The Pokigron Surinam Redtail Boas

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Without a doubt, Suriname redtail boas have reached the state of a cult-snake. There are entire legions of admirers of these beauties with the shiny cherry-red tails. 

To be honest, however, not all Suriname redtails are eye candy. There also are some rather unprepossessing specimens with dark brown tails and a dull body coloration found in Suriname.

Since exporters hardly ever supply data regarding the exact locality of their boas, almost no keeper/breeder of Suriname redtails really knows the exact location where his/her animal was originally caught.

Until now, we therefore did not know in which part of Suriname the nicest redtails are found. However, we can now answer that question. It is the region around Pokigron, south of the Brokopondo dam, that is home to the most beautiful specimens.
 

copyright: ©2001 General Libraries The University of Texas at Austin

You will certainly ask yourself now, how did they come to this conclusion?

Until 1975, Suriname was a Dutch colony, and Dutch is therefore also the main language spoken in Suriname. There is still a rather close relationship between The Netherlands and its former colony.

A friend of ours from The Netherlands (a boa-freak just like ourselves) married a Surinamese woman. Every other year, they visit Suriname and spend 6 weeks of vacation in her hometown.

While she is visiting her family, our friend is out collecting redtails in the rainforest. He told us that the most desirable Suriname redtails (the very light ones with the shiny red tails) are found in the region around Pokigron, south of the Brokopondo dam.

 

He also informed us that the light redtails who are high in demand are very rare, elusive and
difficult to find in the meantime.

For that reason, most of the imported redtails from Suriname these days are dark ones.

Interestingly, specimens with hourglass-shaped saddle-pattern are found in the Pokigron region as well as specimens with perfect widows peaks. Redtail boas with an orange ground coloration also occur, but they all have in common the fact that they are very light.
 

Needless to say, we acquired almost the entire shipment from our Dutch friend in order to build up a breeding stock of outstanding light Suriname redtails of proven origin.

We regard this as very important because the light Suriname boas have become so scarce, that our friend could not even find enough specimens to exhaust his export permit to the full extent.

 

Furthermore, our friend told us that a lot of wildfires can be seen from the plane while flying over the Surinamese primeval forests.

His wife told us that around the towns huge amounts of woodlands are cut down in order to make more space for the increasing population around town.

In addition, the same problem that is apparent everywhere in the distribution area of Boa constrictor: People are killing the redtails on sight, because they think they are venomous.

It is only a matter of time until those fascinating animals are entirely erased in their countries of origin. It should therefore be our most important task to conserve these beautiful boas in captivity.


 

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