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The Hoosier Environmental Council secured a settlement last week in a lawsuit filed a year ago over an endangered species of snake and the wetlands where it resides.
With the Center for Biological Diversity, the signed stipulated settlement agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services has the government re-evaluate the status of the Kirtland’s snake under the Endangered Species Act and develop a new finding to determine whether the snake warrants listing as an endangered or threatened species.
The settlement imposed a deadline of June 30, 2026, for FWS to make its finding.
“I’m so glad the pretty Kirtland’s snake is getting another shot at badly needed protections,” Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity said in a news release. “The wetlands that Kirtland’s snakes need are mostly gone and continue to disappear. Protecting these little snakes and their homes will benefit them and it’ll help people, too.”
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia approved the settlement on July 3.
“This is a victory for Kirtland’s snakes and all the wetlands-associated plants and animals that also depend on their ecological niche,” David Van Gilder, of Hoosier Environmental Council said in a news release. “HEC is grateful to our colleagues at the Center for Biological Diversity and the excellent lawyers and student law clerks of the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic for their tenacity in bringing a favorable resolution to this litigation.”
The snakes spend much of the year underground, frequently in crayfish burrows. They feed on earthworms, slugs and leeches. Kirtland’s snakes live in seven states — Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee — but have disappeared from 79 of the 139 counties where they were once found, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
They are gone completely from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
“The Clinic welcomes the Service’s agreement to reconsider the Kirtland’s snake’s status under the Endangered Species Act, as the snake and the wetlands it inhabits are in desperate need of more protections,” Lee Place, a student law clerk at the clinic said in a news release. “We were pleased to represent the Center and the Council in achieving this important outcome.”
The Kirtland’s snake is protected as endangered at the state level in Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and is threatened in Illinois and Ohio. In addition to habitat destruction and climate change, Kirtland’s snakes are threatened by an introduced disease and by collection for the pet trade.
The case is Center for Biological Diversity and The Hoosier Environmental Council v. Martha Williams in her official capacity as Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, et al., 1:23-cv-02127.
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