Australia's rarest snake, the broad-headed snake, is a 60 cm long snake that is black with numerous bright yellow bands.
Credit: Jonathon Webb/University of Sydney
SYDNEY: Ecologists propose a controlled burning regime to help save the broad-headed snake, Australia's most endangered snake.
The habitat of the broad-headed snake (Haplocephalus bungaroides) has declined and lighting more wildfires may be the solution, said ecologists from the University of Sydney and Stanford University in California.
"Controlled burning would create more of the snake's critical habitat, which would be good news for the remaining population," said Rick Shine, a biologist at the University of Sydney and co-author of the paper published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
The broad-headed snake is restricted to small pockets of suitable habitat in New South Wales. For nine months of the year, they shelter under exfoliated rocks on sandstone plateaus, which stay warm during the evening when the snakes hunt lizard prey. Shine noted that over the last 17 years, snakes disappeared from areas where the rocks became shaded by vegetation.
Vegetation changes near Sydney
The team looked at vegetation changes on four sandstone plateaus in Morton National Park, 160 km south of Sydney. Using photographs from the 1940s and 1960s along with a Quickbird satellite image from 2006, the team analysed changes in vegetation cover over the past 65 years.
Using an object-based analysis of the images, they found that the amount of bare rock (the snake's critical habitat) had decreased in all four locations, by an average of 62%. If habitat decline continues, the species may be pushed to extinction.
Why wildfires?
Wildfires in the region clear vegetation - creating more of the snake's habitat. Fires also reduce the population of small-eyed snakes, which hunt the broad-headed snake, while the population of broad-headed snake appears to be "completely unaffected" by fire events, added Shine.
There are other options, of course. "We could go through the bush with a chainsaw!" Shine suggests, although he doubts that would be permitted in a national park.
Michael Kearney, a biologist at the University of Melbourne who was not involved in this study, thinks we can learn a lot from it. "We expect to see significant changes in vegetation cover in the future as climate change alters plant growth and patterns of fire. [This study] should help us learn from the past about the ecological consequences of such changes."
