Snakes alive! Our rattlers need help
B.C. serpent now 'threatened' but has dedicated humans on its side

Ethan Baron, The Province
Published: Sunday, December 04, 2005

No earthly paradise would be complete without its serpent.

And in this paradise called B.C., research is under way to prevent our most spectacular serpent from disappearing forever.

The western rattlesnake, crotalus oreganus, sometimes called the northern Pacific rattlesnake, ranges from the southern Okanagan to the northern outskirts of Kamloops, with smaller populations in the Cache Creek, Kettle River and Grand Forks areas.

Up to a metre and a half in length, the snake uses a paralyzing, flesh-digesting venom to kill small animals reaching the size of red squirrels and young marmots.

Heat-sensing pits on each side of the triangular head allow a rattler to locate prey during nocturnal foraging.

Now, with the arrival of winter, rattlesnakes, with young born live at summer's end, have congregated in dens -- holes in rocky hillsides where 20 to 200 of them at a time will coil up together till spring.

And though rattlesnakes often inspire terror in humans, it is the snake that has the most to fear from any encounter between fanged reptile and tool-using mammal.

"There's really no reason to be afraid of these animals," says biologist Jeff Brown.

Residential development and industry imperil the western rattlesnake throughout its range in B.C. and Alberta. Last year it received a "threatened" designation under federal government legislation.

In recorded B.C. history, two people have died from rattler bites. Rattlesnakes sink their fangs into about five people a year in this province.

"Usually it's a drunk guy who's picked it up," Brown says.

There's good news for snakes, and humans: Research projects currently under way are examining ways to keep the snakes and people apart and to help ensure enough habitat remains to keep rattlesnake populations healthy.

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Lita Gomez is eating an apple on her way to the lair of the snake.

Gomez, a University of Victoria biology master's student, is little concerned with the biblical implications of her snack. She's visiting the rattlesnake den for her research into the reptiles' summertime movements, work that she hopes will aid in preserving the species.

"It's a beautiful animal," Gomez says. "It's really well adapted for making the best of an extreme environment."

Over the summer, she and her colleague Liam Doyle tracked nine rattlers, surgically implanted with transmitters, at two sites near Kamloops. There was Hulk, and Tiny. Lucky was found, luckily, at the base of a large juniper bush. Spaz, named after an aggressive episode, was the longest, about a metre. Then there was Sexy, always "ready to find the ladies," Gomez says.

It was the movements of the six snakes at a site near Kamloops Lake that threw the researchers for a loop and sent them on snake-chasing scrambles up steep hillsides into areas where rattlesnakes weren't previously known to slither.

The rattlers spent the summer moving up the grassy hillside that is typical of the Kamloops-area rattler habitat. But then they kept going, up into the ponderosa pine belt, and over a steep, rocky ridge on to a forested plateau.