Category Archives: Georgia

Rethinking Rattlesnakes

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coiled timber rattlesnake

Courtesy Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries

In 1967 a young man was bitten by a rattlesnake in Evans County, Georgia, and survived. Despite the happy outcome, the locals still thought there were just too many rattlesnakes in the region. In February 1968 a Rattlesnake Roundup was organized, and 48 rattlesnakes were turned in. There’s been an annual Rattlesnake Roundup in Claxton, Georgia ever since.

This year, however, there is a change. It’s no longer the Rattlesnake Roundup, but the Rattlesnake Festival, according to the Claxton-Evans County Chamber of Commerce website and WTOC.

Rattlesnakes will be celebrated, but not bought and sold. Part of the reason is that pharmaceutical companies no longer buy rattlesnakes to milk for venom antidotes, says an article on the Care2 website. That article helpfully includes a link to a list of rattlesnake roundups nationwide (with a rattlesnake race and rattlesnake derby thrown in for good measure, find it here).

This is good news for rattlesnakes, whose numbers have been declining.

A 2009 paper in the journal Herpetological Conservation and Biology found that rattlesnake roundups do indeed impact local rattlesnake population levels. The Claxton roundup was one of those studied.

Rethinking Rattlesnakes

Posted on by
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coiled timber rattlesnake

Courtesy Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries

In 1967 a young man was bitten by a rattlesnake in Evans County, Georgia, and survived. Despite the happy outcome, the locals still thought there were just too many rattlesnakes in the region. In February 1968 a Rattlesnake Roundup was organized, and 48 rattlesnakes were turned in. There’s been an annual Rattlesnake Roundup in Claxton, Georgia ever since.

This year, however, there is a change. It’s no longer the Rattlesnake Roundup, but the Rattlesnake Festival, according to the Claxton-Evans County Chamber of Commerce website and WTOC.

Rattlesnakes will be celebrated, but not bought and sold. Part of the reason is that pharmaceutical companies no longer buy rattlesnakes to milk for venom antidotes, says an article on the Care2 website. That article helpfully includes a link to a list of rattlesnake roundups nationwide (with a rattlesnake race and rattlesnake derby thrown in for good measure, find it here).

This is good news for rattlesnakes, whose numbers have been declining.

A 2009 paper in the journal Herpetological Conservation and Biology found that rattlesnake roundups do indeed impact local rattlesnake population levels. The Claxton roundup was one of those studied.

Big Nosed Deer Deer in Mich. Is One of Several

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A deer with a weirdly swollen nose was found in Michigan this season. It was the fourth deer ever found in Michigan with a similar swelling, according to a wildlife biologist and pathologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Disease Lab quoted in an article in the Kalamazoo Gazette. The pathologist also says in the article that the only thing the deer have in common is an infection with the mites that cause mange.

State wildlife officials originally had no interest in this particular deer, according to an Associated Press report, but Kevin Keel, a wildlife pathologist at the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study in Athens, Georgia saw the odd deer’s photo on a deer hunting blog, and got involved.

Keel said in his blog post that in the last seven years he’s seen about 10 of these deer from states ranging from Georgia to Idaho. What causes the nasal swelling is still a mystery. The Kalamazoo Gazette article says that a bacterial infection seems likely, but the Athens lab hasn’t been able to isolate it yet.

It may turn out that there may be more of these deer out there than anyone thought. Just a week after the first posting, someone else sent a photo of a swollen-nosed deer to the same hunting blog.

Here’s the Kalamazoo Gazette article that first discussed the deer.

Georgia Surveys Hellbenders

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North Georgia has one of the healthiest eastern hellbender populations in North America. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division began a long-term survey and monitoring project of the large salamanders this year.

Using nets, sometimes snorkeling, the research team surveyed stream segments in four watersheds this season, ending last month. The hellbenders found were weighed, measured, swabbed amphibian diseases, sampled for DNA and tagged with  Passive Integrated Transponders (PIT).

The purpose of the study is to establish baseline data for the species in the state.

Like the Ozark hellbender, which was listed as federally endangered last month, the eastern hellbender has experienced sharp population declines. It is state-listed as threatened in Georgia and has already disappeared from eight streams where it was once found in the state.

The eastern hellbender is found in 12 states ranging from southern New York to northern Mississippi, with a western population in Missouri.

Get all the details in the Georgia Department of Natural Resources press release, here.

Also read about previous eastern hellbender research in New York State, here.

Photo courtesy of Pennsylvania Boat & Fish Commission

2011: Year of the Turtle

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You may think that 2011 is the year of the rabbit. And in the Chinese zodiac, it is. But 2011 is also the year of the turtle, as designated by Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (PARC). The goal is to spread the word about the worldwide risk to turtle species. According to PARC information, 40 percent of turtle species worldwide are threatened with extinction.

The Year of the Turtle program provides participants with a cool logo; a monthly newsletter with education materials, a calendar, photos, and interviews with turtle experts; a national site for turtle-related events; links to a wealth of information; and, most recently, a t-shirt available for purchase.
Fifty partners have joined with PARC to support the Year of the Turtle. Many of these partner organizations are reptile societies and conservation organizations of various stripes, but four states have also joined in: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Georgia, and Arizona.
Tomorrow we’ll take a look at how two of those states, Connecticut and Massachusetts, have woven the Year of the Turtle into their education and citizen science programs.

Illustration: PARC’s Year of the Turtle logo

Shrew in a bottle

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North Carolina researchers found vertebrate remains in 4.5 percent of the open bottles they found on roadsides. The researchers recovered the remains of 553 small mammals, including five species of shrew and six species of rodent. They suggest that such an examination of roadside trash can be a way of surveying shrews without causing additional deaths in pit falls or snap traps. It’s also pretty good testament to the benefits of bottle refund laws.

According to the authors’ citations, the idea of using discarded bottles to survey the abundance of shrews goes back to at least 1966.

The study appeared in Southeastern Naturalist. Read more.

Counting parasites when hosts are hard to find

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In this paper from Conservation Biology, researchers counted what proportion of mud snails were bedecked with a trematode cyst that, as an adult, parasitizes terrapins. They felt this would be easier than directly counting diamondback terrapins on the Georgia coast. It has got to be a lot easier to ID a diamondback terrapin than a specific species of trematode cyst, but still, a very cool idea with the potential to be used in other hard-to-survey species.

Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service