Best places to find snakes in central South Carolina?

[jasonhernandez74]

@Birdraghu-youtube

I thought the user should ask the questions asked by me to himself/herself and take right decision in this regard.

Based on some other threads, these questions seem entirely reasonable. Consider some things that have been said in other threads:

@franheartslepidus

To the people saying herpers are the problem and not inat. You are correct about one thing, herpers are 100% a problem. Many people don’t know how to ethically look for animals and it can end up in habitat destruction and increased poaching in popular areas.

@charlie

And… outside the iNat community, i have encountered some very extreme views on ‘geoprivacy’ from some herper types who um, probably shouldn’t hvae those locations themselves. They were very secretive about these populations and i DO think we should obscure herps at risk of poaching at least in some cases but… without knowing where there secret populations are how do we deal with the huge elephant in this room which is SOME OF THE HERPERS POACH and the same is true for orchid lovers, etc etc.

@diego_amazonia

I compiled observations of wildlife tourism activities in Peru and the nearby borders that I believe need to be changed. These include wildlife selfies, capturing wild animals just for selfies (this is quite controversial, specially for herpers!), and feeding wildlife (feeders).

@mmmmbugs

was in a Maryland DNR webinar the other day where we were warned about posting pictures of snakes online- since illegal collectors can mine our sites to find new localities to pick up snakes and amphibians.

@swampster

Not specific to iNat, but I know of two cases of illegal pet traders using geotags on Instagram posts to find and target populations of Spotted Turtles and Reticulated Flatwoods Salamanders.

An entire thread asking Poll: is handling herps for iNat ethical?

The reality is that herping is a fraught issue because, unlike birds and mammals, many herps are easily captured. How many of us as kids used to take home turtles for “pets,” not knowing any better, because they were easy to catch and seemed cool to have?