Although often promoted as events that will generate money for local civic causes, rattlesnake roundups primarily benefit their organizers and corporate sponsors. Organizers claim that roundups help rid range and timberlands of a threat to humans and livestock, but this rationale has been amply refuted by physicians, biologists, and veterinarians who have conducted studies that show that the number of livestock deaths from rattlesnake bites is negligible, and that, instead of ridding humans of a dangerous pest, rattlesnake roundups actually increase the number of humans bitten. Rattlesnake roundups promote unhealthy, and potentially dangerous, attitudes toward wildlife. Such activities are more accurately described as reckless personal endangerment at the expense of the animal victims, a healthy ecosystem, and the public good. For many, if not most, rattlesnake roundups, snakes are driven out of their hiding places with gasoline, stored in unhygienic conditions without water or food, and packed tightly into containers for transport to and display at roundups.
Many snakes arrive at roundups crushed to death, dehydrated, or starved.
Those that survive may be used in cruel public demonstrations and daredevil acts and are eventually decapitated, an inefficient and cruel method of slaughter for reptiles. Many herpetologists believe that the first decade of the 21st century will decide the fate of several species of rattlesnakes. We must act now to save remaining rattlesnake populations and gather the knowledge necessary for the development of long-term management strategies. Several species of rattlesnakes could become extinct just as we are beginning to understand their ecological importance. Despite the fact that rattlesnake roundups constitute one of the greatest threats to wildlife in the United States and teach damaging ecological practices as well as cruelty, widespread prejudice against rattlesnakes enables unregulated exploitation of them to continue unchallenged.