NOTE: The following piece is a guest blog written by Ryan Wagner, a student at Ohio University studying Wildlife Biology and Conservation. He is an exceedingly good naturalist, with a special appreciation for the scaly crowd as we shall see. Ryan is also a superb photographer - his images speak for themselves. It's a pleasure to host some of his work here, and please visit his "
Field Life" blog to see much more of Ryan's work.
In
the Footsteps of Conant: Herping Ohio’s Hill Country
“Also, there were many objects to
overturn, and there was always the chance of finding something unusual beneath
any log or rock. Springs and both clear and muddy streams abounded. In short,
there was a great variety of habitats to be explored. The net result was that
we probably spent more man hours in the hill country than in any other part of
the state. Southeastern Ohio was unquestionably our favorite collecting area.”
—Roger Conant
Herpetology in Ohio—50 Years Ago
Northern
Red-bellied Snake.
Gravel crunched under our tires as we
pulled off Route 50 onto the first backroad of the day. The morning sun was already beginning to bake
away any evidence of last night’s rain, but by midday, our
sweat-stained shirts and hair would look as if a storm had caught us by
surprise. My backpack held two full
water bottles, a tablet of dissolved electrolytes in each. A third and a fourth were stashed below the
rear seat next to Carl’s water-filled orange juice
containers. Neither of us wanted to
tempt fate by running out of water in the heat of Ohio's Hill Country.
As we pulled to a stop along the
roadside, the fluttering hum of cicadas died down and the air hung still for a
moment as if the forest was waiting to inhale.
I grabbed my snake stick from the bed of the truck as Carl slipped his
backpack over his head. We both knew the
drill. The hillsides all around us held
promise of snakes, lizards, and turtles hidden below cover.
Eastern
Black Kingsnake.
During each of our treks into Ohio’s backwoods, I can’t help
but feel we are a small instance of history repeating itself. Just shy of a century ago, Roger Conant might
have hiked these very same hillsides and ravines. In the 1930s, Conant was the first to attempt
an exhaustive survey of Ohio’s reptile diversity (an undertaking
sorely in need of updating since the previous survey by Kirtland in 1838). During his six years as Curator of Reptiles
at the Toledo Zoo, he would eventually make it to 87 of Ohio’s 88
counties, drive some 41,000 miles, collect countless voucher specimens, and publish
his collective work in The Reptiles of Ohio in 1938.
Weekends were Conant’s
designated field days. He would travel
from his home base in Toledo, accompanied by a small and variable band of zoo
colleagues, local naturalists, and a few wide-eyed teenagers, all eager to
indulge their persistent childhood urges to catch the scaly and slimy. The crew would pack snake bags and collecting
jars into Roger’s 1931 Chevy and set out for the unknown. Their findings were quintessential, helping
to verify species records and contributing to the state’s first
range maps.
Eastern
Smooth Earthsnake.
Conant’s work
wasn't limited to Ohio alone. Take down
your copy of A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern and Central
North America and you’ll find a conspicuous authorship. For most of us fascinated with reptiles and
amphibians (Carl and myself included), this field guide was our ticket into the
world of herpetology. Anyone who herps
Ohio today (or anywhere in North America) is indebted to the work of Conant and
his colleagues.
For over 15 years, Carl Brune has
spent his free weekends and rainy evenings ‘filling in Conant’s gaps.’
Originally from California, Carl moved
to Ohio to teach physics at Ohio University.
He has helped to expand the known ranges of species from copperheads to
streamside salamanders, and has even authored two chapters in the Amphibians
of Ohio Textbook.
Northern
Copperhead.
I began herping with
him in late August 2017. Growing up in a
suburb of Cleveland, reptile diversity was somewhat lacking. For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed of seeing
the creatures hidden among the rolling hills of Ohio’s southern
counties. In 2016, I moved to Athens to
study Wildlife Biology and Conservation.
By luck or fate, I found myself in the middle of one of Ohio’s most
herpetologically diverse regions.
A map
of the physiogeographic regions of Ohio from Conant's The Reptiles of Ohio.
It is no secret that
Roger Conant preferred the Hill Country over any of Ohio’s other
physiogeographic regions. Eleven of the
thirty reptile species he documented there were found nowhere else in the
state. The Hill Country encompasses the
southeastern third of Ohio and sits on the Unglaciated Allegheny Plateau at the
base of the Appalachian Mountains.
Except for the blue grass region, the Hill Country is the only part of
Ohio that was free of ice during the Pleistocene. When the glaciers receded at the end of the
last ice age, their melt waters carved out the labyrinth of ravines and
hilltops that define the Hill Country of today.
Black
Racer.
Before the arrival of
Europeans, 95% of Ohio was covered by huge stands of old-growth forest. Oaks and hickories cloaked the rolling hills
and provided habitat for wolves, bison, elk, black bear, and even
wolverine. By the beginning of the
1900s, the state’s megafauna would be
gone, and the forest would be reduced to 10% of its former grandeur. The trees were cleared for timber and to
allow access to the exposed layers of coal, iron, and oil. Once these natural resources were fully
exploited, industry moved on, and the forests were allowed to regrow. Remnants of old coal towns and iron districts
still stand in isolated pockets of the backwoods, totems to this past age.
Northern
Ring-necked Snake.
By the 1930s, second-growth had
returned to much of southeastern Ohio.
Conant described the state of the forest in his autobiography, “The
charm of the hill country lay largely in the fact it was mostly wild in those
days. Agriculture was confined to some
of the valleys, and second growth had re-clothed the hillsides and many other
areas to the point where the forest had more or less returned to its original
climax stage.” As much as 70% of the
Unglaciated Allegheny Plateau is now forested.
Glacial melt waters washed away most of the area’s rich
soil, sparing the land from agriculture.
Had the soil been more profitable, the Hill Country would likely be a
very different place today.
Despite the
disappearance of many of Ohio’s native fauna during this era of rapid and
intense deforestation, there have been no documented extinctions for any of
Ohio’s 47 species of
reptile or 40 species of amphibian. Just
how and where these fragile creatures survived is something of a mystery. Logging took place over many decades, and it
is possible species found refuge in small, remaining tracts of habitat,
recolonizing the surrounding land once the forest had regrown. Considering the scale of habitat loss that swept
through Ohio in the 1800s, it is remarkable any native herpetofauna survived at
all.
Black
Ratsnake.
One thing is clear, however, Ohio’s
reptiles and amphibians are no strangers to adverse environmental
conditions. A year (or even a day) in
Ohio can fluctuate wildly in temperature and weather conditions. Winter lasts for nearly half the year,
forcing ectothermic species to remain inactive for months on end. Summer is prime herping season, but with
midday temperatures easily reaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit in southern Ohio,
most species are forced to seek shelter to avoid overheating or
desiccating.
Logs and rocks
provide cool, moist places for snakes to hide during the heat of the day. Nature, however, can be supplemented with a
little human ingenuity. In Conant’s time, logging
operations left behind huge saw dust piles strewn along the steep slopes. When covered with pieces of hacked-off bark,
these damp, sturdy piles provided the perfect escape from the elements. Conant recounts one exceptionally good find, “a
large slab-covered pile in Hocking County yielded a fence lizard, three young
broad head skinks, a northern water snake, eleven hatchling black rat snakes,
and two juvenile copperheads.” As mill
practices shifted, Conant’s fruitful saw dust piles became a thing of the
past.
Eastern
Milksnake.
Today, man-made cover is still
important for finding snakes. Plywood
boards and tins scattered throughout the roadsides and hilltops of southern
Ohio are easily flipped and are a proven way to find scads of snakes in an
otherwise desolate landscape. Reptiles
aren't picky; old pool liners, ratty carpets, deck chairs, smashed televisions,
and gas tanks might be an eye sore for most hikers, but for folks like us, they’re a
treasure trove. A good trash pile always
gets my blood pumping in anticipation of what might be lurking below.
During the course of
our search, Carl and I might flip upwards of 100 pieces of cover and hike ten
miles through the ravines and hilltops, all to find a handful of serpents. Somedays, the snakes are plentiful, others
require hours of work to find the most common of species. There is really no telling where or when a
species might turn up; it's often a matter of being in the right place at the right
time.
Eastern
Wormsnake.
Carl and I have been lucky enough to
find more snakes in Ohio than most people will see in their entire lives. Even where snake populations appear stable,
however, the impacts of humans are plainly visible. Whether it be road mortality, habitat loss,
or direct persecution, "snakes engender mighty little sympathy from the
general public," a statement that still rings true today.
Conant was well aware
that with each decade, more species were pushed closer toward extirpation. Fifty years after his surveys, Conant
lamented that, “many places that once supported thriving colonies of various
species have vanished.” Rattlesnakes,
spotted turtles, Kirtland’s snakes—species Conant would have commonly
encountered in his day—have all but disappeared from most of the state.
Timber
Rattlesnake.
Conant laid the ground work for our
modern generation of herpetologists. It
is now up to us to protect the species and populations that remain. Efforts to mitigate the damage we have done
to our natural environment can often seem confusing and convoluted, but I have
found there is something very down to earth about the study of reptiles and
amphibians. Even someone unaccustomed to
the complex and long-winded jargon of scientific literature might be able to
detect a hint of the adventure and mystery only thinly veiled behind tables of
snout-vent lengths and scale counts.
Hobby, obsession, the
‘weird’ cousin of birding,
call it what you will, but herping has captivated my life ever since I first
opened Roger Conant's field guide. In a
few months time, the snakes, lizards, and turtles will begin to emerge from
their frozen retreats. Carl and I will soon be back among the rolling hills of
Southern Ohio, flipping logs, boards, and carpets for the secrets hidden
beneath. Only time will tell what we
find.
Carl
and myself after a day of dip netting for salamanders in 2018.
Ryan Wagner is a
student studying Wildlife Biology and Conservation at Ohio University. He is an avid herper, birder, nature blogger,
and wildlife photographer. You can read
more of his articles at ryansweeklywildlife.blogspot.com or follow him on
twitter @weeklywildlife.
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