Hi there,

I'm new to the site (although I've kept and bred snakes since I was a kid in the 80s).

I have been wondering if any efforts have been made to track the relationships between T.s.tetrataenia in captivity?

I have an 08 pair that I bought from a very responsible breeder who sourced them from The Netherlands. However, he doesn't known, for example, which captive group they are descended from (Jersey zoo? ZSL? Private breeders in the Uk/Europe?) or if they're a filial generation.

I think those of us keeping and breeding these special snakes have a responsibility to do the best we can with the bloodlines we've got to keep the captive population healthy and genetically diverse.

As many of you know, there is very little habitat left for these guys in San Mateo county. So although it's unlikely that our animals will ever be called upon to replenish the wild stock, if tetrataenia reaches the edge of extinction in the wild the captive bred animals will become important to conversationists.

People interested enough in garter snakes to seek out and pay the premium for tetrataenias will often frequent sites like this. In which case, it might be possible for us to get together a register of captive snakes?

That way we can track relationships between them going forward, allowing breeders to avoid producing heavily inbred animals. For example, a decade from now we can cherry pick animals that last shared an ancestor 4-5 generations back, and arrange swaps to keep the genepool as healthy as possible. I know that the European snakes are inbred as it is, but a lot of endangered animals have been through population bottlenecks that reduce the species to an handful of animals, and this still provides enough genetic diversity to restart a viable population.

If we were properly organised we'd be more likely to get taken seriously by those with the power to talk to the Californian authorities and maybe even look at refreshing the stock every ten years or so with a couple of wild caught snakes. I've got a couple of contacts at ZSL so perhaps we could involve them down the line (London Zoo breed SF garters).

What do you guys think? Do you know if anyone has tried anything like this before for this subspecies or any other threatended snake? There would be very little overhead involved in setting it up and the information would be so useful. I'd be happy to create a website if there was enough interest - or perhaps we could run it through here?

Maybe some of you guys are way ahead of me with this - anyone know?

Cheers

Conners