The eastern racer has not been seen in Vermont in 18 years.
VERMONT – The student scientists walked carefully through the grassy field, each standing several yards apart as they searched for one of the state’s rarest snakes.
Then the whistle sounded: someone had spotted a clue about the snake that hadn’t been officially documented in the state for 18 years.
As the students came running to check out a snakeskin, they ended up face-to-face with the elusive eastern racer.
While most would run the other way from a 5-foot long black snake, the students combing the Guilford field celebrated their find.
“The kids were besides themselves; very excited,” said Jim Andrews, who late last month led the group of students participating in an Audubon Vermont summer program. “There was lots of yelling and backslapping and lots of pictures taken.”
What made the discovery even more remarkable was that the student sleuths and Andrews were tracking down a lead from someone who recalled seeing a large black snake in the area in 1985, the same year of the last verified sighting.
“This is a native species which we feared was gone,” said Andrews, who chairs the Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Scientific Advisory Group. “It’s nice to know indeed it’s still here and of at least one site that can perhaps be managed in a way that will help it be perpetuated here.”
By the 1970s and 80s the eastern racer, typically found in southern Vermont, was hard to come by. Many had been killed as farming operations became increasingly mechanized and as more and more of the sun-basking creatures became roadkill, Andrews said.
Finding proof that some eastern racers still exist in Vermont could prove important in protecting its presence, said Hollis Burbank-Hammarlund, executive director of the Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center in West Brattleboro, which has been training citizen scientists on how to spot the rare species.
“At least we know where it is and measures can be taken to protect it,” she said. “You can’t protect something you’re not sure exists. This definitely tells us it’s still here; it’s probably not a large population.”
Andrews and others hope more tips will come in about big black snake sightings so that scientists can get a sense of how many remain in Vermont. They hope people who come across a potential sighting will photograph the snake instead of killing it.
“They’re relatively limited populations and if we lose adults, if we kill adults, than these things are going to disappear entirely,” said Andrews.
He also hopes education will change a widespread societal phobia.
“We hope to get people to the point where they realize snakes are no different from chipmunks or any other of the creatures which we share the state with and actually if we were thinking logically, rationally, they are less of a threat in your yard than a chipmunk is,” Andrews said.
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On the Net:
The Vermont Reptile and Amphibian Atlas:
http://www.middlebury.edu/herpatlas
Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center: http://www.beec.org
AP-ES-07-11-03 1721EDT
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