san francisco garters

[ConcinusMan]

Once a bill is finalized and becomes law, if there's no provision for allowing exceptions under conditions, it literally takes an act of congress to change the law. A letter from the president will not do. The president cannot give you permission to break a law.

Now, in the case of California Condors the provision is there. Licensed conservationist groups and zoos are allowed to collect eggs to ensure that the eggs and chicks have a high rate of successfully growing up, they are collected and raised until they are independent and then released. this has been highly successful at increasing their numbers. Condor populations got so low because of DDT, poaching, and high chick mortality rates, not lack of suitable habitat.

Unfortunately because of the habitat issue, simply increasing their numbers by perhaps catching gravid females, releasing them when they pop, and raising the young to about a year old, would make little difference since the remaining land bearing sf garters is probably already supporting all the garters that it can, at any given time.

Well intentioned efforts to increase their numbers can hurt a species' survival in the long run, especially when there is so little remaining habitat. Introducing more snakes, or captive acquired snakes(and their genes) or offspring into such a small habitat is not a good idea for a variety of reasons. The only thing wise to do, would be to expand and restore areas adjacent to the remaining populations, closely monitor the habitat environment for issues that could threaten them, and take immediate action to correct it. Last I heard, the population is fairly stable, and only experiences ups and downs consistent with any normal fluctuations that occurs in any population of wild garter snakes. The only thing that's going to get them back to historic numbers is to restore and give them back their historic range; a very expensive and impossible thing to do.

[MasSalvaje]

Once a bill is finalized and becomes law, if there's no provision for allowing exceptions under conditions, it literally takes an act of congress to change the law. A letter from the president will not do. The president cannot give you permission to break a law.

No, but he can pardon you.

-Thomas

[ConcinusMan]

You'd have a better chance of getting congress to change the law.

[infernalis]

From what I have heard, even the specimens for sale in Canada originated from the same snakes that the European specimens originated from.

Sadly due to MANY generations of inbreeding, the gene pool is not very healthy anymore.

[Tyrel26]

Thanks for the kind words Jeff, I appreciate it

[mtolypetsupply]

Thought you might like to read this:

USFWS Sacramento Field Office 2006 Review of the San Francisco Garter Snake

I was especially interested in the recommendation on Page 32, last bulleted paragraph:

"Additionally, a captive breeding population comprised of the offspring of wild-born SFGS should be implemented....However absent additional funds, it is unknown whether this project will be able to continue."

Seems like the perfect opportunity to work with them on propagation of the species.

Sometime back (circa 1970's), however, there was input from some of the scientific community to no longer recognize tetrataenia as a subspecies, and make it a pattern morph of infernalis. I'll look for the link to that gov't doc. Anyway, doing that would now remove the endangered tag from that snake, and then remove the need for the preserved habitat, resulting in a mess politically.

Here's a link to the 1985 report, from which the info from Bury, Barry, and Fox allude to integrades at the least and morphs.

As urbanization has progressed, the SFGS, whether actually having been an infernalis or not, has become an increasingly isolated population, so the SFGS actually having been an infernalis may be a moot point, if not invalid.

Lastly, here's a link for the USFWS Species Profile

[Stefan-A]

Sometime back (circa 1970's), however, there was input from some of the scientific community to no longer recognize tetrataenia as a subspecies, and make it a pattern morph of infernalis. I'll look for the link to that gov't doc. Anyway, doing that would now remove the endangered tag from that snake, and then remove the need for the preserved habitat, resulting in a mess politically.

Here's a link to the 1985 report, from which the info from Bury, Barry, and Fox allude to integrades at the least and morphs.

http://www.cnah.org/comments.asp?id=398

The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (2000 Opinion 1961, Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 57(3): 191-192) has voted to retain the historical taxonomic arrangement of subspecies within this evolutionary lineage, rejecting the arrangement proposed by Boundy and Rossman (1995 Copeia 1995(1): 236-240). Accordingly, the subspecies tetrataenia is reinstated (see below) and the races concinnus and infernalis retain their historical definition.

[mtolypetsupply]

http://www.cnah.org/comments.asp?id=398

Good work finding that link, Stefan. Funny, it only took them what, 20+ years to get that reclassification denied?

[Stefan-A]

4 years, if I'm not mistaken. From the petition to suppress it, to the decision being made. 5 years from the proposal by Rossman & Boundy.

Naturally, there's no reason to hurry with these decisions. People make poorly justified proposals all the time and they need to be reviewed.

[ConcinusMan]

Yeah, and it has since been proven with genetic testing that infernalis, tetrataenia, and concinnus are more closely related to garters in other parts of the country, than they are to each other!

As reasonable as they hypothesis is, tetrataenia is definitely NOT a pattern morph of infernalis.