The state of Florida is asking for help from the public in determining whether the Florida Pine Snake, the Southern Hognose Snake, and the Short Tailed Snake should be placed on the federal endangered species list. The three snakes are considered at risk due to habitat destruction.



The project involves GPS mapping of sitings, and the information can be reported on the FWC website. For more background, including how to identify and report each of the snakes, click here.

Photo: Southern Hognose Snake/Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

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You're frozen solid, your heart's stopped beating, and you haven't breathed in days. You're dead, right? Not if you're an Alaskan wood frog.

The amphibian -- an Arctic population of the wood frog, Rana sylvatica -- can tolerate being frozen, heart and respiration both stopped, for days or even weeks at a time. Scientists found that they could survive temperatures down to 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit, while they're Midwestern cousins could only come back from a balmy 24.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

All of which is super cool, of course, but it has a practical, and potentially human-lifesaving application, as well.

From National Geographic:

Beyond being fascinating science, the ability to freeze and unfreeze living organs and tissues without damaging them has potentially profound implications for areas such as organ transplantation.

“There’s an obvious parallel between what these frogs are doing to preserve all of their tissues simultaneously and our need to be able to cryopreserve human organs for tissue-matching purposes,” said [researcher Jon] Costanzo, noting that attempts to successfully freeze human organs for transplants have so far proved unsuccessful, perhaps due to their relative size and cellular complexity.

“If you could freeze human organs even for a short period of time, that would be a major breakthrough because then these organs could be shipped around the world, which would greatly [improve] the donor-matching process,” noted Costanzo.

Read the rest here.

Photo: A wood frog in New Jersey, by kingsnake.com user BryanD.

The CDC reports that cases of Lyme disease have been skyrocketing around the United States -- but not in California, thanks to the western fence lizard.

From the LA Times:

The CDC report might lead health authorities to accelerate the research and approval of a Lyme vaccine. Promising results were found earlier this year on one vaccine under development. That would be a popular item in prime Lyme disease territory, largely the Northeast and northern Midwest states where up to 30% of deer ticks carry the infection. Almost all cases of the disease — 96% -- occur in 13 states.

California isn’t among them, and one reason for that is that we have, in a sense, our own little natural vaccine program going. In this state, nymphal ticks’ favorite host is the common western fence lizard, which has a protein in it blood that kills the bacterium responsible for Lyme. As a result, few adult ticks are carriers.

Read the full story here.

Once extinct in the wild due to predation by rats, the Pinzón Island subspecies of the Galápagos giant tortoise (Chelonoidis nigra duncanensis) has returned to its native island thanks to a successful captive breeding program.

From Scientific American:

[...] Galápagos National Park and its partners launched a program to eradicate the rats and other invasive species throughout the archipelago, starting on smaller islands such as Pinzón, which as of last year was home to an astonishing 180 million rats. Last December more than 20,000 kilograms of poison were dropped on the 18-square-kilometer island. The poisons, which dissolve after a few days, were specially designed to attract rats but repel birds and other wildlife that might accidentally consume them. The rodents quickly took the bait and Pinzón has now been tentatively declared rat-free.

Late last month Galápagos National Park took the third step and returned 118 juvenile tortoises to Pinzón from a breeding center on Santa Cruz Island.

We wish the Pinzón Island tortoise well! Read the rest of the story here.

Photo: Scientific American/Island Conservation

This image of an Irian Jaya Jaguar, uploaded by kingsnake.com user StonedReptiles, is our herp photo of the day!



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In the United States, most large scale "rescue" of reptiles means they're seized from a bad or illegal situation and then killed. That's been the case in Queensland, Australia, too -- but no more.

Andrew Powell, Minister for the Environment and Heritage Protection of Queensland, overturned that policy, directing agencies that take in seized reptiles find them homes, whether in zoos or wildlife centers, or private homes by adoption.

From the Courier-Mail:

Mr Powell said the arrangement would save many animals from an uncertain fate.

"Every year our wildlife rangers are called on to help native birds and reptiles which, for a number of reasons, cannot be released into the wild,'' he said.

"It may be because we can't identify the area from which they came or that they were born in captivity.

"Some animals are the innocent victims of illegal activity, others are surrendered by wildlife carers whose circumstances have changed and they simply can no longer look after them.

"Historically they were offered to zoos and wildlife parks but, if they had no space, there was no alternative but to euthanise them."

Although the growing No-Kill Movement has not frequently championed the cause of pets other than cats and dogs, the principles of animal rescue and sheltering it espouses apply to reptiles and other "non-cuddly" pets, too.

Far too many organizations that claim to be advocating for the "humane" or "ethical" treatment of animals resort to large-scale slaughter when it comes to reptiles, whether to make a court case stronger or simply because they lack awareness of, or connections to, existing reptile rescue networks run by seasoned herpers.

"What's starting to happen here is a great step forward," said Cindy Steinle of Small Scale Reptile Rescue in Wisconsin. "Reptile rescue has evolved greatly over the past decade to follow the lead of our counterparts working with other species of pet, and thankfully fewer animals are killed today, due to the partnership between rescues and the sheltering community.

"Just because an animal is not 'cuddly' does not make it undesirable as a pet, nor mean its life has no value."

Photo: Jungle Carpet Python by Venom925

Biologists with the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) have suited up the continent's most endagered toad with a little backpack in an effort to prevent the species from going extinct.



The backpack holds a radio transmitter that will be used to track the toads in their range.

Photo: US Dept. of the Interior

It turns out well-managed golf courses are better turtle habitat than some farms and parks.

At least, that's the word from National Geographic, not normally prone to pro-golf hysteria. (If golf can be said to inspire anything like hysteria even among its devotees.)

In "Turtles Flourishing in Golf Course Ponds," NatGeo reports on two studies by University of Kentucky herpetologist Steven Price, published in the Journal of Herpetology:

Price and his colleagues sought to understand the fate of turtles in the Charlotte, North Carolina, metropolitan area, where galloping growth has swallowed 60 percent of the undeveloped land in some counties.

The researchers set out nets baited with tins of sardines in 20 local ponds. Some ponds were on golf courses, others in cattle pastures or neighborhood parks. The scientists checked the traps every other day, extracting any occupants by hand.

The surveys showed that two common species—the painted turtle and the slider—were just as abundant in golf course ponds as in farm ponds ... while neighborhood ponds placed a distant third.

And golf course ponds boasted a richer variety of turtle species than farm and neighborhood ponds, because the area around golf course ponds tended to have better connections to other green space, the scientists report in an upcoming issue of the journal Landscape and Urban Planning.

It's not clear why more kinds of turtles hang out near the fairways than down at the local park. Perhaps it's because golf courses often boast multiple ponds and even lakes or streams. And the courses' large stretches of grass and field are good for turtle nests.

Read the rest here.

A Florida police officer saw some baby sea turtles in trouble, and decided to give them a hand.

From Yahoo News:

Sarasota Officer Derek Conley was on patrol at 1 a.m. Saturday when he saw sea turtle hatchlings crawling toward the front door of the Lido Beach Resort. A passerby also told Conley that several dozen other baby turtles were walking around the hotel's parking lot.

Conley, along with some resort guests, scooped up the hatchlings in a box and released them into the water.

"I began collecting hatchlings from the street and stopped traffic several times to do so," wrote Conley in a report.

A news release says that Conley spotted three dead turtles, and he estimates that 90-100 turtles were saved.

Conley also called two area marine rescue groups.

Read the rest, and watch video, here.

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Snowmelt is decreasing all over the United States, putting human endeavors and wildlife survival in jeopardy. One victim of climate change is the Cascades frog, a denizen of the mountains of the Pacifc Northwest known for his distinctive "chuckle."

From NPR:

In Washington's Olympic Mountains things are looking dryer than normal. On a recent day, Maureen Ryan is out looking for the wet spots. She's a researcher with the University of Washington and an expert on amphibians that live at high elevation.

These mountain trails are Ryan's lab, so to speak. She studies tiny snow-fed potholes of water, cupped in the folds of high mountain ranges in the Northwest, a perfect habitat for Cascades frogs. But as the global climate warms, that habitat is receding.

"What's happening to these frogs is in no way dissimilar to what's happening to us, even if we can't necessarily see it," Ryan says. "These frogs are reliant on snowmelt for the water they need to live."

People in the Pacific Northwest also rely on snowmelt to supply water for agriculture, industry, hydropower and drinking water.

Cascades frogs spend most of the year beneath dozens of feet of snow. But for a few short months in the summer, the frogs come to warm sunny ponds to feed and mate. While they're at it, they make what some describe as a "chuckling" sound.

[...]

"Last year we had a good number of ponds ... [that] dried up before the tadpoles had metamorphosed, so they didn't survive there," she says.

Ryan worries that with less snowpack and hotter summers, more egg sacks and tadpoles will be stranded out of water. That could ultimately decimate the population, unless they can move into deeper alpine lakes that are more resilient to the warming climate.

Read the rest, and watch video, here.

In yet more news about just why rattlesnakes are so vital to our ecology, the "magazine of the west," Cowboys and Indians, tries to explain why human fear and persecution of these animals are so misguided:

While it’s not especially natural to empathize with beady-eyed creatures that have been demonized throughout history and rounded up for mass killing, the idea that “the only good snake is a dead snake” is an erroneous one, says Steven J. Beaupre, Ph.D., a biology professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Snakes play an important role in sustaining the earth’s fragile balance of nature, and, although often unjustly persecuted, they offer humans many benefits. For example, according to the National Institutes of Health, snakes are the prized research animals for some scientists seeking better treatments for such disorders as high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer.

“Serious diseases lurk in nature, and healthy ecosystems provide protective effects. Rattlesnakes exactly fit the bill,” Beaupre says. “They’re critically important natural rodent-control agents and voracious small-animal predators that help keep rodent-born diseases like hantavirus and bubonic plague in check.”

Beaupre also says Arkansas timber rattlesnakes may actually help control Lyme disease by consuming large numbers of white-footed mice that carry the bacterial infection. “Plus, any rancher who stores grain knows how devastating rodents can be to his supply,” he notes.

In a world where snakes are villified even when they are harmless and doing nothing but trying to avoid humans, and rattlesnakes are abused and tortured in the name of "entertainment" at "rattlesnake round-ups," those are words herpers and animal advocates alike should take to heart.

Read the full, excellent story here.

Hate ticks? Hate Lyme disease? Then embrace the rattlesnake.

Researchers at the University of Maryland discovered that the Eastern timber rattlesnake, Crotalus horridus, keeps the ticks that cause Lyme disease in check by eating the rodents they're attached to.

From the UMD release:

Human cases of Lyme disease, a bacterial illness that can cause serious neurological problems if left untreated, are on the rise. The disease is spread by black-legged ticks, which feed on infected mice and other small mammals. Foxes and other mammal predators help control the disease by keeping small mammal populations in check. The decline of these mammal predators may be a factor in Lyme disease's prevalence among humans.

Timber rattlers are also top predators in Eastern forests, and their numbers are also falling, so former University of Maryland graduate student Edward Kabay wanted to know whether the rattlers also play a role in controlling Lyme disease.

Kabay used published studies of timber rattlers' diets at four Eastern forest sites to estimate the number of small mammals the snakes consume, and matched that with information on the average number of ticks each small mammal carried. The results showed that each timber rattler removed 2,500-4,500 ticks from each site annually.

Because not every human bitten by an infected tick develops Lyme disease, the team did not estimate how many people are spared the disease because of the ecosystem service that timber rattlesnakes provide. But Kabay, who is now a science teacher at East Chapel Hill High School, and his research colleagues will talk about the human health implications of their work at 4:20 pm today (Aug. 6) in Room 1011 of the Minneapolis Convention Center.

Timber rattlesnakes are listed as endangered in six states and threatened in five more under the Endangered Species Act.

"Habitat loss, road kills, and people killing them out of fear are the big issues," said University of Maryland Associate Biology Prof. Karen Lips. "They are non-aggressive and rarely bite unless provoked or stepped upon."

Photo: Edward Kabay/UMD