THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 8, 1994 TAG: 9409080532
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANCIE LATOUR AND CHARLENE CASON, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
The cries to protect endangered animals have made national symbols out of some of our wildlife: Save the bald eagle. Save the whales. Save the spotted owl.
But save the canebrake rattlesnake?
That environmental call has generated opposition in Chesapeake. Some landowners fear that a state-funded study to track and preserve the reptile - which is on Virginia's endangered species list - could encroach on their property rights.
Two years ago, a pair of biologists, Alan H. and Barbara A. Savitzky, began charting 11 of the snakes at Northwest River Park in Chesapeake. Since then, at least two snakes have slithered onto nearby private farmland.
Now some people are warning that the results of the study could create a slippery slope that would end in the state's condemning the farmland as a refuge for the poisonous animals.
``We've seen it before, with owls and woodpeckers and shrews, and it costs landowners a lot of money,'' said Fleetwood Culpeper Jr., president of the Chesapeake Farm Bureau.
Culpeper was among 125 landowners who attended a meeting Aug. 23 to express concerns about the venomous snakes.
State representatives were also on hand to address farmers' complaints.
``The farmers see so many infringements today on their land use,'' state Del. J. Randy Forbes said. ``I think they're just afraid of a domino effect. They've been told in the past that this would never happen, but they've seen it with an owl and a shrew.''
The comparison to the owl is misleading, said state and local game and park officials.
``If you're going to talk about the owl, that was a totally different situation,'' said Bill Petree, who supervises Northwest River Park.
``First of all, the owl was on the federal endangered list, not the state endangered list,'' Petree said. While the state can declare any sale, moving or killing of the animals illegal, he said, it does not have the power to condemn private property as refuges for endangered animals or restrict what owners can and can't do with their land.
Ron Southwick, assistant chief of fisheries for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, said landowners' fears that the study's findings for the region would work to put the snakes on the federal list were equally unfounded.
``The state has no say at the federal level,'' Southwick said. ``They have to look at the entire national population of animals.''
Even if all the canebrake rattlesnakes in Virginia were to disappear tomorrow, Southwick said, their abundance in other states would make them unlikely candidates for the federal endangered list.
The canebrake rattler was listed as endangered by the state in January 1992.
The snake is found in several Southeastern states. But in Virginia it is restricted to the Hampton Roads region, Southwick said, and ``the kind of habitat it requires here is disappearing.''
The Savitzkys' $49,500 effort, to follow the snakes' seasonal movements and habitat use by implanting them with radio transmitters, is the first of its kind in the region.
``There have been writings from the 1600s about this snake,'' Southwick said. ``But we really know very little about it, and that's the reason we're studying it.''
The study, he said, will be key in understanding how the parking lots, lawns and developments sprouting throughout southeastern Virginia have threatened the last stronghold for the snakes in the state.
Alan Savitzky, who heads the ongoing research from Old Dominion University, recognized the difficulty in getting people to warm up to a scaly, biting creature.
``Snakes are a fairly hard sell,'' he said. ``Venomous snakes are even harder. But they deserve the same respect and understanding any other animal deserves.''
Without the snakes, Petree said, the environment could lose yet another member in the ecosystem. ``These animals have a balancing power in nature just like everything else,'' he said. ``They feed on rats and help control the rodent population.''
While Del. Forbes recognized the principle of animal preservation, he said the study's methods crossed the line between animal protection and human safety.
Once the animals are tagged with the transmitters, they are released back into the park wildlife.
``This is reckless endangerment, creating a major liability,'' Forbes said. ``If you found a loaded gun at a park, you wouldn't pick it up and look at it, then put it back in a park where you knew children were playing.''
He also called the $300 price tag on each transmitter ``a foolish allocation of resources.''
Southwick said the rattlesnake research is being funded by private contributions and voluntary tax-refund donations, not by tax dollars. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Steve Earley, Staff
A canebrake rattlesnake
At left, Savitzky uses a radio system to track canebrake
rattlesnakes in Chesapeake's Northwest River Park. He and his wife,
Barbara, have implanted 11 of the snakes with transmitters to follow
the rattlers' seasonal movements.
KEYWORDS: ENDANGERED SPECIES CANEBRAKE RATTLESNAKE by CNB