it is pretty easy to see that the species is so tied to that that when those habitats are lost or altered to a point that they are no longer suitable, then those species are gone with them. And it's especially true for reptiles and amphibians because they're not nearly as mobile. For example, you may have a bird that depends on old growth hardwood forests and if you cut down a hundred acres, the bird can fly to another old growth forest. It is still a reduction of their habitat, but individually, it doesn't take them, necessarily. Reptiles and amphibians are not able to relocate like that. If something is cleared away, then they're often cleared away with them.
Ayesha: In the United States there is a permitting and zoning process in place that developers have to apply for before construction begins. So how do areas where imperiled species occur get cleared? Isn’t their habitat protected under the Endangered Species Act?
John: One thing to keep in mind is, unless it's a federally listed species, there is no protection from what's known as ‘indirect take’ on private land. So if you are altering habitat for a state protected species or an imperiled species that's not federally listed and your intent of habitat alteration is not to harm the species but rather to build a house, a farm, or whatever, and that species occurred there and it was taken along with that, then it's incidental, indirect take and there's no protection for it. The GA DNR does not have any authority on private land. We can certainly work with willing landowners to do surveys on private land, but more often than not, we already know of occurrences of rare species from past work done or past observations by researchers in those places. If that habitat gets altered, then we might not necessarily be able to go there and document that the species is no longer there. But say a species needs open longleaf pine habitat with dense ground cover and that land becomes a soybean farm, then we know that species is gone.
Ayesha: What is the status of the 165 species that you study? Are they abundant, somewhat threatened, or are all of them threatened?
John: Oh no, they are plenty of species that are really common. I'd say that the majority of them are probably declining because of loss of habitat, but then there are some species that are probably increasing because of habitat alteration. These are species that thrive in disturbed habitat. One example is a reptile in Georgia called the black racer. It's a snake, which likes open country, and we have created a lot more open country. Therefore, they are probably more abundant than they used to be. Also, green treefrogs have become more abundant because we have dammed up a lot of creeks throughout the state to make farm ponds or reservoirs. They prefer that and that has created more artificial habitat for them. But the majority of the species I work with are not in that situation, so most of them are declining.
Ayesha: Since so many species are on the decline, how do you prioritize and decide which species needs immediate attention and protection?
John: There are different levels of protection that have been assigned to different species. The federally listed species are listed either as federally threatened or federally endangered. Those species almost always are the rarest, the endangered being the rarest.
And then we have the state listed species. All species that are federally listed are also state listed. But we have a state list of species that are not federally listed. Some of them are candidates for federal listing and some of them are petitioned for federal listing. And then we have species that we call species of special concern, which are kind of on a watch list. They either have a really small range or we are concerned that they may be vulnerable to habitat impacts or other threats like climate change. They're not protected, but we are keeping track of them, keeping data on them, because we are concerned that they may be next in priority.
Ayesha: One of the species that I was curious about is Georgia's official state reptile, the gopher tortoise. I believe it is one of the species you work with. Can you give us an overview of where it is in terms of its listing and its habitat?
John: Right now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a number of species that have been petitioned for listing by environmental groups. Every species that is being petitioned has to go through a formal review process to see if the petitions are warranted and if there is enough science to base the listing decision on, and the gopher tortoise is one of them. In the case of the gopher tortoise, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has already determined that it is warranted for listing as threatened but their final listing decision is going to be announced in 2024. We and other organizations that are charged with protecting and recovering the gopher tortoise feel that we have enough time to change that trend and improve things for the gopher tortoise. So by the time that listing decision comes up we can defend it and say it no longer needs to be federally listed as threatened. And why don't we want species to get federally listed? That's because it basically shows failure on our part. It would show that we allowed the species to get to such an imperiled state that it had to be federally listed. That is not a success story.
There are several reasons why we think a federal listing for the gopher tortoise would be detrimental for the species. The main reason is that the species occurs on a lot of private land. And to properly conserve and recover the species, we have to have the cooperation of private landowners. We cannot buy every piece of property that gopher tortoises occur on; it's impossible, and we don't want to own that much land. And gopher tortoise is a species that requires active management. This involves keeping the canopy from closing due to encroaching hardwoods or invasive species. This would not have been a problem for their habitat prior to urbanization because fire would have naturally kept these encroaching hardwoods and invasive plant species out and the canopy open. But now we have to manage that by using herbicides or mechanically removing them. All this requires cooperation from private landowners to access their property. The private landowners are more fearful of the feds then they are of us at GA DNR. So we're really concerned that we are going to face a brick wall from the private landowners if that species gets federally listed. Nobody's going to want the feds to know that they've got a federal endangered species living on their property. They might even make efforts to get rid of the federally listed species from their land.
When the red-cockaded woodpecker was federally listed, it was known that they only make their roosting cavities in old-growth longleaf that get redheart rot fungus. It’s a natural thing that causes the tree to hollow out in the middle while the tree is still able to stay alive. The trees have to be at least about 80 years before this develops so some landowners started cutting down the longleaf pine trees to prevent them from getting redheart rot in an effort to prevent the red cockaded woodpeckers from nesting on their properties. So we don't want landowners to stop beneficial management or destroy habitat because of fear of the species becoming a federally listed species.
On the other hand, for some species a federal listing is helpful. For example, the main threat the alligator snapping turtle is facing is that they are over collected, direct take. They are collected for food and the pet trade, which caused populations to crash. A protected species listing for that species can clearly help because once it is federally listed, it’s no longer legal to take them from their natural environment.
Ayesha: Thank you so much for you time. I really appreciate having this opportunity to interview you.
John: You are welcome!
Ayesha: When I first started researching the species that you specialize in, I came across an article that highlighted your work and contributions in reptiles and amphibians conservation. The article was also talking about how you had a change of career path from geology to biology and I was curious how that came about?
John: Well, I was like a lot of people when I went to college. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. So when I got to the University of Iowa, I took a variety of intro classes and really enjoyed my geology class and decided to pursue it as a major. One of the requirements for the geology major when I transferred to Auburn was I needed to have two minors that had to be in the field of science, math, or engineering. I had always been interested in wildlife so I said I'll double minor in zoology and be a paleontologist. So I took 30 hours of biology class right before I graduated with geology, and I fell in love with it. And it was almost immediately after I graduated and got a job in hydrogeology that I realized I really did not like it. So I decided to go back to school and I got my degree in biology. And that was it and I don't regret any of it. I enjoy my career. It changed my life.
Ayesha: Can you tell us about your role at Georgia Department of Natural Resources (GA DNR)?
John: There are around 165 reptiles and amphibians in Georgia, and I'm the lead herpetologist. A herpetologist is a person who studies reptiles and amphibians. With the exception of alligators and sea turtles, I'm involved with pretty much all reptiles and amphibians in the state, to some degree. Most of my work focuses on rare and declining species.
Ayesha: Given that there are so many species of amphibians and reptiles in Georgia, how do you evaluate which species are at risk of becoming rare? Are there any markers in the environment or is there baseline data that helps assess the risk?
John: Yes a lot of it relies on baseline data, species distribution, literature, and museum collections from way back when they documented the occurrence of a certain species in a county or a state. So we have baseline information about where a species used to occur and how common they used to be, and then we can evaluate how it is doing today to see trends and changes. Not just for amphibians and reptiles, but for all of our wildlife, habitat loss, disturbance, and alteration are the greatest threats to them all. For species that have specific habitats that are particularly imperiled, it is pretty easy to see that the species is so tied to that that when those habitats are lost or altered to a point that they are no longer suitable, then those species are gone with them. And it's especially true for reptiles and amphibians because they're not nearly as mobile. For example, you may have a bird that depends on old growth hardwood forests and if you cut down a hundred acres, the bird can fly to another old growth forest. It is still a reduction of their habitat, but individually, it doesn't take them, necessarily. Reptiles and amphibians are not able to relocate like that. If something is cleared away, then they're often cleared away with them.
Ayesha: In the United States there is a permitting and zoning process in place that developers have to apply for before construction begins. So how do areas where imperiled species occur get cleared? Isn’t their habitat protected under the Endangered Species Act?
John: One thing to keep in mind is, unless it's a federally listed species, there is no protection from what's known as ‘indirect take’ on private land. So if you are altering habitat for a state protected species or an imperiled species that's not federally listed and your intent of habitat alteration is not to harm the species but rather to build a house, a farm, or whatever, and that species occurred there and it was taken along with that, then it's incidental, indirect take and there's no protection for it. The GA DNR does not have any authority on private land. We can certainly work with willing landowners to do surveys on private land, but more often than not, we already know of occurrences of rare species from past work done or past observations by researchers in those places. If that habitat gets altered, then we might not necessarily be able to go there and document that the species is no longer there. But say a species needs open longleaf pine habitat with dense ground cover and that land becomes a soybean farm, then we know that species is gone.
Ayesha: What is the status of the 165 species that you study? Are they abundant, somewhat threatened, or are all of them threatened?
John: Oh no, they are plenty of species that are really common. I'd say that the majority of them are probably declining because of loss of habitat, but then there are some species that are probably increasing because of habitat alteration. These are species that thrive in disturbed habitat. One example is a reptile in Georgia called the black racer. It's a snake, which likes open country, and we have created a lot more open country. Therefore, they are probably more abundant than they used to be. Also, green treefrogs have become more abundant because we have dammed up a lot of creeks throughout the state to make farm ponds or reservoirs. They prefer that and that has created more artificial habitat for them. But the majority of the species I work with are not in that situation, so most of them are declining.
Ayesha: Since so many species are on the decline, how do you prioritize and decide which species needs immediate attention and protection?
John: There are different levels of protection that have been assigned to different species. The federally listed species are listed either as federally threatened or federally endangered. Those species almost always are the rarest, the endangered being the rarest.
And then we have the state listed species. All species that are federally listed are also state listed. But we have a state list of species that are not federally listed. Some of them are candidates for federal listing and some of them are petitioned for federal listing. And then we have species that we call species of special concern, which are kind of on a watch list. They either have a really small range or we are concerned that they may be vulnerable to habitat impacts or other threats like climate change. They're not protected, but we are keeping track of them, keeping data on them, because we are concerned that they may be next in priority.
Ayesha: One of the species that I was curious about is Georgia's official state reptile, the gopher tortoise. I believe it is one of the species you work with. Can you give us an overview of where it is in terms of its listing and its habitat?
John: Right now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a number of species that have been petitioned for listing by environmental groups. Every species that is being petitioned has to go through a formal review process to see if the petitions are warranted and if there is enough science to base the listing decision on, and the gopher tortoise is one of them. In the case of the gopher tortoise, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has already determined that it is warranted for listing as threatened but their final listing decision is going to be announced in 2024. We and other organizations that are charged with protecting and recovering the gopher tortoise feel that we have enough time to change that trend and improve things for the gopher tortoise. So by the time that listing decision comes up we can defend it and say it no longer needs to be federally listed as threatened. And why don't we want species to get federally listed? That's because it basically shows failure on our part. It would show that we allowed the species to get to such an imperiled state that it had to be federally listed. That is not a success story.
There are several reasons why we think a federal listing for the gopher tortoise would be detrimental for the species. The main reason is that the species occurs on a lot of private land. And to properly conserve and recover the species, we have to have the cooperation of private landowners. We cannot buy every piece of property that gopher tortoises occur on; it's impossible, and we don't want to own that much land. And gopher tortoise is a species that requires active management. This involves keeping the canopy from closing due to encroaching hardwoods or invasive species. This would not have been a problem for their habitat prior to urbanization because fire would have naturally kept these encroaching hardwoods and invasive plant species out and the canopy open. But now we have to manage that by using herbicides or mechanically removing them. All this requires cooperation from private landowners to access their property. The private landowners are more fearful of the feds then they are of us at GA DNR. So we're really concerned that we are going to face a brick wall from the private landowners if that species gets federally listed. Nobody's going to want the feds to know that they've got a federal endangered species living on their property. They might even make efforts to get rid of the federally listed species from their land.
When the red-cockaded woodpecker was federally listed, it was known that they only make their roosting cavities in old-growth longleaf that get redheart rot fungus. It’s a natural thing that causes the tree to hollow out in the middle while the tree is still able to stay alive. The trees have to be at least about 80 years before this develops so some landowners started cutting down the longleaf pine trees to prevent them from getting redheart rot in an effort to prevent the red cockaded woodpeckers from nesting on their properties. So we don't want landowners to stop beneficial management or destroy habitat because of fear of the species becoming a federally listed species.
On the other hand, for some species a federal listing is helpful. For example, the main threat the alligator snapping turtle is facing is that they are over collected, direct take. They are collected for food and the pet trade, which caused populations to crash. A protected species listing for that species can clearly help because once it is federally listed, it’s no longer legal to take them from their natural environment.
|
..."The gopher tortoise burrows support over 350 species."... |
Ayesha: In any ecosystem there is interconnectedness between species. Can we pick out a few species, which share the same range and habitat with the gopher tortoise and focus on those?
John: Oh yeah, absolutely. The gopher tortoise is often referred to as a keystone species in the sandhill ecosystem because it creates a burrow which can be 30-40 feet long and 10 feet straight down deep in the ground. By design, these burrows maintain constant temperature and humidity that allows a lot of other animals to escape |
temperature extremes. It's a fire-adapted community, so the burrows offer an escape from naturally occurring fires and from predators. The gopher tortoise burrows support over 350 species. Some of these species are highly dependent on the gopher tortoise burrows while others have varying degree of dependency. Of those that I work with, probably the two most dependent ones are the gopher frog and the eastern indigo snake.
The gopher frog gets its name because they spend their non-breeding part of their lives mostly in the gopher tortoise burrows. While they can use stump holes or burrows made by certain rodents, they favor gopher tortoise burrows. On the other hand, the eastern indigo snake, which is a federally listed species, shelters in the gopher tortoise burrows for its entire breeding season. The eastern indigo only occurs naturally in Georgia and Florida. In southern Florida they don't have as strong of a dependency on burrows as Georgia because it doesn't get as cold there. But they're highly dependent on gopher tortoise burrows in Georgia.
The gopher frog gets its name because they spend their non-breeding part of their lives mostly in the gopher tortoise burrows. While they can use stump holes or burrows made by certain rodents, they favor gopher tortoise burrows. On the other hand, the eastern indigo snake, which is a federally listed species, shelters in the gopher tortoise burrows for its entire breeding season. The eastern indigo only occurs naturally in Georgia and Florida. In southern Florida they don't have as strong of a dependency on burrows as Georgia because it doesn't get as cold there. But they're highly dependent on gopher tortoise burrows in Georgia.
Gopher Tortoise Eastern Indigo Snake Gopher Frog
Photo Credit: Matt Moore Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo Credit:Dirk Stevenson
Photos used with permission. Please click on the image to enlarge.
Photo Credit: Matt Moore Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo Credit:Dirk Stevenson
Photos used with permission. Please click on the image to enlarge.
Ayesha: What is a ‘keystone species'?
John: A keystone species is a species whose existence is critical to the existence of other species. Without that particular species, other species would be negatively impacted.
Ayesha: So their survival is dependent on the keystone species?
John: Yes. In fact, there are even some plants that are dependent on the gopher tortoise. Gopher tortoises are one of the primary grazers in the sandhill ecosystem, and they eat lots of fruits from low growing plants and disperse their seeds. There is research done on certain plant species where seeds of a number of plants were fed to the gopher tortoise. Then seeds were collected from their droppings and planted. The seeds that had been scarified by the stomach acid of the gopher tortoise had significantly higher germination rates compared to the ones that did not pass through the gut of the gopher tortoise.
Historical Range and Habitat – Gopher Tortoise, Eastern Indigo Snake and Gopher Frog
Ayesha: Coming back to the species that share the sandhill ecosystem, how about we focus on these three: gopher tortoise, gopher frog, and the eastern indigo snake. Given that they use the gopher tortoise burrow, I'm assuming they all have the same range.
John: The indigo snake range used to extend to southern Alabama and a little bit into Mississippi. But the majority of its range has always been southern Georgia and most of Florida all the way down to the Keys. Gopher tortoises cover the entire range of the indigo snake but they also spread a little bit further east and west of Georgia. Gopher frogs are pretty much entirely within the range of the gopher tortoise except in South Carolina and southern North Carolina where they tend to use stump holes as their primary refugia. And it is in these areas that they are most imperiled.
Stump holes are formed when really old trees burn. When the trees get very old and die, the resin from theses trees flows down into the stumps and they become saturated with it and become flammable. So when a fire comes through it not only burns the stump but also the roots that grow 20-30 feet down into the ground. As the fire goes through them, it leaves a cavity where the root channels were. But in the last several decades, stumps are being removed for the lighter wood/kindling industry by timber companies. Also, trees are not being allowed to grow old enough to get to that stage. Most of the pine tree farms are cultivated to meet the demand for paper, and those trees are typically only grown to about 15 years of age. They are cut and re-planted so they do not create stumps that are useful for the gopher frogs. Hence, the gopher frogs in that part of the range are really limited in habitat.
Ayesha: The range you are describing for these three species is what historically was the range of the longleaf pine forest?
John: Yes, it is.
Ayesha: Our experiences shape our perceptions. And depending on these experiences we each have a different perception of what a forest looks like. For example, when I think of a forest, I think of a rainforest which is dark, with a lot of vegetation, and of course lots of rain. But the longleaf pine forest is a very different forest. And instead of rain, there is another very important element that makes it so unique. Can you tell us what that is? And if you could also touch upon what the habitat looks like, the vegetation, and the light permeability?
John: Everyone uses the term ‘longleaf pine forest’ but it's probably a misnomer; it should really be called ‘longleaf pine woodland’. The difference between woodland and a forest is that a forest typically has a higher percentage of trees and a woodland has more sparse coverage of trees. Some folks characterize the longleaf pine forest ecosystem as grassland with scattered trees. And that's one important component of the longleaf pine system.
Actually the species that live in this habitat are not so dependent on the longleaf pine itself, but the groundcover, the grasses, and the forbs that really start the productivity of the ecosystem. But the longleaf pine helps facilitate that because its needles are highly resinous making it vital for that ecosystem. Another plant that is important for the longleaf ecosystem is wiregrass. It is typically in most areas, although it's not throughout the longleaf range. It’s perhaps the most important herbaceous ground cover plant. It creates clumps and those clumps serve as a substrate for the pine needles to fall down onto without reaching bare soil. This allows the pine needles to stay nice and dry. And the wiregrass itself has really good fuel in them and so it creates the fuel to carry the fire. Without the trees there to provide that needle drop and the wiregrass to carry the fire, there wouldn't be a longleaf pine forest. The longleaf pine forest is a fire forest. That is another critical aspect of the longleaf pine forest.
John: A keystone species is a species whose existence is critical to the existence of other species. Without that particular species, other species would be negatively impacted.
Ayesha: So their survival is dependent on the keystone species?
John: Yes. In fact, there are even some plants that are dependent on the gopher tortoise. Gopher tortoises are one of the primary grazers in the sandhill ecosystem, and they eat lots of fruits from low growing plants and disperse their seeds. There is research done on certain plant species where seeds of a number of plants were fed to the gopher tortoise. Then seeds were collected from their droppings and planted. The seeds that had been scarified by the stomach acid of the gopher tortoise had significantly higher germination rates compared to the ones that did not pass through the gut of the gopher tortoise.
Historical Range and Habitat – Gopher Tortoise, Eastern Indigo Snake and Gopher Frog
Ayesha: Coming back to the species that share the sandhill ecosystem, how about we focus on these three: gopher tortoise, gopher frog, and the eastern indigo snake. Given that they use the gopher tortoise burrow, I'm assuming they all have the same range.
John: The indigo snake range used to extend to southern Alabama and a little bit into Mississippi. But the majority of its range has always been southern Georgia and most of Florida all the way down to the Keys. Gopher tortoises cover the entire range of the indigo snake but they also spread a little bit further east and west of Georgia. Gopher frogs are pretty much entirely within the range of the gopher tortoise except in South Carolina and southern North Carolina where they tend to use stump holes as their primary refugia. And it is in these areas that they are most imperiled.
Stump holes are formed when really old trees burn. When the trees get very old and die, the resin from theses trees flows down into the stumps and they become saturated with it and become flammable. So when a fire comes through it not only burns the stump but also the roots that grow 20-30 feet down into the ground. As the fire goes through them, it leaves a cavity where the root channels were. But in the last several decades, stumps are being removed for the lighter wood/kindling industry by timber companies. Also, trees are not being allowed to grow old enough to get to that stage. Most of the pine tree farms are cultivated to meet the demand for paper, and those trees are typically only grown to about 15 years of age. They are cut and re-planted so they do not create stumps that are useful for the gopher frogs. Hence, the gopher frogs in that part of the range are really limited in habitat.
Ayesha: The range you are describing for these three species is what historically was the range of the longleaf pine forest?
John: Yes, it is.
Ayesha: Our experiences shape our perceptions. And depending on these experiences we each have a different perception of what a forest looks like. For example, when I think of a forest, I think of a rainforest which is dark, with a lot of vegetation, and of course lots of rain. But the longleaf pine forest is a very different forest. And instead of rain, there is another very important element that makes it so unique. Can you tell us what that is? And if you could also touch upon what the habitat looks like, the vegetation, and the light permeability?
John: Everyone uses the term ‘longleaf pine forest’ but it's probably a misnomer; it should really be called ‘longleaf pine woodland’. The difference between woodland and a forest is that a forest typically has a higher percentage of trees and a woodland has more sparse coverage of trees. Some folks characterize the longleaf pine forest ecosystem as grassland with scattered trees. And that's one important component of the longleaf pine system.
Actually the species that live in this habitat are not so dependent on the longleaf pine itself, but the groundcover, the grasses, and the forbs that really start the productivity of the ecosystem. But the longleaf pine helps facilitate that because its needles are highly resinous making it vital for that ecosystem. Another plant that is important for the longleaf ecosystem is wiregrass. It is typically in most areas, although it's not throughout the longleaf range. It’s perhaps the most important herbaceous ground cover plant. It creates clumps and those clumps serve as a substrate for the pine needles to fall down onto without reaching bare soil. This allows the pine needles to stay nice and dry. And the wiregrass itself has really good fuel in them and so it creates the fuel to carry the fire. Without the trees there to provide that needle drop and the wiregrass to carry the fire, there wouldn't be a longleaf pine forest. The longleaf pine forest is a fire forest. That is another critical aspect of the longleaf pine forest.
Longleaf Pine Forest - Summer Longleaf Pine Forest - Winter "...The longleaf pine forest is a fire forest..."
Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo Credit: Matt Moore Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson
Photos used with permission. Please click on the image to enlarge.
Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo Credit: Matt Moore Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson
Photos used with permission. Please click on the image to enlarge.
|
Ayesha: Why is fire so important to this ecosystem?
John: There are a couple of reasons for that. As I mentioned, a lot of species that live in this ecosystem rely on the low growing ground cover, grasses, and forbs. And in order to have the ground cover in these grasslands, we need fire. Why? Because fire controls and keeps the hardwoods from invading. By reducing hardwoods and keeping it open, a lot more sunlight reaches the ground which helps these low-growing plants photosynthesize and flourish. If they had a really thick canopy the low growing ground cover will not grow. Secondly, because the longleaf pine ecosystem is a fire-adapted community, a lot of the plants will not flower ’til after the fire. For example, the wiregrass will flower only if the fire comes through during the growing season. A lot of land managers light a fire in a non-growing season because it is safer to manage these fires, but that doesn't stimulate flowering in the wiregrass. It has to be fire in the growing season to stimulate flowering. And there are other plant species like that which would disappear without fire. . |
..."because the longleaf pine ecosystem is a fire-adapted community, a lot of the plants will not flower ’til after the fire"... |
|
"... historically the highest number of lightning strikes in the United States occur in Florida and in southern Georgia. And it is in those areas that you get fire-dependent habitats, because the species would have had to evolve with that, they always had fire in them...." |
Ayesha: When we hear the term forest fire most of us almost immediately think of the catastrophic California forest fires. Can you tell us how the longleaf forest fires are different and how the species living in this ecosystem have adapted to it?
John: The main difference between the two fires is that California wildfires usually start because of human causes, while those in the southeast are naturally occurring fires that get started because of lightning strikes. In fact, historically the highest number of lightning strikes in the United States occur in Florida and in southern Georgia. And it is in those areas that you get fire-dependent habitats, because the species would have had to evolve with that, they always had fire in them. These habitats were nice, open pine, with a lush layer of ground cover so the fires in such places are not very intensive or fast burning. They were really just low creeping fires that kind of moved slowly along the ground and maybe flame lengths no higher than about 1 or 2 feet. So most animals can get ahead of them and some can even go through them. For example, a rabbit could have probably just jumped over the flames. And then you have animals like the gopher tortoises that used to be a lot more widespread on the landscape so, with their burrows, you’ve got these perfect little places to flee from fire. Other animals, like the pocket gopher, which is a mammal also in steep decline in the sandhill ecosystem, creates a whole tunnel network and sandy mounds that are totally inorganic and thus don’t carry fire. So other animals would dive down into those sand mounds and get down into those tunnels. |
Longleaf pine forest during a prescribed burn. The same area after the fire. The same area flourishing a few months later
Photo credit: Shan Cammack Photo credit: Shan Cammack Photo credit: Shan Cammack
Photos used with permission. Please click on the image to enlarge
Photo credit: Shan Cammack Photo credit: Shan Cammack Photo credit: Shan Cammack
Photos used with permission. Please click on the image to enlarge
California fires are catastrophic fires and we have occasionally had some catastrophic fires in the southeast too. We had the fire in Okefenokee and in the surrounding areas which burned for months. What has changed in the last several decades and why the longleaf forest fires have become more catastrophic now then they were historically is that the habitats have become so fuel-loaded from all these encroaching woody plants. Woody plants are what creates intense fires.
Historically, fires were not put out but would burn naturally on a regular basis with much less intensity and eventually die out on their own. This natural phenomena would keep a check on woody plants. But now we have roads that stop the fires or fires are put out in order to protect homes and buildings.
The Nature Conservancy - How Fire Can Restore a Forest - Watch time lapse video (30 seconds) of how the forest responds a couple of months after a prescribed burn (aka controlled burn).
Gopher Tortoise
Ayesha: As I'm listening to you talk about this ecosystem, I am fascinated by the interdependencies the species have come to rely on. It is incredible! Going back to the gopher tortoise, what is their average lifespan?
John: We believe the tortoises can live to be over 100. We don't know how much longer than that, but living 80 years is not considered outrageous; it's possibly average longevity. They don't have any natural predators as adults, so they have a pretty good chance of living a long time. The only thing that can keep them from achieving old age is disease or current anthropogenic threats. The oldest one on record is 96 years old and he is still alive. He stays at a nature center in Nova Scotia, Canada and is known as ‘Nova Scotia Gus’ and he has his own Facebook page.
Historically, fires were not put out but would burn naturally on a regular basis with much less intensity and eventually die out on their own. This natural phenomena would keep a check on woody plants. But now we have roads that stop the fires or fires are put out in order to protect homes and buildings.
The Nature Conservancy - How Fire Can Restore a Forest - Watch time lapse video (30 seconds) of how the forest responds a couple of months after a prescribed burn (aka controlled burn).
Gopher Tortoise
Ayesha: As I'm listening to you talk about this ecosystem, I am fascinated by the interdependencies the species have come to rely on. It is incredible! Going back to the gopher tortoise, what is their average lifespan?
John: We believe the tortoises can live to be over 100. We don't know how much longer than that, but living 80 years is not considered outrageous; it's possibly average longevity. They don't have any natural predators as adults, so they have a pretty good chance of living a long time. The only thing that can keep them from achieving old age is disease or current anthropogenic threats. The oldest one on record is 96 years old and he is still alive. He stays at a nature center in Nova Scotia, Canada and is known as ‘Nova Scotia Gus’ and he has his own Facebook page.
Gopher tortoise Gopher tortoise habitat Gopher tortoise burrow entrance.
Photo Credit: Matt Moore Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson
Photos used with permission. Please click on the image to enlarge.
Photo Credit: Matt Moore Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson
Photos used with permission. Please click on the image to enlarge.
Ayesha: How can you tell the age of a tortoise?
John: Basically, the same way you would age a tree by counting the tree rings. The tortoise has a top shell called the carapace and a bottom shell called the plastron. Their scutes, the different plates on their carapace go through annual growth spurts which get squared rings. So you can count those. But at some point there are so many rings that become so tight that it's really hard to count them or separate each one out. Plus they live in a burrow that is basically like sandpaper, and every time they go in and out of their burrow, it polishes their shell. So it obscures it. You can reliably age a tortoise up to 10 or 12 years, and after that, it gets harder and harder to the point that it becomes impossible. So then the only way you can age them is if you know what year they were born and follow them through their life.
Ayesha: Is there a way to differentiate a male tortoise from a female?
John: In Georgia, females reach sexual maturity when they are 17 to 18 years old and males around 12 to 15. The most obvious physical characteristic in males is that their plastron, the lower part of their shell, is concave which helps facilitate mounting on a domed female. The females don't need that, so they are just flat on the bottom. That is the easiest way to differentiate the sexes. Males also have elongated gular scutes. These are the scutes on the plastron, that extends underneath the throat which they use in combat with other males to flip them while battling for dominance for a female. Females don't need those, so theirs are not elongated.
Ayesha: What is their primary diet?
John: The gopher tortoise is almost strictly herbivorous. They obviously can't reach very high up so they primarily eat low growing herbaceous plants. They’ll eat both leaves and fruits of grasses and other herbaceous plants. They are known occasionally to feed on carrion. They'll find a dead animal and start chewing on them, but they're not a predator by any means. There's a lot of speculation that female tortoises seek carrion prior to nesting, probably for calcium. Other than that, they're pretty much herbivores. They get all their water from what they eat. They might occasionally drink water, but they don’t need to on a regular basis.
Ayesha: You mentioned nesting. So where do they nest? Do they nest in their burrows?
John: Most often when you see a gopher tortoise burrow, you will see a half moon-shaped entrance, which corresponds to the cross-section of the tortoise. The burrows could be 20-30 feet deep and to create those burrows they have to dig all that sand out from there. As a result of that they just kick it out in front of the burrow and create what we call a ‘sandy apron,’ and the eggs are laid right there at the entrance of the burrow. They always build their burrows in sunny spots, so it gets a ton of sun and incubates the nest. Having the nest at the entrance also allows the female to protect the nest. If something comes to dig out the eggs, they'll charge out and scare things away.
Occasionally they go away from their burrow to a sandy road. It seems like easy, good sand to dig in, but it's not a safe place for them to have their nest. In other words, they're not restricted to just the sandy apron, but that's their primary place to lay eggs.
Ayesha: Are the eggs covered in sand? How far deep are the eggs from the surface?
John: Yes, they're covered with sand; you can't see them at all. Their eggs are usually about 5 inches below the surface, not surprisingly, at a depth nearly equal to the length of the female’s hind legs. The hind feet are shaped like elephant feet and designed for scooping out a flask-shaped cavity. Front legs are more flattened, like a shovel.
Ayesha: Unlike birds, they don’t sit on their eggs; the sun incubates the eggs. And the temperature determines the sex of the baby turtles, is that correct?
John: Yes, not all tortoises but most tortoise, and all crocodilians for that matter, have what is known as temperature-dependent sex determination. But for most other species in the animal kingdom, the sex is genetically determined. So with turtles the typical pattern is cooler temperature creates males and warmer temperatures create females. So we call them hot mamas and cool papas! It's the exact opposite for crocodilians.
Ayesha: For the last few years, the weather patterns have been shifting. And the climate scientists are consistently reporting not only record high temperatures but also longer summers. So if the sex of the gopher tortoise is dependent on the temperature, then at some point we're going to have a skewed sex ratio.
John: Yes, if they're not able to adapt, then it's a real concern. We are going to have way too many female tortoises compared to males. We have not really been able to look at that closely for the tortoises, but our sea turtles folks are definitely looking at that. Sea turtles also have temperature-dependent sex determination.
Sea turtles are federally listed, and therefore, there is a lot more research, funding, and manpower dedicated to their conservation. We have people working on every island on the Georgia coast. The sea turtle nests are monitored every year. We've actually begun putting temperature loggers in the nests and evaluating sex ratios through some genetic means. It's too preliminary to say, but everyone expects that we are going to see a sex ratio skewed towards females. And that cannot help.
Ayesha: And over time, that, in itself, would become a cause for extinction.
John: Right. Early on, it may give them a little boost because they're typically considered the more important sex as they are the ones creating the nest and laying the eggs. But eventually, it will get to a point where there are not going to be enough males to breed. If the trend continues, it is going to be disadvantageous for the species in the long run.
Ayesha: What are some of the main threats for gopher tortoises?
John: Everything related to habitat loss is a threat to them. Fragmentation of the habitat because of development or roads can cause a lot of problems and is a threat. Tortoises are not good at crossing roadways. When you get really urban areas or really high traffic roads, then that breaks up the population. That affects the genetic transfer and their ability to find a mate.
If they don't have enough herbaceous vegetation because fire has been taken out of the landscape and the canopy has gotten too thick, that's a threat.
Sea level rise because of climate change is also a serious concern for the gopher tortoise. In Florida, there are gopher tortoise populations that use the sand dunes right behind the beaches. Almost everywhere in Florida, there is a parallel busy highway near the coast, so as the sea level rises, the tortoises will have to keep migrating inwards. But eventually they're going to run out of space and back up to really busy highways or urban developments. They're going to lose habitat from sea level rise, for sure.
There are some diseases that have cropped up in recent time, and we're really not sure how natural these diseases were or are. But we have definitely recorded some population crashes due to disease. It is natural for animals to have disease and you have die offs in all animal and plant species. But because the tortoise populations have become so reduced, when disease comes through, these events are a lot more catastrophic to the species than it used to be.
One local threat that we think that has reduced their population quite a bit is the practice of introducing gasoline into gopher tortoises burrows to drive rattlesnakes out. These events used to be more widespread and were called ‘rattlesnake roundups’. People would go out into the woods in the winter when rattlesnakes were in gopher tortoise burrows and blow gasoline fumes to the bottom of the burrows. The fumes forces the snakes to come out and they collect them. Tortoise burrows are single-entrance burrows, and there is no draft of air going through. So the gasoline fumes just stay down there for a long time. So it's certainly fatal to the inhabitants that don't get out. This practice is still used, but not to the extent that it used to be.
Another threat to the gopher tortoise is from over-collection for food. We know that several significant populations crashed due to human collection for food especially during the depression. Money was scarce and gopher tortoises are slow and easy to catch. They apparently taste pretty good and they were often referred to as ‘Hoover chickens’.
Ayesha: Do we have a rough estimate of the gopher tortoise population in Georgia? Is the number in the hundreds or thousands?
John: In Georgia, it is definitely in the thousands. We don’t have a total number because we don't have access to all the private properties that they occur on. But we have done what is known as ‘line transect distance sampling’ which is a way of estimating population size. It's a reliable technique and being used by all the states right now. We've done line transect distance sampling on about 80 properties in Georgia, so we have an estimated population on those. And by collaborating through a Candidate Conservation Agreement (CCA) with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), other state and federal agencies, and industries that have tortoise responsibilities, we've come up with a consensus view that a minimum viable population (MVP) size for the tortoises to be able to overcome catastrophic or stochastic events must be equal or greater than 250 adults, at a density of at least 0.4 tortoises per hectare. There's a lot of math and statistics that went into all of that, so we're kind of evaluating populations to make sure they meet that minimum viable population threshold. Our target is to have 65 of those strategically protected populations around the state. We are at 48 protected populations now. There are more populations of that size in the state, but a lot of them are on private land where they have no long-term protection.
Ayesha: So the ideal number is 65 populations with a minimum viable population of the 250 adults per population?
John: Yes, that is our minimum target for Georgia and they will be on permanently protected properties which will strategically represent different parts of the state. So they are not all in one place and have that genetic diversity which is important for resilience in the population.
Ayesha: Given that there are so many species sharing the gopher tortoise burrow, are they not in each other's way?
John: No, not really. In the winter the gopher tortoises are dormant and always at the very far end of the burrow. When they're active, they're coming in and out of their burrow several times a day. Most animals probably just don't want to be trampled by a tortoise several times a day or pushed out of where they want to be. So the use of gopher tortoise burrows is much greater as a whole during winters when the tortoises are not creating a problem for them, and they're not creating a problem for the tortoise. But no, they’re not packed up with a bunch of animals. We have burrow cameras that you can snake down and see what's in there. Often, you have a gopher tortoise and a gopher frog or tortoise and an indigo snake. Rarely do you have multiple species together other than invertebrates. You may have a few crickets and spiders, a frog or a mouse. But they're just not loaded with a ton of species at one time.
Ayesha: Do all these animals use gopher tortoise burrows for protection from the cold?
John: Yes, they use tortoise burrows for protection from temperature extremes, predators, and fires.
John: Basically, the same way you would age a tree by counting the tree rings. The tortoise has a top shell called the carapace and a bottom shell called the plastron. Their scutes, the different plates on their carapace go through annual growth spurts which get squared rings. So you can count those. But at some point there are so many rings that become so tight that it's really hard to count them or separate each one out. Plus they live in a burrow that is basically like sandpaper, and every time they go in and out of their burrow, it polishes their shell. So it obscures it. You can reliably age a tortoise up to 10 or 12 years, and after that, it gets harder and harder to the point that it becomes impossible. So then the only way you can age them is if you know what year they were born and follow them through their life.
Ayesha: Is there a way to differentiate a male tortoise from a female?
John: In Georgia, females reach sexual maturity when they are 17 to 18 years old and males around 12 to 15. The most obvious physical characteristic in males is that their plastron, the lower part of their shell, is concave which helps facilitate mounting on a domed female. The females don't need that, so they are just flat on the bottom. That is the easiest way to differentiate the sexes. Males also have elongated gular scutes. These are the scutes on the plastron, that extends underneath the throat which they use in combat with other males to flip them while battling for dominance for a female. Females don't need those, so theirs are not elongated.
Ayesha: What is their primary diet?
John: The gopher tortoise is almost strictly herbivorous. They obviously can't reach very high up so they primarily eat low growing herbaceous plants. They’ll eat both leaves and fruits of grasses and other herbaceous plants. They are known occasionally to feed on carrion. They'll find a dead animal and start chewing on them, but they're not a predator by any means. There's a lot of speculation that female tortoises seek carrion prior to nesting, probably for calcium. Other than that, they're pretty much herbivores. They get all their water from what they eat. They might occasionally drink water, but they don’t need to on a regular basis.
Ayesha: You mentioned nesting. So where do they nest? Do they nest in their burrows?
John: Most often when you see a gopher tortoise burrow, you will see a half moon-shaped entrance, which corresponds to the cross-section of the tortoise. The burrows could be 20-30 feet deep and to create those burrows they have to dig all that sand out from there. As a result of that they just kick it out in front of the burrow and create what we call a ‘sandy apron,’ and the eggs are laid right there at the entrance of the burrow. They always build their burrows in sunny spots, so it gets a ton of sun and incubates the nest. Having the nest at the entrance also allows the female to protect the nest. If something comes to dig out the eggs, they'll charge out and scare things away.
Occasionally they go away from their burrow to a sandy road. It seems like easy, good sand to dig in, but it's not a safe place for them to have their nest. In other words, they're not restricted to just the sandy apron, but that's their primary place to lay eggs.
Ayesha: Are the eggs covered in sand? How far deep are the eggs from the surface?
John: Yes, they're covered with sand; you can't see them at all. Their eggs are usually about 5 inches below the surface, not surprisingly, at a depth nearly equal to the length of the female’s hind legs. The hind feet are shaped like elephant feet and designed for scooping out a flask-shaped cavity. Front legs are more flattened, like a shovel.
Ayesha: Unlike birds, they don’t sit on their eggs; the sun incubates the eggs. And the temperature determines the sex of the baby turtles, is that correct?
John: Yes, not all tortoises but most tortoise, and all crocodilians for that matter, have what is known as temperature-dependent sex determination. But for most other species in the animal kingdom, the sex is genetically determined. So with turtles the typical pattern is cooler temperature creates males and warmer temperatures create females. So we call them hot mamas and cool papas! It's the exact opposite for crocodilians.
Ayesha: For the last few years, the weather patterns have been shifting. And the climate scientists are consistently reporting not only record high temperatures but also longer summers. So if the sex of the gopher tortoise is dependent on the temperature, then at some point we're going to have a skewed sex ratio.
John: Yes, if they're not able to adapt, then it's a real concern. We are going to have way too many female tortoises compared to males. We have not really been able to look at that closely for the tortoises, but our sea turtles folks are definitely looking at that. Sea turtles also have temperature-dependent sex determination.
Sea turtles are federally listed, and therefore, there is a lot more research, funding, and manpower dedicated to their conservation. We have people working on every island on the Georgia coast. The sea turtle nests are monitored every year. We've actually begun putting temperature loggers in the nests and evaluating sex ratios through some genetic means. It's too preliminary to say, but everyone expects that we are going to see a sex ratio skewed towards females. And that cannot help.
Ayesha: And over time, that, in itself, would become a cause for extinction.
John: Right. Early on, it may give them a little boost because they're typically considered the more important sex as they are the ones creating the nest and laying the eggs. But eventually, it will get to a point where there are not going to be enough males to breed. If the trend continues, it is going to be disadvantageous for the species in the long run.
Ayesha: What are some of the main threats for gopher tortoises?
John: Everything related to habitat loss is a threat to them. Fragmentation of the habitat because of development or roads can cause a lot of problems and is a threat. Tortoises are not good at crossing roadways. When you get really urban areas or really high traffic roads, then that breaks up the population. That affects the genetic transfer and their ability to find a mate.
If they don't have enough herbaceous vegetation because fire has been taken out of the landscape and the canopy has gotten too thick, that's a threat.
Sea level rise because of climate change is also a serious concern for the gopher tortoise. In Florida, there are gopher tortoise populations that use the sand dunes right behind the beaches. Almost everywhere in Florida, there is a parallel busy highway near the coast, so as the sea level rises, the tortoises will have to keep migrating inwards. But eventually they're going to run out of space and back up to really busy highways or urban developments. They're going to lose habitat from sea level rise, for sure.
There are some diseases that have cropped up in recent time, and we're really not sure how natural these diseases were or are. But we have definitely recorded some population crashes due to disease. It is natural for animals to have disease and you have die offs in all animal and plant species. But because the tortoise populations have become so reduced, when disease comes through, these events are a lot more catastrophic to the species than it used to be.
One local threat that we think that has reduced their population quite a bit is the practice of introducing gasoline into gopher tortoises burrows to drive rattlesnakes out. These events used to be more widespread and were called ‘rattlesnake roundups’. People would go out into the woods in the winter when rattlesnakes were in gopher tortoise burrows and blow gasoline fumes to the bottom of the burrows. The fumes forces the snakes to come out and they collect them. Tortoise burrows are single-entrance burrows, and there is no draft of air going through. So the gasoline fumes just stay down there for a long time. So it's certainly fatal to the inhabitants that don't get out. This practice is still used, but not to the extent that it used to be.
Another threat to the gopher tortoise is from over-collection for food. We know that several significant populations crashed due to human collection for food especially during the depression. Money was scarce and gopher tortoises are slow and easy to catch. They apparently taste pretty good and they were often referred to as ‘Hoover chickens’.
Ayesha: Do we have a rough estimate of the gopher tortoise population in Georgia? Is the number in the hundreds or thousands?
John: In Georgia, it is definitely in the thousands. We don’t have a total number because we don't have access to all the private properties that they occur on. But we have done what is known as ‘line transect distance sampling’ which is a way of estimating population size. It's a reliable technique and being used by all the states right now. We've done line transect distance sampling on about 80 properties in Georgia, so we have an estimated population on those. And by collaborating through a Candidate Conservation Agreement (CCA) with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), other state and federal agencies, and industries that have tortoise responsibilities, we've come up with a consensus view that a minimum viable population (MVP) size for the tortoises to be able to overcome catastrophic or stochastic events must be equal or greater than 250 adults, at a density of at least 0.4 tortoises per hectare. There's a lot of math and statistics that went into all of that, so we're kind of evaluating populations to make sure they meet that minimum viable population threshold. Our target is to have 65 of those strategically protected populations around the state. We are at 48 protected populations now. There are more populations of that size in the state, but a lot of them are on private land where they have no long-term protection.
Ayesha: So the ideal number is 65 populations with a minimum viable population of the 250 adults per population?
John: Yes, that is our minimum target for Georgia and they will be on permanently protected properties which will strategically represent different parts of the state. So they are not all in one place and have that genetic diversity which is important for resilience in the population.
Ayesha: Given that there are so many species sharing the gopher tortoise burrow, are they not in each other's way?
John: No, not really. In the winter the gopher tortoises are dormant and always at the very far end of the burrow. When they're active, they're coming in and out of their burrow several times a day. Most animals probably just don't want to be trampled by a tortoise several times a day or pushed out of where they want to be. So the use of gopher tortoise burrows is much greater as a whole during winters when the tortoises are not creating a problem for them, and they're not creating a problem for the tortoise. But no, they’re not packed up with a bunch of animals. We have burrow cameras that you can snake down and see what's in there. Often, you have a gopher tortoise and a gopher frog or tortoise and an indigo snake. Rarely do you have multiple species together other than invertebrates. You may have a few crickets and spiders, a frog or a mouse. But they're just not loaded with a ton of species at one time.
Ayesha: Do all these animals use gopher tortoise burrows for protection from the cold?
John: Yes, they use tortoise burrows for protection from temperature extremes, predators, and fires.
Eastern Indigo Snake
Ayesha: Snakes usually get a bad rap because of their venomous members. But the indigo snake is not venomous. In fact, it is a pretty cool snake. Could you give us an overview of the indigo snake?
John: They are the largest snakes we have in North America. They can get about 8 1/2 feet long and are very heavy-bodied. For most of the year, indigo snakes are rarely in gopher tortoise habitat. They're actively foraging and mostly found in wetland areas or river floodplains. They live in really dense habitat and it's very hard to find them, but those are the areas where their prey is abundant. Males may have home ranges in excess of 5000 acres. They travel great distances, except during the winter which is breeding season. During that period, they are concentrated in the sandhill areas with the gopher tortoise. They are highly reliant on gopher tortoise burrows for shelter and the burrows also allow them to easily find mates because they're all up there together. Males move from burrow to burrow to find females. They go through a humongous home range during their non-breeding season to being concentrated in a very small area in winter.
We've done radio telemetry on them which has shown that, not only do they typically come back to the same sandhill every winter, but they often come back to the exact same burrow. We had one animal at Fort Stewart that moved 13 miles in a year and came straight back to the same place.
Ayesha: Snakes usually get a bad rap because of their venomous members. But the indigo snake is not venomous. In fact, it is a pretty cool snake. Could you give us an overview of the indigo snake?
John: They are the largest snakes we have in North America. They can get about 8 1/2 feet long and are very heavy-bodied. For most of the year, indigo snakes are rarely in gopher tortoise habitat. They're actively foraging and mostly found in wetland areas or river floodplains. They live in really dense habitat and it's very hard to find them, but those are the areas where their prey is abundant. Males may have home ranges in excess of 5000 acres. They travel great distances, except during the winter which is breeding season. During that period, they are concentrated in the sandhill areas with the gopher tortoise. They are highly reliant on gopher tortoise burrows for shelter and the burrows also allow them to easily find mates because they're all up there together. Males move from burrow to burrow to find females. They go through a humongous home range during their non-breeding season to being concentrated in a very small area in winter.
We've done radio telemetry on them which has shown that, not only do they typically come back to the same sandhill every winter, but they often come back to the exact same burrow. We had one animal at Fort Stewart that moved 13 miles in a year and came straight back to the same place.
Eastern indigo snake. Eastern indigo snake habitat Indigo snake outside gopher tortoise burrow.
Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson
Photos used with permission. Please click on the image to enlarge.
Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson
Photos used with permission. Please click on the image to enlarge.
Ayesha: When you say ‘home range’ is that something they're defending?
John: No, they're not really defending it. That's really the range they need to forage and get shelter. The only aggressive behavior they show is when they combat with other males for rights to breed with a female, but they really don't defend territories.
Ayesha: You had mentioned that the indigo snake is federally listed. Are they listed as threatened or endangered?
John: They are listed as federally threatened, which makes them one step below the category of most imperiled. Federally endangered is the most imperiled. They've been listed since 1973.
Ayesha: That is when the Endangered Species Act went into effect.
John: Yes, they were among the first animals to be listed in Georgia.
Ayesha: What are some of their threats?
John: Loss of habitat and the decline of the gopher tortoise are both threats. One of the biggest threats to the indigo snake is roads. They are highly susceptible to becoming roadkill. Good populations of indigo snakes are found in pretty remote areas that either don't have many roads or don't have high traffic. They have a very large home range and they invariably have to cross roads, which is a real serious limiting factor for them. At the time they were federally listed, there was a lot of concern regarding over collection for the pet trade. They're very big beautiful snakes and are very docile, so they were highly sought after in the pet trade. That has subsided because it's now illegal to collect them from the wild since they are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Collection for pet trade has also gone down, because the feds have allowed captive breeding to supply to folks who want to keep the snake as pets. And finally, the gassing of the gopher tortoises’ burrows for ‘rattlesnake roundups’ that I mentioned before has also had a huge impact in decimating their populations.
Ayesha: So what is the snake’s recovery looking like?
John: Over the landscape there are certainly less populations than there used to be and those are becoming less every year. But there have been significant efforts to acquire and protect important pieces of property so we can help ensure their survival. I don't think we're ever going to be able to bring indigo snakes back on the landscape that they've been lost from unless we get rid of people, roads, and all the other threats that impact them. The other option is to build underpasses for all the busy roads within their habitat, but that is not going to happen. Right now, our strategy for indigo snakes is maintaining the best populations and protecting them.
Ayesha: I was reading that as part of their recovery, there was some effort to breed or raise them in captivity, confine them in outdoor pens, and then release them in the wild. Has that helped with the recovery?
John: There was some initial work done out of Auburn University in the ’70s and the ’80s. They raised quite a few indigo snakes in captivity and then released them into the wild. That was actually before they really understood that indigos, especially the young ones, don't really use the sandhill system much of the year but instead use the wetlands more. So they released all of them in the sandhill systems in the summer and, apparently, they eventually all died. None of those released populations that we know of persisted. But now that we know more about them and the snake’s biology, we are able to breed them and get them big before we release them.
They have begun a couple of efforts, one in the Conecuh National Forest in Alabama and one in the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve in Florida. Those are the only two places currently that any captive breeding release efforts are taking place. And almost all of that stock came from females collected in Georgia that we assisted with. We collected gravid females, females that were egg bearing. They were taken into the lab and allowed to deposit their eggs. Then we fattened up the females again and released them back where they had been found. Now these programs hold back enough offspring each season to maintain the breeding program, so they don't have to take females from the wild.
Reptiles have very strong homing abilities and site fidelity. If you move an adult reptile to a faraway place after they have acclimated to a place and have developed site fidelity, they are lost. They want to get back home and will spend their whole time trying to get back home. They will not find shelter or eat. This happens to almost all reptiles that have ever been studied. This is also true for gopher tortoises. So when we translocate gopher tortoises, we set up soft-release pens. We release them in pens and they are forced to stay there. They can't get out, but there is vegetation for them to survive on. We like to keep them for at least nine months, including a winter dormancy period. Then we pull the fences and they are free to disperse. They've tried to do that with indigo snakes thinking maybe that it will keep them concentrated and keep them from wandering. It was a good effort but they quickly learned that indigo snakes were too crafty. They’d get over fences, around fences so they're not releasing them in pens anymore; they're doing hard releases.
Ayesha: What is their diet, and because of what they eat, do they have a role in keeping other snake species in check?
John: I don't think they have a specific enough diet that you would see a real shift in the particular species’ abundance because of indigo snakes presence or absence. They eat just about anything that moves and sometimes they will eat things that are dead and don't move. They eat other snakes, venomous or non-venomous, rats, squirrels, rabbits, and birds. They will even eat baby tortoises.
Ayesha: They eat baby tortoises?
John: Yeah, it seems like a bad situation. They depend on the gopher tortoise burrow for shelter, but then they eat their babies. Thankfully though, the tortoises hatch in the August-September timeframe when the indigos are not on the sandhills yet. Tortoises are strictly sandhill species, and indigos are less likely to be in the sandhill at that time of the year the babies hatch. So the baby tortoises get a little bit of time to grow and harden their shell and make themselves a little bit less appetizing for the indigo. Juvenile gopher tortoises make their own burrows, and since they're really small, when they are born, their burrows are really small and most big indigo snakes cannot get down into those burrows.
Gopher Frogs
Ayesha: Do indigos eat gopher frogs too?
John: Yes, indigos will eat gopher frogs. They will eat just about anything that moves and they can swallow whole. And the gopher frogs are a perfectly good meal for them. Obviously, they do not specialize enough on gopher frogs to consider indigos a threat to them. Gopher frogs breed in the winter in the wetlands so a lot of them are away from the burrows during the time the indigos are in the burrows. And the burrows are in the sandhill ecosystem. So that offsets some of that, but there's definitely an overlap. Female gopher frogs breed and return to the sandhills, but the males will stay in the wetlands in the hopes of breeding with multiple females.
Ayesha: While every organism has a critical role in the ecosystem, some species like the gopher tortoise play a much larger role. Does the gopher frog have an important role like that in the ecosystem?
John: No, not really. They are just another frog in the ecosystem. But compared to the gopher tortoise and the indigo snake, the gopher frogs have added threats because of their life cycle. They have to breed, develop as growing eggs and develop as a larva in a wetland habitat. And they spend their remaining life cycle in the sandhill ecosystem. Hence they have a much higher reliance on two very different types of habitat. Not only that, but these two habitats have to be in close proximity to one another so they can get back and forth.
Their populations have significantly declined because of habitat loss, alteration, and fragmentation of habitat. Maybe they've got a beautiful wetland to breed in, but the upland are all destroyed and they're all now agricultural land. The wetlands they breed in are isolated water bodies devoid of fish. They can only breed in wetlands that don't have fish because fish will eat their vulnerable eggs and tadpoles. They don't have chemical defenses like some other frogs do. If you are a landowner of those wetlands, then you can legally drain or fill them. You can deepen them and stock them with fish. So those are some of the ways wetland habitat can be impacted. So you can have great upland habitat loaded with gopher tortoises but the wetlands have been impacted to the point there's no way for them to breed. It's a double whammy for them. Or you build a really busy road between the wetland and the sandhills, and they can't migrate between the two.
John: No, they're not really defending it. That's really the range they need to forage and get shelter. The only aggressive behavior they show is when they combat with other males for rights to breed with a female, but they really don't defend territories.
Ayesha: You had mentioned that the indigo snake is federally listed. Are they listed as threatened or endangered?
John: They are listed as federally threatened, which makes them one step below the category of most imperiled. Federally endangered is the most imperiled. They've been listed since 1973.
Ayesha: That is when the Endangered Species Act went into effect.
John: Yes, they were among the first animals to be listed in Georgia.
Ayesha: What are some of their threats?
John: Loss of habitat and the decline of the gopher tortoise are both threats. One of the biggest threats to the indigo snake is roads. They are highly susceptible to becoming roadkill. Good populations of indigo snakes are found in pretty remote areas that either don't have many roads or don't have high traffic. They have a very large home range and they invariably have to cross roads, which is a real serious limiting factor for them. At the time they were federally listed, there was a lot of concern regarding over collection for the pet trade. They're very big beautiful snakes and are very docile, so they were highly sought after in the pet trade. That has subsided because it's now illegal to collect them from the wild since they are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Collection for pet trade has also gone down, because the feds have allowed captive breeding to supply to folks who want to keep the snake as pets. And finally, the gassing of the gopher tortoises’ burrows for ‘rattlesnake roundups’ that I mentioned before has also had a huge impact in decimating their populations.
Ayesha: So what is the snake’s recovery looking like?
John: Over the landscape there are certainly less populations than there used to be and those are becoming less every year. But there have been significant efforts to acquire and protect important pieces of property so we can help ensure their survival. I don't think we're ever going to be able to bring indigo snakes back on the landscape that they've been lost from unless we get rid of people, roads, and all the other threats that impact them. The other option is to build underpasses for all the busy roads within their habitat, but that is not going to happen. Right now, our strategy for indigo snakes is maintaining the best populations and protecting them.
Ayesha: I was reading that as part of their recovery, there was some effort to breed or raise them in captivity, confine them in outdoor pens, and then release them in the wild. Has that helped with the recovery?
John: There was some initial work done out of Auburn University in the ’70s and the ’80s. They raised quite a few indigo snakes in captivity and then released them into the wild. That was actually before they really understood that indigos, especially the young ones, don't really use the sandhill system much of the year but instead use the wetlands more. So they released all of them in the sandhill systems in the summer and, apparently, they eventually all died. None of those released populations that we know of persisted. But now that we know more about them and the snake’s biology, we are able to breed them and get them big before we release them.
They have begun a couple of efforts, one in the Conecuh National Forest in Alabama and one in the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve in Florida. Those are the only two places currently that any captive breeding release efforts are taking place. And almost all of that stock came from females collected in Georgia that we assisted with. We collected gravid females, females that were egg bearing. They were taken into the lab and allowed to deposit their eggs. Then we fattened up the females again and released them back where they had been found. Now these programs hold back enough offspring each season to maintain the breeding program, so they don't have to take females from the wild.
Reptiles have very strong homing abilities and site fidelity. If you move an adult reptile to a faraway place after they have acclimated to a place and have developed site fidelity, they are lost. They want to get back home and will spend their whole time trying to get back home. They will not find shelter or eat. This happens to almost all reptiles that have ever been studied. This is also true for gopher tortoises. So when we translocate gopher tortoises, we set up soft-release pens. We release them in pens and they are forced to stay there. They can't get out, but there is vegetation for them to survive on. We like to keep them for at least nine months, including a winter dormancy period. Then we pull the fences and they are free to disperse. They've tried to do that with indigo snakes thinking maybe that it will keep them concentrated and keep them from wandering. It was a good effort but they quickly learned that indigo snakes were too crafty. They’d get over fences, around fences so they're not releasing them in pens anymore; they're doing hard releases.
Ayesha: What is their diet, and because of what they eat, do they have a role in keeping other snake species in check?
John: I don't think they have a specific enough diet that you would see a real shift in the particular species’ abundance because of indigo snakes presence or absence. They eat just about anything that moves and sometimes they will eat things that are dead and don't move. They eat other snakes, venomous or non-venomous, rats, squirrels, rabbits, and birds. They will even eat baby tortoises.
Ayesha: They eat baby tortoises?
John: Yeah, it seems like a bad situation. They depend on the gopher tortoise burrow for shelter, but then they eat their babies. Thankfully though, the tortoises hatch in the August-September timeframe when the indigos are not on the sandhills yet. Tortoises are strictly sandhill species, and indigos are less likely to be in the sandhill at that time of the year the babies hatch. So the baby tortoises get a little bit of time to grow and harden their shell and make themselves a little bit less appetizing for the indigo. Juvenile gopher tortoises make their own burrows, and since they're really small, when they are born, their burrows are really small and most big indigo snakes cannot get down into those burrows.
Gopher Frogs
Ayesha: Do indigos eat gopher frogs too?
John: Yes, indigos will eat gopher frogs. They will eat just about anything that moves and they can swallow whole. And the gopher frogs are a perfectly good meal for them. Obviously, they do not specialize enough on gopher frogs to consider indigos a threat to them. Gopher frogs breed in the winter in the wetlands so a lot of them are away from the burrows during the time the indigos are in the burrows. And the burrows are in the sandhill ecosystem. So that offsets some of that, but there's definitely an overlap. Female gopher frogs breed and return to the sandhills, but the males will stay in the wetlands in the hopes of breeding with multiple females.
Ayesha: While every organism has a critical role in the ecosystem, some species like the gopher tortoise play a much larger role. Does the gopher frog have an important role like that in the ecosystem?
John: No, not really. They are just another frog in the ecosystem. But compared to the gopher tortoise and the indigo snake, the gopher frogs have added threats because of their life cycle. They have to breed, develop as growing eggs and develop as a larva in a wetland habitat. And they spend their remaining life cycle in the sandhill ecosystem. Hence they have a much higher reliance on two very different types of habitat. Not only that, but these two habitats have to be in close proximity to one another so they can get back and forth.
Their populations have significantly declined because of habitat loss, alteration, and fragmentation of habitat. Maybe they've got a beautiful wetland to breed in, but the upland are all destroyed and they're all now agricultural land. The wetlands they breed in are isolated water bodies devoid of fish. They can only breed in wetlands that don't have fish because fish will eat their vulnerable eggs and tadpoles. They don't have chemical defenses like some other frogs do. If you are a landowner of those wetlands, then you can legally drain or fill them. You can deepen them and stock them with fish. So those are some of the ways wetland habitat can be impacted. So you can have great upland habitat loaded with gopher tortoises but the wetlands have been impacted to the point there's no way for them to breed. It's a double whammy for them. Or you build a really busy road between the wetland and the sandhills, and they can't migrate between the two.
Gopher frog breeding pond. Gopher frog tadpole. Gopher frog.
Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo credit: Dirk Stevenson
Photos used with permission. Please click on the image to enlarge.
Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo Credit: Dirk Stevenson Photo credit: Dirk Stevenson
Photos used with permission. Please click on the image to enlarge.
Ayesha: Are gopher frogs federally listed?
John: Not yet listed, but they are petitioned and are under review. They're very imperiled; right now, we only know of six populations of gopher frogs in Georgia.
But there is another species of gopher frog found in western Alabama, southern Mississippi, and southeastern Louisiana called the dusky gopher frog. The gopher frog and the dusky gopher frog used to be considered one species but they are genetically and morphologically distinct enough to be considered two different species. So there is a federally listed gopher frog, but not one that occurs in Georgia.
Legislation And Conservation
Ayesha: While the Endangered Species Act provides guidelines for a step-by-step approach to listing and protecting species, there is other legislation that facilitates protecting species, too. Earlier you mentioned the Candidate Conservation Agreement (CCA) and I had read about the Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA). Can you tell us what the difference between these two is?
John:They're both important, although the Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) is unfortunately not being used as much as it should be. The Candidate Conservation Agreement (CCA) can be between any parties. The Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) has to be non-federal. That is the one big distinction between the two.
The CCA is non-binding and any of the signatories can get out of it. There are no requirements; it's really a document between concerned entities and people that are trying to cooperatively to do better things for, in our example, gopher tortoises, in an effort to keep the species from being listed. Before, Alabama was doing their thing, Florida was doing their thing, and Georgia was doing its own thing. The Refuge System was doing their thing and the US Forest Service was doing its thing. Some of them were doing things better than the others. But now we have all come together to share ideas and try to create some standardization for things that seem to work the best.
One example of this standardization that I mentioned before was line transect distance sampling to estimate tortoise populations. One group was doing burrow counts. We used to go out and just count burrows and then kind of put a factor on them. Typically for every 10 burrows that look active, six of them probably have tortoises in them and four of them don't. So you're just counting burrows you're not counting tortoises. And that method was determined to be ineffective. Sites have different percentages of occupancy of burrows, so that was bad science. Then other people were doing what they called total counts where they were trying to find every burrow. Just wandering around looking for every burrow and that was also ineffective. So through comparison and research, it was determined that the technique that provided the most reliable way of determining population size of the gopher tortoises was line transect distance sampling. Then all the signatories to the CCA agreed to adopt that methodology, so now we all count tortoises the same way and it's now comparable. Another thing that I mentioned is translocation. It’s when you have to move tortoises to a different location to get them out of harm’s way. Some people were just taking them and leaving them at a site, and others were going through greater effort to pen them. Through research it became quite clear that to really achieve the success you want you really have to pen them for at least nine months and ideally over a winter dormancy period. So all the parties got together and said this is going to be the standard. If translocation is involved, we're going to follow that protocol. Those are just two examples but the idea is for everyone to work together to do the best for the tortoise in hopes that when it comes time to make the final decision, we will have achieved a lot.
We have an annual report in which all the signatories document their conservation actions for that year. Signatories have a list of their goals. We also get together for a meeting once a year to present our ideas for improvement, in addition to sharing our successes.
Ayesha: So the primary goal of the CCA is to create standardization, consistency, and for everyone involved to work together. Is the CCA only applicable to the gopher tortoises or is it also applicable to other species?
John: Our CCA is for the gopher tortoise. You can have a CCA for other candidate species as well. We have a species of fish in Georgia called the robust redhorse and there is a CCA for it. As far as species that I work with we only have a CCA for the gopher tortoise.
Ayesha: How does the Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) help?
John: The Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) is only for non-federal landowners and mostly for private landowners. The agreement is basically for species that are being considered as candidates for federal listing. A landowner can enter into a CCAA which is more of a binding agreement. They can get out of it, but they don't get the assurances unless they follow through with all this. The assurances are spelt out in the document along with what he landowner is going to do on his or her property to minimize or ideally improve the conditions for a particular species to persist. The US Fish and Wildlife services believes that if you take those actions, then chances are the species in question is going to persist and do well as a result of those actions. And if it does get federally listed, then the landowner will not be bound by any more responsibilities put forth by the Endangered Species Act other than what was signed up for. So it's a voluntary agreement to do something proactively rather than being required to do something later on with little certainty of what those steps might be.
Ayesha: Are we putting these agreements in place to have a buy in from as many parties as possible so we can mitigate the threats John: I guess the individual landowner is not concerned with the species being listed but they're just trying to have some certainty with what happens on their property. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believes that and it's written in the language that if a CCAA like that was implemented across the range of the species and other people were doing it on the landscape all over the place then the species would likely be recovered or conserved. That's kind of their benchmark.
There is an analog to the CCAA for species that are already federally listed and it's called Safe Harbor. We have a Safe Harbor program in Georgia for the red cockaded woodpecker. Say a landowner has one cluster or a colony of the red cockaded woodpecker on the property and they're concerned that they're going to start breeding like mad and spread on the property and they're going to be limited in the timber production. What they do then is they can enter into the Safe Harbor agreement and it sets a baseline of whatever they have at the time. So if it is one cluster then the landowner formally agrees to keeping that one cluster intact and do good things for it, he or she is legally reassured that if the species breeds and spreads out on the property into the other areas intended for timber production, for example, then that landowner is not responsible for conserving that surplus. It also gives the right to US Fish and Wildlife Service, or GA DNR in this case, to come and get those surplus birds and move them somewhere else before the timber is cut. So it gives the landowner assurances that if they do good, beneficial management practices which increases the population, they're not going to get punished for that. Ideally the idea is some people will not necessarily go through with all the compatible management but that things will actually be a little bit better because they increase the population of the woodpeckers on the property. The Safe Harbor agreement is for federally listed species. The CCAA is the landowner’s tool to get assurances that they don't have to do anything more than what they have already agreed to do if the species gets federally listed. But if the species gets listed, then they can sign up for Safe Harbor to just be responsible for what they have got at the time. And they can even have a baseline of zero which is the case with so many landowners. So they've got properties that have no woodpeckers on them but their interest is to grow longleaf pine to be old and for quail hunting but they don't want to be responsible for the woodpeckers if what good they do brings the woodpecker in. So you can actually have a zero baseline.
Ayesha: I think I have pretty much covered what I wanted to talk about is there anything else that you would like to add that I have missed.
John: We have touched on only two species of rare reptiles and amphibians that use gopher tortoise burrows, but it's important to know that it's not just the indigo snake and gopher frogs that benefit from the gopher tortoise burrows. There are a lot of other imperiled species that use the gopher tortoise burrows. For example, the burrowing owls in south Florida (rare species), Bachman’s sparrows (state-listed species), the Florida mouse (imperiled species), Florida pine snake (petitioned for federal listing), the eastern diamondback rattlesnake (petitioned for federal listing) all use gopher tortoise burrows. There are a number of plants that are rare that gopher tortoises eat and help disperse their seeds and help germination. So gopher tortoises are a really important species to a lot of other species!
Ayesha: Before we wrap up, I wanted to congratulate you on being the recipient of the Alison Haskell Award for Excellence in Herpetofaunal Conservation. Can you tell us a little about this award?
John: Thanks, it was quite an honor, for sure. This award is presented annually by Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation to recognize an individual in North America who exemplifies extraordinary commitment to herpetofaunal conservation. Those that nominated me focused mostly on my efforts to reform wildlife-unfriendly rattlesnake roundups into wildlife-friendly festivals that educate folks on the value of wildlife. Claxton changed to the Claxton Rattlesnake and Wildlife Festival and uses captive rattlesnakes that we provide for display only (they don’t get killed and were not gassed out of tortoise burrows). Fitzgerald changed into something totally different, a Wild Chicken Festival (the town is somewhat famous for its feral Red [Burmese] Junglefowl population), but they also have educational wildlife exhibits and events. Mike Harris and Phil Spivey of WRD also played key roles in these conversions.
Ayesha: Thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed speaking with you and learning about all these species. I am sure the readers will enjoy it too!
John: You are welcome and thank you for helping get the word out.
John: Not yet listed, but they are petitioned and are under review. They're very imperiled; right now, we only know of six populations of gopher frogs in Georgia.
But there is another species of gopher frog found in western Alabama, southern Mississippi, and southeastern Louisiana called the dusky gopher frog. The gopher frog and the dusky gopher frog used to be considered one species but they are genetically and morphologically distinct enough to be considered two different species. So there is a federally listed gopher frog, but not one that occurs in Georgia.
Legislation And Conservation
Ayesha: While the Endangered Species Act provides guidelines for a step-by-step approach to listing and protecting species, there is other legislation that facilitates protecting species, too. Earlier you mentioned the Candidate Conservation Agreement (CCA) and I had read about the Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA). Can you tell us what the difference between these two is?
John:They're both important, although the Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) is unfortunately not being used as much as it should be. The Candidate Conservation Agreement (CCA) can be between any parties. The Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) has to be non-federal. That is the one big distinction between the two.
The CCA is non-binding and any of the signatories can get out of it. There are no requirements; it's really a document between concerned entities and people that are trying to cooperatively to do better things for, in our example, gopher tortoises, in an effort to keep the species from being listed. Before, Alabama was doing their thing, Florida was doing their thing, and Georgia was doing its own thing. The Refuge System was doing their thing and the US Forest Service was doing its thing. Some of them were doing things better than the others. But now we have all come together to share ideas and try to create some standardization for things that seem to work the best.
One example of this standardization that I mentioned before was line transect distance sampling to estimate tortoise populations. One group was doing burrow counts. We used to go out and just count burrows and then kind of put a factor on them. Typically for every 10 burrows that look active, six of them probably have tortoises in them and four of them don't. So you're just counting burrows you're not counting tortoises. And that method was determined to be ineffective. Sites have different percentages of occupancy of burrows, so that was bad science. Then other people were doing what they called total counts where they were trying to find every burrow. Just wandering around looking for every burrow and that was also ineffective. So through comparison and research, it was determined that the technique that provided the most reliable way of determining population size of the gopher tortoises was line transect distance sampling. Then all the signatories to the CCA agreed to adopt that methodology, so now we all count tortoises the same way and it's now comparable. Another thing that I mentioned is translocation. It’s when you have to move tortoises to a different location to get them out of harm’s way. Some people were just taking them and leaving them at a site, and others were going through greater effort to pen them. Through research it became quite clear that to really achieve the success you want you really have to pen them for at least nine months and ideally over a winter dormancy period. So all the parties got together and said this is going to be the standard. If translocation is involved, we're going to follow that protocol. Those are just two examples but the idea is for everyone to work together to do the best for the tortoise in hopes that when it comes time to make the final decision, we will have achieved a lot.
We have an annual report in which all the signatories document their conservation actions for that year. Signatories have a list of their goals. We also get together for a meeting once a year to present our ideas for improvement, in addition to sharing our successes.
Ayesha: So the primary goal of the CCA is to create standardization, consistency, and for everyone involved to work together. Is the CCA only applicable to the gopher tortoises or is it also applicable to other species?
John: Our CCA is for the gopher tortoise. You can have a CCA for other candidate species as well. We have a species of fish in Georgia called the robust redhorse and there is a CCA for it. As far as species that I work with we only have a CCA for the gopher tortoise.
Ayesha: How does the Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) help?
John: The Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) is only for non-federal landowners and mostly for private landowners. The agreement is basically for species that are being considered as candidates for federal listing. A landowner can enter into a CCAA which is more of a binding agreement. They can get out of it, but they don't get the assurances unless they follow through with all this. The assurances are spelt out in the document along with what he landowner is going to do on his or her property to minimize or ideally improve the conditions for a particular species to persist. The US Fish and Wildlife services believes that if you take those actions, then chances are the species in question is going to persist and do well as a result of those actions. And if it does get federally listed, then the landowner will not be bound by any more responsibilities put forth by the Endangered Species Act other than what was signed up for. So it's a voluntary agreement to do something proactively rather than being required to do something later on with little certainty of what those steps might be.
Ayesha: Are we putting these agreements in place to have a buy in from as many parties as possible so we can mitigate the threats John: I guess the individual landowner is not concerned with the species being listed but they're just trying to have some certainty with what happens on their property. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believes that and it's written in the language that if a CCAA like that was implemented across the range of the species and other people were doing it on the landscape all over the place then the species would likely be recovered or conserved. That's kind of their benchmark.
There is an analog to the CCAA for species that are already federally listed and it's called Safe Harbor. We have a Safe Harbor program in Georgia for the red cockaded woodpecker. Say a landowner has one cluster or a colony of the red cockaded woodpecker on the property and they're concerned that they're going to start breeding like mad and spread on the property and they're going to be limited in the timber production. What they do then is they can enter into the Safe Harbor agreement and it sets a baseline of whatever they have at the time. So if it is one cluster then the landowner formally agrees to keeping that one cluster intact and do good things for it, he or she is legally reassured that if the species breeds and spreads out on the property into the other areas intended for timber production, for example, then that landowner is not responsible for conserving that surplus. It also gives the right to US Fish and Wildlife Service, or GA DNR in this case, to come and get those surplus birds and move them somewhere else before the timber is cut. So it gives the landowner assurances that if they do good, beneficial management practices which increases the population, they're not going to get punished for that. Ideally the idea is some people will not necessarily go through with all the compatible management but that things will actually be a little bit better because they increase the population of the woodpeckers on the property. The Safe Harbor agreement is for federally listed species. The CCAA is the landowner’s tool to get assurances that they don't have to do anything more than what they have already agreed to do if the species gets federally listed. But if the species gets listed, then they can sign up for Safe Harbor to just be responsible for what they have got at the time. And they can even have a baseline of zero which is the case with so many landowners. So they've got properties that have no woodpeckers on them but their interest is to grow longleaf pine to be old and for quail hunting but they don't want to be responsible for the woodpeckers if what good they do brings the woodpecker in. So you can actually have a zero baseline.
Ayesha: I think I have pretty much covered what I wanted to talk about is there anything else that you would like to add that I have missed.
John: We have touched on only two species of rare reptiles and amphibians that use gopher tortoise burrows, but it's important to know that it's not just the indigo snake and gopher frogs that benefit from the gopher tortoise burrows. There are a lot of other imperiled species that use the gopher tortoise burrows. For example, the burrowing owls in south Florida (rare species), Bachman’s sparrows (state-listed species), the Florida mouse (imperiled species), Florida pine snake (petitioned for federal listing), the eastern diamondback rattlesnake (petitioned for federal listing) all use gopher tortoise burrows. There are a number of plants that are rare that gopher tortoises eat and help disperse their seeds and help germination. So gopher tortoises are a really important species to a lot of other species!
Ayesha: Before we wrap up, I wanted to congratulate you on being the recipient of the Alison Haskell Award for Excellence in Herpetofaunal Conservation. Can you tell us a little about this award?
John: Thanks, it was quite an honor, for sure. This award is presented annually by Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation to recognize an individual in North America who exemplifies extraordinary commitment to herpetofaunal conservation. Those that nominated me focused mostly on my efforts to reform wildlife-unfriendly rattlesnake roundups into wildlife-friendly festivals that educate folks on the value of wildlife. Claxton changed to the Claxton Rattlesnake and Wildlife Festival and uses captive rattlesnakes that we provide for display only (they don’t get killed and were not gassed out of tortoise burrows). Fitzgerald changed into something totally different, a Wild Chicken Festival (the town is somewhat famous for its feral Red [Burmese] Junglefowl population), but they also have educational wildlife exhibits and events. Mike Harris and Phil Spivey of WRD also played key roles in these conversions.
Ayesha: Thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed speaking with you and learning about all these species. I am sure the readers will enjoy it too!
John: You are welcome and thank you for helping get the word out.
Who To Support:
Please find listed below organizations dedicated to preserving the gopher tortoise, eastern indigo snake, gopher frog and their habitat. Please take a few minutes to visit their website to pledge your support by signing petitions, making a donation and staying informed. Should you wish to make a contribution please send your contributions directly to an organization of your choice.
Georgia Department of Natural Resources (GA DNR)
The Amphibian Foundation
The Nature Conservancy
Gopher Tortoise Council
The Orianne Society
The Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy
The US Fish and Wildlife Service
Please find listed below organizations dedicated to preserving the gopher tortoise, eastern indigo snake, gopher frog and their habitat. Please take a few minutes to visit their website to pledge your support by signing petitions, making a donation and staying informed. Should you wish to make a contribution please send your contributions directly to an organization of your choice.
Georgia Department of Natural Resources (GA DNR)
The Amphibian Foundation
The Nature Conservancy
Gopher Tortoise Council
The Orianne Society
The Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy
The US Fish and Wildlife Service