By Helen Petre
Our home here in the Panhandle is a paradise of animals and plants, perfect weather, dune lakes, pine savannahs, springs and creeks, and miles of beach. Our parks and wildlife management areas are teaming with life. Our highways are full of traffic, tourists, and not much wildlife, other than the occasional deer during the rut. We are building residential and commercial projects faster than our endangered animals can escape.
Here are the names and habitats of some of our endangered species. They share our paradise. They were here first. If you see them, please protect them. The fact that they are endangered means you probably will not see them.
St. Andrew’s Beach Mouse (Peromyscus Polionotus Peninsularis)
The St. Andrew’s beach mouse is a subspecies of beach mouse (P. polionotus). It lives in the dunes in Gulf and Bay Counties. The St. Andrew’s Beach Mouse is six inches long with a two-inch white tail. Beach mice eat invertebrates and seeds from dune plants. They are monogamous and sexually mature at 30 days. Females have four pups after a gestation of 23 days. They are ready to breed again in 24 hours.
With that great breeding record, it seems like they should not be endangered, but they are federally endangered due to beach development, destruction of dunes, and fragmentation of their habitat. Other threats include predation from cats, foxes, coyotes, and racoons.
Choctawhatchee Beach Mouse (P. Polionotus Allophrys)
Another subspecies of beach mouse, the Choctawhatchee Beach Mouse, is also federally endangered. Like all beach mice, they eat seeds and fruit of dune plants and forage at night. The Choctawhatchee Beach Mouse lives in Bay, Walton, and Okaloosa Counties.
Leatherback Sea Turtle (Dermochelys Coriacea)
Leatherback sea turtles are federally endangered. They live 45 years, are seven feet long and weigh 2,000 pounds. They are the largest turtles on Earth, and they have been for 100 million years. Tyrannosaurus rex walked the Earth about 66 million years ago. Leatherbacks have a leathery, bluish, flexible carapace, in contrast to other turtles with hard shells. They can dive 4,200 feet down and stay under water for 85 minutes.
Leatherbacks take the longest migration between breeding and feeding of any turtle species, an average of 3,700 miles. They mate in the ocean. The females come ashore, some right here on our beaches, and lay about 80 eggs. The temperature of the nest determines the sex of the offspring. At 85 degrees F, half are male, half are female. At warmer temperatures they are females, at colder temperatures males. Females return to the beach they were born on to lay eggs. Males spend their entire lives at sea.
One in a thousand hatchlings reaches adulthood. Turtles die when they ingest plastic bags which they mistake for jellyfish. Some dead turtles have been found with as much as 11 pounds of plastic in their stomachs.
Gulf Moccasinshell (Medionidus Penicillatus)
Gulf moccasinshells are two inch long, oval shaped, greenish, thin, river mussels. Like all mussels, they filter feed, consuming plankton and detritus, or dead stuff. Since mussels take in whatever is in the water and use the nutrients for food, they take in pesticides and chemicals, which are a significant threat. Gulf moccasinshells are federally endangered. They live in the Ecofina Creek, which is spring fed and empties into Deer Point Lake, north of Panama City. Deer Point Lake is the water supply for Bay County.
Male mussels release sperm into the water, and females take the sperm into their shells, where eggs are fertilized. Like all mussels, the glochidia, or larva, attach to the gills of fish, where they live for a while, until they are mature. Host fish are blackbanded darters, eastern mosquitofish, guppies, and gulf darters.
Reticulated Flatwoods Salamander (Ambystoma Bishop)
Reticulated flatwoods salamanders are burrowing, or mole, salamanders. They live in seasonally wet savannahs, such as longleaf and wiregrass. Adults burrow into the litter. In October, they lay eggs in ephemeral wetlands with emergent vegetation, a habitat which is pretty rare in October, our dry season. Besides that, emergent vegetation occurs only after summer burns. The eggs hatch only if there is water, and the hatchlings require water for three months. That means October through January. It does not rain much between October and January. That is also the time when the forest service does its winter burns. Things do not look good for this confused salamander.
These are just a few of the most endangered organisms cohabiting with us in our paradise. We cannot make it rain, but there are things we can do to keep our habitat fit for our endangered animals. Please be kind and protect them by reducing use of plastic, recycling, putting trash in trash receptacles, staying on trails, keeping the beach flat, and reducing fertilizer and pesticide use. I am grateful to share my world with these amazing creatures. I hope my grandchildren will be able to enjoy them, too.
