Reptile Roundup Is Meant to Keep July 4 Crowd From Getting Rattled : Conservation: Snakes of all varieties found by volunteers near Brea-Olinda High School before a holiday fireworks show will be relocated, rather than simply killed.

BREA — Cactus, yes. Rabbits and lizards, a few. But rattlesnakes? Not a one.

“You could come out here with the National Guard and sweep the entire hills and not find anything,” said Richard Dunn, a member of the Southern California Herpetology Assn. “Then the next day, come out and you’d see a half-dozen of them . . . on the sidewalk. It’s the nature of the beast.”

Dunn, 46, and his crew of three herpetology club members scouted through brush and along the paths Saturday morning at the Unocal oil fields around Brea-Olinda High School, searching for native Pacific rattlesnakes they knew were out there.

Their search was a mission of rescue.

In the last three months, about 15 rattlesnakes have been discovered at the high school campus, hiding around the athletic fields, in parking lots and even slithering along the sidewalks in the school’s quadrangle. The snakes usually met their fate at the sharp end of a groundskeeper’s shovel. But members of the Southern California Herpetology Assn. want to find them a new--and safer--home.

Since the high school opened in the fall in the undeveloped foothills of Brea, about 50 rattlers have been killed on campus.

The club’s rescue offer came at an opportune time. The city will be holding its Fireworks Spectacular at the school July 4. About 4,000 spectators are expected to be milling around and sitting in the football field, a favorite snake haven, the Brea-Olinda Unified School District’s superintendent, Edgar Z. Seal, said last week.

“That’s primarily why we’re sweeping the hills,” Seal said.

The school district would like to rid the school area of as many snakes as possible before the Independence Day event. The herpetology club’s removal volunteers will be out each weekend morning and evening, when snakes are most active, club treasurer Sandy Veverka said.

Members have been sweeping the foothills northeast of the school since June 16. A final sweep will be made July 3, the evening before the fireworks show.

“They’re worried that a snake could cause a real panic,” Veverka said.

So far, the searches have turned up no rattlers. A serpent was discovered during an earlier mission but turned out to be a harmless gopher snake.

“I usually find snakes when I’m not looking for them,” said John Stendahl, 27, a seventh-grade science teacher at South Middle School in Downey. Stendahl, a Long Beach resident, came to Saturday’s snake hunt dressed in his yellow Southern California Snake Assn. T-shirt, which features a picture of a snake on the back.

Any rattlers discovered around the school will be resettled at Cal Poly Pomona and perhaps other universities for non-experimental study, Veverka said. Nonpoisonous snakes will be offered for adoption as pets.

Association members will remove all snakes, including nonpoisonous varieties, because any snake straying to the school is risking death, she said.

“People don’t know which is which, so they kill them all,” she said.

Veverka said she is excited that the district and the oil company agreed to let herpetology club members walk through their property for the snake relocation.

“Never before has an organized group been allowed to go on property like this,” she said. “The general attitude has been, ‘We kill them--so what?’ Maybe this will set a precedent.”

Veverka said she hopes that more people become aware of the important role all animals play in the environment and are willing to take action rather than just indiscriminantly kill potentially dangerous animals such as rattlers.

Snakes are great for controlling rodents, for example, she said. “Personally, I would much rather have a snake crawling around my yard than a rat,” she said.