At 86, Anslem de Silva is about to pull off his grandest trick yet: hosting the world's first big stage devoted entirely to snakes. This October, in Sri Lanka's hill city of Kandy, de Silva — the man widely called the father of modern herpetology in his country — will welcome researchers from around the globe to the first World Congress on Snakes, a gathering dedicated purely to snake conservation and research.
De Silva's story starts with a rescue. Born in 1940 in the southern coastal city of Matara, he was a child when he came across a rat snake (Ptyas mucosa) being abused by other students. He intervened, saved the snake, and something clicked. That spark became a six-decade career spent documenting the island's dazzling array of reptiles and amphibians.
When de Silva began his work in the 1960s, only a small handful of Sri Lankans were studying these creatures at all. To change that, he organized the country's first one-day herpetological conference, launched its first herpetological research journal, Lyriocephalus, and founded the Amphibia and Reptile Research Organization of Sri Lanka in 1990. Along the way he has authored more than 350 scientific papers and more than 25 books.
But the numbers that matter most to him are people, not pages. Conservation biologist Ruchira Somaweera remembers receiving an inscribed copy of the journal from de Silva when he was just 13 years old. "Most of the herpetologists of my generation were groomed by de Silva, and hundreds, if not thousands, of students have been inspired by him, just like I was," Somaweera told Mongabay.
De Silva's path to science ran through magic. Before becoming a leading researcher, he was a magician good enough to win Sri Lanka's national title of Best Magician in 1965. He credits those skills with sharpening his ability to speak to the public — and he believes storytelling is exactly what conservation needs. "Communicating the value of conservation to the public is an art; a matter of good storytelling," he says. "I believe my experience as a magician helped me to reveal the true magicians of nature — reptiles and amphibians."
One of his key missions is calming people's fears about snakes. Sri Lanka is home to more than 100 snake species, but only about five are capable of causing fatal bites, according to de Silva. Understanding that gap between fear and fact, he argues, is vital to protecting the creatures many wrongly dread.
The IUCN honored de Silva in 2019 with its Sir Peter Scott Award of Conservation Merit for a lifetime of contributions. He currently serves as co-chair of the IUCN Amphibian Specialist Group. Yet ask him about his proudest achievement and he won't point to his books or awards. "For me, it is not only about the species I have studied or documented," he says. "I am especially happy to see the growth of herpetology in Sri Lanka and the younger generations who are now continuing this work." Those young scientists, he knows, are his lasting legacy — and the future of snake conservation.