The Florida snail kite population is in trouble again.
The slender relatives of hawks and eagles have had a bad-news, good-news, bad-news existence since 1967, when the bird landed on the Endangered Species List after many decades of draining, ditching, and channel-digging in the Everglades.
Being on the list didn’t help. Their population plummeted earlier this century.
Then came an unexpected turnaround from an unexpected event and the snail kite population soared. But once again, the number of snail kites is now down by a third in just a few years.
Florida Audubon has been watching after the snail kite in the Everglades for 90 years.
The nonprofit describes the animal as “one of the most iconic birds of the Florida peninsula. With its striking dark plumage, deeply hooked bill, and slow, buoyant flight just above the water’s surface, the kite is uniquely adapted for one purpose: feeding on apple snails. The apple snail does not live north of Florida, and thus, neither does the snail kite.”
Audubon said the snail kite’s highly specialized diet, restricted range, and the disruptions to the water flow in the Everglades combined to lower their population to about 700 birds in Florida by 2009.
Was it the general destruction of the wetlands in Florida? The plummeting number of apple snails, the reason for which still baffles researchers? Or something else?
Then, something unexpected happened: an invasive species saved the day.
The island snail, or channeled apple snail, made its way into the Everglades through the Palm Beach County exotic pet trade.
The native of South America is not good for some farmers and may have led to the decline in the native apple snail. But the channeled snail is bigger, lives longer, and reproduces faster than Florida apple snails — and snail kites love them.
Then nature did what nature sometimes does. Evolution catapulted the snail kite forward to handle the larger snail. In just a few generations, the bird’s bodies now grow bigger. Their bills grow larger by as much as 12 percent to deal with the larger shell.
The improvements in water quality and flow, slow coming during the decades-long Everglades restoration, probably helped restore vegetation and water flow, improving conditions for both snail and bird.
The snail kite population in Florida was back up to around 3,000 by 2019.
Then, last year, University of Florida researchers documented only 30 successful nests statewide — none in the Everglades or around Lake Okeechobee, historically the two largest nesting strongholds. Audubon said they expect this year to be worse.
A snail kite coordinating committee — a multi-agency group that meets each spring and fall — discovered the population of channeled snails does great in wet years but is all but stagnant during dry times.
A drought has been locked on South Florida, drying out parts of the Everglades and the wetlands of Southwest Florida. There’s no end in sight.
But there is a silver lining for the snail kite.
While the bird is having a rough go of it in Florida, it also lives in tropical South America and the Caribbean, where it’s not even considered a threatened species.
In fact, in parts of Central America, the snail kite population appears to be increasing.
Environmental reporting for WGCU is funded in part by VoLo Foundation, a nonprofit with a mission to accelerate change and global impact by supporting science-based climate solutions, enhancing education, and improving health.
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