Inset photo by Jeff Barringer of my first Western Diamondback ever seen in the wild. Animal was seen at an event hosted in Sanderson Texas called Snake Days which was a conservation and educational event that brought reptile people from all over the world. I used this photo to respect the nat geo copywrites. They have amazing shots in the article!

Rattlesnakes are one of the most demonized animals on the planet. Deeply beloved by their fans and often hated by others. National Geographic author Elizabeth Royte spent a great deal of time traveling the country and looking into how to change the perceptions of rattlesnakes. She learned a bit about them in nature along the way and a bit about our battle as those who love rattlesnakes on changing perceptions.

At a time when populations of animal species globally have declined by an average of nearly 70 percent, wanton disregard for life—in the absence of imminent threat to humans—bothers Texas A&M University herpetologist Lee Fitzgerald. “The roundups do send a twisted message,” he says. “They’re not helping the way we think about biodiversity. We care about polar bears, but these snakes are worthless?”
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“I’m blue in the face from teaching people that snakes aren’t out to get you,” Matt Goode said as we hummed through Stone Canyon. “But I don’t know how much progress we’ve made.” Throughout much of the South and Southwest, it’s legal to kill many rattlesnake species. And some people kill a whole lot.

From working with field researchers to a visit to the hell that is the Sweetwater round-up, this is an amazing read. The hardest part to saving these species is changing perceptions on the animal itself. For the full article, visit Nat Geo here.

Have you heard of Project RattleCam? It is a livestream of a Prairie Rattlesnake Rookery in Colorado at an undisclosed location and it runs 24/7 from May to October. You can watch and share interesting obeservations with the team directly through their contacts or just spend your time watching rattlesnakes be rattlesnakes! What a better way to celebrate Rattlesnake Friday! Check it out!

Photo Credit: ©WCS A head-started female Siamese crocodile nesting in the wild

In a huge win for conservation, the first ever nesting behavior has been observed by reintroduced female Siamese crocodile that resulted in two hatchlings! The hatchlings are now being headstarted by the Wildlife Conservation Society.

The authors note: “While collecting eggs for incubation in May 2022, we were able to identify a unique series of notched tail scutes on a female C. siamensis as she aggressively defended a nest.

“From these markings we determined the female was hatched on 11 August 2012 (age = 9.75 years) and released in March 2014. A camera-trap placed at the nest on 11 May 2022 and recovered on 5 July 2022 recorded 1724 images.

“These images indicated the female remained in attendance at the nest throughout the monitoring period. Camera-trap imagery captured eight nest repair events and two nest defense events; during the later the female defended the nest from village dogs.”

They have managed to reduce the mortality with their headstart program by an amazing 90%! To read the paper and full story, click here.

USGS biologist holds an endangered yellow-legged frog recovered from a fire-ravaged stretch of Little Rock Creek, just off Angeles Crest Highway 2 near Wrightwood in the San Gabriel Mountains. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

For over 500 species of frogs, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or more easily BD has been devastating. It has decimated populations worldwide and lead to extinctions of of 90 possible species threatening more world-wide. Scientists have been struggling to come up with a cure of any sort and have started to look at the possibility of infecting the fungus with a virus.

Meet BdDV-1, a viral fragment discovered by scientists whose paper was recently published by the journal Current Biology. The researchers found it in much the same way that one disentangles a knot, by pulling on individual threads to see where they lead. While examining the BD fungus to learn about weaknesses, they discovered a single-stranded DNA virus trapped within the genome of the fungus. Although this only applied to certain strains, when infected they produced fewer spores than the uninfected fungi. Now the next step is to see if researchers can clone and engineer this virus so that it kills BD and saves the frogs.

That will not be the easiest task to accomplish, however, for a big reason: Currently the virus makes the fungus more deadly to the frogs, rather than less so.

Now the question remains if they can reenginer the virus to change how it impacts the virus. To read more about the process, visit Salon here.

Zoo Atlanta in Georgia recently sent 11 endangered Guatemalan beaded lizards (Heloderma charlesbogerti) to La Aurora Zoo. (Zoo Atlanta v)

With an estimated 500-600 animals in the wild, the Guatemalan Beaded Lizard (Heloderma charlesbogerti) is one of the more endangered lizards on the planet. Now when you consider the fact that they are part of the family of the only medically significant venomous species of lizards, it makes them even more special. Zoo Atlanta has been long involved in their conservation efforts and recently had a clutch hatch!

"The lizards that went down will not be released into the wild themselves, however," Zoo Atlanta's Curator of Herpetology Robert L. Hill explained on Wednesday.

"The plan is that these animals would reproduce in their beaded lizard-specific facilities, and that following a quarantine period, the offspring would then be transferred from La Aurora Zoo to protected areas within the known wild range of the species in the dry forests of the Motagua Valley."

When I spoke in 2022 at the International Herpetological Symposium, I had the pleasure of seeing the breeding setup at Zoo Atlanta! It was very amazing to see in person and get up close to conservation project in action! Congrats to the full Zoo Atlanta team! To read the full story, click here!

After saving over 700 eggs from poachers, the Costa Rica National Guard released 446 Sea Turtle babies recently!

Costa Rica, one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, is home to five of the seven sea turtle species. They are natural-born fighters, as only one in every 1,000 sea turtle eggs will become an adult. Hatchlings are prey to almost everything up until that point.

Once they reach adulthood, which can take up to 30 years, their list of enemies decreases significantly. The biggest predators they face are humans.

To read the full story and see the release video, click here.

Chelonia mydas, a newly hatched baby green sea turtle. Photo: Shutterstock

In Taiwan, saving the Green Sea Turtle on its preferred nesting island was the goal, but drastically impacting the native lizards species was the unintended result. Since 2001, on Badai Beach the only remaining suitable nesting spot on Orchard Island, researchers have protected every Green Sea Turtle Nest with a fine mesh netting. This netting prevented any ground dwelling predators from dining on the babies cooking inside. Orchard Island is also the home of the kukri snakes and the stink ratsnakes, both of which gladly dine on eggs. With the instant loss of their normal food source, they turned elsewhere.

The scientists estimated kukri snakes consumed around 120 sea turtle eggs each year before 2001, which would be equivalent to between 5,000 and 18,000 lizard eggs from the five soft-shelled lizard species on the island.

The team found that while populations of kukri snakes and stink ratsnakes were estimated to have declined by 12 per cent and 8 per cent per year between 1997 and 2020, lizard species saw drops of 11 to 25 per cent every year.

Now conservation efforts need to alter their program to protect not only the Green Sea Turtles, but also the existing native species, especially the lizards. This shows how science works best. As you learn how things are working, you adjust to make things work better.

To read more of how these efforts are changing, click here.

Photo of Gideon, a Grand Cayman hybrid bred by Ty Parks in FL, but living his best life safe in WIsconsin - Cindy Steinle

Recently, the State of Florida deemed all Green Iguanas (Iguana Iguana) as a restricted species and created quite a stir, confiscating animals from even private zoos and killing the animals rather than allowing them to be rehomed or allowed to remain on display at the zoo. Now in a move to destroy the reptile industry further, Florida Fish and Wildlife is making the move to change the language from Iguana (Iguana Iguana) to simply Iguana. This would thus include all species including Cyclura and Ctenosaura most definitely but potentially all species under the family Iguanidae which would also include Amblyrhynchus, Brachylophus, Cachryx, Conolophus, Dipsosaurus, and Sauromalus as well.

This is not only bad for pet owners and breeders, but seriously detrimental to worldwide conservation efforts as many assurance populations of a variety of both Cyclura and Ctenosaura species are maintained safely in Florida.

Read the update after the jump or click here to be taken to USARKFL's notice! There is also a link to the bill after the jump.

In the hottest and wryest region of Vietnam, deep in the dry lowland forest of Nui Chua National Park, researchers discovered a new species of blind skink. Searching around the leaf litter around the yellow-bellied termite mounds that these skinks preferred to dine on, the found 7 specimens. When they looked closer, they realized they had a new species, the Ninh Thuận blind skink ()

Ninh Thuan blind skinks have a “worm-like” body that can reach about 4.6 inches in length, the study said. Their eyes are “rudimentary” and “completely covered by scales.” They are also “limbless” with only males having “rudimentary” hind limbs that form “flap-like structures” near their tails.

To read more about this cool discovery click here.

photo courtesy - Missouri Department of Conservation The male hellbender found in the Gasconade River

An Eastern Hellbender, reared in the St. Louis Zoo and then re-released as an adult in the wild was found to have been the first zoo reared animal to have reproduced in the wild having fathered 86 "well-developed" eggs in the Gasconade River.

Justin Elden, curator of herpetology and aquatics at the Zoo, said hellbenders are cryptic, secretive creatures. Numbers might be rising faster than known.

“If there’s one there’s likely many more,” said Elden. “It’s exciting stuff, and my hope and thought is that this is the first of many that we will find.”

This means awesome things for the future of hellbenders! Go check out the full story here!

Presque Isle Co, MI, July 4, 2007, photo by kingsnake user ratsnakeheaven

The Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy is closing on 457 acres of property known as the La Grange Valley wetlands that is known as a "biodiversity hot spot" that houses a pair of nesting bald eagles and two endangered species, including the eastern massasauga rattlesnake.

The agency’s ultimate goal is to protect an important fen habitat with upland islands and tall hardwood trees that harbor a lot of wildlife, including several state threatened or endangered species like the Blanding’s turtle. And no, Hansen says, the agency’s not revealing the other federally endangered species — apart from the massasauga rattlesnake — out of a need to protect it.

To learn more about the project visit swmlc.org

To read the full article, click here.

Photo courtesy of NPR article

With their new found popularity from Minecraft, almost everyone now knows the Axolotl with it's goofy grin. The National Autonomous University is hoping that people love them enough to adopt one, well virtually at least! It might seem amazing with their popularity as a pet, but their wild numbers are on a rapid and drastic decline. Right now, they are running a campaign where you can virtually "adopt" an animal by naming one for a year, donating meals towards one or even donating towards habitat purchase!

Over two decades ago, there were about 6,000 of these tiny salamanders for every square kilometer in Lake Xochimilco in Mexico City. In the last count from 2014, there were only about 36 axolotls per square kilometer, according to Luis Zambrano, who was involved in the axolotl census.

"It's gotten worse. They're not completely extinct, but it's worse," said Zambrano, who is also an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

As always, the biggest threat to the Axolotls is humans, this time it isn't the pet trade however. It is from the over expanding population in their native environment and the poisoning of the groundwater. We all know the importance this tells us about the stability of that area as a whole!

To read the full article, go to NPR here.