RECORDER & TIMES (Brockville, Ontario) 21 July 06 This snake's worth saving (Tracey Tong)
Mallorytown Landing: They're just creatures looking for a place to start their families, but to many people, they're some of the most reviled creatures in existence.
When you're a black rat snake, it's tough to find housing.
That's where St. Lawrence Islands National Park (SLINP) comes in.
Working in conjunction with the Leeds County Stewardship Council, the park is in the midst of its black rat snake nesting box program. In its fourth year at the park, the program - funded by the University of Ottawa, Parks Canada and the Ministry of Natural Resources - is designed to facilitate snake egg-laying activity.
With black rat snake nesting season in full swing, there are not enough suitable nesting areas, said St. Lawrence Islands National Park species-at-risk communicator Chris Bellemore.
Over the past 20 years, annual snake counts have concluded that the population is going down, said Melissa Francis, a resource conservation technician at SLINP who is heading up the park's black rat snake program.
Growing as large as eight feet long, the black rat snake is Canada's largest snake and can be found in the Georgian Bay area and in the Thousand Islands-Rideau area from the parkway to Murphy's Point.
"They are very dependent on the Canadian Shield and the moderating temperatures," said Bellemore. "Reptiles can't handle the cold all that well, but what's making them scarce is the lack of nesting sites and the human persecution of snakes."
There are a lot of misconceptions about snakes, and people will often kill snakes when they see them, Bellemore said.
Because black rat snakes will all hibernate in the same place, it can be devastating to an area's entire snake population if a hibernaculum - where snakes hibernate - has the ill fortune to be located on the private property of someone determined to get rid of them, Bellemore said.
That's what the nesting boxes are for - a safe haven for the snakes.
The perfect nesting box involves finding the right bedding mixture - this year, the park's nesting boxes are filled with a mixture of hay and woodchips - and a suitable temperature for nesting, said Bellemore.
If it's not perfect, the snakes won't use it and will move on.
This year, the park has six nesting boxes, which stand four feet tall by two feet wide, with a hatch on the side that can be opened to place materials inside. They are designed to represent a rotting log, which in nature is where snakes go to lay eggs, Francis said.
While SLINP is in charge of the nesting boxes at the park, the stewardship council puts up nesting boxes of its own design on property belonging to private citizens. It has 12 nesting boxes on privately owned land and two placed in the park.
The nesting boxes on private land are located throughout Leeds County, said stewardship council co-ordinator Gary Nielsen.
The landowners approached were very receptive, Nielsen said.
"We know that these snakes nest in rotting logs and composting debris piles on the forest floor," Nielsen said. "We put the compost piles inside of a cage, so that predators can't get at them."
In order to determine optimal nesting conditions, some of the nesting boxes are placed in shade, some in the sun and some against a rock face, Nielsen said.
Although the boxes are out all year, the contents of the box are changed in mid-June, when the snakes come out of hibernation and prepare for mating season. The snakes lay their eggs in July and August.
In addition to building hibernacula, the park has been monitoring black rat snakes for 25 years, Bellemore said.
"We're tracking where they're going, what they're doing and trying to get an idea of what their habitat requirements are," Bellemore said.
When they find a snake, park staff put a transmitter on it so they are able to track where it goes and where the hibernation site is.
"It's a pretty extensive program," said Bellemore.
The park also brings in guest speakers and brings educational programs to schools and the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve day camp.
"We do education to make people realize that (black rat snakes) are harmless and in a lot of cases, keep rodent population down," Bellemore said.
"We have the opportunity to do a lot just through education."
Things that area residents can to do protect the black rat snake population include reducing speed when driving, leaving dead hollow trees on their property to serve as snake shedding, basking and egg-laying sites, starting compost piles and small brush piles for potential egg-laying sites and leaving hibernacula and the surrounding area undisturbed.
"A lot of people assume that they're harmful because they're so big, but they're really non-venomous and lazy, happy snakes," said Francis.
"They're harmless. Their numbers are dwindling so we're doing whatever we can do to help.
"It is possible that they would become extinct in the area, if nothing is done, but it's difficult to say," she said.
This snake's worth saving