Want to help rattlesnakes?

Thanks to hunting for skins, meat, fear, and entertainment(aka rattlesnake roundups!) rattlesnakes are SERIOUSLY on the decline. It's very upsetting, these are a classic American snake!

I live right in the middle of Texas, and every year these things go by it makes me sick. So far nothing has changed despite complaints. This year, I dunno, I think people are going to try a little harder. I actually saw this petition to consider the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake to be endangered(considering the current US population is estimated to be 100,000) and maybe supporting this cause can help get some limitations on how many rattlers the rattlesnake roundup folks can grab, instead of hunting for as many as they please!


These are the two petitions I've seen. I know it's nothing compared to actually writing our political leaders, but it's at least a good show of a unified voice to save these beautiful animals. Not everyone will email their congressmen or senators, but signing this is easy and quick.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/121/p...pecies-status/

This one is for Texas residents specifically...We're right in the heart of all this cruelty. It's just hard for me to stand by any longer! :O
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/929/570/991/

If anyone has any other articles or..well, anything else related to getting some good legislation to actually help out these beauties, please share! :D

Signed!

I worked with Rattlesnake rehabilitation and anti-venom research in Arizona as part of my graduate studies. We use to go out at night and check the roads to see if we could find any injured snakes we could hopefully nurse back to health and release. People would purposely try to run them over in their vehicles :(.

It's awful! They are such beautiful snakes. Why would we want to get rid of the one venomous snake who will politely warn us "I don't want to bite, but I will! Stay away please!" ?

Thank you for signing! I'm trying to get really involved in this. Help stop these nasty roundups right at the heart. Going to be doing a lot of research. I'm still so new to this type of thing, so it's tough. But there are a lot of people helping me, so I have no excuse, I gotta help these snakes!

Signed :gj:

Signed

Signed, Being a Texan I have heard and saw all the stories. Why not monitor them like we do the Alligator down here. So our futures, future can enjoy them. Looked like it still needed 250 signs to hit the goal tho.

signed, SO glad all rattlesnakes are protected in WI......all 2 species

signed

signed!
spooky

Signed.

Consider me signed.

signed

Signed. Everyone else do your part too. These are wonderfully misunderstood snakes. Thanks for posting this purplemuffin.

Signed and shared on my Facebook page :)

signed! :)

Signed :)

You guys are awesome! Thanks so much! Every little thing we can do helps!

Signed

Why not gather the info for contacting your Texas representatives? All the people signing some petition site could be emailing them. Emailing the people who make laws would have more impact.

You could still put up the petition site, but for anyone SERIOUS about wanting to have a voice in saying that indiscrimate killing of a population of native fauna is WRONG.. it should be a easy few moments to send an email saying "Please stop the rattlesnake round-ups, or at least install some regulations regarding the numbers allowed to be gathered and killed."

I've been in contact with them, but I know that there are those people out there who don't have the time/don't know how/whatever reasons won't do it. The petition is still nothing compared to an actual email(or phone call or meeting in person) but it at least gets more numbers and names out there who otherwise wouldn't have said or done anything. I'd love it if everyone who was against it could all show up and explain why this has to stop, but even those who join groups to help fight this cause have people sitting around twiddling their thumbs when it comes to doing anything other than liking a facebook page. :(

The next people I'm going to be contacting are the corporate sponsors of the roundups. I might be going to them to film what kind of nasty things happen there, and it's sort of a heads up to those sponsors "Do you REALLY want your logo proudly displayed in a place of animal cruelty?" Whether or not they care, no one likes to put their image out there with something so controversial, so hopefully some of them will pull out and stop helping fund these roundups. And hopefully the videos will get out there and be seen by a lot of people to let them really know what these are about. There are already some videos posted, but I will try to post some that are a little more understandable to the non-snake owner. There were things that I gasped over that my mom didn't understand was bad. I'd probably post the raw video as well as a version where I have an intro and actually point out specific clips and explain why these things are an issue, and why it's important that they stop. In that format I can also add in quotes from people making anti-venom about how the majority of the stuff milked here is unusable because it's been contaminated and also mention how rare rattlesnakes are becoming.

Well, when you start a thread on reptile friendly sites, go ahead and put both the easy click-here petition and the slightly more time-consuming email contacts for the representatives and the sponsor companies. I'm sure many of the reptile lovers on places like here would take the time, since they'd just have to click links to the various sites with emails for the different people for them to contact.

signed and going to a texas school im the oddball because they like the rattlesnake round up its good to see other people trying to do something about it

Well, I found an easy list of all our states senators. It has their phone numbers to call, but if you feel more comfortable emailing you can click their names to bring you to their websites which has their email address on it

http://www.senate.gov/general/contac...nators_cfm.cfm

Also here are representatives

http://www.house.gov/representatives/


I think it would be good to contact our own states as well as a few of the states who are doing the madness(if yours doesn't) :)

Wish I could add this back to the original post!

Signed by myself and my husband, and shared on our Facebook pages.

Whatever else you need done, let me know. I'm happy to help!