Turns out fears of encountering anything truly creepy or crawly at the Lehigh Portland Trails are wildly overblown, as a group of nature enthusiasts discovered Saturday.
Throngs of visitors were in search of all things reptilian during the Kansas Herpetological Society’s spring field trip to Allen County.
Roughly 250 naturalists of all ages, from preschool to adult, combed areas in and around Iola and Humboldt Saturday and Sunday.
The centerpiece, Saturday’s field trip to what will become Lehigh Portland State Park, featured a number of discoveries, including a few snakes and amphibians, but nothing that should give outdoorsmen pause when deciding whether to spend some time on the trail.
“That’s what’s great about having this many people out here,” noted Travis Taggart, a Humboldt native and the field trip’s unofficial leader. “We’re gonna find so much more than you would by yourself.”
Taggart is a herpetologist expert at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History and a longtime member of the KHS, which has met as a group at pretty much every county in the state since 1974, but never in Allen County.
“I’ve wanted to have a field trip out here for a long time,” Taggart said. “But Allen County doesn’t have that much public land, and it’s hard to get groups of this many people if you don’t have the space.”
That has changed now that the Lehigh Portland grounds have been tapped as Kansas’s newest state park, with the changeover from private land to public property set to become official sometime this summer.
The visitors broke off into dozens of smaller groups, combing various parts of the 360-plus acres, with many setting off through the 14 miles of hiking and biking trails, and others focusing their search along the shores of the quarry formerly known as Elks Lake.
The KHS members included a number of school groups, with folks from across the state, with many Kansas City and Topeka areas, and others from Missouri and even Arkansas taking part in the excursion.
There were few, if any, surprises, but still plenty of happy discoveries.
The groups found a number of harmless critters, from baby rat snakes to rough green snakes, skinks and turtles, even millipedes.
Nearly all of the groups had at least one camera on hand to document their finds, via the popular site for researchers, inaturalist.com.
The observations were documented online at inaturalist.com, a network of citizen scientists and biologists seeking to gain a greater understanding of just how many critters call areas home.
“It’s always a great turnout, and very family-oriented,” said Taggart, who while growing up in Humboldt, figured he’d turned over every rock in Allen County with the hopes of finding something scaly underneath. “The best part is these are free to the public.”
The crews camped overnight Friday and Saturday at Camp Hunter in Humboldt.
Saturday’s warm temperatures prompted many to spend the afternoons closer to the Neosho River, where they found a number of harmless water snakes.
Water snakes are responsible for one of the biggest reptilian myths in southeast Kansas, Taggart chuckled.
No, not all snakes that live in the water are poisonous water moccasins.
“There are a lot of heavy-bodied water snakes, and some may even have triangular-shaped heads that people will mistake for moccasins,” Taggart said.
In reality, the only water moccasins found in Kansas are in the extreme southeast corner, near Galena in the Ozark plateau.
In fact, Taggart surmised, you may have an easier time finding a needle in a haystack than finding a venomous snake on the Lehigh Portland grounds.
“I can’t guarantee it,” he said, “and conditions change, but if you had copperheads around here you’d know about it.”
Advertisement
Advertisement
