St. Croix Needs Snake Hunters

Boa constrictors have a price on their heads on St. Croix. Industrious Crucians can collect a bounty on each snake brought in — a summer job for those who don’t mind decapitating nine-foot-long reptiles, wildlife experts said Tuesday.

Boa bounty killing could even be a cottage industry, said Sean Kelly, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Planning and Natural Resources’s Division of Fish and Wildlife in St. Croix. Boas under four feet fetch $40, and longer ones net bounty hunters $100, according to U.S. Virgin Islands law.

A decade or more ago, pet red-tail boas got loose on the island, and now they’re a problem, Kelly said. Some invasive species, like most iguanas in the territory, are more nuisance than harmful. Others, like lionfish, rats, and giant tree snakes, are considerably more damaging to the wildlife that’s supposed to be in the Virgin Islands.

Goats and deer, for example, were brought to the islands to feed early colonists. But left roaming free they can eat their way through vital habitats and specific food sources for native species. Mongoose, imported to kill snakes, have chewed through many native reptiles, at one point driving the harmless, and relatively tiny Virgin Islands boa to endangered species status, Kelly said.