
This morning I sketched an emerald tree boa, straight from the toy box. Bright green, beautiful, and absolutely not a pet.
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I thought of my friend Bill Flowers, The Snake Artist, while painting this one. Bill can sit and study every scale on a snake he loves them that much. He’s a conservationist like I am, and he believes they all have work to do in the wild.
These snakes are native to the northern part of the Amazon Basin in South America. That white stripe down the emerald boa’s back? It helps break up the body shape in the canopy. That camouflage has a purpose. This snake isn’t just pretty. It’s effective. They’re not venomous, but they don’t need to be. They hang from branches, all coiled up, waiting to strike birds, rats, bats, other snakes, frogs… they don’t care. They’ll shoot out the full length of their body and grab whatever’s passing.

Their family dates back nearly 200 million years, and this species split off about 30 million years ago, according to mitochondrial DNA. And they’ve been gorgeous ever since. And that’s a problem for them. People want them as pets, or house decorations, or just because they look like jungle jewelry. As an arm candy, trophy husband myself, I understand it’s both a blessing and a curse. But also like me, these snakes make terrible pets. Wild-caught ones have a 90% mortality rate. Even the captive-born neonates, baby snakes, have around 70% mortality. And they’re cranky. Even experienced herpers have a hard time keeping them alive.
The biggest threat they face now is habitat loss, not just from slash-and-burn farming or cattle, but also from reforestation scams. They get paid for new plantings, so they destroy old forest to plant new. Also, they plant palm trees to farm for palm oil. You’d think planting trees would help, but not when you bulldoze the rainforest first. And the trees they plant don’t have a canopy. That kind of “green” destroys the boa’s whole world. So no, palm oil isn’t helping. It’s just another reason these creatures lose the only place they belong. Also, palm oil is the devil. Actively seek products that dont use it.