“Climate change is causing the geographic range of venomous snakes to expand.”

Climate change will only exacerbate the issue by affecting where, when, and how snakes share space with people. This is because snakes will shift their distributions as temperatures rise and extreme events become more common. Many deadly snake species are predicted to increase in abundance and come into contact with more people. Many snake species will shift their ranges, meaning people will encounter new kinds of snakes in many areas.

Scientists used climate projections to predict which parts of western North America may be habitable for 130 lizard and snake species later in the century. They found that for many, the future may be North. Overall, future climate-niche distributions are predicted to shift northward and towards higher elevations.

Climate change is predicted to substantially shift the ranges of venomous snakes around the world, expanding human exposure to some of the most medically dangerous species while threatening the survival of other species, according to a new study published April 2 in the open-access journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases by Anna Pintor of the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, and colleagues. Under climate change, there are also notable increases in snake-human overlap across the Indian subcontinent, eastern North America, and parts of China. Most snakes were projected to have a general trend toward higher latitude range distributions but the extent varied by species.

Our results suggest that substantial losses of potentially suitable areas for the survival of most venomous snake species will occur by 2070. However, some species of high risk to public health could gain climatically suitable areas for habitation. Countries such as Niger, Namibia, China, Nepal, and Myanmar could potentially gain several venomous snake species from neighbouring countries.

Our projections indicated that around ~ 3% of India's land area could undergo hotspot turnover by 2070 (in worst-case scenario), including substantial contractions in the Western Ghats and northeast India, and expansions in central India. Widespread snakes may expand their ranges by exploiting agricultural lands and peri-urban habitats, thereby increasing the risk of human-snake conflict.

Although the seasonal changes in survival ran in opposite directions and though changes were small in absolute terms, the trends did not cancel out, but total annual survival decreased. We conclude that effects of a warming climate can be diverse and pose a threat for thermophilic species in temperate regions, and that future studies should consider survival change by season, preferably in a long-term approach.

Climate breakdown is likely to lead to the large-scale migration of venomous snake species into new regions and unprepared countries, according to a study. The researchers forecast that Nepal, Niger, Namibia, China, and Myanmar will gain the most venomous snake species from neighbouring countries under a heating climate. While a majority of the venomous snake species will experience range contractions due to loss of tropical and subtropical ecosystems, habitats for some species such as the west African gaboon viper will increase by up to 250%, the study found.

Our results showed greater species richness in the eastern-central portion of the Atlantic Forest at present. In general, we evidenced a drastic range contraction of the snake species under climate change. Our predictions indicate that 73.6% of oviparous species and 67.6% of viviparous species could lose at least half of their original range by 2080.

As temperatures rise, snakes are moving towards cooler areas. The road death records in Taiwan give a clear signal: the overall trend is moving northward while climbing towards higher altitudes (Liu, 2025). Similar scenes have also appeared in many parts of the world. In Mozambique and Argentina, some venomous snakes are losing their existing habitats while exploring new nearby habitats in marginal areas.

Research from Spain (Moreno-Rueda et al., 2012) found out that between the years 1940 and 2005 some European species have already shifted their range northwards. Wu (2016) found out that seven out of nine species in China that he studied, had not only shifted ranges, but gained new suitable habitat as well. However, many European snake species are predicted not only to shift their range northwards, but also to lose significant parts or even almost all of their current ranges under future climatic conditions.

Climate change could be responsible for bigger bites by drawing poisonous snakes northward into a band along the U.S. and Canadian border, as well as southward into wide swaths of South America. Using models to predict the ranges of 78 venomous snake species across the Americas, researchers at the University of Kansas' Biodiversity Institute found snakebite risk areas could increase significantly.