
Fear of Rattlesnake Island - samclemens
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/08/18/fear-of-rattlesnake-island-massachusetts/
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meddlepal
I'm from Boston and I don't usually care too much about the western part of
the Massachusetts but I'm in strong agreement with locals on this one.
Rattlesnakes have no place in Massachusetts.

This is more about a conservationist that wants to re-establish a colony of
these snakes in MA when there have been virtually none for a long long time.
This isn't about fixing an unbalanced ecosystem, Western MA has a strong
ecosystem that is well balanced already.

~~~
bmh_ca
Some blame the rise of ticks and tick borne diseases like Lyme on the demise
of predatory snakes.

If true, the balance may not be ideal.

~~~
etangent
On the other hand, one would expect snakes to suppress the population of
amphibians and some ground-nesting birds like nightjars and thus indirectly
increase the population of mosquitoes.

So clearly, one would have to also introduce something that eats these snakes,
like gorillas perhaps. /sarcasm

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nxzero
Always interesting to me how much fear people have of wild animals.

Rattlesnakes aren't dangerous and they're at 100000x more risk of being killed
by a human than killing anyone.

~~~
kurthr
I grew up with snakes in Texas from Water Moccasins and Coral snakes to
Diamond Backs... they aren't safe, if you're sleeping on the ground, walking
around in brush and can't see, or are climbing a rock wall you can easily be
bitten. It's easy to get thrown from a horse too.

The worst are young children and pets who don't know better, which can be
killed or lose a limb, especially by a baby rattler (they don't strike and
release... keep pumping poison), if you're not within 30min of a hospital.
Most hospitals don't carry anti-venom any more either, because it's expensive
and it goes bad.

I saw a 2-3foot (baby no rattle) western diamond back cruise through our camp
of ~20 people, 3 children <6yr, and 2 dogs at 5pm over last Perseid weekend.
It wasn't safe, and I was much more careful walking in the brush after. No one
tried to kill it, but I'd put the chance of it biting someone/dog at more than
1/100 not 1/100k!!

We never saw Mama.

~~~
nxzero
In the United States you have about a one in 50 million chance of dying from
snake bite; five people die a year from snake bites.

Cars alone kill 100k to million snakes a year; not to mention how many people
they kill too.

Please stay in the city if your afraid of animals.

~~~
BearOso
Obligatory xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/795/](https://xkcd.com/795/)

If you never leave an urban area, your chances are even _lower_ than one in 50
million. But if you live in a house on this particular lake, how many orders
of magnitude does that chance increase if they dump thousands of snakes
nearby?

~~~
nxzero
Only 5 people a year are killed by snakes, while tens of thousands are killed
by cars.

As for having 1000s of snake nearby, no, I don't think it would make for any
meaningful increase in danger; I've seen someone go into a cave full of
thousands of rattlesnakes; hint, nothing bad happened.

If you read the notes on the link below, most of the deaths sound avoidable;
aka leave snakes alone, know how to treat a snake bite, get medical attention,
etc.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in_the_United_States)

~~~
ivanhoe
Well, I'm sure people would also object if someone decides to bring thousands
of cars to their neighbourhood :) Speaking of snakes (or any other dangerous
animal) it's not a fair statistics to count in just the deadly encounters. One
should take into the account also how much the local population had to modify
their behaviour to avoid those attacks. Statistics say that sharks rarely
attack people, but also it's a fact that people don't go that often into the
water in the areas with dangerous shark populations. Same thing with other
dangerous animals like gators or poisonous spiders or scorpions. You learn to
avoid risky behaviour and take extra care of pets and children, so stats of
deadly attacks are low, but it comes at extra cost for people living there not
being able to be relaxed and do things they otherwise would be doing.

