Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I need information that can be cited and backedup with real numbers please

1) What is the average weight of a wild WDB
2) What is the average amount of ANIMALS taken in the sweetwater roundup

Im doing a speech for my college public speaking class, this is my topic, to eduacate the masses on the Atrocities happening but I need real numbers that i can site, so it doesnt look like im making this up

Thanx alot in advance to any help given

How many roundups, not just sweetwater but elsewhere too, are there each year
How many snakes are taken in all roundups combined each Year

thanx alot

I personally don't believe in doing your research for you, but your school library should have access to a biological papers database such as Biosys. If you look there and type in rattlesnake roundups, you should get several papers. I know of at least a couple in J. Herp. that discussed several of the problems with roundups. One I've read states that rattlesnakes actually are more valuable to ranchers when alive, because they kill the animals that dig holes and cause livestock to break legs. Good luck, you've picked an important topic.
-Kristen

I've got to agree with KRZ -- your posts suggest that you want someone else to do your assigned work. Also, it's a good thing it's a "speach" class for which you need to "site" evidence. Or do you spell better offline? Having exercised my English-teacher amusement, here's something that might actually be helpful: besides rattlers' value as predators of leg-breaking hole-diggers, those same prey rodents don't do so much crop damage on the open range as they would in other areas, but they are significant disease vectors. You seem to be looking for gosh-wow evidence, so you could mention that bubonic plague -- The Black Death -- infects about a dozen humans in the U.S. every year. Prairie dog colonies in the desert southwest sustain the plague organism. Rattlers eat prairie dogs. Therefore....
MiserMike