Vines and Vipers: Timber Rattlesnake use of cranberry bogs within the New Jersey Pinelands

Livingston, Carl

livingscgo.stockton.edu

Wildlife Biologist & Herpetologist                                                                                                    

Herpetological Associates                                                                                                                        

Pemberton, New Jersey USA

Lind, Craig L.                                             

Department of Biological Sciences                                                                                                                 

Stockton University                                                                                                                                   

Galloway, New Jersey USA

Located in southern New Jersey, the Pinelands National Reserve (PNR), recognized as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, is a vast tract of pine forest, sandy soil, and cedar bogs spanning a quarter of the state. Endangered in the state of New Jersey, Timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) populations are split between the northern mountain population continuous with strongholds in the Appalachian Mountains, and the isolated southern population fragmented between several isolated sites within the PNR. Many of these sites are located on or adjacent to active cranberry bogs, one of the few remaining large scale anthropogenic activities still occurring within the Pinelands. While mono-cropping typically leads to a loss of biodiversity and large-scale habitat destruction, cranberry production is unique in its use of water management and creation of artificial wetlands and berms. We currently understand very little about how C. horridus has adapted to utilize these artificial wetlands over the ~200 years of continuous cranberry production within the PNR. Currently, a combination of active and abandoned bogs exists, each with different management practices and levels of disturbance. A series of visual site surveys were conducted on both active and abandoned cranberry bogs by walking these berms and along edges of wetlands in search of C. horridus. In abandoned bogs we found C. horridus utilizing berms for shedding stations and as rookeries, with mothers and their young coiled under low lying brush. On both active and abandoned bogs C. horridus was found utilizing berms for thermo-regulation basking near pump houses and along berm roads. Both active and abandoned bogs lay adjacent to maple-cedar swampland believed to be used as hibernacula. The Timber Rattlesnake is listed as a species of concern in Wisconsin, the largest cranberry producer in the country, and endangered in Massachusetts, the country's second largest producer. Understanding how snakes utilize active agriculture lands is crucial for their long term survival along the fringes of their range.