Everyone just needs to calm down about the snakes. That was the message from wildlife officials Tuesday night in a packed high school auditorium in Orange, Massachusetts. The state is looking to use an island in the Quabbin Reservoir to create a protected habitat for timber rattlesnakes.
You’d have to try really hard to get bitten by a rattlesnake in Massachusetts.
“We’re talking such low probabilities it’s like getting struck by lightning while holding an ice cream cone in both hands,” says Tom French with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.
French made this argument many times over a couple hours to a crowd of about 200 people. They’d come to hear the state’s plan to revive the endangered population of Timber Rattlesnakes, a native species to Massachusetts that has dwindled to about 200 across the state.
“We really need to have a safety net, and we’re looking for one place in the state and only one, where we can protect snakes from people,” he says.
That place, French says, is Mt. Zion Island – a three-and-a-half mile long piece of land in the middle of the Quabbin Reservoir that is off-limits to visitors. The state wants to move young snakes to the island – one or two a year – starting in spring 2017.
French says that while rattlesnakes can swim, they almost always stay close to their hibernation spots and have no reason to seek out humans. Moreover, he says these snakes already live wild in public parks across the state.
And yet – “we haven’t had, at least in the past 50 years, an accidental bite anywhere in the state, with six million people,” French says.
But many remain unconvinced – like Mike Krunkelvich, who hunts and hikes in the Quabbin area.
“And it’s inevitable that somebody’s gonna be bit by a snake, Krunkelvich says. “And that is going to be the end of my use of the watershed. They’ll close it down.”
And some – like Irene Butler – just really don’t like snakes.
“I’m not happy having poisonous snakes put in because I live close enough to it, within a day’s time, one of those snakes could appear in my backyard,” Butler says.
But the audience also included a number of people in favor of saving the snakes, who were not worried about the tiny risk of a snake encounter. Robert Paquet of Petersham defended the wildlife officials.
“This agency is responsible for endangered species,” Paquet said. “That’s their mission. That’s what they’re gonna do, and they’re just going about and doing it.”
The meeting did get tense at times, like when one man asked whether the public will have a say in whether the plan goes ahead.
“Do we make any difference in the outcome?” he asked.
“Well, it’s not based on popularity – no,” French replied.
French said he’d need to hear a compelling scientific reason against the plan in order to scuttle it – and at the moment, that’s unlikely.
His agency is planning to start breeding a few baby snakes at a zoo in Rhode Island for a year or so before moving them to the Quabbin. If all goes well for the snake population – and French says that’s a big if – he’s hoping to see about 35 new Timber Rattlesnakes in about a decade.