Snakebite affects millions of people globally while snake populations suffer from fear-driven persecution, and addressing both requires rethinking the human-snake relationship.
Snakes occupy a unique welfare position: they are both a cause of human welfare harm through venom and victims of systematic persecution driven by fear. The response to snakebite risk that involves killing snakes on sight is ecologically and welfare-harmful — snakes provide critical rodent control services. Effective snakebite prevention focuses on protective footwear, habitat management, and education about snake behavior, rather than persecution. Treating snakes as threatening vermin rather than ecologically valuable animals produces both unnecessary snake deaths and, ironically, less effective snakebite prevention than informed coexistence approaches.