Snakes Alive! 2010: Another Great Success!

The ACTHA President and Treasurer have both written short pieces on the continued success of Snakes Alive! in 2010.  Click on 'Read More' below to read their summaries and see articles from the Canberra Times related to the event.  Also, be sure to read the February - March 2010 Newsletter for a vast amount of information on Snakes Alive! and other herpetological matters!

Photographs by Mandy Conway

From the President

Well there it is, Snakes Alive! Exhibition 2010 done and dusted for another year. Many people have been asking me “how did it go, was it successful and did you get more people than last year?”.

I found myself repeating the same answers over and over again. Now that I have had time to think about the success of the Exhibition, I’d probably provide a few different responses. Let me ask you what a successful exhibition is and what that means to the Association. Our life member Ric Longmore first conceived Snakes Alive! back in 1987. If we were able to go back to 1987 and tell Ric that this concept would provide a herpetological association with funds to further herpetofauna research and conservation, he’d probably think we’d had our head in the ethanol drum for too long…….or not long enough!

“I’m very proud that a bunch of like‐minded volunteers can get together once a year, run a truly awesome event for a whole week and raise some modest funds along the way. It is even more satisfying knowing that ACTHA is dedicated to channelling these funds straight into research, education and/or conservation of herpetofauna. This is something that ACTHA and every one of its members can and should be proud of. It places our little organisation on a mantle all of its own and if I could give all our volunteers and the Association a medal, I would.”

So back to that ever echoing question, was it successful? Well we did meet all of our objectives: raising funds, herpetofauna awareness and education, and for the first time we were able to go one step further and increase the presence of our local herpetofauna.

I was pleased and somewhat surprised how our visitors received them. Standing beside our skink display and hearing people talk about the reptiles in their backyard or hearing them say, “oh so that’s what that lizard is” was a real conversation starter. As a result, many of our visitors this year took home that little extra something, an appreciation for some of the common reptiles found in our region and a deeper understanding of about them, their habitat and the part they play in the ecosystem.

So that word ‘success’, to me, is not just what boxes we tick but how we go about doing it that brings added value to the exhibition. The result will also mean that another round of grants relating to herpetological research will be offered in 2010.

Joe McAuliffe - ACTHA President

From the Treasurer

4139 people passed through the doors of Snakes Alive this year which was an increase in attendance for the second year running, though it was still well below the record numbers of 5136 set in 2006 when Environment ACT permitted us to display Corroboree Frogs for the first time. Although numbers at the door only rose by 25 people from the previous year, our overall takings (door entry, merchandise and raffle proceeds) rose by $700, totally due to a superb effort on the raffle ticket sales which increased by over 50%.

In fact, it was a roller coaster of a week! By close of business on the Wednesday, after three days of record attendance compared with the previous year, we were optimistic that we would definitely achieve good numbers. However we are always at the mercy of the weather during our January week, and subsequent successive days of 36, 38 and 37 degrees, put paid to that. However, a cooler day of 30 degrees on the Sunday enabled us to just fall over the line re numbers. Of course, another factor that seriously affects numbers, is publicity, and we were very lucky with both TV and particularly newspaper coverage for most of the week. The life and death struggle of the brown snake and water dragon in a pond at the Gardens a few days prior to Snakes Alive, which was reported in the Canberra Times on the preceeding Sunday, was an especially fortuitous occurrence for us, but not for the dragon!!!

Our volunteer base was similar to last year, with respectable numbers of younger and more mature ACTHA members turning up day after day to do their thing, educating our visitors and spreading the herpetological word. Once again, due to everyone's marvelous efforts, ACTHA will be in a position to donate large sums to Corroboree Frog research/breeding programs, and to some local post-graduate students towards their herpetological studies.

Well done everyone - it's another year we can all be proud of.

Margaret Ning - ACTHA Treasurer

Attachments:

File	File size
Fingers Proves to be One Cool Customer (Canerra Times 2010)	205 Kb
In Cold Blood - Nature Red in Fang and Claw (Canberra Times 2010)	187 Kb