Jean-Marie Ballouard

Are snake populations in widespread decline

Long-term studies have revealed population declines in fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. In birds, and particularly amphibians, these declines are a global phenomenon whose causes are often unclear. Among reptiles, snakes are top predators and therefore a decline in their numbers may have serious consequences for the functioning of many ecosystems. Our results show that, of 17 snake populations (eight species) from the UK, France, Italy, Nigeria and Australia, 11 have declined sharply over the same relatively short period of time with five remaining stable and one showing signs of a marginal increase. Although the causes of these declines are currently unknown, we suspect that they are multi-faceted (such as habitat quality deterioration, prey availability), and with a common cause, e.g. global climate change, at their root.

Children Prioritize Virtual Exotic Biodiversity over Local Biodiversity

Environmental education is essential to stem current dramatic biodiversity loss, and childhood is considered as the key period for developing awareness and positive attitudes toward nature. Children are strongly influenced by the media, notably the internet, about biodiversity and conservation issues. However, most media focus on a few iconic, appealing, and usually exotic species. In addition, virtual activities are replacing field experiences. This situation may curb children knowledge and concerns about local biodiversity. Focusing our analyses on local versus exotic species, we examined the level of knowledge and the level of diversity of the animals that French schoolchildren are willing to protect, and whether these perceptions are mainly guided by information available in the internet. For that, we collected and compared two complementary data sets: 1) a questionnaire was administered to schoolchildren to assess their knowledge and consideration to protect animals, 2) an internet content analysis (i.e. Google searching sessions using keywords) was performed to assess which animals are the most often represented. Our results suggest that the knowledge of children and their consideration to protect animal are mainly limited to internet contents, represented by a few exotic and charismatic species. The identification rate of local animals by schoolchildren was meager, suggesting a worrying disconnection from their local environment. Schoolchildren were more prone to protect “virtual” (unseen, exotic) rather than local animal species. Our results reinforce the message that environmental education must also focus on outdoor activities to develop conservation consciousness and concerns about local biodiversity.

Influence of a Field Trip on the Attitude of Schoolchildren toward Unpopular Organisms: An Experience with Snakes

Abstract The general public prefers to support conservation projects that focus on a few, easily “loveable” species; consequently most of biodiversity is neglected. It is essential to redress such bias and to educate children about the value of a wide diversity of organisms, including those labeled by social bias as less appealing. Because snakes are among the most disliked animals, they are suitable candidates for such endeavor. We evaluated the impact of a single field trip on the attitudes of more than 500 schoolchildren. The participants were involved in snake catching and were allowed to manipulate nonvenomous snakes. The organizers limited their intervention to providing natural history information and carefully avoided saying that snakes should be protected. We used pre- and post-field trip questionnaires to gauge the feelings of the children. Although pre-surveys suggested that many schoolchildren like snakes a priori, their attitudes improved following field experience: almost all children declared then that they liked snakes and expressed a strong willingness to protect them. Such change was associated with an increase of the frequency in the responses of the terms linked with affectivity (e.g., “snakes are cute”…). Snake handling was the favorite activity, and physical contact with animals appears to be a crucial element to improve schoolchildrens attitude for an unpopular organism. Our results support the promotion of field trips that include physical contact with wildlife over the current trend in the educational systems that promote virtual approaches.

Schoolchildren and One of the Most Unpopular Animals: Are They Ready to Protect Snakes?

ABSTRACT For cultural reasons and due to the narrow vision of environmental policy makers, most conservation efforts focus on a few charismatic species and consequently neglect the majority of others under threat; many unpopular species are even killed in large numbers with little concern. Redressing this bias through educational programs is therefore important. Snakes are unpopular animals; they suffer from human harassment in most places and many populations have declined worldwide. Consequently, they provide suitable substrate to better improve conservation education in schoolchildren. Responses to a questionnaire administered to 2,570 schoolchildren (7–14 years old) from 10 countries showed that many children liked snakes and that most of the students wanted to see snakes protected. Such counterintuitive results were supported by the explanations given by the children, notably the reasons they liked or disliked snakes. Previous physical contact with snakes was often associated with snake likeability. We also found strong and expected differences between countries: for instance, where venomous snakes represented a health risk, most children declared to be afraid of snakes. Overall, our results negate the simplistic, and previously unverified, adult view that snakes are necessarily perceived as frightening animals, thereby justifying their persecution. This study provides an encouraging message, suggesting that it is not compulsory to focus on charismatic animals to convince children to protect wildlife.

Fibrocement slabs as useful tools to monitor juvenile reptiles: a study in a tortoise species

Most species of tortoises are seriously threatened worldwide. Chelonians are long-lived organisms characterized by slow demographic traits; mathematical modeling estimated that a high rate of juvenile annual survival (i.e. > 0.6 on average) is essential for the persistence of populations. Unfortunately, current knowledge about free-ranging juveniles is fragmentary. Under field conditions, young tortoises are very secretive, they remain sheltered beneath bushes, and they escape capture. The resulting lack of information impairs the assessment of key parameters such as juvenile survival, habitat use, or recruitment rate and thus seriously impedes both accurate population viability analyses and conservation planning. Large-scale monitoring of different populations of a threatened species (Testudo hermanni hermanni) confirmed that juveniles are rarely seen in the field. In 2011, we placed corrugated fibrocement slabs as alternative refuges for small tortoises in a densely vegetated study site. Many juveniles sheltered under the space offered by the corrugations; consequently they were easily captured and recaptured. Our results suggest that this simple technique may significantly improve the detectability of juveniles, providing access to the life history traits of this otherwise elusive age cohort. The slabs also provide protection against predators (such as dogs and birds) which further suggests that these refuges may also improve the survival of the smallest and most vulnerable individuals.

Factors Influencing Schoolchildren's Responses to a Questionnaire in Wildlife Conservation Education

Questionnaires are important tools for assessing attitudes regarding conservation issues. However, they are not easily comparable and their reliability has been insufficiently assessed. We examined factors influencing responses to open- and closed-ended questions about animal conservation to more than 600 schoolchildren (9 years old on average). We analysed the level of understanding, controllable (e.g. sample size) and less controllable factors (e.g. affectivity). Most children responded appropriately to the questions, but subtle changes in the phrasing influenced the answers. Affectivity towards endearing species and spontaneity also influenced the responses whereas small sample sizes (∼50 children) provided relatively stable patterns. Overall, we suggest that standardization of questionnaires administered over large spatial and time scales is needed to accurately assess childrens attitudes towards conservation issues.

Body condition and habitat use by Hermann's tortoises in burnt and intact habitats.

Herman tortoises can maintain their mean body condition in similar range of inter-annual variations in severely burnt versus intact habitats. Therefore, burnt areas provide sufficient food, shelter, and thermally buffered habitats to meet the eco-physiological requirements of the tortoises. Burnt habitats are thus suitable for population reinforcement programs.

Artificial water ponds and camera trapping of tortoises, and other vertebrates, in a dry Mediterranean landscape

Abstract Context. Mediterranean areas offer a mosaic of favourable microhabitats to reptiles (e.g. open zones, thorny bushes) and are considered as biodiversity hotspots for these organisms. However, in these dry and hot environments, reptiles remain sheltered most of the time. They generally escape observation, posing difficulties to perform inventories. Trap sampling or rock-turning surveys commonly used to detect reptiles entail important logistical constraints, may perturb fragile microhabitats, and are not appropriate for chelonians. Alternative simple and cost-effective methods are desired. Aims. We tested the efficiency of camera trapping in a dry Mediterranean landscape, notably to detect threatened Hermann’s tortoises. We tested whether small artificial freshwater ponds could attract animals in the field of view of the cameras to increase detectability. We also tested whether sand tracks survey around ponds could improve the method. Methods. We used a small number of cameras with ponds (5 in 2011, 7 in 2012), thereby maintaining low logistical costs. We randomly filled three ponds and emptied three ponds every 7 days. We set the time-lapse function of each camera with an interval of 5 min and inspected the sand tracks every 2 or 3 days. We used information from 39 radio-tracked tortoises to better estimate the detectability performances of the camera–pond system. Key results. This technique was effective to detect tortoises (n = 348 observations) and five other reptiles (among the 11 species present in the study area). Large numbers of birds and mammals were observed (n = 4232, n = 43 species at least), thereby increasing the biodiversity list of the surveyed area. We detected 28% of the radio-tracked tortoises present in the monitored area. Filled ponds were more attractive and sand track survey completed camera monitoring. Conclusions. Camera trapping associated with small ponds represent a useful tool to perform rapid inventories of the fauna in Mediterranean habitats, especially to detect the emblematic Hermann’s tortoise and other cryptic reptiles (e.g. snakes). Implications. The low cost–efficiency ratio of this method allows performing multiple counting surveys, and thus may help collect robust data necessary to justify the protection of key habitats that are coveted by property developers.

Sex-specific ecophysiological responses to environmental fluctuations of free-ranging Hermann's tortoises: implication for conservation

We assessed the range of variation of physiological indicators (e.g. glucocorticoid) and movements in the endangered Hermanns tortoises. The findings provide sex-specific seasonal baselines that can be used to monitor the health status of tortoises facing environmental threats or during conservation actions (e.g. translocation).