THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502100194
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Coastal Journal
SOURCE: Mary Reid Barrow
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines
Irony is heaped upon irony in this love-hate relationship our state has with rattlesnakes.
Just recently the Virginia House of Delegates approved the timber rattler as the state snake and the bill is now awaiting consideration by the Senate. Yet the state-endangered canebrake rattler, a sub-species that lives here in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake isn't even acknowledged in the bill.
Moreover, it's ironic that the state is seeing fit to honor rattlesnakes at all when last year a scientific study of the canebrake caused such controversy in this area that the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries withdrew all support of the effort in mid-stream.
The canebrake, always a resident of only southeastern Virginia, is now being squeezed out of the state altogether by development. Found only in the Blackwater area of Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, the Dismal Swamp and in small numbers on the Peninsula, the snake was listed as a state-endangered species in 1992. On the other hand the timber rattler is fairly abundant in its western Virginia range.
Only a ``horridus'' makes the difference in scientific nomenclature between the two snakes. In fact if the legislation had described the snake with the Latin name, ``Crotalus horridus,'' the canebrake would have been included in the designation.
But the law is written with a more specific scientific name, ``Crotalus horridus horridus,'' which excludes the canebrake sub-species. (The canebrake, if you are interested, is ``Crotalus horridus atricaudatus.'')
``It's ironic enough that they would choose the widespread venomous snake and exclude the venomous snake with the narrow range,'' said Alan Savitzky, biological sciences professor at Old Dominion University.
Savitzky knows all the ironies firsthand because he and his wife Barbara headed up the canebrake rattlesnake study that was the object of such controversy last year. The couple was tracking the movements of canebrakes in Chesapeake's Northwest River Park with radio transmitters that had been surgically implanted in the snakes. By studying the canebrakes' migration and hibernation patterns, the Savitskys hoped to learn more about conserving the endangered species.
The study was being funded by money from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries non game fund which is supported solely by taxpayers' voluntary check-offs.
Local farmers raised a ruckus because they feared that if the snakes were found to be moving onto their farms, their land use could somehow be restricted to protect the endangered animal. In the end some powers-that-be in the city and the state got involved and the result was the state's withdrawal of the study funding.
Savitizky could understand the fear of poisonous snakes that some critics of the study had, but that's not what spelled the study's doom. ``Then you have phobias about environmental regulations,'' he said. ``That's what broke the back of our study.''
Savitzky has until May to gather up all the canebrakes equipped with radio transmitters and remove the transmitters in another surgical procedure. In still another irony, the rattlers will be released back into the park and then nobody will know where they are, which certainly is no help to those with poisonous snake phobias.
One of the reasons given for the timber rattler's designation as state snake is its historical significance. A group of home schoolers, who last fall brought the snake legislation to the attention of Del. Joe T. May of Leesburg, cited the historical role of the timber rattler on the state flag and regiment flags in the Revolutionary War.
Savitzky, ever the canebrake's advocate, has an even better reason than those for the canebrake's historical importance. The canebrake, he thinks, was the first rattlesnake taken back to Europe for scientific study. It's known the rattler came from Virginia but the literature doesn't say where in Virginia. Since the time was the 1600s, Savitzky reasoned, the snake probably came from the Peninsula and therefore had to be the canebrake subspecies.
``And the irony here,'' Savitzky said, ``is that now we're about to eradicate the very population of snakes that provided the first scientific studies of rattlers in the New World.''
It's as if somebody up there in Richmond doesn't like the canebrake specifically because it is endangered. Could it be that the designation, ``endangered,'' in Virginia these days is the kiss of death?
P.S. You can see a canebrake rattlesnake at the Virginia Marine Science Museum. The snake co-exists peacefully with a copperhead snake in an exhibit in the museum's coastal river room.
THE MOON IS FULL Wednesday night. Although it's a day late for Valentine's, the moon will look almost as big Tuesday night, so just pretend. MEMO: Any comments about rattlesnakes? Or any other creature? Call me on
INFOLINE, 640-5555. Enter category 2290. Or, send a computer message
to my Internet address: mbarrow(AT)infi.net. ILLUSTRATION: Staff file photo by STEVE EARLEY
A canebrake rattlesnake curls up in the leaves at Northwest River
Park in Chesapeake. The endangered snake was being tracked by ODU
biologist Alan Savitzky and his wife, Barbara, of Christopher
Newport until state funding was pulled.
by CNB