Slow Baja - Jon Rebman Conserving The Rare Plants of Baja California

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

Jon P. Rebman is the Curator of Botany at the San Diego Natural History Museum. Originally from rural Illinois, Rebman landed a Fulbright Fellowship that took him to study in Ensenada. During his year south of the border, Rebman traveled the peninsula cataloging cholla cacti with his fellow students and the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California faculty. He credits this formative experience for igniting his passion for the region's rare endemic flora. Rebman earned a doctorate from Arizona State University and wrote his dissertation on the Cylindropuntia (Chollas) cactus family of Baja California. He is a profoundly energetic expert on Southern and Baja California plants and is relentless in identifying them. Rebman says, "if you can't name it, you can't conserve it." Through the crowd-sourced iNaturalist App, Rebman has answered more than 500,000 plant genus inquiries, I am optimistic he will hit a million answers soon. Rebman authored the Baja California Plant Field Guide with Norman Roberts and co-authored the stunning new bilingual photographic book A Guide To The Flora Of The Sierra De San Pedro Martir. Both are available from the San Diego Natural History Museum Shop here. Thanks to Cypress Hansen at the Nat for walking me through the fabulous new Expedition Baja display and for her work arranging this conversation. Additional thanks to Robert Blaker and his daughter, Sierra Blaker, for planting the seed for this show more than a year ago. Check out Expedition Baja here. Follow The Nat on Instagram. Follow The Nat on Facebook. Download the iNaturalist App here.

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down, my favorite tequila. Hey, I want to tell you about your new must-have accessory for your next Baja trip. Benchmark Maps has released a beautiful, beautiful Baja California Road and Recreation Atlas. It's a 72-page large format book of detailed maps and recreation guides that makes the perfect planning tool for exploring Baja. Pick yours up at Benchmarkmaps.com. Well, before we get into today's show with John Rebman, the curator of botany at the San Diego Natural History Museum, and noted Baja plant expert, author of the Baja California Plant Field Guide,

and the brand new and beautiful guide to the flora of the Sierra de San Pedro they might hear. I need to say thanks to Cyprus Hanson. She's the science communication specialist at the San Diego Natural History Museum, and she is the one who vetted Slow Baja's media inquiry. So I don't know what she got to see and what she looked up, but I'm very, very glad that she was able to arrange this interview, and I'm delighted that John was able to be flexible because we did this conversation as I was coming back from the Nora 500,

and of course I got hung up at the border. You know, you think it's only going to be 45 minutes, but it turns out to be three hours. So John was super flexible, and I want to say thanks to Cypress Hansen for the 400 emails that she had to sort and whatever she did to vet Slow Baja. And before we get started on the show,

I also would like to say thanks to Sierra Blaker and her proud Baja-loven Papa, Robert Blaker, for planting the seed for this show over a year ago. Okay, without further ado, John Rebman. We're talking plants and Baja. Hey, it's Slow Baja. I'm in beautiful Balboe Park at the San Diego Natural History Museum, and I'm with John Rebman, and he is the curator of botany,

and we're going to talk about plants and Baja, and Cypress Hanson is leaning in over here. She's the vetter of podcasters, and she is the science communications manager at the museum, and a big shout out, and thank you to her for getting this meeting planned. So, John, say hello. Hi, how are you doing?

Good. Doing a little research on you. I know you're from Illinois. How the heck did a guy from Illinois become obsessed by Baja? I'm from a very rural part of West Central Illinois, the land of corn and beans. And basically, through my academic travels, I did my bachelors in Illinois, a master's in southwest Missouri, and then a Ph.D. at Arizona State. So moved progressively southwest until...

I couldn't get much further here in San Diego. And actually a little bit before that time, I lived in Ensenada in Baja, California, on a Fulbright Fellowship. And so that's how I got to know that part of the area and kind of came up to San Diego when I was doing my doctoral work. So let's get right on to that. A Fulbright in Ensenada, what were you studying? I was doing my work on Choya Cacti.

And I started off at Arizona State thinking I would work with riparian or aquatic plants. And through academic coercion, basically, my major advisor at Arizona State worked on opuntioids, which are prickly pears and choya cacti. And he said, well, why don't you go to Baja, California? There's one question I have on a particular choya problem along the coast in, northwestern Baja. And I went to Baja and did a trip kind of all the way down the peninsula and decided I didn't want to work just in the northwestern part, but I wanted to work out that genus for the entire peninsula. And it ends up that Choyah cacti are a crazy part of the peninsula. In fact,

they are extremely diverse. They are more diverse there than anywhere else in the world. I think there are almost 27 different kinds of choya cacti on the peninsula. Most of them are endemic. I mean, they're only known to the peninsula. So it is just one of those groups that is gone crazy on the peninsula. So being in Arizona, it was hard to travel all the way down to Baja. Every time I had a little spring break or something like that, I would be traveling down there. So I heard about a Fulbright and I applied for it where I could actually move to Mexico and I selected Ensenada. And during that time, I did a ton of field work throughout. the peninsula and worked with students. I was at Wauvisei, the Universidad Autonomia

at the Baja California at the Faculty of Science and worked through their entire herbarium collection and then went to the field with students and faculty and had a blast while I was there for a year and got to know the area well and spent my year and then went back to finish my doctorate. Well I'm just trying to imagine like okay so you're you've grown up in rural Illinois and you've gotten your college degree and you're you're working on your PhD now, correct, when you were doing the Fulbright? When I was doing the Fulbright. Yeah, so you've got a master's, and now you're working on a PhD, and you've exposed yourself

something living in Arizona to Mexican cuisine, but then you're in Ensenada, and you're existing there every day as a local, as an outsider, but as a local. What was that like? Well, I will tell you, I was a little pampered in many ways because I am very good friends, with my Mexican colleague, Dr. Jose Delgadoio, who's there at Waubezé, and he's the botanist there, and I connected with him, and actually he found the place for me to live, and every day I actually ate the main meal with he and his family. And so I got to, plus he taught me my Spanish, so I had a little bit of, you know, a couple of classes, I think, in Spanish, but that doesn't

get you by when you're actually there. So I arrived in Ensenada. not really speaking much Spanish, and I had him to help out, and then just was totally immersed in a different culture. And coming from Illinois, considering where I come from, it's a town of 3,000. We had no ethnic groups where I grew up. It was all very white. And to go and live in another culture where I am the minority was really an amazing experience for me. I still have those friends today. A lot of the students that were there were my age and many of the faculty are still friends. And then when I landed at the museum, we just cemented those relationships and I travel with them and we collaborate on projects all the time. So it was a great kind of little

baby step towards the peninsula and to get my feet wet, so to speak, and really never turned around. I always wanted to stay and working in Baja California as a result. Me too. Let's get on to what's going on here at the museum. You've got this amazing new Baja exhibition. How did that come about? Why did that come about? And can you tell me in the slow Baja audience a little bit about it? Well, the new exhibit called Baja Expedition,

is kind of the first in our way or attempt to show what types of research that we do in the Baja, California region. and also to reproduce what Baja California is like. So kind of what the landscape is like and why that's part of our mission area, what we're doing in different areas of the peninsula. And I think for the longest time here in the museum, you would come to the museum, you would see exhibits, but you wouldn't necessarily see what the scientists are doing behind the scenes.

And of course, you got to see a little bit of that today, but the general public doesn't know really what we're doing. But this is like the first step showing, at least in the Baja California region, what types of studies we are doing throughout the entire region. And it's kind of built on the last few years, different areas that we're visiting and doing research in and why they're so special and why they're important scientifically as well. So it's a fantastic new exhibit. Did you get to go up there? I did. Yeah.

Cyprus took me through and gave me a beautiful. tour, really amazing, and just the enthusiasm of Cyprus guiding me and the enthusiasm of the people around me in the space. It's hands-on. It's stunning. It's well, well-modeled, well-photographed, and it's really immersive. It's wonderful. The museum, you know, we have other exhibits around. We've tried to give local people from our region, our mission area here of Southern California and Baja, California. We have Costa Cactus, which is basically a transect over and natural history stories from the desert to the high mountains to the coast and of course to the water of the Pacific area as well. And then we have kind of the deep history,

the fossil mysteries, it talks about kind of the paleontological history of our region here in San Diego as well. But we have not actually that large part of our missionary is Baja California. So this is that first way of introducing the public to what is south of the border and how special that area is as well. And I know you saw the recreation of Catavina, basically, I always say, you know, coming from I came from in Illinois, if someone had taken me from this very rural area and dropped me in Catavina, I would have thought I was on a different planet. I mean, it is so, so totally different than what I think of, a desert in general. And it is so magnificent. as far as all of these large succulents and just a really dramatic landscape.

The boulders, too. The boulders are amazing. But the plants. Yeah. And the cave paintings. The plants are cool. Yes, exactly. And the gasoline arrows as well.

The people there. Selling gas out of the back of the car. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I love it all. Hey, John, your passion for the plants is going to, is why I'm here. And it's carrying through deeply. But there is so much. that I saw there. I've got notes everywhere on the Red Lake Frog Project, the Guadalupe

Kara, the cross-border rare plant project, Sky Island, explain. Where do we begin on conserving one of the most amazing places on Earth? You said it to me if you can't name it, you can't conserve it. Correct. And so let's start with explaining that and then getting onto conserving one of the most amazing places on earth. I think we can back up even a little bit further than that. If you're not even aware and don't even know about it, you can't, you wouldn't even have an interest in it. And so I think like the exhibit gives you an introduction to what Baja California is. So the general public now has a feeling if they've never traveled down the peninsula to the Cape region or to Catavina, then they, there would be no interest in them to protect the area.

And so I think that's the first fundamental thing. And then you start that next step of, well, let's figure out how important the area is biologically. And I guess maybe I can give you a little overview of the flora of Baja. Is that okay? Okay. For example, the entire peninsula and its adjacent islands, there are about 4,000 different kinds of plants in the area. And of those 4,000, about 26% are endemic. That means they are restricted to the peninsula.

And that is extremely high for any place that's really connected to the continent. That's like what you would find on very remote islands oftentimes. And so to have that many special plants is really, really amazing. And then you get to areas like or groups like cacti. I think there are about 130 different kinds of cacti on the peninsula, but over 70% endemism. Or think of agavees. These are dominant things on the landscape as well. It's over 92% endemism in that group. So some groups are even higher than the 26% for the entire flora.

But that just shows you how special and unique the entire peninsula is in regard to floristic diversity that is found nowhere else in the world. Amazing. Amazing. All right. Well, shall we start on Sky Islands or cross-border rare plant projects? So let's get into it. Okay. Well, let's start with Sky Islands. So the peninsula itself is almost like a chain of Sky Islands down the way the geology goes. Quick definition of a sky island. A sky island is a high area. Basically, it has a different type of climate or habitat in general, and it's surrounded by something else. like an island is a piece of land that sticks out and is surrounded by water. In most cases, in Baja California, it is a higher habitat that's surrounded by lower, drier desert. And so that gives it kind of an island feel because the plants and animals that are there may not be able to exist in the lower parts around them. So they are restricted to these little islands. And that,

the way the whole geography is of the peninsula, the kind of, you think of like the Sierra Juarez, the San Pedro Martyr, you keep going. You know, you've got all the way down to like the Sierra Assemblaia, the Sierra de la Libertad, the Sierra San Francisco, the Sierra Guadalupe, the Sierra de la Giganta, all the way down to the Sierra de la Laguna in the Cape. All of those are sky islands. And so many of the plants and animals

that are at the tops of those peaks or those mountain ranges maybe got there at different times. So they may have, when things were cooler and wetter, They were able to migrate to these areas and then they become pocketed on the tops of these mountains. And maybe they've changed over time. They've evolved, what we'd say, they have evolved into something totally different. And that makes them unique. And that's part of what gives us that endemism on the peninsula is the idea that these things are now restricted to these tops of these mountains and there are nowhere else.

Now, the problem with that when we get into Sky Islands is we can't. really talk about them without talking about climate change. And the idea that we're seeing changes in our environment due to many factors, and that is causing a drier, hotter area. So the deserts that are down below are constantly moving up those sky islands. And what's left at the top are just these smaller and smaller habitats. So we worry about those, like the Sierra San Pedro Martyr, that's in the exhibit because that goes up to 10,000 feet in Paco del Diablo, but there are species that are only

along that highest ridge within a few feet of the highest ridge. Some of the plants there we have, I think we have like 30 endemic species just to the high areas of the San Pedro Martyr. And some of them were throwing a few feet of the ridge at the highest top. So if that climate changes for them, where are they going to go? nowhere. They're going to go away. They're going to go extinct. I think it's what's going to happen. So we worry about those types of things. When we are thinking about the unique diversity in the area, we want to keep that as best we can, but we have to understand it in order to actually protect it. And that's what we're doing in many of these sky islands.

Thank you. That's a brilliant definition. And a little bit, you know, you're talking about it and what am I seeing? I'm seeing that beautiful little barn out, that beautiful little owl, it's not a barn owl, but a beautiful little owl that's existing in this climate. And so that guy, because of where he lives and his little wings and his little size, he's never going to be able to fly off to where the rest of his brethren are. Right. And you have to think that, remember now I'm more plant oriented, but we're talking plants are really not going anywhere, but that little owl may be only living off of certain species that occur in that environment.

So it wouldn't even know what to do if it got outside of that area. So it couldn't just fly away. It doesn't even know what to eat or what bugs might be on that particular plant species. So those are really unique little ecosystems at the tops of many of these mountains. Well, getting on to more unique ecosystems, can we talk a little bit about the islands and the habitats and what's happened with invasive animals, invasive species, what have you, and some of the places that excite you in your research. Good stories, bad stories.

Well, regular islands, and we think of the Pacific and the Gulf Islands. I think that's one of the things that makes the peninsula so amazing as you have these little chunks of land on both the Pacific and the Gulf, and they're very different from each other. So the Gulf Islands, the habitats there are really different than what you'd find on the Pacific Islands. I mean, you think of like Guadalupe Island, for example. Guadalupe Island sits quite a few hundred miles out into the ocean. It's a volcanic island.

So everything that's out there basically had to get out there on its own at one time before human impact. And so things might have floated or seeds might have got there. And then they had all that habitat to evolve and adapt into. So you have really high endemism like when it comes to plants on Guadalupe Island. So it created this amazing kind of disjunct of like our California Channel Islands that sits out there off of Baja California because it sits so far out and it's in the cold California current. It is much more like our channel islands than anything else in Baja California. And it filled those habitats with trees. So we have an endemic pine tree, demic cypress tree, endemic palm tree.

Of course, those are just the trees. Then you could throw in all the shrubs and all of the herbaceous things and annual. You have so many endemics to that area. Unfortunately, what happened, which was a common practice early on, as the early whalers and people coming by those islands, would drop goats off on the island so that when they came back by, they would have food to eat, and they could go and hunt,

and they'd have fresh meat. Always a shortage when you're going to a lot of these desert islands. And so on Guadalupe, those goats did very well. They reproduced like rabbits, and they took over the entire island, and they ate that. hell out of it. And it became a lunar landscape. So I went there in the year 2000. And this is after my predecessor, Reid Moran, had spent a lot of his career traveling for 30 plus years going out to Guadalupe and studying what was left. And he found things on sheer cliffs

and only one plant known, you know. And so the goats were eating everything. And in 2000, it looked like a moonscape in general. There were a few trees left. But nothing could reproduce, and you had just goats had eaten everything. So with our research and working with Mexican conservancy agencies, they removed those goats over time. And I got to go back in 2010 and see the landscape, and it had changed immensely. In just 10 years, you saw all these endemic shrubs and plants coming back and starting to fill in all those gaps across the landscape. Now, I haven't been back since 2010, but I am absolutely sure. I mean, now another 12 years later, that is probably filled in a whole lot since then.

Even in 2010, we found new species to science that earlier collectors never found, because it has been destroyed since the earliest collectors were there were like Edward Palmer in the 1870s, and they were already major impacts, even writes into the notes, the goats had already eaten the crap out of everything. And so some of those species will never come back. that's impossible. They've gone extinct out there. Others, we hope that there might have been a little seed or something on a cliff that blew up on the thing. But those islands like that are really fragile ecosystems.

And you throw in something like a goat or after that they had roving packs of dogs running across the thing. They had introduced rats and mice, which ate like land snails and everything else there. They introduced cats to take care of the rats, and then they took care of the birds. So it just became an ecological tragedy on Guadalupe Island. And so basically we tried to study that island as best we could to understand what was left, what the potential is. And now we've handed over to the Mexican groups that are studying it. And I think they're looking at the comeback of the vegetation and the animals and trying to manage those islands the best they can. And what have you learned from Mesa just next door, these two little islands that nobody can get on because of the sheer walled cliffs?

What do you see there? Because you know I got to go there, right? I didn't know that. So, Eastly, Chris, you didn't tell me anything about that. There are three little islets off the southern end. One of them is kind of a low tide. You can almost reach you that's not that special. But then there's this Lutee sapato, which is far out, which people have been able to land on quite a bit.

And then there's Isoletea Dentro or Toro is another name for it. And that one has the sheer cliffs. And so we were able to explore that area where no one had ever been before because they are sheer cliffs that nobody could get up on in rough water. And really, you couldn't scale it. I don't think maybe a professional climber could do it if they were so inclined. But it is, of course, Shark Alley is at the base. And so you think about all the great whites out there. If you fall off that cliff, you're not going to make it very far.

Anyway, but we took a helicopter out, and we were able to land the helicopter on the top of Visletadentro, and I got to see Virgin vegetation. So what the southern end of the island would have looked like before impacts of goats. And the only non-natives that I found on the entire island had been brought in by Western gulls in their nests. They had brought it from the main island over to the thing. and I don't think anything had even blown that direction onto the island. So got to see what it actually would look like. And it was very different than what was on the main island on the southern end because it's so impacted.

What's that like for you to be that guy? I mean, it's almost walking on the moon, right? I mean, what's it like to be that guy who says, I have to find out everything that's here, to know what could be next door or what could have been eaten by goats for decades? Oh, yeah. Well, of course that's very special. No, I know.

It's got to be, it's got to be riveting for you. It is. To get off, well, anytime you get to go to an area where nobody has been, or you're pretty sure nobody has been, or at least no botanist has been, you never know if you're just going to take two steps and have something completely new to science that you've never seen before. I'm seeing the sense of discovery, exploration and discovery is just off the charts. And I get that every time I go to the field,

and especially into kind of more remote areas because our diversity is so high in general. But areas like Islote adentro, I was thinking, gosh, why just make two steps and there's something brand new right there and another one and there's something else new? I had no idea what to expect. None of us did because nobody had been up there before.

And so it was pretty special to see a landscape that was so untouched in general. That's really hard to find these days. because of non-natives. You brought up the whole idea of invasive plants and animals. It's not just things like goats. It's also every person that comes there unless they're cleaning their shoes and getting the seeds off of them. Or if you're bringing an animal in, something they may have eaten days ago comes out the other end and you have a seed starting there. That's how we're spreading all of these non-native plants, things that shouldn't be there. And then sometimes those are highly aggressive and actually completely wipe out and out compete the native species in an area.

So that's the problems that we see now, especially on the peninsula, because there's a lot of access to different parts of the peninsula. So the non-natives are quietly having their battle with things, even to areas we've never visited. That battle is going on right now. And so there's a bit of a time pressure for a botanist. We need to get to these areas before the landscape changes. And it might not be the just avert thing of having a non-native coming and compete. It may be because there's so much of the non-native, a fire can start, and that changes a whole different thing on the landscape. So there's other ecological things that happen that are not just one plant competing against another in an area like that.

Well, let's talk a little bit about this history of the people who came before you and how long people have been cataloging the floor and the fauna of Baja California. Okay. I think the earliest collectors of the plants, I'll just give you my plant bias here. The earliest collectors were Barclay and Heinz, who was a surgeon, and they were on the HMF sulfur. And it passed through San Diego in 1838, I believe, and went down the peninsula of various stops. And so one of those was Magdalena Bay and also Cabot San Lucas. And I think that by Cabos and Lucas it was at 1841. And so they stopped at these areas and made collections. And all of those, since that was an English ship, all of those went to Kew Botanical Gardens.

But they described just Buku new species, right? because nobody had actually collected on the peninsula before. And of course, they didn't get very far away from where you can land a ship and get in, but everything they found was new, basically. And so those were the earliest known collections from the peninsula. And then there were a few other expeditions. Towns in Stith Brandagey in the 1880s to the 1890s, even to the early 1900s. Nelson and Goldman made collections as they traveled down from the North.

north to the south. Then there were people like Annetta Carter, you know, out of the Loretto area. My predecessor, Reid Moran, who spent 35 years hiking to remote areas and collecting plants on the peninsula. George Lindsay, working on cacti and other plants in the area. I'm sure I'm forgetting, well, Ira Wiggins,

who wrote the flora of Baja California in 1980, so he did that long before that. That was near the end of his career. A lot of really good botanists. that traveled to different areas. But even with all of that effort, if you think about it, the road, I don't remember when the road was actually completed. It was pretty difficult to travel long distances.

Yeah, 74 is when they got the pavement completed. And so before that time, you didn't, unless you had a ton of time, you didn't get to travel at high speeds to get to areas, or you went by boat into areas. So it was hard to get to different areas of the peninsula. And so I think personally, this is one of the peninsula. The peninsula is what drives my exploration, I think, because there are still so many remote areas that haven't been explored biologically.

They're like black holes in our knowledge of science on the peninsula. And so that's one of my goals is to go and visit these areas. And we do that as binational, multidisciplinary expeditions, which that is the big thing of that exhibition upstairs, Baja Expedition, because it is about kind of one of the things that the museum has always done in our collections reflect is this long history of collecting in Baja, California. That's why it's considered part of our mission area.

But when I arrived in 1996, been here a while now, I had just come off my Fulbright. And so, and I went and finished my PhD and came here, And I thought, well, I want to do my expeditions, right, to Baja California. So the first one we did was the Lindbad expedition. It was reviving the idea of not only multidisciplinary, because for the longest time, it was just like botanists going or mammologists going. It's get everyone together, go here, but let's do it a little differently than we used to,

where it used to be gringoes going down, raping, and pillaging for specimens and bringing them back to archelaide. We can do that differently these days. And so we hooked up our Mexican colleagues, and we brought all colleagues and students as well from Mexico. And so that 1997 expedition was the first of our bi-national multidisciplinary expeditions. And now every few years after that, we've tried to do that again.

And I think if I brought anything to this institution, it has been basically that whole idea that we need to do this binationally. and do it multidisciplinary because, as you know, in natural history and science, if you go for your PhD, you become very, very specialized, so you know a whole lot about very little. It's really difficult to cross the boundaries of a discipline and figure out what's going on in the literature and what's happening in science and the other disciplines.

But when you get together in the field with beer at night and you're around a campfire and you've all been collecting and you're talking about, well, I just found this, and this thing is disjunct from this other mountain range, you actually cross those boundaries and you start learning from the other disciplines, and that's what makes a good natural historian, I think, is to really understand what's happening,

not just in your own field, but in all the other disciplines as well. I thought you were going to say it's the beer and the campfire. Well, that too. We're going to take a quick break here, and we'll be right back with John Redmond, and he is the curator of botany at the San Diego. I'm going to get it wrong.

the San Diego Natural History Museum. We'll be right back. Here at Slow Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser south of the border. When we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound Insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use. Check them out at Bajabound.com. That's Bajabound.com, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Have you asked your doctor if Baja is right for you?

If your doctor says yes, well, maybe. you need to check out the Baja Exile. It's every other year and it's coming up February 2023, the 17th through the 26th, San Diego, all the way down the peninsula and all the way back up to Tijuana, 10 days, 3,000 miles. If you're interested in doing it and you got some questions, hit me up at slowbaha.com, click that contact button or you can direct message me at Slowbaha on Instagram or Facebook and always check out the Bajaxel.org page. That's Baja, Excel.org and hope to see you down at the start line in San Diego for a grand adventure. Hey, we're back with John Redmond and we're talking botany in Baja, sitting around the campfire

with multidisciplinary scientists getting real, late night, Baja. John, who are some of your heroes who spent time in Baja before you and you feel like you're you're always walking in their footsteps? never measuring up. How many species of you, you know, cataloged yourself? What have you done? Nothing compared to what Reed did or whomever before you. Annetta Carter. Are there some real legends in this in this field that... Oh, there's no question. I think early on it was Townsend Brandegie because, I mean, that we're talking in 1890s or 1889, I think was one of his first trips to the peninsula, but he was a major plant collector and he went, I'm sure, the only route they could do

at the time probably, you know, by mules and whatever they could get. But he collected all these specimens all the way up and down the peninsula. And then I think one of the things that hit me as a graduate student, so I told you I was working on choias, right? And I landed in the Sierra San Francisco looking at the choias in the area. But I did general floristic. I was constantly learning about the flora in general and collecting and documenting thing. And I've found this plant in the San Francisco's.

And I'm like, wow, I don't recognize this thing. I don't know what this is. And I took it back to the herbarium in Arizona and ended up keyed out to this thing called Eisenhardia Peninsulares, something that Townsend Brandage he had collected over 100 years earlier. And that got me really excited about, like, plants

that he collected that no one has seen since on the peninsula. And that's with my other heroes like Reed Moran spending decades traversing areas of the peninsula and never finding these plants. So there's always room for this kind of rediscovery and discovery of new things as well. But that got me excited and I'm like, I wonder how many other things Brandy

actually collected that we've never seen again. And that's what got me into this National Geographic Society project that I've just finishing up, looking for lost plant species of the peninsula. Things were collected once in history. And they were the types of, specimens, and we'd never seen them in the last hundred years or so. And we didn't know, are they extinct? Are they just rare in an area or what was going on? And so I hooked up with

my binational colleagues again, and we selected 15 species up and down the peninsula, and tried to go visit those localities that Brandy was at, the Reed Moran was at, that Annetta Carter was at, and we went to those areas and see if we could actually find them. And we've been really successful so far. We found 10 out of the lost 15. So we know they're not extinct. Now, they're not really protected either. So that would be the next step.

Once we actually have a location that they're still there, people can actually study those populations and figure out, okay, what's the best way to conserve it into the future? But I think that whole idea, all the way back to a graduate student, when I found this Eisenhardia and had no clue what it was. In fact, I found some correspondence between Ira Wiggins, who wrote the flora, and somebody else, and he was saying, we've never seen this plant before. I don't know where Brandy collected it exactly and all this kind of stuff.

So it had been looked for, but hadn't been found. And even after my work, there's like at least five of those things I haven't been able to find that we hope is somewhere, and then maybe some botanist after me will be He's saying, well, that John Redmond, he couldn't go everywhere either. He didn't find these things. And so there's always a lot of room for that kind of rediscovery and walking in the footsteps of the people before you. Of course, in the collection, I'm doing that all the time because all of this collection of 300,000 plants that we have in our herbarium, that is basically walking in the trails of the people that were before you.

That is an accumulation of scientific knowledge and their efforts in the field. And so we use those things. We try to study them still. And we try to go back and find those if we need to, if it's a really rare plant like that. But that's one of the importance of our collections. So getting into some of the numbers and the nitty-gritty, 300,000 plants and somebody like the Beatles song had to count them all. 4,000 species in Baja,

what percentage of the 4,000 in Baja are represented in your 300,000 here? Do you have any idea? Most of them? Most of them. I would say, of the 4,000, we probably had 98% of those in our collection. We have one of those. Astonishing. But some of those we have many of, right?

So we understand them. They're wider spread. others we have just one collection like I said the or maybe two known in science and and you said five new species this year correct what's a what's an average year for new species for you for you in your institution well it depends on how much time I have to write exactly so this is what I'm getting to is there more time in the field more time to study more time to write less time talking to podcast you're you're you could be finding a new species right now when we're just chatting. Yes. Well, in fact, I leave this Thursday. And let me tell me what I'm doing this Thursday,

just on top of that. So I'll give you an idea, first of all. I made five new species this year, but I really have probably another 40 that need to be described that I'm aware of that are in my cabinets that haven't been described. And that takes time and effort. That's a, that's a species every other month. We're in the 10th month of the year, folks. So John's getting to this every 60 days. He's got a new species. Well, not me by myself. This is with colleagues as well. A lot of my Mexican colleagues that we're doing these things together with as well. But it is, there's a lot to be done. And I think that's like a big problem, a misconception that people have that we already know everything around us. I mean, even here in San Diego County, think about San Diego. We're in one of

the largest metro areas in the United States. We are still finding new species in our county. So, and that's been pretty well documented. It's not like the top of the Sierra de la Libertad in the center the peninsula. It is really a remote area and we're still finding interesting things. Cyprus. John, didn't you recently discover a new species in one of the canyons in the city of Achoya wasn't that you were telling me about? I mean, it's not even a species out in the middle of nowhere. It's a species here in town and it's a cactus. Can you talk about that a little bit? Actually, I can. It is so in a few years back we did.

a BioBlitz of Balboa Park. So right here. And you know we have some natural areas in Balboa Park, Florida Canyon, which runs right there. And during the BioBlitz, I was walking along the main trail, even though there's a lot of homeless and things like that. There's some beautiful areas here within the park. And I was walking along and I saw a cactus there. And it didn't really register.

I'm like, wow, that's kind of weird looking. Maybe that's kind of a weird hybrid and that kind of thing. And so then I thought about it for a year or so. And then one day I'm just taking a walk down there and I'm like, my gosh, this thing is just different. And Michelle Cloud Hughes also works on Choyas. And I had her and I'm like, you got to go see this thing. And she's taking it up from there. And not only is it here, it's out at Cabrillo on Point Loma.

And now we're finding it in other urban areas. And we just didn't recognize it as being something new. It looks like another taxon, another species. that's also rare. And so it's called the snake choya. The other one is. And we've been like mapping snake choya because it's a rare species in San Diego.

I'm just barely over the border into Baja. But now we're finding out that we weren't always mapping the right thing. So this rare plant, the snake choya, becomes even rarer because some of the populations are this new thing. And so it was sitting under our nose here in Balboa Park, for heaven's sake. So it shows you there are things. still hiding in these canyons. Yeah.

Yeah, amazing. Well, let's talk about your trip. You're heading down to Loretto to see Slow Baja alum, Trudy Angel, a friend of yours, friend of mine. Absolutely. I love Trudy. What a wonderful person. So let's talk about this upcoming trip. So I'm going down to do, first of all, a training on I Naturalist.

I don't know if you've used I natural. I have not. It is an amazing app, first of all. It is an app that you download onto your phone. you basically set up an account. And then if you're into nature and you like to hike and you want to learn a little bit more about it, you take a hike and you see a plant along a trail and you take pictures of it and you upload that. And someone like myself will put a name on it for you.

And actually the app itself will give you that kind of name. So that is one aspect of it is it gives you that name. But the way I use it is I'm using you when you're doing it as a citizen. and science project. And so that gives me a new dot on a map that that plant occurred right there. Once I verify it, it actually we pull it into our databases. So we know that it expands our knowledge of the plants and what's happening out there. And so I'd just like to add that John is the number one plant identifier in the world on I Naturalist. So he's had a very large contribution to that citizen science project.

Some would say I have a little addiction problem with identifying. How many investigations have you made? I'm approaching 500,000. 500,000. Well, I'm talking to the right guy here, folks. Not only 500,000 species, but this guy's the expert in Baja, folks. So you're heading down. So one of the goals that I'm going to do a training on eye naturalist

so that we can get more people in the Loretto area using the app. There it's called Naturalista. So if you're in Mexico, it's Naturalista. If in the U.S. it's eye natural, it's the same exact program. It's just one's in Spanish, one's in English. And they're completely are connected, so I see everything on both of them. And then we're doing a little mini expedition with Dr. Sula Vanderplank down there, who's at a new kind of research institute that's developing in Loretto.

We're bringing in a bunch of Mexican botany students from different parts on the peninsula, and we are going out for a week to look for lost things like on the Viscano Peninsula and in Magdalena Bay. And if you know what recently happened there, why would a botanist be interested? I'm going to get quiz you on this one. Why would a botanist be interested right now this time of the year in the Viscano Point? What just happened? Well, there's a heck of a storm. They couldn't be pre-running for the Baja 1,000 yet.

So it'd have to be Hurricane K. Hurricane K passed right over the tip. And if you know, one of the unique things about our peninsula that creates that diversity, not just those high mountains, it's also that we have different climates. So the northwestern part is a Mediterranean climate, so it gets winter rainfall. The Cape region is a tropical climate, so it gets summer rainfall. So what happens in the Viscano? Well, sometimes it goes eight years without measurable rainfall. So not much happens in those years.

It does get fog. It's a fog desert, so you get fog coming frequently there, but not. really rainfall. So when an event like Hurricane K comes and it crosses that part, that gives us a rare opportunity. That is a weird weather phenomenon. And so it drops all this rain there and all these plants respond. So for botanists, this is like our candy store, right? So we go out there and we can see what we can find. And I've got a bunch of lost species and ultra rare species that are known from the Viscano, but you have to have the right conditions. And so it's about perfect timing. So our hopes are very high right now that when we go out there, we'll be able to

find what we're looking for on many of these rare things. As long as the roads are passable, as you know, it wipes out a lot of roads frequently. But there's been a few weeks to build those backs and a lot of the fishing communities have to have those roads. So I think there's been efforts in reconstructing those, maybe going around somewhere, the bridges got wiped out, etc. So that's going to be one of the big things that we're doing during that time. So we're flying into Loretta, but we're actually traveling all the way around Baja California, Sour. And so, John, doing this kind of work seems kind of neat and glamorous to some degree while we're sitting here in the office.

But at the end of the day, it can be hot. It's going to be dirty. You're probably in a tent at night and you're eating stuff out of a can or whatever. Cold beans out of a can. Exactly. I mean, I saw some pictures of the camps. You're not, it's not glamping. here. Oh, no. No, definitely not. Let's talk a little bit about the nitty gritty of your job and getting

a little bit behind the scenes. I thought that was so interesting that you actually have a display of here are some of the things that's your actual shoes. Here's the bat finder or the, you know, the net that you're catching insects in, the presses that you're pressing plants in. Let's talk a little bit about the nitty gritty of what is like being in the field. Well, it's, you're Right. It's definitely not glamping. And you have to realize that all the scientists are a little different in what we're studying. For example, we may set up a base camp and then we try to get locals for food. And actually, their most important thing is not like providing food and support. It's actually they have the knowledge of that area. And so it's finding the right local guides and the right local muleteers or whatever to get to the other areas that we want to get to. And so it's a logistical nightmare. to try and get all this together. And then you've got people from both sides of the border and you've got all these disciplines.

And we end up converging on an area. We set up a base camp and we usually have food, water, that kind of somebody taking care of that so that we can just go out and do our science. But to do that, like myself as a botanist, I have to travel a lot of areas. I'm hiking all day long. And then I come back at night, then I have to have my glass of wine,

and then I prepare my specimens. Okay, maybe more than one glass. But that's kind of the way botanists work. But at that same time, herpetologists may be out a bit during the day. Then they rest for a while. Then they go out all night. Or entomologists, they may be black lighting at night, but they also maybe have a butterfly net during the day trying to find things.

So we're all doing different things all day and all night. And so like any of these things, it can be challenging. When you have like, it's very hot, you kind of have enough water. Do you have enough supplies with you? What if somebody drops off of a cliff? Or bugs, Dengue, like right now after the expedition, Dengue is a big possibility of it from the mosquitoes. So we have to be aware of that.

Do we have all of our mosquito blocks? I mean, it's not the most glamorous thing, but it's definitely exciting. And your tools are still the tools. You showed me the presses. It's still cardboard. It's still newspaper. It's still, you're taking a cutting of a plant and pressing it between pieces of paper and then squeezing it. That's all it is.

And they dry in the field or they do mostly as you press those down. And those are the scientific samples that we will keep for hundreds upon hundreds of years into the future. And so the reason I may be documenting those would be for finding out what's here in this area. Maybe we're doing an expedition, an area that's going to be developed. And so we want to actually document what's there before it's gone. Or in a weird year like this hurricane-driven situation. So we'll try to document those things. And then we'll study that into the future as they get into our collections.

And one of the nice things of like I didn't say about our expeditions, but since they are binational endeavors, when we make specimens, we make them not just for the natural. History Museum here in San Diego, but we're also making them for Siebner, for their collection, and for Uwobisay. And so it bolsters everyone's collections. For the Mexican institutions, the Mexican institutions, exactly for your colleagues there. Correct. And so they can study those things as well. And future generations of those scientists will also have those to work from. And so we were a little bit further ahead in the U.S., right? So we started this stuff earlier than many of the

Mexican institutions. But now they have some great infrastructure and they have people that are excited and love to be in the field and explore and study the organisms too. So what we're building will help them into the future as well. Getting back to you can't conserve what you can't, what you haven't named, how do you feel about, I'm going to put you in the hot seat for a second here. How do you feel about the idea of conservation in Baja with the local Baja population? What is happening with that? It is mixed throughout the peninsula. I will tell you, so I lived in 2015, 2016.

I lived in La Paz, actually, for a year. And a lot of that was during the mine development where there was a lot of conservation groups down there, educating the general public in Mexico from La Paz to say, this is a threat to our water, and everyone is dependent on water. And so they had set aside, a biosphere reserve that was already there, and they wanted to build a new mine in the biosphere

reserve. And so for us, thinking about that, you're like, oh, heavens, no, you would never do that. But money and economy is a big part of Mexico. And so, but these conservation groups were training the general public, and I don't care where you went. I went to some of the most remote areas, and you would hear people talking about, oh, the mine, no, no, you know, in Spanish. But they're, I mean, they're like very much conservation minded and they knew that that was not good for them in the long run. And so there are people that are in Mexico that are really good conservationists. And they need more resources, absolutely. They also need more scientific help in many ways. And that's where the museum, we try to do this collaboratively. We try to work with those conservation groups and those scientists

so that it expands their breath of knowledge as well and how they can take those next steps and convincing the agencies, the management, the government on how to protect those areas. So I think we play a very important role in conservation in Baja. But is that the same everywhere? No.

No, there are areas of the peninsula where you think of like Tijuana to Ensenada. How much conservation do you see along that corridor? Tijuana is growing by leaps and bounds. And Ensenada is spreading. Rosarito is spreading. All of these areas are expanding their footprint. And I'll give you an idea.

We were talking about cross-border rare. So this year, I went looking for a rare plant that's rare on both sides. It's called the Otai Tar Plant, the Andeandra Conjugans. So it's rare in southern San Diego County on Otai Mesa. and then there were a few historic populations in Baja, California. So we got some money to go looking for the population to say, what's left in Mexico. And so we did it binawally as well.

So we brought Mexican scientists and people from the U.S. And we were working in the Tijuana area. Some of the populations were under a bulldozer and actually in front of the bulldozer. So they're expanding, putting all new housing development areas in some of these areas. And one of the things, if you know the bulldozer, Boulevard 2000 that goes from Rosarito up to the other side. I'm sure you've traveled it. Great way to get to the Otai Crossing. Well, right along that, I was driving along there,

and we had our group, and I said, oh, wow, that looks like a Dianendra. We stopped right on the side of the road. Now, that road is not that old. And it's kind of gritty. And it's kind of gritty. Putting it politely. Yes. But that gave us access to a new part of the area on the south side of Tijuana. And so we stopped. We popped along that road, we got out and we said, oh my gosh, here's some rare plants. This is a D&Android, whatever. We also found a brand new Estragalus, took a few new steps from it, another new species for science. Not new records.

These are new to science. On the south side of Tijuana, for heaven's sake. Now, unfortunately, we know it from that population. It's going to be gone here really soon, maybe even before we get it described. because it's a little bit of a process to get all that stuff together. But that just gives you an idea. They're not thinking about conservation as much right there in that expansion. And these plants like Otai Tar plant, it's federally listed in the U.S.

It's not listed yet for Mexico. And that sometimes protects other species if they knew it was actually in those areas. So different parts of the peninsula have different conservation mentality. shall I say. But I do think it's interesting that even a place like Rosarito has created new hiking trails in the last couple of years and is promoting nature. Absolutely. And there are some people really doing that well on the peninsula.

The problem is you think of like that whole corridor once again in Sonata, Rosarito, Tijuana, how much natural lands is actually there? There's nothing protected on the books. None. So that can all expand without any protection. Nobody has bought up saying, I'm going to protect this big, this big chunk of land before it's completely gone. It's south of there, like San Quintinia, of Terra Peninsula, you know, out, out to

Puntumaso and the area. Or you go up into the mountains, the Sierra Juarez, you have a national park there, and you get the San Pedro Marcheer, you have a national park. What do you have along the coast? We have a huge amount of diversity there along the coast, and it is urban development, very heavy there. Yeah, that's not a park that I like to go to very often. No, not me either.

Well, John, you've been a real delight. And I love the enthusiasm. I just, you had, you just touched on the lost species. And I was touched by, again, not your area of expertise, the red-legged frog project where you're moving frog eggs from south to north. Are there things here that, you know, we're losing in the United States, that there are species of plants in Baja that could be, you know, seed saved or could help our native populations here.

Are there stronger populations of things, I guess, is what I'm saying, of rare plants in Baja, in areas that haven't been touched that are on the south side of the border or something where what, give me a good story to wrap it up on, I guess is what I'm getting to. Well, absolutely they are. You have to realize that a lot of our rare plants in San Diego County are things that actually have wider distribution in Baja, California and just barely come across the border. And so they may be wider, maybe down to Ensenada or San Quintin,

but when you get up here, they only go for a little portion of our counties. So think about that from the United States or from California, just a little portion of San Diego County that has these plants of what's left in an urban area as well. And so we list those things very quickly. But we know that there are lots of populations south of the border. So one of the big efforts in this cross-border rare plant project that we're doing is that not only we're trying to find the populations that are left south of the border, but also we're documenting that getting little pieces for DNA, and we're seed banking those.

So they're going back to the populations to get seeds, and then with those little seeds, we send those to Mexico City to the National Seed Bank. And then a lot of times they're duplicated and they go to Q Botanical Gardens and their seed bank as well. So we know that these species will be, have a conservation seed bank into the future. And maybe we're going to have to go to those seed banks when things change and can bring them back into existence because they might blink out in what's happening in a lot of our areas here if we do not protect these species. And we have to know as much as we can about them to adequately protect them. Cyprus, this Baja exhibition is, you said permanent.

So here for the long haul. What's the best way for people to find out about the museum? What's the website, social media, et cetera? Yeah, so our website is sdnat.org. All of our social media handles are SDNHM, which is short for San Diego Natural History Museum. Right now, we are open every day but Wednesday from 10 to 5. And admission for adults is $22. For children, it's $12.

and we've got free admission Tuesdays once a month. Which was actually today when I came. So, hey, thanks again, John Redmond, Cypress Hanson, for making this happen. And I hope our paths cross soon in Baja, John, and please say hi to Trudy from Slow Baja. I will do that. Thank you. And how many miles do you think you've logged on a mule in your since that Fulbright? Quite a few. All right, we did it.

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AdobeGuadalupe.com. For appearing on Slow Baja today, our guests will receive the beautiful benchmark map 72-page Baja Road and Recreation Atlas. Do not go to Baja without this, folks. You never know when your GPS is going to crap out, and you're going to want a great map in your lap. Trust me. Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation. John's enthusiasm for plants and Baja is absolutely infectious.

I really was delighted to see the new exhibit at the museum, and I strongly recommend all those Southern California folks to get down to Balboa Park and check it out. If you like what I'm doing here, it's that time of the year, it's the end of the year, it's the holidays. Share the show with a friend, a Baja loving friend. Rate the show on iTunes, Spotify. You can rate the show on Spotify if you're a Spotify listener. Drop a taco in the tank.

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