This snake had disappeared from New Jersey for half a century. It’s back.
“I was so excited I was hyperventilating,” said the herpetologist who found the first queen snake in the state since 1977.
It took Jeff Dragon about an hour and a half of clomping through muck and woods to find something that’s been missing in New Jersey for almost 50 years: a queen snake.
And, it was just dangling off a bush before his eyes like a necklace on a sale rack.
“I was so excited I was hyperventilating,” said Dragon, a herpetologist for the state’s Pinelands Commission.
And, yes, he notes, Dragon is his real last name and not one made he made up for his job.
Dragon’s adventure began, literally, after seeing what the cat had dragged in.
What’s a queen snake?
The queen snake, last verified as present in the state in 1977, or 47 years ago, is listed as endangered by the state and many believed it extirpated, meaning it was thought to no longer exist in New Jersey, until Dragon’s find on April 14.
Queen snakes (Regina septemvittata) are nonvenomous and grow 15″ to three feet long. They are colored green to brown. Historically, they were uncommon among the roughly 23 species of snake known to be present in New Jersey.
Those queen snakes present had typically been found along a narrow ribbon next to the Delaware River, from Trenton to Gloucester County. The snakes are picky about their food, and feed almost exclusively on newly molted, soft-shell crayfish living in clean streams and rivers with rocky bottoms.
Queen snakes can be found hunting in the water for crayfish, basking on the shoreline, hiding under rocks, or hanging from limbs of bushes that dangle over water.
They are not listed by Pennsylvania as threatened, but are considered “vulnerable” by the nonprofit NatureServe, which many states rely on for data about species. Queen snakes are listed as “critically imperiled” by NatureServe in New York, Delaware, and New Jersey.
Where was the queen snake found?
Dragon, 37, won’t give the exact location where he found the snake in fear that amateurs will go “herping” for more. He will say only that it was found in Gloucester County, and not in the Pinelands region.
“I have traveled around the U.S. and go on what we call herping trips, sort of like birding but for reptiles and amphibians,” Dragon said. “So I’ve been looking for reptiles basically my whole life.”
Dragon started his quest for a queen snake in 2021 after being contacted by a friend. The friend had found a queen snake in his basement and sent a picture to Dragon.
“I thought, ‘Oh, my god, someone is playing a trick on me,’” Dragon recalled. “This is a queen snake.”
Dragon rushed to the friend’s house, only to find that the friend had released the snake. Two subsequent times, the friend found a dead neonate, or baby snake. Those could not be documented as official finds because their origins could not be verified. Dragon suspected the friend’s cat had caught the snakes.
But Dragon couldn’t let it go. He continued his search in streams near the friend’s house. But the searches proved fruitless.
How was the queen snake found?
“I started my search again this year,” Dragon said. “I like to get in before the vegetation gets thick but it’s still warm enough for the snakes to be out. So I was like this is the window.”
After about 90 minutes of walking through heavy brush he saw a queen snake “right in front of my face on a shrub and grabbed it.”
Dragon took a picture and documented the location through GPS. He notified Kris Schantz, principal zoologist for New Jersey Fish and Wildlife, part of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. He released the snake, a female. It was too small to tag with a radio transmitter. Custom transmitters are required to track the snakes, Dragon said.
“The state is now in the process of relisting it as endangered and rediscovered after more than 45 years,” Dragon said. “So I’m pretty excited.”
He fears that poachers will start to seek the queen snake.
“Herping has become a very popular hobby,” Dragon said.
Dragon said it’s a good sign that a queen snake has been verified. That means the water is clean enough to support crayfish, and the snakes. He hopes an effort can be made to find more queen snakes and track them through radio telemetry.
“It’s now one of our most endangered species in the entire state,” Dragon said. “I think it’s time to find some more information about them, and how they behave.”
Exciting news
“We are absolutely excited,” said Schantz, the state zoologist. “It was believed to have been extirpated.”
Schantz said queen snakes had been listed most recently as endangered by the state just in case of such a discovery.
She said that targeted searches had been carried out in New Jersey over the last 20 years, but that no queen snakes had ever been found. It wasn’t until Dragon’s friend — and his cat — began turning up dead snakes that real hope emerged.
“We couldn’t verify where those snakes had come from,” Schantz said, noting that someone could have brought them in from out of state. She credits Dragon’s determination.
“Jeff and I just kept talking about it,” Schantz recalled. “So Jeff went out and really hunkered down and searched and spent hours out there. He finally found this female.”
She said officials will continue to work on tracking down and documenting more queen snakes.
“I think it’s important to understand that the queen snake’s range in the U.S. is roughly the Eastern third of the U.S. and extends into Canada,” Schantz added. “But in about half of that U.S. range, they’re considered imperiled or vulnerable. It is definitely a species of concern for an area greater than just New Jersey.”