A snake expert has joined a nationwide project to help halt the decline of adders.

Nigel Hand has been out and about throughout the UK looking for Britain’s only venomous snake.

Mr Hand, from Ledbury, has been given the task of locating the snakes, catching them and taking a DNA swab from them before releasing them.

This week he has been testing the adders that live on part of the Malvern Hills.

Mr Hand has been interested in wildlife since he was a child.

“People are not always keen on snakes but they are living creatures like any other and just as important.

"As top predators snakes are usually a good sign and an indication that an area has a healthy diversity of wildlife,” he said.

Mr Hand, who has studied rattlesnakes in America, has been thrilled that during his work on the Adder DNA Project he has been lucky enough to see Black Adders for the first time.

“In 30 years I had never seen them until I started on this project,” he said.

The swabs of DNA are being taken to try to determine the levels of in-breeding in adders.

Once a common sight in the UK the numbers have halved in the last 50 years as they have struggled to adapt to changes in their habitat.

The NHS said about 100 cases of adder bites are reported in the UK every year.

Since records began in 1876 only 14 people have been reported to have died from adder bites – the last in 1975.