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The church and a biblical symbol of Evil have been reconciled in a triumph for a former UN peacekeeper turned eco-warrior battling to save a species of snake from extinction.

Hans-Joerg Wiedl holds a blunt-nosed viper
© AFP Henghameh Fahimi

PAPHOS, Cyprus (AFP) - In the foothills of the Troodos mountain range on this Mediterranean island, the Greek Orthodox monastery of Ayios (Saint) Neophytos has given its blessing to the mission of snake guru Hans-Joerg Wiedl.

The monastery said it has decided "to ethically support" the Austrian herpetologist's work and nominate Neophytos as the "Patron Saint of the Cyprus grass snake," or natrix natrix cypriaca, a harmless but endangered species.

In concrete terms, it is conceding 2,000 square metres (more than 21,000 square feet) of land for Wiedl "to set up a herpetological park ... to breed the Cyprus grass snake and later on release the young ones into the wild".

For Wiedl, who is better known as Snake George, or "Mad George" to his detractors, the church's support marks a watershed in a 10-year struggle for official recognition of his work in his adopted homeland.

"They don't want me. I am never invited by the forestry, water or veterinary department. They don't like it that it was a foreigner who discovered everything there is to know about snakes and reptiles here," he says.

Snake George started work in 1995 on a park on a coastal road near the resort town of Paphos in southwest Cyprus, but he is being forced to relocate as the land owner wants it back.

With its sunken enclosures, running water, rocks and plants, the landscaped park has recreated the natural habitat of its captive snakes and amphibians. Now he faces the task of raising the funds to open a new and bigger snake park.

His crusade to protect the snakes of Cyprus is confronted with ignorance, prejudice, fear and often official indifference.

"Education is the only path to conservation. The people on this island think the only good snake is a dead snake," says Wiedl, whose park attracts 1,000 schoolchildren a year as part of their environmental studies.

But "even my neighbours in Paphos are killing them, even the local people who live next to my reptile park. It makes me so angry," he says.

"A lot of people don't believe that snakes are useful. They are the farmer's friend: they eat mice and rats. They do an extremely important job in keeping down the rat population.

"For example, people are still killing the young whip snakes, the number one foe of the blunt-nosed viper, the only extremely venomous snake in Cyprus, and that's why their population is growing," he explains.

But attitudes are gradually changing. "Back in the 1970s, when I first came here with the UN, newspapers and TV would show pictures of people who had killed snakes, as if they were heroes."

In 1992, he rediscovered the Cyprus grass snake in a mountain dam after no recorded sighting for decades. Snake George has since devoted himself to conserving the species.

The cause of its near demise has been the trout, introduced to Cyprus for sport-fishing after World War II, which preys on the young grass snake, he says.

Hans-Joerg Wiedl holds a blunt-nosed viper
© AFP Henghameh Fahimi

Now the church has come to the rescue. For Wiedl, it was only natural.

"We are Christians and we believe that fauna and flora were created by God, as God created all creatures. It is only human to protect and respect what we have in nature, or we are not human," he says.

Ever since the Garden of Eden, the snake has been seen as a symbol of Satan. "Upon thy belly shall thou go, and dust shall thou eat all the days of thy life," God ordered the creature behind the Original Sin.

But the snake handlers of the Pentecostal Church in the United States venerate them, taking literally the order of Jesus to "take up serpents".

On the Greek island of Cephalonia, each August 15, the feast of the Virgin Mary, "holy snakes" crawl to a particular church in Markopoulo village and crawl onto her icon, in what is regarded as a portent of good luck.

Cyprus and its snakes go back a long way. In 321 AD, Roman Empress Helena thought the island was uninhabitable because of its snakes and brought a shipload of cats to exterminate them.

For Wiedl, 62, it has also been a long crusade.

"My whole life has been trying to learn about wildlife. I love to observe, in the wild, because I have great respect for nature. I want people to feel what I feel," he says.

"I was in the jungles of South America, Africa and Asia, and I learnt from the local people that you should never kill more than what you need to survive. For modern society, nothing is ever enough."

A devoted naturalist, Wiedl won an honorable mention in the 1993 Rolex Awards and was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art in 1998.

The latter came some 20 years after he stepped on a landmine, a man-made peril rather than a poisonous snake, during a tour of duty in the Middle East and was forced to leave the Austrian army.

His hopes for the survival of the Cyprus grass snake are now pinned on Ayios Neophytos, a monastery carved from a cliff and founded by a 12th century saint who lived an ascetic life or praying, writing and fasting.

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