FREE PRESS (Detroit, Michigan) 09 November 10 Venomous Mich. snake loses bid for protection (Todd Spangler)

Washington: Michigan’s only venomous snake will have to continue to go without federal protection for now.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, an ecological protection group based in Tucson, Ariz., the Obama administration today denied giving Endangered Species Act protection to some 250 plants and animals which were nominated.

Among them: the eastern massasauga, a wetland rattlesnake found in the Michigan and around the Great Lakes. The center says it has been eradicated from 40% of the counties it once inhabited “due to wetland losses from urban and suburban sprawl, golf courses, mining and agriculture.” The Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment says it’s the state’s only venomous snake, though it also calls it “shy” and “sluggish” and says it prefers to avoid contact with humans.

But there have been anecdotal reports that encounters with the snake are on the rise. In June, a Davisburg woman, Brenda Lacroix, was walking in Shiawassee Basin Park in Springfield Township when an Eastern massasauga which she described as “3½ feet long and the width of my arm” bit her dog Kodi, a 3-year-old Samoyed. He survived thanks to antivenom from the Detroit Zoo.

The Center for Biological Diversity said eastern massasauga has been a candidate for inclusion on the list for 25 years. U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials did not issue a release on the decision not to include the species, and did not immediately return a call for comment.
Venomous Mich. snake loses bid for protection

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