For a little over a year, I have been working on establishing a captive breeding program of Drymarchon couperi in Georgia. About 10 months ago, I submitted a proposal package (about an inch thick) to GA DNR outlining the proposed program. I am pleased to announce that after months of review and scrutiny, months of drafting agreements and permits, and more months of reviews and signatures throughout the agency, the approved paperwork arrived today.
Without retyping the entire Project Description and Overview, here are the highlights. Project name is “Eastern Indigo Snake (Drymarchon couperi): Conservation Through Public Education”
The program is two-fold. First is the active use of couperi to be added to my public education programs throughout the state of Georgia. The second use is for captive reproduction.
From the paperwork: “Although the primary purpose of this agreement is to establish conditions through which the permittee may obtain and possess Eastern Indigo Snakes in Georgia for wildlife exhibition and educational programs, a secondary objective of this agreement is to establish conditions for potential future captive propagation of Eastern Indigo Snakes”
Outlined in my proposal was the sole purpose of the potential breeding: providing educational specimens. According to my proposal, every offspring is produced in order to be donated free of charge to state institutions, parks, nature centers, and other educational entities and individuals as designated by DNR. Considering that we are one of the few states where couperi are still found in the wild, there is only a handful in captivity here used for educational purposes. This was the motivation behind the project. Not a dollar is made on the offspring.
This was seen as an impossible project since just acquiring permits to keep a single couperi are extremely difficult to obtain. I send great thanks to Dean Alessandrini and Dirk Stevenson for all of their help in putting together the proposal, to DNR for their forward thinking acceptance, and to Tony Carlisle and Jeff Snogres for their support during this long process and their continued support of myself and the program.
Nothing is impossible (but it can get frustrating)
B W Smith
Southern Reptile Education
www.reptileeducation.com
