Snakes play an important role in our ecosystems and there are several threats that they face within those systems, including climate change, habitat loss and human persecution. Save The Snakes works to raise awareness and conservation action for what endangers imperiled snake species. However in recent years, we have also been facing another challenge, snakebite. After the World Health Organization declared snakebite as a neglected tropical disease in 2017, increased efforts have been placed to reduce the number of snakebite incidences, provide medical access to people that need it most and improve reporting of incidences. To better communicate these key messages, Hiral Naik joined Save The Snakes remotely from South Africa in 2018 as a social media volunteer, to share these topics on our media platforms and raise great awareness and support for our global snake conservation and snakebite mitigation efforts. In order to increase our local efforts in South Africa, in 2021 Hiral became Africa Programme Manager for Save The Snakes while based in South Africa. She started the local education initiative Snake Education and Community Awareness Program (SECAP) in partnership with Hoedspruit Reptile Centre, which continues to this day.
For the past four years, Hiral has also been doing her PhD research on snakebite and snake behaviour in South Africa, with the primary goal of investigating the circumstances that may lead to a bite and when and why snakes are behaving defensively within a South African context. Her publication on the incidence of snakebite in South Africa has recently been published in the Transactions of The Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. The paper highlights the importance of reporting incidences, including key information about the circumstances involved. This data is important to reduce snakebite incidences and aligns with our goals at Save The Snakes to mitigate human-snake conflict. Hiral also conducted behavioural experiments on medically important venomous snakes, including black mambas, puff adders, snouted and Mozambique spitting cobras to assess their behaviour when presented with a threat. The snakes showed much tolerance, only striking to defend themselves when absolutely necessary. This research is invaluable to better understand the behaviour of snakes in relation to humans.
Hiral has completed her PhD and is now our Research and Conservation Manager. In this new position she will assist Save The Snakes in achieving our goals in mitigating human-snake conflict and promoting coexistence around the world. Through her research and conservation experience, we aim to create an improved education model to communicate the importance of snakes. We will be using our network of snake conservationists and supporters to cultivate a culture of coexistence with snakes through targeted strategies and deepen our conservation impact with tangible results.
We are excited to have Dr. Hiral on board and look forward to improving our conservation efforts.
