Saving Snakes

Category: 7. Viperidae - VIPERS and ADDERS | Date: Nov 26 2007 | By: admin

This Morning Bonface, the Farm Foreman was feeding our small Gaboon Vipers Bitis gabonica. So I thought to myself why don’t I take some pictures and explain to you how this particular side of our work runs.

Kakamega Forest in Western Kenya is the last habitat remaining in this country that still has a few wild Gaboon Vipers. The area has been very well protected by the Forestry Department and Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) since the Colonial period in Kenya. Yet the Gaboon Vipers have suffered from indiscriminate killing either through ignorance or through the illegal trade in their skins. More recently the Illegal export of wild specimens to the black market pet trade in Europe and the USA has further deleted their populations.

Last year in June 2006, Anton and I led a KWS approved, joint Bio-Ken / National Museums Of Kenya’s Department Of Herpetology (NMK) expedition to Kakamega Forest to see how things were on the ground. We found the numbers had reduced since our last visit there more than 15 years previously. We did however collect 5 adult specimens which we returned with, for educational purposes. Two males and three females. On the 17th of January 2007 one of these females produced 23 live young. We don’t need any more so we have been feeding these and the previous batch from our old female up to a size that can be released. Too small and the chance of surviving from predators is quite low. In the wild like the sea turtles, less than 5% reach an age that is old enough to breed, so we try to give them the best chance we can before we release them.

An example of one of our many projects already underway at Bio-Ken is the breeding and relocating of these Gaboon Vipers to Kakamega forest in Western Kenya some 1,150 kilometres from where we are based. Our first batch of about 25 snakes is now about three and a half years old. The second group of 20 are now eleven months old. They all need to be fed weekly and together just these will use about 85 day old chicks a week and about 20 rats and 25 mice a month. We are at present keeping them in large plastic tubs which is getting too small for the older ones. What we really need is to get some funds together and build them some bigger cages before we can organise them for release. We have a film job for BBC next month so hopefully we can use a bit of that money to start with a few cages.

There is still alot to get around before we can release them. There is the cost of building their cages and keeping them maintained. There is the cost of the handlers who clean and feed them as well as the cost of cleaning and feeding the breeding rats, mice and chicks needed to feed them. At the end of all this we need to get an expedition to take them to where their home range is which is about a three day journey one way. One can very quickly get the idea that we have done very well considering we have been doing this, so far, from our own pocket. Although we do this from the heart and the love of these snakes and reptiles it is often frustrating that we can’t do more, due to finances. The Gaboon Vipers are just one species that we are working on. We are working on several others at the moment and would love to get our teeth into many more projects that need to be started such as more work on Kenya’s three Endemic Vipers of which two are really struggling in the wild at the moment.

Below are three pics from today and one from our expedition last year.

Photo by Royjan Taylor

Photo By Royjan Taylor

Photo By Royjan Taylor

Photo by Anton Childs

Technorati : Bitis Gabonica, Gaboon Viper