Danger Underfoot for Drillers

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

August 23, 2011 | 1:44 PM

A northwestern Pennsylvania husband and wife team want to make sure workers drilling for natural gas don’t get bitten by rattlesnakes. Bob and Lisa Zumstein tag and track rattlesnakes. They told the Bradford Era that they’re not just educating drillers to keep them free of snake bites, but to also protect the snakes themselves from getting killed.
According to the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Pennsylvania’s population of Timber Rattlesnakes has declined because of unrestricted hunting, den raiding, and development.