Michael Brennan
Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia
November 2026
Introduction
Habitat loss and fragmentation are among the leading threats to wildlife worldwide. As human development expands, natural habitats are increasingly divided into smaller, isolated patches, making it more difficult for animals to find food, shelter, mates, and suitable places to reproduce. These challenges can be particularly severe for predators, which often require extensive areas of habitat and may face conflict with people as they move through developed landscapes. Venomous snakes, including rattlesnakes, face additional challenges due to widespread fear and persecution.
The Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus adamanteus) has experienced substantial population declines throughout its range due to habitat loss, fragmentation, and human persecution. Although the species does not currently receive federal endangered species protections, it remains a conservation priority throughout much of the southeastern United States.
Jekyll Island, Georgia, provides a unique opportunity to study and conserve this species. Managed under a sustainable development model that limits development to 35% of the island, Jekyll retains substantial natural habitat for wildlife. However, development has divided suitable habitat and contributed to the isolation of eastern diamondback populations in the northern and southern portions of the island. Continued isolation raises concerns about the long-term health of these populations and their ability to remain connected.
To address these concerns, the Jekyll Island Authority is restoring habitat to create a wildlife corridor intended to reconnect these isolated populations. However, relatively little is known about how eastern diamondbacks respond to large-scale habitat restoration. Adult snakes tend to remain within familiar home ranges, suggesting that younger snakes may play a particularly important role in dispersal and population connectivity. Unfortunately, the movements and survival of newly born and juvenile eastern diamondbacks remain poorly understood because their small size makes them difficult to track using traditional technology.
Through our partnership with the Jekyll Island Authority, we are studying eastern diamondbacks across different life stages while developing new tools to monitor their movements. Our goal is to better understand their habitat requirements, identify factors influencing their survival and dispersal, and evaluate how effectively restored habitat can support wildlife populations.
Methods
Neonate movement and survival: We are using small Bluetooth tracking devices to monitor newborn eastern diamondbacks, allowing us to follow individuals that would otherwise be difficult to track using conventional radio transmitters. By monitoring snakes from multiple litters, we can document their movements away from their birth sites, identify habitat use, and estimate survival during their first year of life. These data will help us understand how young snakes disperse and contribute to population connectivity, as well as identify potential challenges during this particularly vulnerable life stage.
Adult Movement and Habitat Use
We are monitoring adult eastern diamondbacks using traditional telemetry alongside automated tracking technologies. Traditional telemetry requires researchers to physically locate individual snakes using handheld receivers, while automated tracking uses strategically placed receiver stations (nodes) to collect location information from tagged animals. We have installed a node grid within Jekyll Island’s dune habitat to evaluate how effectively this technology can monitor ground-dwelling wildlife. The system can potentially provide locations every five seconds, offering substantially greater detail about animal movements than traditional tracking methods. Testing the system in dune habitats will help us understand how factors such as vegetation density and terrain influence detection and determine how effectively automated tracking can be used for long-term wildlife monitoring.
Preliminary Results
To date, we have tracked 28 eastern diamondback neonates from six different litters using Bluetooth technology. Early findings suggest that neonate movements may be more limited than previously expected, with individuals traveling approximately 50–250 meters from their birth sites during their first active season. Survival has varied considerably among litters, ranging from 0% to 80% before winter. Overall, approximately 33% of monitored neonates survived through this period. Although preliminary, these findings highlight the challenges young snakes face during their first year of life. Historical mark-recapture data from Jekyll Island suggest that only approximately 1% of marked neonates are eventually recaptured as adults, illustrating the substantial mortality that occurs between birth and adulthood. Continued monitoring will help us better understand early-life movement and survival and identify potential factors influencing recruitment into the adult population.
Our automated tracking system has also demonstrated considerable promise for monitoring rattlesnakes and other ground-dwelling wildlife. Although dense vegetation and changes in terrain can reduce detection effectiveness, the system generates orders of magnitude more spatial data than traditional telemetry while requiring only a fraction of the time and effort. Beyond simply recording locations, its increased sampling frequency allows us to examine how often snakes move and better understand their activity patterns. These early results demonstrate the potential for automated tracking to improve wildlife monitoring, particularly for species that are difficult and time-consuming to locate.
Meanwhile, restoration of the Jekyll Island wildlife corridor is actively underway, with native grasses being planted in late 2026. Once restoration is completed, we plan to relocate the automated tracking grid into the corridor to monitor how eastern diamondbacks and other wildlife use this newly available habitat.
This project is improving our understanding of eastern diamondback rattlesnake ecology while developing new tools to address longstanding challenges in wildlife conservation. By combining Bluetooth tracking of neonates with traditional and automated tracking of adults, we are gaining insight into life stages and behaviors that have historically been difficult to study. At the same time, we are evaluating technologies that could make long-term wildlife monitoring more efficient, detailed, and accessible to land managers. As restoration of the Jekyll Island wildlife corridor progresses, these methods will provide an opportunity to measure how wildlife responds to newly restored habitat and whether these efforts improve connectivity between previously isolated populations. Ultimately, our goal is to develop a practical framework for monitoring the success of habitat restoration, using eastern diamondbacks as a focal species while generating information that can benefit a much broader range of wildlife.