SARG NEWS - 22 October 2010

SARG NEWS - 22 October 2010

Every year, one of the south east amphibian and reptile groups hosts the regional meeting.
This year's meeting will be at Milton Keynes on 13th November 2010, hosted by Bucks ARG.

SARG will be showing a strong presence, providing one of the talks, and running one of the afternoon workshops.

These meetings are a great chance to catch up with the other groups, and for a good chin-wag about all things herpetological.

The talks are usually informative, and its a great chance to network.

This year's agenda can be downloaded here: ARG-UK SE Regional agenda

Steve

SARG NEWS - 17 October 2010

SARG NEWS - 17 October 2010

For next year, SARG has chosen the adder to be its 'species in focus'. This fits in nicely with the current Adder Project, which is a collaboration of south east regional groups to accurately map the known distribution of the adder, and to find new locations.

This afternoon, SARG surveyors visited Banstead Heath to try to establish adder presence. It was late in the year for adder activity, but the bright sunshine raised our hopes. It is important to establish whether adders are present at Banstead, as the Heath is under threat from a major water pipeline development.

Most of the heath is deemed to offer suitable habitat, and the day was made more than worth while with two beautiful juvenile adders spotted and photographed.

If you have seen an adder in 2010, or even in past years, can you please submit a sighting report on the SARG website? We need an approximate date for the sighting, and you can click on a map to record the location. ALL sightings are valuable to us, and we can sort the probables from the certainties. If you have a photo of the animal you saw, please say so in the comments field.

Below is a picture of the first adder sighting today, courtesy of Jonathan Cooper, one of the Banstead Commons Conservators. Thanks also to Richard Knights, Banstead Commons Warden for giving up part of his Sunday to show us around the Heath.

SARG NEWS - 11 October 2010

SARG NEWS - 11 October 2010

Reptile Habitat Management Handbook - out now!

Everyone needs a good read now that it's too cold for surveys, and we have the perfect thing! The 'Reptile Habitat Management Handbook' has just been published. It's aimed at site managers, and those who advise on habitat management, and gives plenty of guidance aimed at improving the status of snakes and lizards.

Some forum members kindly gave us ideas and photos when we started writing this - many thanks, and we hope that you'll find it useful. The book was published by ARC, with part-funding from Natural England and the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. Full details are: Edgar, P., Foster, J. & Baker, J. (2010). Reptile Habitat Management Handbook. Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, Bournemouth. ISBN 978-0-9566717-0-7.

Over the winter, we'll be running a jointly funded (Amphibian and Reptile Conservation and Natural England) series of training workshops for habitat managers. The aim will be to get the main messages out to those who are interested to learn more about incorporating reptile needs into site management. This is aimed at generalist site managers rather than those who already have a reptile focus to their work. We feel that just producing the handbook is only a start; real benefits for reptiles will need persistent promotion of the guidance and follow-up work, hence the workshops.

How do you get a copy?

One could be in the post to you already! Over the next couple of weeks, Amphibian and Reptile Conservation are doing a mass mail-out to a wide range of organisations working on habitat management. Everyone who contributed a photo that was used in the final version will also get a copy soon.

You can see a low resolution PDF version at: http://www.argukjb.org.uk/Downloads/RHMH%20LowRes.pdf

A high resolution version will be up soon at the ARC website: www.arc-trust.org

To get a free copy you can turn up to one of the conferences over the winter (eg ARC/BHS Scientific Meeting on 5 December), where there will be copies available. You can also request a copy directly from ARC - email enquiries@arc-trust.org or tel 01202 391319 (cost £3.00 to cover postage and handling; please enquire for bulk order costs).

How can forum members help?

Two ways spring to mind:

(a) By telling site managers and land managing organisations in your local patch about the handbook. Use its guidance to help enhance management for reptiles on sites that you visit, where necessary.

(b) By letting us have feedback on both format and content; anything missing, or advice that you think could be improved? The handbook gives a feedback email for this so that we can keep all your comments together.

Jim Foster