san francisco garters

[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?