Last September, I saw my first rattlesnake. My partner, John, and I were hiking in Pinnacles National Park, and as we trudged up the dry, dusty path, we realised that what at first glance had looked to be a branch up ahead was in fact a snake. Quite a big snake, and unhelpfully stretched right across the path where we needed to walk. Not long before this, a huge black tarantula had wandered down the path towards us, and before that we’d needed to clamber through a cave where we disturbed a couple of bats. There were vultures circling above. Possibly not everybody’s idea of a good nature walk, but as somebody writing a book about underappreciated animals, I was in my element.
Anyway, after we’d stomped around for a bit on the path ‘our’ snake lazily slithered out of view and into the bushes. It felt like we’d reached a good negotiation, with no animosity on either part. This snake, I am sure, had a pretty good life here in Pinnacles.
Not so the rattlesnakes with the misfortune of being born around Sweetwater, Texas. Rather than being left alone to get on with their snake business, these animals have a good chance of being captured and ending up at the Sweetwater rattlesnake roundup, which starts tomorrow (March 8th). Over the weekend, an expected 30,000 visitors will descend on the town, here for food, drink, shopping and the spectacle of seeing hundreds, if not thousands, of western diamondback rattlesnakes (WDRs). There’s a Miss Snake Charmer Pageant (which is less about charming snakes in the traditional sense of the word and more about cutting their heads off and skinning them) and the family fun doesn’t stop there. Young children are encouraged to contribute to a cheery wall of red handprints, using the blood of butchered snakes.
The roundup is organised by the Sweetwater Jaycees, and it’s been going since 1958. It was initiated to eradicate snakes from the town, as people and animals were being frequently bitten. That’s an understandable aim, since the WDR is a venomous and potentially dangerous snake, but since then the roundup has evolved in purpose and today, it’s a fully commercial venture. The Jaycees buy all the snakes brought to them by hunters throughout the weekend, and hunters can turn a decent profit - this year, they’ll receive $15/lb for the first 3000 lbs and $10/lb thereafter, up to an 8000 lb limit. On top of that, the person that bags the overall greatest weight of rattlesnakes gets a $1000 prize, and the hunter that catches the longest snake gets a $500 prize, which is doubled if the snake breaks the record, which is currently 81.5 inches (a little over two metres). According to the Sweetwater Jaycees’ data, an average three-foot WDR weighs less than one pound, while a big snake weighs 5–6 lbs, and that means that the organisers are expecting hunters to be bringing in many hundreds of snakes.
Once weighed, the animals are tipped into holding pens for visitors to observe. Some are measured and milked for their venom, while a subset is ‘processed’ on site, meaning they are decapitated, gutted and skinned. It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that crowds would flock to see, but according to this report, produced by the Snake Harvest Working Group (SHWG):
It was reported that a few years ago, the Jaycees moved this process [decapitation] out of public view due to complaints, but they indicated they got more complaints from people wanting to see it so they moved it back into public view.
The SHWG was convened in 2014 by the Texas Wildlife and Parks Department (TWPD), after concerns were raised about the method used by hunters to catch snakes: it’s not as if hundreds of rattlesnakes are just slithering around the Sweetwater area, waiting to be caught, so how do hunters bag so many? The answer is foul play, in more ways than one, and in a way that seems ironic given the town’s delightful sounding name. For one, the snake-catching isn’t confined to that weekend. When there’s big money to be earned, hunters go all out to get as many snakes as possible and that means that they start catching them weeks, if not months, before the event. They also play dirty, targeting the snakes’ winter dens in a process called gassing. WDRs often spend the winter communally, with up to one or two hundred individuals tucked up in old tortoise burrows or rocky cavities, making these sites highly prized by hunting teams. And, rather than waiting for nature to take its course and the animals to naturally leave in spring, hunters force them out by spraying gasoline into their winter safehouses. Snakes that aren’t killed by the noxious fumes try to escape, but are instead caught and crammed into plastic bins where, often lacking food or water, they are kept alive until the festival begins. According to the SHWG report, an estimated 90% of the snakes that are brought to the roundup have been collected and held for four to six weeks before the event, with just 10% caught on the weekend of the event.
Gassing is a cruel and lazy way to catch snakes. It’s also indiscriminate and kills all kinds of other animals that live in the same caves and crevices as the snakes. These are known as karst-dwelling animals and at the time that TPWD convened the SHWG, 26 species of karst invertebrates in Texas were federally listed, and 130 endemic (occurring nowhere else but Texas) karst invertebrates were known to occupy the same or similar habitats as these listed species. Whether or not the gassing process degrades burrows for future use is not known.
The group published their report in 2016 but could not reach consensus on the main question of whether gassing should continue, probably because four of the twelve group members were Sweetwater representatives with a big stake on keeping the status quo. For them, maintaining Sweetwater’s status as the biggest rattlesnake roundup meant collecting as many snakes as possible, even after being presented with data showing no correlation between visitor numbers and snake numbers at other snake-themed events. As the report states:
At the center of the issue, a SHWG representative from Sweetwater indicated that they need 4,000 pounds of snakes to have a successful event. He suggested that a ban on the use of gasoline will result in harvest below 4,000 pounds, and thus have a negative impact on the roundup.
Due to the disagreement within the SHWG, no further action has been taken to limit gassing, and many of the snakes captured and brought to Sweetwater this weekend will have been subjected to this. It’s a cause for ongoing controversy.
Another question surrounds the number of snakes being taken for each roundup. Gassing is, of course, favoured because it enables hunters to take the maximum number of snakes that they can, and since WDRs are not listed as endangered there are no quotas on the number harvested. The organisers say that over six decades they’ve not seen any evidence for declining snake numbers, and at present there’s no conservation concern for this species. Below, you can see the total weights of snakes harvested at each of Sweetwater’s roundups since 2016 (all of the data available on their website).
One of the Sweetwater representatives in the SHWG reported that the annual average over the history of the roundup is 5600 lbs; a total which has not been achieved in the last five events. Even the 4000 lb total specified for the success of the roundup has not been met since 2019. On the other hand, 2016 seems to have been a record-breaking anomaly, with nearly 25,000 lbs of snakes brought in (about 10.8 tonnes).
This is nowhere near enough data to make any conclusion about population trends (what is needed is a long-term analysis of WDR numbers since the 1950s), but if I was one of the organising committee I might want to think about some contingency planning. Even if WDRs are not presently endangered, it may not always be this way. As we keep chipping away at their habitat and degrading the environments in which they live, can we continue to believe that these kinds of mass mortality events have no consequences? When hunters were blasting hundreds of passenger pigeons from the skies in the 1800s, they surely didn’t think that they were doing any lasting damage either. Once the most abundant bird species on the planet, by the time that people started to notice the passenger pigeon’s decline, it was too late to save it from extinction.
It may be useful to pay attention to similar events on the other side of the country, where dwindling populations of the eastern diamondback rattlesnake (EDR) have forced roundups in Alabama and Georgia to adapt. The EDR has undergone considerable population declines over recent decades, primarily due to habitat loss, but rattlesnake roundups have also contributed. Conservationist Bruce Means analysed the numbers and size of EDRs brought in at four roundups from 1959 to 2008, and found that while numbers harvested peaked around 1990, all four events had seen declines since then.
Recognising that hunters were travelling further afield and yet still bringing in fewer snakes, and that public opinion was turning against them, the roundups in Georgia are now wildlife friendly. In Claxton, for example, the roundup was changed to a Rattlesnake & Wildlife Festival in 2012, and Whigham became a ‘No Kill’ festival in 2022, with the butchering replaced by an educational programme. Fitzgerald took a different direction entirely, replacing the snakes with a Wild Chicken Festival in 2001. The then-mayor commented at the time about dwindling snake numbers, and a need to ‘recognize the impact we have on the environment.’ In Alabama, however, the city of Opp continues to run its Rattlesnake Rodeo, despite receiving a petition of more than 55,000 people who urged transformation to a no-kill event.
The Center for Biological Diversity is calling for all remaining roundups to be outlawed. Sweetwater seems intent on holding out, maintaining that the format of the roundup is necessary to its success and therefore to the money they can bring in. And it’s true that large, community-led events can be vitally important, providing considerable social and economic benefits. An economic analysis published in 2015 concluded that the roundup generates $8.4 million in Sweetwater every year. But in a rapidly changing world, it’s also important to adapt. Snakes have been maligned for centuries and rattlesnake roundups only serve to propagate the fear and perceived need to kill them. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Snakes play an essential role in the ecosystem, being superbly evolved to prey on small mammals, many of which are pests to farmers, and also a source of food for other animals, such as eagles, owls, coyotes and bobcats. Snakes can be dangerous when they are surprised or feel threatened, but they’re not out to get us, and at a time when human activity is already playing havoc with ecosystem balance, propagating the idea that it’s ok to kill thousands of snakes is utterly irresponsible.
One can only hope that the Sweetwater roundup will soon acknowledge that times have changed. I, for one, would much rather see a snake in the wild than being butchered for ‘entertainment.’
Facts of the fortnight
February was the warmest February on record for England and Wales, with an average temperature of 7.5°C and 6.9°C, respectively. It was also wetter than average, with East Anglia experiencing both their warmest and wettest February on record. Met Office report here.
Thanks to the latest issue of BBC Wildlife for this one - not only is there a species of rodent called the hero shrew, but stories have been told about these supremely tough little animals being able to withstand being stood on by an adult human. While that’s untested scientifically, they do have bizarre and unique backbones that can contract and interlock, making them supremely dense and strong. More here.
A species of weakly electric fish known as the elephantnose fish may use electrical pulses from other individuals in their group to extend their perceptual reach, something never before documented. Using neural recordings, behavioural data and modelling, the researchers conclude that this collective sensing may enable the fish ‘to extend its electrolocation range, discriminate objects and increase information transmission.’ Summary here.
And an update on one of last week’s… Charlotte the stingray has still not given birth, so it is surely imminent! The aquarium’s last update was yesterday (March 6th), with a video showing the very chonky fish swimming around in her tank.
#NaturePhotoADay
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see that late on New Year’s Day I decided to set myself the challenge of starting a nature related Project365 (this year, #Project366), meaning I have committed to sharing one nature photo every day for the whole of 2024. You can follow along on Instagram if you like, but I share my favourite from the previous fortnight here anyway.
The last fortnight has been typically British, with a bit of everything thrown in. Having said that, after a very soggy, mild February (as above!), it is finally feeling suitably springlike. And as we turned our backs on February, what better than this beautiful daffodil, lit up in the afternoon sun on St David’s Day. Welcome, spring - I’m so ready for you!
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