by Wilson Ring
Hidden on hillsides in a remote part of
western Vermont, a small number of venomous timber rattlesnakes slither
among the rocks, but their isolation can't protect them from a
mysterious fungus spreading across the eastern half of the country that
threatens to wipe them out.
In less than a
decade, the fungus has been identified in at least nine Eastern states,
and although it affects a number of species, it's especially threatening
to rattlesnakes that live in small, isolated populations with little
genetic diversity, such as those found in Vermont, New Hampshire,
Massachusetts and New York.
In
Illinois the malady threatens the eastern massasauga rattlesnake, which
was a candidate for the federal endangered species list even before the
fungus appeared.
Biologists have compared its appearance to the
fungus that causes white nose syndrome in bats, which since 2006 has
killed millions of the creatures and continues to spread across North
America.
It's unclear, though, if snake fungal disease,
"ophidiomyces ophiodiicola" was brought to the United States from
elsewhere, as was white nose fungus, or if it has always been present in
the environment and for some unknown reason is now infecting snakes,
biologists say.
"I think
potentially this could overwhelm any conservation effort we could employ
to try to protect this last remaining population," said Doug Blodgett, a
biologist with the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife who has been
studying the state's rattlesnake population for 15 years. "We don't
have any control over it. It's just completely out there in the wild."
Rattlesnakes were once found across much of the country, but
habitat loss and efforts by fearful humans to wipe them out reduced
their numbers, especially at the northern edges of their range.
In
New Hampshire, the disease helped halve the population of rattlesnakes —
now estimated at several dozen — after it was first spotted in 2006,
although it was only afterward that scientists linked the fungus to the
decline, officials said.
Vermont's population of timber
rattlesnakes is down to two locations near Lake Champlain in the western
part of the state with an estimated total population of several
hundred.
An Associated Press reporter was allowed to accompany
wildlife officials to a rattlesnake habitat on condition the exact
location not be revealed out of concern that too much attention could
further threaten them. Blodgett led an hours-long search for some of the
elusive creatures until he found a pair hiding in a rocky crevice,
though it wasn't clear if they were infected. Later, a healthy single
snake was found on the forest floor.
The disease can cause crusty scabs and lesions, sometimes on the head.
Jeffrey Lorch, a microbiologist with the U.S. Geological
Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, said
he's been getting reports of snake fungal disease from all over the
eastern United States. Not every location is reporting that the disease
is threatening snake populations.
"It does seem to be a disease that has different effects in different areas," Lorch said.
The
fungus poses a greater risk to snakes that reproduce slowly, such as
rattlesnakes, which can live up to 30 years, experts say.
In
Illinois every year the disease infects about 15 percent of the
population of about 300 of massasauga rattlesnakes, most of which are in
Clinton County, with a mortality rate of 80 to 90 percent, said Matt
Allender, a wildlife veterinarian and epidemiologist at the University
of Illinois who started noticing the fungus in 2011. The mortality rate
in infected timber rattlesnakes is estimated between 30 and 70 percent,
he said.
The fungus' impact on the massasauga is expected to play a
part in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's determination on whether
to list the snake as endangered, officials said.
"I think that in
populations that have been shrunk due to other mechanisms, such as
habitat loss, other environmental changes, those types of things, are
more at risk of going extinct from snake fungal disease mainly because
it's a smaller population," Allender said. "They have less of a buffer
to withstand these diseases."
Part
of the challenge in studying the disease is that snakes, especially
venomous varieties, don't get much sympathy from the public, which makes
funding studies harder. Snakes are also harder to find than, say,
white-nose-infected bats where scientists can go into a cave and see
tens of thousands of carcasses, Lorch said.
The
fungus has been found in all five rattlesnake populations in
Massachusetts, but it doesn't appear to have had the high mortality rate
reported elsewhere, said Anne Stengle, a Ph.D. candidate at the
University of Massachusetts who is overseeing a federal grant in nine
states to study the fungus.
Since
the initial hit, the decline in the Granite State's timber rattlesnakes
appears to have stabilized and some are reproducing, said New Hampshire
Fish and Game Biologist Mike Marchand.
"I'm
at least optimistic that there are animals that are successfully
surviving from year to year as well as reproducing," Marchand said. "We
had a pretty strong dip in the population."
Council bosses in Wales turned off traditional street lights because
they were interfering with glow worms’ mating habits.
The sodium illuminations were tempting away the male insects, which
meant they were failing to copulate with the females.
But since the lamps have been changed to LED ones, the males are no
longer being lured away to the lights, and the population around
Llandudno’s Great Orme has boomed.
Crowds lined the pavement to watch the fourth annual Moffat Sheep Races on Sunday afternoon.
A nine-year-old spaniel was rescued by volunteers after falling 650 feet (200m) down a cliff chasing a rock.
The Brecon Mountain Rescue Team were called by Dyfed-Powys Police after Woody fell from the summit of Pen Y Fan in Wales on Saturday.
Rescue leader David Grant said: “Woody was one of the best behaved
casualties we have bought off the mountain.
He was very well behaved, grateful, light to carry and didn’t complain
once.”
Mountain rescuers have asked people to be aware that throwing rocks from
summits is very dangerous, not only for eager spaniels, but for humans
walking or working below.
A caution sign is to be put on a bronze bench sculpture in Somerset, warning people it gets hot in the sunshine.
Man on a Bench by Giles Penny was unveiled in Bruton in June and now
attracts a number of visitors who sit on it to have their photograph
taken.
Town mayor Steve Hall, said he was certain it "won't heat up to griddle
levels" this summer but it could be a "shock" to those wearing shorts.
Many companies have been slipping clauses into contracts designed to prevent any criticism of them. Be wary.
At 11:30pm last Friday surveillance cameras picked up a shadow. Seconds
later the man lurking outside Joy's Gift Shop in Hilo, Hawaii, smashed
his way inside the store.
"We were fast asleep in bed and we get a call from the alarm company
followed up by a call from the police," said co-owner Bill Heideman.
"Small business is very hard to make a profit and survive. Yea it's
definitely a hit to us and yea we would like to see him pay for his
crime," said Heideman.
With the public's help Heideman might get his wish. The hat the
suspected crook was wearing wasn't much of a disguise. Cameras
positioned throughout the store captured a clear shot of the man's face.
A police officer who complained about ‘anti-white’ discrimination
from the black community toward police officers’ Facebook page is filled
with racism.
Joanie Knight from Bogalusa, Louisiana, came home from work on Tuesday
to find that nearly everything in her home of value was missing.
Police say the woman’s babysitter Estelle Ard, 64, and the babysitter’s
daughter, Cathy Knight, 27, are accused of selling the woman’s
possessions on Bogalusa’s WBOX radio swap shop.
Bank customers were escorted in and out of a branch in Ipswich, Suffolk,
under an umbrella on Friday as dive-bombing seagulls protected their
chick which had fallen from the nest.
Unsuspecting customers parking up at Natwest Bank in Ransomes Europark
had to duck for cover when approaching the main entrance as the parent
seagulls swooped on anyone getting to close to their offspring.
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Workers at the Titusville Rehab and Nursing Center in Florida have said
that a resident at the home woke up, went to the bathroom and found a
live snake in his underpants.
"(It was) in his underwear," said certified nursing assistant Veronica
Mitchner. "I was like, a snake? A real snake. And I wanted to see the
snake and when I seen the snake in a cup, I was like, 'Dang, that's a
real snake.'"
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