Practical Advice for Coping with Copperheads in Atlanta

- 

A neonatal Copperhead, as is depicted by the 'yellow' tail.
This will disappear as the animals gets older.

I stumbled upon this article this morning, while doing research for my Biology of the Reptiles course at Agnes Scott College. I was, of course, put off by the title 'Good Snakes vs Bad Snakes' but could quickly guess what this author was referring to by 'Bad Snakes' - She was undoubtedly speaking of Atlanta's most despised vertebrate — the Copperhead.

At the Amphibian Foundation, we have initiated a Copperhead Rescue and Advocacy Program for two reasons: 1) We feel an obligation, which started with amphibians, to speak out for the underdog, persecuted, and the misunderstood wildlife in our neighborhoods (Box Turtles and Snapping Turtles also fall into one or more of these categories) — and 2) We were 'forced' into this position by the immediate inundation of Copperhead calls and messages we started receiving once we opened our doors in Buckhead in 2016.

Part of our Copperhead program involves providing free workshops for the community, so that people can understand the truths about these snakes vs the unprecedented numbers of falsehoods. Plus, we just want people to know how to recognize a Copperhead. Only 6% of the Copperhead calls we receive are actually Copperheads. The vast majority of our calls are harmless, beneficial snakes, and many of which are killed nonetheless.

This article from Slate highlights some things you can do if you are concerned about Copperheads, and don't want to waste your time and money.  It has some great advice from our friends and partners David Steen and Kathryn Dudeck.

Read the article here

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ask the frog staff: How many tadpoles actually survive into adulthood?

-
Image
Hi Mark. A frog friend and I were at the lily pond today and it was rife with tadpoles of various sizes and stages. Two questions: 1) It looked like the two ducks might be feeding on them ... do they? 2) How many tadpoles actually survive to frog adulthood? — Christine C. This particular topic has come up a lot recently, and one of our visitors beautifully photographed a heron eating a rather large bullfrog out of the lily pond in the Children's Garden . It was a graphic interaction, but demonstrates how vital amphibians are in food webs and one of the reasons we use to illustrate how important it is to keep amphibians around. Almost everything eats them, or their tadpoles, or their eggs ... or all three.  Many animals eat frogs exclusively (including some frog species!), and the herons at the Garden obviously love them. I have seen ducks eating tadpoles quite rapidly. In fact, my amphibian class last summer quantified how quickly different aquatic birds could ...
Read more

Species Spotlights: Poison frogs and Glass frogs

-
Image
Epipedobates tricolor | Phantasmal poison frog (Morispunga morph) Male transporting tadpoles. Frogs are among the most diverse groups of vertebrates . They occur globally from the tropics to the sub-arctic regions, and in just about every conceivable habitat, one can find a frog species that has specialized to live there. Despite this diversity, it is generally easy to tell a frog from any other type of animal. Thanks, in part, to the absence of a tail like most other critters. Due to the range of unique requirements these habitats demand of frogs, each species has specialized behaviors and/or characters and some of these specializations are quite spectacular. Today, we are featuring two species which possess unique, prominent physical attributes. First, and one of the author's favorites is the Phantasmal poison frog | Epipidobates tricolor , which has been living, breeding, singing and hopping around the Fuqua Conservatory since 1995. Most poison frogs (family: dendr...
Read more

Amphibians and Solar Eclipses — What to Expect

-
Image
Green Tree Frogs are typically vocal during August and we may hear an increase in their breeding activity during the eclipse! Very little is known about amphibians and their response to a solar eclipse. We may even expect such a short lapse in photoperiod to be largely ignored by amphibians. One of the few reports on the subject comes from data gathered during a solar eclipse in New England in 1932. Wheeler, et al (1935) documented a lot of activity, with species such as Spring Peepers, Grey Tree Frogs and American Toads temporarily behaving as if it were night. We are encouraging our Metro Atlanta Amphibian Monitoring Program (maamp.us) participants to get out, if possible to their survey sites and record their observations during the eclipse. We would also encourage the entire Atlanta community to submit their observations of amphibians while they are out witnessing the event. Did you hear an increase in frog calling? Was there an increase in activity? Did the frogs, toads and sa...
Read more