Chuck Hurd with a cobra
The giant trees of the forest sway together like a pendulum with fall’s cloudy whispering winds. Once shiny green leaves now fade orange, ruby red, and gold, loosening from branches, then gracefully twirl down to Earth. The waiving tree canopies hiss goodbye as fall rains pour from the heavens and stream down Chattanooga’s streets. Piles of dropped leaves crumble back into fertile soils.
As the season shifts into Halloween, we remember the summer loss of pioneer herpetologist of Chattanooga, Mr. Samuel Charles “Chuck” Hurd, a strong gentleman whose roots grew deep in the south and shared secrets about wildlife that spread in all directions, uninhibited by country borders. For decades Chuck educated thousands of people about the importance of conserving reptiles, especially ones with venom to digest rodents, and how to properly keep and breed as healthy exhibiting aquariums to enable humans especially city kids, to easily observe, learn about, and grow an appreciation for.
A herpetologist is someone who studies and teaches others about reptiles and amphibians and how they have persisted on our planet for millions of years since the reign of the dinosaurs. Chuck was also a wrestler and held over 20 plus championships on the southeastern independent circuit.
In the late 1980's and early 1990's Chuck worked at the Reflection Riding Nature Center rehabilitating car struck turtles, shotgunned snakes, cat attacked lizards, dogged down raccoons, one eyed owls and broken hawks. No creature was turned down by Chuck Hurd. During this time, rehabbed turtles were given to children and adults, to learn how to nurture and care for properly in captivity (husbandry) and become real world wildlife conservationists through personal hands on contact. Chuck studied at UTC and moved on to help build reptile exhibits at zoos and aquariums across the country.
Many of Chuck’s reptiles were the first educational reptile exhibits at zoos, nature centers and aquariums nationwide. Their scaled alien bodies and forked tongued progeny can still be seen today. Chuck was blessed with a gift to relax the animal to handle and limit stress, so people could spend adequate time enjoying personal life changing encounters. Wolves and mountain lions included. Private citizens have bred both in captivity for hundreds of years, though modern rhetoric discounts their efforts as inhumane and wrong.
Educating people through hands on interactions with reptiles was Chuck’s passion. Though, like the success story of the American Alligator, Chuck stressed the importance of capable private citizens breeding raring reptiles away from extinctions, first, before a burgeoning government tries listing it under the federal Endangered Species Act, takes credit for breeding it in captivity to generate more specimens to grow and eventually release in the wild, and criminalizes and jails anyone else breeding, exhibiting, or keeping as a pet.
Chuck often spoke of the alligator snapping turtle (Macrochelys temminnckii), North America’s largest freshwater turtle that can weigh 300 pounds and live more than 80 years. For the last 30 years, researchers and state governments have depicted the alligator snapper as needing federal protection based on shocking hearsay information, largely historic human consumption of its meat. But in reality today, this hardy turtle lives in healthy breeding populations in rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from Texas to Florida, even in megacity downtown bayous in Houston and Dallas, Texas. Females lay 10-30 eggs per year, and the giant turtle has been bred by private citizens as pets for the last 20 years. And bred unintentionally at the Tennessee Aquarium in the 1990's, that hatched hundreds of babies because males would not stop publicly copulating females in the Delta exhibit’s cypress swamp.
However many academics refuse to acknowledge, and they push all turtles deserve protection and should not be bred as pets, because they are slow growing, late to reach sexual maturity in life (15-18 years) and are exported to China as food by the millions.
Such individuals prey on the uninformed, confusing millions of captive bred hatchlings produced at legal turtle farms in the deep south as wild caught, and cite turtle population studies from the frigid Canadian border where everything grows slower, a stark contrast to the near tropical climate of the South where turtles grow fast and reach maturity much sooner (four to eight years) since they forage, eat and breed constantly. While all cultures have long consumed turtle meat, in truth Asians adore turtles as pets, a symbol of goodwill and longevity.
Often in Asia, endemic turtles are collected by locals before a forest is clearcut and the turtles intercepted by wildlife officials touting another illegal harvest to supply the commercial pet trade.
Chuck would explain part of the problem was the 2000's brought impatience, instant gratification and quick judgment of social media, misleading a new generation to believe physical interactions with any animal aside from a dog or cat is taboo. Ironically, these are some of the most invasive species on the planet that are documented causing population depletions by raiding turtle eggs, killing lizards, snakes, birds and small mammals.
Social media now broadcasts anti pet reptile headlines crafted to cause knee jerk reactions, anger, even hate.
So was born a slew of animal education competitors misinforming the public, seeking fame and donations crying their institution was the first to breed a rare reptile species in captivity, not Chuck Hurd. “Donate now!” Even your inheritance, to help battle the sensational “Endangered Species Crisis,” of the early 1970s, even if the animal is not really endangered of becoming extinct. Egos selling doom were hurt by Chuck’s success and discredited him as an outlaw, though deep down inside, they sought to be the only ones to rehabilitate, exhibit and play with today’s living dinosaurs.
Chuck’s hands on contact with the scalies, especially the misunderstood frightening fanged serpents, became low hanging fruit to ridicule and annihilate, since it seems there must always be a bad guy to blame in the narrative of protecting endangered species, even if one really does not exist. Man’s innate fear of snakes was exploited as superdangerous, yet domesticated dogs, bees and wasps kill more humans per year. Legal animal exhibits were suddenly twisted as illegal and facilitating a dramatic “black market wildlife trade.”
Chuck became a target and vilified. His critics slammed him for posing with pictures of animals he bred or nurtured back to life, because it was against their policy to teach children touching an uncommon exotic animal was not okay. Later, many of Chuck’s cherished tame reptiles were ripped away from his life, confiscated and kept at zoos or destroyed by the government in the name of “public safety” or as an “invasive species,” much like the hyperbole of the pythons and monitor lizards in the Everglades that in reality will never populate above north Florida for freezing to death.
So Chuck moved away from Chattanooga to educate, and breed his snakes and turtles elsewhere, where profiteering animal extremists had not yet taken over duping governments to ban the private breeding and exhibition of reptiles, especially venomous serpents classified as exotic animals.
For the last several years, every day, Chuck battled health problems requiring dialysis. Yet, he humbly continued to educate us about the beasts that slither and blood runs cold. He never doubted the Creator when his time came to return to the earth, eventually passing away on June 24 in Gate City, Va. Chuck was born on May 4, 1972 in Lebanon, Va. He loved his mother dearly, often commenting how good she was to him.
What a trooper Chuck was, tolerating today’s prejudices against keeping and breeding reptiles for educational purposes. Fortunately, many old school dude and lady herpers have picked up Chuck’s burning torch, to bravely carry high in the air, and speak accurately to others to keep personal contact with the scalies, alive.
Chuck’s smiling spirit for the animals lives on. For all the creatures you saved and brought back to life, for the people you rehabilitated and connected to the Natural World, we deeply thank you Mr. Chuck Hurd, the speaker for the animals.
Tim Lunsford and Chris Jones
Chuck Hurd with a Macrochelys temminckii alligator snapping turtle