Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - September/October 2014 - 54

Back from
the Brink:

The Story of the
The Story of the

Timber Rattlesnake
by Chris Urban, Jim Chestney
and Kathy Gipe
photo-Karl Lutz

Pennsylvania
Fish & Boat
Commission Natural
Diversity Section
While many of us are intrigued by the Timber Rattlesnake as a
species symbolic of Penn's wilderness, this snake was thought
of as a nuisance in the past. Northern counties of Pennsylvania
even had bounties on them. There were a number of organized
snake hunts that were known to bring in hundreds of Timber
Rattlesnakes per hunt. In the 1970s, numbers of rattlesnakes in
Pennsylvania appeared to be declining rapidly, and researchers
and conservationists throughout Pennsylvania sounded the
alarm. The Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission (PFBC)
soon listed them as a "candidate" species, thus imposing permits
and bag limits on snake hunters. In response to evidence of
continuing decline, these limits were further reduced to only
one snake per year in the early 1990s. Also, PFBC started
commenting on permits for development projects and making
recommendations to reduce impacts to the snakes. The status of
the population was still unclear.
In 2003, with the help of the new United States Fish &
Wildlife Service State Wildlife Grant program, PFBC acquired
funding and embarked on a statewide assessment of the
species. The first phase of this assessment included visiting
known and historical sites from across Pennsylvania. With
hundreds of sites to visit, the Commission took a different
approach in this statewide study. They sought out and trained
willing and experienced rattlesnake volunteers to conduct the
site assessments.
Two Commission staff ran the project (a project leader and
field coordinator), and six regional teams were established. Each
team included a volunteer regional team leader and ranged
from four to ten volunteers per team. On average, the project

54

Pennsylvania Angler & Boater * September/October 2014

photo-Robert Zumstein

maintained about 40 project participants that made up the
regional teams. The charge of these teams was to document
snake presence within their region, describe the sites and assess
the disturbance levels of the sites.
The first phase of the study was completed in 2006. It
resulted in visits to over 460 historically known sites with 39
percent confirmed to harbor Timber Rattlesnakes. The good
news was that more than 80 percent of these confirmed sites
were ranked as moderate to good quality in terms of viability
and habitat quality. The bad news was that the South Mountain
population in southcentral Pennsylvania was found to be
in serious trouble. In this 30-mile long mountain chain, 71
percent of the sites were found to be poor quality, held remnant
populations or were no longer considered viable. This critical
information led to regulation changes in 2007. In order to
allow this population to recover, snake hunting in the South
Mountain was prohibited. Additional statewide regulations
were implemented in 2007, limiting hunters to take adult male
rattlesnakes only. This regulation allowed females and juveniles
to be protected with the goal of aiding the recovery of the
statewide Timber Rattlesnake population.
The next phase of the assessment began in 2007. Unlike
the first phase, the emphasis of this study was on areas where
data gaps occurred that appeared to have habitat and likely
presence of rattlesnakes but were unassessed. The same
regional teams pored over many sources of information to hone
in on Timber Rattlesnake habitat in their respective regions.
Then, the volunteer teams visited these potential habitat areas.
By 2013, over 900 new sites containing critical habitat were
PFBC Facebook: PaFishandBoat
Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - September/October 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - September/October 2014
