Reptile Fight Club - Reptile Invasive To Kill or Not to Kill with Luc Myers

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

In this episode, Justin and Rob are joined by Luc Myers to discuss what you should do with invasive species. Who will win? You decide. Reptile Fight Club!Follow Justin Julander @Australian Addiction Reptiles-http://www.australianaddiction.comIG https://www.instagram.com/jgjulander/Follow 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 Reptile Bike Club. We are sponsored by mutton powerlifting gloves. If you don't use mutton powerlifting gloves, you are not going to lift much. All right. I'm Justin Joolander here with me, Rob Stone. What is going on? Not too much. I think I've got to get some of those.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Finger caly and, you know, foam calluses and things. I got to get on that. Yeah. I mean, you've got to keep the sponsor. happy.

I know. I know. Nick will be pissed if he hears we're not using his gloves. All right. Well. Right. Yeah. Yeah, he's got to send us some.

I don't know what the deal is here. You know, he's a sponsor, but he won't give us free product. It's ridiculous. All right. Well, okay. We've got, with us tonight, Luke Myers, joining us for a nice little debate about invasives. So welcome to the podcast.

How are you doing? Pretty good. Have a good. ready to talk about getting rid of some invasive species. It's something I've been doing for a couple years out here in California. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a sad thing, you know. I was, what was it?

Well, I can save that for later, but yeah, I'm getting close on eggs, so on a couple different snakes. I'm getting excited here. And I also realized my husbandry on my gurney stuff was a little off. I had them way too hot. And so, like, they were always, like, down at the lower levels, kind of tucked in. And my tem gun was out of batteries. And so instead of buying a battery, I just assumed, ah, I've been keeping them like this for a while.

They're fine. And then I get a temp gun. I'm like, oh, that's a little hot. So changed it. And now I, you know, I was watching my, I have this little camera on them. And I'm watching it on my phone. And, like, they're out basking now and stuff like that. And then they kind of run down and mate for a bit and then separate and go back to basking.

So I'm hoping things will improve this year. But yeah, kind of fun to be in the swing of breeding season and see some of those positive signs. My female black-headed python is inverting. Hopefully she'll be laying eggs soon. Our buddy Jordan Parrott just got a clutch of eggs. So congrats to Jordan, a clutch of black-headed python eggs. So pretty cool stuff. But, yeah, other than that, season's going as well as can be expected and hopefully have a new, I guess, I don't know if you can call it a new species, but a new type under my belt.

Got pygmy banded pythons about to lay eggs, so it's kind of exciting. Oh, that's just another children's python, so who cares? Oh, my goodness. Well, it's super interesting that the agonnier are not as plastic relatives. their sort of attempts that they'll expose as odatria stuff, right? Because they'll sit there very shortly, but I mean, I would run, you know, again, not using a big bowl, but by getting stacks super close to the light, you know, glowerdye would sit at 165, 170F for, you know, two, three, four, five minutes,

and then tuck down to the next level and whatever. So it's really interesting that the hernia don't have that sort of response. They were just saying, this is too hot, my friend. Yeah, well, and I had a nice little conversation with our, uh, a VEA, Lus, Viles, I never know how to pronounce. I should have asked him when I talked to the other day, but yeah, he was giving me some nice advice on that. And he's like, yeah, 120's kind of their preferred basking temperature. Yeah. So he was like, he keeps him, you know, around that temperature. So I'm like, yeah, I better try to match that and see if I can improve my success here.

Because Ard does very well with them. I mean, I don't know. He does very well with most of the things he touches. So he had those amazing womas for, you know, that he was producing for salon. I think he still has some, but man, yeah, he produces some killer animals. So he keeps asking me, hey, you produce any depressive? I'm like, no, I thought they were going to go, but then they didn't go. He's like, why don't we have a conversation? He said, let me get you on the right track so I can get some of those. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's a, you know, Alan Rapashi's bloodline, so I think you want some of those stuff. So, yeah. Cool. Yeah. How about? you look, do you keep anything at home or is it like just more work?

No, I got a, I've been keeping green trees for probably about 10 years. Okay. I got a pretty small group. I got about 16. I got one clutch in the incubator right now. 14 eggs. Should have hatch in a couple weeks. They look pretty good.

But they're all those damn hybrids. Designer green tree reader. I got a little younger. I think now if I got into it, I'd maybe go. just get all pure biogs or something like that. Right. But, yeah, I've had a group about 10 for a pretty long time now. Nice.

I brought them a couple times. And then I got a couple Mountain Kings I got last year. So I have some Greer Eye and some Nabila. Nice. I really like those. Oh, and one, I was gifted to Jamaican boa. So I have one single Jamaican boa that just kind of sits in a corner. But it's cool.

Right. Yeah, that's cool. Rob works with some of the, those. Yeah, Jamaican mosa's and Portland boas. Yeah, for sure. They're definitely cool, man. They have to see if we can catch some more. Yeah, if you want to pair it up, you got the right guy here.

Well, there's days I'm like, I don't want anymore. And then there's days I'm like, it'd be cool to get at least one with like a pair. Right, yeah. Just to say you've done it or helped breed an endangered animal or whatever. I don't know if they're truly endangered or if they're just. I think the Jamaicans are. So the Puerto Rican seem like they either have been or should be sort of downgraded. They seem to be pretty resilient to development and things.

They're more widespread in Puerto Rico than sort of they were initially construed to be, I think. The Jamaican bowers, I think, really do suffer from persecution in Jamaica, for sure, which is all the more shocking when, you know, we're talking about a place that doesn't have venomous snakes. The idea that people are afraid of snakes really doesn't make a ton of sense, and that they're sort of going on another way to kill them. And habitat stuff is right. So, yeah, those I think really are in trouble. You mentioned the Nabokai, though, Luke.

When you say Nabokai, what do you mean? Do you mean what I would mean by Nabokai, what the hobby is meant by a black guy for the last, I don't know, 40 years? Or do you mean, are you being liberal with that? Burbank. No, these are the ones way down south. These look like the classic. side lateral bands and things.

Yeah. Yeah, not the Newton of Block guy, I guess. I don't know how you would put that. Right. A pyro south of the Grand Canyon, yeah. Right. Yeah. I was like you get some of those.

I guess it was fresh in my mind because I was reading a book out of Utah, well, theoretically out of Utah, Justin. So I was turned on to it by Tom Major on the Herpological Highlights podcast, and he actually was a, a reviewer, supply to review for this book, Piro by Dallon Kohler, available on Amazon. But he was a student at BYU, and as part of an undergrad, I think, project who was trying to get into grad school associated with either biology or Hempstaff became his mission to try and find pyros. in the sort of median well a in utah and then be looking to try and find samples that would come from um above the watchukas but below the grand canyon and so it's yeah it's kind of in a caulfeld style

it's obviously more you know it's a new i think he came out last year was my guess um but you find it fascinating because it's all about he's he's talking about herping in utah looking for these things. And there's one, he does manage to turn him up, give away the spoiler, but he does manage to turn him up, but only at one place, and it's in Knoche, Knoche, above where we were at. And he turned him up on three different trips over the course of, you know, 15 months, something like that.

But, yeah, it's really fun. And I think part of what I did find appealing about it is it speaks to the difficulty of the thing. I think kind of in the social media age, a lot of this stuff is made to seem easier or trivial relative to the actual effort that it takes, some sort of effort and inputs and all those, the suffering that goes into it, you know, for a handful of likes on Instagram or whatever. So, and now, I think, it doesn't explicitly say this, but I think he's working in a master's program for Kevin Messenger over at Nanjing Forestry. Certainly it says China.

It says Nanjing. So I would presume that means with Dr. Messenger. So, yeah, interesting book. I think 10, 15 bucks on Amazon. Yeah, it's on its way. It costs 11 bucks with tags. Yeah, that's cool. I was part of a working group in Utah where the state was kind of paying us to survey

and find out how stable or how large the population of pyros and milk. in Utah were. And so they reimburse us our gas money for going out and herping. So it was kind of a sweet deal. Was that early 2000s? Early to mid. Yeah, yeah, early to mid. Okay, so actually his project wound up being one of a couple projects

was actually to sort of collate all those records. Okay, yeah. So I'm sure you evolve, you're the target audience for this book. Yeah, yeah, that's very cool. I hadn't heard about that. And I don't know that I know the author, but, yeah, there were a few guys. Mark Hazel was, like, really exploring some of the West Desert. Does he?

Yeah. He kind of took this kid under his wing. Okay. There's, you know, accounts of them going out together, trying different mountain ranges. Where they hadn't been documented. Exactly right. So, yeah, this should be exactly up your alley. I read it in a day.

So there's your challenge. Nice. The gauntlet is thrown down. And I guess notably absolutely. And maybe they were too young. I don't know. But Pat May and he just put out a video of finding some pretty awesome pyros. No, they were, they must have been pyros in San Juan County in the southeast.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's something. Right? Yeah. It was pretty. I mean, they've been documented there before.

And Ray Jones, I mean, he's kind of the milk snake master. Maybe it was a milk. But, yeah, just really, I think it had a lot of red on its face, really nice-looking animal. Like, it was really high red, really pretty snake. But, yeah, Pat May has a nice YouTube channel, and he's been putting up a lot of videos lately from, I think he herps all, you know, all the time that he can in the warmer weather and then puts up videos in the winter. Right. He's putting him up later. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, so some nice stuff, especially over the last couple days.

I think he's put up four or five videos. But yeah, check out Patrick May's videos. And Rye Jones, man, he finds all sorts of stuff. I think he's, you know, increased the number of counties that they found milks in by, you know, by several counties. And Brian Eager's, he was involved with the whole thing. And he's, I mean, these guys are just legend herpers in Utah for sure, like pretty crazy. easy. But yeah, that'll be interesting. I'll look forward to reading that. Yeah.

Yeah. Sounds awesome. I'm definitely going to check it out too. Yeah, definitely worth checking out. I think it should be sort of general interest to anyone who's into field herping and things. I just knew that as I'm reading, I'm going, Justin is exactly the target audience of one for this book. Right. Could that be a more perfect audience? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's. took me until this, what, two years ago to find one. So, yeah, it's been. And, you know, I guess I was

always a desert rat. I didn't think there were cool reptiles in the mountains. And so, and it was kind of funny because my dad had found a pyro in Oak, Oak City around that area, kind of the northern extent of the range in Utah. Yeah. And so we, he has a picture of him holding a pyro that he found with, he was out herping, or not herping, but he was out doing some fieldwork with my grandpa, who was a wildlife biologist that was studying mule deer. And so they were probably doing some deer studies and they ran across the pyro during that time. So I put that in the field guide. My dad's hands holding this pyro from, what was it, like, 1963 or something like that,

kind of cool. So fun stuff. But, yeah, so he found one before I did. He's like, I remember. we're finding like a really pretty banded snake, you know, with red. I'm like, what? Show me the picture, Dad. Why are you just telling me about this?

We could have been visiting Oak City all these years. That's how it always works. Someone takes you a picture. Hey, I know you like snakes. Do you know what this is? I've been looking for it for so long. They're not a herper. They don't even care.

But they're like, oh, I found one. Yeah, no big deal. Yeah. So same, I mean, we'd always stay at my great aunt's house in Marysvale. And Marysville is a great locality for, you know, some of these tricolors. And so I'm like, man, if only I would have known, you know, I was flipping rocks and stuff, but mostly finding like scorpions. I was probably in the wrong place, you know, but I was out by the junkyard.

I think we'd find a snake here there. But, yeah, nothing. No, no tricolors. So what do you do? But I guess that's the fun of it. you learn about new things and learn how to find them. And it's half the fun of it, I guess. Having new targets, learning about new animals.

All right. Well, I guess one other order of business will wish Rob a happy birthday today. I appreciate you. Happy birthday. Yeah. Appreciate you spending your birthday on recording a podcast with this. But yeah. Yeah.

Hope you had a good day. Absolutely. No place I'd rather be. I'm excited for it. Awesome. Yeah. Well, yeah, if you're out there and you haven't wished her up a happy birthday, go for it. And you share a birthday with our other good friend, Dustin. Exactly right. Yeah, I forgot that this morning. I'm like, oh, happy birthday, Rob. And then Phil's on there, happy birthday, Dustin. I'm like, oh, crap, I forgot it was Dustin's birthday, too. So, yeah, good stuff. Well, happy birthday to both of you. All right. Well, Luke, why don't you kind of tell us about yourself where you fit into herpetology or herpeticulture and we'll kind of go from there. Cool. Yeah. I've been working at the zoo for about four years as a reptile keeper. So I've been doing that for a while. I ended up majoring in animal science at UC Davis to do some giant garter snake stuff while it was over there, which is cool. Cool. Yeah. Were you into snakes before that? Or like, was this just kind of something you discovered in college? Or have you always kind of... Yeah, I was kind of a late bloomer I discovered in college.

And I went to community college and our bio department had a snake room. And I was like, this is the coolest thing ever. And they'd pay you, you know, to come 10 hours a week to come take care of the snakes. And yeah, that's where I got hooked. And there I got green tree pythons when I was in community college. and basically I've had green trees ever since. And then, yeah, eventually transferred major in an animal science. Yeah, did the garter snake stuff. A little bit of raptor stuff while I was there, which was cool. That was fun.

They had like a raptor rehab on campus. Oh, cool. It was pretty cool. And then when I moved back, eventually got a job as like a wildlife biologist for like a consulting company where basically if they're doing like power lines in a national forest, you just go right down what you see. or to make it simple, you babysit a construction crew to make sure they don't trash the place if there's listed species there and stuff like that. So they're never happy to see you there. Yeah, they know they have to be careful.

Yeah, but, you know, you get access to some pretty cool places. And, you know, you started traveling a lot more around California and spending more time field herping. Cool. And then through that process, I became fairly permitted and state permitted for California Red Lgged Frog. So ended up doing a lot of work with them. And part of getting your permit is you have to volunteer hours with permitted biologists

so you can kind of a track record that you're qualified. And through that, I became connected with a nonprofit based in Inslaughta that does red-legged frog habitat restoration. Oh, cool. So basically, it just kept on going and bothering them all the time. And eventually I started teaching there. They do, again, kind of for biologists working as consultants, Rare Herps Workshop, because it basically has all the same species of Southern California. So you can take bios down there and they can get, you know, it'll count for hours here.

And you can handle them. And there's just a little ton of stuff down there. So I started teaching that class. And then I'm on the board for that organization. They're called Fano del Noraste. Noraste. So that's been fun. So I go to Mexico a lot now.

Oh, nice. Yeah, like at least four times a year. And they do some really, really cool stuff for red-legged frogs. Yeah. It's been a so. Go ahead. Sorry. Oh, do you speak Spanish?

Nope. Not even a little. Yeah. I know stevoias, onions. Onions. Yeah. I have one, one quote from like, I don't know, I think it was some friends that. that they said that they would, they took this tour and, you know, everything was in Spanish.

And every time they got on the bus, the bus driver would say the same thing. So it's like, hovenous, estabien, poel into harcises coel into horses, cost us in the autobus. You, it is okay to leave your possessions on the bus. So that's the phrase I know in Spanish. It's not very helpful when you're, yeah. Well, in Red Lugget, Frog, so that's really cool. I know I've seen them a couple years ago when I was up by Santa Cruz looking for the things that eat those. Or maybe the fancy things that eat those.

But I did see the frogs, which was really neat. Oh, that is cool. Yeah, I love snakes, but kind of, you know, spending more time working as like a wildlife consultant or whatever. I really fell in love with amphibians. And we have a lot of protected ones and some really cool ones in California. And, you know, I love the toads. Like we have Oroyo toads, spade foots. Awesome, you know.

So, uh, those are cool. That's even later, you know, I was like, I can't believe I love amphibians. You know what I mean? But they're great. And even through that process, doing red-legged frog stuff, uh, that's how I kind of got into bullfrog removal, um, having sites that had bullfrogs that needed them gone. And, uh, you know, I think people used to think it couldn't be done, but it definitely can.

And, uh, it definitely works, you know. You see an impact, huh? Oh, yeah. Okay. That's good. That's encouraging. Yeah, sometimes, I mean, like, you see the cane toads in Australia and you're just like, there's nothing you can really do.

They're just so prevalent and so numerous, you know, and in so many areas that you're not going to get to. It's just crazy. So, I don't know. That's encouraging to hear. Yeah, two trips back when we were up by Byfield, Queensland. It was the first time that I'd ever seen who came upon. I think it was on the property we were staying at.

There was a pond, you know, a stagnant pond that had cantoes morphing out. So it was tadpoles and then morphed out. And each sort of square foot must have had, you know, hundreds to thousands of time. And it just seemed in the moment overwhelmed. You know, and, yeah, as we'll chat through, it's kind of like you just start mashing, you know. Kool-Aid Manning through that? you know, what are you going to do? Or is it just like, I don't know if, you know, there's really, and that's one pond in,

you know, on one parcel of property in, you know, one tiny segment of this habitat, like what, the scope and scale of it is certainly a factor for the conversation. Yeah. All right. Well, I guess I can kind of lead us into our discussion here. And I guess I will put out, you know, a bit of a trigger warning or whatever you want to call it for those who are. little sensitive to this subject. I mean, we're a little flippant with our title, you know, and obviously we love animals. We love wildlife. And so, you know, that's, that's part of this,

of course. But, you know, there is a time for humane euthanasia of invasive species. And so we want to discuss that. So if that's a topic that bothers you, you know, maybe this isn't the episode for you, you can hear one of our many great episodes before and after. But hopefully, you know, you'll listen and give it a chance and see, because, you know, obviously there's points on either side and we'll hopefully hit on those topics. And if we miss something, let us know and we can rehash it down the road. But I think Luke's a perfect person for this topic where you're involved in bullfrog removal and have seen kind of the the pros and cons of that, you know, where if areas have, you know, bullfrogs running amok and,

you know, unabated, then I'm sure you've seen the damage that that causes and have first-hand experience with that, too. So I think this is a valuable topic anyway. So, yeah, despite our, you know, I guess flipping use of the word kill or that kind of thing, you know, it's, it's more of a catchy title rather than our true feelings, I would say. I would suppose. So, but, so yeah, we'll go ahead and flip a coin see who gets the opportunity to debate you on this one. And so, Rob, why don't you call it? Tails.

Tails. You got it. Birthday win on the coin toss. Birthday win, birthday surprise. Yeah. That being said, I will defer to you. I think you have lots of thoughts on this. And I have allergies going crazy.

So I don't want them to subject to people that more than necessary. So, yeah, I'll just interject. You relax. Relax on your birthday. Kick back. Have a beer. Exactly. All right. And then Luke, I'll flip it and you can call this one. Heads. Heads. It's heads. I'm a double losers day.

So, yeah, which side would you like to defend, I guess? I think I could do both. Do you have a side? Do you want to defend? Not necessarily. I was just going to give. go with the flow, I guess, whatever you feel more passionate about or, you know, have more data to back, I guess. But I mean, you can, you can make points on either side, too, if I miss something on the side. I think I could go pro and then I can, you know, throw some things out there where, you know, like, yeah, maybe this isn't so great and that kind of stuff too.

So I'll go pro then. Okay, sounds good. And then as the coin toss winner, you can have me go first or you can go first or you can go first with whatever point you want to make and then I'll counter it or vice versa. I'll let you go first. Okay. Sounds good. Well, I guess we'll kind of define what we're talking about a little more here.

So all invasives, not just necessarily bullfrogs. So I guess I'll maybe start with the topic of like feral cats. Like we all know feral cats are one of the worst, you know, predators and most effective predators. I guess, of native wildlife, and especially, you know, if they're just kind of left, let, if they're feral, yeah, right. So, I mean, our cats are in our house. They don't go outside, you know, we, they're pretty, they lack their front claws, whether you agree with that or not, but so we don't let them outside.

So they're house cats, basically. So I don't know if they could catch a wild animal if they, but, but, you know, they, it's kind of ingrained in their DNA. So, but, uh, you know, and there's all sorts of feral cats around where we live. And I was seeing something. There's been a decline in bird species. Like we've lost four billion birds over the past 10 years or something like that.

This was just one of those flashy news headlines that I saw this morning while I was just scrolling through social media. But so, you know, that we know that they're a terrible predator, especially in Australia. that's kind of where I get excited about the herping and stuff. And I mean, feral cats or cats have never been in Australia, or at least, you know, in our recent history. Since the place to scene, let's say. I'm probably wrong on that too. But they've been introduced, you know, through pets and things like that.

So, yeah, cue the cat coming into Terob's house. But, I mean, and people love cats, right? I really like cats as well, and especially like wild cats, you know, bobcats and mountain lines and all that stuff. Cats are great, but in the wrong area, they can just be devastating to wildlife. And, I mean, the track record of cats in Australia has huge declines in native mammals, in reptiles. So, yeah, they're just a terror over there. And they don't belong and they shouldn't be there. But, and I've seen some folks, like there's this guy that, you know, makes cat skin half.

And he's got like a whole cat outfit, you know, then he goes and hunts feral cats. And there were some projects with aboriginals out there where they were trapping cats and things like that. But I think if you tried to do that in the U.S., you'd probably get stoned. And, you know, you'd be in big trail. They'd sick pita on you and all sorts of things. So like, you know, there's a fine line, you know, that you can just go out and kind of will. nilly take out cats. So I think, I don't know, there's got to be a way to do this humanely and in line with, you know, I'm sure you would hope that these animal rights organizations

or whatever would recognize that this is a problem for native wildlife and they would be pro some solution to this problem. But I think if, yeah, you just kind of took it upon yourself to go out and indiscriminately shoot cats, you'd probably be in big trouble. So I wouldn't recommend doing that, even though it probably needs to be done, however you want to say that. So I guess that'd be my first thing. You really kind of have to be careful with the invasive species that you're targeting and the way that you do that. I know my dad's cousin got bit by a cat, and he was worried it was rabbit. And so he told his neighbor, like, oh, I got bit by this, you know,

know, black cat and I'm trying to find it so I can take it in and make sure it's not rabid so I don't have to get shots or whatever. And so his neighbor would come over, is this your cat? Like, no, that's a white cat. I said it was a black cat. You know, like, is this your cat? No, again, it's a black cat. Like how many times?

Yeah, so there's a lot of feral cats around here. So I'll start out with that one. Okay. Well, I think you should shoot all the cats. I'm joking. That's my side. I'm sticking to it. No, but, you know, it is, I think, right, it's always going to depend on where you are, right?

Like, what the invasive is, all that kind of stuff. Like, I mean, we're talking about animals, but, I mean, invasive plants are probably just as bad, too, right? Oh, they're terrible. I look at some of those, like, invasive grass. I'm like, there's no way to solve this. issue, you know, what are you going to do? But I think, right, it's all about context. You know, if you're talking about shooting cats in downtown L.A. to, you know, help save the pigeons, which are another non-native, right, or house barrels, another non-native. Like, what are we talking

about here? But I think if you're looking at if it's doable, if it's going to benefit, you know, native species, right? And it's hard to argue that there isn't a reason to do it. And I think even, you know, even, you know, some people might be like, well, what's killing one going to do? But sometimes I'm like, well, saves one more snake. I don't see how it hurts anything. Right. Especially if it's like, you know, kind of like the cane-toed bullfrogs where one adult can lay several thousand eggs,

then maybe killing one does make a little bit of a difference or again just saves. one more native reptile and aphibian's life, however you want to look at it. But I think it's always going to be context-dependent, right? And I think in the right context, there's certain situations where it's hard to argue that it's not worth at least trying to do or doing, you know? Right. Yeah. And I mean, I guess with any of this, I guess the full disclaimer, if you're going to euthanize something, yeah, make sure it's done as humanely as possible. And, you know, that kind of thing. You're not letting anything suffer unneeded, you know, or getting some kick out of, we're not getting a kick out of killing things, right? Let's just put that out there.

And so this is a kind of a necessary evil that nobody enjoys, but that needs to be done. I mean, I'm kind of a softie anyway. And so, like, yeah, I kind of had that attitude in Australia, like where there's the cane toads everywhere. And run it over, hit it. You know, I'm driving. And I'm just like, oh, I miss, darn it. You know, like, I, well, even when I was trying. trying to hit it. I would miss for some reason. So I don't know. Just my subconscious saying, because, you know, I was given the choice early on. My dad's like, do you want to go hunting or do you want to go backpacking? Like, that was kind of the way he presented that. And so I'm like, well, I don't really like to kill things at all. You know, so I'm like, I'll go backpacking. Like I'm not much of a hunter. But and then, you know, in my day job and, and, you know, feeding my snakes and stuff, I'm euthanizing mice all the time. Like, you know, that's just the nature of it. So, and I, you know, I consider myself an animal lover, but, you know, I guess there are some things that are bigger than that, I guess.

And so, yeah. Yeah, and I think sometimes kind of like, when you mentioned, like, seeing the cane toad, I mean, I've been to some, I'm sorry if I'm going to bring up bullfrogs a lot, because that's what I have no experience with, but you end up at these ponds where it's like only adult bullfrogs. Like, you know there's other native species close by and has been taken over. And, I mean, there's, you know, 40, 50, maybe 100, like, huge adults, right? And then the only thing you are seeing in the pond is little metamorphal frogs. And you realize they are eating each other. They're breeding and basically just feeding themselves. And, you know, you're like, this is perfect habitat in every other way.

And kind of just knowing that, you know, there could be red-legged frogs here. And that entering your mind almost becomes personal. So now you're like, we got to get these out of here. This is too good of a spot to be overtaken. You know what I mean? Right, right. It's, yeah, I think some people, I've talked to people where they're like, I don't know if I could do that.

And then they've been to some sites and they're like, this isn't okay or normal. You know what I mean? And sometimes it takes seeing how bad it is to kind of change people's minds on some things, you know? Right. And sometimes going to those places where you see that, you're like someone has to do something here.

We can't just let this go on and go, oh, there's no way to fix it. I'm going to walk away and just ignore the problem, right? Right. Yeah. So that's kind of, yeah, when you see that, sometimes it's hard to even see, you know. Yeah. I think in, you know, in regards to that, like, and this is probably a point for your side, but like if there's a use for the, you know, like I know in Australia, they'll use the cane-toed leather and they'll make, like,

hand you know purses or like change you know what it whatever you call the little things that you put your change in or whatever and you can buy one that's made out of a cane toad and a lot a lot of times they'll have like fake eyes or something in the head you know it's a little grotesque but like i i saw some really nice like leather products made from cane to leather you know and i mean i guess if if they're gonna get get a you know product out of it then then there's another incentive i guess to to make that happen. But I know with Bullfrogs, Aspen, Mayhan,

I think he was cooking up the legs and eating them, you know, like making a little meal out of all the bullfrog legs eat collect or something. So, you know. They're delicious. Cook the right way. I've had some pretty good ones.

Yeah. You're on a campfire late at night. Right. It's not bad. But again, even kind of to your point, right, everyone's going to have their own comfort level.

I remember we were working one job a couple months ago, and we were also getting ready or sliders, which are invasive here. And we'll usually take them to some spot, and they'll humanely euthanize those with, like, chemicals because it's easier, like, a place. But even we had done a couple, and I catch this little, like, baby turtle. And I was like, we both looked at each other. We're like, I can't do this. You know what I mean? Yeah. I was like, I found it all.

You know what I mean? Everyone's going to have their own level where they're like, this is too far, right? And some people might be cats. Some people might be a frog or a turtle, but, you know, but we've just, you know, I have worksites where it does make a difference, right? And you'll see, even sometimes you'll see,

without introducing native species, stuff just comes back on its own, which is way cooler than even introducing where you're like, oh, it was just hanging out, waiting for this, you know, one area to kind of open up. And they were right on the edge and then they'll just come back in and stuff like that, which is really, really cool to see and, you know, makes you feel pretty good about the work you're doing. Right. Yeah.

And some, I mean, some even wonder if they're more neutral. I mean, even like, I don't know, I know this is a very, you know, with the cane toads in Australia, that's probably where I have the most, you know, knowledge or experience with, with invasive. but like there were there are some populations that benefited from cane toads, you know, that the big predators went away, you know, and that's obviously a horrible thing, but like the populations of the pig-nose turtle really expanded when the cane toads kind of went through Darwin area or whatever. And same with the children's pythons.

They found a positive relationship with the cane toad spread and children python numbers and stuff. So sometimes invasives can, you know, unwittingly benefit, you know, the some of the other, the other types. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. They know plantations with short-tailed pythens, right?

Yeah. They work for those. They didn't work for a lot of things. Exactly. Yeah. So, and I'm not saying that's a, that's a good outcome necessarily, but, you know, for that species, it may be a good outcome. And if, you know, they were struggling anyway, maybe that's, but, but everything's tied to I saw some recent thing where they were overfishing or eliminating great white sharks in this area, right?

And then they watched what happened to the other populations of fish and things in that habitat once the main apex predators were removed. And some of the lower level predators increased in numbers. and then that resulted in a reduction of like food species of fish that fishermen would catch and use, you know, to feed people. And so getting rid of the great white sharks, they thought, oh, that'll make more fish available for us. But it actually had the opposite effect where, you know, they're, and anytime you're messing with the natural balance, you're going to have some repercussions that are most likely going to be negative, you know, if you're just willy-nilly taken out a predator because these, these tropic webs have developed over millions of years and, you know, taking out one piece is probably going to be a bad situation. You hear this with all sorts of different, you know,

things where we've eliminated different, you know, natural predators like wolves or mountain lions or bears or something, and then all of a sudden the deer population explodes. And that was one of the things my grandfather studied on mule deer was like trying to, you know, figure out what the right population level would be. And of course, that varies based on weather conditions, how bad a snow year it was. And I mean, he'd go out and study these populations. And one year, they'd just have an overpopulation and then they'd just be starving to death because there's too many for the land of support. And so, you know, that was kind of the research to figure out, you know, how much, what kind of take they needed for the hunting. Because that's, once you get

rid of the predators, man becomes the only predator for the most part. And so they have to intervene in that regard through hunting. So I think, you know, sometimes we, with the, with the invasives that we're talking about, it's, you know, a little more insidious or hard to track, I guess, or hard to find. But, you know, I guess it sounds like there's, there's some hope there with some of your experience with the bullfrogs. Maybe could you tell us a story about how that's been a successful thing. I mean, you mentioned that some of the red-legged frogs are kind of waiting to come back, but have you seen kind of like elimination of bullfrogs in an area?

Yeah, yeah, you can definitely do it, you know. You know, I can talk about kind of how we do it, but, you know, we go out once a month. Air rifles, we found them is the most effective. And, again, it's at the beginning, and Mike, who taught me how to do it a lot, or kind of my mentor for it was, he would always say, you know, you can't go out too often because they become, like, aware of a predator.

And you're like, ah, it's a frog. Could that really happen? And I remember one of the first jobs I got on my own. And it was like, go out every week. Go out every week. Yeah. And I was like, ah, I really think we could do once a month. And just like, no, just go out every week.

And sure enough, within, like, three weeks, you put a flashlight on them and they're underwater, you know what I mean? And they learn so quick, which is really cool to see. in person opposed to one of those things you just hear about, you know. Right. But, yeah, we found that going out once a month is kind of that happy middle where you're

not out there too much, where they kind of learn to just avoid you at all cost. And they're kind of still get like, I'm sure if you've looked at them like frogs at night and a palm, they freeze up if they've never really seen too many humans, right? And stuff like that. So, yeah, we'll go out once a month. And it's just, it also just depends on the system, right? Like, again, kind of tied to cane toads. Like, bullfrogs are really, really aquatic.

So if it's a pond, I mean, maybe a couple are going to leave every once in and out, but they're not traveling large areas of land as frequently as something like a toad, right? It's going to be maybe in that, I don't know if cane toads breeding like vernal pool type things, kind of like a spate foot or something like that. But then they're, you know, moving across the landscape maybe way more. So luckily, again, with bullfrogs, if it's kind of a closed system, it does seem like it's with enough pressure, you can definitely get them out of there.

Okay. So how long does it take on average to kind of clean a pond, you know, of bullfrogs? It just depend on the number. It depends on how big the pond is and how many frogs, right? Yeah. Definitely, I think some take a couple years. But I think there's been some papers that show that even if you get down to like they did it in Yosemite Park. And I think kind of once you start getting down to that 90% range,

you really just see benefits for a lot of other stuff and you know more than natives can kind of move back in and then you know you don't have to go out every month you can maybe go out a couple times a year just get some ones that somehow survive to adulthood you know what I mean and kind of just like like just kind of keep it at bay type thing right way less effort and stuff like that but yeah just always depends on how big the system is but and again I haven't talked to anyone that's cane toads but really seems like that Like the adults are the driving force. So getting rid of those huge adults is going to really help a lot pretty quickly. And then you're kind of just slowly working on metamorphs and trying to cut that cycle of recruitment to, you know, a breeding size and stuff like that. Yeah. Bringing up Yosemite kind of makes me think of another thing. Like, you know, there's often laws in national parks where you're not allowed to harm anything or remove anything. There was an invasive aquatic weed that had made its way into one of the national parks.

And I can't remember if it was like Vietnamese people. This was a food plant that they would harvest and eat. So they were going into the national park, removing this invasive plant for free because they were taking a home and cooking it up. and they made them stop doing that because, you know, you're not allowed to take anything out of a national park. And it's like, what? You know, you have free removal, you know? These people are just selecting this one invasive plant, you know, and you don't have to pay them. And they're paying a park fee to come in and get it.

Like, let them do it, you know? Like, it's a good thing. But, yeah, they stopped it. And now that, you know, plants choking out the waterways and things like that. So not a great thing. But, you know, you have to, I guess, keep in mind that sometimes that's illegal to do or to remove things from national parks. We didn't already talk about that, did we? I'm trying to think if that was before we started recording or after.

Because, yeah, I can even, like, with Bullfrogs in California, like, for, they have, like, with a fishing license, you can use, like, a gig and a couple things. But even, like, air rifle, you need a scientific collecting permit. with the CDFW or California Department of Fish and Wildlife. So, you know, kind of, I think we did talk about that a little before. Like, Python's like, you've got to make sure you're following the rules and regulations. And I think for both frogs, like an air rifle maybe kind of makes sense where, you know, they don't want people just going out into the mountains and shooting frogs who can't ID them properly. Right.

You know what I mean? I mean, to be like, oh, look at all these frogs I got. It's a threatened frog or something like that. So it kind of makes sense. But then again, kind of like some of the laws are weird. Like I think with a fishing license, no air rifle, but I want to say I'd have to double check in my notes. I have a PowerPoint site on it. I think archery is okay.

Oh, really? For bullfrogs? And you're like, who put that in there? Like, okay. So there's always sometimes a little weird rules and regulations, right? Where you always wonder what they were thinking, what they wrote that kind of stuff. Right, yeah. That's maybe the bow fishing type thing, you know, where they have,

they're doing that already. So, yeah, go ahead and get a frog with that as well. But, yeah, I don't know. That's crazy. But, yeah, that's, yeah, thinking about the cantoes, we were out in the middle of this, like, it was, it was really hot and dry. Like, there was no, there was very little water in, like, this water course, just some, like, little ponds that had remained, right?

And, you know, it floods seasonally. So you'll have a raging river for a couple months. and then it will dry out over time and just be, you know, ponds that are isolated, you know, from each other. So, but we were out herping in this area in Western Australia and just this dry creek bed looking for monitor lizards. There were this, there was this old tire I flipped it over. And there's like five cane toads underneath this tire, you know, a slight bit of moisture under the tire, but like otherwise hot and dry. It was miserably hot, you know.

But yeah, they're persisting in the. these desert, you know, habitats because of the periodic rains and floods. So they're pretty tough animals. So it's really kind of a sad thing to see that. But I don't know. You know, sometimes you think there might not be a solution to that, but there was the invasive plant in Utah and throughout the southwestern deserts. The, what's it called? It takes over the spot of the willow trees, along the banks of the river. It was introduced from the Middle East. Gosh, I don't know why I can't remember the name of it,

but it grew, I mean, if it's by a substantial waterway, it can grow to, like, tree size. But so these have always been a big problem. And they take up, like, you know, five times more water than the willow trees do. So they're actually just sapping the water from the river ways and things and just a big problem with an invasive plant. But they did a scientific study where they took this species of beetle from the Middle East that only feeds on that plant, right?

And so, you know, the warning bells are going off like, oh, are you sure about that? But they did all these tests and the beetles would starve to death before they would eat any other native plants. And so they released the beetles. And we were coincidentally doing a river trip. And so we were waiting on the shores of the color. River and we could just hear the beetles munching the this invasive plant and it was just like and then we went back a year later and it looked like a fire had gone through like all these plants were just dead or dying and like we couldn't you know find any beetles or you know it's just like crazy because when the plants were thriving those beetles were everywhere like they're just kind of flying through the air and landing on the trees and eating the leaves and stuff it was pretty impressive but once once they were dead you didn't see the beetles anymore so it seemed like a kind of a success you know much much better than the cane toad success trying to get rid of cane beetles but you know it was really good i haven't heard about that one

before that's really cool um i can't remember the name of the plant but anyway so yeah success stories happen but you know unfortunately they're they take a lot of effort like you know hunting individual bullfrogs or um or take a lot of planning and research to make sure that it's going to be something that doesn't end up like a Simpsons quote where, oh, well, just once the... That's the beauty part. What about the monkeys? Yeah.

The grill is die when the winter comes. That's the beauty part. So, yeah, we don't want to turn into another cane toad issue. But so I guess there are some good examples that. But it seems like the more we try to intervene with nature, the worse it gets a lot. Yeah. And then it's like, where do you want to draw the line? Like when were they introduced? You know what I mean? That becomes a whole can of worms, right? Like everything got there somehow at one point it was, you know, how it was introduced. And, you know, that could be a little complicated too. Yeah. I kind of feel bad for the Burmese pythons. They're kind of the, you know, the whipping boy for the, you know, like the invasive problem. I mean, Florida is about as unnatural as it gets. There's so many invasives, you know, all these fish and other wildlife.

And so, you know, it's hard to, you know, pick out and single out the Burmese pythons when there's so many other invasives. So, yeah, it's kind of a difficult situation. But I think there was, there was some, you know, they were talking early on about, oh, the Burmese pythons are decimating the raccoon population. And, but I heard recently that the raccoons were decimating the turtle populations. And so once the Burmese pythons are taking out some of these raccoons, then all of a sudden the turtles are bouncing back and native turtles in Florida. You know, so like, that's kind of a good thing from an invasive. Right.

Maybe, you know, restoring balance that we, when we eliminated the Florida Panthers and, you know, all the other predators in that area, maybe the Burmese pythons are. doing part of that job i don't know there's a quote i love it goes there's uh no solutions only trade-offs right right and you know that even example kind of reminds me of even it's not invasive but like um they were trying to do uh once i we went to while i was uh trying to get more foothill yellow legged frog experience was they were um pumping water in uh to have you know year-round water for steelhead it was some steelhead habitat restoration uh so you went where there was water year round, which was kind of an unnatural, right?

Right. They were pumping more and that was natural to improve steelhead habitat and completely overgrown. And, you know, you'd look at it and think it's great frog habitat too. But once you were below where they were pumping in water, we found like a couple foot hill yellow-legged frogs. And then you got right above from where they stopped doing the steelhead restoration and all these big boulders with a couple plunge pools.

And like, I think we got 300-foot hill yellow. the naked frog. So, right, someone's trying to improve steelhead habitat, terrible for the frogs. Meanwhile, more frog habitat. So sometimes it does kind of become just a human thing where what are you trying to save and what do you care about?

And at the cost of what else, you know what I mean? It can go, that can be a deep rabbit hole. This is important to me, but what's important to you type of thing? It can be a hard one to argue, you know? For sure. I mean, fishing's a huge, you know,

probably a huge revenue for the state. I mean, enough that they're dropping fish out of planes and stuff to seed different lakes and things. But, yeah, where you see trout, you don't see many frogs, you know, because the trout eat the frogs. So, yeah, if you're trying to put in trout in every waterway, then you're probably going to do some damage to your native amphibian populations, which is not a great thing. So there has to be a balance. There has to be some thought. You know, we don't just dump stuff wherever we want anymore, although they probably still do to some extent. Right.

No, that's a huge one in California. I can't believe I didn't even think about that one. Introduce trout or just have rook, have reekin, I don't know. Sorry. They wrought that hive. Native amphibians all over, at least in California. That's been a huge one too, right? but people are always going to want to fish.

I think until the end of tie, you're not getting rid of fishing, right? And, you know, I think you get a trout out where maybe people don't go and you leave the popular places where, you know, tons of fishermen already, right? And kind of pick your battles, right? Right. Yeah, you kind of ride off some spots and be like, well, I guess this is a fishing place, you know. But yeah, there does have to be some kind of tradeoff. You can't just say this, we're just going all trout everywhere.

Right, exactly. Has to be planned out and thought out. And I think we're getting better at that. I think that things are hopefully improving overall, you know, rather than getting worse. And I did hear a talk about the Burmese Python situation. And this research that was done seemed to suggest that all the Burmese pythons kind of came from one animal. Like somebody had a, you know, a gravid Burmese python. that was all pissed off back in the 70s, and they went,

I don't want to handle this. So they just released it into the, you know, gave it a nice home in the Everglades and kind of it radiated out from there or something. So that was kind of what this research showed, that it was from a limited gene pool, maybe one, you know, female. And over time, just kind of radiated outward from where it was released, like in the epicenter of the Everglades. So, you know, I don't know how you combat that.

You know, just one release event, you know. And I'm sure other events kind of contributed to that, but kind of interesting to think about, you know. Yeah, but I think now is kind of the best time to combat that kind of stuff with things like, I Naturalist. I think was it the Italian wall lizard, you know, popped up in California. And they put that out really quick, you know what I mean? So maybe if, you know, the Burmese Python happened nowadays where it was. was there's 40 of them out there, you know, and we get them down quickly. I think, you know, hopefully moving.

I see a light at the end of the tunnel, you know. I think there is, if you catch it early, right, I think you can kind of squash it before it gets out of hand sometimes. Yeah, that's encouraging. The other thing I was thinking of is there's some invasive species that are kind of not a plus or minus, you know, they're just kind of there. they don't really out-compete maybe a little bit, but like they're not as, what's the name? There's like invasive, but there's also... Naturalized. Yeah, naturalized where they're not really damaging or out-competing things.

They just kind of become a part of the system. Yeah, I think actually, I might have misspoke. I think the Italian wall lizard out here in California might be naturalized. And I think there was some other invasive that popped that we get a decent amount of. There's so many people here you get invasives in California. But I think some of them have popped up in cities. You know what I mean? Like, oh, it's in Los Angeles.

They water their lawn every day. It can kind of survive here. You know, there's sprinklers on every morning where it was actually out in the desert. What it looks like, it doesn't have a chance. So I think there are some examples of like Mediterranean or house geckos. Yeah. I think there's some out here. Right.

It's in the middle of the city. Yeah. They're living on houses or in houses and they're eating insects. Like they're not a, they're not a negative, overall negative to the, to the population. But, yeah, I mean, there can be other consequences, too, of what the lungworms that they found in the Burmese pythons that are spreading to the, yeah. Yeah, penistones. Yeah, penistone. Like, that's not great.

You know, that's an unexpected consequence of, of, of, of, you know, feral Burmese pythons or invasive Burmese pythons. So, yeah, there's other things that can happen. The diseases could be more scary. The disease could be more scary than the species sometimes, right? Right, yeah. I just saw a paper talking about video myces, the snake fungal disease in Australia, that it's been found in some wild pythons.

So not sure if it's just a different. species or the same species that's over there or if it was brought in with some, you know, legally smuggled animals from the U.S. that had snake fungal disease or what, but now it's in, you know, native population. They found three different fungal diseases in native Australian snakes and other reptiles. So that's, you know, kind of bad news. And I think that was a big risk with amphibians and the B-Sal. fungal disease of salamanders.

And they kind of put the kibosh on importing salamanders to prevent B-Sal from entering the U.S. because we have a very rich diversity of salamanders in the United States. And so that would be very tragic if that were to make its way in. And so I think those efforts either, you know, they paid off. I mean, we don't have B-Sal. I don't know if that really did it or not. but we don't have B-cell, so that's good. Not yet.

That's the hard thing. It's like, yeah, you don't know when it's going to make its way over. And again, you know, the African clawed frogs, they kind of suspect that was the introduction of Kittred into a lot of areas where they were using the frogs as pregnancy tests, basically, you know. And so once they stopped using frogs, then they, just kind of, oh, we'll just put it in this pond here, whatever, you know, back in the 60s or 70s, and now they're an invasive species in areas.

I don't know if there's still a problem in California. I know the... Yeah, yeah. I found one, or a tadpole maybe two years ago. Have you ever seen the tent? You're a potty-looking tadpoles, yeah. I had to take, I was like, this is a tadpole. I was, like, looking at it for 10 minutes, like, what is this thing?

Right. And then it almost looks like a... Oh, okay. Yeah, they're almost like see-through, like big eyes, like weird looking. They almost look like an insect or something. Yeah, or catfish. Yeah. Yeah, with a little like...

Calfish and, yeah, so... Yeah, they're out here, unfortunately, too. Yeah. Still persisting after all those years. I mean, that was a while ago that they were introduced. So, you know, I guess, but I, you know, you don't hear too much about them. I wonder if they're, are they pretty... They seem pretty localized in spots.

They're not spreading too far and wide. Yeah, I don't think they spread this. I mean, I've heard it's like random ponds. Like, ah, there's one in this pond right here, and they just kind of overtake it. I did find them in like a residential wash. So I don't know if they're just all in that kind of drainage right there, which is a pretty big one. But it's, again, it was at Los Angeles that was developed on every part, you know, around the whole drainage type thing. Right.

And you're like, how much are you really hurting? I mean, the tree frogs. seem okay here. The toads are okay. But yeah, I have heard there's random pawns where they just overtake, but it's definitely not to the extent that what happened with bullfrogs or anything like that. I grew up with Woodhouse's toads like all over our yard, and you know, you'd see them every night you'd go out and like you'd have to be careful driving because they'd just be all over the roads and things like that. And now it's like a rare event to see a woodhouse.

is toad out in my parents' yard. You know, I get really excited when I find a toad nowadays where it's, you know, you saw a huge decline in their population, at least locally. I don't know how extensive that was because I, we've, we found, you know, Woodhouse's toads, you know, all across the state, you know, they range from the southwest corner all the way up to my name, you know, area. So, um, I found, I found that out today, in fact, Joe, Joe Mendelsohn's like, um, your range map for Woodhouse's,

toes doesn't incorporate some of the data we gathered back. You might want to change that. So I added the additional range up to Idaho, you know, to the border. So, but yeah, it's, it is sad to see those. And I guess that would be an invasive species, you know, the, the chitrid fungus, you know, came from another continent and hitched a ride on African clawed frogs or whatever. So. And then, you know, scientists out studying it, you know, put their book.

boots on and tracked it into new areas and all sorts of things. So sometimes, you know, you think you're trying to help and you actually making it worse and you don't know. So I think we can forgive them for that, you know, where it's not like it was on purpose or anything. But, yeah, the more you learn, the more you realize, oh, we didn't know a lot back then. And so I guess I guess we can't be too terribly hard on the idiots that brought in cane toads to eat cane beetles on the that occurred at the top of the cane and the toads were at the bottom, you know, but I guess we can, you always have, you know, 20, 20 hindsight. So what do you do?

Well, I'm sure there's going to be some things where in 30 years will be like, I can't believe we were doing that. Right. Yep. They're not above it, you know. Yeah, that's very true. Yeah. But, you know, even kind of sometimes, I guess kind of an argument to getting rid of

invasives. I mean, if we're talking about Kittred too, like even there's starting to show that some populations, you know, there was a crash. But they do, some of them sometimes do develop Kitchard resistance. Right, right. And I guess you could just leave them be, right, and let nature do its thing if you want to make that argument. But I think it's kind of like you can combo, like combine the two, too, where now they're trying to like do amphibian reintroductions, like specifically with frogs with populations that they know have kitchard resistance. Right.

So you start with a good population and then you start putting it back to where they used to be. And, you know, if you coupled out with invasive removal, it just increases your odds for success and all that stuff. For sure. Yeah, because as far as I understand, both frogs aren't susceptible to Kittred, right? They're pretty resilient. They're pretty resilient. Yeah, they're pretty resilient to everything. To everything.

To everything. It makes them a good invasive, I guess. They're a cool frog. It's hard to get a big one if you're like, that's a pretty sweet frog. great there, you know, but you have respect to, but, you know. Yeah, they're beautiful. I mean, bright green and yeah, they have some really nice looking

colors and yeah, it is sad that they're invasive in some areas, but it's nice to go enjoy them where they're from, I guess. Yeah. That would be cool. I should do that one day. Right.

Add that to the list. And yeah, I guess I really enjoyed the day geckos over in Hawaii. You know, they're beautiful and they're all over the place. But I don't think they have, you know, too much of a net negative impact over there. They're just kind of hanging out at the resorts and eating flies. So I don't know.

One of those, you know, kind of inane invasives or, yeah. What did you call them again? Not invasive, but naturalized. Naturalized. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, again, it's kind of just where each person wants to draw the line, right?

Like, same thing. We have, for there's a non-native or naturalized population of Jackson's chameleons in California in some neighborhood. I'm like, kind of want to go see that. That'd be kind of cool. Right. They absolutely would not hurt that thing. You know what I mean? Yeah, sweet.

It's a Jackson comedian. So, you know, again, it's just kind of personal where you draw the line and maybe the specific to the, work you're trying to do and all that kind of stuff. Right. Yeah, it sounds like in Florida, you can go and chasing those invasive or naturalized chameleon populations you might end up getting shot at or. Got to be careful where you're looking for them. Yeah, any other success stories you can think of in regards to invasives or things that

you're working on and, you know, or you have worked on? Or is it just pretty much bullfrogs? For me, mainly bullfrogs just because, again, it's kind of picking up steam in California. It seems like more and more people are doing it too because it's kind of shown that it works. And I think like the last, they have a California, Nevada, amphibian population meeting every year. And I think a couple years ago, there was like one bullfrog talk. And I think this year there was like six or seven between two days. And so it definitely seems like more and more people are doing it, which is really cool.

because I think for a long time, people just kind of like, again, I really don't know anything about the cane to, but people just looked at this situation where like, this is impossible. And, you know, a couple of stubborn people were like, no, we can do something about this. And they really didn't make a difference. And there's been a ton of sites where they've gotten rid of bullfrogs and started introducing natives like foothill, I think a yellow-legged frog. Really good for pawn turtles, too, because the bullfrogs end up just eating patching pawn turtles. Really? Yeah, you end up with these populations of you have all these breeding adults, so it kind of looks like a population is good. But every year, all of the neonates are basically just getting eating and they're just kind of breeding and there's no recruitment at all.

Yeah. So, yeah, people doing palm turtle work have really started doing a lot of bullfrog management and all that stuff too. Man, I didn't know they could eat turtles. That's crazy. Yeah. I found rats in their stomach. I think so one person found a hummingbird once. They'll eat new, like California newt larvae should kill almost anything except maybe a garter snake that found a newt larvae in them and stuff like that.

So yeah, full on rats, crayfish. That was a pretty funny one. Yeah. Louisiana invasives eating invasives. Right. We're killing them. Like, uh-oh, what are we doing now? The crayfish population going to explode.

Right. You know, it's like, unexpected. It's like hard. There's huge crayfish in their stomachs. Wow. That was pretty shocking to see tarantula hawks. Yeah. Which is pretty crazy that they're eating those.

So they'll basically, I don't think they think about what they're eating. I think someone moves in front of them and they scream up. Mm-hmm. Well, I think, didn't you have a picture on your Instagram that had, it looked like a toad, like toad feet out of, yeah. You think that would be toxic as well, but they can. eat a toad and be all right, huh? Right. I don't know if anyone's just let them eat a giant one and followed it around, but it was going to,

that toad was dead when I pulled it out of its mouth, unfortunately. But, yeah, that was one of the sites we actually teach a class on kind of what we do trying to train up other people who are managing sites. So I use that picture because I'm like, look, what was happening here too, you know, and even what was interesting, kind of a similar situation when we first started serving that area, There's adult toads everywhere, but you wouldn't see any metamorphs. You know what I mean? Went to multiple times.

And then this year we got a lot more egg masses. And hopefully we're going to have been there. This will be our third year. So I'm hoping we'll start seeing more and more toads and coarse frogs and all that stuff there too, which would be cool. That's great. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice to hear that there's hope and there's, you know, potential for success. That's really exciting.

Yeah, I didn't know if we were gaining much of a. foothold, you know, because you hear all these things about the cane toads in Australia and, like, they're doing all these different programs or something, but it doesn't seem like anything really works or takes, takes that big of a dent out of the population, you know? Like, I guess they're training up animals with, like, release of juveniles or something ahead of the wave of adults, so at least the animals, you know, the big monitor lizards and stuff can learn like this is not a food source. Don't, you know, don't eat it kind of thing.

But it seems like kind of a, yeah, we're releasing more, you know, like to combat the ones that are coming, the invasives that are marching along or whatever. It doesn't quite sense. So I just want to make sure I understand. So they're like releasing young peatotes while lizards are hatching because a baby one won't kill it. It's not as toxic. Is that the idea?

They'll get a totally distasteful but not fatal. He'll get a tummy ache and then decide they never want to eat that again. Exactly. So then when the big ones get here, they don't try to eat those and die. So you don't get a second chance when you try to eat an adult, I guess. So it makes sense, but it just seems like counterintuitive that we're going to release more of these things, you know. That would be a hard one for me to get behind. Right.

I don't know if I can do this. Yeah. We were in one area in northern Queensland where we were hiking around this wetlands area, and, like, there were a lot of frogs, like native frogs and stuff. And then we saw a few cane toads, but they were like half dead or dead, you know, like just kind of, I'm not sure what happened there, but I'm like, man, I hope they figured something out, you know, like they're finding a way to combat the cane toads here. But yeah, we saw lots of native amphibians there.

and a couple, you know, cool pythons. But, yeah, it was weird to see the cane toads, like, not doing well. You know, usually they're the most populated, you know, the most numerous animal you see out there. But so I don't know what happened there, but hopefully that spreads. Some cool evolution. Right. Right. Yeah.

It could be really cool. So, I don't know. It's a tricky situation. I mean, we, we continue to kind of mess up the planet and then, you know, try to, some people are trying to find ways to fix all the problems we've started and they just keep going, keep happening, you know, new things pop up here and there. And it's very difficult with global travel being so easy and people just not really understanding the natural thing, you know, like, oh, I'll just bring this thing back with me, you know, that I found in some other country. and oh, I don't think I can take care of it. I'll just throw it out in the woods. And, yeah, kind of sketchy.

Yeah, but, you know, there's still a lot of out there worth protected, you know? Right, right. It's easy to get kind of in your head about it, but there's still some really cool places out there, you know. Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. I think, you know, I, I don't know, I saw some story about this Indian guy from India that was, in this deforested area and it was just trashed and he just started planting trees like as he could you know like just planting seedlings and pretty soon the whole area was forested you know like after a couple decades and you know one person can and make it make an impact and make a change so it sounds

like you're you're doing your part with the bullfrogs restoring some of these habitats in California to their form of glory. So it's really encouraging. And I will say to teaching the class, we've had some people are like, I really don't want to do this. I'm a vegetarian. But, you know, they're at my sight and I know this is going to help it. And, you know, after two or three, two or three shots, they're like, give me that. It hits some primal and see. They got the board ones. I got this one. You know, so, you know, it helps. And I think there's a, you know, primal caveman brain that can kick in a little bit.

Sometimes for people who don't think they have it in a, you know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's encouraging. It's catching on, I guess. Yeah. Any other topics you can think of that we haven't hit yet in this regard to invasive species?

I'd like to maybe ask you a little bit about your herping if that's all right. Yeah. Yeah, I think we're cool stuff. where have you kind of focused your herping? A lot of Southern California. And then once I started going down to Baja, a lot of Baja, but kind of almost exclusively Baja, Baja, like northern Baja. I haven't gone all the way down the peninsula yet, but that's one thing we're planning

in September. Oh, cool. Yeah, even like, again, in Baja, it's mostly the same stuff that's in Southern California right there. but just less developed and more of them. So I love it out there. It's one of the favorite places in the world. Do you, at the zoo, do you work with the Baja Blue lizards?

Oh, yeah, they have a couple on exhibit. Yeah, yeah. They're cool. You know, and it's, I think, well, for, I think it's going to be one of those things where it's like they're cool in a tank. And you're like, yeah, that's a cool lizard. But I have a feeling once I saw one in the wild, I'd be like, I get it now.

You know, there's been a couple of animals like that. We're like, yeah, that's pretty cool, I guess, you know? And then you see it in nature and you're like, oh, my God, a tank doesn't do this thing justice. I can't believe I didn't think these things were as awesome as they were. Yeah. So, yeah. I fell in love with the Mirrens, the Petrosaurus Miranzai, the smaller relatives of the Baja Blues that are in like Brago area. You've seen one of those?

Oh, they're fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, I think I saw a picture earlier this year of someone in California getting one. I was like, there's petrosaurus in California. Yeah, yeah. I don't really go look for lizard specifically too much, but I was like, I need to go see one of those. They're fantastic. They're so fun to watch, just cruising around on the rock faces.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, you said, Justin, they're reminiscent of the Pilbara rock monitor. Yeah, they remind me of a monitor lizard, you know, just the way they move and the, yeah, they're really fun. So, yeah, off air, I'll give you a couple places to check for them. I might be going down there this weekend or next week. It's so good to know. Yeah. Yeah, they're cool.

I saw, sorry about that. I saw on your highlights or whatever, that saddled leaf nose snake. And that was really cool. Was that Arizona? Was that down in Mexico? Yeah, that was Arizona with Brandon. That was one of those ones again. I've seen leaf nose out here

And I think I remember Brandon and Alex or someone posting one And being like, what the hell is that? I was like, that is so much cooler than any leaf nose I've ever seen. Like, I had no idea those were in Arizona. And that was one I wanted to see for a while. And I mean, you know, I love rattlesnakes, but some of those weird little calubids are just like so cool

and so underrated, you know? And just hold them and look at them close without worrying about anything. Yeah, those shovel noses do it for me. I love the... They're so cool. Yep. Yeah, you had a really nice photo of a couple of those.

Yeah, they're pretty sweet. Yeah. A lot of those in Barago. A lot of... I've had some good nights with those. Yeah, yeah, they're awesome. And it seems like you either see a lot of or like Lepidus of various different forms.

I do like Lepidus a lot. I like Lepidus. Yeah, almost all of them basically kind of been of in the Hujuccas with like Brandon and Alex, Dustin, all that stuff. So really cool. And then I was lucky enough to see one in Mexico this year, which was like, yes. I thought one of those, I was like, oh, that doesn't look like the rest. Yeah. Yeah, that one was cool.

And then, yeah, definitely. I spent some time in the Gila for volunteering for some more. Rufie Puntatus stuff and didn't see a Levitis, but was looking at pictures of those New Mexico Levitus, and that's definitely something I want to go for this year. Those are hard to beat. Those are pretty cool. Green ones. Mm-hmm.

But, yeah, no, I do love that. If I could get, if it was legal in California, I'd get rid of all the green trees. Have a little montane rattlesnakes. They're pretty amazing. Looks like you've got a night lizard under UV or under a black light or something. Oh, yeah. Someone, uh, we were out, someone was like a bug person and they're like, let me put the UV on it and the skull glows. Oh, yeah.

I didn't know about that. It was like, holy crap. And the moss was there, the lichen was glowing. Yeah. Yeah. That makes the picture look really psychedelic or something. Right. I think, uh, someone started, uh, if you do see red-legged frogs again, I forget someone

I forget who someone publish a paper that even the red-legged frogs like if you hit them with a UV light, their eyes like zombie color and then now everyone just brings it UV and they're like, let's see if this is UV reflective and stuff like that.

But yeah, if you ever get a chance with a red-legged frog, it's crazy looking to. So I think someone had it for that and they're like, hey, put it on the night lizard. Like, holy crap, he can see the skull. Yeah, those night lizards are cool too. those granite night lizards that get so white

yeah right it's fun trying to catch them there's a cool they have like a site we go to Mexico it's like an old ranch graveyard and they have all these boulders right next to it and just getting little twigs trying to scare one out so you can grab so I love catching them that's a lot of fun

yeah we were looking for the leaf towed geckos as well out there and kind of the same area where we were seeing the petrosores and the granite night lizards yeah Yeah, it's a fun spot. And found a big Chuck Wallace, like half of him. This was sticking out of the rock at night.

So he just kind of pulled him out, got some pictures and put him back in the... You got him out? Yeah. I have never been lucky with that. It's late and you're like, well, you're stuck in there. Yeah, I think he was sleeping, so he wasn't really expecting somebody to grab him and kind of yank him pretty quick. But, yeah, it was kind of funny.

Someone was advising that if you pour water on him, that it, come out because it's so foreign to them that they don't know how to react. I might have to give that a try soon. I'll let you know. Squirt the water bottle on them and see what happens. I like the t-shirt and the

tap the nose and they kind of back up into your t-shirt or something. Oh, cool. I've got a couple out that way. Yeah. They're cool. I love chugs. In Mexico, have you

seen any of the Swaitaqs banded geckos? No, no, no, no. Not yet. That's definitely one of the other ones. Yeah, it's a holy grail species for sure. Right. Yeah. And of course, you know, you hear people talk about, oh, back in the, you know, 70s, you used to get 100 a night out of Norego. Right. It's not fair. But, yeah, that would be a really cool one. Yeah, I haven't seen, I don't. I don't know. look for too many geckos from being honest

you know kind of just find them randomly but yeah the animals are everywhere out there yeah they're fun have you put in much time looking for rosy boas um not a crazy amount of time but definitely

seen a couple um I found one in Baja and it was it was cool but it was kind of like it wasn't like the perfectly striped you know I remember like sweet but like I need to find another one. You know, I've seen more in

more in Sokowl and stuff like that, but I do love Rosie Bowes. I definitely like Rosie Bowes way more. I know people love rubber bows, but I think Rosie Bowes are way, way, way cooler. Like, every rubber bow looks the same too. I don't know.

True. There's not a ton of variety. You get a nice juvenile that's like pink or orange or whatever. They're pretty cool. That's true. Yeah, I still haven't seen one of those, so maybe that'll change my mind. They're pretty cool. But I I will agree that there's a lot more variety in a rosy boa. I still haven't found a rosyboa.

I'm kicking myself. Yeah. Yeah. You'll get one. Come back there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Try. No, I love Berega. That's one of my favorite areas to Herp. I just love that area. It's the best. You know, I wish I could live out there. Yeah. I love it there.

It's a cool area. Yeah, I think actually pretty close to where I saw you, Rob. We've gotten one before right there. Yeah. I don't doubt. Like, it seems from talking to Jordan, right, who's found a bunch of them from back in the day that there's a strong seasonality to it. And none of the times that I've been out there have aligned with that. So, but Justin was much closer. He'd gone out for the Herpeton and other groups were finding him. You were just barely missing it.

Yeah, I was just behind him and they were finding him. And then I'd come through and wouldn't see one, you know. I saw, like, 30 leaf-nose snakes and that, like, they were everywhere. And I'm thinking, ah, leaf nose are like the common species. You find them everywhere. And then I came back, you know, the next three or four times and didn't see any. And I'm like, where's all the leaf nose snakes? I thought that was a gimmy, you know? Like, they'd be everywhere.

So it must be some seasonality or some year-to-year variation or something. But, man, that was the year for leaf-nose snakes. Yeah. Yeah, I think honestly similar to when I got that saddle leaf nose. I'd never seen one been going to Arizona a couple of years. And I think that one weekend we got one. it was like five or four and it was like one night there was settle nose saddle no's on the road yeah that's cool it seemed like they were moving that weekend for whatever reason right or

saddleback sorry yeah it's hard to predict those things but yeah it's nice when you hit on something like that on the spot it's even in right and right it does talk about um in that area it's from the 20s or 30s 30s it may be into 40s exactly what you're saying though justin where it was like they were considered to be an exceedingly rare snake. And then there was sort of someone worked out a weather pattern or whatever it was that, oh, it's actually within this very narrow band of conditions time of year, all these different things.

They can be extremely numerous. And then outside of that, they're essentially not out at all. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. That kind of goes along with my lived experience. Yeah. Yeah. So the giant garter snakes, what kind of?

stuff did you find with those or, you know, you got any cool stories about the giant garters? That one, you know, I know people love them. I think they got listed as the state snake in California this year. So they're cool, but that was hard work. And basically, you know, they're holding on in like rice paddy canals. So you're not in like beautiful habitat. Right. Yeah. Herpin secondary habitat. Right. You're on the Central Valley, you know, peak summer. hot and humid mosquitoes everywhere in these

you know uh rice canals filled with invasives you know these are fish bullfrog so I think if I saw them in better habitat I'd like them a little bit more I do I do love gartersnakes though you know yeah

can a giant garter snake take on a bullfrog or just to eat yeah I think yeah I think some the smaller ones I think I remember I remember seeing one eating a bullfrog in a trap like hearing bullfrog alarm call or something like that, like a smaller one. But the big bullfrogs can definitely eat garter snakes too. So it's kind of like the back of both ways.

Yeah. But it was fun. You know, it was cool. Experience and all that. And they're cool. But I think there's prettier garter snakes in California. Sure. There's a huge diversity of cool garter snakes in California.

I was surprised how many like different. I think Pingleton's like, really into gartersnake. They did like a trip just for garter snakes and tried to find all the ones in California. And it's pretty cool, you know, I guess what is it? His podcast, but his web page had a travelogue. Yeah, yeah, Thamina Paloosa. Yeah, yeah, Thamina Paloosa.

That's right. It's pretty cool. But yeah, it got me kind of interested. There's some neat ones down in the Baja, too. Like I'd love to do like a top to bottom. AHA trip. I don't know if this year's the year to do that, though. It's kind of sketchy out there right now. Yeah, it's fine. You know, just don't be wasted at night walking around town, you know, mind your own business. Right, yeah. I mean, that's first order of business for any,

you know, good herb trip is get out of town, get out of town. Right, exactly. Yeah. Although it always kind of struck me that, like, what is it that we're trying to do? We're going to exceedingly rural areas to drive aimlessly at night. That, that might look a little bit. You know, our intentions might not be totally clear with that. Yeah. But you've never had issues? No. No, not even remotely. I think we've had some people again in the city maybe left their window down. Someone grabbed something from their car while they were like in the gas station or something like that. But, you know, nothing even remotely kind of weird so far. Knock on with

but it helps always go with someone from there. I have some friends down there. Yeah. They know what's going on, the political climate and all that kind of stuff. Actually, I did hit someone on a dirt bike while they were coming down a dirt road flying. And luckily our friends went out and worked it all out.

And that was pretty good. But I was probably going, I'll admit, I was probably going a little too fast. He was probably going a little too fast down a dirt road. Right. It stopped, but his bike fell and like

was right under my tire but that was like oh here we go this is it but it all worked out and everyone was okay but that was pretty crazy for a second yeah we did a trip me and my wife did a trip down to Cabo area

we were supposed to go with a group of friends and we're going to go see whale sharks you know in January and so but my my buddy that arranged the trip had had like a death in the family. So they had to cancel their trip. And everybody else had like refundable plane tickets. So they just postponed theirs. And we didn't. So we're the only ones that ended up

going. And then the weather was terrible. So like it wasn't even sure that we were going to be able to get on the boat and go see them. And so, but we know, we had a good time. And it ended up the last day of the trip that they said, okay, we can go out and look for whale sharks. And we got to see, you know, a bunch of them, which was really cool. But I was hoping to see some petrosors. Because like the resort we were staying in, like the rocks next to resort had records, you know, all up and down. So I'm out there, you know, hiking around in the morning, you know, trying to see. And it seemed like it got hot enough. And, you know, they've been seen in the winter.

But, yeah, it didn't get lucky. Nothing. Yeah. I'd like to do a focus herb trip down there. There's some really cool spots to see animals. We're going to go. We're doing a road trip in September. And we're like, anyone can come if you want to drive it, you know?

So, yeah. Four or five people. and we're going to drive all the way from San Diego all the way down, hang out of the pause for a couple of days and drive on. So it should be cool. It's going to be fun. So, yeah, if you guys fly out there and get a car, got a car, want to drive down, you know, more than welcome.

Okay. I'll keep that in mind. I've wanted to do that for a while. I don't know if I can make it happen this year, but, yeah, me and my wife are heading over to Europe in a month for a conference, and then we're going to do a little trip through Germany. So, yeah, I may be a little bit of a little bit of Europe. little light on the annual leave.

And then with the IHS meeting, I'm giving a talk out there. So I'm locked in there, but another week. So, yeah, we'll see how things are. But yeah, that'd be really cool. Have you looked for the Baja Zanata at all? Yeah, I got my first one last year. Yeah, I'm up in Sierra Juarez. And it was, that was probably one of my favorite finds ever.

we were we put in work and it was like sunset i think we were all like everyone's arms was store because you're just flipping great and we're like moseying back to our campsite and someone's like come on let's go i think we shotgun to two beers and go hit one more rock file got a like the second wind of energy and uh yeah we got one and then uh we want to go because it was cold at night really cold and And we didn't see like a crack into the granite. We're like, is it just hanging out here? Like, it seems really cold.

And like, we put it back that, like, sunset. We found it. Like, let's go see if it's still there. It's hanging out there overnight. Because it was, like, pretty close to freezing. And it was a big adult. And sure enough, it was still there hanging out. And then, I'm like, well, let's just look around here a little bit more.

We didn't check out this area. and I got one of the like redhead ones like 10 feet away from it. Because that's what I wanted to see. Like this one had, it was cool. It had the whitehead, but to me it was like, this was more like a pyro. Right. The Bound in King'sakes.

I was like, I need to get the red head. So yeah, that was one of the really cool ones. And then actually we're doing a trip to San Pedro Martyr to look for those this year. We're going to invite a, we're going to do it as like a fundraiser because they go survey, the organization I work for, they survey red-legged frogs out there. Every year, it's the highest elevation of known occupied habitat for red-legged frogs. So red-legged frogs at 10,000 feet is crazy. You know what I mean? They overwinter, like, or they think they haven't proven it, but they think the tadpoles overwinter kind of like yellow-legged frogs, like Sierra Legged frogs, which is just crazy for,

our-legged frogs to do. So it's supposed to be a really cool site. And it's like, well, you know, we can look around for Ogamo while we're up there. We're not going to do much during the day. So, yeah, it's actually should be a really cool trip. And if anyone listening, we want to go, they're, yeah, we're kind of doing it. We have a rancher bringing in horses and stuff like that. And just got to bring your camping gear and we'll go catch frogs at night and look for snakes all day. apparently they have a really cool um you'll get them in socal too i've seen them out here but the like all black heller eye that are at high elevation and stuff like that so apparently they're they're everywhere out there too which is really cool um a royal toad up there not a lot but everyone's one i guess uh some people get a royal toad which is really sweet too

that's cool man i still need a heller i haven't seen a heller i haven't seen a heller i yet i know i know it's bizarre No, it took, yeah, it took me much longer than it should have. Yeah, it was one. I mean, we were on the right spot because we were, like, past hikers, like, oh, you see any snakes? Oh, yeah, there's a rattlesnake just right up this. And we're like, we're running up there and, yeah, it's gone.

You know, nothing there. I think there's so much activity, a lot of those places that they're sort of being consistently disturbed. So, yeah, they were out, but they were being disturbed by other groups that were out. Too many hikers. It was along the PCT or whatever. PCT, yeah, in an earlier sections. Yeah, well, if we go to Sandy, there's what I don't want to guarantee. Right.

But there's one board I've pretty sure I've seen the same pair under it every year for like three years in a row. I'll hitch you up when I'm down there. Right. I've got a board line that a friend told me about and I hit it, you know, every time I'm down in Orange County. but no rattlesnakes. I've seen a couple king snakes and some ringnecks and a gopher or two, but never a rattlesnake. It's kind of bizarre. That's how it goes once you say, now that I said that out loud,

go back in a second, there's not going to be anything out there. Yeah, well, we're in Borago, and I was like, oh, guaranteed we'll find a sidwinder at this place. You know, they're everywhere, and, you know, you almost stepping on them when you're, when you're photographing them. When they're going. Yeah. Yeah. There's another one just right behind you or something. But, and then, yeah, we didn't see any. And the guy was just pulling out of the area and he's like, oh, yeah, I saw a sidewinder and this and that, the other. And then we go in there. We saw a few, like, leaf-nose snakes, but no sidewinder's. It was crazy. Yeah. You try to guarantee something, and you're guaranteed to skunk yourself. Right. Yeah. Some of them, like, I'm not even going to try to look.

I'm just going to go somewhere that I think is good and just mosey. around. It'll either show up or it doesn't, you know. Yeah. Well, what would you say your most notable find or your favorite find has been? Oh, I think probably that Alabama, for sure. That was with some good friends. Yeah, of their San Francisco Gartersnake, seeing one of those for the first time. It's like, because that was another one. I was like, you know, if you go a little farther north, you can get those infernalis that look. Yeah. That are just as red and blue. And they just don't have the red stripe.

And I was like, it's the same snake. Who cares? And then when I saw my first one, I was like, oh, my God. This is totally different. I was wrong. I was totally wrong. I had admitted on that one. Great.

But probably the Zenata or this year we were out doing some pond turtle trapping in Baja. And I didn't bring my camera because I was like, I've seen everything out there in this area. I'm not going to find anything, you know, whatever. You know, I'm going to travel late this time. And it was slightly raining. And so I was like, there's a rattlesnake in this bush. And like, it was like up in the bush. And I'm like, looking at it.

And I'm like, that's not a ruber. And so I was like, that's not a sidelander. And I'm like, what the hell? Not a hellera? And so it's like, is that a fucking enyo? We're like, oh, shit. It's an enyo. And I think they, um, the, um, the, uh,

Jorge, who is one of the lead, like, directors of Fano, or runs the nonprofit. It's like, I think this is a range extension. So no one was expecting it at all. You know what I mean? It wasn't at anyone's radar. We're looking at like, what is this? And that was just really, really cool. That was one of my favorite ones.

Everyone's jumping around, hugging each other. Like, who what's at all? And then ended up finding a couple more of that trip with that first one where we were like looking at it. We're like, what? And then, you know, someone out loud goes. Is that an Nyo? And that was just a really cool moment, you know?

Yeah, that's crazy. So did you document the range of section? Or was that? I think we're going to, I was going to, my wife's getting surgery. And I was like, maybe I'll try to type it up because I'm going to stay at home and take care of her for a way. So that was on one of my things to try to do. Your to do list, write it out. Look it up a little bit more and stuff like that while I'm stuck at home, taking care of the wife, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. It was it like a less herbed area? It was like private land? I mean, it was someone's ranch. And they let us on there for the turtle stuff. Oh, nice. It was cool.

Yeah. That's awesome. So with the turtle work, are you like trudging around in the mud and, like, setting traps and stuff? Is that the method? Yeah, it was kind of one of those similar things. They were teaching, like, biologists in California who wanted more southwestern pond turtle. experience how to trap turtles, notch them, all that sex them, all that stuff. So it's just a couple of days of setting trap lines and a lot of turtles there.

But yeah, it was cool. That's cool. Yeah, I think we got like 60 pawn turtles that weekend or something like that, all different age classes and stuff. So it was fun. Yeah. Well, that's good stuff, man. Sounds like you've done some awesome herping and some really cool studies.

We really appreciate you coming on and sharing your experience and some of your stories. Thanks. Yeah, no, we do. It was fun. And, yeah, if you guys ever want to go to Baja, shoot some bullfrogs. Hey, Jim. Definitely let me know. You're right on.

All right. Well, why don't you put your, like, social media information out there? Where can people see your stuff? Yeah. So you can Luke Snake Walker. It hits Luke with a C. my mom's French. So that was my dad compromising, giving me a French-ish name, I guess.

But, yeah, Luke underscore Snake Walker. And, yeah, if anyone, again, we're hosting the Bullfrog Workshop. So if anyone was listening who wants to learn more about that as a working biologist in California, we'll teach them how to ID other species, how to get your permits. And then you get to go do the real work. After we have the little lecture camp at the preserve, they close it off for us. So it's a really good time. Oh, cool.

Yeah, if anyone's wondering, we're doing that San Pedro, or San Pedro Martira trip, too. So that's open to anyone who wants to support that organization doing Red Laded Frog Habitat Restoration. So they can definitely message me on their LinkedIn or anything like that, and we're sending that all up too. Okay. Awesome. Well, kind of at the end of the show, we like to maybe talk about. about things we've seen that are really cool in herpetology, herpeticulture, or whatever, like stuff in the news or whatever.

But I was sent a few papers on rattlesnake taxonomy, and I hadn't realized that some of these changes had been made. Like, they elevated several, like, glutosis and con-color to full species and a couple others in there as well. But, yeah, they reworked all the Western rattlesnakes. was kind of exciting to see. I mean, there's always been kind of a back and forth between, is it a subspecies, is it, you know, full species? Is it even anything or, you know, and one of the things, because we'd, we'd been looking for, well, well, Rob and I had kind of discussed on

the Hopi rattlesnakes, you know, it seems like it's the same thing, you know, from that area on the Hopi Reservation all the way up through Utah and stuff. And so we just kind of considered, oh, the prairie rattlesnakes in San Juan County are most likely nontious. But apparently they did some genetic studies and found that there are no nontias in Utah. They're basically restricted to kind of Arizona and maybe into New Mexico. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Like, oops, we had to change the field guide to just go back to prairie rattlesnake rather than Hopi rattlesnake. So, yeah.

Unfortunately, because I've got ties to the Hopi, you know, tribe. My grandfather was adopted by the Hopi, so I was kind of, I have a fondness for the Hopi culture and, you know, the reservation and stuff, but yeah, I was hoping they were Hopes, but apparently they're not, so learn something new, I guess. Well, and that just shows you something, the lack of utility of common names, right? Because we were in, those snakes reside in ancestral Puebloan sites in southwest Colorado and in southeast Utah, and so I don't know that that's a great name. Right. You know, it also is super interesting from a phylogenetic, you know, there's a lot of phylogenetic questions to that.

My question was, right, so there's seemingly a mountain range gap for the southeast, southwest, southeast, Utah, southwest Colorado populations, and we were talking about this versus the painted desert population above the ramp. And it seems like, I don't know, it's just the whole thing then becomes interesting. If we can see, it was admitted, right, that the phenotype of those San Juan County, at least some of those San Juan County, particularly far south San Juan County animals, is the same as the painted desert ones. Right. So if there's the phenotypic plasticity to present the same look when exposed to the same ecological pressures, then are we really just talking about, it does, it does seem like right over by Albuquerque, maybe there's more gene flow in that sort of. the northern gap than there is in the really thin southern gap. So maybe those southern animals are just really genetically bottlenecked and they didn't have

the infusion of extra genes, however slow. Yeah. But that's really probably what we're dealing with then. If we get the same phenotype in both, but they don't, you know, genetically they are different. They're different. Then to me maybe sort of suggest it's not even a form. Maybe either out of the form list entirely.

Or are they the same form or is it? two different things that, I don't know. You know, we don't... Kind of convergence or, you know, they have the same looks, but just because they're in the same habitat. But they did find, you know, that genetic difference between Nantius and just virus, spiritus. So, yeah, there was, seemed to be something to it.

Yeah, but just restricted to kind of below, you know, the... Yeah, and so I just wonder how, what the bottleneck effect of that. Right. How many made it through that southern gap, right? It's a really question. This actually reminds me, Luke. I meant to ask you, so in that Instagram photo assemblage of snakes from last year, there was an interesting crudalus in there. What was that?

Was that the Enyo you're talking about? Or was that a real far southern New Mexico prairie rattlesnake? What was that thing? Which one? I think there is a prairie and an ennio in there. It's probably the prairie. Where is that prairie from, I think, is what I would. Oh, the prairie?

Yeah, that was on the way. that was on the way. I can't remember the name of the freeway. I took some random highway on the way to, what's it called? Tahila National Forest. I could look it up, but yeah, I can't remember. It was like two in the morning. I've been driving 12 hours. But yeah, I think it was the prairie, but New Mexico for sure. Right. So that's sort of what I was guessing. We've seen them down there, and it was in the vein of that snake. Yeah, that, okay, cool. Well, it was beautiful. It was, you know, it was pretty close. I want to say it was around the Silver City area, if you know where that is. Yeah.

Yeah, it was right around there. But yeah, I remember me like, this thing's gorgeous. Like, this is a really cool snake. I just noticed you got a freaking snowy owl in California. That's awesome. Oh, yeah. There was a lot of debate on that one. Right.

People were like, it came in on a ship. I had some of the coworkers, like, that's for sure someone's pet. You know, like it doesn't count. Yeah, some cool shots of it too. But yeah, that's one that I'd love to see. Yeah, my birderside in the colder months. You got to do it, right? When you get it, you got to look at the birds, you know.

As well, yeah, there's something to look at. I keep telling Rob, but he does not agree. He'll come around. He'll come around. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I like the particularly charismatic or.

iconic ones. Yeah. But that's about as far as I've gone to this point. Right. Yeah. I mean, I definitely have my favorite groups, but it is kind of addicting to get new species. You know, you're like, oh, that's something I haven't seen before.

Yeah. Also, maybe speaking of common names, I think maybe I'm a bit put off by some of the common names. All right. Always a source of humor. Yeah. I have to giggle like a schoolgirl when I say some of their names. Yeah.

Finding bird nests. One of the things we had to do for work is nesting bird surveys. And, you know, watching birds and finding birds nest is always kind of a fun thing to do. You see one carry some food. You're like, oh, where's it going? You find a little nest. And that's always really cool. I really enjoy that one, too.

For sure. All right. Well, thanks again for coming on. We'll thank the Podfather and his Mackinwicky for hosting our pod. and we'll say good night and we'll catch you next time for Reptile Fight Club.