Bhatt believes education is a key to easing human fears and violence toward snakes. To spread the snake gospel, Bhatt and her volunteers often put on what they call "snake shows" to acquaint people with their reptile neighbors.
"Through the snake shows, we want to achieve a closer relationship between man and snake," Bhatt told the National Geographic Channel. "Only if we educate them, if we create awareness amongst them, then they'll stop killing snakes. If they could touch the snake, if they can see it up close, maybe they can identify, and they will let it go."
Snehal seeks to enlist other Indians to join her in the fight against snakes' most dangerous human enemies in India—poachers and snake charmers.
Snake Charmers Prove Deadly for Reptile Charges
Poachers illegally trade in snakes such as the Indian python, slaughtering the snake for their skin. The python today is an endangered species.
Bhatt directs her most venomous anger at snake charmers. Snake charmers defang their animals to avoid lethal bites while still giving the impression they are handling deadly snakes. Defanging often leads to the premature death of the snake. Despite laws against both unlicensed ownership of a cobra and defanging, snake charmers still perform in India.
"The fangs are simply cut out very crudely with a knife and just at the fang base where they grow out of the mandibular bone," said Rom Whitaker of Draco Films. Whitaker has long studied the practices of Indian snake charmers. "More sophisticated are the charmers who slice the venom gland and leave the fangs intact. It's a ruse to show that the snake is not defanged," said Whitaker. The gland then atrophies if it doesn't rot away.
In the neglectful care of such tricksters, a snake's prospects for health are not good.
Bhatt hopes that by exposing the charmers' ruses, and explaining how they hurt their animals, she can dry up support for snake charmers in the villages where they ply their trade. Bhatt's ultimately seeks to put the charmers out of business.
As for captured snakes, Bhatt and her volunteers release them into the wilderness in the hope that their human encounters will be at an end.
"When I release the animals back into the wild areas, I really feel as if I've given a mother its child back," she said. "I feel like I've done my duty to mankind as well as nature."
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