Ecologists rattled by Texas snake round-up
Ecologists rattled by Texas snake round-up - World - smh.com.au
Ed Stoddard in Sweetwater, Texas
March 12, 2007
Death rattle … a handler thrills the audience as he sorts through the Sweetwater snake pit.
WHEN Chris Soles says he works in a snake pit, he's not kidding.
The lanky Texan stands among hundreds of slithering rattlesnakes and prods them with special tongs that allow him to snatch the reptiles at arm's length.
"I'm sorting out the dead snakes," says Mr Soles, wearing protective trousers as he picks up a lifeless rattler from the bundle and throws it into a bucket outside the pit.
The snakes are caught during the annual rattlesnake round-up in Sweetwater, Texas, billed as the biggest in the world.
The three-day event, which ended yesterday, includes a rattlesnake-eating contest.
The round-up worries ecologists but locals say it draws up to 30,000 visitors. Farmers say it helps control a pest that occasionally maims or kills stock.
Nothing is wasted, the organisers say. Skins are made into belts, meat is sold as a delicacy and venom is milked for sale to drug companies.
Data provided by the organisers shows the amount harvested each year has fluctuated wildly, sometimes in response to the price of snake meat.
The American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists holds a dim view of snake round-ups.
In a position paper last year the society said: "Rattlesnake round-ups … have great potential to affect snake populations negatively, and it is difficult to predict when rattlesnake harvests will push local populations beyond the point of recovery."
But in Sweetwater, ecological or moral objections are brushed aside as overblown or just crazy.
"We don't hardly put a dent into the population," said one cowboy as he prepared to tuck into some fried snake. "More are killed on the road every year."
I'd like to put a dent in HIS population...
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