Aerial photo showing eastern massasauga habitat, including the restoration area, along the lower Chippewa River bottoms in Buffalo County, Wisconsin. - Photo by Kris Johansen, Wisconsin DNR

The Green Bay ES Field Office worked with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource (DNR) on a 20 acre habitat restoration project for the eastern massasauga rattlesnake (EMR) in the State’s Tiffany Wildlife Area located in the lower Chippewa River bottoms, Buffalo County, Wisconsin. 

In March of 2007, about 10 acres of wooded habitat was opened up and another 10 acres re-brushed to provide a contiguous early successional habitat for the snake totaling about 40 acres and looking close to what was present at the site in the 1950’s. 

The EMR is a Federal candidate species known only from five sites in Wisconsin.  The lower Chippewa River bottoms supports the best remaining population of the snake in the state.  This effort is part of a larger partnership effort by the Service’s ES Green Bay Field Office, the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, and the Wisconsin DNR to restore and maintain a viable population of EMRs in the lower Chippewa River bottoms.  

Staff from Necedah NWR are also contributing to this effort. More open river bottom habitats provide good basking and resting places for EMRs, especially gravid females.