HERP
NEWS 287/2009
HERALD
When Johnie the croc wants
walkies, her owner makes it snappy.
Johnie - a female - rules
the roost at the Lowing home.
Her favourite time of the
day is meal time, the Herald Sun reports.
"She's just like a
cat or dog in that she knows when the fridge door opens there is a good chance
of a snack, so she shuffles in for a feed," Vicki Lowing said.
Chicken wings are her
favourite, along with whiting and red meat.
Ms Lowing said her son
Andrew, 15, and Johnie, 13, experienced sibling rivalry.
"Sometimes Andrew
goes to have a shower after school and Johnie's already in there and not keen
to share the space," she said.
Andrew turns on the cold
water tap and watches the cranky croc beat it.
It's only when Johnie
barricades Andrew in the bathroom that Vicki has to sort it out.
Andrew, an aspiring vet,
should not have to share the shower. Johnie has her own heated pool which takes
up most of the lounge room.
Most rooms have heaters
and UV lights to keep her toasty.
Ms Lowing's passion for
reptiles began as a girl growing up in the country.
Her property on the
western outskirts of Melbourne is also home to pythons and blue-tongued lizards
as well as cats, horses, turtles and chooks.
And two other crocs -
Fovian and Jilfia, both 2.
Jilfia makes Johnie look
positively tame. The savage salt water crocodile lives in his own heated pool
in a rear bungalow.
Frozen rats fill the
freezers at the Lowing home. But sometimes the inmates are hungry for each
other.
Johnie used to share her
pool with a salmon catfish, which had thorny spines on its fins.
Ms Lowing realised the
croc wasn't getting on with her pool pal when she saw bite marks on the fish.
The catfish didn't pull through, but it had the last laugh.
Johnie is being treated at
the Lort Smith Animal Hospital for welts inside of her mouth.
So how did Johnie get her
name? Simple. No one was game to look at her undercarriage when she was young
and once she started responding to Johnie, it was too late to change.
Ms Lowing has put her
reptiles on show to help pay the heating and feeding costs.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26207667-421,00.html
MILENIO (México, México) 14
October 09 Capturan un lagarto en Avenida
de la Industria - Protección Civil exhorta a no maltratarlos sino reportarlos a
la dependencia. (Patricia Azuara)
Capturaron un lagarto
a las orillas de un vaso lacustre ubicado sobre la Avenida de la Industrial, a
la altura del kilómetro 14.5 en el municipio de Altamira; este feroz reptil
registraba un peso aproximado a los cien kilos y un metro y medio de largo.
Lo anterior fue dado a
conocer por el Comandante del Cuerpo de Bomberos, José Torres Gómez, quien
explicó que en temporada de lluvias se registra un incremento considerable de
la presencia de estos animales.
“En
estas fechas se están atrapando un promedio de tres al mes”, dijo.
Comentó
que los sectores que corren más riesgo, son los que se encuentran asentados a
la margen de las lagunas.
“Hay peligro en las
colonias Nuevo Madero, Bahía, Santa Elena y la Zona Centro. Es importante que
la ciudadanía reporte ante este dependencia o la Dirección de Protección Civil
cualquier anomalía que observen”, exhortó.
Recordó que desde hace
tiempo en Altamira es alarmante la salida de lagartos, por lo que pidió a los
habitantes extremen precauciones al estar frente a alguno.
“En
tiempo de lluvias, vamos a tener un poco más de problemas, los animales son
agresivos, es bien importante que la gente no los maltrate y les tenga un poco
de respeto”, reiteró.
La
Dirección de Ecología traslada a estos animales, dijo, a lugares donde la gente
esté fuera de cualquier peligro, ya que, recordó, anteriormente se han
registrado trágicas muerte.
El comandante refirió que
anualmente se llegan a atrapar más de 50 animales.
http://www.milenio.com/node/302859
IL GIORNALE (Rome, Italy) 14
October 09 La salamandra del «Marsano» (Laura Mombelloni)
All'Istituto Agrario
per l'Agricoltura e l'Ambiente «B. Marsano» di S. Ilario ritrovamento di specie
endemiche protette. Durante le ore di lezione all'aperto all'Istituto Marsano
può anche capitare di imbattersi in un piccolo essere vivente che difficilmente
si può incontrare. Alcuni ragazzi, infatti, nei pressi del ruscello che scorre
nel terreno della scuola sono incappati in un piccolo anfibio. La professoressa
Angela Comenale Pinto che si trovava con gli alunni della scuola, non ha avuto
difficoltà a riconoscere la Salamandrina terdigitata nota come Salamandrina
dagli occhiali, grazie alla caratteristica colorazione arancione del ventre e
alla macchia di colore chiaro situata sul capo. L'entusiasmo e l'emozione della
scoperta hanno coinvolto prima la docente ed i ragazzi, poi l'intera scuola: si
tratta infatti di una specie protetta ed endemica della penisola italiana.
Questo significa che la nostra salamandrina è diffusa unicamente lungo
l'Appennino ed il limite settentrionale della sua distribuzione è proprio la
Liguria centrale. L'entusiasmo della scoperta deriva dal fatto che ragazzi
appassionati di natura ed ambiente abbiano avvistato questa specie, permettendo
così di segnalare agli organi competenti - Regione Liguria - la presenza di un
nuovo sito di distribuzione dell'anfibio. La salamandrina vive in torrenti con
acque pulite e forestate, in cui l'ombreggiatura degli alberi è importante per
creare l'habitat idoneo alla specie. Il ritrovamento della salamandrina come
quello di altre specie tra cui la Raganella mediterranea, l'Anguis fragilis
(noto come orbettino) e il biacco (Hierophis
viridiflavus) conferma l'importanza della tutela del terreno su cui sorge
l'Istituto «B. Marsano». L'avvistamento di queste numerose specie dà la misura
dell'elevato tasso di biodiversità del territorio su cui sorge la scuola,
biodiversità da tutelare e proteggere da interventi antropici indiscriminati
che potrebbero alterare l'equilibrio ecologico di questo ambiente.
MIAMI
HERALD
(Florida) 13 October 09 S. Florida tops list of big-snake risks -
South Florida ranks as ground zero for potential ecological damage from giant
invasive snakes, according to a new risk assessment of nine potentially
troublesome species. (Curtis Morgan)
There are a few upbeat
findings in a new federal study of the assorted threats posed to the nation by
Burmese pythons and eight other large exotic constrictors.
This, for instance:
``Although the largest individuals of all of the species covered in this work
are probably capable of killing an adult human, most seem disinclined to do
so.''
Take some solace in that
reptilian reluctance because much of the rest of a 302-page risk assessment of
nine species of giant invasive snakes released Tuesday by the U.S. Geological
Survey is not so comforting -- particularly for Florida.
Given the evidence
slithering from the Everglades to Tampa, it's no surprise which region ranked
at the top of the risk list.
``On the mainland, South
Florida is ground zero,'' said Gordon Rodda, a USGS zoologist in Fort Collins,
Colo., who co-authored the report with colleague Robert Reed, an invasive
species scientist and herpetologist.
It's not just a warm, wet
climate that makes the snakes feel at home. The area is also a hub for
importers and breeders who supply the pet trade -- the source of escapes and
releases that have allowed at least one species, the Burmese or Indian python,
to establish itself across much of the peninsula.
Based on climate alone, South
Texas and tropical islands like Hawaii and Puerto Rico also are at high risk. A
few of the hardier species also could potentially make a go of it in the warmer
southern belt.
The report analyzed the
biological risks posed by nine species, including the world's four largest
snakes, all of which can top 20 feet: the green anaconda, Indian or Burmese
python, Northern African python and reticulated python. Those, along with the
boa constrictor, were ranked high risk. All have been found in South Florida.
Four look-alikes -- the
Southern African python, yellow anaconda, DeSchauensee's anaconda and Beni Beni
anaconda -- were classified medium or low risk, primarily because they are less
popular as pets. ``Pretty much the reptiles of concern started out with what's
out there that can eat us,'' Rodda said.
The risk to humans appears
low, however, similar to the risk of an alligator attack. Four of the species,
including the Burmese, have been documented killing humans back home, but
unprovoked attacks are rare.
The risk to native
wildlife is considerably more serious. The top five species all share traits
that could could tilt the natural balance of ecosystems and make the snakes
difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate, Rodda said.
They're big enough to eat
just about any prey and too big for most predators. They can live from swamps
to sewers to suburbs. They grow fast, travel far and produce lots of babies.
The havoc the brown tree
snake has wreaked on the Pacific island of Guam provides a disturbing example.
Despite a $50 million campaign to kill them, the snake has wiped out 10 of 12
species of forest birds, one of two bat species and half the native lizards.
The risk assessment,
prompted by a petition from the South Florida Water Management District to ban
Burmese pythons from import, does suggest methods to control the snakes. The
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service and other agencies will
use the risk report to develop a management plan. But in another positive note,
Rodda believes the constrictors can be removed from the wild if authorities
move quickly -- for instance, with small populations of boa in South Miami-Dade
and African pythons recently discovered in West Miami-Dade.
The prospects of
eliminating Burmese pythons, estimated at tens of thousands in the wild in the
Glades alone, are more bleak, the report concludes. No current weapons, from
python patrols to traps, appear cabable of controlling a wily reptile adept at
traveling in wet and dry terrain.
``I'm fairly optimistic we
can do something about the boa and the North African python,'' said Rodda.
``The Burmese python, there is no real real reason to think we can eradicate
them over such a vast area.''
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/1281798.html
THE
TRIBUNE (San Luis Obispo, California) 13 October 09 Study:
Snakes sold through pet trade a danger to native wildlife (David Fleshler)
Burmese pythons and other
giant snakes sold through the pet trade could devastate native wildlife in
parts of the United States, according to a long-awaited federal report that
moves the government closer to restricting trade in these species.
The U.S. Geological Survey
released a 323-page study Tuesday that said Burmese pythons, northern and
southern African rock pythons, boa constrictors and yellow anacondas could
threaten ecological treasures such as national parks.
Four other species pose a
medium risk: the reticulated python, Deschauensee's anaconda, green anaconda
and Beni anaconda.
"Native U.S. birds,
mammals and reptiles in areas of potential invasion have never had to deal with
huge predatory snakes before - individuals of the largest three species reach
lengths of more than 20 feet and upward of 200 pounds," states a news
release that accompanied the report. "The reticulated python is the
world's longest snake, and the green anaconda is the heaviest snake. Both
species have been found in the wild in South Florida, although breeding
populations are not yet confirmed for either."
The study was prompted by
the discovery of Burmese pythons and boa constrictors that were reproducing in
the Everglades. Authorities are now investigating whether African rock pythons
also have established themselves in South Florida.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service will use the report in its decision early next year on whether to
declare these snakes "injurious species," which would prohibit
imports and interstate commerce in the snakes. Ken Warren, spokesman for the
wildlife service, said a decision could come early next year.
Marshall Meyers, chief
executive officer of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, said the only
snake on the list that's commonly sold at pet stores is the boa constrictor,
with the rest sold only by and to specialists.
If the government bans the
interstate trade in these species, he said, it could backfire as people who
want to get rid of their snakes may feel forced to choose between selling them
illegally, killing them or releasing them in the wild.
Although fatal attacks on
people have occurred, the report says the snakes pose a "minimal
risk" to public safety.
The greater danger is to
wildlife.
The report uses an example
of the brown tree snake's introduction to Guam 50 years ago. Today the island
has lost 10 of 12 native forest birds, most of its bats and about half its
native lizards.
It's too early to assess
the damage the Burmese python has done in Florida, the report states.
Although some species
would be limited by climate to parts of Florida, southern Texas, Hawaii and
America's tropical islands others, including the Burmese python, could
potentially spread throughout most of the southern United States.
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/528/story/883534.html
ORLANDO
SENTINEL (Florida) 13 October 09
Snake handler teaches reptile
tolerance at DeLand serpentarium - Carl Barden preaches conservation message to
counter hysteria (Eloísa Ruano González)
Deland: The public's collective fear of snakes has
spread since July, when a 2-year-old Sumter County girl was killed by her
family's python. Since then, lawmakers have talked of banning certain reptiles,
and the state has tried to whittle their numbers in the Everglades.
Reptile handlers say the
recent stories, as well as misinformation, have caused a frenzy and poisoned
the reputation of the snake -- a shy, yet highly misunderstood creature.
One Central Florida man is
trying to do his part to stop the hysteria. In January, Carl Barden opened his
venom extraction lab to the public as part of The Reptile Discovery Center.
"We felt strongly
about getting people and reptiles and amphibians together...education breeds
conservation," said Barden, who runs the serpentarium northeast of DeLand
with his girlfriend, Denisse Abreu.
At The Reptile Discovery
Center, visitors can watch from behind a glass wall as Barden "milks"
cobras, diamondback rattlesnakes and other varieties. He grips the snake's head
as Abreu holds down its body. Then Barden tricks the snake into sinking its
fangs into a piece of plastic stretched over a milkshake glass to collect oozing
venom.
The 8-acre facility is a
haven to about 700 snakes, many of which aren't native to Florida. About 40
species, including South American vipers, African green mambas and coral
snakes, are tucked away in newspaper-padded stacked drawers and plastic boxes
in the lab 50 feet from the couple's home. About 95 percent of the snakes are
poisonous.
For a decade, Barden, 44,
has extracted venom to sell to pharmaceutical companies and medical-research
facilities. Some of the venom, which he extracts five days a week, is used to
make antivenin. He sends other samples to research labs, where scientists are
investigating the use of chemicals and other toxins in snake venom to treat --
or someday maybe even cure -- diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart
disease.
The center, which includes
a nature trail that houses large lizards and tortoises abandoned by their
owners, is one of half-dozen milking labs in the U.S. Only a few are open to
the public.
Barden, who has been
bitten nearly a dozen times, said the center offers pet owners tips about
reptile nutrition and proper caging to prevent tragic accidents like the one in
Sumter County. He supports stiff regulations on permits for snake owners.
"Those laws are in
effect for good reason," Barden said. Even though he acknowledges that
Burmese pythons have stressed Florida's wildlife, he doesn't think hunting the
invasive species will yield the state's desired results. Burmese pythons adapt
well to their environment and often are difficult to spot, he said.
"There's a tremendous
amount of misinformation going around...we shouldn't take a broad sweep to a
narrow problem," Barden said.
Barden has handled snakes
since he was 7. He earned a biology degree at the University of Central Florida
and worked at the reptile house at the Central Florida Zoo and Botanical
Gardens.
He initially planned to
open his reptile center north of DeLand, near De Leon Springs. Residents
protested the proposal, fearing a snake could escape the facility and slither
onto their property.
Barden moved the facility
to near the Tiger Bay State Forest northeast of DeLand. No snake has escaped
the center, which is regulated by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Commission, he said. Vents and windows have been double-screened and doors
double-sealed to prevent snakes from escaping, he said.
He urged people to give
snakes a chance.
"Reptiles are part of
people's everyday life... As people begin to understand, they tend to be more
tolerant -- and they kill fewer," Barden said.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/volusia/orl-deland-snake-couple-101409,0,4960239.story
THE
MERCURY (Hobart, Australia) 12 October 09 Testing
kind to local lizards (Anne Mather)
Many of the experiments by
scientists at the University of Tasmania are carried out without physical
contact.
Dr Erik Wapstra said even
watching animals in their natural environment, without tagging or touching
them, was classified as an experiment.
Dr Wapstra, a senior
lecturer in the university's School of Zoology, said his experiments on lizards
did not harm them.
He monitored some reptiles
in their natural environment and placed others in a controlled environment.
"We remove small
numbers of lizards from the wild and undertake experiments in which we
manipulate the climate conditions they receive under carefully controlled
laboratory conditions," he said.
"Here, we can examine
specific responses to different thermal regimes and examine how they are likely
to respond to a range of scenarios.
"All these animals
are then released again, unharmed, at the end of the experiments."
The purpose of Dr
Wapstra's experiments is to understand the effect of climate change on
reptiles.
The work is still in
progress but it appears three Tasmanian alpine species of reptiles are in
danger of extinction within 50 years if current climate change models
eventuate.
Dr Wapstra said other
university projects requiring animal experimentation included Monitoring of
Tasmanian devil populations because of the devil facial tumour disease.
They also involved
monitoring of the devastating chytrid fungus in amphibian populations and
measuring the effects of drought (and other factors) on population numbers of
native marsupials.
Dr Wapstra said all
research involving animals in the state needed approval by a relevant ethics
committee.
He said researchers are
guided by the principles of the "three Rs":
All work must seek to
replace the use of animals wherever possible, all work must reduce the number
of animals to the minimum required and must seek to refine practices so they
have the least impact on the animals.
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2009/10/12/102911_tasmania-news.html
DAILY
MERCURY (Mackay, Australia) 12 October 09 Family's dogs kill deadly taipan
(Fallon Hudson)
Todd Harrington's two dogs,
Oscar and Jade, look proud as punch sitting on the lawn in their backyard.
The two dogs killed a
deadly taipan at the Harringtons' Eimeo residence after it slithered its way
under their fence.
Mr Harrington's house
backs on to a reserve and he believes that is where the snake came from before
his dogs tore it in two.
He said he called a
wildlife ranger and described the features of the snake to him.
“The man said he was 90
per cent sure it was a taipan.”
Mr Harrington said the
wildlife ranger had told him it wasn't every day you heard of two dogs
surviving an encounter with a deadly reptile like a taipan or a brown snake.
“I have two young children
so I am very thankful,” he said. “The snake was found only metres from the
sandpit where they play.
“I guess the key message
is that there are snakes about and to proceed with caution if you see one in
your backyard.”
Australian Wildlife Rescue
Service snake handler Fay Paterson said yesterday Mackay was well and truly
into snake season. “It is the mating season at the moment and there has been a
lot of snake movements.”
She said in the past six
weeks she had caught about 44 snakes in the region.
It was easy to detect a
brown snake, she said, as they had small heads and a creamy belly with a flicker
of red through it, while a taipan was distinguishable by its head and its
square nose, which gives them the title 'Coffin Head'.
She said nine times out of
10, when people called to say they had a brown snake or a taipan it ended up
being a tree snake.
“Normally you can get rid
of a green tree snake by putting the hose on it.” But Ms Paterson said if
someone found what they believed to be a dangerous snake they should not touch
it or go near it and call a snake handler or a wildlife ranger.
She said 95 per cent of
people were bitten because they had been trying either to catch it or kill a
snake.
“The best thing is to
leave it alone,” she said.
http://www.dailymercury.com.au/story/2009/10/12/eimeo-familys-dogs-kill-deadly-taipan/
NEWS
& ADVANCE (Lynchburg, Vermont) 12 October 09 Biologists,
company work together to save wetlands, mole salamander (Jill Nance)
here’s an eerie silence at
the edge of the quarry, where barren rock meets the forest’s end.
About 20 feet back, under
a canopy of willow oaks and red maples, lies the breeding ground of one of
Virginia’s rarest amphibians: the mole salamander.
In 15 to 20 years, as the
Boxley Materials Company mines rock for sidewalks and roads, the quarry edges
in Nelson County will extend into the forest, swallowing the wetlands where the
salamanders reproduce.
Destroying the wetlands
doesn’t sit well with leaders at Boxley, a Roanoke-based company whose site in
Piney River is one of 15 locations in the state with reproducing populations of
mole salamanders.
“Being environmentally
friendly is one of our visions. It’s part of what drives us as a business,”
said Donald Barricks, superintendent of the Piney River location.
Nor does it sit well with
a pair of scientists: Mike Hayslett, a conservation biologist from Sweet Briar
College, and Tom Biebighauser, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest
Service.
The mole salamander is
designated a “species of special concern,” according to the Department of Game
and Inland Fisheries. Though it’s not endangered, it could become so because of
population decline or loss of habitat.
In September 2007, the
biologists joined forces with the industrial company to build a new wetland
outside the range of quarry expansion.
Boxley contributed
thousands of dollars worth of equipment and manpower, while Hayslett and
Biebighauser provided scientific expertise.
Two years later, the
man-made wetland is teeming with life, and more importantly, it has been
accepted by the mole salamander as a place to breed.
“It wasn’t a shock, but it
was still such a pleasant surprise,” said Hayslett, who likes to refer to the
mole salamanders simply as “the moles,” not to be confused with their furry
namesakes.
“The moles have accepted
this, they’ve reproduced, and we got our first generation within six, seven
months of construction.”
During a tour of the
wetlands last week, Hayslett tromped through the murky waters in knee-high
rubber boots. To the untrained eye, the vernal pools look like little more than
a glorified puddle, a breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
That was the first
impression of Sweet Briar sophomore Becky Bonney, who knew virtually nothing
about the pools before taking a job with Hayslett as a field biology assistant.
She soon learned there are more to the pools than mosquitoes and algae.
“They looked like swamps
to me,” Bonney said. “Mike taught me about the diversity of life in it, and how
significant they are for our environment and ecosystem. After that I was
hooked.”
Hayslett calls vernal
pools an “underdog” ecosystem.
“They are poorly
appreciated because they are small and they disappear,” he said.
“If a pond or wetland went
dry, you might think less of it. That it was nature’s intent comes as a
surprise to many people.”
The wetlands tend to fall
through the cracks of legal protection, Hayslett said, threatening the future
of the plants and animals that rely on them.
Ironically, it’s the
wet/dry cycle that makes the pools so unique. The yearly shift between aquatic
and terrestrial gives them a double dose of biological diversity as compared to
static ecosystems.
With the first man-made
wetland a success, Hayslett is spearheading phase two of the project. He
completed another wetland this fall, near a patch of woods by Boxley’s office,
and plans to introduce salamander eggs to its water this winter.
Phase two poses new
challenges.
Salamanders are picky
about where they will breed. When they emerge from underground burrows once a
year, they head back to the ponds where they were born to look for a mate.
The first man-made wetland
was close enough to natural wetlands that the salamanders colonized it.
“It’s like putting a new
housing community in an area that’s already densely populated,” said Hayslett.
“The salamanders will seize on the opportunity for a new habitat.”
For the most recent
wetland, which is about a mile away from the natural pools, Hayslett will have
to artificially introduce salamander eggs into its waters. Salamanders won’t
naturally make the trek there because it’s too far and dangerous.
The stakes are high. Out
of 100 eggs, maybe one will survive to adulthood, Hayslett said.
“It’s one thing to move
eggs. You haven’t established a population in a new spot until you see tadpoles
successfully leaving the pond,” he said.
Next spring, if nature
allows it, Hayslett will see the first batch of tadpoles.
BANBURY
GUARDIAN (UK) 12 October 09 Turtles dumped in a bucket
Four turtles were found
dumped in a bucket on the doorstep of a Brackley veterinary surgery.
Staff at Croft Veterinary
Centre in Banbury Road found the bucket on Thursday and took in the creatures
before informing the RSPCA.
The four animals - which
have been nicknamed Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael after the
characters in the hit TV show Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles - are Southern
red-bellied turtles.
They vary in age from six
months to two years and may be a family group, with two young adults and two
juveniles.
RSPCA animal collection
officer Dennis Lovell collected the turtles from the vet and said: "The
turtles had been left in a small amount of freezing cold water. Although they
had not been there long enough to cause them any long-term damage, this clearly
is not the right thing to do with unwanted pets.
"If someone feels
they can no longer look after their animal all they need to do is contact the
RSPCA or another reputable welfare organisation and seek help."
The turtles are now being
cared for by a specialist keeper and new homes will be found for them.
Southern red-bellied
turtles originate from Florida but are kept as pets. They are herbivores, but
some younger ones eat small insects. When kept in captivity they need a UVB
light for basking, as well as a heat lamp and need minimum water temperatures
of 70 degrees fahrenheit.
They also need to be kept
in a large aquarium.
Anyone with information
about this incident can call the RSPCA in confidence on 0300 1234 999 and leave
a message for
http://www.banburyguardian.co.uk/news/Turtles-dumped-in-a-bucket.5725112.jp
NEWS-PRESS (Fort Myers,
Florida) 12 October 09 Capital Ideas: So far, Florida is not
winning its war on 'Reptiles of Concern' (Paul Flemming)
Hostilities have already
been declared, but Florida is considering a surge in its war against Reptiles
of Concern.
Wildlife officials in the
battle against invasive species use that phrase, or its ROC acronym, to refer
to the problem, mostly with the Burmese python, but including five other snakes
and the Nile monitor lizard.
On Tuesday, Florida Fish
and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials gave senators an update.
Already on alert, the
offensive kicked up a notch this summer when a Sumter County 2-year-old was
killed by a Burmese python, a family pet.
That's when Gov. Charlie
Crist put a figurative bounty out on the pythons, directing agencies to issue
permits to professionals and hard-core amateurs. So far, 15 permit holders have
captured 35 Burmese pythons.
FFWCC officials said they
thought a benefit in the captures might come from sale of the snakes' hides and
flesh, but concern has cropped up over mercury in the meat. You can't make this
stuff up.
It's ROCs loose in the
wild, however, that are the real concern.
There are up to 100,000
constrictors proliferating in South Florida. It's thought the interlopers got
their start when Hurricane Andrew blew up an exotic-animal operation in
Homestead and sent the non-native species into the Everglades.
Even with that incredible
beginning, there's no doubt that pets that outgrow their welcome - the pythons
can grow up to 20 feet - and get dumped are a big part of the problem.
Though Burmese pythons
mate only once a year, they lay up to 60 eggs and protect their nests, cutting
down on predation.
Legislation to keep track
of the snakes, and hold their owners accountable, has made a dent.
Dealers and owners have to
register and pay a $100 annual license fee to own one of the seven species of
ROC.
It's that annual fee that
may have prompted many of the 350 reptiles surrendered in six pet amnesty
events held so far, as much as snakes outgrowing expectations.
(An Oct. 3 event also saw
a howler monkey and African serval handed over by disillusioned pet owners.)
But the continued
expanding range of the ROCs - they're moving north of the Tamiami Trail now -
is prompting further proposals. Commission folks will be back before lawmakers
in December with further ideas ranging from minimal changes to ownership
restrictions to a full ban, adding species to the list of ROCs and further
control and eradication.
If we do nothing, the
pythons win.
http://www.news-press.com/article/20091012/COLUMNISTS50/910120316/1015/opinion
GLOBE-NEWS (Amarillo, Texas)
12 October 09 It's All Trew: Turtle hunt leaves us shellshocked (Delbert Trew)
Among this year's
experiences to date is a story about our developing a new fishing lake and the
turtles contained therein, plus a couple of turtle stories.
I have a Native American
friend who, for years, has "rescued" turtles from the freeways,
placing them in her large, fenced backyard. At feeding time, she steps to her
back porch, bangs a pan with a spoon and the entire backyard comes alive with
healthy turtles arriving to be fed.
A relative living in
California, also with a large backyard, became host to a wayward desert turtle
who took up residence. Since it is on the endangered species list, it sported
its own tattoo number, registered description and has been to the local vet
twice.
The turtle tale continues.
We have a small, swampy lagoon area that old timers called Blue Hole, where
they played hooky from Alanreed school, rode their horses across the pastures
and swam in the cool waters. It must have been larger and deeper in the old days.
At the urging of our
daughter-in-law, Janice, we decided to clean the place, trim the brush and
develop it into a fishing camp for the family. A plan was agreed, the work
began and, after a few months passed, the camp was finished, complete with a
new fence to keep the cattle out.
Since none of us knew
beans about improving and stocking a pond, we used a pond consultant (available
at no charge) provided by a business that sold stock fish. Pond size, depth,
history, age, surroundings and eventual use were all logged in, a plan
suggested and the development began in earnest.
The water was cleaned the
best we could, banks leveled and secured, shade trees trimmed and parking
spaces built. We bought a stock of minnows, bass and hybrid brim as
recommended. After the fish were released, the expert asked if we had any
turtles? When we stopped to study the lake and watch, we had more turtles than
you could count. Big turtles, middle-sized turtles and many little, bitty
turtles. We were told that would not do. We had to lower the count.
We built a home-made
turtle trap. After all, a turtle can't be too smart. Ha! The only turtle
casualty was one that laughed himself to death after seeing our contraption. We
ordered a manufactured turtle trap from the fish people. It was a square
aluminum cage that floated with trap doors on top that dumped the turtles as
they lay in the sun. The great turtle hunt began.
Three days went by, no
turtles caught. The new trap was too shiny. I pulled it ashore, rubbed mud and
moss all over the shiny places, reset and waited. To date, we have caught 42
turtles, from large as a plastic bucket to little bitty. All have been
scattered to other dirt tanks across the ranch, as far from the fishing lake as
possible.
I have been told to place
a beautiful, well-developed female turtle inside the trap as a lure for other
turtles. So far, I have not been able to determine the sex of a turtle by
looking! Do any of you readers know the formula?
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/101209/new_news5.shtml
PRESS
DEMOCRAT (Santa Rosa, California) 11 October 09 New park
site erects fencing and a pathway to protect exiting salamanders (Bleys
Rose)
Burly construction workers
are brandishing jackhammers and wielding ditch diggers on a vacant lot and
fashioning wood ramps across a 4-lane road in a project aimed at herding tiny
tiger salamanders off the site of a future Santa Rosa park and onto breeding
grounds in vernal pools across the street.
Because the slimy
amphibians were placed on the federal endangered species list after the city
had promised a neighborhood park at Northpoint Parkway and Fresno Avenue, the
city has been forced to undertake an effort to evict them before park
construction starts.
“As far as I know, there
are none here,” said Sheri Emerson, the city's senior environmental specialist
as she surveyed the site on Friday. “This area has been isolated for years by
city streets, so the likelihood is pretty slim.”
Developers working in
southwest Santa Rosa are accustomed to erecting barriers that trap tiger
salamanders as part of a survey to determine their presence and to determine
whether mitigation measures are necessary. A line of dark plastic-like material
that stands a couple feet high is not an uncommon sight in an area that the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined may be habitat necessary for the
species to thrive.
This project, however, is
different in that the city aims to divert them off the site and get them to
march about 50 feet to a known tiger salamander breeding area across Fresno
Avenue.
“We are putting in exit
ramps so they can leave of their own accord,” Emerson said.
Construction of Airfield
Neighborhood Park will cost about $1.1 million, a hefty price prompted mainly
by the need to remove topsoil likely contaminated because the whole area once
was the site of the Santa Rosa Air Center. The cost of the tiger salamander
round-up will be in the $50,000 to $70,000 range, said Rich Hovden, city park
planning manager.
“We have had extraordinary
patience from the neighbors who have been promised this park for years,” said
Hovden who added that he fielded many calls from residents when they saw
construction crews churning up the dirt.
Susan McCarthy, who lives
in the neighborhood, said she was surprised that such a big effort was being
made for such a small animal.
“I think our money could
be spent in better ways, not for a creature that or may not even be there,”
said McCarthy, who lives across the street from the proposed park.
In theory, after a heavy
rain, the 8-inch, brightly colored amphibians will leave the burrows and gopher
holes they have occupied during the dry season and head for the moisture of
vernal pools where they traditionally breed.
A crew from Argonaut
Construction has been working all week to erect a barrier of fabric-based
fencing around the perimeter of the park site. It is a common device for
preventing silt run-off that federal officials have approved for limiting the
movement of tiger salamanders.
There'll be one exit from
the enclosure and that's the chute, similar to a skateboard ramp, intended to
funnel the meandering tiger salamanders in the desired direction. City
officials say they must wait for a deluge for the experiment to work. Rain is
forecast to begin Monday.
When they launch it, Fresno
Avenue will be closed and residents of the Air Center subdivision will have to
drive a few blocks out of their way.
“This rain that is coming
next week is not going to be enough to shut down the street. It may take a few
good rains to trigger it,” Emerson said.
City parks director Marc
Richardson said the city last Thursday sent area residents letters of
notification about the project and the likely closure of Fresno Avenue. The
city also has created a Web page for information at srcity.org/airfieldpark.
“This park has been
delayed for many years due to various reasons and we want them to know the park
is finally going forward, but we have to do this first,” Richardson said.
The project is necessary
for the city to obtain a biological opinion from the Fish and Wildlife Service
that would detail park development restrictions on the site. If none are found
or if the project is considered a successful experiment in salamander
migration, city officials said construction of Airfield Neighborhood Park could
begin next spring.
If not, riding herd over
tiger salamanders may have to wait until next year.
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20091011/articles/910119959&tc=yahoo
LAS
VEGAS
The county won’t be
picking up your poor, your tired or your huddled masses of desert tortoises any
longer.
After Dec. 31 residents
who have kept the threatened species as pets but want to be done with them will
be on their own.
The County Commission
approved that change Tuesday after hearing a report on the expense — picking up
about 1,000 unwanted tortoises costs $104,000 a year, plus $700,000 to take
care of them once they’re in county hands — and an argument that the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service and/or the Nevada Wildlife Department should be doing the
picking up.
County staff and U.S. Fish
and Wildlife people will continue discussing how to deal with abandoned pets.
County officials hope
those talks are amicable because a much more important, potentially more
expensive matter largely related to desert tortoises is creeping up on the
county. And the county does not want to anger Fish and Wildlife.
What could be more
important than picking up those cute, abandoned animals?
As it turns out, a
community advisory group is working on a new conservation plan to expand
developable acreage in the Las Vegas Valley. U.S. Fish and Wildlife must sign
off on the permit.
Under the current, 30-year
conservation plan, which governs 140,000 acres and expires in 2031, developers
pay $550 per acre to care for tortoises. Most of that money is spent on
conserving more than a million acres of tortoise habitat outside the Las Vegas Valley.
More important, the
current plan includes a permit allowing for the “incidental take,” or harm to
tortoises and 77 other protected species. So if, for example, a developer’s
construction crew happens to plow under some tortoises during the grading of
land, that’s acceptable. It has been that way for almost 20 years.
Fish and Wildlife wants to
change that standard.
What do they want to do,
save every tortoise crawling the high desert?
As many as possible. Janet
Bair, U.S. Fish and Wildlife regional supervisor, said her agency has worked
out multispecies habitat conservation plan agreements with Lincoln County and
with the developers of Coyote Springs, a community to be built on 42,000 acres
60 miles north of Las Vegas. It also hopes to work with Nye County. Those
agreements include new language restricting the incidental taking of tortoises.
What’s wrong with that?
Some in Clark County see
it as unnecessary and expensive. The new permit would expand the period of the
agreement to 50 years and add 215,000 acres.
Terry Murphy, who sits on
the community advisory board and brokered the desert tortoise compromise
between developers, the county and feds 20 years ago, said the acreage being
considered contains about 1 percent of all desert tortoise habitat.
“There are hundreds of
thousands of them in existence,” said Murphy, who is also a well-known
consultant to developers and casinos. “So to expend that much time saving urban
tortoises and putting them God-knows-where, I’m not a scientist but I can’t see
how that’s going to help them.”
She added that some
members of the advisory group are talking about increasing the amount of money
per acre that developers must pay for desert species conservation.
Does Fish and Wildlife
agree that the tortoises are plentiful?
The entire tortoise
habitat, stretching from Utah through Nevada to California, isn’t under
constant study, but Bair said her agency has seen various populations of the
tortoises scattered throughout the area “declining precipitously.”
“We’ve also noticed ... in
the last six to seven years Southern Nevada has some of the lowest densities in
the range.”
Does the federal agency
think it could compromise on the “taking” of tortoises?
Bair smiled at the
question, then said the agency wants to hear “all options.”
To that end, U.S. Fish and
Wildlife is holding several hearings, called scoping meetings, to get the
public’s advice on changes in the conservation plan. The agency will consider
the information as it prepares an environmental-impact statement for the
additional 215,000 acres.
The first of those
meetings will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Oct. 19 at the Clark County Library, 1401 E.
Flamingo Road.
County Quote of the Week: “This is almost like tree-hugger frustration.
Can’t find no trees to protect in the desert so it’s tortoises.”
Commissioner Tom Collins,
during discussion about discontinuing the county’s role in picking up abandoned
desert tortoises.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/oct/11/tortoises-creep-public-debate/
PRESS
DEMOCRAT (Santa Rosa, California) 11 October 09 Just how many acres does the
tiger salamander need? (Bleys Rose)
Sonoma County officials
say the 74,000-acre expanse of the Santa Rosa Plain is far too large — perhaps
four times too big — an area to receive federal protection as critical habitat
for the endangered tiger salamander.
The county's objections to
a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to designate the entire plain — from
Windsor Creek to northern Petaluma and from Highway 116 to Petaluma Hill Road —
are outlined in a letter issued by county supervisors.
County officials say
environmental studies have turned up evidence of tiger salamanders only in a
much smaller zone, about 17,000 acres from Guerneville to Pepper roads and from
Llano Road to Highway 101.
“The county believes that
the proposed rule would designate an area that is far broader than can be
justified by the current scientific information on the distribution and
abundance of the species,” board chairman Paul Kelley wrote in a letter to federal
officials.
The county's statement on
critical habitat designation is one of many being filed in advance of an Oct.
19 deadline for public comment on the federal proposal. The federal agency was
forced, by settlement terms of a lawsuit filed by an environmental group, to
roll back local attempts to create a smaller salamander habitat zone and to
return to a 2005 plan for the entire 74,000 acres.
After collecting public
comment and issuing an economic analysis of critical habitat designation, the
federal agency intends to make a decision on the zone of protection by July 1,
2011.
Suzanne Doyle, a Sierra
Club official in Sonoma County, said Thursday she still was drafting the
group's proposals, which have not been approved by its governing board. However,
she said the Sierra Club believes the final federal rules should include
creation of an agency to monitor tiger salamander preservation efforts and
should prohibit replacement of agricultural land with vineyards because the
reptiles don't survive among the grapes.
“One thing I can say is
that the status quo doesn't provide enough protection,” Doyle said. “
Doyle said many in the
Sierra Club are critical of the Conservation Strategy plan advocated by the
county that proposed 17,000 acres as critical habitat.
Settlement of the lawsuit
last August put an end to the group of development industry, environmental and
government leaders called Santa Rosa Plain Conservation Strategy. Their plan
attempted to streamline the permit process and establish mitigation banks for
habitat preservation.
“Conservation Strategy
ended up shrinking the actually protected area to 4,000 or 5,000 acres and it
set critical habitat back to zero,” Doyle said.
However, county officials
say their Conservation Strategy plan was based on salamander surveys that “have
now been completed on the Santa Rosa Plain with negative results, according to
Kelley's letter.
Surveys have not found
evidence of the animal north of Mark West Creek, west of the Laguna de Santa
Rosa, east of Highway 101, nor in the Petaluma area, according to county
officials.
While the federal agency
studies the issue, officials in Sonoma County and Santa Rosa say they will
continue to adhere to Conservation Strategy guidelines that regulate intrusion
of development into tiger salamander habitat such as upland burrows and
seasonal pools and ponds.
Although the poor economy
has largely halted development, some developers have been funding mitigation
banks that improve habitat near their sites.
Susan K. Moore, field supervisor
with the Fish and Wildlife Service office in Sacramento, said that because
Conservation Strategy's goal was tiger salamander recovery, the plan remains
laudable although settlement of the lawsuit put the entire effort on hold.
However, she said “we
believe that designation of critical habitat is unlikely to require substantial
deviation” from Conservation Strategy's proposed regulations.
POST-GAZETTE (Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania) 11 October 09 New survey
finds Pennsylvania rattlesnake populations waning (Terry McCormick)
The buzzing was loud ...
and close.
Matt Wilson quickly
glanced downward and spotted the source. A timber rattlesnake lay curled only a
few feet away in the knee-high, wild huckleberry patch where he and his wife
Paula were hiking.
"I heard another buzz
and looked down by my boot," he said. "One was right beside it. Two
more were right in front of me. We decided to move into the woods. We almost
never see snakes without nearby rocks for them to escape under. It was very
unusual. Just when you think you know everything about them, they confound
you."
Despite the occasional
confounding, the husband and wife team from Smethport, Pa., had a busy summer
this year fulfilling assessment requests from the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat
Commission's Timber Rattlesnake Site Assessment and Inventory Project. The
project's goal is to check the nearly 600 known rattlesnake den sites in the
state, while assessing the health and status of the overall population of the
reptile, which in Pennsylvania is a "candidate species' for listing as
threatened or endangered.
"We did a total of 37
rattlesnake den site assessments this season" said Wilson. "Many were
in Tioga, Elk and Clearfield counties, so each was a long drive, likely
followed by a tough hike."
Den sites are usually
rocky areas where rattlesnakes can safely hibernate over winter. After emerging
in late April, the snakes hang around the den for only a few weeks before
moving out to hunt. Gravid (pregnant) females bask in the sun or give birth at
specific locations they have used before. Rattlers can travel miles from their
dens over summer and return the following fall.
The assessment season
begins in early spring when the snakes first come out of their dens. The
Wilsons usually stop searching in early September. Before and after these
times, it's "a crap shoot" to see snakes.
This summer's cool, wet
weather didn't put a damper on site confirmations -- they documented more
snakes than last year. But their research left them concerned about the
reptile's future.
"The north-central
area of the state seems to be holding its own, especially on public land.
However, the northeast and south-central populations are having problems,"
said Wilson. "We don't see as many rattlers on private land either. All of
the snakes that we saw this season were on state forest lands."
Jim Chestney, director of
the project and a rattlesnake specialist for the Fish and Boat Commission, said
the south-central part of the state had a good reproductive output, while the
north-central area hit its usual average.
The snakes must reach 7 to
9 years of age to reproduce, once every three years at a minimum.
"[It] makes our
efforts to learn as much as we can about the reptiles and their habitat all the
more critical," said Chestney. "The Game Lands of the Pennsylvania
Game Commission and the state forests overseen by the Department of
Conservation and Natural Resources are managed for wildlife. Habitat is
preserved and human activity regulated to this end. ... We also have many, very
cooperative landowners, yet activity on private lands, like construction,
logging, ATV trails and so on, is less restrained and could have a detrimental
effect on any existing snake populations."
Rattlesnakes less than 42
inches in length are protected in Pennsylvania. This law protects young snakes
and females specifically -- they rarely get longer than 40 inches.
Nevertheless, the killing of poisonous snakes, whether they're run over on a
highway or shot on sight, takes a toll.
"People often have a
shock reaction upon seeing a rattlesnake," Chestney said, "Education
about the animals and their place in the ecosystem helps prevent that. Young
people today are more likely to enjoy and react well to a sighting of a
rattlesnake in nature than their parents were at the same age."
Wilson described crotalus horridus to be a shy and
retiring animal.
"Believe it or not,
these guys are really timid. They don't chase people. They will do anything to
avoid a confrontation," he said.
Still, when dealing with
any potentially dangerous animal, caution is the watchword. While doing
assessments, the Wilsons rarely touch the animals. Much of the information they
need can be deduced simply by observation.
"When we find snakes
while assessing a site we count them as best we can," said Wilson.
"We observe and estimate sizes, sex and coloration. Normally we'll see
about three darks for every light phase. This summer we saw some as small as 10
inches and a few up to 54 inches or larger. The big ones are males. I carry a
tape recorder, camera and a
Unlike last year, the
Wilson's documents several "spaghetti piles" in 2009. "The
theory is that there is a three-year cycle for having young," he said.
"Last season they were feeding in the woods. This year they were basking
and incubating their young. Often several females will go to the same rock to
bask, making a plate of spaghetti, so to speak.It was a good season. We had a
blast. Any time we spend in the woods makes us happy."
Read more about the
state's rattlesnake project at www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/cwp/view.asp?a=496&q=161850.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09284/1004355-358.stm?cmpid=sports.xml
LA RAZÓN (La Paz, Bolivia) 11
October 09 A la caza de lagartos por el progreso de Loreto (Liliana Carrillo)
¿Ha cazado lagartos?”.
Lanzada a quemarropa, la pregunta asusta. “He cazado hormigas, de niña”.
“Entonces, mejor si no se cae al agua...”. Carlos Balcázar no bromea. Ni él ni
su casi medio siglo de experiencia como cazador de yacarés, que le han dado el
apodo de Kalimán en el Beni.
Loreto.
1. 00 de la madrugada del tercer viernes de septiembre en la laguna Mendoza, a
45 kilómetros de la ciudad de Trinidad. Los bichos no duermen;
la luna, sí. Balcázar, de pie en una barcaza, no precisa hablar con Ángel
Suárez, el remero. Han cazado juntos desde hace mucho, mucho tiempo. “Desde
niños, 40 años serán”. Ahora tienen 53.
“Ahí está, ¿ve los
ojos? Brillan”. Y yo que nada distingo, hasta que el rifle dispara. El ruido
espanta a una bandada de pájaros. Después, segundos de silencio. Una vara busca
en el agua; un hacha golpea el hueso y el cuerpo de un lagarto es jalado a la
balsa. Aún se mueve. “Ya está muerto; no tenga miedo”, dice don Carlos.
Ha comenzado la
temporada de caza controlada en el municipio de Loreto. Durante tres meses, en ley, los pobladores de la zona aprovecharán la
carne y cuero de los reptiles en el marco del Plan Lagarto que, en tres años de
implementación, ha incrementado las ganacias de comunarios, indígenas y
hacendados hasta en un 200 por ciento.
Peligrosamente,
“cocodriliano”
En
Bolivia existen cinco especies de reptiles de la orden cocodrilia. El más
famoso, por su valioso cuero y su fiera apariencia, es el caimán negro, un
gigante cuya cacería está prohibida. Más pequeño y popular es el caimán overo,
yacaré o lagarto a secas.
Desde
que tiene memoria, Miguel Guasebe Tamo ha cazado lagartos en las lagunas que
rodean Boybo, el pueblo tacana donde nació hace 39 años. “De chicos, ya íbamos
tras los yacarés, ayudábamos a los grandes”, recuerda y admite que sólo una
noche sintió temor en la empresa: “Esa vez, el lagarto, asustado, ha brincado a
la balsa y nos ha perseguido”, relata. “Esas veces no
sabíamos que había sido tan bueno el yacaré”.
Los
pueblos originarios no fueron los únicos en apreciar el fino cuero de los reptiles
que habitan en Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz y el norte de La Paz. Durante la primera
mitad del siglo XIX, los depredadores, traficantes y cazadores furtivos de
lagartos pusieron en peligro a la especie.
En
los años 80, Bolivia suscribió el Cites (Convención sobre el Comercio
Internacional de Especies Amenazadas de Fauna y Flora Silvestres) y prohibió la
caza y la exportación de caimanes en general. En los diez años que duró la
veda, la población de lagartos se recuperó; aunque nunca se libró de la cacería
ilegal.
“Hasta
más de 20.000 cueros salían anualmente del país vía Paraguay; ése era uno de
los mayores problemas”, refiere Mario González. Este español, historiador de
profesión y enamorado de Beni, es el director de la Asociación Boliviana de
Conservación (ABC), una de las instituciones que, en sociedad con varios
municipios y comunidades, lleva adelante el Plan Lagarto.
A
la caza... de traficantes
En una noche, con
suerte y puntería, dos expertos pueden cazar hasta 20 lagartos. “Hay que saber cuáles; deben ser machos y adultos”. Carlos Kalimán los reconoce con sólo verlos en el agua. “Antes, se mataban
más pero sin conciencia ... hasta hembras”, relata. Por
eso vino la veda.
Tras
la prohibición de diez años, ya en los 90, el saludable incremento de la
población de lagartos inspiró varios programas piloto de conservación y
aprovechamiento. En 1999 comenzó a funcionar el Programa Nacional de
Conservación y Aprovechamiento Sostenible del Lagarto.
En
2006, en Loreto se implementó el Plan Lagarto con el apoyo de ABC, la Fundación
Amigos de la Naturaleza (FAN) y la Sociedad para la Protección de la Vida
Silvestre (
Con todo, el inicio no
fue fácil. “Eran varios los actores comprometidos —indígenas,
campesinos y hacendados— y a ello se sumaba el papel de los traficantes que
manipulaban los cupos para la caza”, recrea el director de ABC.
“Han venido a la
comunidad y han dado talleres. Al principio, la gente quería seguir vendiendo a
los rescatistas de cuero; ha habido peleas, pero al final hemos decidido
trabajar con el Plan Lagarto”, cuenta Miguel Guasebe.
“El propio control de
la gente ha hecho escapar a los contrabandistas”, comenta Vladimir García, un
veterinario potosino que dirige el Plan de Loreto.
Ahora, el cupo de
animales cazados es distribuido entre la gente que se inscribe en el programa.
“Antes, lo que sucedía era que las autorizaciones de caza se vendían a las
curtiembres que al mismo tiempo contrataban cazadores intermediarios, para que
acopiaran el cupo sin ningún límite. No teníamos idea de cuántos animales se
estaban cazando ni de dónde. Y en ese sistema perverso, evidentemente el
beneficio no llegaba a las comunidades, que es la lógica de este programa”,
explica González.
Después
de meses de talleres y reuniones, se logró la participación no sólo de
comunidades indígenas y vecinos municipales, sino también de hacendados,
quienes permiten la cacería en los ríos y lagunas de sus propiedades y aportan
con el transporte de las presas hasta Trinidad, paso que es vital en el
proceso.
“Ahora,
la gente, especialmente los más pobres, están viendo los beneficios”, evalúa
Carlos Balcázar, el cazador que representa a los campesinos en el Comité de
Gestión del Plan Lagarto, que también incluye a Miguel Guasebe como voz de los
indígenas y a representantes de los hacendados y las instituciones de apoyo.
En
la cadena de frío
Durante
décadas, era común ver cuerpos de lagartos despellejados a las orillas de las
lagunas. Para los cazadores, lo importante sólo era el cuero. Con
el Plan Lagarto, ahora también se aprovecha la carne del animal.
“Sucede que la
conservación de la carne requiere ingresar rápidamente en la cadena de frío”,
explica González. En ocho horas, dadas las altas temperaturas de la zona, la
carne de yacaré comienza a descomponerse si es que no es refrigerada. Pero
Loreto está a hora y media de Trinidad y el transporte cuesta caro, ¿qué hacer?
“La solución llegó con los ganaderos, que aportan con tractores y camiones en
los cuales las presas de caza pueden llegar rápidamente al frío”.
Ahora, dos horas
después de salir del agua, los cuerpos despellejados de los lagartos pueden
estar en los modernos frigoríficos de la Universidad Técnica del Beni (UTB),
que también es parte del Plan. “Tenemos capacidad para
conservar hasta 120 kilos de carne de lagarto. No
sólo la conservamos, también la etiquetamos y la comercializamos”, explica
Pedro Villalobos Vargas, ingeniero comercial trinitario, director del Programa
de Fomento del Beni (Infopebe) de la UTB.
De un lagarto se puede
aprovechar hasta 80 kilos de carne, de la cola y del lomo, que se comercializa
dentro y fuera del país para el consumo humano. El gancho no sólo es su exótico
sabor sino sus cualidades nutricionales. Según el ingeniero Villalobos, “se
trata de una carne baja en grasas saturadas y colesterol; mucho más saludable
que la vacuna o porcina a las que aventaja en textura y nutrientes”.
Preparada en frituras,
filetes y guisos, la carne de lagarto es el boom de moda en restaurantes como
la Casa del Camba, de Santa Cruz, y La Suisse, de La Paz. “También tiene un
creciente mercado de exportación a países de Europa, Sur y Norteamérica”,
amplía el ingeniero Villalobos.
“¿A qué sabe?”,
preguntamos. “Un poco a pescado, pero aun mejor. Los que lo prueban no se
arrepienten y siempre repiten”.
Cuero para el mundo
Mientras la carne del
lagarto se convierte en un manjar exótico, el aprovechamiento de su cuero —que
alguna vez amenazó al animal— se legaliza y crece. “Desde que llegó el Plan
Lagarto obtenemos cueros más grandes y de mejor calidad”, explica el licenciado
Juan Veza, gerente administrativo de la curtiembre Bolivian Crocco,
especializada en el aprovechamiento de reptiles.
Y los cueros que
llegan a la curtiembre han crecido, pues el Plan de biocomercio establece que
sólo se puede cazar en Loreto animales que midan más de 1,80 metros, desde la
punta del hocico hasta la cola.
Los mismos camiones
que llevan la carne de lagarto hasta el frigorífico de la universidad se
encargan de trasladar los pellejos hasta Bolivian Crocco, ubicada a 10
kilómetros de Trinidad. Ello garantiza la eliminación de mediadores o
rescatistas que usufructuaban en el proceso. “Se paga de inmediato”, puntualiza
el gerente de la empresa que nació hace ya casi dos décadas.
En
la curtiembre, los cueros de yacaré son sometidos a un proceso industrial, que
puede durar hasta tres meses, en el que se cortan, se curten y se tiñen.
“La
mayor parte del producto sale a los mercados extranjeros donde el cuero
boliviano es altamente cotizado para la confección de accesorios y también de
prendas”, añade Juan Veza mientras enseña un arco iris de pieles brillantes y
suaves.
Actualmente, Bolivian
Crocco exporta a Italia, España, Estados Unidos y Alemania. “El mercado
nacional no es muy grande pero el cuero de lagarto es muy buscado en la
artesanía”, añade.
El impulso de Loreto
“Se invita a las
madres de familia a la reunión... Mañana habrá carne en la casa de doña Rosa”.
El megáfono colocado en la plaza de Loreto reparte anuncios comunales que el
pueblo escucha “mejor que radio”. Desde hace tres años, los 300 pobladores
tienen energía eléctrica toda la noche y se nota por la competencia de
rancheras entre las casas que siempre tienen las puertas abiertas. Aquí se
escucha a Pedro Fernández con una ranchera que no disimula el reggaetón
de Daddy Yanky que sale de la rockola del único hotel-pensión del lugar.
Hace 400 años, Loreto
fue la primera misión jesuita del Beni; su iglesia conserva aún el estilo
sobrio y alegre del barroco mestizo en tallas de madera, grandes ventanales y
un enorme órgano.
“Es lindo acá, todos
nos conocemos, pero cuando llueve... no se puede creer, nos inundamos y
quedamos aislados meses”, relata doña Ana, vecina del pueblo milenario,
tradicionalmente ganadero, que ahora ve en el lagarto una veta para su
desarrollo.
“El
Plan Lagarto es un ejemplo de biocomercio —refiere Ruth Delgado, jefe de la
Unidad de la cadena de cueros y carnes silvestres de la FAN. El objetivo es hacer uso del yacaré pero velando por su preservación. Es decir, el aprovechamiento sostenible de los animales y la
distribución equitativa de los beneficios que de ellos obtengan las
comunidades”.
“Nosotros vamos a seguir
con el programa; porque por tres meses nos ayuda mucho. Es decisión de los
tacanas”, refuerza Miguel Guasebe y él representa a 20 comunidades indígenas.
De vuelta a la laguna
La mesa del restaurant
“Uhccojiricoy wenco” espera con un menú de lagarto: lo han preparado al ajillo,
a la diabla, al perejil... “Sabe a pescado y un poquito a pollo”. Frente al
plato de chicharrón de yacaré, es difícil no recordar esa madrugada del
penúltimo viernes de septiembre.
“¡Bah!,
el hombre siempre ha vivido de los animales, hay que agradecer... mejor coma”,
me reta don Kalimán. Para él, y para muchos en Loreto, vienen tres meses de
caza en balsa en busca de ojos que brillen en la noche.
Pueblo
Ubicación. El
municipio de Loreto es parte de la provincia Marbán del departamento del Beni.
Está a 45 km de la ciudad de Trinidad.
Historia. Situado en
tierra de indígenas tacanas, Loreto fue fundado como misión jesuítica durante
la Colonia. En la República adquirió rango de municipio.
Recursos. Las
comunidades aledañas viven aún de la caza y la pesca. La economía de Loreto se
basa en la ganadería y, recientemente, en el biocomercio.
Lagartos. Según un
estudio de la ABC, la población de lagartos en ríos y lagunas de Loreto es
óptima, por lo que la caza de la especie es legal durante 3 meses.
La
cacería de lagartos fue vedada por 10 años. Hoy, la población de los reptiles
crece en 4 departamentos
http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20091011_006877/nota_277_892601.htm
THE
We're speeding through the
darkness in a packed four-wheel-drive, seven recruits heading to the front line
to capture and kill foreign invaders in far north Australia.
We're out hunting cane
toads, which are on the brink of spreading across Western Australia's Kimberley
wilderness, wiping out native goannas, turtles, quolls, lizards and snakes
along their path towards Broome and Perth.
The annual Great Toad
Muster is now in its fourth year, and despite the searing heat and sometimes
slimy, smelly work, the current month-long muster has attracted a record 140
volunteers. Dozens more wanted to come, but had to be turned away for lack of
funding.
Armed only with
spotlights, heavy-duty garbage bags and specially designed toad fences, the
musterers have bagged, tagged and gassed more than 130,000 toads in the past
three years.
With two days to go before
this year's muster ends, the tally is more than 42,000.
Originally from South
America, cane toads were introduced to Queensland canefields in the mid-1930s
in a bungled attempt to contain cane beetles.
Their population has
exploded because each adult female can lay up to 30,000 eggs at a time. Their
toxin is lethal to Australian animals. Even their tadpoles are venomous.
Having spread unchecked
across Queensland, northern NSW and the Northern Territory, there are now up to
200 million cane toads in Australia.
While a handful have
hitchhiked as far as Perth and Fremantle inside fruit boxes and on trucks, the
main western front lies just inside the WA border.
With so many toads on the
march, some say the fight to contain their westward march is pointless.
But muster organisers are
optimistic that they can, at least, prevent important areas from being overrun,
by fencing off and systematically clearing waterholes where toads gather after
dusk until the wet season rains arrive.
Designed by frog lover and
Darwin Lord Mayor Graeme Sawyer, the fences can be built cheaply with shade
cloth and pickets, with mesh at the bottom that is too narrow for toads but
still allows snakes, lizards and native frogs to wriggle through.
On the first night after
fencing off the edge of a billabong or dam, a four-wheel-drive load of
volunteers can fill bag after bag with several thousand toads from along the
fenceline. After a week of return visits, there is little more than a handful
left to collect.
The fences are mostly
built at the Toad Muster base camp, a temporary tent city on a cattle station
70 kilometres east of Kununurra, near the WA-NT border. The local TAFE and
prison have also been working together, teaching prisoners to make
ready-to-roll fences.
The toads are surprisingly
easy to catch, especially if you grab them before they reach the water. Female
toads are typically bigger and smoother, with skin like soft leather, while the
males have a slightly rougher, sandpaper feel.
Although the milky toxin
that toads secrete when stressed is lethal to ingest, handling them poses
little threat, so only a few squeamish volunteers bother wearing gloves after
their first night.
After a long drive back to
base along pot-holed cattle tracks, we carry the heavy bags to ''Toad Hall'' -
a tarpaulin-covered area about 100 metres downwind of the central kitchen and
living area.
The toads are gassed in
the bags with carbon dioxide, and are dead within about 30 seconds.
It's a method picked up
via the internet from the French: it's how they kill frogs whose legs are
destined for gourmet restaurants.
The worst job to do each
morning is to tip out the slimy bags to count how many toads were caught at
each waterhole, then load them back into a four-wheel-drive, which takes them
to a pit five kilometres from camp.
But there are deadlier
hazards too, such as the king brown snake coiled beneath a tree a metre from
our creekside track; a whip snake slithering through camp; and the red flash of
crocodile eyes reflecting back in our torchlight.
None of it deters the
volunteers, a mix of retirees, backpackers, tradies and professionals, aged nine
to 80. Most are from Perth, but a few are from as far away as Melbourne,
Tasmania, Germany and South Korea.
''When people say to me,
'Why do you bother?', I say come out and see what a difference we can make with
this many people,'' says Stop the Toad Foundation campaign manager Kim Hands.
''Imagine how much more we
could do if we could take more volunteers. You never know what you can achieve
until you try.''
http://www.stopthetoad.org.au
BOSTON
GLOBE
(Massachusetts) 10 October 09 Landlord doesn’t know who owned boa
constrictor (Jack Nicas)
A Fall River landlord has
finally evicted his most unwelcome tenant.
After five days of rooftop
sunbathing, a 5-foot-long, 15-pound boa constrictor was trapped Thursday night
in an attic of a six-family dwelling. It was unclear who owned the pet or
whether it escaped or was abandoned.
“It actually slithered its
way into a homemade trap,’’ said Robert Schenck, owner of Animal Instincts, a
local pet store that captured the 2-year-old snake and has taken it in. He said
the trap was a rabbit fur-filled cardboard box with a hole carved out.
“It’s a pretty makeshift thing; it’s actually amazing it went
in,’’ Schenck said yesterday.
The boa was first spotted
Sunday, stretched out on the edge of an East Main Street roof, neighbors said.
“It would come out in the
sun, just sunbathing,’’ said Zelda Pavao, owner of Brickhouse Café next door.
“And it would go get some water when it was raining.’’
On Wednesday, two
volunteers from the Animal Rescue League of Boston attempted to capture the
snake, to no avail. “Basically, it disappeared,’’ said Jennifer Wooliscroft,
spokeswoman for the league.
Later that night, the city
animal control officer set the cardboard trap in the attic. The snake was found
coiled inside yesterday morning, according to Schenck, who picked the reptile
up about noon.
“His temperament is
definitely on the aggressive side,’’ Schenck said. “He’s in survival mode. They
become aggressive when they have to fend for their life.’’
Schenck said the snake,
which is not a native of the Commonwealth, is sick and about 10 pounds
underweight.
“He has an upper
respiratory infection,’’ he said. “He’s in a 75-gallon aquarium in the
quarantine room with heat lights, a clean water bowl, and antibiotics.’’
Neighbors said the
landlord recently found an empty aquarium left by a former tenant.
“If anyone has unwanted
pets, please do not let them loose,’’ Schenck said. “They’ll never survive in
this local environment; it’s too harsh.’’
Schenck said the store,
which is considering keeping the snake, will put it to work in its
animal-breeding program. Boas could live for 30 years, and adults can grow up
to a dozen feet long and weigh more than 60 pounds.
“I’ll probably name it
Cuddles,’’ Schenck said, “because he already hooked onto my arm and squeezed
like you wouldn’t believe.’’
TIMES
OF INDIA (New Delhi) 10 October 09
Serpent's Paradise (Jayanta
Gupta & Jayanta Bhattacharya)
As 11-year-old Pradip
Kundu sits cross-legged in the courtyard, head buried in his textbook, a
poisonous monocled cobra slithers across the red floor a few feet away. The
class VI student calls out to his mother, "Ma, jhaenglai dhukechhe (Ma, there is a snake in the house)."
His mother, busy with household chores, doesn't bother looking up. "You
concentrate on your studies, the snake will go away on its own.''
In Musharu and three other
villages - Polshoria, Chhoto Poshla and Boro Poshla - in West Bengal's Burdwan
district, man and reptile have learnt to coexist peacefully , some say for 500
years now. Children learn about cobras before they can even walk. After all,
there are snakes everywhere - one for every two residents is the estimate.
"No one knows the
exact number," says Nayan Chakraborty , priest of the temple in Musharu.
"There may be thousands. They are worshipped as an incarnation of goddess
Jhankeswari, hence the name jhaenglai. Here, snakes and people have lived
together for hundreds of years."
Chakraborty should know.
He offers puja to Jhankeswari every day. And as a member of the only Brahmin
family in the village, he has the added responsibility of handling the snakes
whenever the need arises. Other villagers won't touch a jhaenglai.
Villagers are extremely
protective about the reptiles and do not allow outsiders - even if they are
experts - to touch the snakes. "Our snakes are amazing," says
villager Madhusudan Konar. "They may feed on chicks and ducklings but
never harm cattle. We have seen cows and calves stamping on them with their
hooves. But they don't strike back. Jhaenglais are here to protect us."
Experts, in turn, believe
it is this protective nature that has helped the reptile multiply.
"Villagers believe that only Brahmins, and that too members of a single
family, can touch the snakes. The snakes, therefore, are left undisturbed . Had
that not been the case, there would have been many more incidents of
snakebite," said an official from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI).
Strangely, villagers are
convinced that snake-bite can be treated at the temple. "Victims are
brought to the temple and made to bathe in the pond. They listen to mantras,
fast for a day and are not allowed to sleep. In a few days, they are
cured," Chakraborty said.
But experts say cobra
venom can kill in minutes and the probable reason behind the few casualties is
that poisonous snakes tend to reserve their venom, releasing only a small
quantity at a time.
Many herpetologists and
biologists have visited these seven Burdwan villages to unravel the mystery
behind this strange coexistence . No one, though, has succeeded.
Researchers can't do much
because villagers won't let even a single snake be transported out. A few years
ago, a team from ZSI visited the villages, confirmed that the snakes were
cobras and milked them to test the potency of their venom. The villagers
allowed all this, but the moment the team wanted to take away a snake to
Kolkata for further examination, the protests began.
"Had the Wildlife
Protection Act permitted the capture of snakes, it would have been possible to
trap 400-500 cobras here on a single day," said well-known snake expert
Dipak Mitra. "During my visits, I have seen poisonous snakes enter
kitchens and climb shelves while the women cook. The snakes do not feel
threatened and people have got used to them. It's truly remarkable."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/india/Serpents-Paradise-/articleshow/5109345.cms
THE
WITNESS (Pietermaritzburg, S Africa) 10 October 09 Snakes
stage home invasions (Angelo C. Louw)
“It is still early days;
the worst is yet to come,” are the ominous words of Pietermaritzburg snake
catcher Mark Enslin.
It’s that time of the year
again when the province is plagued by slithering reptiles of all shapes, sizes
and degrees of venomousness.
Enslin said that
Pietermaritzburg and its surrounding areas are home to many venomous and deadly
snakes that are “not scared to bite”, and in the past week alone, he has been
called out 33 times.
“We have puff adders,
black mambas and Mozambican spitting cobras, also called mfezi, and boomslangs
here,” said Enslin, who has been catching snakes for close to 25 years.
He said snakes lurk in
thick vegetation.
Ashburton, Chase Valley,
Hayfields, Howick, Merrivale and World’s View are just a few of the areas where
snakes flourish.
Just this week, he was
called out to a home in Ashburton where a spitting cobra, found on the veranda,
had attacked a cat, spitting into its eyes.
“We’ve always had snakes
in our yard ever since we moved here,” said homeowner Ingrid Harrison. “The
night before we saw the snake, the cat, Sooty, came into the house with
streaming eyes, and because we’ve had pets attacked by snakes before, we knew
what the problem was.”
Harrison washed Sooty’s
eyes out with milk and applied an ointment that the vet gave her when their dog
was attacked. She said it took two days for her cat’s puffy eyes to subside.
The next day, her son
Ruari came rushing into the house with her two cats, having saved them from the
cobra.
“They were stalking the
snake, and my son saw this and ran and grabbed them and brought them into the
house,” she said. “At that point, the snake had been hissing and had reared its
head.”
She then called Enslin.
However, in the 10 or so minutes that it took for him to arrive, the snake had
made its way to the house and Ruari kept it at bay with a fishing net.
“It was quite aggressive,”
she said. “It spat at Mark twice – but luckily, he was wearing goggles.”
Enslin said Mozambican
spitting cobras are the only snakes that can spit at you while lying down. “If
it does this, it is just warning you to back off,” he said.
Garth Carpenter, another
city snake catcher, said that over the years, he has seen many instances where
children and animals were attacked in this way.
“There was a case in Table
Mountain where a four-year-old girl was spat in the eyes,” he said. “I went
inside, caught the snake and took her to hospital.”
Carpenter, who has also
dealt with Harrison many times over the years, said he has been called to
remove snakes from homes between 30 to 35 times so far in the past two months.
However, neither of the
snake catchers was aware of any snakebite incidents in the city since snake
bite season began.
Both, however, expect the
risk to increase as the days get warmer.
“Avoid the snake,” says
Mark Enslin. “Most snakes bite and they can cause death.”
He says you should remain
still and back away “very, very slowly”.
Eshowe snake catcher Alwyn
Schultz says a snake will bite one only if it feels threatened. “Snakes don’t
want to attack you, but they will if they feel threatened.
“I know it’s difficult to
do, but don’t panic. You do not want to alarm the snake.”
He said the calmer one is,
the calmer and more placid the snake will remain.
He adds that one should
never turn one’s back on a snake.
“When it doesn’t feel
threatened anymore, it will turn and go away.”
Not all snake bites are
lethal. Symptoms can vary from a sore thumb to death, so it is advisable to
visit a doctor if you are bitten.
“It doesn’t matter what
kind of snake you think it is,” says Schultz. “Unless you have a very good
knowledge of snakes, it is not easy to identify exactly what snake you’ve been
bitten by, so you have to visit a doctor — to be certain.”
Enslin says that in the
case of spitting cobras, unless it has spat its venom into a wound or the eyes,
one can easily just wash it off. “I’ve been sprayed in the eyes; it burns like
fire.”
If the venom is in a wound
or one’s eyes, wash the affected area with water or milk to neutralise the
venom.
http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global%5b_id%5d=29209
HUTCHINSON
NEWS
(Kansas) 10 October 09 Group counts species - Searchers turn up
turtles, snakes and lizards (Clara Kilbourn)
Wilson State Park: Glass lizards, a western hognose snake and
the barred tiger salamander were among 20 species of amphibians, reptiles and turtles
recorded during last weekend's Kansas Herpetological Society field count.
"The three were
really great finds and the first for Lincoln County," herpetologist Joe
Collins said.
The lizards and salamander
were released back into their environment. The hognose snake, identified by its
turned up scale that resembles a hog's snout, will go on exhibit in Lawrence,
where it replaces a hognose previously housed in the University of Kansas
Natural History Museum.
The only venomous snake
discovered was the massasauga rattlesnake. About a dozen were counted, some
were road kills and a few were live, Collins said.
The event attracted 75
volunteer participants from several states and as far away as Belgium. The
group documented 1,150 specimens.
A complete list of the
animals included Blanchard's cricket frog, plains leopard frog, bullfrog, false
map turtle, ornate box turtle, Texas horned lizard, prairie lizard, six-lined
racerunner, eastern racer, milk snake, western rat snake, Great Plains snake,
gopher snake, ringneck snake, common garter snake and lined snake.
For Hutchinson zookeepers
Melanie Weber and Ryan Witmer, the trek across the plains was their first
experience on a count.
"It's always fun when
a group of scientists gets together," Weber said.
She and Witmer found two
eastern collared lizards, one an adult and the second a juvenile, along with a
non-venomous ringneck snake. They were allowed to bring the animals back to the
Hutchinson Zoo. The three animals are in quarantine and will soon be on display
in the Habitat Building.
A fall season count meant
that many of the animals were out in the daytime eating the last of the food
they could find, Collins said.
"They can feel the
weather coming in and the days getting shorter," he said. "They know
its time to find a place to spend the winter."
Visit the Web site
www.cnah.org for information.
http://www.hutchnews.com/Outdoors/wilson2009-10-10T20-31-51
BRATTLEBORO
REFORMER (Vermont) 10 October 09 Vernon family finds rare snake in Vermont
(Chris Garofolo)
Vernon: A Vernon man and his children have reported
the first Eastern hog-nosed snake in the Green Mountain State.
Dan Waters found the
eight-inch recently hatched snake with his children and their friends at the
end of his driveway on Sept. 23. The snake was playing dead at the time, a
trick often used by the species when it feels threatened.
The children were getting
off the bus when they all gathered around something near the drop-off point,
said Waters. The snake was lying in the driveway upside-down, he said.
"It was nothing I’ve
ever seen before," he added.
So the family scooped the
creature into a box and brought it into the house.
Waters examined the snake
and found it did not match any local species. He found online the best match to
the specimen in his possession was an Eastern hog-nosed snake, but it was never
documented in the state.
Unsure exactly how the
species made its way to his Vernon home, he brought the snake to local game
warden Kelly Price, who also recognized said it was unusual to the state.
"He agreed that it
didn’t look like anything around here," said Waters.
Price later contacted
herpetologist Jim Andrews of the Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Atlas to look at
the snake.
According to Andrews, he
has seen dozens of photographs sent in by residents thinking the snake they
found was rare, but is typically nothing more than a milksnake or northern
watersnake.
However, the suspicions from
Waters and Price were correct this time around.
"In this case I was
pleasantly surprised to see it was an Eastern hog-nosed snake, which has never
been documented in this state before," he said.
"It was kind of cool,
the kids were excited that they found something that hasn’t been found
before," said Waters.
A herpetologist studies a
specific branch of zoology dealing with reptiles and amphibians. Andrews
teaches a herpetology course at the University of Vermont and is known as the
state’s unofficial herpetologist.
Within two days of first
contacting Price, Andrews and his assistant Kiley Briggs and former student
Jason Plotkin visited Vernon to photograph the snake in greater detail and
talked to the Waters family about where it was found.
There remains multiple
theories on how the snake made its way to Vernon -- it may have transported
itself or with its parent via railroad or truck in a cargo of mulch, compost,
firewood or other materials from northern Massachusetts, but Waters said there
has not been any such shipments to his knowledge.
The species is not popular
as a pet snake because it is difficult to keep. The fact that it was a
hatchling also means it is unlikely it was a released pet.
Additionally, Andrews said
it is possible small populations of the species have or do exist in scattered
locations in Vermont with any documentation. Older reports of unknown snakes in
southern counties may also could have been this snake, he added.
The Eastern hog-nosed
snake (heterondon platirhinos), is
commonly found 15 miles south of Vermont’s border. Its appropriate habitat is
along the Connecticut River’s sandy points, but is seldom found north of
Montague, Mass., with the exception of the Merrimack River valley in New
Hampshire and the Glen Falls region of upstate New York.
Growing as large as 31Ž2
feet in length as adults (but are more noticeable because of their wide
bodies), the Eastern hog-nosed snake prefers dry sandy soils and open space
with plenty of sunshine. The species is harmless to humans, but may flare up
like a cobra when cornered or roll on its back and play dead.
They tend to vary in
coloration yet it is easily identified by its flat nose.
"What really sets
this snake apart is the nose," said Andrews. "[The nose] is used for
burrowing in the sand ... it is a toad specialist, it is a toad eater and will
eat other amphibians but his favorite food is toads."
After the discovery of the
snake, Andrews is asking residents living in the low borderlands in the
southern portion of the state to keep their eyes open for a stocky little snake
with a flat, upturned nose to see if the species is moving into Vermont.
"Some people have
asked if the presence of this juvenile here represents a recent northern range
expansion for its species. That is not known," said Andrews in a release.
"At this point, the Eastern hog-nosed snake will remain a hypothetical
species in Vermont until others are found."
For more information or to
contact Andrews, visit the state reptile and amphibian atlas Web site at
www.vtherpatlas.org.
http://www.reformer.com/ci_13519953?source=most_emailed
DAILY
NEWS
(Bowling Green, Kentucky) 10 October 09 The newt a part of fall’s brilliant colors
(Geordon T. Howell)
While raking moist leaves
up this fall, you might be quite stunned to see a small, brightly colored
creature squirming around beneath the autumn debris.
To some, the slimy life
form might cause alarm, while in others the amphibian will likely evoke
intrigue because of the fantastic, reddish-orange coloring of its slippery
skin. Red-spotted newts tend to show up in places one would not expect to find
any sort of water-loving salamander hanging out, but this adaptability to
different environments and development is why they remain so prevalent in
southcentral Kentucky and most of the eastern United States today.
For decades, the species’
hardiness has earned the red newt countless terrarium homes in science
classrooms, and backyard gardeners consider them an asset because of the newts’
fondness of insects. A very interesting aspect of the red spotted newt is that
it has three life stages, and the brilliantly colored stage that we are
accustomed to witnessing is only the middle of this lengthy trio of
metamorphoses.
Much like a frog, the
amphibious newt begins life in a puddle, pond, or roadside ditch, where it
hatches from one of hundreds of deposited eggs and begins life as a dully
colored larva with a paddle-like tail. Eventually the immature larva undergoes
a dramatic change in color, develops lungs and becomes a land-loving newt.
Many a fisherman has
probably been disappointed after securing a handful of red newts from under a
rotted log or stone step while searching for worms. Although the red newts
closely resemble commercially produced plastic lizard baits and appear to be
perfect live bait for bass fishing, nature has equipped the red-spotted newt
with a skin toxin. Fish and other animals find the taste repulsive, so the
fragile little newt needs no other defenses. This is why newts can live
alongside predatory fish in ponds and streams during their first and third life
cycles without the threat of becoming a meal.
For several years the
bright, terrestrial newt might roam dry land before finally maturing, changing
back to a moss-green color, and returning to the water to breed and live out
the remainder of its lengthy life hunting the shallows for food throughout the
year.
Keep your eyes peeled in
the coming weeks, as one of the most striking fall colors may be not actually
be the leaves, but a small newt residing beneath them.
http://www.bgdailynews.com/articles/2009/10/11/sports/sports7.txt
EVENING
POST (Bristol,
UK) 10 October 09 Thousands sign petition after Bristol cat eaten by snake next door
More than 4,000 people
have signed a petition for tougher laws on snake owners, started by a Bristol
man whose cat was eaten by a python.
Martin Wadey's pet Wilbur
was eaten alive by his neighbour Darren Bishop's 13ft snake Squash earlier this
year.
The story made global
headlines in the summer after Mr Wadey, 44, of Brislington, started an online
campaign in memory of his lost pet.
'Justice for Wilbur'
called for changes to the law as constrictors like Burmese python Squash are
not covered by the Dangerous Wild Animals Act (DWAA) and so owners do not need
a licence.
So far, there are 4,637
electronic signatures on the e-petition to 10 Downing Street to introduce
"Wilbur's amendment", ahead of the deadline on October 24.
Mr Wadey recently received
a letter from MP Kerry McCarthy, which had an attached letter from Defra
Minister Jim Fitzpatrick.
Mr Fitzpatrick said adding
constricting snakes to the schedule has been considered before but was
rejected.
"The study concluded
that on balance the listing of constrictors on the schedule was unlikely to
achieve the aims of the DWAA," he wrote.
He said there were no
plans to revise the act in the near future, but if there is, there would be a
full public consultation.
Mr Wadey last night said
he was disappointed with the response but would await a response to the
petition from Government when it is submitted.
And he admitted he had
been "overwhelmed" by his "15 minutes of fame".
"I didn't realise it
was going to go around the world. I was getting e-mails from people in
Australia, New Zealand, everywhere.
"It totally polarised
people's attitude between cats and reptiles. It was absolutely amazing. I'm
just trying to respond to as many people as I can."
Mr Wadey said the number
of people signing up has slowed in recent weeks, but it would be nice if the
petition could tip the 5,000 mark.
Mr Bishop has also been
busy since the incident and has appeared in a short film on the internet
explaining his side of the story.
The 10-minute film, called
The Snake That Ate The Neighbour's Cat, is divided into two parts and can be
seen on Youtube. It was made by Pet Street Film Club, a social networking group
for animal lovers.
In the video, Mr Bishop,
35, says again that he is sorry Wilbur was eaten, but gives his opinion on any
potential law change.
He said: "It is
legislation put in place to protect the general public from people who are
licensed to keep very dangerous, wild animals that are known to kill the
general public.
"That would cover
zoos, herpetologists that keep venomous snakes.
"It puts a licence on
them to stop or mitigate any circumstances where their animal could harm a
member of the public.
"As far as I know
Wilbur wasn't a member of the public, so to have the legislation to licence
these animals because of a death of a cat, it is not what the legislation is
there for.
"If Martin had his
way, everybody that owns one of these large pythons would have to go and get
licensed, because of me."
After watching the video,
Mr Wadey said: "His smirk belies what he really thinks when talking about
discovering the bulge in the snake."