Fieldtrip/Stag party in the Island of Örskär, Sweden

I went with some of my fellowherpers to a stag party combined with a little fieldtrip to the beautiful Island of Örskär, located in the coastline of Uppland in Sweden.
The island is known for its rich fauna and flora. It inhabits 18 different species of orchids, about 260 species of birds have been observed passing by and one of the few places in Sweden where Rana lessonae lives and can be observed.The victim was a good friend and a fine herpetologist called Petter.The journey begins..

We where about 10-12 persons that had the benefit of going to this party. And, may I add, it did sound somewhat different than other stag partys I have went to. Going to an island in the middle of nowhere, just to get drunk, laugh and look at a frog.

Anyway..
I got picked up by the expeditionleader and the victim Petter (who was blindfolded and dressed in a “beautiful” suit).

The vic, having some air.

Once we arrived to where the boat that should take us to the island, we let him take the blindfold of.

Before..

..and after..

The boat, overloaded..

Petter on the boat..

On the island, we started to walk. Neither of us expected to walk very far and had therefor quite much to carry, but hey.. What a surprise!! About 5 km´s in the woods later, we found the place that we set our camp on.

Having a quick rest, somewhere in the middle of the island..

On camp, we had a little rest before setting up the tents.

Lelle

All of us, except myself..

We found some Rana lessonae immediatley after arriving to the camp-place.

Big herper, little frog..

Same herper, not that big (long..) anymore..

After we had been eating (and drinking some…) setting up tents and such. We took a little walk around the island, herping.. Lovley weather and temperatures. The environment offered some very nice sceneries.

Looking for Triturus cristatus

Goldmoss Stonecrop, Sedum acre

It looks quite hars here and there. It makes me wonder what it is like in the wintertime..

Having a little rest..

A lottle later we found a female Natrix natrix.

And a beautiful Vipera berus..

She started to dislike our company, so we let her be.

Petter and I took longer time to get back to camp, as we stopped to look at some wild flowers.

Spoonleaf sundew, Drosera intermedia in bloom.

Another picture of the flesheating flower,Spoonleaf sundew, Drosera intermedia.

Petter photographing the Sundew.

Vaccinium microcarpum, I think. If so, it is a dwarf Cranberrie.

Beautiful flower, anyhow..

Right..

After we came back to camp in the late afternoon, we had something to eat (and drink.. again..) And out came the fishing-gear..

No luck though.. As expected..

Well.. If you don´t count this little fellow in..

The next morning, we packed it all and went back to the boat. Ofcourse we thought that we had been to kind to Petter, so we had to do something..

A friendly walk turned into a bath..

Surprislingy much water clother can absorb in a short time..

 

And of course, he had no other clotes, so it was back in the suit again.
Thanks all of you that went on this trip and made it such a nice weekend!!

Scientists Are Aiding Timber Rattlesnakes

Adapted from a news release issued by Purdue University  7/26/07

The much-maligned and endangered timber rattlesnake may have a future in Indiana, thanks to Purdue veterinary medicine, forestry and natural resources researchers working with the state’s Department of Natural Resources on a project to track the snakes.

The researchers are supporting the biological diversity of wildlife in Indiana by helping to stop the disappearance of the snake from the state, said Purdue veterinarian Steve Thompson. Once found in abundance in woods and hills of Indiana, researchers now have a hard time finding them.

“More timber rattlesnakes have been killed by people than people have been killed by timber rattlesnakes,” Thompson said. “We both have our place in the ecosystem. In addition, if an animal becomes extinct, we will never know the uses we might have found for it. There’s medical research being done now using other reptile venom for treatment of diseases such as diabetes. If the timber rattlesnake disappears, we can’t anticipate what predator will fill its niche, overpopulate in their absence or if better understanding could provide an opportunity to help other species, pets or humans.”

The snake measures 3-5 feet long and can be identified by its characteristic rattle and the presence of dark bands running across its back. There are about 34 snake species in Indiana, four of which are venomous, including the timber rattlesnake, northern copperhead, cottonmouth and massasauga rattlesnake. Both of the rattlesnakes that are found in Indiana are endangered species and if found should be left alone, according to a state advisory.

Amphibians hopping at Wyman’s

Frog study finds no deformities in area population

A bullfrog is captured at Wyman’s Living History Ranch and Museum by students doing a study on deformities in frog populations in Colorado. No deformed frogs were found during the teams visit to Northwest Colorado on Wednesday. Enlarge photo — Photo by Dan Olsen

Craig — The peaceful croaking of the frogs in the oxbow next to the Yampa River east of Craig was interrupted by the swish of dropping nets and a cheer of success from the captors.

A group of three college students and a high school senior from Boulder made their way from the Front Range to Wyman’s Living History Ranch and Museum on Wednesday, swinging nets and scooping dippers into the former section on the river now bypassed on the museum property as part of a survey on Colorado frogs.

“We’re in Craig looking for malformed frogs,” University of Colorado biologist August Jensen said. “In the Midwest and West, there have been high levels of deformities found in the frog populations.”

The group found a large number of frogs at the museum’s pond. In their area of study, teams can go many days without finding one of the elusive hoppers.

At Wyman, they managed to capture 103 “metamorphs” and eight adults.

They checked one other Craig area pond and the Yampa River before returning to Boulder.

The reason the study is being conducted in Craig is because in the 1930s, chickens in Northwest Colorado came down with a specific parasite that the team is looking for. It is thought the parasite might lead to deformities in the amphibians.

No signs of the parasite have been found in Colorado this year.

The group said they have found great numbers of salamanders, but they also have seen only low numbers of leopard frogs.

Don Larson from the Uni­versity of Alaska in Fair­banks is working with the group from Boulder.

“It’s exciting to find this many frogs,” he said.

Inspired by a study by Pieter Johnson, who was published on the subject of frog deformities in 1999, the group dedicated itself to explore the frog population in Colorado and check health issues in the species.

“Since May, we’ve been going around looking for frogs,” Anna Peterson said.

The CU biology major and friends were happy to report that no deformed frogs were found in the pond at the Wyman museum, and the study moved next to an area near Loudy-Simpson Park for a check of the river’s frogs.

Dan Olsen can be reached at 824-7031, ext.207, or dolsen@craigdailypress.com

From Craig Daily Press

www.terrariummorbidum.se toolbar.

Toolbar for all of you that are interested in European reptiles and amphibians. Packed with site-links, radio, chat and 20 herpetological-related links in different areas, such as books / magazines, fairs / expos and different sites with information regarding the animals.

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read more | digg story

Wal-Mart willing to relocate reptile to build store

TOMS RIVER — A pine snake may not stop a Wal-Mart Supercenter from coming here after all.

Last June, the state Department of Environmental Protection denied a permit to the retail giant to build a 228,000-square-foot store on Route 37 on the boundary with Manchester.

A Coastal Area Facility Review Act, or CAFRA, permit was denied after a male northern pine snake was determined to have spent the winter in a den on the property and the site was deemed to be a pine snake habitat.

However, the DEP confirmed Wednesday that it and Wal-Mart are negotiating the future of the 43-acre site.

Wal-Mart requested an “alternate dispute resolution,” DEP spokeswoman Elaine Makatura said.

“Often when an application is denied, they will request this type of negotiation to see if there is any flexibility at all, so this is routine,” she said.

Makatura said she could not comment on the negotiating itself, which is confidential, but did say that the parties had one meeting recently.

“I heard the negotiations were going on and they were very promising,” Manchester Mayor Michael Fressola said Wednesday. “We have set aside a piece of property behind the site where the snake can be moved. This property will allow for them to track the movement of the snake through the area. We are proposing that property for mitigation.”

The parties are discussing mitigation and Wal-Mart has to come up with a plan for an “environmentally friendly store,” Toms River Mayor Paul C. Brush said when asked what he knows of the talks.

Brush said he heard if Wal-Mart built a “green store” with solar panels and proper landscaping, DEP would consider mitigation of the snake.

Both mayors, who had lashed out at the DEP after the permit was originally denied, have said that the combination retail store and supermarket would bring a needed addition to the tax base in their towns.

“This would get us ratables at a time when our expenses are increasing at a dramatic rate,” Fressola said.

Brush said, “I have always supported it right from the very beginning.”

“It is on the highway, on the western part of town, which means it will divert traffic from coming further into Toms River,” he said.

The Sierra Club of Ocean County remains opposed to the application, said Chairman Gregory Auriemma.

Making the proposed Wal-Mart an environmentally friendly building would amount to “green washing,” he said. He said that term refers to “trying to put a green friendly face on top of something that is not really green.”

Selling environmentally friendly consumer products does not make it acceptable to “pave over sections that are normally going to have runoff into the streams of our county,” Auriemma said.

He said the proposed building could bring with it traffic problems as well as threaten the habitats of other species besides the pine snake.

The attorney representing Wal-Mart could not be reached for comment.

From Asbury Park Press

Lizard woes might hinder local projects

 Gap in species protection policy could create headaches for builders

A permit that has allowed the Coachella Valley to grow over the past two decades while protecting a threatened lizard is in jeopardy of expiring next month, worrying planners who had hoped to have an expanded permit plan ready to take its place.

“We haven’t had to worry about this for 18 years. Now we have to worry about this,” said John Wohlmuth, executive director of the Coachella Valley Association of Governments.

His agency is leading the charge to protect the lizard and 26 other species while allowing the valley to nearly triple its population to 1.1 million by build-out in 2066.

The Coachella Valley fringe-toed lizard permit has been extended six times since 2000, but the California Department of Fish and Game said as recently as May that it has no plans to extend it again.

If CVAG’s multiple species plan isn’t ready to replace it by Aug. 31 - a nearly certain scenario - all projects would be required to obtain environmental permits. That process could take six months or longer.

Among the projects that could be delayed are Interstate 10 interchanges, including at Gene Autry Trail/Palm Drive.

“The impact on highway interchanges and any delay that would be generated by loss of a permit would be of a concern to us,” said Eric Haley, Riverside County Transportation Commission executive director.

Steve Robbins, general manager-chief engineer for the Coachella Valley Water District, said without an environmental permit plan, project-by-project approval will create a backlog at the Department of Fish and Game, creating much-longer than usual delays in construction projects.

“It throws a real big question mark into any construction that has to go on,” Robbins said.

CVAG had hoped to have its multi-species plan in place by late summer or early fall, but it appears December is more likely.

The agency unveiled a valleywide plan in early 2006 that required all cities to sign on.

Desert Hot Springs opted out, citing concerns over two projects it hoped would be part of its growth - a golf course project and a College of the Desert campus.

So CVAG revised its plan to exclude Desert Hot Springs and had circulated the new plan this year with hopes of it becoming effective this fall.

On Tuesday, the Desert Hot Springs City Council issued a preliminary decision to rejoin the plan, a move CVAG welcomed.

Katie Barrows, director of environmental resources for CVAG, said Wednesday the agency still wants to pass the plan later this year and then will amend it to include Desert Hot Springs.

Another wrinkle

Desert Hot Springs officials on April 26 received approval to annex 2,114 acres for the Palmwood Golf Club.

That move didn’t sit well with Fish and Game officials, who hoped the land would be conserved.

Shortly after, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club sued the annex-granting body - the Riverside County Local Agency Formation Commission - to challenge the decision.

Today, LAFCO will hear from valley, Riverside County, Coachella Valley Water District and public works officials asking the commission to reconsider its decision.

If LAFCO reverses its decision, the multi-species plan could be completed by the end of the year, Barrows said. CVAG negotiations with Desert Hot Springs include provisions regarding the annexations.

If the agency sticks to its original vote, it’s a whole different story.

“That creates a much more challenging situation,” Barrows said.

If land included in the multi-species plan changes hands, revisions would be required that would need to be revisited by participating bodies. And that could take as long as a year, Barrows said.

A fringe-toed lizard keeps a low profile in the sand near Cook Street.
Palmwood hearing
The LAFCO meeting starts at 9:30 a.m. today and will be held at the Eastern Municipal Water District headquarters in Perris.The $1.8 billion, 75-year Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan would allow the valley to nearly triple its population to 1.1 million while setting aside land to protect 27 species, including endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep and the threatened fringe-toed lizard.

From The Desert Sun

Can amphibians tackle climate change?

Amphibians are known for their resilience. They have bounced out of mass extinctions, survived vegetation changes, and outlived the dinosaur by evolving distinctive behaviours and morphologies and adapting their lifecycles. But a study from the us reveals these very attributes have placed the future of nature’s sentinels in peril (BioScience, Vol 57, No 5, May 2007). Amphibian decline has been documented in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. Of the 5,743 known species, 43 per cent is declining, 32 per cent threatened, and 168 considered extinct.
Their state came into sharp focus in 1989, when scientists compared notes at the first International Conference on Herpetology; many amphibian species were declining mysteriously. In India, a 1998 survey by the Conservation Assessment and Management Plan Workshop for Amphibians of India used techniques developed by the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group of iucn (World Conservation Union). It concluded that about 48 per cent of all amphibian species and 59 per cent of endemic ones were threatened. The frog’s demise Frogs and toads, amongst nature’s hardiest, are in serious trouble in many places. The California red-legged frog (Rana aurora draytoni, made famous by the character of Daniel Webster in Mark Twain’s Jumping frog of Calaveras County), has disappeared from 75 per cent of its range. The noisy natterjack toad (Buffo calamita) in England is almost extinct in lowland heaths. The causes are several: exposure to ultraviolet (uv) radiation, habitat loss, pesticide contamination, global warming, acid rain and infectious diseases. Other animals groups face similar threats but amphibians are more vulnerable. What works against them are the very characteristics acquired over their evolution to survive a variety of environmental regimes. Most frog, toad, and salamander species lead double lives; starting out in water in the egg and larva forms, they switch to a terrestrial adulthood. They deal with two kinds of habitats, with varying dangers of pollution. Their eggs have no shells; their permeable skin is little protection from fungal infection and uv rays. Ultra dangerous In the early 1990s, Andrew Blaustein led a team of researchers from the Oregon State University in usa to the range of the Cascades frog (Rana cascadae) in the Oregon mountains, where the young ones of this species regulated their body temperatures by basking in sunlight. Something was killing the creatures. The possible cause emerged a few years later: increasing exposure to uv rays due to a depleting ozone layer. Later, field experiments proved uv rays decrease the hatching success of several species. In the Pacific Northwest of the us, for example, the hatching success of Cascades frogs, western toads, long-toed salamanders, and northwestern salamanders was lower when exposed to ambient uv radiation. In Europe, the hatching success of common toads (Bufo bufo) was lower for uv-exposed eggs than for those shielded from the rays. Amphibian eggs face aquatic predators and a variety of chemical contaminants. For amphibians, extremely low concentrations of widely used pesticides are harmful (see ‘Feeling Jumpy’, Down To Earth, February 28, 2006). These suppress their immune systems and affect their growth.

Gila monster ungrateful

> Severe pain, nausea, weakness, tremors followed rare bite <

He was just a little guy in distress, so I didn’t really think before plucking him out of the water at the edge of our swimming pool.

But when the lizard turned his head nearly 180 degrees and bit my hand between thumb and forefinger as I held him, and I was unable to dislodge him with my free hand, I knew I needed help.

“Debbie,” I called to my wife after walking the 30 feet from the pool to our back porch, “I’ve got a Gila monster on my hand.”

Thus began an ordeal that sent me to the emergency room at Tucson Medical Center for eight hours, caused me to miss a day of work and left my right hand weak and painful for more than a week.

I was actually bitten twice. The 10-inch critter’s teeth also briefly penetrated my left thumb as I attempted to pry it off the other hand.

And although that bite was much less serious, the left hand rivaled the right for pain as the effects of the neurotoxin set in.

That took about 15 minutes, after Debbie (Star reader advocate Debbie Kornmiller) pried the lizard off my hand with a plastic knife; he’d been attached for not much more than a half-minute.

The Arizona Poison Control Center, which we called immediately, advised us to seek emergency medical help and to wash the bite thoroughly because of the great possibility of infection.

Although Gila monster bites are not known to be fatal to people in generally good health, the pain was severe.

I became thirsty, disoriented and weak, unable even to hold a pen to sign the admitting forms at the ER.

Later, I became nauseated, vomited and was unable to control tremors in my extremities, especially my legs. I could walk, but barely.

Heroic Dog Saves Kids From Poisonous Snake

 

Jewels Elsworth is credited with saving her family’s two children and two of their friends while they were playing near bushes in their front yard. From 50 yards away, Jewels sensed the imminent danger.

“All of a sudden Jewels flies from out of nowhere and just knocks the babies down and they’re just crying,” Misty Elsworth said.

“Jewels knocked me and Maddie down and Jewels was going to save us,” young Ashlyn Elsworth remembers.

The adults were baffled. The always obedient dog ignored all their commands to stop.

“She pushed Ashlyn and Maddie down, yeah, and discovered there was a snake in the bush,” Dalton Fayard said.

“She comes out of the plant with what appears to be a stick,” Misty said. “It ended up being a snake stuck to her mouth.”

“We thought she was gonna die,” Dalton said.

While they all panicked, the highly poisonous water moccasin sunk its teeth and venom in for several minutes before Jewels could shake it off. When they got to the Emergency Animal Hospital, she was critical.

“Her neck had swollen so much, by the time I got there I couldn’t even put a collar on her. I got there, I was crying hysterically,” Misty said. “And that was the last time I saw her, was when they took her back and her blood pressure has started to drop.”

The Elsworths barely slept that night praying that Jewels would survive. The next day, their Dad went to the hospital and came home with an answered prayer.

“Jewels jumped out of the car and put us to the ground and started licking us,” Dalton said.

“She had hair gone from both sides from having IVs in her all night and she was just on the ground licking the kids,” Misty said.

“She’s a cool dog,” Dalton said.

A cool and fearless dog, who saved a family from what could have been a terrible tragedy.

“She saved us,” Dalton said.

“Yeah, she saved me and Maddie,” Ashlyn said.

“Oh, it scared me to death cause it could have been a whole lot worse. I mean Jewels was just, like I said, she was our hero. She’s amazing,” Misty said.

And even after her battle with a cottonmouth and brush with death, they say Jewels Elsworth is vigilant when it comes to protecting her children.

“When she gets out in the yard and I have plants, she literally tip toes around the plants to check them out while the kids are outside playing. It’s just, it’s amazing. She’s a great dog,” Misty said.

From WLOX

Snake found stuck in Cadillac

Forget “Snakes on a Plane.”"Snakes in a Cadillac” was the Friday afternoon thriller that drew a crowd on the St. John’s Hospital campus.

Witnesses said Mount Vernon resident Mike Woods was going to pick up his mother on the hospital campus when someone yelled, “Hey, did you know you have a snake hanging out your door?”

Woods pulled over on a campus loop road and as the snake dangled from the bottom of the driver’s side door, he slid out the passenger door. He alerted guest services, which radioed St. John’s security, said spokeswoman Cora Scott.

The 24-inch-long, pinkish-tan copperhead was wedged head in, tail out. Woods told security the snake might have crawled in from the woods near his house.

Officers redirected traffic and secured the area to keep curiosity seekers a safe distance from the snake.

Security called the city animal control office, which said it didn’t take “snake calls.”

So officers called Dickerson Park Zoo, and Superintendent Mike Crocker soon arrived to find a crowd in front of the medical building, the Cadillac and a now-dead snake.

“I opened the door and grabbed hold of the snake by the tail end and pulled it out, just to be safe,” Crocker said. He avoided the head — “It’s not unusual for someone to get bitten by reflex action of a dead snake.”

Crocker took the snake back to the zoo, dissected the plump back end and found 17 ova — snake eggs.

With the snake safely dispatched, the crowd dispersed, Woods thoroughly checked his car before climbing back in, and drove away.

From News-Leader