Endangered
Louisiana pinesnake
Pituophis ruthveni
Louisiana pinesnake is a snake in the family Colubridae — Pituophis ruthveni, recorded as Endangered and tied to United States.
Appearance
Dorsally, the color is buff or lion-like yellow with dark brown blotches and spots that are very similar throughout the body. The marking patterns are visibly different from one end to another. The neck region is "busier", the dark reticulates and blends more with the lighter coloration.
Range and habitat
The Louisiana pine snake is generally associated with sandy, well-drained soils. Open pine forests, especially longleaf pine savannas; moderate to sparse midstory, and a well-developed herbaceous understory dominated by grasses. Baird's pocket gophers appear to be an essential component of their habitat. Both native and captive-released snakes were found most frequently in areas containing an ample number of pocket gopher mounds, and snakes stayed active longer and moved greater distances where pocket gopher burrows were abundant.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Above ground, snakes usually moved underground at least once during the day, possibly for foraging, body cooling, or predator avoidance. The large size of the pine snake hatchlings may be an adaptation to enable young to feed relatively early.
In crisis
Management activities are being conducted to promote the species' recovery. Recovery efforts to counter extirpation resulted in around 300 snakes having been reintroduced into the wild. In 2018 the snake was added to the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife.
Species with low reproductive rates, like the Louisiana pine snake, are typically incapable of quickly recovering from events that affect population size, increasing their potential for local extinctions. Fire is central to the recovery effort.
Louisiana pinesnake is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Louisiana pinesnake, Wikidata item Q3016432. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
