Texas indigo snake kyle1/16/2024 Range: Harrison County, Mississippi (down from a range that once included southeastern Louisiana, southern Mississippi, and southwestern Alabama) Traits: The dark-spotted species (one of the world’s one hundred most endangered) often uses gopher tortoise burrows. 1 on Big Pine Key protects the herd from being hit by cars. Reason for Hope: A recently installed chain-link fence along U.S. What Happened: Habitat destruction and poaching nearly wiped them out by the 1950s lately, screwworm infestations have depleted numbers. Traits: A subspecies of the North American white-tailed deer, the herbivore is roughly the size of a large dog. Reason for Hope: South Georgia’s Orianne Indigo Snake Preserve provides a crucial habitat biologists recently found the first baby indigo in Alabama in sixty-plus years, thanks to reintroduction efforts.įlorida Key Deer Odocoileus virginianus clavium What Happened: The species all but disappeared due to longleaf pine forest destruction (but when a researcher does come upon a snake, he or she gets to name it). Range: Florida, and the coastal plain of southern Georgia (but range once included southernmost Alabama and southeastern Mississippi) Traits: This nonvenomous iridescent blue-black species is the longest native snake in North America. Reason for Hope: A successful captive breeding program begun in the 1970s has resulted in around 200 additional red wolves living in captivity today. What Happened: Predator control programs practically stamped them out by the 1960s. Range: The remaining wild wolves live on North Carolina’s Albemarle Peninsula. Traits: The tawny canines resemble coyotes. Here, a sampling of animals at risk of being lost forever. In fact, these factors and others, says Jaclyn Lopez, the Florida director and senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, have led in part to the South’s becoming home to more endangered and threatened species than anywhere else in the country. Unforgettable creatures, from the Texas ocelot to the Ozark hellbender, have historically thrived in the South thanks to the region’s rich biodiversity, a quality that has in turn attracted an influx of new residents and development that now imperil their very existence.
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