Tale from the Field: Finding the Albany Adder – Following in the footsteps of Dr John Hewitt

Alouise Lynch, Bionerds PTY Ltd

Dr John Hewitt was born in Dronfield, Derbyshire, England, on December 23, 1880. Between 1905 and 1908, he was the curator of the Sarawak Museum after studying natural sciences at Jesus College in Cambridge. In 1909, he was employed as an assistant curator at the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria, and in 1910, he was named Director of the Albany Museum in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa. He was a skilled naturalist with a deep interest in herpetology, and he described, collected, and documented many of South Africa’s frogs and toads.

My husband and I recently spent a week retracing his steps on a farm outside of Grahamstown. We visited the area where he discovered, collected, and described the Albany Adder, Bitis albanica, South Africa’s most endangered snake species.

Most of us have a “bucket list,” a list of things we want to do or see before “kicking the bucket,” as it were. Some challenges are tricky, while others are as simple as trying tripe for the first (and usually last) time. Our bucket list is as nerdy as we are, a living list of 40 species we aim to see in a specific year. Discovering a needle in a haystack seems more likely than finding some of these species in the wild!

The Albany Adder, described as the holy grail of South African dwarf adders, had only been observed in the wild 12 times by 2017. That year, we collected a crew of nerds and embarked on our quest to find this uncommon snake. The Endangered Wildlife Trust discovered two specimens in the wild on a recent study trip, and we were hoping to be as fortunate as they were. NO PRESSURE!!!! We had five days to find this snake. It was cold and windy, and we had walked a long distance by day five. We had given up. We all agreed to return to the vehicles and try again the following year. I stepped around a bush to find a little brown and grey snake with tortoiseshell scallops on its back at my feet. The excitement was so great that we almost missed the snake making a “run” for it! We had discovered an Albany Adder. Number 13 in history! It was sheer enchantment.

The size of this species takes everyone we have ever shown them to by surprise. The largest adult female Albany Adder we have found was 34.6 cm long, a bit thicker than a pencil, with an extremely aggressive bity end on one end. When you are this small, you need a temper to survive in a world where everything is out to eat you. We still do not know where they shelter, how they breed, when or where they pup, or their general primary habitat use.

The Endangered Wildlife Trust allowed us to execute a research and monitoring project on the Albany Adder in 2018. We jumped at the chance and have been working on the “Averting Extinction – saving South Africa’s Most Threatened Snake” project for the last five years. The project has not only increased the known number of specimens from 13 to 43 over five years, but we have also proven that they exist in various habitat types and are working with landowners to safeguard this species in areas where we have confirmed their occurrence. This past week was a watershed point for this project.

We eventually obtained our first confirmation of prey species – a very plump Variegated Lizard – after I gathered roadkill specimens from Addo Elephant National Park. And after many years of attempting, we finally acquired access to Dr Hewitt’s old haunts. We spent three days scoping for feasible habitat in the area where he initially discovered this beautiful species. The landowners are conservation-minded and fiercely protective of their property and its fauna, which is a great plus for us because baboon spiders and snakes are indiscriminately poached in this area. We are very excited to return to this location during their next peak activity period to see if we can rediscover this species where Dr Hewitt found the first Albany Adder.

We hope to relocate these snakes at this site. If we succeed, we can begin establishing a conservation corridor from Gqeberha to Makhanda, incorporating private nature reserves, national parks, and private farmland – affording Albany Adders and many other species and habitats long-term protection.

Thanks to People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES), Rainforest Trust, PPC, Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency (ECPTA), and Bionerds for supporting this work.