Potential snake gassing ban killed by Texas Parks and Wildlife – via Herp Digest

By Asher Price - American-Statesman Staff, 10/24/16

Sidestepping recommendations from their staff and outside scientists, Texas Parks and Wildlife commissioners have quietly killed a proposal to ban rattlesnake gassing.

Commission Chairman Dan Friedkin, under pressure from key state lawmakers, removed the item from the agenda of the commission’s November meeting, seemingly ending several years of deliberations about the practice, in which gasoline is pumped or sprayed into caves and crevices to drive snakes from their winter dens for capture.

The seized snakes are then featured in rattlesnake roundups — old-fashioned carnivals in which snakes might be put on display, “milked” for venom or used in daredevil stunts.

The commissioners had long been in a political bind: Their own staffers have said gassing is a threat to snakes and other animals that live in the sinkholes, crevices and underground caverns found in wide swaths of the state. But rural lawmakers who represent towns with the popular rattlesnake festivals tried to stymie any ban.

The collection of snakes by gassing “generates passionate appeals from those on both sides,” said Friedkin, who made the decision in consultation with the department’s top staff. Lacking consensus on the matter or support from lawmakers, “any attempt to move forward with this proposal would be futile.”

Friedkin said he has asked Parks and Wildlife Department staffers to find ways to collect rattlesnakes that do not harm other species and “do not carry the adverse economic impacts that an outright ban could have on communities that thrive on rattlesnake roundups.”

Commercial collection of rattlesnakes takes place in dozens of Texas counties, including Williamson, Burnet and Llano, according to the parks department.

A 2013 petition supported by biologists, zoologists, herpetologists and ecologists from Texas and elsewhere triggered a closer look at the issue by the Parks and Wildlife Department, eventually leading to the ban proposal.

Researchers have shown that exposure to gas can cause short-term impairment or death for snakes, toads and lizards.

The commission “has decided that, at this time, there is insufficient support from legislative oversight or the potentially regulated community for the department to move forward with regulating the use of gasoline to collect rattlesnakes,” John Davis, wildlife diversity program director at the Parks and Wildlife Department, said Monday.

Among the lawmakers who have registered their opposition to a ban is state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, who represents Sweetwater, home to the largest roundup, and is chairman of the state Senate Agriculture, Water and Rural Affairs Committee.

“It is not necessary for the state to overreact by prohibiting a common practice that has not been conclusively shown to harm wildlife and habitats in its controlled, targeted use,” Perry and other lawmakers wrote to the Parks and Wildlife Department in 2014.

Perry and state Rep. Susan King, R-Abilene, whose district also includes Sweetwater, wrote legislation in 2015 that made it harder to change state rules through petitions.

Perry’s office said he was unavailable Monday, and King did not return a request for comment.

At least 29 states have banned the use of gas or toxic substances to collect or harass nongame wildlife, including the four states bordering Texas — Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma, according to information from environmentalists who were pushing for a ban.

But in Texas, the wildlife commissioners never appeared keen to take action on the ban proposal. The commission tabled a decision in 2014 after lawmakers weighed in and instead, in an apparent attempt at finding political cover, called for a working group to examine the issue. But the working group provided no cover, unable itself to come to consensus on key issues.

Environmental groups again filed a petition in March to push the agency to ban the practice. And in June, the commission’s vice chairman, Ralph Duggins, suggested that agency staffers return with the proposed ban in November, giving commissioners another opportunity to publish the proposal and take public comment on it.

“I’m deeply disappointed that the commission once again caved to pressure from rattlesnake hunters,” said Collette Adkins, a biologist and senior attorney at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity.

Rattlesnake Wranglers, Armed With Gasoline - via Herp Digest

By Manny Ferandez , SWEETWATER, Tex. 3/3-14— At the foot of a rocky cliff here, Riley Sawyers knelt down and peered into a small, dark hole, on the prowl for rattlesnakes. One had already lunged at him and bitten his Kevlar-reinforced boot. The venom was still drying, as was the blood on his arm from where the thorny terrain had scratched him, when Mr. Sawyers went to fetch the gasoline.

It was not for his dusty S.U.V. It was for the snakes.

To encourage the rattlesnakes to slither out, Mr. Sawyers and his nephew slipped a thin copper tube into the hole and hand-pumped gas fumes into it. In West Texas, as infested with western diamondback rattlesnakes as New York City is with rats, snake hunters like Mr. Sawyers have been using gas fumes to flush out their prey for decades.

The practice, known as gassing, has outraged animal rights activists and reptile researchers who say that spraying a toxic substance in wildlife habitats hurts the environment, the snakes, and other animals and insects that live underground or use the same burrows.

In recent months, the opponents of gassing have gained a powerful, unlikely ally: the State of Texas. The state’s wildlife agency is considering banning the use of gas fumes to capture rattlesnakes — a move that would add Texas to the list of more than two dozen states that have partly or completely outlawed the practice, including Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma, all of which share borders with Texas.

In a state that advertises its small government and has fought efforts to protect the dunes sagebrush lizard and other animals as endangered species, the agency’s involvement in snake wranglers’ affairs and its attempt to safeguard a creature that bites and frightens ranchers and others strikes some as anti-Texan. If the ban goes through, snake hunters noted, it will be illegal to use gas to chase out a rattlesnake, but legal to use it to catch a gopher.

The debate over the proposed ban has mushroomed into a larger, stranger battle that has attracted the attention of Gov. Rick Perry and other Republican leaders and underscored the cultural divisions between urban and rural Texas.

“A lot of people that’s bringing this to issue have never encountered a snake,” said Mr. Sawyers, 46, a state-licensed snake hunter, tile layer and Marlboro chain-smoker who has a cheerful quotation from Davy Crockett next to the snake tattoos on his arm: “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” “If you’re into the Bible, snakes have intimidated people from the beginning, and I don’t think that’s changed to this day. If they were on your land, would you want restrictions on how we can get them off, or would you want them removed?”

In Houston and other cities, people have barely noticed the proposal to prohibit gassing. When the agency considering the ban, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, held hearings in Fort Worth and San Antonio, just 21 people attended. No one showed up at the one in Houston.

But the hearing in Sweetwater in January drew an estimated 250 people. This town of roughly Every March, Sweetwater puts on the country’s largest rattlesnake roundup. (A billboard on the highway into town claims it is the biggest in the world.) The snakes for the event are supplied by wranglers like Mr. Sawyers, the majority of whom use gassing to capture rattlesnakes in the rugged, dry terrain nearby. Hunters are paid by the pound; at this year’s roundup, they brought in hundreds of live western diamondbacks, totaling about 3,900 pounds. A ban would make it harder for hunters to collect a large number of snakes, and some believe the hunters would not bother to take part because there would be no financial incentive.

Town leaders and organizers of the roundup said a ban on gassing would end the roundup and its 56-year tradition, or shrink an event that pumps millions of dollars into the local economy every March as thousands of people travel to Sweetwater to shop, eat and visit. The Sweetwater Jaycees, the nonprofit group that organizes the roundup, use the proceeds to finance community projects, including feeding needy families on Thanksgiving, buying equipment for the fire department, and helping local students, Little League teams and disabled adults.

“It would be a devastating blow to us,” said David Sager, 63, a snake handler at the roundup and a member of the Jaycees. “The rattlesnake roundup is our ways and means.”

The good deeds that come from the roundup are preceded by rather gruesome ones at the event itself, where attendees and organizers celebrate, photograph, skin and eat the most widespread venomous snake in the state. The live diamondbacks are squeezed for their venom — a valuable commodity sold by the Jaycees — and then slaughtered, all in front of the men, women and children at the event. In their most recent report, from 2004, organizers estimated that from 1958 to 2003, the roundup handled 254,000 pounds of diamondbacks — enough dead reptiles to equal the weight of a small locomotive.

Though state wildlife officials have been examining the issue of gassing for years, the primary catalyst for the proposed ban was a petition sent to the agency last year signed by 57 zoologists and others, many from out of state. Some of those who signed the petition oppose not only gassing, but the roundup as well.

“The behavior that occurs at the traditional roundups is animal abuse,” said Kristen Leigh Wiley, curator of the Kentucky Reptile Zoo and one of those who signed the petition. “Just because it’s a rattlesnake and not any other animal does not mean that it cannot experience pain or suffering.”

Officials at the Parks and Wildlife Department said their goal was not to end roundups, but to protect the various species besides rattlesnakes that are exposed to the fumes. They pointed to a 1989 study that showed that a 30-minute vapor exposure impaired or killed seven species of snakes, lizards and toads. 

“I liken this to fishing with dynamite,” said John Davis, director of the department’s wildlife diversity program. “It’s about a means of take, a means of collection.”

Some lawmakers, led by state Representative Susan L. King, whose district includes Sweetwater, oppose the proposal and want more extensive field research. Snake hunters and residents said the amount of fumes used in holes and crevices was too insignificant to warrant a ban, and expressed fear that without the gassing and the roundup, the town would be overrun with diamondbacks — a claim that supporters of a ban deny.

Rattlesnakes are the creatures Sweetwater loves to hate.

At the roundup, young women compete for Miss Snake Charmer. This year’s winner of the fried rattlesnake-eating contest — Tonya Osteen, 39, a mother of three — has found diamondbacks on her porch, and one bit the neck of one of her dogs. “It just helps thin out the population,” said Ms. Osteen, whose teenage daughter skinned a snake at the roundup. “Somebody sitting there saying, ‘Oh, poor little snakes’ — I don’t want my kids getting bit by rattlesnakes. My three-legged dog, imagine him getting bit by a snake.”

Out at the rocky cliff a few miles outside town, Mr. Sawyers and his nephew Alex Newman hunted mostly without the gas sprayer — a red can similar to the kind used to spray weed killer on lawns. “You don’t go around shooting fumes in every hole,” said Mr. Sawyers, who has become rattlesnake royalty in Sweetwater as one of the stars of the Animal Planet reality show “Rattlesnake Republic.”

At the hole, they pumped fumes for less than a minute from a can that held about 50 cents’ worth of gas. No snakes emerged. Their only catch of the day was a three-foot diamondback that Mr. Newman, 32, grabbed with a pair of metal tongs.

Since the roundup had passed, Mr. Sawyers did not want to go to the trouble of selling one snake. Instead, he said, he planned to marinate it and then smoke it on a barbecue grill.

Princess Anne says badgers should be gassed

April 2014: This Sunday (April 6) the Radio Times has reported that HRH Princess Anne will make controversial statements regarding England’s badger cull in the BBC Countryfile programme. The magazine says that the Princess Royal will say she supports gassing as a way of killing badgers 

Mark Jones, veterinary surgeon and executive director of Humane Society International UK, said: 

“It is extremely disappointing that a prominent member of the royal family should endorse the gassing of a supposedly protected indigenous wild mammal.

"Gassing experiments carried out at Porton Down in the early 1980s were abandoned because of the appalling levels of suffering to which the badgers were exposed. Lethal concentrations of gases in complex badger sets are difficult to achieve, making sub-lethal exposure and associated suffering highly likely. Any attempt to reintroduce gassing would doubtless result in a slow and painful death for many badgers, and potentially other non-target animals.

“Moreover, the government’s own figures clearly show that badgers don’t need to be culled to halt the spread of bovine tuberculosis. In Wales, the reintroduction of annual cattle testing and other cattle-based measures resulted in a 48 percent reduction in the number of cattle slaughtered because of bovine TB over a four-year period, in the absence of any badger culling. Princess Anne should be better informed before making public statements on such controversial and divisive issues.”

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/princess-anne.html

The unacceptable cost of 'gassing' rattlers----Op-Ed by Collette Adkins Giese, Austin American-Statesman, January 11, 2014 - via Herp Digest

The horrid practice has now been outlawed in most states, but it still takes place here in Texas this time of year.

Hunters pour gasoline or ammonia down burrows where rattlesnakes hang out during chilly winter months. Sometimes the toxic flood kills whatever unfortunate animals are residing below. For the lucky, death comes almost immediately. For others it can take two, even three months.

But often, just as hoped, a startled snake comes rushing out of the hole, where a waiting hunter bags it and heads off to a rattlesnake roundup, where snakes are displayed, then slaughtered. Or they sell the snakes directly to the folks who fashion rattlesnake boots, belts, ashtrays and key chains.

For many good reasons, state wildlife officials are now considering making Texas the 30th state to outlaw the cruel practice of “gassing” snakes, which harms not only rattlers but hundreds of other animals — including 20 species of endangered animals that also live underground in Texas.

Foxes, lizards, toads and hundreds of insects that depend on underground shelters can be killed when snake dens are gassed.
Many involved in the trade of rattlesnakes will tell you that rattlesnake populations are doing just fine across the United States. But the best scientific evidence suggests many of the nation’s snakes and other reptiles fighting a losing battle for survival.

Due to threats such as ongoing habitat destruction, 1 in every 5 of the nation’s reptiles is now considered at risk of extinction.

From Louisiana eastward, struggling populations of eastern diamondback rattlers are struggling to the point that they are currently being considered for federal Endangered Species Act protection.

By comparison, western diamondback rattler populations are doing fairly well. Still, the best evidence suggests their populations are likely declining, and there’s no reason to believe that western diamondbacks could somehow magically sidestep the ever-escalating challenges of habitat destruction that are wiping out so many of our other reptiles across the U.S.

Yet the rattlesnake roundups continue, including one in Sweetwater that’s billed as the “World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup.”
Although several localities across the Southeastern U.S. have abandoned rattlesnake roundups in favor of educational wildlife festivals that display captive snakes, Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama and Georgia still host lethal roundups every year.

Some of the most compelling research on declining populations of eastern diamondback rattlers stems from studies of snakes captured for roundups. The size and numbers of eastern diamondback rattlesnakes collected for four of those events over the past 25 years reflects a steady decline in the weights of even the prize-winning snakes, according to research by rattlesnake expert, Bruce Means, executive director of the Coastal Plains Institute.

Means also analyzed 50 years of data for the longest-running roundups and found the total number of captured rattlesnakes declined by 67 percent in the past two decades.

Anecdotal evidence suggests similar declines may be occurring at the Texas roundups, and more research needs to be done on the status of western diamondbacks populations.

In the meantime, by approving the proposal to ban “gassing” of rattlesnake dens, Texas would not only stop the unnecessary killing of other animals that share their underground homes with snakes, but get a jump on making sure western diamondbacks remain an iconic part of the Texas landscape for generations to come.

Giese is a biologist and staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson, Ariz., which focuses on the protection of reptiles and amphibians. She may be reached at cadkinsgiese@biologicaldiversity.org

Tell Texas: Stop Gassing Animals - via Herp Digest

In Texas hunters can still use gassing -- blowing gasoline fumes into snake dens and capturing any snakes that surface in order to breathe.

Gassing is already banned in dozens of states -- including every state that borders Texas -- for good reason: Underground dens provide homes for hundreds of species, including foxes, lizards, birds and invertebrates. In Texas alone 20 endangered species live underground and can be hurt or killed by the toxic fumes.

Texas is proposing to outlaw the practice, but there's some strong opposition. Prohibiting the use of gasoline to hunt snakes would reduce the number of snakes supplied for Texas's "rattlesnake roundups" -- bloody contests where hunters compete for prizes by capturing native snakes. Thousands of Texans attend these gruesome events each year, and roundup supporters fiercely oppose the state's effort to ban gassing. 

Please take action now to urge Texas officials to ban the use of gasoline for hunting and protect Texas's snakes and other wildlife that share their underground homes.

Go to http://action.biologicaldiversity.org/o/2167/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=14841

to sign form, so they can send a letter on your behalf and then please spread this around.

Thanks.