Saving Snakes

Category: 6. Elapidae - COBRAS and MAMBAS | Date: Dec 07 2007 | By: admin

This Snake is truly an awesome snake. It is huge for a cobra in general but it is absolutely massive compared to the other spitting cobras. These guys get really big and a record of a specimen caught by James Ashe in the 1960’s was just over 9ft in length. Please refer to my Blog posted on 30th November 2007 regarding the discovery of the new cobra. We have not yet got one quite so big but some of them have been very big indeed. Below is a picture that I took at Bio-Ken Snake Farm when one of our big specimens in the live collection successfully swallowed a young rabbit. This is amazing. I saw one regurgitate a 4ft Puff Adder Bitis arietans. Anton saw one killed by some Maasai that was swallowing a 5ft Puff Adder. We had one brought into the Snake Farm that had swallowed a two and a half foot long Savannah Monitor Lizard Varanus albigularis. The list goes on and on.

There must be some huge ones still out there and it is now more important than ever before to go out there and look for them. This will need alot of funding but Anton and I with the support of Sanda and the rest of the Bio-Ken team are ready to go and get this done. What I need to do is to find some funding. I want to try and protect this snake as much as I possibly can from the start. The discovery of the Large Brown Spitting Cobra Naja Ashei is of great conservation significance. Although I do not think their numbers in the wild are under any great threat at the moment, the development of areas in their range of distribution, mainly the coastal areas, will obviously have a negative impact on their numbers. A large venomous snake is very often killed on site with no regard to their position in the food chain and other ecological issues. I hope that the publicity of this new find can be directed to the public in such a way that the conservation of its species as well as other snakes can be brought to light and hopefully have a positive impact no mater how small. I believe education is the key to conservation and it starts at any point that your audience has interest in the subject you are addressing.

Today conservation is no longer a good idea, it is a necessity. Although I am a naturalist and conservationist who is truly passionate about all wildlife, my heart goes out to the reptiles that are often very misunderstood, especially the snakes. One cannot conserve one species alone. To be successful in saving our planet’s flora and fauna for future generations we must conserve everything. The snakes are no exception and I have dedicated my life to their cause since my first snake at the age of ten. I hope to continue this until I am old and grey when, hopefully, I can hand my work on to someone younger, more able and as passionate about saving snakes, as was done to me by my good friend the late James Ashe. Saving Snakes is what I live for.

More research work needs to be done on their venom and its implication to snakebite treatment and Antivenom manufacture. Anton and I would really like to get this off the ground. We have the knowledge and experience behind us to do so but lack the financial support we require. If there is anyone out there, who reads our blogs on saving snakes, and has any idea how we can get this moving now is the time to say something. We would really like to hear from you. You can find our email addresses on our web site www.bio-ken.com

Bellow is a series of pictures taken showing that we can do this.

Picture by Bonnie Sare

Picture by Bonnie Sare

Picture by Anton Childs

Picture by Matt Carol

Picture by Bonnie Sare

Picture by Bonnie Sare

Picture by Royjan Taylor

Technorati : Large Brown Spitting Cobra, Naja ashei

14 responses so far