Recognition for Australian Reptile Park's Venom Section

The Australasian Society of Zoo Keeping (ASZK) has presented the Australian Reptile Park's Venom Section with the prestigious Heidi Hellingman Award.

The award, presented at the recent ASZK conference in Auckland, recognises professional achievement in the zoo industry.

The Australian Reptile Park has supplied terrestrial snake venoms to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL) for over sixty years. During this period approximately 10,000 snakebite victims in Australia and New Guinea received the life-saving CSL anti-venoms - which are widely regarded as being among the best in the world.

The venom of tiger snakes, taipans, death adders, browns and king browns is an essential ingredient of CSL's snake anti-venom production and the Park continues to maintain a large collection of over 200 dangerously venomous snakes.

In the past twelve months, a very different technique has been employed to extract venom from snakes.

The narrow tip of a suitable pipette is carefully placed over a fang and in doing so, presses against the tissue surrounding the fang. This triggers a contraction of the venom gland and delivers venom into the pipette.

This method has proven to be highly successful in collecting significantly higher amounts of venom each time a snake is 'milked' compared to the previous glass vial method.

By collecting venom in a more efficient method, more venom is extracted, and more life saving anti-venom can be produced.

Currently there are over 2,000 bites every year in Australia, with approximately three hundred receiving anti-venom many of whom would have died without it.

Today, after more than half a century in the venom production business, the Australian Reptile Park is the sole-provider of terrestrial snake venoms to CSL.

Australian Reptile Park Marketing Manager Libby Bain explains "we don't produce venom for any other commercial purpose, and therefore do not aspire to produce significant profits from the work.

"However, we do gain a considerable amount of satisfaction from the knowledge that the work contributes to the production of life-saving medicines that are relied upon by hundreds of patients in Australia and New Guinea every year.

"Our dedicated keepers continue to improve new techniques that help save more lives and work more effectively."

For more details go to www.reptilepark.com.au

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