What is the Snake Count
The Snake Count is a Citizen Science Program to map and track snake distributions across North America. It is a chance for everyday "citizens" to be directly involved in snake conservation. You will learn how to find and identify snakes to help scientists identify conservation concerns for snakes across North America. Everyone who participates in the Snake Count does it for the joy of being outdoors and helping promote the conservation of our most unique predators--snakes!
Collection of Snake Photos:
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Snakes play vital roles as mid- to top-level predators in our natural ecosystems but they are often very misunderstood and feared by humans. This makes conservation efforts for snakes very difficult. In addition, we lack good geographic distribution records for many species of snakes which limits our ability to adequately measure their conservation needs. The CSC is working hard to increase our knowledge about snakes, their conservation needs, and to educate people about the important roles snakes play in our world.
Taking part in the CSC 2013 Snake Count is a great way to get outside with family and friends, find snakes, record data, help the CSC promote its mission, and support snake conservation. The goal during the Snake Count is to document every species of snake that occurs in the United States in a single time period. This way we can say whether a species still exists and where it occurs in 2013. The data collected during the Snake Count will be used by the CSC to map the current distribution of snakes. In particular, the data collected will confirm the existence of some rare species and provide baseline data to help monitor selected populations of more common species in the future. For example, we recorded a very rare species (Black Pine Snake – Pituophis melanoleucus mugitus) and had range extensions or new county records for other species.