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December 2023 - a recap

As the year rapidly comes to an end, we are busy finishing up with equipment orders being shipped around Africa and had our last public courses this past weekend. We still have a few corporate training sessions this week before taking a break for the festive season holidays. 2023 has been an incredibly busy year for us and it is great to see an increasing interest in snakes. More people are overcoming their fears, and myths and superstitions around these misunderstood animals are being crushed with each awareness session. On top of this, the number of people offering to remove and relocate problem snakes around the country is on the rise. In the past most snakes would have been hit with a spade or stick, but are now being relocated to suitable habitat by trained individuals. The increase in snake awareness certainly helps in the conservation of snakes and we are building a strong snake-loving community in southern Africa.

This year alone, our social media following has grown to over a million people. These pages and groups are great as they offer enthusiasts the chance to familiarize themselves with a plethora of species from all over southern Africa. It also allows people to see colour variations and learn the differences within a species. The selection of profiles for snakes (122 southern African and 39 African), spiders (18 common species) and scorpions (44 species) are readily available on our website, Facebook page and our free ASI app ASI Snakes. These are commonly shared on social media pages to provide additional information per species.

The monthly ASI Newsletter goes out to over 80 000 people and covers an array of factually accurate topics from medical information pertaining to snakebite, to snake behavior, easily confused species and awareness on snake encounters. Past newsletters are converted into articles and are available on the ASI website. These newsletters are also sent to several corporate sites across Africa.

We write free articles for a multitude of magazines including Farmers Weekly, Adventure Afrika, Kruger2Canyon, WildlifeCampus, Go Magazine, The Mozambique Cattleman Magazine, Mining Weekly and the list goes on. If you work with a publication and would like an article on snakes, feel free to drop us an email on snakes@asiorg.co.za.

Our popular Snake Awareness, First Aid for Snakebite and Venomous Snake Handling course was attended by close on 3000 people this year. This course covers the theory and awareness around snakes, spiders, and scorpions as well as many other venomous animals and also focuses on the medical aspects of snakes and snakebite. The venomous snake handling sessions teach the basics in safe snake removal and equips delegates with the correct and safest protocols for snake handling. The more advanced Bootcamp and Advanced snake handling courses were attended by over 260 people and allows delegates the opportunity to improve on their skills and get a full day of practical experience. This includes more advanced techniques in snake handling as well as real-life scenarios where snakes are hidden in an old building and the delegates need to navigate the removal utilizing all the skills they have learnt.  

Some of the 3000 delegates trained this year.

The popular kids’ snake awareness course was hosted in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg throughout the year and was attended by over 300 future snake rescuers. These courses cover safety around snakes with show-and-tell of a selection of reptile species and allow interaction and touching of some of the pet snakes. This course is a must for any child with a passion for nature and especially snakes and other reptiles.

Velcro the Rock Monitor is one of the animals on the Cape Kids Course.

We currently have a selection of online courses for snake identification and awareness. These courses range from understanding the diversity of snakes in southern Africa to a more advanced course looking at problematic groups and tricky to identify species such as the medically important snakes, green snakes, small black snakes and variety of sand and grass snakes in southern Africa. If you are interested in improving your snake identification skills, these courses are available on our website. We offer these courses for free to a number of universities through the African Snakebite Institute Foundation, encouraging the future generations of potential herpetologists.

Johan was busy this year with a selection of talks, largely to doctors and medical students including the 13th Annual East African Snakebite Conference, a talk on Medtalkz that had close on 1,000 medical professionals, Remax estate agents in the Cape and multiple talks at Safari Outdoor branches across the country.

One of Johan's free talks presented this year.

Our range of snake handling equipment has increased over the years as we develop and perfect the safest protocols for handling snakes. We are the largest manufacturer of quality snake handling and safety equipment in Africa. This year we manufactured and shipped close on 2,000 snake tongs and 1,000 snake hooks. Our huge range of snake gaiters were supplied to over 2150 people, largely on corporate sites across Africa. This type of equipment wasn’t easily available in southern Africa ten years ago and it is amazing and encouraging to see more and more people use correct and safe equipment when dealing with snakes.  

A selection of the our snake tongs.

The free ASI Snakes app had over 50 000 downloads this year alone, increasing the total number to just under 300 000. There are currently over 800 permitted snake removers listed on the app, making it easy to find a local snake catcher in your area. If you are a competent snake handler and have the time, consider signing up as a snake rescuer on the app and assist your neighbors and community with problem snake removal.

Lastly, we would like to thank everyone who supports us and helps with snake conservation in Africa. We are slowly making progress towards making people aware of these animals and it is great to see problem snakes being removed instead of being killed. We wish you all a happy and safe festive season and look forward to another busy year in 2024.

The FREE ASI Snakes app has over 295 000 users!

If you're interested in learning more about snakes, snakebite and finding the contact details of the local snake remover in your area, then this is the app for you.

The app includes Snake Profiles, Easy ID's, Snake Posters, quizzes, a section to submit a photo for identification, First Aid for Snakebite as well as medical info for Snakebite. And a list of over 700+ snake removers - country wide.

If you don't have it yet, get the app here: http://bit.ly/snakebiteappit's FREE!

Join us at the Xmas Reptile Expo at Emperors Palace on the 16^th of December 2023 – to stock up on last minute stocking fillers for the nature enthusiasts in your life.

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Johan Marais
African Snakebite Institute | +27 82 494 2039
E-mail johan@asiorg.co.za 
Find out more at www.africansnakebiteinstitute.com

Johan Marais is the author of various books on reptiles including the best-seller A Complete Guide to Snakes of Southern Africa. He is a popular public speaker and offers a variety of courses including Snake Awareness, Scorpion Awareness and Venomous Snake Handling. Johan is accredited by the International Society of Zoological Sciences (ISZS) and is a FGASA (Field Guides Association of Southern Africa) and SASTM (South African Society of Travel Medicine)-approved service provider. His courses are also accredited by the HPCSA (Health Professions Council of South Africa). Johan is a qualified instructor for the Emergency Care & Safety Institute in Oxygen Administration and Wilderness First Aid and a qualified Basic Life Support instructor.
 

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