Indigo Magazine

Indigo

The Member Magazine of The Orianne Society

issu e

magazine

Issue 6 • Winter 2016

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staff Christopher Jenkins Chief Executive Officer

Photo: Ben Stegenga

Heidi Hall

Eastern Diamond-backed Rattlesnakes: Denizens of the Southeast

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Development Director

Dirk Stevenson

Longleaf Savannas Initiative Director

Brannon Knight

Longleaf Savannas Initiative Stewardship Coordinator

Houston Chandler

Longleaf Savannas Initiative Species Coordinator

Jacob Barrett

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Matt Moore

Photo: Edvárd Mizsei

Photo: Matt Moore

Longleaf Savannas Initiative Field Operations Coordinator Longleaf Savannas Initiative Field Techinician

20 The Forgotten “Sky Island” Meadow Viper

A Case for Cottonmouths

Ben Stegenga

Longleaf Savannas Initiative Field Techinician

Amanda Newsom

Communications Specialist

Charli Palmer

Program Manager

Patty Li

Species Spotlight

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Stephen Roussos Edvárd Mizsei

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The Vanishing Sagebrush Sea & Decline of the Great Basin Rattlesnake

Member Spotlight

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50 Field Photos

Photo: Skyler Walker

4

Photo: Dirk Stevenson

Photo: Pete Oxford

The Path to Global Viper Conservation

contributors

Photo: Dirk Stevenson

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Photo: Scott Bolick

Photo: Pete Oxford

Accountant

52 Upcoming Events

issue Indigo Magazine Issue 6, Winter 2016 Indigo Magazine is the member magazine of The Orianne Society and is produced, designed and edited by the staff of The Orianne Society.

CONTACT The Orianne Society 11 Old Fruit Stand Lane, Tiger, GA 30576 706-224-1359 info@oriannesociety.org www.OrianneSociety.org

@OrianneSociety

Indigomagazine As a child, I would never

message from our CEO

Photo: Tammi Nowak

have imagined I would be writing a letter as the lead-in to a magazine focused on viper ecology and conservation. I have always loved the outdoors and have many memories of my wildlife encounters, but it is perhaps the first time I saw a viper in the wild that had the greatest impact on me.

Twenty-one years ago I was a sophomore in the wildlife biology program at the University of Massachusetts, and my first job in the field sent me to the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. I spent the summer searching the foothills of Sierra National Forest for Western Pond Turtles and the high elevation meadows for Mountain Yellow-legged Frogs.

Throughout the summer I saw many of these rare species and had the chance to find numerous other reptiles and amphibians in the region, but the greatest moment of that summer was seeing my first rattlesnake in the wild. I was walking through a meadow with a fellow wildlife technician. As we approached the edge of the stream, I heard it for the first time: a rattlesnake warning me that I was too close. At that moment, I had no idea that I would go on to hear that sound thousands of times and to see various vipers all around the world, but I knew it was a special moment. It was quite cold that day; cold enough that we were not optimistic about seeing amphibians. If I knew then what I know now, I would say it was one of the last days I would have expected to see a rattlesnake—we even had some snow flurries later that day. Making it more improbable was the fact that we were above 5,000 feet in elevation in the Sierra Nevadas east of Clovis, CA. From that moment, I was hooked. My days of dreaming about being a bear biologist were gone—I now had a new direction. We watched the snake as it backed away from us rattling.

It finally found a defensive position to hold, as it backed up against the base of a shrub along the creek. We watched it for a few moments and moved on. We both thought it was a great experience, but I knew it was a formative moment that would direct the future of my career.

Many things have happened since my first rattlesnake. I have completed my dissertation working with rattlesnakes; I have conducted research and conservation projects with Great Basin Rattlesnakes, Eastern Diamond-backed Rattlesnakes, Midget-faded Rattlesnakes, Northern Pacific Rattlesnakes, Timber Rattlesnakes, Copperheads and Bushmasters; and I have formed the IUCN Viper Specialist Group to focus on global issues of viper conservation. It was that one moment in time that led to these accomplishments and my passion

for viper conservation.

I encourage everyone to pay attention to these moments, to remember the first time you encountered a viper in the wild. Take time to savor these moments and enjoy these animals in their native environment. If it affects you anywhere near as much as it did me, you will want to do more to protect these species.

We invite you to join us in viper conservation, to protect these animals and to become a part of viper conservation by supporting The Orianne Society.

Sincerely,

Dr. Christopher Jenkins, CEO

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SPECIES spotlight

by Amanda Newsom

Photo: Pete Oxford

The Guatemalan Palm Pit Viper is part of a Central American clade of green palm pit vipers of the genus Bothriechis found in Mesoamerica. They can grow up to 100 centimeters in length, though they typically range from 60-70 cm, and have slender bodies. These beautiful green or blue-green vipers are usually found 500-2,000 meters in elevation in the rain forests, cloud forests and coffee plantations of Guatemala, Mexico and Hondoras. They are terrestrial snakes that are succeptible to deforestation and conversion of habitat to agricultural uses. While their higher-elevation populations seem to be more stable, the lower elevation populations have become increasingly rare due to these threats. Guatemalan Palm Pit Vipers are currently listed as Least Concern with the International Union of Conservation of Nature, although they are listed as Threatened by Mexico.

MESO Guatemalan Palm Pit Vipers are found in three countries in Mesoamerica: Guatemala, Mexico and Hondoras.

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100 Guatemalan Palm Pit Vipers can grow up to 100 centimeters, though they are generally 60-70 cm in length.

2,000 Guatemalan Palm Pit Vipers are typically found living 500-2,000 meters in elevation.

Photo: Pete Oxford

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MEMBER spotlight

by Amanda Newsom

Photo: Dirk Stevenson

ROB RICHIE

Rob holds up an Eastern Indigo Snake (Drymarchon couperi) during winter surveys at the Orianne Indigo Snake Preserve.

This winter we’re putting the member then went on to present conservation awareness programs at spotlight on Rob Richie. Rob has been a member and volunteer for The Orianne Society for seven years now, but he’s loved all things “that swam or crawled” since he was a boy. His interest in reading led him to learn more about reptiles, and he began volunteering at the Tennessee Game and Fish Commission to care for the snake in their education program as a teenager and 6 ORIANNESOCIETY.ORG WINTER ISSUE 2016

their summer camps during his college years. After college, Rob worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority for 34 years before retiring. All the while, his wife and two daughters have supported his desire to seek out and help conserve herps, even when they don’t particularly share his enthusiasm.

Not surprisingly, Rob’s favorite species to find in the wild is

Rob searches for Green Salamanders (Aneides aeneus) in Tennessee.

Photo: Heather Ahrens

an Eastern Indigo Snake, which is how he came to find out about The Orianne Society and to seek out volunteer opportunities to help these magnificent creatures. In 2008 he came across an Indigo during some free time while conducting an assessment along the Altamaha River. He decided to take a hike in what he thought looked like “good Indigo country,” and within about five minutes of searching a recently-burned area of slash pine, he spotted what looked like a motorcycle inner tube but was in fact a large Eastern Indigo Snake. He couldn’t contain his excitement when a group of college students came by shortly thereafter, so they received an impromptu lesson about Indigos that day!

After coming across The Orianne Society’s website while researching Indigos in 2009, Rob reached out to Dirk Stevenson about volunteer opportunities to help monitor Indigos in the field, and a budding friendship with Dirk, our field technicians and the organization began. He came down to the Orianne Indigo Snake Preserve, and in Rob’s words, “so began my annual pilgrimage to South Georgia, the sightings of many more Indigos and the meeting of new friends.”

Since then, Rob has attended many of our Places You’ve Never Herped events, and he’s a valuable staple at our Indigo Days events as a working member to guide our groups—always with a smile and a pleasure to have in the field. He says that the Indigo Days events are his favorite because “never before have I had an opportunity to meet and work with so many like-minded individuals when it comes to preserving and conserving reptiles and amphibians, including the habitats and ecological systems that support them.”

Rob has also helped with our fieldwork to conduct surveys for Timber Rattlesnakes, Gopher Tortoises, Alligator Snapping Turtles and Striped Newts, to name just a few, and he hopes that his work will inspire future generations to continue conservation work as scientists or citizen scientists—whether it be in their careers or free time. He stated, “there are many future challenges in a changing world associated with climate change, emerging diseases and habitat management practices across the mosaic of seasonal habitats that our herps use, and we need to ensure their continued survival in a changing world. Member support, as well as taking an active role in raising public awareness about issues, will ensure a ‘fighting chance’ for herps of the future and the ecosystem health they represent.”

From all of the staff here at The Orianne Society, we thank Rob for his dedication to making a meaningful contribution to the conservation of reptiles and amphibians and for the time he has spent working with our staff as a volunteer. May you find many more Indigos in the new year, Rob!

Photo: Dirk Stevenson

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Rob assists Orianne staff and members with measuring a Florida Pinesnake (Pituophis melanoleucus mugitus) during an Indigo Days event.

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by Matt Moore

Snakes are undoubtedly among the most maligned creatures on Earth. While some of our world cultures respect or even revere snakes, many others view them through eyes of fear and repulsion. Within the context of the United States, a country inhabited by both a high diversity of snake species and people who fear them, there is one species that leads the pack in both being feared and woefully misunderstood: the Cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus).

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Photo: Matt Moore

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Large adult male Eastern Cottonmouths (Agkistrodon piscivorus piscivorus) engaged in combat in South Georgia. Biting is never utilized during combat between Cottonmouths. The entire fight is comprised only of wrestling to determine dominance, with neither combatant being injured.

I have spent a lot of time around Cottonmouths while hiking and wading in swamps and creeks in South Georgia.

Whether it has been during hikes of shallow wetlands assisting in Spotted Turtle population studies or during wades of creek swamps surveying for Snake Fungal Disease, the more time I’ve spent around them, the more fond I’ve become of them. It didn’t take long for this misunderstood venomous snake to

become my favorite species of pit viper.

Late this past summer, I had apparently gotten a four-leaf clover stuck in my wading shoes because I was fortunate enough to twice witness, and document from start to finish, combat between two separate pairs of male Eastern Cottonmouths. Witnessing male combat in the wild between Cottonmouths is not very common, and I had ring-side seats at an arms-reach distance on both occasions!

The first combat I witnessed occurred while I was photographing a family of river otters that were frolicking in the creek. I was sitting on the bank taking pictures of the otters when I noticed a large Eastern Cottonmouth swimming along the edge of the creek. The snake was behaving strangely, tongue flicking and investigating the exposed tips of submerged limbs in the creek as he slowly made his way to the edge of the bank directly below me. The

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Indigomagazine snake crawled up into the hollowed-out bank I was sitting on and disappeared. I saw several holes in the bank in front of me, and I looked down into them to see if I could observe the snake. Through one of the holes, I saw the moving coils of a large Cottonmouth. I assumed it was the snake I had just observed down there alone trying to make himself comfortable in his creekside retreat.

Visibility was limited, so I sat back down on the bank to continue observing the otters. A few seconds later two large Eastern Cottonmouths, one approximately 3.5-4 feet and the other approximately 3-3.5 ft in length, literally erupted out of one of the holes in the bank right in front of me! They entwined their bodies around each other in a vertically-oriented battle sticking out of a single hole in the bank. I started taking pictures as rapidly as I could while sitting just a few feet from the two combatants.

In less than a minute, the battle was over with the smaller male beating a hasty retreat to the other side of the creek. The larger male pursued the evicted male a short distance before returning to the battle site. He then slowly crawled up the side of the steep creek bank in my direction before deviating to the left and stopping in a patch of sunlight about 10 feet from me. His head was held high as he rested in the sunlight. It was the most incredible wildlife experience of my life, and I expected it to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Just over three weeks later, I would discover that my prediction of it being a singular experience was wrong.

Exactly 22 days after this incredible experience, I found myself back at that same creek again looking for snakes.

Not far from where the previous combat took place, I came upon another Eastern Cottonmouth at the edge of the creek. This snake was behaving much like the larger male had been acting a few weeks earlier.

This time, instead of photographing the snake, I turned on the video recorder of my camera as I watched him intensely investigate some cypress knees sticking out of the water. He was tongue flicking and crawling around the small cluster as if he was searching for something. I assumed he was onto the scent of a hidden frog in a small accumulation of sticks stuck in the cypress knees. After a few minutes of this intense investigation, I saw another Cottonmouth seemingly materialize out of nowhere, and it began chasing after the snake I’d been observing!

There were a few very noticeable differences between the ensuing combat of these evenly-matched (approximately 3 ft long) snakes and the two larger snakes I’d witnessed engaging in combat a few weeks earlier. One major difference was the duration of the combat. While the first contest was over in less than a minute, this one went on for half an hour!

These two snakes also differed in that they would separate and then reengage each other to combat briefly, like rounds in a wrestling match. One of the snakes would periodically chase the other away from the epicenter of the dispute, which happened to be the location about 3 ft in front of me where the fight initially started. During the prolonged contest, this male would also sometimes spot the other snake swimming at a considerable distance from the epicenter and swim out to meet him to engage in a brief wrestling match before coming back once again to the spot right in front me.

Another key difference between this contest and the previous one was the way it ended. This time, rather than the clear victor returning to the site of the initial fight, these two snakes simply parted ways, heading in opposite directions. One of the combatants swam downstream and the other swam upstream until both snakes eventually disappeared from view.

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Cottonmouths, also known colloquially as “water moccasins,” are reviled above all other venomous snakes in the United States due to the firmly-entrenched belief that they are highly aggressive and will chase or swim after people in their territory in order to deliver a deadly bite.

After encountering over 60 Cottonmouths this year alone, I have yet to have a single individual either chase me or attempt to bite me. However, I have had them come towards me on numerous occasions because I was between them and where they wanted to go. If I happened to be standing between the snake and a source of shelter it was desperately seeking, the snake would crawl right past me in order to get to the safety of a hole at the base of a cypress tree or a pile of leaves and sticks accumulated on the bank of a swamp creek. I believe this shelterseeking behavior is the root of many of the exaggerated stories reported by people being “chased by a water moccasin.”

The fear and loathing many people feel towards snakes they deem to be “water moccasins” causes not only the unnecessary deaths of Cottonmouths, but also much more frequently the deaths of any snake seen in or around water. This is due to the inability of many people to accurately identify and differentiate a Cottonmouth from any unfortunate snake that happens to be seen in an aquatic environment. The snakes that tend to be most frequently misidentified and killed are nonvenomous watersnakes (genus Nerodia). Compounding the problem of superficially resembling Cottonmouths and living in wetlands is the tendency of watersnakes (and many other species of snakes, for that matter) to flatten their heads into a pronounced triangular shape when they feel threatened.

A major issue is that many people believe that venomous snakes can be differentiated from nonvenomous snakes

Indigomagazine

Photo: Matt Moore

“He then slowly crawled up the side of the steep creek bank in my direction before deviating to the left and stopping in a patch of sunlight about 10 feet from me. His head was held high as he rested in the sunlight.”

The proud victor basking in the sunlight shortly after the conclusion of the wrestling match.

by simply learning a few superficial morphological and behavioral “quick fix” generalities. Unfortunately, many people in the U.S. believe that characteristics such as possessing a triangular-shaped head, a thick body and/or a short tail are traits exclusive to venomous snakes. These mistaken beliefs often lead to the death of any snake encountered that roughly fits into those visually-subjective categories.

Additionally, mouth-gaping, which of course is the defensive behavior that lead to the standardized common name for

Cottonmouths, is not a behavioral trait exclusive to these snakes. Many other snake species also employ mouth-gaping as a defensive behavior in an attempt to ward off a perceived threat. Yet another defensive behavior employed by many of our native snake species is tail vibration in response to a perceived threat. Imagine how many harmless snakes are killed every year due to tail vibrations as a defensive tactic because they are misidentified as rattlesnakes. These pervasive issues clearly illustrate the need for increased and on-

going public education about snakes.

The Orianne Society regularly incorporates public education events with live native reptiles and amphibians as an important component of our conservation efforts. Hopefully each positive encounter that people experience with a real live snake at one of our educational events will lead them to walk away with a better understanding and appreciation of our wonderful native snakes.

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If you have been a follower of The Orianne Society for any amount of time, you know we are pretty enthusiastic about vipers—you are reading the “viper” edition of the magazine right now. We are extremely concerned about their populations and the fact that they receive very little in the way of conservation

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L A B O L

efforts, and these concerns are not unfounded. You have probably heard us say this over and over, but the numbers are disconcerting: there are over 250 species of vipers distributed across all continents with the exception of Australia and Antarctica, and the majority of these species are declining in populations.

Twelve percent of vipers (32 species) are listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

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: Josh

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R E P VI

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Red List as Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered. In addition, four species are listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) Wild Fauna and Flora Appendices I, II or III; one species of rattlesnake is listed under the United States Endangered Species Act; and the majority of vipers in Europe (10 species) are listed under Appendix II of the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats.

As if those numbers aren’t depressing enough, there is a bigger issue here. Snakes

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are very difficult to study and don’t receive a great deal of funding for research. That being said, we think that the status of many viper species is in significant need of updating, meaning vipers may be of a greater conservation concern than the current lists suggest.

WHO LIKES VIPERS? The Orianne Society really likes vipers, and we are not alone. There are a number of people across the world that have dedicated their careers to conserving these misunderstood and heavily-persecuted species. Considering the plight of vipers, Orianne Chief Executive Officer, Dr.

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by He

Hall

Chris Jenkins—an extremely avid viper conservationist—decided to organize these people with the hope that unity might make their voices heard for viper conservation. In 2009, Chris worked with the IUCN to start the Viper Specialist Group (VSG), an IUCN Species Specialist Group, aimed at providing a platform from which conservation biologists focused on viper conservation could work together to increase the scientific understanding of viper biology and to develop and implement conservation action plans to prevent viper declines and extinctions.

To form the group, Chris reached out to several well-regarded viper experts to act as officers and Regional Coordinators for the group. Officers include a Chairman, Deputy Chairman, Program Manager and Red List Authority Coordinator.

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r Parke

Indigomagazine Regional Coordinators are viper experts within certain geographical areas based loosely on established IUCN geographical boundaries. Together, the officers and regional coordinators act as the steering committee and guide the focused efforts of the group.

The tasks of the officers and the Regional Coordinators vary. The Chairman and Deputy Chairman guide the VSG meetings, develop a general strategy and direct the conservation activities of the group. The Program Manager helps to distribute information internally between the officers and Regional Coordinators and externally to the general membership and public. The Red List Authority Coordinator leads the efforts to complete species status assessments and to determine gaps in data. The Regional Coordinators act as the central point between the officers and general membership by recruiting valuable members and by collecting regional data and information on viper conservation projects that allow for the group to complete status assessments and conservation action plans. It isn’t as confusing as it may sound—basically, it is a structure that allows the flow of valuable data between biologists to improve viper conservation efforts and to inform the public on the importance of viper species.

I should mention that the VSG is separate from The Orianne Society, but several members of The Orianne Society staff have served or still serve as officers and members of the group. Chris acts as the Chairman of the group. Former employee Dr. Stephen Spear is the Deputy Chairman. I act as the Program Manager.

Former employee Javan Bauder was at one time the Red List Authority Coordinator until he decided to continue his education for his doctorate and realized he may not have the time he would like to dedicate to the group. However, the majority of the

officers and coordinators are not Orianne staff, but rather are people who have come together from all across the world for the common passion of viper conservation.

Now, let’s learn more about the people that are integral parts of the group:

THE OFFICERS Chairman: Christopher Jenkins, PhD Chris is the founder and current Chairman of the VSG. He is responsible for developing the strategic direction, building the steering committee and membership, and directing the implementation of conservation programs. He also appoints all officers, Regional Coordinators and the Red List Authority Coordinator. Chris has a BS and MS in Wildlife Biology from the University of Massachusetts and a PhD from Idaho State University where he worked on the conservation biology of Great Basin Rattlesnakes. He is the founder of The Orianne Society and currently holds the position of founding Chief Executive Officer.

Deputy Chairman: Stephen Spear, PhD Steve is the current Deputy Chairman of the VSG and is responsible for serving as a liaison between the Regional Coordinators and the Chairman and helping Regional Coordinators identify new members to the specialist group. Steve has been interested in vipers since he was a child, and since completing his doctoral degree from Idaho State University, he has worked to conserve several viper species, including the Midget-faded Rattlesnake and Black-headed Bushmaster. Steve is currently the Director of Wildlife Ecology at The Wilds.

Program Manager: Heidi Hall This is me. I don’t pretend to have vast knowledge of vipers, nor do I really

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research viper species. What I do is determine how to make information flow and how to educate the public. Though a wildlife biologist by education and training, this is not my role in the VSG. I act as the pivot point for information coming from the Regional Coordinators, the other officers and the membership. My job is to keep everyone on the same page, to look for funding opportunities and to find ways to expand the VSG membership and overall reach of the group. I currently work for The Orianne Society as Director of Development.

Red List Authority Coordinator: Johannes Penner Johannes serves as the main contact point for the IUCN Red List. He coordinates which species are included in the Red List by reviewing current taxonomy, and he coordinates the provision of data for assessments and review of assessments. In addition, Johannes must ensure that all assessments adhere to the standards of the Red List and that all criteria for listing are met.

Johannes currently works for the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin.

THE REGIONAL COORDINATORS The Regional Coordinators’ responsibilities are vast, but in general, they grow the membership regionally, coordinate the efforts of viper research and conservation in their respective regions, and facilitate the flow of data between officers, other coordinators and members. In addition, all Regional Coordinators work together closely with the officers to determine taxonomy, priority of assessments, and data collection for status assessments and conservation action plans.

Photo: Pritpal Soorae

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This Sindh Saw-scaled Viper (Echis carinatus sochureki) was found actively on the move at night.

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Indigomagazine European Regional Coordinator: Jelka Crnobrnja-Isailović, PhD Jelka serves as the European Regional Coordinator of the VSG. She has been involved in viper research and conservation for over 35 years, since she was a student of general biology at the former Faculty of Sciences and Mathematics University of Belgrade, now Faculty of Biology. Jelka received her PhD in Evolutionary Biology at this university. Since 1986 she has been affiliated with Institute for Biological Research “Siniša Stanković” University of Belgrade, reaching the position of senior research fellow in the Department of Evolutionary Biology in 2011. She is also involved in education as a lecturer of evolutionary biology and conservation biology at Faculty of Sciences and Mathematics University of Niš where she reached full professor in 2013.

Mesoamerican Regional Coordinator: Jesus Sigala Rodriguez, PhD Jesus serves as the Mesoamerican Regional Coordinator of the VSG. Jesus is a Mexican biologist in the Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes (UAA) in Central México. He received his undergraduate degree in biology at UAA and his PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University in New York, USA. His research interests with vipers are diverse, but his current projects are related to distribution patterns of rattlesnakes in Mexico and of vipers in the Americas.

South American Regional Coordinator: Marcio Martins, PhD Marcio serves as the South American Regional Coordinator of the VSG. Marcio started studying vipers in the early 90s, studying snake assemblage in the Manaus region of the central Amazon. Since this time, he has contributed to over 20 scientific papers on South American snake species. Marcio has a keen interest in island

vipers due to their intriguing evolutionary history. In the past five years, his interests and those of his students have expanded to vipers from other regions beyond South America, including studies on vipers from a global perspective. Marcio is currently employed by the Instituto de Biociencias at Universidade de Sao Paulo.

North African/West Asian Regional Coordinator: Pritpal Singh Soorae Pritpal is the North African/West Asian Regional Coordinator of the VSG. He is the unit head for wildlife assessment and monitoring at the Environmental AgencyAbu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Besides working on herpetology, he is also involved with the CITES Scientific Authority and Invasive Alien Species.

North American Regional Coordinator: Rulon Clark, PhD Rulon is the North American Regional Coordinator of the VSG. He is currently an associate professor of biology at San Diego State University. With the help of tolerant parents who emphasized lots of outdoor experiences, he was able to turn a childhood interest in reptiles into a career.

He has been studying rattlesnakes for over 20 years, ever since first encountering Sidewinder Rattlesnakes in the Arizona desert as an undergraduate at Utah State University. As a doctoral and postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University in the United States, he studied the foraging and social behavior as well as the conservation ecology of Timber Rattlesnakes. His laboratory continues to study both basic and applied aspects of snake ecology, with a particular focus on rattlesnakes in the southwestern United States.

East Asian Co-Regional Coordinator: Anita Malhotra, PhD Anita is the East Asian Co-Regional Coordinator of the VSG. She is currently a

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senior lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at Bangor University in Wales, United Kingdom. Although Anita completed her higher education in the U.K. and has lived there for over 35 years, she was born and brought up in India and is now an overseas citizen of India. It was in India that she became interested in snakes and other herps and has continued to return there on a regular basis. In addition to research into adaptation and population evolution, she has specialized in the taxonomy and evolutionary history of pit vipers in Asia, and more recently she has also been studying the evolution of their venom.

East Asian Co-Regional Coordinator: Kevin Messenger Kevin is the East Asian Co-Regional Coordinator of the VSG. He is currently a PhD student at Alabama A & M University and at Nanjing Forestry University in China, and he has a BS in zoology from North Carolina State. During his undergraduate years, he got the travel bug and ended up working in the mountains of rural China for a summer, causing him to fall in love with the country and to see the tremendous need for herpetological work there. The majority of Kevin’s research involves behavior, natural history and conservation interests. He conducts a great deal of work in southeastern China where he focuses on the conservation of Chinese reptiles and amphibians.

Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Co-Coordinator: Luca Luiselli, PhD Luca is the Sub-Saharan Africaa CoRegional Coordinator of the VSG. Luca is a tropical ecologist, Italian-Nigerian and full professor of ecology. He teaches ecological statistics at the Rivers State University of Science and Technology Port Harcourt (Nigeria), teaches at the University Roma Tre (Rome, Italy),

Stephen Spear, PhD

Heidi Hall

Rulon Clark, PhD

Photo: Photo: Unknown Unknown Photo: Unknown

Jelka Crnobrnja Isailović, PhD

Anita Malhotra, PhD

Photo: Unknown

Photo: Zhou Zenyang

Pritpal Soorae

Photo: Photo: Jeff Unknown Lemm

Jesús Sigala Rodríguez, PhD

Johannes Penner

Photo: Unknown

Photo: Jorge Valdez

Chris Jenkins, PhD

Photo: Chris Jenkins

Photo: Pete Oxford

Photo: Denim Jochimsen

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Marcio Martins, PhD ORIANNESOCIETY.ORG WINTER ISSUE 2016 17

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Photo: Timo Paasikunnas

“The VSG is young, but it is off to a great start and has a wonderful base of people that are passionate about global viper conservation... we are optimistic that we can make a difference by changing the trajectory of declines and preventing extinctions.�

European Adder (Vipera berus) used for education and outreach programs.

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Indigomagazine and is the president of Institute for Development, Ecology Conservation and Cooperation in Rome, Italy. Luca’s research has focused on the ecological studies of several viper species, including the European Vipera aspis, Vipera berus and Vipera ursinii, and the Afrotropical Causus maculatus, Atheris squamiger, Bitis gabonica, Bitis nasicornis and Bitis rhinoceros. Since 1996, Luca’s studies have focused on vipers in Nigeria, Togo and Burkina Faso in West Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa Regional CoCoordinator: Bryan Maritz, PhD Bryan is the Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Co-Coordinator of the VSG. He is a herpetologist and lecturer at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, whose work focuses generally on snake ecology and conservation, although his PhD and several current research projects focus on the conservation of vipers globally and locally. Bryan’s PhD focused on the ecology and conservation of the world’s smallest viper, Bitis schneideri, and included some of the first empirically-robust estimates of population sizes for southern African snakes. More recently, Bryan lead a prioritization process within the VSG to set conservation priorities for vipers globally. Bryan also facilitates conservation

research regarding two highly-threatened South African vipers, Bitis albanica and B. inornata.

THE BIG GOAL One critical role of any specialist group is to conduct status assessments and maintain the Red List. In the last six years the VSG has worked on status assessments for multiple vipers and has ultimate plans for completing updated assessments for all the world’s vipers. They recently published a paper that is the first global analysis of conservation priorities for vipers—including defining diversity hotspots and identifying individual priority species—and are currently moving into a phase of conducting conservation action plans for vipers in each region. At the upcoming viper meetings in Morocco, they are planning to hold action planning meetings for the North African/West Asian and European regions and will continue conservation action planning until they have completed all regions. The general membership now includes over 200 viper experts from around the world.

The VSG is young, but it is off to a great start and has a wonderful base of people that are passionate about global viper conservation. With the continued dedication of the steering committee and members, we are optimistic that we

can make a difference by changing the trajectory of declines and preventing extinctions.

Vipers need some help, so the VSG is an important entity. There are many threats that are common across viper species, including direct human persecution, collection for the pet trade, habitat loss and fragmentation, and climate change. Many vipers are considered capital breeders that have life histories characterized by relatively late ages to maturity, long intervals between pregnancies and low fecundity relative to other snakes, which may make them especially vulnerable to many of the threats they face. Even more detrimental than these threats is the fact that they are extremely feared and often misunderstood, so they face some of the highest rates of human persecution than any other animal. One of the greatest hurdles to conserving vipers is changing widespread public perception that vipers are something to be feared—and that is a hurdle the VSG hopes to cross.

If you are interested in becoming a member of the VSG or contributing to the VSG newsletter, please contact your regional coordinator via their corresponding email address below.

European Regional Coordinator

Jelka Crnobrnja Isailovic

jelka.c.i@gmail.com

Mesoamerican Regional Coordinator

Jesus Sigala

jjsigala@gmail.com

South American Regional Coordinator

Marcio Martins

martinsmrc@usp.br

North African/West Asian Regional Coordinator

Pritpal Singh Soorae

psoorae@wildlife-services.com

North American Regional Coordinator

Rulon Clark

rclark@mail.sdsu.edu

East Asian Regional Coordinator

Anita Malhotra

a.malhotra@bangor.ac.uk

East Asian Regional Coordinator

Kevin Messenger

herpsrule2@aol.com

Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Coordinator

Luca Luiselli

lucalui@iol.it

Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Coordinator

Bryan Maritz

bryanmaritz@gmail.com

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Photo: Edvรกrd Mizsei

Indigomagazine

Vipera graeca in Albania.

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by Dr. Stephen Roussos with excerpts by Edvárd Mizsei When most people think of the Greek landscape, they may envision a coastal setting with islands and Mediterranean scrub, but not a landscape dominated by mountains like the Rockies or even alpine meadows. The truth is that much of Greece, and in general the Balkan Peninsula, has a diverse topography and rugged landscape that has created the highest herpetofaunal diversity in Europe. The Pindos Mountain Range is the most southern range in the Balkan Peninsula and forms the largest mountain chain of Greece and southern Albania. At the top of the tallest mountains are beautiful alpine meadows—an unknown group of “sky islands” surrounded by a sea of coniferous and mixed broadleaf forests in deep valleys.

The endangered Greek Meadow Viper (Vipera graeca) lives in the sky island grasslands of the Pindos, but very little has been known about the species, as few have ever been observed in the wild. Meadow vipers (i.e. Vipera ursinii, Vipera renardi, Vipera lotievi, Vipera anatolica) are a group of small Eurasian vipers that specialize in eating grasshoppers and crickets (orthopterans). Some are amongst the most endangered vipers in the world due to their small, highly-fragmented populations that are in some cases threatened by human activities.

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Indigomagazine Meadow vipers constitute several species/subspecies of vipers (taxonomy is continuously being revised) that have evolved to live in either lowland grasslands or montane alpine meadows, occupying a similar ecological niche in their particular grassland habitats. The Greek Meadow Viper is a high-elevation, montane lineage that was just recently found to be one of the most evolutionary distinct lineages in the group and possibly one of the “oldest” (ancestral) taxon among the group according to genetic analyses.

This unique viper was discovered and described in 1988 by two Swedish herpetologists and viper experts, Göran Nilson and Claes Andrén, on Mt. Lakmos (Greece) as a subspecies of the Orsini’s Viper (Vipera ursinii graeca). Twenty years later, in 2006 this viper was recorded for the first time in Albania on Mt. Nemertsika (close to the Greek border) by Hungarian zoologist Zoltán Korsós using a single photograph that was given to him by his botanist colleagues from the Hungarian Natural History Museum. Between the description of the taxon in 1988 and the first record in Albania in 2006, virtually nothing was ever known about this montane viper except a few more sightings from different mountaintops in Greece.

A Greek herpetologist, Yiannis Ioannidis, was interested and concerned about these vipers and made visits to habitat patches in the 1990s and early 2000s. His numerous observations and assessments of the habitats and populations based on his anecdotal evidences were shared with the multinational community of herpetologists that work on meadow vipers for a management booklet focusing on studies and conservation efforts of meadow vipers sponsored by the European Union. It was a sample of Yianni’s that was used in a phylogeography study published in 2012 (Ferchaud et al.) that showed the evolutionary distinction of the Greek

Meadow Viper and the first evidence that supported the taxon receiving full-species level designation. Yianni even made some mark and recapture observations, which were the first of their kind for this species and which data will be important to add to the more recent efforts.

Starting in 2010, synchronously, two separate groups of viper conservationists started conducting field work in Albania and Greece (spearheaded by Edvárd Mizsei and myself, respectively) to start learning more about the species’ distribution and biology. The two groups joined efforts to create a multi-national collaboration between universities (Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX; University of North Texas in Denton, TX; University of Debrecen in Debrecen, Hungary; and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Thessaloniki, Greece) and museums (Goulandris Natural History Museum in Athens, Greece).

The group was casually named as the Greek Meadow Viper Working Group, and over the course of the last four years, there have been 25 expeditions to these montane grasslands, 12 grants that have been received to support and enhance our efforts, 11 new populations found, and three papers published sharing the knowledge we have gained from fieldwork—including our latest paper in Zootaxa outlining a comprehensive analysis and description of new morphological and genetic data that elevates the taxon from subspecific status to full species, Vipera graeca.

“Sky Island” Habitats of the Pindos Mountains The Pindos are high in floral endemism of conifers, oaks and even sub-alpine and alpine meadow herbaceous plants including orchids. Several areas within

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the range have been mandated as part of the Natura 2000 ecological network of Europe as well as National Parks of Greece and Albania, but illegal logging, grazing and hunting still persist in some areas because of a lack of regulation and enforcement. As you fly from the west or north into Athens, you can see this jagged mountain range, sometimes covered in snow or peaking above the clouds.

The tree line is found at about 1,6001,800 meters, and the tallest mountains peaks are 2,000-2,500 m. This is where the Alpine meadows are located and hence exist in a narrow altitudinal zone.

Temperatures during the summer months range from 5°C to 20°C and in the winters between -5°C and -27°C with upwards of 3-meter-deep snow. Some of these habitats in Greece have become skiresorts and host thousands of visitors in the winter. This has increased road and building construction in the vicinity of these habitats, but we do not know to what extent these activities may disturb or threaten the viper populations.

Alpine meadow habitats would seem an extremely harsh environment for reptiles, as they are snow-capped for at least half of the year and constantly subjugated to high winds and cold temperatures even during the warmer months. Nevertheless, V. graeca lives exclusively here, as well as seven other snake species that partially utilize these habitats (Coronella austriaca, Natrix natrix and more scarcely Vipera ammodytes, Zamenis longissimus, Zamenis situla, Elaphe quatuorlineata, Heirophis gemonensis).

Also seven lizards (Ablepharus kitaibelii, Anguis greaca, Algyroides nigripunctatus, Podarcis muralis, Podarcis tauricus/ionicus, Lacerta agilis, Lacerta viridis/trilineata), a tortoise (Testudo marginata) and six amphibians (Bombina variegata, Ichthyosaura alpestris, Triturus macedonicus, Bufotes viridis, Rana graeca, Bufo bufo) inhabit these habitats either exclusively or partially at

Photo: Stephen Roussos

Indigomagazine

Fragmented montane alpine meadow habitats (sky islands) in the Pindos Mountains.

the ecotone of the tree line. Furthermore, other protected species such as the brown bear (Ursus arctos), Eurasian wolf (Canis lupus lupus), the critically-endangered Balkan lynx (Lynx lynx balcanicus), Balkan chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra balcanica) and numerous rare birds inhabit the Pindos and use the meadow habitats in their home ranges.

During the Pleistocene glaciations (ice ages) the Pindos were mostly large expanses of grassland steppe habitats capped by glaciers and steep rocky mountaintops. During interglacial periods (warmer periods between ice ages such as the present) the forests extend their distribution (tree line) up in elevation,

restricting the grassland habitats to the mountaintops creating “sky islands� of alpine meadows. Thus, the distribution of cold-adapted Greek Meadow Vipers was probably much larger during the ice ages, and now the distribution is at one of the most fragmented and most minimal in total area.

Isolated in Time and Space As mentioned above, there was not much known about the ecology and evolution of this viper, but we are continuously making a concerted effort to

collect data in order to learn more. Being located at the tops of mountains, some of these habitats are difficult and rarely accessed. The most common human activities that exist on these mountaintops are a mixture of herdsmen (sheep and cattle), hunters and hikers. The habitats are access-limited by dirt roads or sometimes just by hiking in on foot; thus fieldwork at these sites is often quite challenging and takes much logistical planning and coordination.

Although there is a peace and quietness in these meadows, the occasional cowbell ringing on the slopes and grasshoppers and birds chirping in the grass give a liveliness to the mountain. Some of these

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Photo: Stephen Roussos

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The Sand Lizard (Lacerta agilis) inhabits very few places in Greece, one being the terra typica (location of where a species is described) of Vipera graeca.

sites withstood being battlegrounds in World War II, some bearing memorial monuments for those who died there.

On other mountains I have been told first-hand stories by old shepherds who were teenagers during the war—vivid descriptions of artillery shells flying through the sky. Thus in the midst of the fresh air, stillness and simplicity of these grasslands, they have endured glaciations, successional stages of fragmentation, vegetation changes, and even bear memories of war.

Most of the meadow vipers across Europe have received a relative amount of study by herpetologists and in some cases highly-funded programs for in situ

and ex situ conservation efforts (i.e., Hungarian Meadow Viper, Vipera ursinii rakosiensis). The Greek Meadow Viper was somewhat forgotten for 20 years following its discovery and description, and even knowing that its distribution is one of the more restricted ranges. Given the millions of years of survivorship of V. graeca on these mountaintops, persisting through numerous ice ages, dealing with human activities and being recognized as an endangered species, these little vipers have been forgotten in time and space on the summits of Greece and southern Albania. There is much that we can learn from the Greek Meadow Viper that can be applied elsewhere, and there is also much

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we can offer to protect the remaining populations.

The patterns and mechanisms of adaptation for these cold climates as an ectothermic animal is one of our greatest interests, as well as how these populations have been able to endure the dramatic fluctuations in climate over millions of years. As the global climate is warming, these sky islands are shrinking in size by tree encroachment. Consequently, we are currently addressing this conservation concern in our research by studying the effects of modern climate change, fire suppression and grazing activities on the survivability of these small and isolated populations. At the same time, we hope

Indigomagazine the Greek Meadow Viper can become a flagship species for these habitats as preserving the overall ecosystem will conserve other endemics, as well.

In Albania Since 2010, a group of young, Hungarian herpetologists (Edvárd Mizsei, Márton Szabolcs, Bálint Üveges and company) travelled south to Albania in their personal vehicles, on their own time and funded by their own pockets, to start searching more habitats in the region and collecting data. After several multi-person expeditions to the various mountainscapes of Albania, more observations were made and several gaps in our knowledge have started to be filled.

First, these new records and the accumulation of new spatial data points allowed the Hungarian team to use a species distribution modeling approach, based on the available distribution data from literature combined with climatic data. The resulting distribution model was ready to be tested in the field and to establish the presence or absence of Greek Meadow Viper populations in predicted sites. Several of these habitats were searched, and a total of nine new localities were found just within Albania.

These are the results of a recent paper published this year by Mizsei et al. in the journal Amphibia Reptilia.

However, by no means is this species abundant in any of these habitats.

Sometimes the ideal microhabitats are also restricted within the mountaintop meadows. Analysis of recorded hiking routes during searches (visual encounter surveys) gives a glimpse into the difficulty of finding individuals and the search effort that goes into these surveys.

These analyses show that, in general, the chance of finding a Greek Meadow Viper

hits 50 percent after hiking at least five kilometers, and that’s considering they are present in the search area and you are an expert herper. In other words, these guys are hard to find, even if you are in the right spot! This is a combination of rarity, crypsis (camouflage) and most likely activity patterns linked to peculiarities in weather conditions that the species favors.

Along the fieldwork of distribution mapping, we identified possible threats and started several conservation actions to deal with the most critical ones. One was the land use of the habitats. These alpine meadows are used as sheep and goat pastures in Albania, with varying levels of extensive grazing, and some sites seemed to be heavily overgrazed. To test that, we made a grazing exclusion experiment to study the recovery of vegetation without grazing pressure and to be able to determine the effect of grazing in these habitats.

In 2014, we built three fenced areas supported by the European Herpetological Society (Societas Europaea Herpetologica), and we are actively monitoring these sites annually. We expect to see trends set in over the next few years, but in other similar scenarios, around 10 years were needed to reach stabilization of vegetation structure. The continuation of that project includes the mapping of grazing pressures and raising social awareness on nature protection. This part of the work in Albania, funded by a grant from the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, was just finished.

Another issue is a human-wildlife conflict between shepherds’ livestock and the Greek Meadow Viper populations.

Our work—supported by The Rufford Foundation—helps shepherds and local stakeholders prevent snakebites by informing them about areas where and when vipers are expected to be active.

Based on our findings we have learned

the habitat preference and yearly/daily activity of the vipers and can ideally help lead the shepherds to avoid encounters.

Congruently, we are disseminating knowledge on how to recognize bites on sheep and goats early enough to treat them. We go through the correct steps to take in order to get the animal veterinary help and recommend possible tools to reduce sheep mortality.

The Greek Meadow Viper living in temperate mountaintops in a Mediterranean landscape makes it a highly-vulnerable species to climate change. Thanks to a grant awarded by the Chicago Zoological Society CBOT Endangered Species Fund, we are now going to explore the thermal biology of the Greek Meadow Viper to help predict its response to climate change. We will assess thermoregulatory behaviors of the snake by measuring body temperatures of at least 100 specimens and by recording operational (environmental) temperature and humidity distribution of the habitats using data loggers, exploring circadian and yearly activity patterns.

We have already predicted habitat suitability in the future by extrapolating current trends to the year 2080 under different climate change scenarios. These models give a dire image where the species will likely lose 90 percent of its habitats in this period of time due to warming conditions. To test this model and to find key habitats and populations to prioritize conservation efforts to increase the likelihood of the species’ survivability, we will have a month-long field expedition in 2017 where volunteers may be accepted.

In Greece

Starting in 2010, Dr. Maria Dimaki of the Goulandris Natural History Museum and myself started having discussions on

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Indigomagazine

There is no doubt that the Greek Meadow Viper and its relatives are some of the most cold-adapted snakes in the world, and this is fascinating. how to approach further field research of the Greek Meadow Vipers in Greece.

Since there was hardly anything known beyond some distribution records in the Pindos, we decided we would have to go step-by-step and start visiting some of these locations and developing a dataset of information that we could analyze.

In 2012, a group led by us—including other herp enthusiasts, university students and nature photographers—decided to visit a site in Central Greece. After several exhausting hours of hiking across rocky outcroppings, grassy meadows and steep inclines, I finally spotted one: a beautiful, sub-adult male with a highly-contrasting dorsal zigzag. As any good ole’ herper would do, it was the moment for a few whoops and hollers of accomplishment.

Soon enough, we found another three, all gravid females.

This was the very motivation we needed to continue our search for other populations and collect data that we could use to address conservation threats and develop management plans. The following year (2013), on the other side of the globe at Dr. Lou Densmore’s herpetology lab at Texas Tech University (TTU in Lubbock, TX) undergraduate researcher Elizabeth Mack and I (then a PhD student in the same lab) started making plans to further fieldwork on the Greek Meadow Viper.

A few months later Mack had secured enough funding by The Explorers Club and the TTU-Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Research program to travel to the Pindos in Greece and begin advanced fieldwork.

In the summer of 2013, three mountains in the southern Pindos were surveyed by Ms. Mack, Dr. Dimaki, Phaedra Kokkini (volunteer researcher at the Goulandris Museum of Natural History) and myself. We spent many hours each day traversing across suitable-looking habitat at the highest elevations and yielded no results after three days and two mountains. The following day on the third mountain, we found a full-grown male and a neonate active on the surface. Since this locality seemed to harbor a population, we decided to deposit the data loggers at this site to collect data underground, on the surface and under rocks. We left the data loggers in those locations for over 12 months taking measurements every hour. These data were warranted so that we can understand what environmental conditions a viper may experience when sheltered underground or under a rock, or when exposed on the surface.

There is no doubt that the Greek Meadow Viper and its relatives are some of the most cold-adapted snakes in the world, and this is fascinating. It is amazing to think that these vipers live under snow cover for half the year and spend the next half feeding, breeding, thermoregulating and building resources before the snow hits again (and thus hibernation sets in).

Analysis of the data collected gave us a basis from which to work and to start testing some hypotheses about activity and thermoregulation. The preliminary results were presented at the 4th International Biology of the Vipers Conference held in Athens, Greece, in 2014.

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Throughout 2014 and 2015, Dr. Dimaki and assistant Mario Vergetopoulos visited two of the Natura 2000 sites where the viper lives during a state-funded national monitoring of reptiles and amphibians for all the Natura 2000 sites. They were able to survey the herpetofauna in these areas to understand the abundances of certain species and additionally were able to make a couple observations of Greek Meadow Vipers. In 2014, Ilias Strachinis (then a student of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and Matt Wilson (nature photographer and herp enthusiast) visited one of the same sites and were able to document a couple of individuals. So, each year since 2012 we have been able to make a concerted effort to monitor a couple of populations in Central Greece and to collect more data.

This year, four expeditions to the Greek Pindos (partially funded by Societas Europea Herpetologica) were organized and completed by the Greek Meadow Viper Working Group. We visited five mountains that had previous records of the species, including the type locality Mt. Lakmos, where they were first described.

Additionally, 11 mountains were searched that we predicted as candidate habitats for the species, in which we found two new populations in Greece. In all, 28 people were involved at one point or another in the surveys, and based on the results we found, it took on average 50 man-hours (total hours divided by vipers found) to find one Greek Meadow Viper.

On early 6am mornings at about 6-10°C, we would come out of our dew

Photo: Stephen Roussos

Indigomagazine

Photo: Stephen Roussos

A female Greek Meadow Viper laying low and adjacent to vegetation avoiding detection by predatory birds.

A dorsal view of a female Greek Meadow Viper. This species exhibits sexual dimorphism (as do many European vipers) where the females have a brown dorsal zigzag pattern and the males have a darker brown/almost black, dorsal zigzag.

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Photo: Edvárd Mizsei

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Fieldwork on this species means high elevation camping in the species’ habitat which makes for very cold nights, even in the summer. This was our campsite in Albania in 2015.

drenched tents and start scouring the mountainsides for glimpses of semiexposed vipers in the low-lying vegetation.

These vipers tend to hide extremely well and expose only part of their coils to the morning sun. This could easily be an adapted behavior to avoid getting picked up by predatory birds that regularly scan these meadows for an easy meal. We systematically searched at all hours of the day, whether in full sunlight, scattered clouds and even while in clouds, in order to understand more about the species’ activity since we still do not know much about their daily patterns and weather preferences.

On clear days during mid-day in June, July and August, the temperatures tend to reach the upper limits for the vipers, as

few are found during the hottest hours in those months. It seems to be a desperate situation for these vipers where the alpine meadows occupy a narrow altitudinal zone, the microhabitat preferences of this species are fragmented throughout the mountaintop, and on top of that, their preferred times of activity may be in a narrow window of each day. These vipers must not get out much!

This year provided much-needed fieldwork to collect data and also to help better understand the species’ distribution.

Our team included volunteers from Hungary, USA, Greece, Denmark, Sweden and France, and we are very grateful for all of their snake searching efforts.

This despite having to sleep in a sheep’s pen (with old poop) when the weather

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conditions were too rough for our tents, or being stranded on a mountaintop because a car battery dies and then a brown bear is spotted nearby basecamp. Actually, that was a highlight that some (including me) did not get to see, as we had separated into two surveying parties. The search party I was with had to change a flat tire on a slanted dirt road that crossed a rockslide and almost lost the Land Rover (AKA “Meadow Viper Herpmobile”) because it slipped off the jack and nearly rolled down the mountainside.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Our collaborative efforts continue to pursue support and funding for additional

Photo: Edvárd Mizsei

Indigomagazine

Part of the search team (Greek Meadow Viper Working Group) during one of the expeditions in Greece this summer. From left to right: Marie and Bosse Stille, Stephen Roussos, Gábor Mészáros, Otto (dog), Edvárd Mizsei, Bálint Üveges, Ilias Strachinis, Frank Deschandol, Márton Szabolcs and Darwin (dog).

fieldwork to mountains that have not yet been visited and for population genetic analyses. Filling in these gaps will allow us to have a comprehensive knowledge to prepare a sustainable longterm management plan for the species.

We will be able to determine whether any population is threatened by a recent reduction in habitat size, small population numbers and even inbreeding depression, thus prioritizing conservation at specific locales.

In broader aspects we hope to use these efforts to help preserve several biota in these unique Mediterranean montane ecosystems that hardly receive any attention and are steadily dwindling.

Furthermore, an interesting facet of this study system is that we can learn much

about climate change in other parts of the world through the evolutionary history and phylogeography (spatial distribution of genetic lineages/populations) of this viper. It can be used as a model system for other mountaintop habitats that are seeing reductions in size due to increasing average temperatures.

Currently, the International Union for Conservation of Nature conservation status of the taxon is pending based on our work, as it is for now considered as Data Deficient. We are studying the grazing pressures in these habitats and whether they threaten these vipers or actually help maintain the grasslands.

Natural fires and herbivores such as ungulates, or even domesticated sheep, help maintain the grasslands by preventing

tree encroachment. Allowing a certain level of grazing activities by shepherds and controlled burns have been used before in the French Alps to maintain healthy grasslands for meadow vipers.

As the species has been determined to be a distinct species and an endemic to the Pindos, which includes national parks and several Natura 2000 sites, more attention is being brought to this extraordinary viper, and rightfully so. Our preliminary analyses and results that have been published, and will continue to be disseminated, can provide the framework for a state-funded conservation program that will ensure the long-term management and awareness of the Greek Meadow Viper for the generations to come.

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EASTERN DIAMOND-BACKED RATTLESNAKES: Denizens of the Southeast

by Houston Chandler & Ben Stegenga

The Eastern Diamond-backed Rattlesnake (Crotalus adamanteus) is the largest rattlesnake species in the world with a record length right at 8 feet (2.44 meters) and an average weight of just over 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms). However, because of its range-wide decline over the last century and increasing human threats, it is uncommon to see even a 6-foot individual today. This robust, olive-brown pit viper is patterned on its back with black or dark brown diamonds edged in yellow or cream. This contrasting pattern fades towards the tail which is terminated with a distinctive rattle. Like all rattlesnakes, they add a single segment to their rattle every time they shed, which can be two to five times a year (adults shed less frequently than juveniles). Sometimes a snake’s rattle will break during normal activities over the course of its life, so it is impossible to tell a snake’s age by the length of its

rattle. The face of an Eastern Diamondbacked Rattlesnake (hereafter, Eastern Diamondback for short) is distinctly patterned with a dark diagonal stripe, also edged in creamy yellow, running through the eye to the back of the jaw. Without a doubt the Eastern Diamondback is one of the most beautiful and impressive snakes in the southeastern United States.

There is no question that Eastern Diamondbacks are potentially dangerous animals capable of causing human fatalities. In fact, many herpetologists rank the Eastern Diamondback as the most dangerous snake in North America because of its fairly potent venom and enormous venom yield (200–850 milligrams dry weight). However, like most snakes they are misunderstood, and their reputation as being aggressive is exaggerated. An Eastern Diamondback’s first line of defense, as the snake in

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Orianne Field Technician Ben Stegenga’s first encounter demonstrates (page 31), is to remain motionless in hopes that its cryptic nature will keep it from being detected. This is incredibly effective as even the largest Eastern Diamondbacks will simply melt into the environment.

As anyone who has searched for similarly-cryptic snakes knows, motionless snakes can often go unnoticed until an observer is right next to them. If an Eastern Diamondback is in fact detected, or it feels a potential threat has gotten too close for comfort, it will begin rattling as it attempts to retreat into some form of cover. If there is no suitable cover in the immediate area, the rattlesnake will instead erupt into its famous raised defensive posture. From this coiled position an Eastern Diamondback will always face the perceived threat, and any further advances by the antagonist could be met

Photo: Pete Oxford

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Indigomagazine rely heavily on open-canopy habitats that contain Gopher Tortoise burrows, stump holes, armadillo burrows or similar refugia that provide shelter from winter weather.

The diet of Eastern Diamondbacks consists almost entirely of mammals, but occasionally birds will also be eaten. They are an important biological control for a wide range of small mammal species, with young snakes preferring small rodents and adults feeding primarily on cotton rats, squirrels and rabbits. In fact, the Eastern Diamondback is one of the only North American snakes that regularly feeds on adult rabbits. While Eastern Diamondbacks may actively follow scent trails from time to time to find prey, they mostly hunt from a stationary ambush position, often alongside a fallen log or an established rodent trail. An individual

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can remain in that position for a week or more, relying on its cryptic pattern to keep it concealed and its heat-sensing pits to detect approaching prey. When potential prey does come within range, the rattlesnake delivers a single strike in which its retractable fangs swing forward and inject a lethal dose of venom before releasing. The complex venom cocktail quickly incapacitates and kills the prey animal, which the snake will track down using a combination of olfaction and tongue flicking. Once found, the snake will proceed to swallow the prey head first.

An Eastern Diamondback will generally reach sexual maturity between three and four years of age, and breeding often occurs from March to April and from August to September. During the breeding season mature males will engage

Photo: Dirk Stevenson

with a strike. However, like all snakes, an Eastern Diamondback has no interest in confrontations with people, and despite being prepared to defend itself, its priority will be to escape. It is not uncommon for an Eastern Diamondback to slowly back away from a threat while keeping its focus on the aggressor (predator or human).

They are particularly skilled at retreating into Gopher Tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) burrows in this manner.

Historically, Eastern Diamondbacks ranged from Louisiana to southeastern North Carolina, mostly occupying the southeastern Coastal Plain. However, their current range is much less continuous.

They are presumed to be extirpated in Louisiana and have patchy distributions in Mississippi, South Carolina and North Carolina. South Georgia and Florida remains this species’ stronghold, but even in these states, Eastern Diamondbacks are experiencing range-wide declines.

Habitat destruction, fragmentation and degradation are by far the leading causes of population declines in Eastern Diamondbacks. This species also faces an added threat, as there are few laws banning or limiting the killing of Eastern Diamondbacks, contributing to rampant human persecution.

Eastern Diamondbacks historically inhabited a variety of mostly open-canopy pine woods and savannas, such as Longleaf Pine-Wiregrass sandhills. Longleaf Pine ecosystems are fire-dependent but have become increasingly fire-suppressed and fragmented since European settlement.

Today, Eastern Diamondbacks are most often associated with remnant Longleaf Pine–Turkey Oak sandhills, dry Palmetto or Wiregrass flatwoods, oak hammock and scrub environments, and abandoned fields. Grassland-savannas and maritime forests on many barrier islands also harbor large rattlesnake populations. During the winter months Eastern Diamondbacks

My First Eastern Indigomagazine Diamondback Encounter

Photo: Ben Stegenga

by Ben Stegenga

Before moving to South Georgia to work for The Orianne Society, my experience working with Eastern Diamond-backed Rattlesnakes was limited to the one I kept at home for educational use. I had seen several Eastern Diamondbacks during Orianne Society field events, but I had never actually found a large Eastern Diamondback in the wild. Some of my first fieldwork was on a Timber Rattlesnake telemetry project in the mountains of South Carolina, and during that project, I absolutely fell in love with rattlesnakes. So, what species could be more alluring to a rattlesnake aficionado than the largest rattlesnake species in the world?

I had found several DOR (dead on road) Eastern Diamondbacks earlier this summer, but on a warm September afternoon, I finally got the encounter I had been wanting so badly. Dirk Stevenson, Director of the Longleaf Savannas Initiative, and I had set out for an afternoon of road-cruising for snakes on a favorite network of rural roads. Our primary target was Pygmy Rattlesnakes, but we were hoping to encounter some other species, as well. Only a couple minutes in, I caught a glimpse of what looked like that characteristic black and yellow diamond pattern in the weeds on the road shoulder.

“Whoa, back up, I think that was a snake!” I said. Having seen a DOR Diamondback less than half a mile from this exact point the week before, I wondered if I just wanted to see one so badly that my mind was playing tricks on me. As every herper knows, that can happen, and you’ll find yourself stopping for all manner of serpentine-shaped sticks and mirages. “No, that was definitely a snake,” I told myself. I jumped out of the truck with snake hook in hand, and I walked up to what was definitely a snake. But my heart sank. It was not moving and was lying in an eerily similar manner to the DOR I had seen the week before. It’s anterior half was concealed in the thick vegetation on the road shoulder, and I was scanning for a glimpse of its head.

At that moment, Dirk finally set his eyes on the mystery snake I had jumped out of the car for. “Holy smokes, it’s a Diamondback!” he said with surprise. And at that exact moment, the motionless snake sprang to life. With its rattle buzzing, it drew its tail deeper into the grass, and then the outline of the entire snake finally materialized as it tried desperately to retreat into deeper cover. I hurried to prevent its escape and gently hooked the serpent back onto the road where we could safely secure it in a snake bucket prior to photographing it.

This individual was a male and only measured slightly over 4 feet, far from big by Eastern Diamondback standards, but I didn’t care. It was still a magnificent creature, and my heart was pounding with excitement.

It was an exhilarating experience to finally find one of these incredible snakes in the wild for myself. It’s an encounter that will continue to draw me back into the field in search of this iconic southeastern rattlesnake.

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Indigomagazine in ritualistic combat bouts in which two males will raise the anterior third of their bodies off the ground, intertwine and attempt to push the other to the ground.

This combat rarely causes any harm to the snakes, but it determines dominance and grants the victor breeding rites with females in that territory. Combat between two opponents can last up to several hours until the subordinate male retreats. After gestating for approximately five months, a female Eastern Diamondback will usually give birth to a litter of eight to 15 young, and she will remain with them until they

complete their first shed. This offers them some extra protection during the most vulnerable part of their lives. Although some females will give birth in consecutive years when resources are abundant, it is much more common for them to only produce litters every two to three years.

This slow reproductive cycle is another factor that makes Eastern Diamondbacks vulnerable to additive mortality of adult snakes.

Interestingly, Eastern Diamondbacks are not the only large snakes that depend on Gopher Tortoise burrows. The

Eastern Indigo Snake (Drymarchon couperi), the longest snake in North America, also shifts to using sandhill burrows during the winter months. So for a couple months out of the year in South Georgia and Florida, you can find two serpentine giants living side-by-side. However, their size is where the similarities stop for these two snakes.

On the one hand you have a cryptic, sit-and-wait ambush predator (Eastern Diamondback) that moves very little on an average day and uses heat-sensing pits and venom to hunt and kill its prey. And on the other hand you have a sleek, seek-

Photo: Matt Moore

Photo: Houston Chandler

A Look into a Hidden World

Gopher Tortoises, a renowned keystone species that occurs in sandy pinelands of the southeastern Coastal Plain, excavate deep burrows that provide refuge for over 350 species of animals, including a number of “obligate commensals� found nowhere else on the globe. Many snake species, including Eastern Diamond-backed Rattlesnakes, shelter in Gopher Tortoise burrows during certain times of the year. While sampling for snakes, we sometimes find compelling evidence (e.g., a track or shed skin) that a snake has recently used a burrow, but the snake is nowhere to be seen! In these cases, we need a special piece of equipment that allows us to look inside Gopher Tortoise burrows: the burrow camera.

A burrow camera consists of a small camera attached to the end of a rubber hose, which can be carefully fed down a burrow. A color monitor allows the observer to see what’s inside the burrow. Looking for snakes using this method can prove difficult as burrows are, on average, around 5 meters long and are often occupied by a tortoise that can block the camera from traveling deeper into the burrow. Repeated curves and bends typical of some tortoise burrows (e.g., some are twisty as a kinked snake), not to mention roots and loose sand, also conspire to make some of them difficult to negotiate. However, with patience and elbow grease, the burrow camera operator is usually able to navigate the camera to the terminus of the burrow so that the entire burrow can be inspected for snakes.

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Indigomagazine and-destroy predator (Eastern Indigo) that covers more ground than any other North American snake and uses visual cues, speed and brute force to overpower its prey. It is a collision of two completely different snake worlds, and it makes a Gopher Tortoise sand ridge an exciting place to visit during the winter months.

CONSERVING RATTLESNAKES IN THE SOUTHEAST

The Orianne Society is currently working to conserve Eastern Diamondbacks through multiple projects, with a focus on identifying remaining habitat and monitoring existing populations. These projects are designed

to ensure that existing populations of Eastern Diamondbacks are stable, while identifying and minimizing threats to these populations. Current projects include documenting the distribution of Eastern Diamondbacks in Georgia through a variety of methods, mapping available habitat in Georgia and Florida, monitoring the presence of snakes at a large number of sites in South Georgia over many years, sampling for an emerging snake disease, and participating in education and outreach events aimed at changing public perception of this often maligned species. We are also working on a range-wide conservation action plan for Eastern Diamondbacks that, when completed, would guide conservation and management strategies. In addition to these various research projects, we are actively involved in habitat restoration and management, including the use

of prescribed fire, on a number of protected sites in South Georgia (such as the Orianne Indigo Snake Preserve), which will benefit existing populations of Eastern Diamondbacks. Overall, our combined efforts are designed to ensure that the largest venomous snake in North America is around for many generations to come.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Mapping the Remaining Habitat & Current Distributions of Eastern Diamond-backed Rattlesnakes Habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation are the main threats to the vast majority of declining species on planet Earth. As native habitats continue to shrink through development and altered land uses (e.g., farming), it is important to identify where there is remaining habitat for species of conservation concern and if that species’ current distribution includes all potential habitat. It is difficult, if not impossible, to make effective conservation and management decisions at the state or regional level if current distribution data is unavailable. Since 2008, The Orianne Society has taken a lead role in documenting the distribution of Eastern Diamondbacks in the state of Georgia. We have gathered Eastern Diamondback distribution records using a variety of methods, ranging from formal snake surveys to credible records submitted by the public. Compiling these records provides a snapshot of the current distribution of the Eastern Diamondback in Georgia and allows us to determine just what types of habitats support their populations.

Snakes are notoriously challenging to study because of their generally secretive

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Indigomagazine and surveying burrows can be an effective method for locating this species.

Significantly, many of the remaining sandhills with large Gopher Tortoise populations in this region are protected through state Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) by Georgia Department of Natural Resources (GADNR), nature preserves through The Nature Conservancy (TNC) or conservation easements, including over 100,000 acres of conservation land in the Altamaha River drainage. This high-quality habitat combined with exceptional biodiversity led TNC to list the Altamaha River region as one of “The 75 Last Great Places.”

Furthermore, beginning with the 2016–

2017 sampling season, we are expanding our snake occupancy surveys to include 10 to 15 sites in both the Alapaha and Satilla River drainages. This will increase our total number of survey sites and allow us to monitor Eastern Diamondback populations in other regions of the state.

Although surveys have just started, we hope to find intact rattlesnake populations at many of these new sites.

Each sampling season, occupancy surveys are conducted from November to March, with each site being sampled a total of three times per season. Sampling sites multiple times each season allows us to estimate the chances of finding Eastern Diamondbacks if they are actually present

Photo: Dirk Stevenson

nature, making many species difficult to find even during the best times of year.

Therefore, the majority of our survey efforts for Eastern Diamondbacks are designed to document yearly presence of populations on a large number of sites in South Georgia. We initiated formal occupancy surveys for Eastern Diamondback and Eastern Indigo Snake populations in November 2009 at approximately 40 sites in the Altamaha River drainage. Both sides of the Altamaha River are lined with large sand ridges, providing excellent habitat for Gopher Tortoises. Sites with large numbers of Gopher Tortoise burrows are more likely to be occupied by Eastern Diamondbacks,

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Indigomagazine at a site. Estimating the ability to find a target species (detection probability) is an important part of surveying for almost all reptile and amphibian species. During each survey, one or two observers transverse a sandhill by walking from tortoise burrow to tortoise burrow, checking the area around each burrow apron for basking snakes. Sometimes instead of finding a snake basking near a burrow entrance, we find clear evidence that a snake has inhabited or been near that burrow— from a recent snake track in the soft sand or a shed skin. In these cases, we use a burrow camera to thoroughly inspect the burrow for the individual that left the track or shed.

At the end of each survey, we record the number of rattlesnakes and shed skins seen and the number of Gopher Tortoise burrows that we inspected on that survey.

We use the data from these surveys to determine the number of sites that are occupied by Eastern Diamondbacks while accounting for our ability to detect snakes. Over the course of many sampling seasons, occupancy estimates can be used to gauge whether or not the number of occupied sites is increasing or decreasing across the Altamaha, Alapaha and Satilla River basins.

After compiling Eastern Diamondback records for the state of Georgia from formal surveys, chance encounters and submitted observations, we were able to construct a species distribution model for the entire state in 2015. In short, mapping recent occurrence records on top of environmental data layers (e.g., forest type, canopy cover, percent sand in the soil) allowed the model to predict what types of habitat are now occupied

by Eastern Diamondback populations and then map these habitats across the state.

Completed maps can then be used to estimate the amount of remaining habitat for Eastern Diamondbacks in Georgia.

We found that suitable habitat for Eastern Diamondbacks covers approximately 25 percent of their exclusively Coastal Plain range in the state of Georgia, with just under 10 percent of the suitable habitat occurring on conservation lands, suggesting that land conservation could be improved for rattlesnakes in South Georgia.

In 2016, we completed a second habitat distribution model for Eastern Diamondbacks, this time for the state of Florida. We again used recent distribution records and environmental data to estimate and map available habitat for Eastern Diamondbacks. The results of this model indicated that Eastern Diamondbacks are widespread across Florida, with significant areas of remaining habitat in almost every county. Conservation lands were often predicted to have some of the best remaining habitat, highlighting the importance of conserving intact habitats for Eastern Diamondbacks and other native species. We hope that these two distribution models will be used to inform conservation decisions for rattlesnakes in these two states by identifying areas that are in need of protection, especially in portions of their range where there is little protected land.

SAMPLING FOR AN EMERGING SNAKE DISEASE

Over the past decade, herpetologists have become increasingly concerned with Snake Fungal Disease (SFD), which is caused by the fungus Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola. SFD was first documented in northeastern populations of Timber Rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus), likely because their den sites are conducive to

fungal infections (i.e., cool and wet). SFD was associated with severe declines in some populations of Timber Rattlesnakes during the mid-2000s. Overall, very little is known about SFD, but with increased awareness, SFD has now been found to infect a wide diversity of snake species (both vipers and colubrids, including Eastern Indigo Snakes) in at least 16 different states, including Georgia.

Infected snakes generally have some combination of crusty blisters, swelling and/or lesions on the face and near the vent. Infected areas are sometimes present over the entire body, and snakes with severe SFD infections often exhibit altered behavior that is likely to result in an inability to find enough food to survive.

SFD was recently documented in three different snake species in South Georgia

by Orianne Field Technician, Matt Moore. These recent confirmed cases, the prevalence of SFD in rattlesnakes in the Northeast, and the potential for Gopher Tortoise burrows to act in a similar manner to Timber Rattlesnake den sites (i.e., supporting fungal growth in cool, wet environments) prompted us to begin sampling Eastern Diamondbacks and Eastern Indigo Snakes for SFD infections in 2016. As part of our ongoing surveys and through opportunistic sampling, we will be capturing and tubing Eastern Diamondbacks so that we can sample them for SFD. Each Eastern Diamondback that we capture is carefully examined for SFD symptoms, specifically lesions or blisters around the face. We are sampling healthy-appearing snakes for SFD using small cotton swabs to rub the primary areas where SFD occurs (lips, pits, eyes and nostrils). These swabs will then be laboratory-tested for Ophidiomyces.

Any Eastern Diamondbacks that have blisters or lesions characteristic of SFD will be swabbed directly on the infected

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Indigomagazine areas, and in severe cases, we will biopsy infected areas. We plan to collect samples from as many snakes as possible over the next two years and are collaborating on this project with Dr. Matthew Allender of the University of Illinois, an expert on SFD. Currently, we have not observed any signs of SFD in Eastern Diamondbacks, and hopefully our sampling over the next two years will indicate that this emerging disease is not a problem for Eastern Diamondbacks in South Georgia.

EDUCATION & OUTREACH FOR A MISUNDERSTOOD SPECIES

A contributing factor to Eastern Diamondback declines across their range is human persecution and wanton killing of rattlesnakes when they are encountered.

In addition to being killed by individuals, the southeastern U.S. has a long history of rattlesnake round-ups, where hunters bring in rattlesnakes from surrounding areas. Until recently, all of the rattlesnakes brought to a round-up were killed at the end of the event. The rattlesnake round-up in Claxton, GA, followed this practice from 1967 to 2011, but in 2012 it transitioned to a snake-friendly wildlife festival. John Jensen (State Herpetologist for GADNR) described the change in 2012 as follows: “For the past 44 years, the city of Claxton, GA, hosted an event that few, if any, Gopher Tortoise Council members would have supported, much less attended. Well, the times have certainly changed. On March 10 and 11 of this year, the event officially changed from the ‘Claxton Rattlesnake Round-up’ to the ‘Claxton

Rattlesnake and Wildlife Festival.’ The name change is much more than just a case of semantics; rather, it’s recognition of the new, conservationfriendly focus.

Prior to 2012, hundreds of Eastern Diamond-backed Rattlesnakes, a declining species, were annually rounded-up from the wild and brought to the event by hunters who were rewarded with both bounty and prize money.

Many of the snakes were inhumanely handled during the capture, storage and transport and while displayed. All of the snakes were sold to ultimately be slaughtered for their skins to be processed into various products. Worse yet, the standard collecting technique employed by snake hunters involved blowing gasoline fumes down a long garden hose shoved to the bottom of Gopher Tortoise burrows. Rattlesnakes were forced out of the burrows due to the overwhelming fumes, but Gopher Tortoises and many other dormant commensals remained in the burrows to die or suffer certain illness. Because tortoise burrows have only one entrance and thus no draft, these fumes likely remained at the bottom of burrows, rendering them uninhabitable for quite a while.

Certainly bolstered by growing public disdain for the poor treatment of rattlesnakes and the ecological harm caused by their collection, officials with the Evans County Wildlife Club made a monumental decision earlier this year to change the focus from wildlife exploitation to wildlife conservation and education. No longer would rattlesnakes be rounded up from the wild, nor would tortoise burrows and tortoises be impacted by their collection. Instead, GADNR would annually supply a captive source of rattlesnakes that will mimic the main ‘hook’ for the event, otherwise everything else that keeps the crowds coming back–the parade, beauty contest, food, arts and craft vendors, various events, music, etc.– would remain status quo. Added to the festival to further the new conservation and education focus would be booths from wildlife conservation groups and agencies. The Gopher Tortoise Council, The Orianne Society, GADNR, University of Georgia Herpetology Club, Zoo Atlanta, Jacksonville Zoo, Canoochee Riverkeeper,

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Georgia Southern University Center for Wildlife Education, Let’s Get Wild and National Wild Turkey Federation were among those groups that manned booths and/or presented educational programs this year. Approximately 20,000 people attended the two-day festival this year, and with no money needing to be paid for snake bounties and prizes, the event was proclaimed a huge success in terms of attendance, proceeds and the conservation message presented.”

In addition to being involved in the Claxton Rattlesnake and Wildlife Festival, The Orianne Society takes part in many events and festivals across the Southeast to educate the public about amphibian and reptile conservation. At many of these events, we display native snake species, including our large Eastern Diamondback, to give people a chance to see native wildlife up-close. We work to dispel the myths and fears that usually plague Eastern Diamondbacks by educating people about these snake’s natural history and importance in Longleaf Pine ecosystems.

Through a combination of education and research, we aim to ensure that Eastern Diamondbacks are protected for many generations to come.

Indigomagazine

Photo: Pete Oxford

The Art of Working with Venomous Snakes

Working with venomous snakes like the Eastern Diamond-backed Rattlesnake obviously poses a hazard to researchers, but there are many tools that herpetologists use to safely work with these and other venomous snakes. We use snake hooks and tongs to safely and gently capture and handle venomous snakes, but often times that is not enough. Depending on the goal of the study, a wide range of data might need to be collected from a snake, and much of that data requires physically having the snake in hand.

To accomplish this safely, herpetologists use a couple of simple tools: either a squeeze box or restraining tubes. The snake species and size are taken into consideration when choosing which method to use, but much of it is also personal preference. Both methods have their own minor pros and cons.

Tubing is the simplest and most commonly-used method for handling venomous snakes. As its name implies, a snake is coaxed into a clear plastic tube, and then by grasping the snake’s body and the tube opening simultaneously, the snake is safely restrained. The tube size must be chosen carefully to match each individual snake. It must be wide enough to accommodate the thickest part of a snake’s body but narrow enough to keep it from doubling back towards your hand. Once restrained, a snake can be sexed, PIT-tagged, scale-clipped, swabbed, have blood drawn or have most other procedures performed with no harm to the snake or researcher. One drawback is that you cannot obtain an accurate measurement from a tubed snake, as they often kink up inside the tube.

The squeeze box method is a little more complex. A squeeze box is essentially a shallow wooden box with three walls and one open side. A thick layer of foam lines the bottom of the box. While one person uses a hook to place the snake on the foam, another uses a Plexiglas shield to press the snake gently into the foam to restrain it. From there a snake hook can be used to safely maneuver the posterior end of the snake out from under the Plexiglas through the open side of the box. At this point it is safe to mark the snake and collect other data. This method does require two people to perform and would make procedures like swabbing a snake’s face for fungal infections difficult, however, it does provide a way to obtain an accurate length by tracing the snake’s body on the Plexiglas with string or a map measuring wheel.

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40 ORIANNESOCIETY.ORG WINTER ISSUE 2016

Photo: Charles Peterson

Indigomagazine

Indigomagazine

by Dr. Chris Jenkins

The Sagebrush Sea: The high deserts of the Great Basin and Interior Columbia Basin are covered with a vast, seemingly endless “sea” of sagebrush steppe. The sagebrush steppe is an ecosystem dominated by a canopy of sagebrush shrubs, but beneath the canopy there is an equally-characteristic community of perennial grasses, forbs and biological crusts. This sagebrush sea is home to a unique diversity of wildlife, including such iconic species as the sage grouse. It is also home to a high diversity of predators including raptors, mammalian mesocarnivores and snakes. But one of the most iconic predators in the sagebrush

sea is the Great Basin Rattlesnake. Images in my mind of them coiled on the rim of a lava rock crater, scanning out across miles and miles of their foraging grounds— the high desert—are the most powerful images I can conjure. But these images are getting rarer in real life, and it is my hope that by writing this article, I can bring some awareness to the fact that one of our great western predators is in decline.

During the expansion of the America West, the intermountain regions including the Great Basin and Interior Columbia Basin were some of the last places explored. The formidable Rocky Mountains to the east and the distance from coastal developments on the Pacific

made this a hidden landscape. But when Americans first discovered this landscape, it must have been quite a sight. Imagine a landscape that goes on as far as you can see in every direction, a high desert that is dominated by knee-high sagebrush shrubs. The shrubs are predominantly a pale green, and their variation in height gives the illusion that you are in the middle of a vast, endless sea. Beneath this oldgrowth canopy of shrubs lives a diverse community of grasses and forbs. The wildflowers come alive blooming in the spring as the winter snows melt, and most of the grasses are perennial so they grow forth from their roots that have waited out the winter in a state of dormancy.

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Indigomagazine Amongst the grasses and forbs are mats of microbial crusts that have formed over hundreds of years of evolution. The winters are cold in the sagebrush sea, but the summers are equally as hot. The microbial crusts play the critical role of helping to retain moisture in the soil— moisture that is critical to the diverse plant communities. These sagebrush steppe habitats can be thought of as old-growth forests with the shrubs as the trees. Fire is an important natural disturbance, but in this pre-American era fires would have burned a given location as infrequently as every 200 to 300 years. Some of these fires would have been very large, burning potentially thousands of acres.

The wildlife communities were equally as impressive as the plants. Large ungulates such as bison, elk, mule deer and pronghorn roamed the landscape.

Some individuals would live in the sagebrush year round, but many would migrate down out of the high mountains to spend the winter grazing and browsing across the sagebrush flats where the snow was not as deep. Following these ungulates was a suite of large carnivores such as wolves, mountain lions and grizzly bears that similarly survived the winter on the bounty of the sagebrush sea. The sagebrush sea is also renowned for its diversity and abundance of raptors that soar high above the canyons and flats.

Of course, it has an abundant small mammal community that supports these raptor populations as well as populations of many other mesocarnivores such as bobcats, coyotes and badgers. There are also obligate species, or species that cannot survive without sagebrush, such as sage grouse and pygmy rabbits. While sagebrush is toxic for most animals to consume, most of the obligate species have evolved adaptations that allow them to feed on it, especially in winter when other food sources are rare. Despite the

incredible image of this entire ecosystem complete with sagebrush, fire and large carnivores, perhaps its most iconic species of wildlife is the Great Basin Rattlesnake.

Before American colonization of the region, Great Basin Rattlesnakes would have been widely distributed and abundant, functioning as one of the most important carnivores on small mammal communities.

Despite being one of the last places in the lower 48 states explored by European descendants, the sagebrush sea has seen widespread changes, and the entire ecosystem is in decline. The decline of the sagebrush steppe is complex and not completely understood.

I will provide my synthesis based on field research and literature review as to some of the major causes. There is very little human development in terms of roads, towns and cities in the sagebrush steppe, but the region has experienced significant agricultural development.

Large expanses of sagebrush steppe have been converted to irrigated agriculture, especially along rivers. Even with this large scale conversion, the majority of the sagebrush steppe ecosystem remained untouched. But the remaining private and federal lands have been used extensively for cattle grazing. As part of agriculture in the region, an annual exotic grass called Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) from Europe and Asia was introduced. The cattle grazing breaks up the microbial crusts and allows Cheatgrass and other exotics to more easily invade the habitat by finding a foothold in disturbed soils. Cheatgrass is an annual grass that comes up early in the spring taking up precious available water, producing seed and then dying back early, whereas native grasses produce seed and die later in the year. Cheatgrass produces an incredible amount of seed, and when it dies back in summer, it provides a huge source of fuel for wildfires. In areas

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converted from sagebrush to Cheatgrass, the fire regime changes significantly with fire return intervals going from hundreds of years to, in some cases, two or three years. Frequent fires and direct competition with Cheatgrass then prevent native shrubs, grasses and forbs from growing, and you ultimately end up with a system dominated by annual nonnative grasses.

I have seen places in northern Nevada where you can stand and look for 50 to 100 miles in every direction and not see a single sagebrush, only the white, fluffy seed heads of Cheatgrass. This new ecosystem is changing wildlife communities. Much of this change comes through trophic cascades where the vegetation is changing prey communities and in turn impacting predator populations. For example, the conversion to Cheatgrass has negative impacts on populations of iconic predators such as golden eagles. The changes also affect the quality of winter grazing and browsing for ungulates, and ultimately the predators that follow the ungulates down onto the winter range.

With the sagebrush removed, the obligate species like sage grouse no longer have the food they need to survive. Finally, there is a little known predator of the sagebrush sea that remains but is declining as these landscape continue to change. The impacts of this landscape conversion on Great Basin Rattlesnakes was the focus of my doctoral research at Idaho State University (ISU).

Observations on Great Basin Rattlesnake Reproduction: Great Basin Rattlesnakes are a subspecies in the Western Rattlesnake complex and are distributed throughout the Great Basin and Interior Columbia

Photo: Chris Jenkins

Indigomagazine

Photo: Chris Jenkins

Big Southern Mountain with purple wildflowers in the foreground.

Big Butte.

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Indigomagazine animals giving birth every year or multiple times per year, but many rattlesnake species and other evolved low-energy species can take many years between pregnancies. Other subspecies of Western Rattlesnakes can take up to four years to reach sexual maturity and go two to three years in between pregnancies. Great Basin Rattlesnakes also have few offspring per pregnancy, only four to six in most cases.

All these life history characteristics result in Great Basin Rattlesnakes having a capital breeding strategy, or a strategy where they need to spend years foraging and saving up energy for reproduction.

Any animal with this type of life history can be especially vulnerable to anything that increases the mortality of adult snakes, especially females. In addition, any disturbance that alters the amount

of energy they are able to acquire can slow down their reproductive schedules (requiring them to store energy over longer time periods) and results in lower reproductive output, which can ultimately have population level consequences.

The idea for examining the effects of landscape change on Great Basin Rattlesnake populations came from observations I originally made in the field.

When arriving at ISU to start my doctorate, I took over responsibility for running a long-term monitoring program for three populations of Great Basin Rattlesnakes on the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

The INL is a Department of Energy facility that is approximately 990 square miles, similar to the size of the state of Rhode Island. In that entire area there are only a handful of facilities and associated

Photo: Dirk Stevenson

Basin, including portions of Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, California and Arizona.

Throughout much of this range, these snakes live in relatively cold high desert environments where the climate only allows them to have a short active season, four months in some cases. Great Basin Rattlesnakes are carnivores that feed primarily on small mammal prey and can be considered evolved low-energy systems. In other words, they are long lived and have a life history that allows them to maintain viable populations while being active only for short periods and while eating infrequently. Due to short activity periods and variation in prey populations over time and space, female Great Basin Rattlesnakes often need multiple years to acquire the resources necessary to produce one litter of offspring. Most of us think of

Young Great Basin Rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus lutosus) in the high deserts of Idaho.

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Indigomagazine a recapture, their existing PIT tag number was recorded. Over the years, more than 5,000 rattlesnakes have been captured, many of which were recaptures or animals that had been marked in the past. In my first year in the field, I noticed that snakes in one of the populations, the Butte population, seemed consistently smaller.

I also realized that this was the one area that received extensive grazing and had a fair amount of invasive plants such as Cheatgrass. These observations put me on a trajectory to see if there was a link between the landscape condition and the small size of the snakes.

I wanted to see if my observations of small snakes was real. As a first step, I analyzed the long-term data set to determine if snakes from the different populations were different sizes. My

suspicions had been right—snakes at the Butte population were consistently shorter and thinner than snakes from either of the other two populations. Having this information in hand, I decided to delve deeper into the snakes’ life histories and determine if other characteristics also differed between the Butte population and the less-disturbed sites. Analysis of the mark-recapture data set revealed that snakes from the Butte population consistently had life history characteristics that would indicate they were taking in less resources and had lower reproductive output than snakes from the other two populations. Specifically, they had lower growth and shedding rates, the latest ages to maturity, the largest size at maturity, the lowest proportion of females pregnant (i.e., longer intervals between pregnancies),

Photo: Dirk Stevenson

roads. Thus, it is one of the wildest and most intact sagebrush steppe areas remaining anywhere. The three rattlesnake populations we monitored are distributed across the INL, and for over 15 years the ISU Herpetology Laboratory has been capturing and marking rattlesnakes in the spring and fall at their overwintering hibernacula. Each spring and fall field crews visit the three hibernacula complexes. Snakes are captured in drift fence arrays and individually-placed traps and hand captured. The density of snakes on the site is incredibly high—my record was capturing 123 rattlesnakes in one day, and I could have likely added another 30 to that number but I ran out of snake bags. Snakes were then returned to the university and measured, weighed, sexed and marked with a PIT tag, or if they were

The author and fellow researchers sample rattlesnakes on the Idaho National Laboratory.

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Indigomagazine and the lowest fecundity (the number of offspring born). My observations had taken me deeper than I expected to go, but there was a clear pattern, and I decided to refocus my dissertation to answer the question of what could be causing these patterns and specifically whether there is a link between landscape disturbance and the rattlesnake life histories.

The first step to answering these questions was to come up with some hypotheses as to what could be linking disturbance to rattlesnake ecology. To do this, I first took a long hike into the desert and immersed myself in the sagebrush as my mind worked through all the potential pathways. What was apparent almost immediately was that it had something to do with how much energy the rattlesnakes could acquire, but what factors could the disturbance change that would impact how much energy a snake could acquire?

The first thing that came to mind was that the disturbance could be changing prey communities, maybe lowering rodent abundance, in a way that would make it difficult for rattlesnakes to have as much success hunting and thus acquiring energy.

Second, could the disturbance be changing something about the physical environment that is affecting temperatures and thus the amount of time a snake could spend foraging? Rattlesnakes are ectothermic animals (i.e., their body temperature is controlled by the environment) that have preferred body temperature ranges for all kinds of activities including foraging. If the disturbance changed the temperatures so there was less time within the snakes’ preferred foraging temperatures, it could affect their ability to acquire energy.

Third, I thought it could have something to do with competitors or predators.

If the disturbance gave a competitor an advantage or made the snakes more susceptible to a certain predator, it could reduce the amount of energy a rattlesnake

Human Activities • Overgrazing • Invasive Plants Natural Patterns and Processes • Disturbance • Climate

Prey Availability

Competition Predation

Potential Foraging Times

Snake Behavior • Movement • Habitat Preference Energy Acquisition Weight Gain Reproduction

Local Adaptation

Population Level Consequences Figure 1. Conceptual framework outlining multiple pathways by which altered disturbance regimes could influence rattlesnake populations.

could acquire. Finally, I thought it was possible that snakes from the Butte population had adapted or evolved to their immediate environment, and even if they were to feed at the same rate as the other populations, they would still be smaller and have lower reproductive output. To summarize these thoughts in a visually-concise way, I developed a conceptual model that outlined potential

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causes and their connections (Figure 1). Based on time and resources, I had to focus in on certain hypotheses and moved ahead looking at questions of prey availability and available foraging times and to not focus on competition and predation. We did conduct a laboratory experiment that showed that snakes from the Butte population were not locally adapted and that it was indeed some type

Indigomagazine of environmental factor resulting in the patterns we observed.

Observations on Landscape Disturbance, Vegetation, Prey & Microclimates:

I was very excited to see what we would find because unlike the vegetation and soil, small mammal communities are not something I could readily observe walking through these deserts. Overall, they were much different between disturbed and undisturbed sites. The communities in undisturbed sites were diverse with abundant populations of both large and small rodents, whereas the disturbed sites had low diversity and were dominated by small species like deer mice. Specifically, the undisturbed sites had significantly higher small mammal species richness, higher abundance and higher biomass.

In addition, the average size of mammals was significantly larger in undisturbed sites because larger species like chipmunks and squirrels were rarely captured in disturbed sites. To summarize the difference, small mammal communities in disturbed sites were dominated by deer mice, their abundance was lower than in undisturbed sites, and the larger prey species had disappeared. To link the soil and vegetation cover to prey communities, I ran a series of models that found that increased small mammal richness, abundance and biomass was related to high levels of biological crust cover, high

Photo: Charles Peterson

As a first step to determining the likely cause, I thought it was important to characterize the environment that each of the rattlesnake populations lived in. Walking through these disturbed areas, the most obvious changes had to do with the soil characteristics and changes in vegetation communities. Thus, I worked with field crews to measure cover of various soil and vegetation characteristics at multiple sites in the areas surrounding each of the overwintering hibernacula. The vegetation communities in undisturbed sites were dominated by sagebrush and perennial grasses, whereas the disturbed sites were dominated by Rabbit Brush (an early successional shrub) and had more invasive-exotic grasses and forbs. In terms of cover, undisturbed sites had significantly higher biological crust, lower amounts of bare soil, higher shrub

cover, taller shrubs and relatively low grass cover. The disturbed sites had more open soil that contained little biological crust, and the sagebrush canopy was gone. In addition, the disturbed sites had more exotic grasses which resulted in the higher grass cover values. These results were relatively intuitive based on what we saw in the environment, but it was important to document those patterns in our specific study area and also for linking them to small mammal communities.

To estimate how small mammal communities varied between disturbed and undisturbed sites, I worked with field crews to conduct two years of small mammal trapping at many sites distributed around the three rattlesnake populations. Our crews would set up a grid of baited small Sherman live traps and larger Havahart traps. The traps were opened late in the day and checked first thing the next morning. We identified each mammal to species, weighed them and cut a small tuft of hair off each of their backs so we could identify them as already being captured. We then ran the trapping array for a second night, processing the animals in the same way. After two nights the trapping arrays moved to a new location.

Great Basin Rattlesnake.

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Indigomagazine shrub height and decreases in grass cover, further supporting the observation that prey available for rattlesnakes was lower in disturbed areas.

Now I knew that prey availability was lower in disturbed areas, but I wanted to see if disturbed areas had different microclimates that resulted in less time available for the snake to forage. As I walked these areas, the disturbed areas seemed to have less cover, more open soil and just looked like they might be hotter and potentially restricting the time snakes could spend foraging. To determine if this observation was true, I placed a series of snake models attached to data loggers in both disturbed and undisturbed environments. Snake models are a piece of copper pipe painted to match the reflectance of a snake’s skin. Inside the model is a thermocouple which measures temperature. The models provided a measure of snake body temperature that is much more accurate than simply taking air temperatures. If you were to take a snake’s body temperature in the wild, it would almost always be different than air temperature because of the many vectors of heat transfer such as radiation, conduction and convection. For example, a snake could be on the surface on a relatively cool afternoon, but if the snake was on a rock that was warm from the sun, its body temperature could be much higher than the air temperature because of conduction. I placed snake models in a series of situations (e.g., full shade and full sun) in both disturbed and undisturbed sites. Using known preferred temperatures for foraging, I could then determine if the disturbed areas provided less time for snakes to forage. Overall, we found that in the spring and fall preferred foraging temperatures were found during the day.

But as the spring turned to summer, foraging times became more crepuscular (dawn and dusk) and then transitioned

to completely nocturnal for most of the summer. This pattern in available foraging times was not different between disturbed and undisturbed sites, and snakes could forage an equal amount of time in all areas surrounding the three populations.

So I had learned that the disturbances were changing soil characteristics and vegetation communities, and those changes were linked to decreased prey availability. However, disturbances were not having any impact on the amount of time a snake could forage. My next step was to dive deeper into this prey availability question and see if there was a potential link to the variation in size and reproductive characteristics I observed among rattlesnake populations.

Linking Prey Communities to Rattlesnake Reproduction: To explore the connection between prey availability and rattlesnake reproduction, I decided that I needed a way to follow snakes while simultaneously studying the small mammal communities. This might sound like no big feat, but at the time, it had never been done. Somehow I had to track the snakes through their entire year and simultaneously trap small mammal communities in the areas they used. To do this, I followed over 30 snakes over a three-year period across both disturbed and undisturbed areas. Following a snake with radio telemetry is no small feat in and of itself. With an animal like an elk, you can put a radio transmitter on a collar fitted around the animal’s neck, but a collar does not work with a snake. Instead I had to carefully surgically implant radio transmitters into the snakes. This technique is an obvious intrusion on the animal, but multiple studies have shown that snakes with implanted transmitters

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continue to move, feed, gain weight, breed and give birth. This solved the problem of following the snakes, but sampling their prey as they moved through the landscape was going to be a real challenge. I decided that we would use the same small mammal trapping arrays we used previously but have the arrays follow the snakes across the landscape. Thus, our field crews would locate snakes using the telemetry gear and then set up a small mammal trapping array on their previous location.

We would trap mammals for two days, and then the array would move up to the next snake location. In this way, I was able to know where snakes were daily and to have small mammal trapping arrays follow each snake through the landscape for the entire active season. I also captured each snake at the beginning and end of the season to see if the snake’s weight had changed. It was an incredible amount of work, but we got it done.

What we found was fascinating. First, Great Basin Rattlesnakes had general movement patterns similar to other rattlesnake species. Specifically, they made straight-line migration-like movements away from overwintering sites and then set up a core area where they spent the summer foraging. In these core areas they would make short non-directional movements as they moved between prey ambush sites and areas to digest. Snakes moved an average of about 1 kilometer from overwintering sites but a total distance of about 5 km in a season. If you were to view the rattlesnake movements from the air, they would almost look like a series of lollipops going out in all directions from the hibernaculum, with the migration movements forming the stick and the non-direction core movements as the candy head. Interestingly, the snakes used the same general migration route and core area year to year. Even snakes followed for three full years used the same foraging

Indigomagazine

Figure 2. The relationship between prey availability and snake weight gain. The shape of the points represents hibernaculum and disturbance category (circle = undisturbed, non-Butte population; square = burned non-Butte population; triangle = grazed Butte population; diamond = grazed and burned Butte population). The color of the point represents year (black = 2003 and white = 2004).

areas. Over the course of the three years, prey availability went up and down from year to year and was patchily distributed, but the rattlesnakes maintained their fidelity using the same core areas. For example, snakes in disturbed habitats that had lower prey availability did not make any effort to shift their foraging grounds to find areas of higher prey availability. As a result, we found no real differences in habitat selection among snakes. Instead, at some point likely early in their lives, they select a foraging area and continue using that foraging area, weathering out changes in habitat and prey availability. This makes sense based on their life history, as longlived, low-reproductive output animals are adapted to enduring variations in prey resources.

Finally, we found that snakes using core areas with higher prey availability gained more weight. Specifically, there was a strong relationship between prey availability and weight gain in rattlesnakes, where snakes using areas with higher prey availability gained more weight (Figure 2). So in summary, I documented that disturbed areas had lower prey availability, rattlesnakes did not shift their movements or habitat selection in response and instead had high fidelity to foraging areas.

But snakes using core areas supporting greater prey availability gained more weight. These connections likely explain much of the small size first observed in snakes from the Butte population and the accompanying lower life history and reproductive output values calculated from the long-term data set.

Rattlesnake Population Level Consequences: We observed differences in rattlesnake reproductive output, habitat characteristics, prey availability and a lack of differences in available microclimates and foraging times. We even documented a link between disturbance, prey availability and weight gain in snakes (which drives reproductive output). However, I still did not know if these observations could have any consequences for rattlesnake populations. To determine if the patterns we were observing were having an impact on populations, we developed a series of life tables to estimate population growth rates for the three populations.

This approach incorporates all of the life history information such as ages to maturity, pregnancy intervals, and

fecundity and used it to estimate whether the populations were growing, declining or staying stable. Our estimates of population growth rate showed that the Butte rattlesnake population is likely declining at a rate of about 7 percent per year, whereas the other two populations were remaining approximately stable. While no study can control for every factor and examine every possible connection, the work on Great Basin Rattlesnakes strongly suggest that the landscape conversion of sagebrush steppe to an annual grassland is causing Great Basin Rattlesnake populations to decline.

A Future for Rattlesnakes in the Sagebrush Sea: If our study is accurate and landscape conversion is causing rattlesnake population declines by lowering prey availability, we have to realize the scale of landscape change across the Great and Interior Columbian Basins and that hundreds of additional Great Basin Rattlesnakes and other predators are likely also to be declining. The truth is that the invasion of Cheatgrass is so widespread, it is going to be very difficult to restore the entire landscape. I see the changes as analogous to other large widespread phenomena such as the Chestnut Blight or Hemlock Wooly Adelgid, both of which have devastated forests in eastern North America. But the difference is that I think we can hold the line with Cheatgrass. By focusing on those remaining intact areas of sagebrush steppe and implementing livestock grazing and fire management that will slow or prevent the spread of Cheatgrass, we can ensure a future for Great Basin Rattlesnakes and the other predators that live among the sagebrush sea.

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1

A FIELD 2

1.SCOTT BOLICK 2.TRENT ADAMSON 3.BLAISE BYRD 4.JOE TETRAULT 5.DANA GREEN 6.LUKE SMITH 11 7.Ashley Harris 8.KENNY RUELLAND 9.SKYLER WALKER 10.I zalete Tavares 11.JAKE HUTTON 12.Isaiah Lieberenz 13.Bruno Gattolin Red Salamander

Pygmy Rattlesnake

Marbled Salamander

Eastern Hog-nosed Snake

False Poison Frog

Brown Anole

Eastern Box Turtle

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Eastern Gray Treefrog

Coral Snake

Chaco Treefrogs

Pigeon Mtn. Salamander

Bullsnake

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10

Green Jararaca

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photos

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UPCOMING events January 2017 Herbicides & Longleaf Workshop January 10-12, 2017 Jasper, TX www.longleafalliance.org/events/h201-herbicides-longleaf GOPHER TORTOISE COUNCIL ANNUAL MEETING January 13-15, 2017 Palatka, FL www.gophertortoisecouncil.org/annual-meeting/ RED HILLS FIRE FESTIVAL January 22, 2017 Tallahassee, FL www.redhillsregion.org/event/red-hills-fire-festival/

February 2017 southeasT PARC ANNUAL MEETING February16-19, 2017 Little Rock, AR separc.org/meetings/2017/2/16/2017-annual-separc-meeting southeastern wildlife exposition February 17-19, 2017 Charleston, SC sewe.com FIRE & Longleaf Workshop February 21-23, 2017 Jasper, TX www.longleafalliance.org/events/f201-fire-longleaf INDIGO DAYS To Be Determined www.oriannesociety.org

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NORTHWEST PARC ANNUAL MEETING February 27-March 3, 2017 Blue Lake, CA www.nwparc.org/meetings-events-calendar/2017/2/27/ 10th-annual-nw-parc-meeting

March 2017 82nd north american wildlife & natural resources conference March 4-11, 2017 Spokane, WA wildlifemanagement.institute/conference CLaxton Wildlife Festival March 11-12, 2017 Hagan, GA www.evanscountywildlifeclub.com 40th Annual Herpetology Conference March 25-27, 2017 Gainesville, FL www.flmnh.ufl.edu/herpetology-conference/home/ Association of Zoos & aquariums Mid-year meeting March 26-31, 2017 Albuquerque, NM www.aza.org/conferences-meetings FIRE & Longleaf Workshop March 28-30, 2017 Cheraw, SC www.longleafalliance.org/events/f201-fire-longleaf-1

= The Orianne Society will be participating

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May 2017

August 2017

5th Biology of the VIPERS Conference May 12-14, 2017 Chefchaouen, Morocco 5thbovconference@gmail.com

NORTHEAST PARC ANNUAL MEETING August 8-10, 2017 Pembroke, VA http://northeastparc.org/next-meeting-info/

Longleaf 101 Workshop May 23-25, 2017 Stockton, AL www.longleafalliance.org/events/longleaf-101

Herbicides & Longleaf Workshop August 15-17, 2017 Tallahassee, FL www.longleafalliance.org/events/h201-herbicides-longleaf-2

National forest landowners conference May 30-June 2, 2017 Asheville, NC www.forestlandowners.com/page/2017NationalConf

September 2017

June 2017 Herbicides & Longleaf Workshop June 13-15, 2017 Tuskegee, AL www.longleafalliance.org/events/h201-herbicides-longleaf-1

July 2017 Longleaf 101 Workshop July 11-13, 2017 Ft. Stewart, GA www.longleafalliance.org/events/longleaf-101-1 JOINT Meeting OF Ichthyologists & HerPetologists July 12-16, 2017 Austin, TX www.asih.org/meetings 40th ANNUAL International Herpetological Society Symposium July 19-22, 2017 Rodeo, NM www.internationalherpetologicalsymposium.com/40th-annualsymposium/

UNDERSTORY RESTORATION Workshop September 26-28, 2017 Southern Pines, NC www.longleafalliance.org/events/u201-understory-restoration ASSOCiation of fish & wildlife agencies 107th annual meeting September 10-13, 2017 Salt Lake City, UT www.afwaannualmeeting.org/

October 2017 UNDERSTORY RESTORATION Workshop October 11-13, 2017 Alexandria, LA www.longleafalliance.org/events/u201-understory-restoration-2 UNDERSTORY RESTORATION Workshop October 24-26, 2017 Milton, FL www.longleafalliance.org/events/u201-understory-restoration-1

2016-2017

Want to announce an upcoming herpetology or land management event in the summer issue of Indigo Magazine?

E-mail the event information to info@oriannesociety.org by June 30, 2017 to be included.

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MEMBER levels Our members are the backbone of our organization, and we cannot accomplish all we do without your support! This year, we have expanded our membership program to offer differing levels of support to encourage members to become sustaining supporters of reptiles, amphibians and their habitats:

Spotted Salamander Membership: $35

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