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134 IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 2  •  JUNE 2005 NEWSBRIEFS

Absence of Lesser Antillean Iguanas 
on Île Forchue

After an extensive search, Karl Questel,
from St.-Barthélemy, reports an absence
of Lesser Antillean Iguanas (Iguana deli-
catissima) on the Island of Fourchue,
despite the presence of appropriate food
plants such as Prickly Pear (Opuntia sp.)
and young Black Wood. He was unable
to search Forchue’s tiny neighboring
islands of Petite Islette and Île-au-Vent,
where researcher Michel Breuil had
reported the presence of iguanas during
investigations in 2000 and 2001.

Dogs Track Burmese Pythons in
Everglades National Park

Wildlife Biologists in Everglades
National Park are training a beagle
named “Python Pete” to assist in a tar-
geted eradication of Burmese Pythons
(Python molurus). The Pythons, dumped
in the park by pet owners who can no
longer manage the massive snakes, can
reach 6 m in total length and are thriving
in the Park. Authorities fear that the
snakes will prey on endangered birds and
other endemic wildlife. Unlike many of
the invasive plant and animal species in
the park, scientists believe that the
Burmese Python population is small
enough that it can be eliminated with
intensive intervention. A clear sense of
urgency exists, however, given evidence
that the snakes have been breeding.
Sixty-one Pythons were caught and killed
in 2004, and 15 have already been taken
in January 2005. Aside from the tracking
skills of Pete, who is being trained to fol-
low scented trails, the targeted eradica-
tion program also makes use of a hotline
for reporting sightings and a preventative
education program aimed at pet stores
and exotic reptile organizations with the
slogan “don’t let it loose.”

Iguanas Eat at Airport
Landscapers at Simon Bolivar
International Airport in Guayaquil,
Ecuador are faced with a problem: the
grounds are being overrun by Green
Iguanas. Dr. José Luis Silva, has appealed
to the IUCN Iguana Specialist Group for
ideas on how to keep the iguanas away

from ornamental plants without harming
the animals. Ironically, the city of
Guayaquil is home to the aptly named
“Parque de las Iguanas,” a public park
that has become a favorite tourist desti-
nation. Trees in the park are filled with
Green Iguanas and visitors come to
admire and feed them.

Lizards Banish Rats from Rat Island
Scientists from the Durrell Wildlife Trust
in Jersey aim to create a rodent-free
refuge on Rat Island, a small Caribbean
island off the western coast of St. Lucia,

in order to save one of the world’s rarest
creatures: the St. Lucia Whiptail Lizard
(Cnemidophorus vanzoi). The Rat Island
project involves a team of conservation
workers who, in early February, began
laying down blocks of waxy poison in a
grid across the little island off of St.
Lucia. They will return in March in
order to conduct tests to make sure all of
the rats are dead. Only when all of Rat
Island’s rats have been killed will breed-
ing whiptails be introduced to colonize
the island.

For hundreds of years, European
ships have carried rodent stowaways
across the world, where they have estab-

N E W S B R I E F S

This very large adult Lesser Antillean Iguana (Iguana delicatissima) lives in one of the more inac-
cessible and uninhabited uplands on St.-Barthélemy. Despite intense development, primarily for
the tourist trade, the island supports a population of iguanas. Unfortunately, those not protected
by private land owners or by living in remote areas, are vulnerable to poaching, and feral and
domestic cats kill many juveniles, precluding effective recruitment.

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Critically endangered St. Lucia Whiptail
(Cnemidophorus vanzoi).

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Green Iguanas (Iguana iguana) may wreak
havoc with ornamental vegetation.

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IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 2  •  JUNE 2005 135NEWSBRIEFS

lished thousands of strongholds. Many
efforts to deal with the problem have
only made matters worse. When the sug-
arcane plantations of St. Lucia and other
Caribbean islands became plagued with
rats, landowners introduced the mon-
goose (Herpestes javanicus) to kill them.
Unfortunately, the mongoose is active
during the day and rats are nocturnal.
Contact between them is minimal and
they happily coexist — only now the
mongoose, in addition to the rats, is dec-
imating native island populations of
birds and reptiles.

Rat removal, such as that on Rat
Island, is not a one-time solution.
Increasingly, conservationists are turning
to small offshore sites in hopes of creat-
ing preserves in which threatened crea-
tures might find sanctuaries.

Adapted from a story by Robin McKie, Science
Editor, The Observer, originally published on 13
February 2005; http://observer.guardian.co.uk/
international/story/0,6903,1411804,00.html?
gusrc=rss

Snake Snares Decapitate
A company called SnakeSnare, LLC, in
Iowa has designed a device that is
intended to intentionally decapitate wild
snakes. The company’s website promotes
use of the snare in residential areas and
on golf courses, “where gunfire is imprac-
tical or illegal,” citing the old adage that
“a good snake is a dead snake.”
Concerned about the marketing pitch
promoting the extermination of wild
snakes, Dean Alessandrini, Vice-

President of the Greater Cincinnati
Herpetological Society, suggests checking
their website (www.snakesnare.com) and
voicing your concerns.

Giant Garter Snake 
Habitat Sought

After years of improperly filling wetlands
at the airport, federal wildlife regulators
have ordered the Sacramento Inter-
national Airport to purchase alternative
wetland habitat for Giant Garter Snakes
(Thamnophis gigas). The species is listed
as threatened and protected by the U.S.
Endangered Species Act. In competition
for the purchase of 300 undeveloped

acres in northern Sacramento and south-
ern Sutter counties, land that commer-
cial developers also are seeking as miti-
gation for construction elsewhere, the
airport may end up paying more than
$11 million.

Sacramento Business Journal

2005 Turtle Survival Alliance 
General Meeting Announcement

The 2005 IUCN/Turtle Survival
Alliance General Meeting will be held
22–24 July 2005 at the Mission Valley
Resort Hotel in San Diego, California.
Don Boyer, San Diego Zoo, is serving as
the Conference Committee Chairman.
The meeting will run approximately
from 8–5 on Saturday and Sunday with
a lunch break. A trip to the San Diego
Zoo is scheduled on Saturday evening.
Following a buffet dinner, participants
may visit the zoo grounds until 10 pm.
Stragglers will be fed to the tortoises.

Papers and posters will be presented
in three general areas: (1) Graduate
Research (Brian Horne, briandhorne@
hotmail.com, and Patrick Baker, bakerpj@

Playing on the public’s fear of snakes, SnakeSnare intentionally promotes the killing of harmless
and often useful snakes, such as this Common Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) from Holt
County, Missouri.

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Threatened Giant Garter Snakes (Thamnophis gigas) may gain some wetland habitat courtesy of
the Sacramento International Airport.

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muohio.edu, chairs), (2) Captive
Husbandry (Fred Caporaso, caporaso@
chapman.edu, and Chris Hagen,
hagen@srel.edu, chairs), (3) International
Conservation & Field Research (Rick
Hudson, rhudson@fortworthzoo.org,
and Dwight Lawson, dlawson@
zooatlanta.org, chairs). Talks and posters
focusing on captive breeding, nutrition,
in situ conservation plans, range country
education programs, population surveys,
genetics, trade observations, legislative
priorities, facility management and
design, contagious diseases, and quaran-
tine are encouraged. Titles and brief
descriptions of papers are due by 15
April, although submission of a title,
abstract, or paper does not guarantee
acceptance for presentation. Presenters
will be notified of the status of their pro-
posal by 15 May. After contacting
Session Chairs, submit papers or
abstracts to Chuck Schaffer, Conference
Program Chair (904-220-0678, chelon-
ian1@aol.com, 13811 Tortuga Point
Drive, Jacksonville, FL 32225).

National Award for Turtle Studies
The National Wildlife Federation’s
Conservation Achievement Award has
been awarded to Hawaiian NOAA
Fisheries biologist George Balazs for his
work on the threatened Hawaiian Green
Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas), which he
helped place on the federal endangered
species list in 1978. The population has
recovered significantly since that time
and Balazs’s radio-tagging studies have
shown that the turtles can take long
open-ocean routes from their feeding
sites to nesting areas and that they can
navigate hundreds of miles from the
main Hawaiian Islands to nesting
beaches in the northwestern Hawaiian
Islands without landmarks.

Honolulu Advertiser

Rattlesnake Roundup: 
Spectator Sport or Animal Cruelty?

The Taylor rodeo grounds, outside
Sweetwater, Texas, are home to one of 28
annual rattlesnake roundups in the
United States each year. This year’s gath-
ering is billed as the 33rd Annual
National Rattlesnake Sacking
Championship, and the main event is a
race against the clock to see which two-
man team is the fastest to pitch 10 snakes
into a burlap bag. About 80
Diamondback Rattlesnakes (Crotalus
atrox) squirm on a plexiglas stage, trying
to hide underneath each other while han-
dlers incite them to strike and rattle for
onlookers.

Andrea Cimino, wildlife campaign
coordinator for the Humane Society of
the United States says, “The roundups
are extremely cruel, but people can
ignore the cruelty because a reptile can’t
scream.” Some biologists suggest that the
roundups could be depleting snake pop-
ulations; however, the Western
Diamondback Rattlesnake seems to be
plentiful in Texas according to the Texas
Parks and Wildlife Department. Ken
Garrett, member of the winning team,
which bagged ten snakes in 30.75 sec-
onds, says, “I’m a hunter. I believe in
man’s dominion over all animals. The
snakes are there for the use of man.”

After the roundup, the snakes are
packed into plywood boxes and hauled off
by a snake dealer who sells them for snake
kebabs, coin purses, and cell phone cases.

Los Angeles Times

Search for a Shy Serpent
He’s very shy; loves to eat small frogs,
very small dead fish, and the occasional
centipede; and has been known to hide
under cow pies on warm summer days.
The problem is, he has officially been
seen only one time in Wyoming, way
back in 1985, and scientists aren’t sure if
he’s even around anymore.

So, Wyoming Game and Fish
Department officials are asking for the
public’s help in gathering more data
about the possible numbers and distribu-
tion of the tiny but mildly venomous
Plains Blackhead Snake. “They’re very,
very secretive ... but then again we
haven’t had a whole lot of people looking
for it,” said herpetologist Bill Turner, a
Game and Fish reptile/amphibian biolo-

136 IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 2  •  JUNE 2005 NEWSBRIEFS

Rattlesnake roundups have a long history,
attract lots of people, set foolish examples of
how to safely handle potentially dangerous
animals, and typically provide highly mis-
leading information about snakes in general
and rattlesnakes in particular. Photograph
courtesy of APNM.org.

The Plains Blackhead Snake (Tantilla nigriceps) may or may not be present or even widely dis-
tributed in Wyoming.

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Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas)
swimming off Kauai.

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gist. “We’re curious to know if it’s wide-
spread, if they’re uncommon throughout
the state or if they’re just peripheral to the
state,” he said. “We’re trying to get the
public to help us out, because this is an
animal that we’ve had only one sighting
of in the state so far.”

Game and Fish officials say
although there are about 40 reptile and
amphibian species in the state, biologists
have little or very limited information on
most of the species. “One example of
species we need to know more about ...
is the Plains Blackhead Snake,” Turner
said. He said the reptile’s population sta-
tus is currently “unknown” in Wyoming.
Turner has recently been working with
scientists and other biologists to learn
more about Wyoming’s reptiles and
amphibians. The effort is part of a larger
department initiative to help preserve
those nongame species with the greatest
conservation needs.

The Plains Blackhead Snake was first
found in Wyoming in August 1985 –
near Glendo Dam in east-central
Wyoming — by two eminent herpetolo-
gists, Ellen Censky and C. J. McCoy, dur-
ing a “typical collecting run” through
Wyoming, Turner said in a phone inter-
view. The pair wrote an article about the
discovery, which was the first official doc-
umentation of the species, he said. Turner
said while the article was being printed,
another important book on Wyoming
herpetology — “Amphibians and Reptiles
of Wyoming,” by the late George Baxter
and Mike Stone — was also published.
But the Plains Blackhead Snake was omit-
ted from the Baxter/Stone book, which
later became the preferred reference for
herpetology in the state. Turner said since
then, the snake has been largely over-
looked by scientists.

The snake has grooved teeth in the
rear of its mouth. Turner said some scien-
tists think the fangs help inject toxic saliva
into its prey. “When we say venomous,
that’s just the venom in its saliva... It’s a
tiny snake, and the primitive injection
system poses little or no threat to
humans,” he said. Turner said if the Plains
Blackhead Snake is discovered again in
the state, it would mean Wyoming has
two venomous snake species. The other is
the Western Rattlesnake, with its sub-
species — the Midget Faded Rattler and
the Prairie Rattler.

Turner was hired in 2003 by the
Game and Fish Department to be the
agency’s first herpetologist, according to
Walt Gasson, the agency’s special plan-
ning coordinator. He said the depart-
ment used federal funding from the State
Wildlife Grants program to hire Turner.
In 2001, Congress established the pro-
gram to provide funding for states to
help conserve species of greatest conser-
vation need. Through September 2004,
the state received almost $2 million in
SWG money. Gasson said the depart-
ment is in the process of writing a com-
prehensive wildlife conservation strategy
to continue receiving the federal funding.
He said while the department is charged
with conserving all wildlife, limited fund-
ing has sometimes hampered efforts to
manage nongame species such as the
Plains Blackhead Snake.

Jeff Gearino (Star-Tribune, Jackson Hole,
Wyoming) 10 May 2005

Proposed Downlisting of 
American Crocodiles

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
reports that annual monitoring of the
American Crocodile (Crocodylus acutus)
in Florida indicate that the criteria for
reclassification (the number of nests and
nesting females) from endangered to
threatened have been achieved. The
Service also proposes to initiate a five-
year review of population data, ongoing
conservation measures, and other factors
affecting the species.

Since 1975, when the crocodile was
protected under the Endangered Species

Act, its numbers in Florida have grown
from fewer than 300 individuals (with
only an estimated 10 to 20 nesting
females) to an estimated 500–1,000 indi-
viduals (and more than 61 nests), not
including hatchlings. Approximately
95% of remaining crocodile habitat in
southern Florida has been acquired by
federal, state, and county agencies and is
now protected from development. These
protected areas should allow the crocodile
population to expand and may provide
additional nesting opportunities. If this
proposal is finalized, the American
Crocodile in Florida will continue to be
federally protected as a threatened species.

The American Crocodile, a large
greenish-gray reptile, ranges in size from a
little more than 25 cm at hatching to a
maximum length of about 3.8 m. It is one
of two native crocodilians (the other, the
American Alligator, Alligator mississippien-
sis) that occur in the continental United
States. The American Crocodile is distin-
guished from the American Alligator by a
relatively narrow, more pointed snout and
by an indentation in the upper jaw that
leaves the fourth tooth of the lower jaw
exposed when the mouth is closed.

The American Crocodile is found in
coastal regions of the Atlantic and Pacific
coasts, southern México, Central
America, and northern South America,
as well as some Caribbean islands. In the
United States, the crocodile is limited in
distribution to the southern tip of main-
land Florida and the upper Florida Keys.
The American Crocodile remains endan-
gered throughout the remainder of its
range outside of the United States.

IGUANA  •  VOLUME 12, NUMBER 2  •  JUNE 2005 137NEWSBRIEFS

A pair of American Crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus) thermoregulating on a canal bank in South
Florida, the northernmost extent of the species’ range.

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