By Gabriel Goodwin
LANSING —The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finalized a plan to aid the recovery of the endangered northern copperbelly water snake because its Michigan population has diminished to mere hundreds due to habitat fragmentation and habitat loss, experts said.
The short-term goal of the plan is to allow the population to reach sustainability, Barbara Hasler, fish and wildlife biologist for the agency, said.
She said she hopes that will be the turning point for the species because the recovery plan’s focus is to stop the decline, reach a stable point and increase the number of copperbellies.
The plan lays out a timeframe of about 30 years but “is very dependent on funding and the ability to do the identified actions to protect the population,”said Hasler, who is based in East Lansing.
Professor Bruce Kingsley, chair of the Biology Department at Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne, said the northern copperbelly water snake population has been declining for at least 75 years and has been in a threatened status for more than 20 years.
Kingsley considers the copperbelly water snake to be an indicator species, which means it usually illustrates the relative health of its landscape.
Historically, there were 13 sites in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana where northern copperbelly water snakes could be found. The copperbellies now can be found only near the tri-state borders, Kingsley said.
“The copperbelly is only found in a handful of places now,” Kingsley said. “We are sometimes vague with locations because people begin trying to collect a species just because they are rare.”
Federal endangered species law is intended to prevent wildlife from being eliminated across their range, Kingsley said.
He said the copperbelly water snake is an umbrella species as well and protecting an umbrella species potentially protects other species sharing all or some of the same environmental requirements, Kingsley said.
“Personally, I don’t feel an animal has to have a critical role in an environment to be worthy of preservation,” Kingsley said. “The fact it is there should make it worthy of preservation.”
Hasler said the copperbellies were a large integral part of the wetland ecosystem.