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Snakes alive - but on the eve of destruction

Jessica Gorst-Williams reports on the threat to two native reptiles and Kevin Pilley visits a luxury hotel for the common grass snake 

MIND how you go when on sandy lowland heath. Put a foot wrong and you could bring the indigenous sand lizard and smooth snake a step closer to extinction.

As their habitat is trampled down by riders, bikers and hikers, charred by heath and dune fires, and swallowed up by new buildings, these two reptiles are struggling to make it to the millennium. This summer, heathland fires have been a particular problem. In June alone there were 107 fires in the triangle of hinterland around Poole, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Verwood, one of these rare creatures' few remaining heathland habitat areas.

Top of the at-risk list of British reptiles is the sand lizard. Stocky, with a deep-set head and short legs, it measures up to 22cm (8 1/2 in). Its milieu is dry heathland and coastal sand dunes dominated by marram grass. It is Britain's only egg-laying lizard and typically puts its eggs at hoof print - or bike wheel - depth (about 7cm or 3in) in exposed sand in June and July. Hatching takes between 40 and 60 days.

Many of the sand lizard's old haunts have been sucked into urban development projects or lost to agriculture or forestry.

A species recovery programme was initiated in 1994 by the Herpetological Conservation Trust, English Nature, the Countryside Council for Wales and the Worldwide Fund for Nature. This oversees the existing populations in parts of Dorset, Surrey and Merseyside and is re-establishing colonies in Hampshire, West Sussex, Devon, Cornwall and North Wales.

Sand lizards live in colonies, at best supporting 100 adults. There might now be only 6,000 adults left in Britain. Dr Keith Corbett, of the Herpetological Conservation Trust, says: "Once adult, they have no instinct to move away when things go wrong. If the land around their burrow is burned or they wake up to find everything around them is ploughed up, unlike other creatures they stay put, only retreating into their burrows. This makes them very vulnerable."

Despite this, stalking them for captive breeding has not proved easy. "When they are basking, they are camouflaged in heather or marram grass," says Corbett. "When disturbed, they will disappear into the vegetation only to emerge and peer at you from behind another clump of vegetation."

Sand lizards feed on almost all small invertebrates - beetles, wasps, shield bugs and all sorts of spiders and flies. And, as with most reptiles, they sometimes devour their own young.

The smooth snake, the other land-based indigenous reptile playing brinkmanship with extinction, is also occasionally cannibalistic. It unhelpfully has the sand lizard on its menu as well.

Heath fires pose less danger to it because of its greater mobility. While the destruction of an acre of habitat could spell disaster for the sand lizard, it would take the loss of about 20 acres to have a comparable impact on the smooth snake.

The smooth snake is harmless to humans. It is well camouflaged: its colouring tones in with mature dry heathland with a mix of heather and gorse. In England it is found only in southern counties, where there are thought to be 2,000 adults left. The chances of coming across one are slim - they spend much of their time hunting underground or hiding in thick vegetation.

Does it matter if a reptile or two become extinct? Yes, insists Dr Tony Gent of English Nature. "Everything in nature has its special place," he says. "To lose one would be like losing a piece of a jigsaw. We already have a rather poor reptile fauna, with only six species in mainland Britain, so we have a duty to ourselves to conserve them.

"We also have an international duty to do so. How can we preach to other nations about conservation if we do not look after what we are responsible for ourselves?"

J. G-W.