It's inarguable that…

It's inarguable that development and persecution of this species will continue as long as people are permitted in their habitat, since the majority of people are swayed by decades or centuries of Christianity or Disney into thinking snakes are evil, rather than simply another animal we share this earth with. Too many cottagers (and those who live year-round in Massasauga country) swiftly eliminate them the second they see them out of ignorance and fear, since there's no IQ test required to have a cottage in an area, let alone permanently live near these much-maligned animals. The government needs to both actively conduct, and actively/passively support others with, the mass education of both grown-ups and children alike, across the province, about how unnecessary it is to persecute these and other snakes, and how patently ignorant it is to turn up your nose at wildlife conservation as something only 'tree-huggers' or 'environmentalists' do. People tend to only know what they're taught. Time I was forced to spend learning folk-dancing in highschool was time I could have better spent learning about local and provincial conservation issues and ecological concepts/paradigms. After having been on a number of projects that took place in Massasauga country, I've seen the extensive damage that even one single ignorant construction worker can wreak on a local population of Massasauga; the work culture of any development site is that it isn't their job to have to take any part in conserving a thing and anyone or anything that tells them otherwise can't do anything about it (*cough* e.g. Lake Huron wind power development 'contractors' *cough*). A sea change is needed. People will continue to do something as long as they are not punished for it; that's just human nature. It CAN also be human nature to look at something differently or at least act differently when presented with the option of doing so, and provided incentive to do so - i.e. maybe whichever contractor/worker finds the most live Massasauga on a site or saves the most within a work season wins a paid day off (or something better, but you get the idea)...

The following should be a legal mandate and requirement for ANY and ALL contractors working on any development that takes place within the range of Massasauga, especially where they are KNOWN to occur but of course also where they are *likely* to occur, and regardless of who their employer is (self-employed, privately employed, or municipal/provincial/federal employer):
(prior to and during the development of ANY and ALL land development projects or projects that involve altering, destroying, degrading the land either temporarily or permanently; and this could be accomplished in a simple single-day mandatory workshop where people are PHYSICALLY engaged in the learning and not just handed a pamphlet):
- be formally trained/educated on how to identify a Massasauga and other Ontario snakes;
- be formally trained/educated on what their legal requirements are, as employers and employees;
- be formally trained/educated on examining both the moral and professional integrity-related implications of negative actions - such as "only weaselly losers bully any kind of wildlife", and "only a brain donor would justify killing something by saying it was because they "don't like it" or think it's ugly or were 'scared', or were 'pretending to do the public a favour'"
- be formally trained/educated on the multiple options available to them if or when they encounter a Massasauga on or near the work site (or anywhere, for that matter) - options that DO NOT result in the Massasauga getting hurt or killed, but instead left alone or relocated safely and humanely to a safer area by trained personnel.
- that any individual or company who harms a Massasauga purposefully, or harms them through lack of available preventative action (like the gutter-ball who said 'screw off' to the wildlife inventory staff who were surveying for SAR for a particular wind power project, and then he went ahead and detonated explosives in that area without letting them examine it first as per both their suggestion and requirement, resulting in a half-dozen Massasauga being found killed in the blast zone), is both fired and punitively heavily FINED, and for the love of GOD have the funds from those fines be put towards not only Massasauga conservation efforts but site reparations as well, instead of pathetic, paltry fines that don't even cover the administrative costs of levying the fine and enforcement in the first place.

- another thing - conservation is HURTING for money, but loads of people and companies and organizations are making huge sums of money by habitat destruction with little to no requirement for restoration. Of course development is going to continue; but it is only political will that prevents it from proceeding in ways that are at least slightly less damaging or at least easier to repair. Currently, they are at BEST encouraged to do 'mitigation' (read: it's okay to leave something worse off), but also there is no follow-up to determine whether they actually followed through on any environmental mitigation recommendations, and there are no penalties if they didn't follow through - and yet we continue to witness literally hundreds of species everywhere continue to decline. Like wondering why there's so much smoke while we're putting wood on the fire. Each work site should at minimum have some trained staff separate from the employer working the site to monitor actions and report violations, and there needs to be political will to ENFORCE PENALTIES against those companies who commit violations. Make it expensive to do wrong, so that it's cheaper to do things in a way that still permits development but doesn't do more harm than it has to. Currently, the fines are laughable and considered to be worth the cost of doing business. Judges, please, levy enormous fines, and have those fines go towards things like land purchases for conservation, not-for-profit wildlife trauma care centres, installing roadkill mitigation fencing, building underpasses and overpasses, training and educating the workers and public, signage, invasive species management efforts, and for Pete's sake, also put towards covering the costs of enforcement so that you can provide your own economic incentive to enforce the law.