Rattlesnake Roundups: Killing Events Endanger Animals and the Environment

Robert Mendyk was the kind of kid that loved snakes, frogs and lizards. He would race home from school every day to play in the dirt and subscribed to several animal magazines to learn about species not native near his home in Long Island, New York. One day in the early 1990s, at just 11 years old, he came home, opened a reptile magazine and saw several photos that horrified him. 

“The article was about rattlesnake roundups. It was the first time I’d ever heard of them, and I remember seeing graphic pictures of decapitated rattlesnakes, guys making a spectacle out of the snakes and piles of rattlesnakes in unhealthy conditions,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it.”