Reptile Fight Club - Captive Impacts of species being added to ESA with Michael Gillon

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

In this episode, Justin and Rob talk with Michael Gillon  about the captive Impacts of species being added to the ESA  Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIGFollow Rob @ https://www.instagram.com/highplainsherp/Follow MPR Network @FB: https://www.facebook.com/MoreliaPythonRadioIG: https://www.instagram.com/mpr_network/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtrEaKcyN8KvC3pqaiYc0RQSwag store: https://teespring.com/stores/mprnetworkPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/moreliapythonradio

Welcome to another episode of Reptile Fight Club. I am Justin Juhlander here in the midst of a winter killstorm. We're finally getting some snow that we desperately need. It's kind of sad when Houston is getting more snow than Utah. So it's nice to have a little white stuff around. I don't know about you, Mr. Rob Stone. Are you also in the midst of winter wonderland or have you got hit by the same thing? Yeah, I mean, although it sounds like weirdly this year we've gotten a lot more than you

have. Yeah. Because I think this is probably the 12th time we've had snow, 12 to 15, somewhere in that range. But yeah, I think we're probably seeing similar. What's your anticipated for tonight? I haven't looked at the forecast, but we're probably at a good six, seven inches over or maybe even more overnight like maybe eight inches. They actually canceled some classes up on

campus so that's a rare event here. So anywhere else they'll shut down the city but here it's like it's got to be two feet or more or else everything's staying open. Yeah, fair enough. So I think, yeah, we're, we're similar a little bit less. How about you, Michael? Uh, we're doing good here. It just snow all melted. Uh, a few weeks ago we had like, eh, like eight inches of snow over a few days, which is like the only snow we've gotten all year other than that. It's been 50 degrees, 40 degrees Fahrenheit the whole time.

Yeah, it's crazy. It's just rainy basically. But what's typical for the year Vancouver? Yeah. So like we get a couple light snowfalls a year, maybe one slightly bigger one. Like usually we've had a little bit by now, but yeah, no, it's been a late year for that and a little warmer. Yeah, it's been really warm here. A couple of weeks ago was like in the 50s and that's just unheard of in February. It's crazy. Yeah, good thing climate change isn't real. Okay, we won't get into that. Let's talk reptiles, enough of the weather. All right. Thanks for coming on, Michael. This is Michael Gillen. We appreciate you coming on. He had an idea for a topic and we thought that sounded really good. So we'll introduce that in a bit. So you're from

Vancouver. Where do you kind of fit in in herpetoculture? Well, recently I joined my reptile club a couple of years ago as a board member. So I've been helping out with that and membership and putting on the shows we do, which right now we're still looking for ways to use that money. But we've definitely grown our local reptile show pretty good and get a few friends out from Alberta that run the big Western Canadian reptile show. And actually they did that TV show Scaled. So those guys come and we'll have a good weekend in that with that show. But yeah, so I generally keep more niche kind of underrated stuff. I consider it underrated. Kentucky Pine Snakes and got a couple of sub-ox from Justin Smith and Rob Nimmo.

And the last couple of years, I've kind of gotten into West Indian bows with the Stricat Lattice, the Bahamond bows. Cool. Which is kind of like my new kind of passion that I'm working into. So hopefully we'll get some more Luther bows up from Steve Woodward in a couple of months once the Cites comes through. Interesting. Nice. How is it to import things from the US? Pretty straightforward. We have a couple of shipping companies up here and they both do non-CITES. That's pretty easy. You just have to declare what you have kind of thing. CITES,

we have one company that does it and for them it's pretty easy because they know the paperwork and they also don't just do the US to Canada, they do the UK, Euro, like several places in Europe. I think they even do Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, all those things. So they seem to know the ropes, so you just pay them the money and they do the paperwork for you. Nice. Yeah, it's always helpful when you have the infrastructure to bring stuff in easily and kind of move things around a little more. I've seen some pretty incredible shipments that have come into Canada that I was kind of jealous of, but yeah, I don't know. It seems like you guys

were getting stuff in when we couldn't in certain areas, at least my interests. So in certain areas, at least my interests. So definitely. Yeah. That works, I guess. Yeah. So, well, cool. We appreciate you being here and excited to fight with you a bit here. Yep.

Nowhere is happy to be on. Are you, are you breeding these projects or is it? Yeah. Last year I produced the second clutch of Kentucky Pines in Canada. I'm not sure if anybody else like in Europe or anything has them, but I got a pair from the original clutch that was from like 2019 animals. And then I got, I imported a really nice female from Rob Nemo that was at Daytona. This year I hope to go to Daytona, but yeah So produce seven babies from them this year and they're they're all really good

So nice, it's nice to see that the sub box didn't turn out as well from Justin but We'll see this year. I might even get both females to go but well, I'll have to see do you think it's a Climate type thing where you know, they come from such a dry area and you're up in a little bit more of a wet area? No, really, I haven't had any issues with that. It was more, I think I just missed the clutch. I was like so unsure of like when they were going to go. I like to just left

the mail in with her for like a couple months. And then when I was like, it's like, okay, she's off food. I should have just known that she was rabid and that it was all going to go instead of thinking, well, maybe they're finally cycling and ready to breed because it was like June when she laid. So it was, maybe she's just going to start breeding now. I don't know. But yeah, no, I was able to hatch one egg, but the baby came out kinked. It's still doing well. It's feeding, but I can't sell that and move it on or keep it or breed it. So I'll find it a nice home with a friend. And yeah, hopefully this year I'll get a little bit better luck. Nice. Yeah, that goes like that sometimes for sure. Like, what do you do? Right? You just learn

from it and move on. Exactly. Nice. Yeah. Well, I, yeah, I need to probably remove a male Woma or two. I saw Woma's locked up again. I'm pretty sure she's gravid and probably looking to lay here soon. So I need to get rid of the mail out of there. But yeah, it's been, I don't know, they'll probably all lay when I'm gone. So I'm taking off in less than a week. So we'll see how things go while I'm out of town. And if my daughter will check on stuff while I'm out and make sure I don't miss a big clutch. But yeah, it's way goes. I guess you take that risk when you leave town for a few weeks. Definitely. Yeah. But I'm definitely excited to get somewhere warmer and see some

wild herps again. Always a good time. Where are you headed to? Over to Alice Springs in Australia. So awesome. Central Australia and doing a little, a little herping out there. Um, it's my big birthday trip. So turning 50 good times. So the old man, I always thought 50 was so old, but yeah, not so much anymore. Now you're looking at Trump or you're like, ah, I got 25 more years. Exactly. Yeah. Yep. I've seen some pretty, uh, healthy old guys out herping. You know, you think I want to be like that when I'm that old, especially when I'm retired and have the time to actually go do it, you know, hopefully have the resources to do it. Cause that'll be a good times. Yeah. But, yep. So we'll, So, well, I think the other guys are actually taking off in a couple

days, except for Aspen. So they're going to get a head start on me. I think Jordan's starting in South Australia and Jason is starting up in Northern territory. He's going to go up to Darwin and pick up Dale, another friend that's coming along, and then they'll drive down to Alice. And then I think Dale has to leave a little early, so it'll just be the Americans after that. And I guess one kind of half Australian, half American, he's an American, but he's studying in Australia. So meet us out there as well. So that'll be fun. But yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Got a lot of lifers that I need to find out there. So meet us out there as well. So that'll be fun. But yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Got a lot of lifers that I need to find out there. So hopefully we get lucky

and hit a good time and time of the year and see lots of herbs. But we'll see. Have you been able to travel over to Australia or any anywhere out of the US or Canada? Yes. No, or into the U S. Yeah. There's some travel baseball stuff when I was a kid. So this summer, as long as things don't get too, uh, hectic, I think I will. Well, I already have tickets booked for Daytona. Oh, nice. I want to make it down, hang out with Schmidty and fill in the guys and, uh, finally meet some, uh, people in person for sure.

Cool. You plan to stay any longer to do any herping or do you do much herping? I do up here. I usually go to, so out here we're, so on Vancouver, we got, we kind of have rubber boas nearby. There's been some INAT sightings like a lot closer. I haven't really gone out there in the summer as like we've found some pretty productive roads out in the central Okanagan, which is kind of like the same terrain that

Nick lives in, Nick Mutton, with the desert. It's not really a desert, but it's like grasslands. It's pretty hot there all summer long. So we got Norpaks and Great Basin Gophers, rubber boas. We've been very productive with the rubber boas since we started looking. Usually every trip we get a handful of them. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Well, that sounds good. That's nice to have a local herping that's productive and exciting. Little rocket runs that are nice, quick. Change of scenery.

Yeah, for sure. How about you, Rob? How is everything going for you? All good. I'm very jealous of all the things that are local to Michael. I need to try and mix in some of those. Certainly, Norpax fit into that box. RubberBose fit into that box. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how I can make all that work for this year.

But not going with you to Australia, so bummed about that. But I know you guys will have a ton of fun, a ton of success. So I'm excited to hear about it when you're there and then when you come back. So I already know what the return episode will be. It'll be me sitting here super jealous. Right. Oh man, I'm glad I got, I had a cold last week and I still have a little bit, you know, kind of hanging on there. I keep playing water polo and that doesn't help it much. So I need, I'm glad that I got really sick right before, or the week before I leave so I can be healthy

and good on the trip. So got to get that crap out of the way first and then hopefully it'll be all the way gone by the time it's time to leave. So I'm feeling pretty good now. So I think I'm out of the woods. But yeah, definitely some bugs going around recently. Yeah, right. Good thing there. Well, I'm not going to get into that either. No politics either. I just about launched into that. Okay, let's keep talking reptiles. All right.

Well, let's see. We're going to be talking about the Endangered Species Act and kind of listing animals and if that's a, you termed it a death now for the- Yeah, for the species in captivity. Species, yeah. Yeah. It is listing an animal on the endangered species list. Yeah, bad for that animal in captivity or can it help it in some ways or things like that?

Is the endangered species list outdated or does it still serve a useful function and how does that impact things that we keep and breed in captivity? I think it's an exciting topic and we appreciate Michael for bringing that to us and being willing to come on and fight with us. So we'll go ahead and flip the coin to see who gets to fight with you today. So go ahead and call it, Rob. All right. Tails. It is tails. You win the flip.

Would you like to fight or defer? Well, I put in a lot of thought onto this, so I will fight, but I'll certainly look for any interjections that you're willing to make. I'm sure I'll pipe in there somewhere. I can't stay quiet too long. All right, Michael, you go ahead and call this one, see which side you get. Heads. His heads.

We've got two winners today. I'll choose the bad guy for the endangered species act. Okay. So in support of the endangered species act and that it doesn't really impact us that much with captive projects. Okay. Sounds good. And as the winner of the coin flip, you get to decide if you go first or if you defer

to Rob. I defer to Rob. I defer to Rob. I'm sure Rob was ready for that one. Yeah, sure. So a little bit of legal background context or even what brings us to the context now, I think maybe is useful. So a lot of the reason that this is timely is because Fish and Wildlife Service using emergency rulemaking added Borneo earless monitors, blue tree monitors, amongst others,

as listed species under the Endangered Species Act for 240 days, and then during which period of time they'll accept comments about that and then go to a final rulemaking out of that. The comment period I think is ending next week, so we're really kind of on the back side of that. The Endangered Species Act is from 1973. CITES, similarly, is from 1973. There have been calls locally here in the US to modernize the Endangered Species Act because it's effectively unchanged beyond the listing and removal of species from its uptake in 1973 to really

focus on native species where the impact has been greater, whereas CITES is focused on non-native species. It's species across the globe based on member countries and things. As I say, similarly in 1973, it went into effect in 1975 when the 10th member country ratified it. At this point, we're at about, I think it's something like 185 member countries, including I think all of the EU countries are members at this point.

So most of the globe is a member, but that took a long time. I couldn't figure out exactly what the sort of lines of demarcation were, but it was certainly kind of slow to start. The point of the Endangered Species Act that particularly including non-native stuff was to try and limit effectively, it's being the world's policeman, right? At least relative to US influence saying like, we won't have people in the US engaging in stuff that's problematic because other countries aren't effectuating wildlife trafficking laws is basically where it had come from.

But there's a strong argument, I think, that at this point, with the uptake of CITES over the last 52 years, that that sort of universe doesn't really exist in the same way. Maybe we need to reevaluate whether it's appropriate for non-native species to be on the US Endangered Species Act when the role or pursuits that are for non-native species being listed on the Endangered Species Act really aren't effectuated unless we're talking about North Korea, Nauru, Timor-Leste. There's only 15 or 20 countries. For the most part, they're not huge jurisdictions. That's just a little plate setter that I thought I would give. I suppose the other thing, I don't think I mentioned there that NOAA had also petitioned for potential listing of diamondback terrapins on the Endangered Species Act.

So we can kind of draw those as a dichotomy. So the Borneo earless monitors and blue tree monitors are a non-native species, whereas diamondback terrapins are a native species. So we can talk about it in that way too. But yeah, that was just sort of a legal plate setter. We can get into the impact of all that. But I'll pause for breath. And Michael, if you have anything

off the rip, we'll go there and then we can get into it. I just had a quick question. So you said there's 10 member countries that decide on which gets listed on the Endangered Species Act? No, it was just originally, right? It was a lot of these international treaties, they actually come into force when member countries join and then effectuate legislation in their own country that essentially codifies what they've agreed to as part of the treaty. So it was initiated in 1973, but it didn't actually go into effect until 1975 when the 10th member jurisdiction ratified it and took it up within their law.

At this point, we're at approximately 185 member countries. Then they decide, now are those countries know like Indonesia and listing the blue tree monitors and is that how it's working or is it kind of a scientific consensus type thing? Sort of. It's different entities can bring proposals to bring something be it a species within their jurisdiction or not right in this case the Lanthanotus and the Blue Tree monitors are being brought by the US, notably not Indonesia. Yeah. Although I would say they're being brought by the US because it's pertinent to the Endangered Species Act. They're not, at this point, up for consideration for CITES 1 listing. So

CITES, they're a different, is essentially a tiered system. The Endangered Species Act sort of is too, I guess, in the sense that you would have things that are listed as endangered, things that are listed as threatened, and things that are listed or not listed, right? So there's sort of a three tiers and kind of in, I guess, CITES would be a four tier system, appendix 1, appendix 2, appendix 3, and not listed. So it's probably worthwhile. Let's table set a little bit more. So appendix one for CITES, which again is the international entity, appendix one listed species are prohibited from commercial trade across jurisdictions, essentially. There's theoretically a carve out for verifiably captive bred CITES-1 animals, but a lot of

jurisdictions just don't engage in that. The US notably being one, it's very difficult. I know there's been a lot of... We see that with green sansenia are verifiably captive bred greens Tanzania in Europe with paperwork. The US will then judge that paperwork as founder stock and this sort of thing. SIDES But you need SIDES paperwork from both exporting and importing country and those animals cannot leave your possession, right? Or something along those lines? Yeah. So yeah, it's super fine point. The easy generalization for a CITES-1 animal is

that they can't be engaged in commercial trade internationally. Appendix 2 is a regulated, they're essentially quotas so that there's designated amounts. There can be additional specifications like they need to be captive bred in the country of export. We see that with condor pythons, green trees. All the proscenes, I think all of the proscenes complex monitors are supposed to be at least F1, if not F2 captive bred to be exported from Indonesia. Again, all of this can then interact with pragmatic, is that what's really happening,

the law versus implementation of the law or effectuation of this stuff. In general, appendix one, no commercial trade internationally. Appendix two, there's regulated commercial trade. Appendix three is less common than you would think and it's more just sort of a tracking the numbers rather than regulating what's happening. It's trying to get a sense for it. So theoretically, those are things that might be perceived to be trending towards inclusion on Appendix 2 where they want to try and record what the level of trade is.

Non-listed aren't subject to those terms and limits. For the Endangered Species Act, as I say, there's endangered, threatened, and not listed. Endangered certainly fall into that box where they can't be... So, the Endangered Species Act is a US-specific law that deals with interstate commerce. And while the definition is not quite as plain as it might sound, essentially federal law applies to things that are actions occurring amongst the states or amongst people from different states, at least theoretically.

So that's why in the context of Endangered Species Act listed species, a lot of the conversation is, oh, I'm free to sell it in my state, but if it's going to someone out of state, that that can't be involved in commercial trade because that's interstate commerce. Now, as I said, variably over history, the meets and bounds of interstate commerce is subject to a lot of case law and a lot of interpretation of things. But in general, it would be fair to say that Colorado and Utah, those are different states. A transaction between us would qualify as interstate commerce for sure. And so a listing, I believe either endangered or threatened, prevents commercial transactions

across state lines. I couldn't sell an Endangered endangered species act listed animal to you. I think the difference in terms of impact between endangered and threatened, those rankings is sort of the difficulty in getting a permit. I think that's basically it, is that on threatened species, like I think Eastern indigos are threatened, not endangered. Yes, same with the pine snakes. And the pine snakes. So in general, if with that threatened listing, it means that you could apply to the federal

government, have more or less success submitting an application and getting approval to engage in an interstate sale. And that's a lot of what we see in that space. I think probably if it's a listing of endangered under the Endangered Species Act, that there's no commercial trade amongst states at all. It's not, oh, I could get a permit to engage in this transaction. I think that's the distinction. Obviously, in the same way, not listed falls into that not regulated under this law category. But it's international with all its ratifying entities and the other is just the United

States. Okay. Well, thank you. That is definitely some good place setting and yeah, appreciate it. I'm sure our sponsor is happy. Just a shout out to our sponsor, Mutton's Choice Powerlifting Gloves. Buy them, lift stuff, be happy. Just a shout out to our sponsor, Mutton's Choice Powerlifting Gloves. Buy them, lift stuff, be happy. All right, Michael, what do you got for us?

Michael S. All righty. So where do I start? Well, you get in some parts, the Endangered Species Act is only affecting those who are very keen on commercial and selling the animals. As it is still legal to gift these animals to other people, the keeping and breeding of them has no reason to stop, nor should it really stop people unless they're truly just engaged to make a profit off of them. Which obviously it costs money to run our collections and keep these animals. But you can always keep other things to do that. And through the non-commercializing, it would truly weed

out people who are only in it for the money and aren't actually there just to keep these animals, to keep them around, keep them as genetically diverse as possible. As we've heard with the Puerto Rican boas, their study was shown to be very genetically diverse through the many years of not having new blood injected into that other than some of the animals Jeff Murray has been able to bring into that blood pool through his connections with AZA zoos and whatnot. It does seem like there's some groups that are more interested in gifting than selling. You see something like with the Puerto Rican bows and things like that, they seem to have a following where they're more likely to gift those than to try to sell them. Whereas something like a radiated tortoise, you see ads for

those all the time, just like Florida sales only and you got to got to pay a couple couple grand or or more to get one or share you know so it's interesting how how different groups view this and yes definitely like Ralph Till with the not this year but I believe it was a year or two ago Egyptian tortoises got put onto the ESA list and And he's created, he's now created a group of people who are not, not an official organization, but a group of people that are willing to share blood lines and gift animals to each other. That's cool. And try to keep that population as diverse as possible.

And so the, the law is you can't sell them across state lines, but you can gift them. And if you're gifted them, can then you sell within your state, but just not across state lines? Or do you have to have a species permit associated with? Well, I believe you could sell them in state lines if you produced offspring from those animals. Although some people like Jeff Murray never sell anything due to just like, you never know you could sell them to somebody and then they drive, they move to another state or they end up selling it and then you get dragged into it.

Right. And then it probably could get messy. You keep yourself out of trouble if you just gift things rather than try to find a way to get them into the state and then sell them. Yeah. That makes sense. I'm all for that. And with this is like, you don't have to have these massive collections of 40 blue tree monitors. You could just have a couple cages of some nice green tree, blue tree monitors you just have a couple cages of some ice cream tree mott blue tree monitors in your living in in whatever reptile room you have produced

a handful or a dozen a year super in the monitors i don't know exactly how much how hard it is for them to read or how how many they produce and i assume it's not excessive numbers, but you could produce the handful of animals every year and gift them out to your friends or obviously maybe get a feel for people who are genuinely into wanting to keep them and gift them out. And eventually you could end up with them being in every state and then actually they probably already are in every state. But just getting them around so there's no point of having an ESA list anymore. And then they would basically like, eventually you could come back to US Fish

and Wildlife and say, well, we don't need this anymore. But you got to, yeah, I think I just killed myself. I think that's the way things go here. We do gift points to the other side quite often. Definitely. Yeah, totally. So I think certainly, fundamentally, my own collection reflects a lot of the same thoughts. It is a representation of the values of what you're saying, in the sense of saying, as you highlighted with the study that was on the diversity within the captive gene pool of Puerto Rican boas, it really did highlight exceptional diversity. There's essentially no sign of inbreeding despite a species that's been prohibited from commercial trade for going on 50 years under the ESA.

So yeah, totally. I think there's obviously, honestly to me, so right, if we're in this context because of this discussion around blue tree monitors, something that's been available in captivity freely for purchase for about 20 years more or less, even initially sort of obfuscation around where they're from. So they're from the island of Batanta. But there was a lot of sort of trade secrets around that. Same thing with all those persinus, the weird color persinus complex stuff, say the black tree monitors that were from Uru and have been around for longer.

I know there was a suggestion at least that that population is actually the most imperiled of all of them and was the least protected historically throughout the trade because of the infrastructure around exporting reptiles from the Aru Islands, that those were available from the 80s in some number and that those are actually the most at-risk population. Haven't been there, can't speak to it myself, but I know that that was the discourse that was being presented as the ones that were available at the lowest price deemed the least special were actually probably the rarest in the wild as that was happening. So it also seems seems to be the fact that a rue is in danger as well of being becoming just a big

plantation, you know, cultured fields and such. So they were knocking down a lot of primary forest to put up palm plantations and things. So, yeah. For sure. Right? And that sort of gets at what is the utility of listing at this point, particularly, I think, I don't know if it was before the show or since we've come on, but alluding to maybe there's a distinction in utility for the endangered species act of listing native species versus non-native species.

And I know associated with sort of the discourse around listing Lantanotus, blue tree monitors and the separate proposal to list Dinovac terrapins, that sort of falls into two camps, right? So the first two are non-native species, the latter is a native species. And while US ARC has put out talking points sort of pushing back on all three of those listings, there's definitely a distinction between the potential efficacy of listing or impact of listing a native species versus non-native species. Non-native species listing it here, we can't, to your point Justin, we can't do anything to protect the habitat.

In terms of that listing criteria won't have any impact whatsoever on what habitat preservation looks like. Other than just not having a market for them, but then if they're going to get rid of their habitat anyway, then they might as well go somewhere rather than just be killed in a field somewhere. So I don't know. Yeah, that's the tricky thing. And wasn't Lanthanotus, I think kind of they found that Lanthanotus were doing okay within

like cities and disturbed areas like in kind of farmer ditches and things. Well, they found the first one in an outhouse didn't they? Yeah, right. When they were constructing an outhouse. Yeah. I mean, so yeah, that's super interesting. And the other part of it, and I know some of the US ARC-based pushback for Lanthanotus and Blue Tree monitors has been, hey, show them the evidence of you actually having success

in producing these in the United States, right? And the uptake in captive breeding for both of those species in the last 10 to 15 years has been really impressive and amazing considering sort of where we start their relatively late timeframe frame animals in the mid 90s those first three Lanthanotus that had come in at least in sort of modern living memory or whatever I think all died within a week or two, a week or 10 days even in zoo facilities because we really didn't understand them whereas at this point I mean there are a ton of pictures of Atlantic land producing eggs and hatching out and all this stuff. And yeah, so presumably, right, to the extent that the utility of the Endangered Species Act for non-native species is supposed to

be these things aren't genuinely being produced in a way. Well, when the law was created in 1973, yeah, there wasn't a ton of captive reproduction, particularly of critically endangered reptiles. I think that's probably fair, right? That's not to say there was none, but for the most part, right, it probably comes from a true place. But the good news is that more than 50 years on, we actually have improved and we have the ability to record it and share it in a way that we certainly didn't at that time.

Yeah. And it seems like there's a pretty good demand for things like blue tree monitors and the tree monitor complex in general. And I really hope that means that more black tree monitors will be bred and that kind of thing. Because you're right, they were kind of looked at as the poor man's green tree monitor or something back in the day. But I think there's been a little bit of a resurgence, people realizing how actually cool these things are and they're not coming in as much or at all. I don't know. You don't see them. Well, we've seen, I've seen a couple up here from some friends that have pet stores out east. They definitely, they get some in, but they're also getting in the BOMI and the Pracinum 2 and that. Even some of those tricolor monitors too, they're coming in a little more often.

But who knows if some of that stuff is actually captive red? Some of it does still look kind of questionable. They do mix in a lot of wild cots with the seams. Right. Well, and the other part of that to me, it's just always been so interesting, right, in all of those, the reptile experience is defined by, you know, sort of, you like what you like, right? And honestly, the prusinus complex animal as well has been interesting, seeing the great

deal of phenotypic variety and speciation amongst that complex based on where they're from. To be honest, that style or body form has just never really been my favorite thing. I prefer Kimberly Rock to anything within that proscenium complex just sort of structurally and things because they all... Well, heck, Justin, you've seen Keith Horni, which to me, I've had that natural question of... I know we chatted about it a little bit of like, are Keith Horni, are they a distinct thing, particularly from say, Bacari, the

Black Tree Monitors or Bomei? They're kind of a mix between the two in terms of phenotypic appearance. So that's always been an interesting sort of question that I've had out of that. Yeah. I didn't get a very good look, so I can't answer your question. It ran away from me pretty quick. That's about it. Yeah.

So the king horni or key horni? Key horni. Yeah, the kind of iguanas and the straight at the top of Cape York kind of thing that Mitch has found. Interesting. I think even Steve Irwin did some conservation with those back in the day. He had it on one of his TV shows where he went up there and caught some and showed him jumping around and stuff.

It was pretty cool. I don't know if he had them in a bag and just pulled them out because it's hard to get close to those things. But you know, the black headed Python isn't just sitting in the tree hollow. They didn't just find a fresh hatched clutch of green tree pythons climbing in the underbrush altogether. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think there was, Scott had, I don't know, we'd have to ask him separately or whatever. There was some sort of story around those Keith Hornets, but I don't remember exactly what the outside of it was. I think it was those. So with the Lanthinotus, how many people in the US have actually bred them? Because from what I can tell, it kind of looks like there's the one guy in Europe or Belgium who's definitely doing it. And then obviously there's probably some captive hatch clutches at least occurring

in Indo from some of those Indo imports imports as well as Chris Aplin seems to be working at a facility that's breeding what seems to be quite a few of them. Because I think it used to be Ben Siegel who has all those that switched his name to cold blooded reptile shop or something I see on Morph Market. He seems to always have Borneo earless available. Do we know if those are produced by him or are those just imports being resold? Dave Keltner I know there are some folks that have bred them, captive bred. I listened to a talk at Repticon, not Repticon, Herpeton. I keep messing up that name. But Herpeton, they had a talk

on Lanthanotus and it was by, let me see, I had the name, man, I'm so terrible with names. I'm just not great. But I guess Rob Nixon has produced at least a bunch of them. So I know he had pictures of eggs and hatching eggs and told how he bred them and stuff. So I know there's a few people and he's kind of more private. He doesn't really get himself out there maybe as much. So I'm sure there's a lot of people like that that are quietly doing it or maybe selling them through other places. But it seems like they're fairly popular.

I know our friend Keith McPeak's got a group of them. I'm sure he'll be successful here soon. Well, definitely seeing from him. That would be cool. Yeah. Definitely neat seeing though, like even like other people now are starting to get at least one or a few and they're showing the videos of them eat chow down on the worms and stuff. It's definitely cool to see them being way more successfully bred for such an odd animal that even not too long ago, people didn't even know how they would properly keep them.

Yeah. Yep. And unfortunately, sometimes with that, they kind of have that notoriety. So they become kind of the Instagrammer, the influencer lizards or something where you can only afford them if you're a rich influencer or something. So then they just become like a thing to get clicks on their videos rather than people concerned about breeding them maybe. But I don't know, maybe some of those Instagram influencers are doing good and working with them as well. So I shouldn't generalize.

But yeah. So here's the thing. I actually, I think so again, in the spirit of the venture, I'll give Michael a couple points to his side that I think are fairly highlighted by the conversation that's just occurred. The first would be that Keat does have them. We talked about it when these got listed and he said, particularly at this point in his life and his enjoyment of those animals, them being listed, not being able to sell them

across state lines would have absolutely zero impact on his interest in keeping and producing them. So just as sort of a case study in terms of, oh, did this diminish your interest in doing it, change your group dynamics, change any of that? And the answer was a firm no. The second part, Justin, what you just highlighted in terms of sort of the Instagram popularity in the same way that we've seen with Bollensaitons, and things where their prices skyrocketed because they become these popular items. I would say that, and we've talked about it a little bit in that context, is that a lot

of what has happened with that artificial inflation, well, or artificial or not, inflation of the market price for those animals is that it becomes a lot harder to make substantive groups to work with. That popularity has made it that people are probably less likely to have, and I think our own lived experience has been the more animals that you can have that constitute your group, the less likely you are to have the problems you can run into when you only have a singular pair of animals. If anything all goes wrong, then that year is out at best. Or maybe the project is entirely derailed. You don't actually have a project, you have a pair or whatever it is. And when your bolens plathons are $14,000 a pair, it's a lot harder to have multiple animals. And I know I've highlighted over

and over, I think, well, I love what the condor folks have done, what Nick has taken up from Dave Kelly in terms of making these lineage charts and all these things. I can show you all these things. I admit that looks super cool, right? And intrinsically, I'm interested in that. But I don't think that reflects what happens in nature. And I think we often have a lot less animals to give lineage charts for because we're not producing them in sort of the natural constant of saying, throw in five

potential buyers at that particular female, right? The insistence that it needs to be this pair so I can make a nice chart often leaves us with less babies about which to worry. And so I guess I would just say that to me in that way, Endangered Species Act listing, the fact you can't sell them, essentially removing their commercial value makes it for the people who are actually interested in them, possibly a lot easier to make a substantive group because there isn't that artificial or real market value associated.

But now it's only, it's limited to people who genuinely care about them. There's no sticker price. Definitely. I could definitely see more even amphibian people, possibly like salamander people, even though there doesn't seem like there's many, but like those types of people that already do those setups and enclosures for such a small lizard that requires like a similar water marshy setup, they would probably be way more interested in keeping them, especially if there was no price associated with them.

It'd be a lot more appealing to keepers like that. Right. I understand that a lot of the innovations that we have now, particularly in terms of expansion of the cage manufacturers, even heck, to support US ARK and try and promote positive regulation, either lack of regulation or at least where the regulation is required to have it be reptile keeper friendly. That's been supported by dollars associated with the industry, both in terms of investment dollars, taxpayer money, all

those sorts of things. I acknowledge that simultaneously, there is a socialist paradise ideal to the idea of if everything costs the same, and that same was essentially the non-defined X, that everyone would be keeping what they liked and the diversity of what might be kept would probably go up. Right. Yeah. Right.

Yep. Because it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If somebody is producing thousands and thousands of ball pythons because they're commercially exciting for people, then of course most people are going to be keeping those species in lieu of other things. Yeah. But in the end too, a lot of people will still work with all these groups that are maybe overproduced right now to whatever extent that means.

Maybe they aren't and we just haven't reached as many people. But with the ball pythons, I'm sure there's still be people who keep ball pythons, even if they're worth nothing. For sure. Definitely not as many as there is now, but there definitely would be people who keep leopard geckos and crested geckos and all that type of stuff. Yeah. All it takes is for them to disappear for a while and then everybody wants them and they're high in demand and things. Definitely. I have, there's some older keepers up here that talk about, well, they were around when

Thomas Huff still had his breeding facility or they knew his son who's actually works for, at one point worked for the Smithsonian, I believe, when I was looking up some Thomas Huff papers on West Indian boas and he's an arachnologist. That's how you say it, correct? I probably didn't. I submit he's going to kill me later. But he studies amblyages, those little whip spiders, I guess is what they're properly called. But his dad was a founder of the Reptile Breeding Foundation with Jamaican boas and Puerto Rican boas and had the first recorded breedings and what maybe not the first recorded breedings but the first written down scientific papers.

Well, it's hard to say if there are papers but they're in the, they come up when you look on Google Scholar from the 70s on even Cuban boas and that, which is really interesting to see all that info that was created back then. Yeah, absolutely. And I know, so we had Jeff Marie on boas, boas, boas earlier in the month, maybe it was the end of January, but released the beginning of the month, and talks about that because Tom Hoff and the Reptile Breeding Center, that stuff is in our captive Jamaican boas, Puerto Rican boas today. The original animals on a lot of those lineages originated from there. And that's sort of the point, right? Is those things have been unavailable, not commercially unavailable.

They've been unavailable here for a long time now. I looked back in CITES, there was like 35 Puerto Ricans imported from Denmark in the early 2000s and three separate shipments. None of those animals are apparently around anymore. And there's no Jamaican boas from what I can tell. There might be a handful I've heard, but not looking like it is other than in like the Toronto Zoo had a litter a couple of years ago. But all that stuff seems to have left, which does suck because I'm sure they didn't cost that much back in the 70s and 80s, but nobody bothered

to keep them going. There might've been some going in the early 2000s, but a lot of those keepers have either gone into hiding or aren't around anymore, which definitely sucks because the origin of all the West Indian boas are kind of from Huffstock. He had Exul boas and even, because his pictures are in the old Dick Ross book and there's Cat Island boas and that and there are two, which have been really cool to have now. Yeah, absolutely. So it's definitely interesting, right? As I said, as you initially highlighted, the notion that the captive Puerto Rican boa stock

is so genetically diverse does fly in the face of what we might intrinsically think in terms of a listing, right, where it's going to make it less likely that we have, or more likely that we'd have sort of a genetic bottleneck of the population that we do have. So it's interesting that in that context we actually haven't seen that. It was sort of making me think, well, maybe in our sort of free commercial space we often – and I know we've all seen this, where we'll buy a pair of animals. There's a pair that produces a pair that then... As long as those animals are actually from original founder stock that are from a similar area, I know Terry used to highlight

this, that there was some line of black rat snakes, I think it was, that had been inbred for in the dozens of generations without issue, but those were founder stock that were from the same place as opposed to some of the Australian stuff where we're seeing what it was the Celestraline Coastals where it's just two arbitrary coastal carpets thrown together and if they're not naturally, don't go through a natural genetic bottleneck based on being from the same area, that we might actually get problems associated with what otherwise we would assume would be bigger from unrelated animals, right? Being what that genotypic variation isn't always a good thing.

We tend to, it's always sort of presented as like, oh yeah, this is always a good thing, but not necessarily, right? And we see that in the case of West Indian boas, hog island boas, all those things are probably from relatively small gene pools, but if they...we have sort of a concentration of genes that are effective and unlikely to produce deleterious results, whereas random combinations, those things could just crop up. One point from the sort of USR contrary talking points in terms of why an endangered species act listing is bad beyond certainly, I think because of the crowd that they're speaking to in terms

of captive breeders, the principal talking point is just the ban on interstate sales. But the second point that they raised was something that I hadn't, I guess I knew that it existed but the scale maybe was different than I appreciated, is that I believe if I'm interpreting their materials correctly, 26 states of the 50 US states, if something is listed on the Endangered Species Act or prevented from owning it just based on that status as a listed species. I knew of Illinois, I believe, and I think there's even there a permitting process where you can do that, but the sort of discourse I remember around it was, well, it took them a year to send me the permit and the permit lasts for a year,

and then it was effectively expired by the time that they had responded, you know, and that sort of governmental inefficiency and things. So I suppose it's only right to highlight that here is that to the extent you are then in a jurisdiction that solely defers to that sort of status designation, doesn't look at it critically, instead just says, oh, if it's listed on there, you can't have it, then that is probably the hardest point to refute. Just out of hand, preventing you from working with something because of its status on there, that's something I hadn't previously acknowledged or realized to that scale. So that's sort of-

And you said 26 states? That's how I read the Mozart's materials. Wow. Okay. So I don't know if that... Who knows, right? You said 26 states have a default? That's how I read the most arched materials. I don't know if that, who knows, right? Obviously there is a presentation to that. So it could be that it's not, in fact, 26 states, maybe it means at least some jurisdictions within 26 states. The one that I knew of was really Illinois previously. But I... So it may just be city ordinances or...

Here we call them bylaws, but yeah. I think technically in my study, it says endangered animals are prohibited as well due to the bylaw. Right. So viewed through that lens, maybe it's possible that what they're really saying is amongst 26 states in at least some portion thereof, there would be a problem just by interacting with something that's listed. I think that's possible.

Certainly these talking points are written by a lawyer and as a lawyer, I can appreciate that. The other points that they had listed to me are more built upon their principle point, which is just the lack of capacity to sell that I think we've talked through a little bit. It's just disincentivizing captive breeding, expressed differently, halting the global population growth through herpetoculture, thwarting breeding programs, under human care or in captivity, and I guess finally criminalizing pet owners.

Those are multiple expressions of the same maybe three core ideas that are presented there. I do think there's truth to all those things, and I certainly appreciate the point, but I do have to admit that Michael, we've seen proof with Puerto Rican Boas and Jamaican Boas. Well, I think there would be utility to them not being listed. Certainly they're around 50 years on after having been added because of the work people were willing to put in associated with producing them for their own sake, not for commercial ends.

I really do think that a lot of our unwillingness to see more species added, particularly things that people are genuinely having success with, is just sort of, we've acclimatized in a situation where we could do it. Brian Soussaint producing a kind of blue tree monitor. I understand where he would be motivated to, I mean, those are beautiful. And I do think he deserves compensation for the work that he's doing. So having that transition to a space where he's going from, what are those babies have to be?

600, 1000, I don't know, good money. And I'm sure he's invested a lot into the infrastructure to make that plausible, being in that space as opposed to, as you highlighted, Michael, the people who are working with Jamaican Boat is now, we're not the people who were working with them when they were added to the list for the 50 years ago. We don't have those operate. Even 50 years ago, there probably wasn't someone who was similarly invested as Brian is now with the blue tree monitors into that

infrastructure is making those sales, is seeing the reward for his labor on that. And then to have that taken away for at least eight months, just seemingly arbitrarily, I can certainly understand where that would be unsatisfying. Yeah. If I remember right, the Chris Applin episode that they did with Michael Cole and was it Brian Sussan? I vaguely remember, but they were talking about how basically, I believe US Fish and Wildlife or whoever proposed this, they sent a lawyer over to the island where the blue trees are during the dry season to see if he could find any. And obviously he found, I think he found one, luckily enough, as Chris would say, because as Chris says, in

that time of year, you're lucky to even find any at all in the dry season. But if you went there with locals in the rainy season, you could find a few more. But then we have to remember that these are, for even researchers, they're very hard to find and create population Densities for so it's it's a very poor basis on Leave the listing in the first place Making them seem like they're extremely endangered when as we know the black trees If any one of them was going to be listed it probably should be them and not the black trees, if any one of them was going to be listed, it probably should be them and not the blue trees.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm certainly in general skeptical of this sort of regulation and things. I guess they, and certainly Justin and I have spent enough time looking for goannas that are not being commercially hunted and have difficulty finding them to kind of highlight that. So yeah, I certainly appreciate that point. I think too, right, a fundamental pushback is just saying what is the utility of us listing non-native species when there's an entire regime that now more than 50 years on has been taken up and is designed to deal with, to protect this sort of infrastructure and encourage the member states where those species are native to protect the habitat and protect

them from exploitation for an inordinate level of commercial trade. Whatever that might be, whether that level is any or if it's a thousand, whatever that regulation needs to look like. It's really, at this point, we have a structure where member countries, societies have the capacity to set and define those limits for themselves. There's an argument that it's really an imperialist narrative that we're applying to the world saying, hey, Indonesia, you're not doing a good enough job protecting blue tree monitors on Batanta.

And really the only effectuation that that's going to have is preventing people who were already working with them in the US from being able to sell them as opposed to just giving them away. It really will have no impact on the population where the listing on appendix one for CITES would not. It definitely seems a lot similar to how it seems like US Fish and Wildlife in certain ports does not allow the Aussie wildlife to go in and out. But then in some ports, they do seem to let it through as Ashley has been able to, I believe, even get some, yeah, shinglebacks, I'm pretty sure.

And maybe even some other stuff to, I think Dan Roe, I believe, was able to get some from her. But like, it seems to be a hit and miss. She doesn't even guarantee- The arbitrary whim of the particular inspector or whatever, which obviously isn't the way the system is supposed to work. It's the antithesis of how it's supposed to work. Yeah.

Yeah. There's many, well, a couple examples where I've just been pulling my hair out talking to fish and wildlife officers trying to get export permits for something that I brought in from Europe as a captive bred animal, had it stamped by, you know, the paperwork was all in order. They all came in legally and then I bred them and I wanted to send some back to Europe. They said, no, we can't tell that they're, you know, they weren't sourced from the wild. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Come on, you know, what more do you need? But I don't know. It's, it's insane sometimes. Definitely.

The policing of other people's problems. Right. Upholding Australian law in the US just seems crazy for no reason. Right. Simultaneously recognizing that this is a difficult time for federal agencies and things. We're not really trying to go in on it relative to that. And honestly, I would say that it's not necessarily disconnected in the sense that probably a lot of the people who might have a more open mind on this are

maybe more likely to be new people that are more likely to be impacted by these problems. Whereas the old KG inspector who just is unwilling to accept import paperwork from the Czech Republic or whatever it might be, is probably not probationary. So yeah, I don't know. See, I had the opposite. The old guy gave us permits for stuff and his replacement said, under no circumstances can I grant those. It's like they were just holding letter of the law type of folks.

All based on hearsay when these animals could have legally went to a European zoo and had legal paperwork. Yeah. It's kind of funny, but I guess that's the way it goes. Definitely. Or particularly galling in the instances where they do have legal paperwork. And frankly, it's not within your remit to tell me whether you think this legal paperwork was achieved by ill-gotten means.

Is it legitimate paperwork? You said it is. Therefore, I'm not asking you. I'm telling you. They said, we have no record of that. Like I'll send you a copy. I've got the permit right here stamped by you. Oh my goodness.

So well, yeah, I don't know. Do you think either of you, do you think there are other points that we should hit on here? I think it's certainly timely. I'm curious. I have a question for Michael. If some of these things get listed, what steps would you see needing to happen to ensure that they are available and produced in captivity for the next several generations. They definitely would need to be a framework of people that want to keep these for the long term and keep them around. So there definitely need to be a group of whether it's eight people

or 20 people in some type of coalition to whether it's actually gifting them or just, it's hard to say because Ralph Till and that were asking the question when he was on the Let's Talk Turtles podcast about, well, are we actually, could we just send you the animal? It's still my animal. I'm not selling you the animal. I could just breed or loan it out, breed it and then send it back after a couple of years. And would that be legal as it, like it sounds legal, but if for some reason something happened, would it be? But yeah, no, definitely there would need to be some sort of framework and a plan with that group of people to continually create a diverse gene pool and get as diverse possible, have as

many different animals from as different imports as you could to keep that bloodline as strong as possible. So in 50 years, maybe they change the ESA list, abolish it and only make it as broad you say for native species as that's what it probably should be for. In Canada, we have a similar list that's not well, that the herb community doesn't seem to even know about up here as like stink pots and rubber bows are listed on it. You see people out East or out West with certain animals at it. And it's like, well, according to this list, nobody in Canada should even actually own this, like Canada wide, even though you see people with one or the other. And like, yeah, they're banned

in the province to keep that they're native to, but they're also federally on a list that is not necessarily enforced either. But yeah. Yeah. I'd really worry about something like a monitor lizard just because I know how difficult they are to keep. And I mean, they kind of burn you out, I think a lot of times compared to something like a boa or something that's a little less high metabolism, high maintenance, that kind of

thing. And so I'd worry that that group, although there may be a lot of people who are really interested and really like them, they still get like, oh man, I can't do this. Especially if I'm not able to sell the offspring. Because you see, they're several thousand dollars a piece for captive bred tree monitors. And so, if you kind of take that away and you're only able to gift them, I think people might get burned out a little faster. Like, hey, I did my deal. I bred them for five years. And now it's just too much work and too much effort, too expensive an electric bill and feed bill to keep these things going just to gift them to people. So I worry about if those kind of things

play into it, which I'm absolutely sure they they probably would in the long term You know success of these kind of projects It could probably strengthen it though as well as it gives you a purpose to keep those animals Yeah, and said instead of just well, I'm gonna keep them and hopefully make this much money. Yes. It's gonna cost me a lot Mm-hmm, but I'll still make this money instead of, but instead they could just have the mindset of I'm doing something for a good purpose. Like it could give you, could give some people that extra bump to just keep it going, but I could definitely see where you're coming from where it definitely could also burn you out

for the other reason. Yeah. Yeah. That's just a fear that kind of in the back of my mind, I wouldn't want to see blue tree monitors disappear just because, well, we have all these others that we can produce and sell. But hopefully somebody who is producing and selling the others would also maybe keep those just to contribute to the overall good of the world to be able to see captive-bred blue tree monitors in the hobby.

Do we know how, if any of these ESA listed suggestions in the talk, as we're in that 280 days, have these ever been like declined or pushed back or anything? Yeah, I mean it certainly can happen given sort of the nature of this addition or the way it was being approached from sort of the emergency listing with them placed on there effective immediately. It suggests sort of all of this is being viewed through a particular lens, which is to say like, okay, if we're in a lens that thought this was sufficiently an emergent risk to call upon emergency rulemaking and leave, depart from sort of the usual track, I don't know that that suggests an entity that's really open to feedback, right?

Maybe there's a particular result that's being driven towards and I would imagine that part of this would be, and realistically this can happen, that to the extent then that they get a ton of feedback that then they don't seem to appropriately weigh or measure. I would imagine that there would be entities that might then be willing to essentially sue saying, okay, from an administrative law perspective, you didn't actually account for the evidence. You had your desired goal in mind and you just acted based on that contrary to the evidence that was presented to you in normal course.

I would say that based on the way it had been approached, unless all the changes of late, super late, have changed the dynamics sufficiently, then I would think we're probably in a space where they'll probably be added, and then you'll probably get legal challenges around whether that was an appropriate decision in light of the evidence that was received, whether where they'll probably be added and then you'll probably get legal challenges around whether that was an appropriate decision in light of the evidence that was received, whether they really constructively looked through the feedback and adequately weighed the inputs that they received. I wonder too, if all the changes in the government and all the...

That's what I mean. If that's going to... Yeah, what sort of impact that'll have on the children. Maybe the person who was pushing it is gone, or maybe they're not and it's just still going to go straight through. Saying, hey, let's take a step back here. Maybe all those voices are gone. So it'll be interesting.

I mean, I think we are in rarely to unprecedented times with this stuff. So it'll be interesting. For sure. Well, any other points or topics that we didn't hit on on this subject that you want to bring up? I'm sure we'll think of something later. Yeah, right. As soon as we say goodbye, I, I should have said this right on.

Well, I think it was a productive and interesting discussion for sure. I wasn't aware of a lot of these aspects. I appreciate your time and effort to prepare for this and look into this stuff. Thanks again for bringing the topic to our attention and coming on and fighting it. So it's been a great time having you on here. Where can people find you? Just on Facebook or Instagram. Just my name. Michael Gillen is all you need to look. G-I-L-L-O-N? Yes.

I have to be confused with the Gillan of Gillan's monitors fame. No, not that special. Well, thank you guys for having me on. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the inspiration. I do think it's timely. That's a big part of it, the appeal and intrinsically interesting to me, but yeah, just the timeliness relative to the sort of multiple proposals that are going at once and the upheaval and all these things.

Yeah, definitely seeing the, some of the people freaking out right away, thinking they're illegal, cannot keep it all anymore. No one can help them. And while that may be the case in some parts of some jurisdictions or whatever, in general, that's overstated. Yeah. Kill the horrid creatures and their lizards too. Well, I think having that understanding that you've both have kind of brought to the table will be very helpful in the whole effort to counteract these things

or to put in your comments or whatever. So thanks guys. Anything cool in the world of reptiles that you've come across this week or have any recommendations for people to check out? I got a new book I'm excited about. It's Snakes Without Borders by Rick Shine. That came in the mail this week, so I'm excited to dive into that a bit and do some reading here. I just finished an older book, the Bruce Means, Stalking the Plume Serpent. I finally finished that. I just kind of had it on the bedside and I'd read when I got a chance. But what

a great book. What a fun, you know, I just love those kind of first accounts of working with reptiles in the wild or, you know, stories about finding them. So it's a great book if you haven't heard, you know, check that one out. And Snakes Without Borders looks to be somewhat similar, you know, stories about studying and in the wild. So pretty cool. I, I was, uh, I started reading the snakes without borders. Uh, um, and he starts out the book talking about, um, Legler, uh, Dr. Legler that worked at, uh, the university of Utah. And when I was, uh, you know, on my path to become a herpetologist as a young kid. I think I was in high school, maybe. I went and visited his lab at the U of U and was able just to chat with him. I don't know how I

even got in contact with him or why he let me into the lab, but he took me in, was telling me really cool stories about turtles and some of the discoveries he'd made. And so it was cool to see that he was a kind of a role model or what's the word I'm looking for? That he played that role for Rick Shine as well, where he was helping him. Inspiration. Yeah. So pretty cool. But yeah, I was really privileged to meet Dr. Legler before he passed away. And just to hear those stories was just really cool. But yeah, I was really privileged to meet Dr. Legler before he passed away and just hear those stories was just really cool. I don't know why I wussed out and didn't go down the herpetology route, but oh well, I can go have those adventures in field herping, I suppose.

But yeah, good stuff. Anything from you guys you want to share that you've seen that's been cool? Well, recently I read Romulus Whitaker's book that he came up with, I guess, last year. My friend got it for me for my birthday. It was very good. Very interesting. At some points you're like, Oh, is this like even about snakes? And then by the end of it, you're like, I need more. I need another whole book. So I hear Rob got the book. So I'm sure he'll enjoy it just as well. But yeah, it was very interesting and you'll see how it connects with certain other things

that we all know about, whether it's a serpentarium in South Carolina or herping or traveling the world and just growing up in a time that none of us have been around for. So yeah, it's a very good book. I believe it's called Snakes, Drugs and Rock and Roll. So definitely good. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's cool. I'll have to check that out. I've got, I've got just, I

mean, you can see it. I've got a big pile of books right next to me that I have need to dive into a little bit better, but yeah, I keep buying more books, but I don't have as much time to read them. So I guess maybe in, in retirement, I can finish a bunch of books. Start working through it. Yeah, you had mentioned that, Michael, about the Ramwadikar book. Yeah, I got it a year or so ago, but I haven't prioritized it. I'm almost through the book, actually. I don't think it's Gordishu. It's involved, but it's not an eco book, but it's the snake identification in the ancient Egyptian Brooklyn medical papyrus. So essentially, it's papyrus text from, what is it?

Well, so it doesn't have a definitive age, but at least 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 years old, something like that, and reading through it and trying to figure out, okay, what is the ... It's interesting where it's essentially defining what the snake would be and then what the appropriate treatments would be based on this. Wow. And I think I'm three quarters of the way through it. And when I was three pages into it, I said, actually, the person this book was written for, the singular person this book was written for is Phil Wolfe.

So as soon as I finish it, I'm going to send you a picture of it. You got to read this big man because you are the intended audience for this book. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely an audience for just about anything out there. And yeah, Phil does sound like that would fit him very well. Egypt and venomous snakes. Ancient Egypt, venomous snakes, papyrus, all this translate, even that fits in the same box of things that amaze me that I have no knowledge of or in-depth knowledge of or whatever, where it's just the whole idea that we've taken in 130 years, we've gone from hieroglyphics being indecipherable to now being able to,

okay, we've turned this whole thing and we're translating 5,000-year-old text about snakes and snake-like treatment and all these things and we're implying, okay, well, based on the weather conditions that would have existed at the time that the manuscript is written, it's not necessarily even the species that are present in that range today. It's we need to look at it and say, what would the weather conditions have been at the time that the manuscript is written, it's not necessarily even the species that are present in that range today. We need to look at it and say, what would the weather conditions have been at the time that this was written that theoretically this could have been a species? So just incredibly complex and convoluted things. It's an amazing piece of work, super interesting and just amazing within the true sense of

the word, in the sense of like if we were having this conversation 150 years ago, no one would believe it. It would be truly unbelievable. Right. Yeah, that was cool. I did get to visit the museum in London, got to see the Rosetta Stone and got kind of geeked out about that. That's pretty cool stuff to think about, those ancient texts and realizing what they're talking about. That's interesting that there's one devoted to snakes and snake bites and treatment. That's pretty cool. And one of the experts for the book actually is talking about in the terms of sort of the implications of the grammar within the hieroglyphic form.

And that's the part. Excuse me, it's just so... Well, I think it means reddish, not red, because of the way the subsequent word. And it's amazing. That's crazy. Well, I'll wait for the audiobook from Phil. Yeah, Phil can record the audiobook. I do enjoy listening to Phil.

Well, all right. Yeah. Thanks again for coming on, Michael. We're thankful to Eric and Owen and the NPR crew for hosting us. Thanks for all the hard work they do and thanks for listening. We'll catch you again next time. We appreciate it. Thanks for listening.

We'll catch you again next time. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you again next time. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.