Massachusetts is planning on creating a colony of venomous timber rattlesnakes on an island in the state's largest body of water, the 30-square-mile Quabbin Reservoir, according to CBS News. Although the plan is to make the area off limits, many people are worried at the idea of having an island full of poisonous snakes slithering through the woods that will be traversed by hunters and fisherman.
Despite these fears, Tom French of the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, who is directing the project and has received numerous emails and phone calls from worried residents, believes that they are completely unfounded.
"People are afraid that we're going to put snakes in a place of public use and that they are going to breed like rabbits and spread over the countryside and kill everybody," he said.
There are currently only around 200 of the endangered snakes indigenous to Massachusetts left, all of which are scattered across five pockets ranging from greater Boston to the Berkshires. This decline in population is the result of human-caused deaths and a loss of habitat that could eventually cause the species to disappear, making the project crucial for their survival.
With Gov. Charlie Baker now on board with the project, according to CBS Boston, the project may gain more acceptance, although some hikers are still not sold. Bob Curley, who hikes regularly, believes that the preservation effort is crucial but thinks it should be done somewhere other than the Quabbin.
"When the inevitable happens and there is an interplay between a hiker and a rattler, what's the repercussion?" said Curley, who claims his dog was bitten by a rattlesnake last summer. "Are the trails around the Quabbin going to be shut down?"
However, Baker says that rattlesnakes are timid by nature and only attack when provoked, with the only documented rattlesnake deaths in Massachusetts dating back to colonial times, Sky News reports.
