The Florida Tree Snail Collection at Everglades National Park

A Florida tree snail. NPS.

In south Florida, the Florida tree snail, Liguus fasciatus, is famous for its many color forms — so beautiful that shells became prized souvenirs, and collectors raced to find new patterns.

The snailers

In the 1950s, groups of "snailers" stripped colonies of as many snails as they could. Each colony, with its own color form, lived on a particular tree or hardwood hammock; collectors guarded their locations and prized owning a colony's only snails. Competitive collecting and natural threats to the hammocks shrank populations and wiped out some color forms.

Archie Jones with his Florida tree snail collection. NPS.

Bringing them back

• 1957: collector Ralph H. Humes proposed to Superintendent Daniel B. Beard that they reintroduce nearly extinct color forms to the park. District Ranger Erwin C. Winte worked with Humes, Archie L. Jones and Captain C. C. Von Paulsen to reestablish them.
• Mixing colonies: the project grew to placing snails from different hammocks together to breed new color forms — something not allowed today, since it was done for looks, not science. Reintroductions now come only after careful study of their effects on the ecosystem.
• Results: from 1957 to 1980, 51 new color forms were introduced at Long Pine Key.

The collection

Donations from Humes, Jones, Fred Dayhoff and other leading collectors gave the park's museum over 25,000 Florida tree snail shells, including one fossil — along with souvenirs such as keychains and lapel pins, and artworks inspired by the shells.

Tree snail keychains in the park's collection. NPS.

Remember: taking anything from a national park is illegal.

Sources

Based on "A Short History of the Liguus Tree Snails Collection," Everglades National Park, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.