Green Hands USA: America Volunteers

With your help, the Center for Snake Conservation will be able to document every snake species found in North America.

Snake enthusiasts and other citizen scientists are invited to spend an hour, a day or even a week in the field this May and September to help document the status and distribution of the 295 or so snake species and subspecies in the U.S., as well as additional species in Canada and Mexico.

"In order to ensure that appropriate and adequate conservation efforts are applied to snakes, we need to understand more about them and where they occur," said Center for Snake Conservation founder Cameron A. Young. "The 2011 fall snake count was a huge success and we intend to keep growing in 2012 and the future with counts both in the spring and fall."

The data collected during the Snake Count will be used by the CSC to map the current snake distributions of snakes in the United States. Specific locality information for snakes will not be made available to the public in order to ensure that rare species remain protected in the wild.

 You can sign up for the 2012 Snake Count -- or volunteer to be a regional or state coordinator -- here.