Snakes in a Drain at NETWC

turtle crossingBlack racer snakes are rare in Vermont, so when highway construction was going to introduce drains with holes big enough for the snakes to fall into, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife asked for a fix. Drain covers with smaller holes were not possible. So the Vermont Agency of Transportation fashioned snake-sized ladders and attached them to the drains. It turns out that black racers are excellent climbers, so it is expected that the snakes will rescue themselves if they fall into the drain.  A poster on the unusual solution was presented at the Northeastern Transportation and Wildlife Conference, being held this week (Sept. 21 – 24) in Burlington, Vermont.

In other news from the conference: Now that fish and wildlife departments and transportation agencies are getting along so well together, what is the next step? Bringing urban and land-use planning into the fold. This will be trickier, because while transportation and wildlife function on the state level, planning happens at the local level. In Vermont, several speakers noted, just two percent of all development was subject to state review. (And Vermont has a strong state-level development law.)

Snake Disease Confirmed in Georgia

mudsnake-scwds_cropSnake Fungal Disease was identified in a mud snake found on the edge of a blackwater swamp near near Statesboro, Georgia, according to a press release from Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Nongame Conservation Section. The fungal disease was confirmed by the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, the release notes.

The mud snake was the first wild snake confirmed with the disease, but previously a captive rat snake had been diagnosed with the fungus, a brief article in a newsletter from Georgia Department of Natural Resources says.

Mud snakes are solitary, so the finding suggests that all snake species are vulnerable to the fungus, the press release says.

Read many more details, including a description of the disease, in the Georgia DNR press release, here.
The Georgia DNR newsletter article can be found here, but you have to scroll down.

Photo: Mud snake with Snake Fungal Disease, courtesy of Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

Rattling support for the eastern massasauga

From the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Conserving the Nature of the Northeast blog:

eastern massasaugasThree years of research, more than $60,000 in funding, and continual habitat manipulation is the secret to resurrecting a degraded swamp in New York into basking habitat for one of the state’s slithering residents.

The eastern massasauga rattlesnake (Sistrurus catenatus) is listed as endangered by the state of New York and is a candidate for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. In the meantime, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continues working to recover the species.

The massasauga lives in wet areas made of peat layers from years of decomposing plants. The layers hold water like a sponge, with new plants growing on each layer. Just two swamps in the Empire State support the species, but one has been so severely degraded that few massasaugas can actually survive there.

Keep reading…

Photo: Eastern massasauga, courtesy USFWS

New Python Trap From APHIS

wp_c_python_trap_image006It’s got to be a really big snake to trip the trap recently patented by the US Department of Agriculture’s National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC). But that’s the point. The idea is to live trap invasive pythons in Florida while leaving the native snakes alone. One difference between the native snakes and the non-native pythons is that the pythons tend to be a lot bigger.

“Though the trap is based on a standard live trap design, the Large Reptile Trap is the first to require two trip pans to be depressed at the same time in order to close the trap door. The pans are spaced such that non-target animals are unlikely to trigger the trap,” said NWRC wildlife biologist and trap inventor John Humphrey in a USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) press release.

The big question now is: will it work?

Read more about the trap and the invasive python problem in Florida in the Christian Science Monitor, here.Or read the APHIS press release here.

Photo: New python trap. Courtesy USDA APHIS.

More Rattlesnake Fungus

vt rattlesnake studyNashville Public Radio reports that two timber rattlesnakes with heads deformed from a fungus have been found in Tennessee. It’s unclear who the wildlife biologists who are reporting the fungus are (state? university?), but the story quotes Ed Carter, head of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and TWRA biologist Brian Flock.

Read the Nashville Public Radio story here.
A condensed version of the story was distributed by the Associated Press. Read it on the WBIR website, here.

The rattlesnake fungus has devastated the rattlesnake population in neighboring New Hampshire, so the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife isn’t waiting around to find out what’s going on with its own rattlesnakes, which are only found in one area in the western part of the state.

Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department rattlesnake project leader Doug Blodgett says in a department press release that lesions have been found in rattlesnakes last year and in several other species of snakes in the state.

Read the Vermont Fish and Wildlife press release here.

Photo: Vermont Fish & Wildlife biologist Doug Blodgett carefully examines a timber rattlesnake icheck it for signs of snake fungal disease. Photo by Tom Rogers, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department.

2013: Year of the Snake

YearoftheSnakeLogo_final_transpSo, the Chinese zodiac sign for the year that roughly corresponds to 2013 (starts on February 10), is indeed the snake. And aptly, Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, the conservation partnership, has designated 2013 to be a year of focusing on snake conservation issues.

The state partners with PARC for the year of the snake are Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Wildlife Division (CT DEEP), Maryland Department of Natural Resources and The Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW).

Much like the previously mentioned Year of the Turtle, the PARC program provides resources to promote snake conservation during the year, including a newsletter, a calendar of related events and a poster.

You can find that resource page here.

Florida Announces Python Contest

python challenge logoNon-native Burmese pythons are disrupting the south Florida ecosystem by devouring native wildlife. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and its partners have used just about every tool in the box to try to control Burmese pythons in the state. Now it is trying one of the oldest wildlife control methods out there: competitive harvesting.

The FWC says, in a press release that the goal of the 2013 Python Challenge is to increase public awareness of this ecological threat. The contest will last a month, beginning January 12, 2013, and will award $1,500 dollars for the most Burmese pythons collected and $1,000 for the longest Burmese pythons in two categories of contestant, the general public and state python permit holders.

Contestants must complete on-line training to identify Burmese pythons and pay a $25 registration fee. The prize money, a Miami Herald article reports, will come from the entry fee and commission partners.

Now for a bit of editorializing: if it works, it will be the best $5,000 the commission never spent. But the risks are alarming. The on-line training appears insufficient (find it here). The better of the many possible poor outcomes is that the prize money won’t inspire enough people to scour south Florida’s public wetlands for what can be a dangerous snake. Part of the contest rules require that you own a GPS device or a smart phone to track your own movements during the python hunt, which is yet another barrier to participation.

At worst, greed and inexperience will mean people are hurt and native snakes slaughtered. Let’s hope FWC got it exactly right. If they did, it could provide a valuable model for other invasive species efforts.

Read the FWC press release here.
Read the Miami Herald article here.
Find the Python Challenge website here.

Python Forecast: Cloudy

In 2008 the US Geological Survey published a report that said that the entire southern third of the United States could provide habitat for the invasive Burmese python that has been roiling the Florida Everglades ecoystem.

A recent paper in the journal Integrative Zoology says that occasional hard freezes and widespread winter temperatures that are too low for too many months of the year to allow the snakes to digest food will keep the snakes in the Everglades.

Interestingly, one of the authors of that paper is a python breeder. Another two are with USDA Wildlife Services. The lead author, a professor at a veterinary school testified before Congress in 2009 against listing constrictors as an injurious animal. (The fifth author is an expert in Burmese python digestion.)

Read the article in Integrative Zoology

A previous paper in PLoS ONE reached a similar conclusion, but for a different reason. This paper reasoned that there wasn’t enough marshy habitat north of the Everglades for pythons to spread. One notable finding in that paper was that, given climate change, the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest might someday become warm enough to be suitable habitat for pythons.

The PLoS One paper is open access.

The question is, how big of a worry is pythons crawling their way out of the Everglades into the rest of the South compared to the worry pythons becoming established in some other warm, swampy place in the United States due to the release of unwanted pets?

I would say that pythons crawling north from the Everglades through Disney World to reach the Okefenokee Swamp is a minor concern. Having another area of the US become infested with released pythons is something worth keeping an eye on.

Map: From the original 2008 USGS report. Green shows areas of the continental United States with climate matching that of the pythons’ native range in Asia.

Rattlesnakes and Grizzlies: Endangered?

Face to face with an eastern rattlesnake or a grizzly bear, you might not feel that it was the animal that was endangered. However, the eastern rattlesnake came closer to a possible Endangered Species Act listing earlier this month when the US Fish and Wildlife Service began a 12-month review of the species’ status.

Read more in the Chicago Tribune.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada found no solid evidence of decline in the nation’s grizzly bear population overall, so it denied the species endangered species status, instead designating the western population a species of “special concern.”

Read all about it in the Ottawa Citizen.

Rattlesnakes and Grizzlies: Endangered?

Face to face with an eastern rattlesnake or a grizzly bear, you might not feel that it was the animal that was endangered. However, the eastern rattlesnake came closer to a possible Endangered Species Act listing earlier this month when the US Fish and Wildlife Service began a 12-month review of the species’ status.

Read more in the Chicago Tribune.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada found no solid evidence of decline in the nation’s grizzly bear population overall, so it denied the species endangered species status, instead designating the western population a species of “special concern.”

Read all about it in the Ottawa Citizen.