Evolution's survivors are slithering into extinction says STUART WINTER
UNBLINKING eyes in the brilliant Texan sunshine sent a chill down the spine. The surly cottonmouth was a long way from any swamp but the searing gravel road was pumping energy into its cold-blooded, serpentine body. This snake was not for moving.
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Even the rumble of trucks failed to shake America’s infamous aquatic pit viper from its repose. Any second it would be flattened, beautiful camouflage patterning imprinted with tread-marks.
My attempt to chivvy the snake to safety was greeted with fangs framed by the eponymous, ghostly-white “cottonmouth” – the prelude to a venomous and potentially fatal bite.
The last time I had tried to rescue a snake from being squashed on a road ended with a California red-sided garter coiling around my wrist and sinking in its teeth. A thick fleece saved the day.
Once bitten…I clapped and jumped, hoping the vibrations would send the cottonmouth scuttling. A tail wiggle à la rattlesnake showed its displeasure.
“Leave the snake alone,” came an angry voice with a Texan twang. “It ain’t doing any ’arm.” Innocent explanations followed to a woman driver, concerned I had evil intent towards the wildlife. A smile creased her face as the snake slithered to safety in the long grass, oblivious to its fortune.
These seem enlightened times for snakes in Cowboy Country. Public notices advise how these once vilified creatures do not hunt people and always prefer retreat over attack.
The other message is they are key to nature’s balance.
Snakes are not the only reptiles in need of tolerance. Across the globe too many members of this ancient zoological classification, with its origins dating back 320 million years, are in peril.
Human pressures have literally put them on the Edge. This is the acronym – for Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered – that has been coined by the Zoological Society of London for a conservation initiative to highlight the parlous state of threatened species that have a notable place on the evolutionary tree of life.
Mammals, birds, amphibians and corals have already been scrutinised by scientists using a complex formula to calculate those life forms in need of efforts to stop them slipping off the edge of existence. Now it is reptiles.
Snakes, turtles, lizards, geckos and crocodilians, to name a few, have undergone scrutiny to produce a list of 100 species with an imperative to protect.
Top of the list is the Madagascan big-headed turtle, the sole surviving member of a genus with an 80 million year history. Providing food for humans and habitat degradation have seen it become critically endangered.
In third place is the Madagascan blind snake, a tiny, worm-like creature with translucent pink skin whose coastal forest haunts are threatened by logging and charcoal production. It too is critically endangered.
Another snake makes 22nd place on the list. The Round Island keel-scaled boa is unique among all creatures in the way it can manipulate its upper jaw. This hunting technique has not saved it from habitat destruction on its Indian Ocean outpost.
Edge Reptiles co-ordinator Rikki Gumbs explains: “Many Edge Reptiles are the sole survivors of ancient lineages, whose branches stretch back to the age of the dinosaurs. If we lose these species there will be nothing like them left on Earth.”