Box turtle, rattlesnake collection would be outlawed under WV's proposed new regulation - via Herp Digest

By John McCoy Staff writer , West Virginia Gazette

Mar 21, 2020

A regulation proposed by West Virginia’s Division of Natural Resources would make it illegal for people to take home box turtles for pets. If approved, the regulation would go into effect in 2021.

The DNR’s proposed reptile-collection regulations would set a bag and possession limit of zero for timber rattlesnakes, although agency officials say provisions will be made for congregations of snake-handling churches. 

JOHN McCOY | Gazette-MailOne of West Virginia’s most-collected reptiles might soon become uncollectable.

State natural resources officials are considering a regulation that would make it illegal to pick up and take home a box turtle.

The regulation, which would go into effect next year if approved, would set a bag limit of zero for 17 reptile and amphibian species, including Eastern box turtles, timber rattlesnakes, Eastern hog-nosed snakes, smooth greensnakes, Northern rough greensnakes and red cornsnakes.

Kevin Oxenrider, a biologist with the Division of Natural Resources’ Natural Heritage section, said agency officials are aware that the proposed regulations for box turtles and timber rattlesnakes might be controversial.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Mountain State youngsters carry home box turtles each year to keep as pets. Congregations at snake-handling churches count on having rattlesnakes on hand during their services.

Oxenrider said provisions would be made for snake handlers, but not for people who pick up box turtles.

“We’ve been working closely with [the DNR’s] Law Enforcement Section to make sure we don’t infringe on people’s ability to worship with snakes if they choose to do so,” he explained. “We plan to work with the attorney general to make sure people have access to those animals for [snake-handling] purposes.”

He said a provision would be written into the regulation that would allow snake-handling congregants to collect rattlesnakes as long as they let the DNR know in advance they’d be doing it.

“In addition, people who study rattlesnakes for scientific purposes, or who need them on hand at educational facilities, could still request permission to collect them,” he said. “It also would be legal for landowners to kill rattlers that they consider a threat to the people who live on the property.”

Current regulations allow people to collect one timber rattler, which must measure at least 42 inches in length.

“The current size limit is to protect female rattlers, which don’t usually get that large,” Oxenrider said. “Taking out an adult female could have a significant impact on a local population. Female timber rattlers take seven years to mature, and they only reproduce once every 2 to 5 years.”

The no-take regulation, he added, would allow law enforcement officers to avoid the hazard of having to measure collected snakes to determine if they’re of legal size.

Timber rattlers — the official West Virginia state reptile, and the only rattlesnake species native to the state — have become increasingly scarce in recent years. DNR officials are currently working on two different studies to determine where rattlesnakes tend to live, and how to minimize contact between rattlers and humans.

Current state regulations allow people to possess up to four box turtles, but that would change under the new regulation. Again, Oxenrider said the no-take regulation is intended to slow an ongoing decline in box-turtle populations.

“Their numbers are down throughout their range in North America,” he added. “They’re particularly susceptible to illegal collecting for the pet trade. One man in Maryland was caught with more than 1,000 of them.”

Being able to take box turtles legally, Oxenrider said, creates opportunities for poachers, who could simply make the rounds of their associates, picking up four turtles at each stop.

There’s also a disease issue. Box turtles can carry ranavirus, a disease that can be fatal to reptiles and amphibians.

“We’ve had three die-off events from ranavirus here in the state,” Oxenrider explained. “Box turtles don’t have large home ranges. When you have 20 animals die in an area, it has a large impact on the local population.”

He said it isn’t unusual for a youngster vacationing in the Eastern Panhandle to find a box turtle and take it back home with them.

“That’s how diseases get spread,” he continued. “[Going to a no-take regulation] stinks, because kids are used to having that connection with box turtles. But it’s needed if we want box-turtle populations to persist in West Virginia.”

Oxenrider said the no-take rule will not be enforced against people who rescue box turtles they see crossing highways.

“We would allow for Good Samaritan acts,” he explained. “We would ask people to move turtles to the side of the highway, but not move them any farther than that. Moving them to the side of the road won’t spread ranavirus. Taking them home just might.”

The proposed regulations have been presented to members of the state Natural Resources Commission, who will vote on them at one of their quarterly meetings later this year.

Fungal disease poses real threat to W.Va. snake population – via Herp Digest

WV Dept. of Commerce

Juvenile eastern milk snake discovered with first case of Snake Fungal Disease in W.Va.

Metro News, by Chris Lawrence, 7/29/17

ROMNEY, W.Va. — An eastern milk snake in Kanawha County has become the second snake in West Virginia in the past 11 years to be confirmed with Snake Fungal disease. Division of Natural Resources officials worry the condition is spreading and poses a threat to snake populations.

WV Dept. of Commerce

Open wounds and crusty scabs on the skin are signs of snake fungal disease, although it’s easily confused with the normal shedding process.

“The clinical signs include crusty patches or scabs on the skin of the animal.  The snake acts very lethargic,” said Kevin Oxenrider who oversees reptiles and amphibians in West Virginia.

The discovery is the first contemporary case. Oxenrider and other researchers now can trace the disease all the way back to 2006 in West Virginia when a rattlesnake, captured as part of a study suddenly, and mysteriously died.   A clinical analysis of the snake at the time revealed no conclusions about its demise.  However, a second test on a biopsy from the same snake a decade later, armed with more knowledge, revealed it was in fact the state’s first case of snake fungal disease.

“We know it’s been present since 2006.  It went undetected from 2006 to 2016,” he explained. “Now we’ve had this animal recently turn up and test positive for the disease.”

The fungal infection appears to be prevalent throughout the northeastern United States.  Where it originated and what causes it remain unknown.  Studies on the condition are in the very early stages.

“It’s thought that it’s probably not native to North America, but it’s still very under studied,” Oxenrider explained. “It seems to be hardest on rattlesnakes in the northeast, but it can impact any species.  A large number of snakes throughout the northeast have been contracting the symptoms with open wounds, scabs, and impacts to their dermis layer of skin which is causing them to die.”

Although a lot of attitudes about snakes are very negative, Oxenrider notes it’s a serious problem and could threaten the balance of the Eco-system.

“The reason people need to care about this, although people dislike snakes, they do serve a very important purpose,” he explained. “Snakes consume a lot of invertebrates or bus. They consume birds and a lot of small mammals.  If we don’t have snakes you could have an over abundance of those species and that could be a problem.”

Snakes tend to cut down on numbers of mice, rats, chipmunks and other small rodents which are known to carry serious disease some of which can infect humans.

If you observe a snake which appears sick, Oxenrider hopes the public will be willing to leave it alone and take a picture to submit to the DNR so they can examine the evidence.

“A lot of times we’ve been getting people submitting pictures of snakes just shedding their skin.  That can be easily confused with the clinical signs of snake fungal disease,” said Oxenrider. “That’s why we’re asking people to not just go ahead and kill it thinking it had snake fungal disease.  It’s possible that it’s just shedding.”

You can contact your local DNR district office to inquire more or submit pictures of the stressed snakes.

Ranavirus, Turtle- USA (02): WestVirginia - via Herp Digest

(Editor must read, Ranavirus can be major threat to wild turtle populations. You can help by reporting any large herp mortality events to local natural resources agency as soon as possible)

A ProMED-mail post

ProMED-mail is a program of the

International Society for Infectious Diseases this is from their listserv

Date: Sat 24 Nov 2012

Source: Sunday Gazette-Mail [edited]

In July [2012], while walking near a small pond he had built on his farm near Clendenin, Bill Archibald spotted a pair of dead eastern box turtles in the brush.

"I didn't think a whole lot about it at first," Archibald recalled, "but then I noticed other turtles in the same area acting kind of lethargic, with swelling around their eyes, lying in the same spot for days, and I started to wonder what was going on."

When Archibald returned to his farm following a weeklong trip to Alaska, "every day that I walked up to the pond I'd find dead turtles."

The mysterious deaths, which numbered 26 by the end of the summer, didn't sit well with Archibald, a graduate of the state Division of Natural Resources' Master Naturalist program, who had built the pond to enhance habitat for the frogs, salamanders, and turtles living on

his land. He emailed Doug Wood, a retired Department of Environmental Protection biologist who teaches several Master Naturalist classes.

"Bill sent me one of those unusual queries I get from time to time -- 'Hey, Doug, do you know what this is?' " Wood recalled. After consulting the Internet and some professional colleagues, Wood supplied Archibald with the contact information he believed could

solve the mystery about what was killing the box turtles on his land.

As it turned out, the turtle was infected with ranavirus -- a pathogen that causes an animal disease known to have caused large localized die-offs, mainly in populations of frogs, salamanders, and other amphibians in 25 states since 1997. In more recent years, the virus is

known to have infected scattered populations of box turtles, which are reptiles, in several states.

At Wood's suggestion, Archibald got in touch with Towson University (Maryland) biology professor Richard Siegel, leader of a box turtle study at a highway construction site between Baltimore and Washington,DC.

There, local turtles were outfitted with radio transmitters and released in areas safe from blasting and heavy machinery. The study was designed to determine whether relocated turtles did better by being moved to a site 6 miles [9.7 km] from the construction zone, or

to an area just across a fence from the new highway site.

But Siegel and his Towson colleagues found that an alarming number of turtles -- which can live to be 50 or older and normally have a 98 percent survival rate from year to year -- were dying at the relocation area near the construction site. 31 of the 123 turtles

outfitted with the transmitters and released there were found dead within a 3-year period. Cars or construction equipment killed 3 of the turtles, but the rest were felled by disease, which turned out to be ranavirus in 27 cases.

"Finding even one dead turtle is unusual," Siegel said in a Washington Post story about the die-off that appeared earlier this year [2012]."Finding over 27 dead turtles in a 2-to-3-year period was bizarre."

In addition to killing the Maryland box turtles, ranavirus is believed to have been the cause of death of nearly every tadpole and young salamander in the study area since spring of 2010.

Siegel referred Archibald, who had lost a similar number of turtles on a half-acre [0.2 ha] tract of land within a single season, to Dr Matthew Gray, professor of wetland ecology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and a ranavirus researcher. The Clendenin area

man sent 3 frozen box turtle carcasses to Gray for analysis through the University of Tennessee's Center for Wildlife Health.

The best preserved of the 3 carcasses was that of a box turtle that had exhibited signs similar to those shown by the ranavirus-infected turtles in the Maryland study -- foot lesions, lethargy, difficulty breathing, swollen eyes, and bubble production at the nose and mouth.

"We verified that ranavirus was the likely disease agent that killed the turtles on Bill Archibald's property," said Gray. Of the 3 turtle carcasses sent by Archibald, 2 were too decomposed for analysis, Gray said. Because the 3rd carcass -- which tested positive for ranavirus,

had been frozen, damaging tissue cell structure -- a test could not be made to confirm that ranavirus directly killed the turtle.

"We can say that the turtle from Bill Archibald's property was infected with ranavirus, but without histology -- inspecting tissues microscopically for damage by the pathogen -- we cannot make an assessment if the infection caused the disease leading to death," Gray said. "We plan to stay in contact with Bill, and will process additional specimens if he observes mortality. Future plans are to sequence a portion of the virus genome to determine if it is a common or unique type of ranavirus."

Unlike the ranavirus incident in Maryland, frog and tadpole life in and around Archibald's pond appears unaffected by the box turtle die-off.

Researchers believe people, pets, farm animals, and warm-blooded wildlife species are immune to ranavirus, because their bodies are too warm to support the disease.

Wildlife biologists worry about how far ranavirus has spread, how fast it is spreading, how often it recurs, and how quickly amphibians and turtles can develop a resistance to it. Ranavirus-associated die-offs involving more than 20 species of amphibians and turtles have been recorded in at least 25 states since 1997.

The ranavirus outbreak that killed the Maryland box turtles was one of the 1st known incidences involving that species. The National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, lists it as the nation's only confirmed case of a ranaviral infection involving wild box turtles.

But the center acknowledges that similar ranaviral outbreaks in box turtles have been reported in New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia prior to the case reported at Archibald's farm.

"Ranavirus tends to hit amphibians in their young life stages, so when it shows up, it can wipe out a whole age class," said Dr Anne Ballman, wildlife disease specialist at the National Wildlife Health Center. "If a local population runs out of young recruits, a species can be

wiped out for a season. If ranavirus occurs repeatedly, there is the potential of that population declining dramatically in localized areas."

Because there is no required monitoring of wildlife deaths due to disease, it's difficult for wildlife biologists to know how far-reaching and fast-moving the virus is.

"That's why it's important for people who come across large mortality events involving amphibians or turtles to report them to their local natural resource agency," Ballman said.

Researchers believe ranavirus is spread through direct contact with infected animals, by exposure to contaminated water or sediment, or by preying upon or cannibalizing animals carrying the virus.

"Observant folks who enjoy the woods, like Bill, are often the front line of defense in documenting the spread of biological infestations or infections," said Wood. Archibald's interest and action "led to what appears to be the first known, or at least, first publicized

finding of ranavirus in a wild box turtle population in West Virginia. This speaks highly of citizen involvement in conservation concerns."

"I wonder how the virus got here, whether it will come back again, and why the frogs and tadpoles in the pond weren't affected by it," he said. "I hope that by studying what happened here, researchers can

find some answers."

[Byline: Rick Steelhammer]

--

Communicated by:

ProMED-mail from HealthMap Alerts

[It becomes increasingly apparent that some infectious diseases are a very important threat to wildlife populations and a growing conservation concern. Amphibians are already being hit by another emerging infectious disease, chytridiomycosis. Also, there is evidence

that these pathogens interact with environmental factors (climate change, pollution, etc.) resulting in greater impact. Ranaviruses are a group of pathogens belonging to the genus Ranavirus (family

Iridoviridae) that have been linked to catastrophic die-offs of larval amphibians in North America and elsewhere. In the United States, ranaviruses are responsible for the majority of disease-related mortality events in amphibians. This virus became an emerging infectious disease possibly due to a novel strain introduction orincreased occurrence of anthropogenic stressors on the landscape.

A few years ago, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) listed this pathogen as a notifiable disease.

Although ranaviruses were known to infect reptiles, here and in recent episodes, turtles appear to be the main host species involved. This

host preference jump across taxonomic classes (from amphibians to reptiles) merits concern and a molecular investigation.

New crayfish species ID'd in W.Va.

West Liberty scientist finds creature in Greenbrier waters

Relatively slender claws and body, as well as differences in the plate-like projection between its eyes, differentiate the Greenbrier crayfish from its cousin, the Big Water crayfish. The Greenbrier species is found only in the Greenbrier River and its headwaters.

 

"We found that you start seeing it around Anthony," Loughman said. "It becomes more and more common as you head upriver."

The new species is pretty good-sized. It averages 3 to 3 1/2 inches from the tip of its tail to the tip of its nose, and 5 to 6 inches from the tip of its tail to the tips of its claws.

Twenty-three crayfish species live within West Virginia's borders. Only three are completely endemic -- the Elk River crayfish, the Greenbrier Cave crayfish and now the Greenbrier crayfish. Loughman said the new species is abundant through its range, but added that the range isn't very large.

"Because of the limited range, it was suggested that the species be considered 'threatened' within the state," he said. "The DNR hasn't yet decided whether to put it on the protected list. If [DNR officials] consider it worthy of federal protection, they'll make that recommendation to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service."

Loughman considers the new species' population to be stable.

"If some sort of environmental problem arose in the headwaters of the Greenbrier, the Greenbrier crayfish would be in trouble," he said. "Fortunately, most of the river's upper headwaters lie within the Monongahela National Forest and are pretty well protected."


The new crayfish's natural predators include smallmouth bass, rock bass, raccoons and the giant salamanders known as "hellbenders." Loughman and his associates also have discovered that it and other crayfish species play an important role in any river's ecosystem.

"If anyone asks, 'Why should I care about a crawdad?' they should consider this," Loughman said. "Crayfish are always digging. They stay in a burrow for two to three weeks, then leave. The holes they leave behind become hiding places for other critters, including fish. Young smallmouth bass and channel catfish are heavily dependent on crayfish holes."

Loughman said his discovery of the new crayfish species is significant for two reasons.

"One, it's a species found only in West Virginia," he said, "and two, it increases the state's biological diversity by one organism."

By John McCoy

The Charleston Gazette

http://wvgazette.com/News/201109101577?page=2&build=cache