U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed a snake found in North Carolina as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Officials said the southern hognose snake is threatened by habitat loss, fragmentation, road mortality, and the impact of non-native species.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, which petitioned the service to protect the snake, the southern hognose lives in the coastal plains of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, but they already have disappeared completely from Alabama and Mississippi.
They live in the longleaf pine ecosystem, a fire-dependent forest habitat that once covered 92 million acres in the Atlantic and Gulf Coast regions. By the 21st century, 97% of longleaf pine forests had been lost to forest clearing and fire suppression.
After petition was made and a review of the best scientific and commercial data available was completed, fish and wildlife found that listing the species is warranted.
“It’s good that one of the South’s most distinctive and imperiled snakes will receive protections they urgently need, but I’m troubled by the loopholes in this proposal,” said Will Harlan, southeast director at the Center. “The Fish and Wildlife Service needs to remove the exemptions for logging and pesticides and designate critical habitat to give these snakes a fighting chance.”
