Indigo Snake Watch program helps track threatened eastern indigo snakes
FWC photo.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is seeking participants to help identify images of eastern indigo snakes, listed as federally threatened, from a database of digital trail camera photos. This project, the Indigo Snake Watch, is focused on improving our understanding the activity and distribution of the reintroduced snakes, and gives volunteers an opportunity to make a difference in the conservation of North America’s largest native snake species.
The Indigo Snake Watch is a new FWC volunteer program and participatory science project based in northwest Florida, hosted on the Zooniverse platform. There is no commitment and users can classify as many or as few photos as they wish. This project follows the successful rollout of the Everglades Wildlife Watch earlier this year; for details, visit myfwc.com/news/all-news/wildlife-watch-424.
Organized by the FWC, the Central Florida Zoo’s Orianne Center for Indigo Conservation, and The Nature Conservancy in Florida, this project uses camera traps to determine the reintroduced snakes’ success and distribution at their release site, The Nature Conservancy’s Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve. For details, visit Zooniverse.org/Projects/FWC/Indigo-Snake-Watch.
"Everyone can help in the efforts to re-establish eastern indigo snake populations,” said Preserve Manager Catherine Ricketts. “Staff at the Preserve, which is part of TNC's Center for Conservation Initiatives, are proud to have played a part in restoring this land, and now - after eight years of releasing the snakes at ABRP - we welcome the public to help track and monitor the snakes’ continued recovery."
The FWC’s partners at The Nature Conservancy in Florida and the Central Florida Zoo are placing trail cameras throughout the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve. As those cameras collect photos, the images will be uploaded to our Indigo Snake Watch Zooniverse project, where anyone can log on and help classify photos. Just follow the link Zooniverse.org/Projects/FWC/Indigo-Snake-Watch, create a free account, and start identifying the wildlife in the photos from your own home.
If you’re worried about perfect accuracy, don’t sweat it. With consensus analysis, your identifications will be combined with others to give us the most accurate understanding of indigo snake activity in these areas.
With your help, we will be able to sort through more photos than we ever could alone and gain a better understanding of the reintroduced indigo snakes.
Following photo identification and analyses, the data will be sent to biologists in all the involved organizations to help inform conservation and reintroduction efforts for the snakes. Information and updates from the project will also be shared on the project’s Zooniverse Results page.
The eastern indigo snake has been reintroduced to the Florida panhandle after disappearing from the region decades ago. The FWC is heavily involved in the reintroduction of eastern indigo snakes to their former range, as well as in the conservation of Florida’s wealth of biodiversity and wildlife habitat. To learn more about FWC’s work to conserve threatened species, visit MyFWC.com/Imperiled.