Not everyone reads the same news, and I'm very happy to play my part in bigging up the region for famous things other than our ability to run, dance, sing, kill and maim, play cricket, etc. So, I was excited to see a bunch of reports coming to my computer this morning that the world's smallest snake had been discovered here in Barbados (see report). The snake in adult form is just under four inches in length and could just about wrap around a finger (see image).The story is simple but, as with so many things has a moral that we need to heed. Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State, who discovered the snake said that "The Caribbean is particularly vulnerable because it contains an unusually high percentage of endangered species and, because these animals live on islands, they have nowhere to go when they lose their habitat." He believes the species is rare because most of its potential habitat has been replaced by buildings and farms. His concern is amplified by the fact that small species tend to reproduce at a lower rate than larger species, so instead of a clutch of 100 eggs being laid, this little snake may only be laying one egg at a time.
To give credit where it's due, Hedges has also discovered on the nearby island of St. Lucia, a new threadsnake that is nearly as small as the Barbados variety. But, as he notes correctly, it's hard to protect what you don't know exists.
We talk a lot about our concern for the environment, and that we have some unique features in the Caribbean that we wish to exploit for their potential as tourist attractions. To me there is more than a slight contradiction there. But, my concern is that "talk is cheap, but money buy land", and without being a merchant of gloom and doom, we need to do a lot more than talk.
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