Archie Carr: A Naturalist in Florida
Archie Carr	Tree Snails
	ARCHIE: If there is a single species in which the essence of tropical Florida seems to be packed, it is that of the lovely, painted tree snails of the genus Liguus - the ligs, as they are known to collectors. And they are as baffling as they are alluring....The Florida tree snails live almost secretly, and only in hammocks....The hammocks are disappearing except in Everglades National Park.
	CYNTHIA L. RAIDER: You know, Walter, it`s really neat that I get to do this program on Liguus tree snails. When I came here to the park I was allowed to do a 20 minute program on whatever I wanted to, and I chose Liguus tree snails because they're such fascinating and amazing creatures. And most people don't see them. They'll walk on by, and they don't think about looking for these little tiny things you have to hunt for. You can walk by and you won' even notice it. But once you find one, and then it`s like, oh wow, that's so beautiful I want to find another one. And you look around in other places and you get attached to it - it's like an addiction.   WALTER MUSAKA: I know that Archie Carr even mentioned that was actually a curse for them, through over collecting.   CYNTHIA: Yeah, exactly   WALTER:What do you know about that?   CYNTHIA: Well many of these tree snails are wanted because of their beautiful color varieties. There are about 50 different color varieties around in the area and people used to collect them to try to get one of each color variety, kind of the way people collect baseball cards. Actually some people got kind of greedy. If they found in one of the hammocks a rare color form, what they might do is collect what they could get of that color form, and then burn the hammock down. That way the snail shells they had would be worth more. And back in the 40's some of these shells, one shell would go for $50, which was a lot back then.
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