A Black Hills State University professor is helping to save one of the rarest snakes in the world from extinction.
Brian Smith has been working since 1999 to save the Antiguan racer, which was thought to be extinct in the 1930s. The snake, however, was rediscovered on Great Bird Island near Antigua where an estimated 100 of them are now living.
Smith said the small snakes, which are harmless to humans, have no fear of people.
“You can walk right up to the animals and pick them up,” he said. “They don’t recognize you as a threat, so the lizards will just walk right up your leg. It’s the weirdest thing.”
Smith, who is an associate professor at BHSU, said he has been working with Fauna and Flora International, an organization that is based in England and has been working to save the snakes since 1995.
Rats, which are flourishing on the island, prey on the snakes, Smith said. As a result, efforts are being made to eradicate the rats and that causes other problems.
“You know everyone says, ‘Oh, you’re going to work in the Caribbean that must be nice.’ But you go out there and it smells like dead rats,” he said. “And I’ve never experienced that kind of heat.”
Smith said the humidity is high and temperatures average around 95 degrees in Antigua, which is near Costa Rica.
Part of Smith’s mission was to establish an internship program, which gave BHSU students a chance to study abroad. That program, however, has now been taken over by Antigua. Smith, who also has done field work in Guam, Costa Rica and Guatemala, said he now wants to expand his research efforts in Antigua.
“We want to ratchet back up the Antiguan research,” he said. “There’s a lot of research still to do down there. It’s a natural experiment. There’s lot of little projects to do down there. It’s an easy place to do ecological research.”