After a long and cold winter people across Wales have been able to enjoy the recent warm weather. But it's not just brought out sun-seekers in their summer clothes as for one community Britain's largest wild snakes are re-emerging from hibernation.
Residents in Colwyn Bay in Conwy have become accustomed to living alongside the Aesculapian rat snake with the constrictors often seen in gardens, undergrowth, and compost heaps, NorthWalesLive reports. But as they too embrace the hot spell many have been hit and killed by cars.
In the past week Tom Buckley said he has seen three dead snakes. “All three were on the roads and were possibly hit by cars travelling down from the mountain zoo,” he said. “The more people know of their whereabouts the better. From now on I will always be on the lookout for them one in the roads. If I see one I’ll try to move it – or just wait until it moves out the way.”
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The Aesculapian rat snake first appeared in Conwy in the mid-1960s when Robert Jackson, founder of the Welsh Mountain Zoo, imported the reptiles from Italy. In the early 1970s it is thought some escaped. Baby snakes found in the zoo grounds were initially thought to be grass snakes but were later confirmed as Aesculapians.
By then they’d already begun breeding and spreading very slowly beyond the zoo. Some conservationists welcomed their arrival as a “returning” species as they were once native to Britain before the last Ice Age.
Colwyn Bay’s residents have largely approved too. Harmless to people and pets, the rats snakes rid the streets of pesky vermin.
Decades on the town’s Aesculapian population is small – it is thought there are only 60 to 70 breeding adults in the area. Life in north Wales is tough for a snake more commonly found in southern Mediterranean and Balkan countries.
There they can reach 6ft – much longer than Britain's grass snakes, which can grow to 3.5ft. Here food is scarcer and, until recently, the weather less accommodating. Even so an Aesculapian found basking in a field in May 2022 was measured at 4.5ft.
That was "Dave" the snake. Since then he’s been radio-tracked by Bangor University researchers as part of a long-term study that remains ongoing. For five years Tom Major led the project for his PhD. He would like to see more protections offered to the snakes – and to wildlife in general – but he accepts it’s a difficult cause. Aesculapians face multiple threats rather than just roads, which they will only cross as a last resort.
“The population is stable but it’s very vulnerable, being so small,” he said. “Ongoing development in the area, for housing, will always be a threat, as will road deaths. Building road culverts would help. Evidence suggests that once snakes, or any other wildlife, become aware of culverts, they will use them. However these are not generally incorporated into transport policies in Britain and it’s unlikely they will be built in Colwyn Bay. Cost is one issue; the fact that these are a re-introduced species is another.”
The snake’s name relates to Aesculapius, the ancient Greek god of medicine whose staff was a rough-hewn branch entwined by a single snake. It was believed to be able to cure a patient or a wounded person just by touch. The staff has been adopted as the logo for modern medicine and pharmacology.
The snakes are regular visitors to the Llanrwst Road garden of Lydia Mary Fernandez-Arias who lives near the mountain zoo. Usually they make themselves scarce but when they make an appearance she’s happy to see them.
Bangor University’s snake-tracking team used to visit the garden twice a day. “They go out hunting in the summer and they like the long grass in my garden,” said Lydia. "I’ve not yet seen them this summer although I’ve not been looking for them. Last I heard some snakes had moved into the roof in a chapel in Mochdre.
“It’s sad to think of them getting hit by cars. As far as I’m told the snakes don’t impact the local environment and they once lived here thousands of years ago.”
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