Media release dated August 2016.

In a world first, the dedicated workers at an Australian wildlife education company have had a new species of viper snake named in their honour.
This month Australian scientist Raymond Hoser, published a paper revealing the discovery of two new species of viper in Turkey and Greece. He named one of them Montivipera snakebustersorum in recognition of more than a decades valuable conservation work by the team at Snakebusters, Melbourne reptile shows.
Hoser said that, “Those hard working individuals on the front line of wildlife education and conservation rarely get to be honoured for their contributions and this recent act of naming a species in honour of some of these people is an important step to rectifying this situation.
The species Montivipera snakebustersorum is under threat from habitat destruction and potential pests mainly as a result of increasing human population where they occur. The political instability in the region also means that governments are not interested in conserving snakes as they are more pre-occupied with their own survival.
The paper:
"Montivipera xanthina divided and a new subgenus of Eurasian Vipers for the Vipera raddei Boettger, 1890 species group (Squamata: Serpentes: Viperidae)."
was published in Australasian Journal of Herpetology, issue 33 on 1 August this year. Details can be found here: http://www.herp.net
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