Rio Grande Valley Botany with Ernest Herrera

Okay, there we go. I'm finally learning to use my equipment. I
had the fucking us beat things switch. I get so turned up man with
these anyway, Okay, welcome to another episode of the Crime Page Biding Doesn't
Podcasts. I'm sitting here with my friend Ernest Herrera, who's a botanist here
in South Texas and lifelong South Texas resident of Rio Grand Valley, which is
one of the most botanically interesting places in the entire United States to me,
especially for how fucking hot it. This is the hottest place in the United
States. Oh yeah, sure, I mean right now it's absolutely I mean,
well cumulative heat throughout the year. I always tell people, because everyone
thinks Phoenix and Death Valley. But man, they get cold winters. We
don't even really get we don't get cold winters at all. There'll be eighty
five on Christmas here. So anyway, thanks for being down to do this.
Yeah, thanks for having me, Joey. I want to talk.
I mean I don't know where to start, I guess, so I wanted
to ask you, like, you know, you've lived there your whole life,
right, so tell me about growing up here, your family history.
You know you said, your grandma basically grew up on the river, right,
Yeah, so she grew up on the south side of the river.
She was born in, but you know, kind of moved to the south
side of the river, south of Progresso pretty much. And she would talk
about all sorts of native plants. Specifically, she would talk a lot about
Texas ebony, which is I found out pretty interesting. But you know,
I never really got to talk to her about it because I didn't really know
the native plants back then, but I would hear her talk about him all
the time, and then you know, she passed away. After that was
when I really started learning what was out here and making those connections. It
was just pretty pretty exciting. But yeah, she has a ranch, well,
the family has a ranch south of Progresso, and that's where my mother
grew up. That's where lots of my aunt and uncles grew up, and
my grandmother lived there pretty much most of her life. And you used to
go there as a kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we used to
go there all the time. It was it was really cool. It's just
kind of you know, being out in an area pretty much they had no
light, you know, no reading water, you had to get water from
a well and no electricity at all. So Candles was it was it all
farmland there or was it like native brush left? There were corridors of native
brush pretty much everywhere and the rest was was farmland. So she she was
a farmer. Yeah, they had, They had quite a few acres out
there that they would, you know, harvest pretty much everything from there.
It's crazy to me when I think about it, because all the native the
native plants we have here are Mexican. They're not the stuff you see in
San Antonio. I mean half of them are, but most of the stuff,
like you you look at range distributions on an ass or something, and
it goes on down into Mexico. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I
mean, that's why it's the Tamai Bimbiotic Province for the most stupid geopolitical boundaries.
Like it's just humans have fucked it up so bad. If you if
you look at the Rio Grand Delta, it's really interesting. We have like
maybe a quarter of the whole delta in the American side, and then the
Mexican side has the other three quarters pretty much of the delta. So the
real Grand Delta goes way way south into Mexico, which is pretty cool.
I actually just found that that recently. That's cool as hell. And it's
the headwater. Of course, they're in New Mexico, which I think is
always cool because I didn't realize is that at first, But when all those
glaciers were in New Mexico, all that melt water was coming down through you
know here, bringing rocks and all its ship from way further west. Yeah,
yeah, that's right. So do you so the the but the property
where your grandma grew up. You said you can't go there anymore. It's
a little too hot or what. No, it's it's hot as yeah right
yeah, not temperature yeah yeah, yeah, I mean it's also hot temperature
wise right now. But yeah, I mean we we go occasionally to visit
our family cemetery out there, which is pretty cool too because there's some needed
plants out there that I get a check out. But we have to check
in see how sape it is to go. Yeah. So, did they
took over the ranch or it's just the whole area or what they took over
the whole area? That's you know, it's right along the border. It's
primline for them. So Jesus Man. Let's when and when did that start
up really bad? The last ten years? No, it started out when
Calderon was in office, so around two thousand and eight. Yeah, yeah,
that's when everything started really going. Before that, I mean they were
out there, but you know, they didn't really mess with it. Yeah,
shit got really bad after like two thousand, between two thousand and five
and two thousand and eight. Yeah, really yeah, yeah, the cartel
stuff, it's got something's got to break eventually because it's so unsustainable. Now
it's wild. I mean there's all you know, crazy shit. I just
heard about some people that got murdered and uh there was like two Australians like
tourists got murdered in Baha, and just it's just too hot, you know,
it seems fucking insane, and it's unfortunate because it even cuts conservation efforts
for us, right, Like I was mentioning the real Grand Delta, right,
we could it'd be great if we've figured out some sort of you know,
international approach to conservation for the real Grand Delta, you know, but
we can't really do that too much because it's kind of hard to go out
there and start can stuff and then it gets exploited politically too. It's just
more like anti immigrant crazy shit, like it's you know, it's like,
oh these cartel like the cartels aren't impacted by the border wall. They don't
give a fuck. You know, you're staging political theaters. You can't just
fucking so aggravating, man. No. Yeah, And then you know,
conservation efforts right right along the river. They don't want to plant trees now
because right it provides cover. And I'm like, what are you planting?
And they're trying to plant you know, things like grasses and that's gonna road
that's a lot of right o. Wait, right, we need some good
trees to provide that. Yeah, because it's all especially where it's just sandstone
bluffs. Man, that is a soft rock that river currents take out.
So yeah, I heard I heard border patrols going back to some of the
properties where they built the wall because they want to They want to fucking clear
like another one hundred feet right next to the river, like you fucking idiots.
Yeah, doesn't make sense. I mean, it's gonna make the river
that much wider. It's just to keep eroading, right, and it's not
helping anyone. Yeah, I would have I would have been a crossover.
I would have loved to see ship. I would have loved to see this
area thirty years ago. But can you imagine like three hundred years four hundred
years ago, Yeah, you know, like when did I mean, I
guess the Spanish were here already back then, but got it just to see,
like what what the original landscape looked like. You know, there's so
little of it left. It's so underappreciated. I'm both the Mexican and the
US side. It's crazy. Yeah, the few remnant like forests that I've
been to are insane. They're so packed, right, Like, it's just
you can't get through them without crawling right like under them or with a machete,
right right. But it's kind of crazy to me to think that people
actually settled here at some point or another, and I'm sure it must have
looked so different. I mean there was there was probably a bountiful place in
some ways. That river was probably super clean, super filled with super you
know, just bountiful, just filled with I mean you had rio grand those
native muscles that were here, you had all kinds of cool fish. Yeah,
you know, it was entirely different before the dams too, right,
I mean it's yeah in Spanish for a reason, because it was like a
raging river and oh my god. How you go to like, you know,
Boca Chica and you get like a trickle getting into the Gulf of Mexico.
Yeah, yeah, I didn't even think about that, Okay, Yeah,
So let's let's talk about the biosomes of this region, because this is
real. Yeah, I mean, if you look at a map, I
always tell people too, if you look at a satellite image in the entire
United States or the whole kind of North America, you could see to the
east of the hundredth meridian, it's green and more music, and as you
head west starts to turn beige. And we're right basically at the southern you
know, southern tip of the United States on that line. So it's like
we're where the Gulf Coast transitions to desert. I mean, you've got like
the cactus gardens where there's peyote and star cactus, you know, like an
hour west here, and then to the east you've got you know, yuccas
and all this subtropical stuff growing on the right on the coast, like what
is it? What's that celistracy and meetinis? Do you know that one?
I forget there's a member of Celeustraci that occurs here. It's like like two
feet high. But you also get it in Baja. It like grows at
this latitude near coastal oceans. Let me see if I can find it up.
Oh that leg you know, but I know you all that that's a
cool No, it's let's see. So it's strac I looked it up.
But you know, the plant life here, it's it's weird to me to
see. Like, I mean, you get like Rio Grand Valley barrel cacti
on uh, you know, Hamato cactus hamatacanthus growing like in Brownsville, like
on the shipping channel. Ye Yukatra Cooliana. Like that drive when you're going
to South Padre, you know where all the frat boys are puk and on
themselves and there's no restaurants to say for a couple of bar food diners.
You go past these fucking incredible fields of yucca everywhere, like they were flowering
a month ago. It was fucking intoxicating to see. Yeah, and of
course they're building like shitty housing condo developments there because but is huge there too.
Yeah. I mean it's just it's pretty much almost the same as the
west side, right, Yeah, it's interesting. You find horse scripplers,
you find barrel cactus, sussed rib kantis, haterimlarid, like you find all
these cool cactus species tens. Where the fuck did I see Matinus secuman out
of South Africa? Yeah? That one. Yeah, that's weird because if
you look at the distribution that's yeah, and it's like this, it forms
these like two foot tall thickets. Yeah, and it likes salt. You
get a lot of fucking salty soil here too, which I want to ask
you about too, like astrophytem vrilla they grow in salty soil with that fucking
salt tolerant grass far away from the coast too. Yeah, yeah, yeah
totally. And then of course right yeah, which I think is just because
it's so fucking hot here, water weathers ship off the rocks and then evaporates
before it can wash it out to a watershed. But but that creates like
these really cool plant communities, like you said, very specifically, and it's
like astrophying. It needs that. Yeah, and the moment you see those
it's just like these little pockets out in the Yeah, and it's hard water
here too. I bought a fucking those carnivorous plant nerds. I was just
out there, like, get a TDS meter total thoselves. I got one,
and I was like, holy shit, it's like five hundred and forty
parts per million here. Yeah, and then the ro that I got come
out to sinks like sixteens. So it's really no way you can water your
no, and if you water like cacti or something, you see the salt
build up on the soil. But anyway, I forgot I was going with
this. But the different biozones here, I guess I wanted to ask you
about because you yeah, because it's this transition zone from the humid almost subtropical
stuff closer to the coast to like you go out to Del Rio, like
you're starting to then get into Chihuahua Desert. It's so cool driving to Alpine
from here along the river because you can see the transition to fucking Chihuahua desert.
And then you get all these plants that grow in South Texas but also
have a more variety, a different ecotype in the West, whether it's like
jo trophidaweka or fucking peyote or hamato cactus or any of that stuff. Yeah.
Yeah, it's it's pretty interesting. And I like how you can go
to the center of the Rio Gang Valley and you drive one hundred miles west
one hundred miles east north and it's just entirely different ecotypes. Yeah, and
that's that's what's cool about that kind of transition zone we have here. We
have that temperate you know, tropical desert and coastal zones, right Yeah,
everything in the middle is just kind of this mix of all of those plants
and uh so yeah, it's a it's a it's an amazing party. That's
what it contributes to our biodiversity here. Yeah. Yeah. And then of
course it's easy to forget to like four hours south of here, you have
L C. L O you know, which is nuts. I mean that's
like you know, epiphytic orchids and tall mountains and pretty incredible stuff. Yeah.
That's the main thing we're missing here, that that kind of change in
tootography, right. Yeah, we're flood plains, so it's pretty flat,
right Yeah. So well, anyway, and then you get the sandsheet north
of here as well, which is different little blue stem and prunas Texana and
all this. Yeah Yeahnia and yeah men Nouda is really cool and yeah yeah
that's like that's that four foot tall one. Yeah yeah, the way flowered
r Yeah yeah. Moth lots of moth pollinated stuff. So anyway, so
how did so when you got it? When did you really get into plant?
Because you're in a tiles too, but your your grandma kind of got
you into this just being exposed to it, which not many people are here
anymore because so much has been destroyed. And then but now you're you're like
one of the best bondists I know in this area. Like how did you
get there? It just I mean, I think my grandma had an influence,
right, But there was a disconnect, right, And that's kind of
one of the things that I talk about, you know, with kind of
the population here in the valley, there's that disconnect with nature, right because
everything's been torn down. So thankfully I had some amazing naturalist professors and at
the at my at UTRGV right at you know doctor McDonald who was an amazing
botanist in the area. Yeah, who was it, guy? Because I've
heard Angela mentioned. Yeah, doctor McDonald is a he's a taxonomist and he
did a lot of work on combobulists in Mexico. So so he did,
you know, a lot of the morning glories. They he actually discovered them,
got him named and everything. So it was just this taxonomist and so
he kind of exposed me to the vegetation. Doctor Zayden, as a herpetologist,
took us out. You know, I took all the field classes,
right, so doctor Zaiden took us out, got us to see all the
herbs, and then that kind of exposed us to you know, what kind
of environments they were they were interested in, right, or they were living
in. And then doctor Brush, doctor Brush a birder, right, he's
a he also looks at birds mostly, but also really really looks at what
type of habitats they're in their inhabiting here in the Rio Grand Valley. And
so between those three professors, I think it made a kind of huge impact
on me and just I really wanted to, you know, learn more about
the natural history and just what's what's out here. So little by little got
more and more exposed to them, and you know, just started learning pretty
much everything that was out here. UTRGV is cool, man. I remember
when Zach was digitizing the or bearing there. I need to go lurk there
some more. Colleges are always good for lurking in. There's always something good,
whether it's like a cheap cafeteria or just a nice library or whatever.
Do they have much in the way like with their bodany department? Is there
much there their biology department? I guess now just have cut botany departments.
Yeah, because the department in ut rgu is kind of shifted directions, right.
It used to be, in my opinion, a lot more natural oriented,
and now they're kind of changing you know, directions and kind of just
going straight into research, which is fine, right, but you're not going
to get that naturalist perspective as much anymore within the biology department. So you're
talking about like not going out and sweating your ass off in the field more
doing like what molecular worker lab stuff. Yeah, that'sych with everything. Yeah.
Once, I mean I understand they opened up a medical school, so
they're trying to you know, it helps kind of funnel students into the medical
school. That's what's funding the programs. That's why you're losing you know,
some of these really cool naturalist professors out were there. How many passionless med
students in the world take I feel like that especially it's such a profession where
people go to just like I just want to make money. I'm just going
there to make money, you know. I mean, I'm sure there's a
couple that give a shit, but you know, like doctors and lawyers and
fuck me and that's no. Yeah, but I mean that either way,
I mean it. I there are still some amazing professors. I'm not going
to dubt that there. Yeah, great, right, but it's just I
think there's a little bit blessed now where that will take you out to the
field. Oh yeah, man, get you to get you exposed to it.
I see that all over the US, though, it's like it's you
know, it's as college has been turned into more of a business and that's
more of a bottom line thing, and there's less and it's a US thing
like you don't see it in other places so much like Australia, they still
fund a lot of a lot of this stuff. That is, you know,
I think the problem with the US here is that they don't see what's
the point of that, what does it do? How can you make money
out of it? What's the way we want to put money into studying these
things? Because you know, why do you want to study something like soil
biota or Michael riizal relationships or any of this stuff, Like what does it
do? You know, it doesn't benefit anything egg science and it's just really,
you know, I think it's I blame Reagan basically, any chance I
can get this ship on Reagan's He's the one that brought it to this.
Everything's got to be money, money, money, and so now you get
this anti intellectual lowest common denomination or shit. It's part of the reason the
US is in so in decline right now. But we won't get into that.
I won't go off on a rent. But that said, yeah,
like I was, like I interviewed the people from Duke the Duke about them
closing the irbarium, Like what you're closing a fucking orbarium at a like one
of the major you know, universities, And it's insane. It's insane,
Like you have to explain to these pencil neck stiffs that only know numbers and
budgets why it's important to keep in urbarium. It's crazy. So and that's
why Zach was dig digitizing the ibarium here too. You know, it was
pretty much just send all that to ut Austin, right, and I wonder
if they just threw in the dumpster after we did it. They're like,
yeah, we didn't need this. No one was really interested in taking care
of it anymore after doctor McDonald left, so it was just kind of like,
okay, well let's digitize it in. Yeah. It's crazy to me
because I look at subjects like law or pre med and I mean, some
stuff about like human anatomy and biology can be cool. I like that,
but I look at stuff like law and I'm like, God, who the
fuck would want to go study law? No offense to any of my lawyer
friends. I've got like two of them. If you're listening, you're great
people, and not talking about you. I'm talking about the other ten million
fucking lawyers. But you know, I'm like, that's got to be fucking
passionless, soul sucking shit work. I'd rather work in the fucking DMV,
you know, where at least I could like not out on quelus or something
at work. And you know what, I mean, but whereas I look
at studying biology and bonding and I'm like, this shit fills my soul.
This fills a hole within myself. This makes me feel alive and like I
don't want to die anymore, you know. Yeah, you go out into
your back. I mean, it's biology, right, it's life. You
don't, it's the opposite. It's forming relationships with living things. Yeah,
you know. And you see it the moment you start planting a few native
plants, right, you get all these cool insects, and then all these
cool birds, herbs, whatever you find rate and it just it. If
you have that interest in it, there's you know, just endless amount of
things that you could learn. There's no way you could ever learn everything.
That's Oh, there's so much cool shit. I'm into bugs like me.
It's me and my daughter sit and look at the bug book now and she
gets all excited, you know. And some people, a lot of people
down here, not a lot, but some people down here get it.
Like Christy came to drop something off the other day and she's like, I
was like having to dodge butterflies on a way to your front door. You
know. Ken talks about that too. I mean, it's like it feels
good. So I think that leads me to my other question I wanted to
ask you about or there's just this topic I want to talk about. How
do you get people into caring about this? Because this is a really I
mean, people don't give a shit about this in most of the United States,
you know, California, Arizona's a little di mean, you get people
that are into it, you know, maybe some other regions in the in
the Southeast, like college towns or whatever, Ashville in tribute, But like,
is it general ethos In the United States, our focus on plants has
been mostly is it attractive, you know in the home depot, garden center?
Or does it is it medicinal or like the drug bro thing, is
it's psychoactive? Like these are all really narrow, myopic perspectives on plants,
Like they're missing the point. They're not you know there and all those subjects
are kind of boring to me. I'm interested in the general ecology. Everything's
networked together. How do you get people to start caring about this, get
excited about you know, I you know, I've worked at the Nature Center
for about five years of Macallan Nature Center and in my opinion, the best
way to do it is you know, it sounds cliche, but it's it's
youth, right, getting one of the few that kind of you know that
at an older age. You know, I started learning because I studied biology,
right, Yeah, But there were several homeschool you know, families that
would go by, and those kids have now grown up to be really cool.
Biologists are really cool, like naturalists in general. Yeah. So I
can think of several families that, you know, same thing. They would
go to the nature center, go regularly take you know, go to our
bird walks, butterfly walks, plant walks, whatever we had out there,
and they, you know, those kids just became some amazing people. If
you go to Salininio right now, that family of kids and you know their
mother that are taking care of that place, they were kids that would go
to the nature center where those big as mona zumas are. Yeah, yeah,
exactly, And and they've gotten so passionate about conservation. And I I
love that, right, And I think if I was exposed at a much
younger age, I would have loved it too. But I just, you
know, like I said, everything's been cut down, how could I get
exposed. Yeah, that's crazy too, isn't it crazy. It's like robbing
the comments. It's like robbing people of the ability to experience these things to
nature. It's insane, man. And that's something that this civilization that has
been created does. It's like we got to make room for it again.
It's nuts, man. Yeah. I wasn't into this as a kid.
I was into plants, like mainly there like plugged into the same neurocircuitry that
maybe making art did. But I didn't have any context for it. And
I didn't know what the native plants were in Chicago until I came back when
I was like thirty five. And I only got into plants because I hated
what humans created so much, you know, I hated the strip mall and
the fucking car culture, all this shit. Yeah. I was into lizards,
turtles and frogs and so really cool thing is that I had Texas horned
lizards in my backyard at the time when I was a kid. Where you
live now, Yeah, where I live now, It used to be an
old watermelon and then they turned it into a subdivision and somehow everyone had horned
lizards in their yard, and you know, people started adding lawns, and
I guess these horn lizards started not making it anymore. But these were that
was the animal that I played with as a child, right, Like,
would find them regularly. They were everywhere. Wow, And so it was
it was a really really cool thing for me to be able to experience that.
And just people don't, like I said, you know, nowadays everyone's
inside or you know, you're just not connecting. You don't have these animals
at your home, right or these plants that interest you, that pique your
interest as a child. Right. Well, I will say it's it's during
the summer here. It's like it's the same as winter in Minneapolis or Chicago.
To me, it's like, was it always this fucking hot? It
was always pretty brutal, but it wasn't like this one oh five, Like
may no, no, I mean again, Like I mentioned to you earlier,
my nephew was in band. It is in band right now, and
I'm just like, how is he surviving out there? When I was in
band in high school, I don't remember temperatures reaching one hundred you know regularly.
Now they're right now, they're crossing one hundred in me right, like
they're past twe hundred lady h you look at tump records, then it would
be a couple of days of over one hundred and humans there something, Yeah,
exactly in the dog days. Right. This is nuts man, It's
it's like scary and it's been hazy and shit too. Is that it's just
from agricultural fires in Mexico? I guess, oh, yeah that's what I
read. I mean, what did they burned stuff there? Yeah, they
burned cane and you know they burn kane specifically when there's southern winds. So
it comes to no shit, yeah, the the United States, Oh,
it's crazy man. But yeah, I mean if you look if you look
at the if you look at a satellite, and it's like the McCallan Mission
area, like all the way east of Brownsville there's all strip malls and parking
lots and the strip mall. Things really weird here. It's like all the
way up I thirty five. It's like it's yeah, it's a fucking it's
a farm. They're farming consumers. It's what the economy is based on.
It's so crazy because you're like, this is not this is so destructive and
how how long can it last and it creates a miserable for people too,
I don't know. Anyway, And if you look south on the Mexican side,
it's all like agriculture and probably who knows how many cartel safe houses.
But but but it's you know, and then you start going west, I
mean, there's just few. There's so few crumbs left, I guess,
and that's why it's like the few that are here. It'd be cool to
create some kind of directory. There probably is one, but of like places
where people can go if they need to get out, you know, yeah,
you know, and that's that's one of the biggest things. And I
was going to get to that earlier too. And you know, as a
child, no one exposed me really to all the nature centers that were here,
right, all the natural places. I only knew of one, and
I was Benson State Park because it was down the street from my house,
right and also when I was in a freshman we went out there and you
know, help plant their their parking lot. But other than that, you
know, it's crazy. I didn't know about Santa Ana, the biggest one
I didn't know about, like Hunadra Scota, I don't know about the Butterfly
Center, which is also down the street from my house. You know,
all these other places that exist. I had no idea they were out there
until I became a naturalist. So it's it's about exposure and you know,
more than anything, just trying to get these places, you know, so
that people see them and are interested in going to them. Yeah, I
mean, thanks to COVID, you know, everyone was housed inside and they
were just kind of like freaking out, so they started looking for these places.
They discovered some of these gems like we have like Las Ladra. Las
Holaday never had people in the parking lot, you know, it was usually
the only one in tell. Everybody would sell though, raise because that's really
cool. Yeah. So Las Ladrey is it's basically these old hyper sailine lakes
that are you know, pretty far inland, and it's just this amazing habitat
around it. Whenever it's dry, you get these really cool crystals of salt,
you know, in the whole lake. And then when it's uh,
you know, whenever it rains, you know, you get these days filled.
It's insane. Yeah, it feels like I mean, it feels like
you're walking on crystals. Yes, that's what it is. Yeah, and
you find all these animals that kind of have died because of how salty it
is, and they're preserved within the salt. It's yeah, yeah yeah.
When I was out there, I was let out there maybe two or three
years ago, and the fucking have Alna were just murking all the cactus has
they have Alina thing always been that this bad here. Yeah, I mean
I'm not too sure. I'm guessing, you know, because of all this
habitat destruction, right, Yeah, they're kind of getting pushed in more and
more and so, right, they get squeezed into the few remaining areas.
And also there's their populations have probably experienced the boom kind of like deer,
yeah in the Midwest and Northeast because no one really hunts them. Yeah,
yeah, and so the predators are all gone, so yeah, yeah,
so they're basically just kind of in a way over harvesting areas, right,
yeah. God, they've been fucking things up. Though. I thought it
was wild pigs at first, because I'm like, I have Alena evolved here,
they probably weren't doing this, But then I thought all there were used
to be jaguars here, Puma's they were keeping them in check, and people
were probably hunting them for hundreds of years too. But yeah, it's their
natural predators are gone for sure. I mean jaguars more than eating, right,
that's partly the one that really predated on them, Yeah, the thirties.
Yeah, yeah, but like they have, it's been uprooting cactus.
It's been it's been nuts, man. It was Benson. I wanted to
ask you about to Benson Rio Grand Valley State Park that was a former agfield
that got reclaimed right, yeah, to a certain extent part of it,
and then just most of it was owned by the Benson family. They actually
donated to Taxa Sparks and Walleife Department. You know what's fucking weird down here
is it's it's like all Hispanic area, but there's a lot of fucking Anglo
names everywhere, which is fucking weird to me. That shit wouldn't fly in
like Tucson or southern California or you know what I mean. Yeah, No,
it's it's all these original well not original, I would say, but
all these settlers that came afterwards, right yeah, and they were given these
Spanish land grants, and of course you are you know, white people that
you know, got a chance to get these grants and they took over the
area. But they're not here anymore. Did they all are? The Benson
Serve for example, so here right? And I don't know if the Sherry
families here. But was this always a predominantly Hispanic area or was it half
and half at some point or was it like this weird feudal system where like
the Anglos were kind of running things. And then because it seems like that's
what it was, you had the La Matanza, the massacre, you had
the fucking pin Chase ren Chase, the rangers just marking people, which is
a super dark history that I didn't it doesn't get talked about. Man.
Yeah, yeah, I'm you know, it definitely used to be more Hispanic,
right, But it's just you know, at some point the border moved
right Texas Mexico his way further about like two hundred years ago as well with
the Mexican American War, right, you know, we had we had that.
That's why we have several forts here on along the Reo Grand because that
was such a you know, a good kind of border just kind of start
fighting back, and so we have those sports, especially in Brownsville where you
know that's those were like the main headquarters for people to for the Americans to
fight, you know. And so that's when the border changed and you know,
all these kind of Hispanics got kind of turned into Americans in a way,
right, But it also brought an influx of you know, English were
like, we can go down there now it's cri you can farm citrus down
there. Yeah. So and that's when they did all of this kind of
citrus farming and you know, cotton. But they were also like stealing land
from people too, weren't they. Yeah, yeah, I mean fucking sure.
Yeah. These these grants, I mean they were given, you know
to people as if no one already lived there, but they were settlers behavior.
Anybody lesson wants to learn about this, look up Lama Tanza or Rio
Grand Valley History, et cetera. There's a there was a documentary on PBS
where this lady's talking about like her this is like the twenties, like nineteen
twenties, like rangers were coming down running people off their land, just murdering
people, yeah, and just cleaning the land, just crazy shit, like
Estapo shit. Yeah, it was nuts. It's just fun. It's just
weird because like even in like downtown Mission Is there's like a Tom Landry.
Girl, the fuck does Tom Landry have to do with Like it was like
a Dallas Cowboys coach, and like, fuck, I'm surprised no teens vandalized
that, and I'm like, where where are the where are the where are
the graffiti teens of the Rio Grand Valley? You know. It was just
I'm like, that should be someone you know, el it shouldn't be that
guy. He's absolutely no offense to Tom Landry. Maybe was a nice guy,
who fucking knows, but I'm just saying it seems kind of weird or
just plants. It'd be cool to see like a Texas tortoise mural on that
fucking right, Yeah, something you know that actually you know is connected to
you know, yeah, yeah area, I'd love to see that. I
don't know. I got a friend who doesn't dangered species murals for Center for
Biodiversity. I'd love to see if whoever owns that wall the way. Yeah,
man, it's so weird man anyway, But so yeah, I've always
been interested. I've always kind of been interested more in Star County. Because
that's I've always been. I mean I learned desert botany. I started going
to the Mohave Desert when I was I don't know, fucking twelve years ago,
ten twelve years ago, So desert plants always kind of took me more.
Have you you've done a lot of You've surveyed a lot out there.
I mean you work as a consultant, you know, doing surveys and stuff.
Have you done a lot of work in Star or what? Yeah?
Yeah, done quite a bit of work, you know, pretty much the
entire real value. And for a while I was in Star County, Star
and Stapata, And so what do you see out there? I mean as
far as it's just in the general region, like as because that's really when
it's always a few degrees hotter than it is in the Mission McCallen area,
which is always a few degrees hotter than it is in the Harlingen Brownsville area.
So what do you what does one start seeing as they get into like
the peyote gardens, the astrophytum areas, all the cool cacti. How does
the biota, how does the flora change? Oh? Yeah, it's it's
interesting there it starts changing because we start getting a little bit of topography there,
right, You starting these small kind of like rolling hills, and so
there you start seeing very different drastic changes from based on elevation. Right at
the very top of these hills, you have you know, these like extremely
dry plants, like you know, you have all these yukkas, and that's
where you start finding the ladder pods on the bluffs, right, and then
you have these arroyos that kind of feed into the river, which have like,
you know, just the subtropical plants that you find over here in the
McAllan mission area fight you know, cordia and ebonies and ashes. And so
that's the nice part about it, because just because of that topography kind of
change, right, you start seeing so much more diversity out there. Right,
Like I mentioned earlier, here in the kind of floodplain area, it's
kind of all you know, pretty pretty I guess, uniform. Right,
So that's the biggest difference you start seeing over there, and I think that's
probably also the reason you find more endangered plants in that area, right.
You know, it's easier for some of those plants to get kind of exploited
with you know, farming or grazy, yeah, whatever it is. Yeah,
it's so cool though. I mean those bluffs above the Rio Grand they
kind of go all the way up to Laredo. Yeah, it's fucking wise.
I think that's all Jackson Group. That's the geologic formation. But it's
all this E've seen sandstone. And then right there where the river is,
it's flat. You could tell it's a flood planet that's just been scoured out
by the river changing course every fifty to one hundred years, you know,
yeah, yeah, no, And then you find like old oyster beds right
from when the coasts used to be there. So Straea Gigantia remembered the fucking
name because I was so excited about them because I've got so many of them
here. They're like these, some of them the size of a hubcap.
You know. I remember seeing Frank Knea JOHNSTONI I just growing on these beds.
These fucking it's just oyster shells, like the substrates, just the oyster
shells. That's where you find like Yates ya as well, Yeah, that's
that it can't they see a thing with the purple flowers? Yeah? Yeah,
I think he used to be a justice Yah, it kills me,
man, how many how many cool plants are here that people don't know about
because it's just such an understudied region and it's kind of off the map for
you know, we're like we're over here in the corner of Texas. Yeah.
Yeah, other people we're all kind of living within these urban centers.
We're like I said, so it's all been cleared at some point, so
no one has you know, pockets of at least native habitat, whereas out
in Star County they're like these you know, big ranches that are owned by
very specific people, right, very few people. Yeah, and so some
of them you can find bigger pockets out there native you know, uh,
brush or habitat. It's sad though, because a lot of that is you
know, those those big parcels are now being turned into ten acre tracks so
someone can go build their little mc mansion dream home a nice ranch. Yeah.
I want to try my handranch. Yeah. It's a trend right now.
Yeah. Yeah, that they're going into in the fucking buffalo grass is
when did the buffle? Was the buffalo always hear this bad? Or did
you see it get worse? And I would say it's gotten worse. Yeah,
I was here in twenty fourteen. I remember going to Chihuahua Woods.
I didn't see any It was barren ground with huge clumps of mammalaria hider eye
and any acanthus, a kind of serious any canthus and twisted rib twist tomato
cactus and and uh a kind of serious pent the lofust. It just my
first mind was blowing it out there. Yeah, yeah, I was like,
this is insane. And so that's what I'm trying to do by Kelly
Lawns around here is plant more than ships, Like create these little cool cactus
gardens. Yeah. I mean that's the main thing with buffalo grass, And
that's that's the reason they brought it over, right, because it's it's drought
tolerant, and you know, it's just no one needed to water it for
it to do well. Involved with huge mammals, yeah, selecting for it,
nibbling it down and eating it. Anything that couldn't respond to that and
grow really fast get robust, yeah, one extinct. And so we didn't
have that here. And so I mean, if if we did, it
was like what buffalo right, and then you know what that would happen?
Not buffalo bisons, right, yeah, and so you know, they got
disconnected from the area too, and so so there used to be bison here
too. Yeah. Well the bison used to kind of come down the winter.
They were winter Texans. Yeah, yeah, and so that's where they
imagine like kind of those they took care of, well not took care but
they maintained kind of those grasslands as well, right, those you know,
pretty much gotten grasslands, and so yeah, it was just it was very
different. And so once we started bringing cattle in and these invasive grasses,
you know, everything changed. It's crazy though that it seems like it was
so recent though, like last time or twenty years ago. Yeah. Yeah,
it was definitely within the last hundred years, because it's got so you
go to like the hike and bike trailer wherever, and it's just buffalo grass
under the miskis. Yeah, no diversity whichsoever, it's yeah, and that's
why people don't understand the moment you cut everything down, that's the first thing
that comes in those grasses even I mean, I've seen some areas that are
like disconnected from any you know of these invasive grasses, and somehow these still
come in first before anything else. And just take over. Oh the seeds
are so tiny and they're probably in all that equipment that they used to yeah,
yeah, no, and then to take to restore those areas. It's
it's it's a long process. I mean that the Mcallian Nature Center, that's
what we did. We kind of first fought off the grasses within the thorn
scrub, which is kind of that you know, intact area in the in
the center of the nature center. But then after that we fought off that
west side of the nature center, which was all buffalo and guinea grass and
only ebony trees and a few that walk in. And it was one of
those things where you had to go back several times a year fight that back,
and eventually you had to go back less and less. Yes, yeah,
definitely, but that's like not a sustainable management strategy as yeah, we
had, I mean we had a pretty big staff at that point where we
had maybe fifteen twenty people, you know, and every day would be out
there working on it. So that's why it worked. But how do you
fight that, you know, on a large scale, there's it's gonna have
to be some kind of bio control or something, you know, or like
some sort of gene editing, like gene drive, you know, like bringing
out recessive alleles and making them the dominant ones, like a recessive allele that
makes the buffalo grass just die. Yeah, and or like produce only sterile
seed or something that would be Yeah, that would be a good idea,
something like that, because I mean, the moment you take those grasses out,
shit comes back. Yeah, everything comes back, and it's amazing,
and it's like this beautiful tapestry of diversity and fucking all the cool fucking cact
i hear that don't grow anywhere else. It's insane to me. And then
once it's restored, the need the invasive gases don't come in anymore. I've
never seen a place where people just I mean, I'm sure there's quite a
you. I just haven't spent much time in places like Florida or Mississippi,
but uh, I've never seen a place where like that. There's such a
richness of diversity, of cool plants that don't grow anywhere else, that nobody
knows about who lives there or really cares about, and it is so willing
to just get rid of It's crazy to me. I've never also been to
a place where cleared land is somehow more valuable than intact land, like that
parcel of that was over on what is it Brian where that Nicktagania is like
coming up along the margins and they cleared there was I mean it wasn't It
was probably clear at one point for agriculture, but the misky had grown back,
the Polo Verde had grown back, and uh, I think it was
just the Koliada, yeah, parking cit and Koliata and miski and then some
other cool stuff. But it was cool. It was a cool little area,
you know. And then they cleared up. They haven't even sold the
fucking party. It's crazy. They just route plowed it and it just looks
like shit and it's just sitting there getting hot as fuck. Yeah yeah,
and the people complain about why it's so hot in the value. I'm like,
well, you're cutting down all the trees, every single tree. Those
are nature swamp cooler. That's what cools everything down. It's crazy to me,
this Native plant ordnance. We're trying to get past the emission City Hall
because they're like they didn't even know what a native plant was. They were
like I was talking to them they're like they're you know, I'm like,
look, miss, it says in an ordinance. You know, no plants
can be taller than twelve inches unless they're cultivated. And she's like, oh,
yeah, that's not native plants, and like native plants are cultivated,
Like do you even know what what the definition of a native plant is?
It it's a plant that evolved here. It's just you know, it's it's
it's directly applies to the ecology, benefiting pollinator and stuff like that. It's
they didn't care. I mean, they looked at me like I was just
like, ye's, like it's nuts, man. So I think trying to
get that through to people is like what I'm it's my main thing, you
know, trying to get people like I've killed a couple of lawns, blocked
a few blocks away plant native stuff. They get to see it, They're
like, this is fucking awesome. I love it. That's that gives me
a little bit of hope, you know. Yeah, I mean, and
I think that's going back to, you know, fighting those organces. That's
kind of the way to really fight back your you know, most of it,
most of the native habitat's gone, right, in my opinion, and
well not just in my opinion. You know, the studies show, you
know, everyone says all these numbers between one and ten percent of the native
habitat that is left thing left. I would say, yeah, it's closer
to one percent, probably, But so then the only way to kind of
fight back now is to bring it into the urban environment, Bring it into
people's lands, bring it into people's just even if everyone were to plant one
or two native shrubs, I think it would make a huge I'm gonna get
a fucking conservation. He's been at my house on my front yard, you
know, my like two hundred square feet, just so that no one can
you know, or if I ever sell it, I'm just gonna vet whoever
buys that. You know, I'm going to be like, this is you
know, that's my plan. You know, if we ever sell my parents'
house where I kind of like worked on, you know that yard in the
backyard, right, if someone is planning on buying it, that doesn't care
about the need of environment. I don't care how much sted Yeah, no,
that's not because this is this is now supporting so much life in this
right and the moment you step into the backyard. There's just tons of birds
and life. I got cicadas in my yard. I heard a little cicada
in my yard. I didn't have those last year. Yeah, that's awesome.
Those really cool. God. But we were at the property we just
got the Thorn Scrub sanctuary. They were fucking going off, those little ones.
It was so loud, it's so pleasant. It sounds almost psychedelic.
Yeah, it's so cool them. And they have like different frequencies too.
It's it's it's amazing how like they've evolved like all these like crazy little frequencies
just depending on the species. Right, Yeah, hear each other out between
like you know, all these other cicadas that are calling it at the same
time. There's like six species here too. Each one exploits a different niche
and different food source comes out a different time. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
The giant ones are what I'm stoked about. The ones that sound like
one of those hand buzzers. You know, there's like gag hand buzzers you
can get like a prank store or something. Yeah, and they haven't come
out yet, but they'll they'll come out very soon. But yeah, I
mean, I think you know, we like I said, we need to
just start adding needed plants, you know it. No one needs to have
a whole forest in the yard. Right. And I've had, you know,
people fight back into me. Well, I'm not gonna get oscill outs
in your head. No, you're not gonna get oscill outs in your yard.
There's no way. But you're things. Besides, Yeah, there's so
many birds that will take off of that, so many insects. The moment
you get a few insects, you'll get birds in here. That are three
species of lizard in my yard. Yeah, probably four because like a quarter
acre. Yeah like that, right, and you have so much you know,
diversity in here. Oh, it's so nice, man, it's so
nice. And it's nice too during these hot ball breaking summer months where it's
like I can go spend some time outside, not a lot, you know,
but come back inside, cool off, break some iced tea or some
go back out whatever. You know. It's instead of to go out to
the field, drive somewhere, you know, whatever, to wherever the fuck
and everything looks like shit out here. And I water here too, which
I'm okay with because it's again, it's supporting life. It's like putting water
up for the birds insects or something. But the water is not gonna be
anywhere near as much as water in a lite. No, the long thing
is fucking insane to me here. I don't know why people do that.
And you spend so much money on the line and maintenance, right, you
have to mow it regularly, and especially during the growing season, you have
to water it all the time. And then there's people that want it,
you know perfectly, you know, just all one grass. Well, it
just gets just like your input. And you're keeping this dumb ass Saint Augustine
grass which a little with a little mix of bermuda, of course, because
bermuda thrives Saint Augustine needs a lot of water. You're keeping it perpetually cut
short in bonds eye, which means it's perpetually stressed out because it's if it
doesn't have enough top growth, it can't form much bottom growth either. Those
roots don't go deep. It's I've killed a lot of Saint Augustine. It's
really easy to rip out once you cut below two inches with a sod cutter.
I don't that the law on here is gonna be a short lived thing.
It's like even in Phoenix, like Phoenix where it's like the Miami in
a way of the Sonoran Desert. A lot of people don't give a shit
about nature at all. They're like botox injections, muscle cars, all the
same dumb shit you see predominant here now. But people don't have launch because
they realize it's insane. Yeah, Tucson, I think soon like has a
has a good idea of what's going on. And you see, you see,
even like other landscaping in the area, like it tends to be.
You know, at least you know, more xeric adoptive tents, more need
of tuc Sons, a little bit more loose though. I think maybe the
hippies hung out there a little bit longer. You could tell the hippies never
hung out here in the sixties at all. Not at all, No fucking
way. This is a repressed place. But anyway, but yeah, Tucson,
I might. I might fuck if I have to. If I can't
leave the country for whatever reason, I'm gonna probably end to move into two
Sons and some time I got my friends there. It's good people. You
can grow all the same plants. It gets a little chillier than here,
but it's wonderful out there. Yeahh I mean that's it, that's just the
meeting. I I really don't want to move from here. I feel like
I'm rooted here, Like I said, I grew here. I need to
stay here now, family for a while, right, And so that's kind
of just one of those things where I wanted to fight back and make sure,
yeah, restored as much as possible. And you're doing a lot of
good by being here too. If you ever dip out and I'm still stuck,
he I'm gonna fucking cry because you know, it's like there's only so
many people that give a shit about this stuff here. Hopefully, you know,
the kids here, like the these like twenty and twenty four year old
kids give me a lot of hope. They're really fucking cool. I've talked
to a lot of them. I give them plants like whatever I can do,
teach me how to grow correct stuff whatever. It's nice seeing that.
Yeah, there's a really interesting gap in age the naturalist. I don't know
that there's these very old kind of boomers, right Ken, Yeah, right,
and you know, and older than him, and then there's this gap
in the middle where there's very few naturalists would say from like what it was
like gen X or so. Yeah, and then there's a few millennials,
and then we're starting to get like more gen Z people kind of Yeah,
there's a lot of coopy. I was holding these plant walks. I got
like four people to show up. It was cool. Yes, it's exciting.
You guys fucking are the future. You can make things not suck.
Yeah, Yeah, that's what gives me a bit of hope. Right,
you know, we're getting we're getting more people interested at least, and I
don't know what happened with that gap and where those people went, but that's
kind of one of the big reasons it's been taking so much time to like,
you know, make that progress. Like you know, these older people
are you know, unfortunately dying out and and they have so much knowledge,
but they can only do so much at this point, right, Yeah,
we need we need younger people to show. It's the kids to the kids.
It sounds i you know, I always say it sounds cliche, and
I've heard you know, especially gen Z kids are kind of overwhelmed because we've
been telling them forever that the world's going to end, right, and but
you know, it's kind of I hope that instead of you know, pushing
them away, it drives them to do a little bit more. Yeah.
Man, it's yeah, I mean it's their whole like, oh, things
are so terrible now. It's man, the scale is more now. But
humans have always been absolutely insane. I mean, we're we're crazy bipedal primates
with the neurology of angry chimp. That's what we are. It's controlling that
via culture and self awareness and all these wonderful things that the Buddhists try to
tell us about and other cultures have tried to tell us about. But uh,
and then I think I think you add like this hyper individual, hyper
capitalist, fucked up sociopathic philosophy on top of that that neurochemistry already, and
you get an ugly result. Yeah. And so the answer to that is,
of course, this stuff. But I want to ask you about this
these little rapdotis snail shells because I found that at a at a yard I
was killing over here, the lawn I was killing that was like a foot
underground. Man. Yeah, this is a This is like one hundred year
old snail shell. Took me forever to find a live one. Yeah,
I know. I never I was always like, where did these come from?
Like the same thing. I would find them in my yard, right,
like when I was digging, you know, to plant some stuff,
right, and I was wondering where they came from. And it took me,
you know, ages to find you know, an actual live repdotus.
So that kind of tell you know, these were everything old. Yeah,
and they were here at one I found on my yard. Yeah. Yeah,
they were everywhere. And now you have to go to like pretty much
all these like native sort of habitats to find live ones. And they do
well. I mean it's not like it's not something that needs very specific environments.
But if when you cut everything down, I mean, they have nothing
to feat on it. I remember seeing those when I came here at twenty
fourteen. I think I started like La Puerta or Vitia brush tracks right off.
That's eighty three right now it's interstate too, but it used to be
Yeah, and I remember being like, what the fuck, there's it.
This is a desert, this is hot, this is like a hot,
rocky desert. There's all these cat dii but there's snails here. Yeah,
And I guess they were used by the col Tecans too for jewelry and shit.
Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it. Yeah, I mean so cool.
Yeah, they're crazy adapted to these eric and air conditions, right, they
just go dormant for most of the year and the moment it rains, they
become active. That he had some in their yard. I was so fucking
jealous, man, and I was like, you got fucking rapdotus here and
they shed probably if they came in on plants that she planted there from her
for anybody listening. And this is our friend Betty Perez whose yard got mowed
down by the City of Mission, which was like so fucking insane, like
so insane that they would just come and do that, And they went into
her backyard too, Like it wasn't enough to just like destroy your front yard.
They went into the backyard where it's not bothering anybody because it was supposedly
weedy lot. But then after that, everybody mobilized and showed up at Mission
City Hall. A lot of people came out. It was awesome, and
people seem to listen, but they still haven't done anything, of course.
Yeah, that's that's what we're I'm actually meeting up with a group tomorrow about
that we're gonna start a plan and kind of work on a whole ordinance for
the city. Yeah. Andre's just he was calling me about that. I
read the text. Yeah yeah, because I mean we need to do that.
If we the moment we kind of like, you know, just let
it fizzle out, they won't do anything. No, yeah, exactly,
And that's what like Mariana from Butterflies or the like, stay on them.
You need to stay on them because if you don't, they'll just they don't
give a shit. They really don't. They say they do, but they
don't. You got to stay on and make sure it gets done. If
you make it, sure it it's done, they'll do it. You basically
do it for them, right right. You know, like we're working on
writing the entire ordiance. We have sample ordinances that we can kind of like
adapt to, you know, mission, right, and then we're going to
present that to them and present them with lists of native plants, present them
with lists of needed growers, right because otherwise, like I said, you
know, the moment they're like, oh, I don't know what your plant.
That's all they need for them to be like Okay, We'll just go
to you know, home deeople and buy whatever you want. Right. So
what, so what are you? What do I want to talk about?
This? This is I mean shit, we should have gotten on necessarily.
I don't even know you. This is amazing. So what is your what's
your strategy? Like, what's your angle? You guys are going to talk
about because what the ordinance now allows for cultivated plants? But the people,
some of the people at city Hall don't seem to understand that cultivated native plants
can be cultivated plants. They think native plants is just a synonym for weeds.
For like letting your largo. You're letting your yard go because you're a
slob, you know, be like I don't want to most so I'm just
gonna which is not what it is. It's like they they came, they
were trying to mess with me, and I was really nice, but I
just kept going back every day and being like, look, these are native
let me tell you. I can write you a list of what it is.
Come to my yard check it out. I kept telling them, come
come, I'll show you, and uh, they were finally like, just
don't worry about it, just leave us Oh yeah, it's it's it's about
educating them right and then and then also fighting that term, right weeds,
because that the moment you say like something is a weed, that they're like,
okay, we need to cut all that down, right, because we
think of weeds and you know in terms of like agriculture for example. It's
funny to me, and don't lose that thought. I just gotta interject this.
What's funny to me is all the quote unquote weeds. All the volunteers
are seem to be native, Like most of what I get popping up or
seeing places is native. Yeah. You could all these sunflowers immediately, right,
like just the moment you let these oh there was a cool uh not
a bronia, it was another nick tag. It was I think it was
maybe a bow or hobby or something that show. I didn't see it this
year, but heterotheca all this cool ship. Yeah yeah exactly, that's I
mean, that's what I started doing in my yard at first, just stop
you know, mowing, right, and then started taking out the grass.
And for the most part, you know, natives started coming in on their
own, and you know, I got I started getting like low push and
snake eyes without I never planted anything really. Yeah no, yeah, that's
fucking awesome that some bird pushpis. Yeah that goes all the way into Tucson.
Yeah, well that's cool too. Yeah. So, I mean it
doesn't need much, right, and so I think more than anything, it's
just fighting this this perspective of like native plants being weedy plants, right,
and kind of showing I'm educating. I'm telling telling them why they're important,
right, telling them how this is going to help us. Right now,
we have all these like water restrictions for example, right, I mean,
how are people supposed to you know, follow these water restrictions while also,
you know, trying to maintain this lawn right doesn't work? Right, So
showing people the lawn is man, I mean we got to show that the
lawn is madness too. It's so hot, man, Like the lawns hot.
It's only marginally cooler than asphalt. Yeah, Like, it's just it's
just sitting there getting heated up. You have the water to keep it alive,
unless it's bermuda grass. It's so crazy to me, the dude,
I mean, it's so backwards. I planted, I plant I was trying
to plant trees across the street, and the neighbor called the cops on me,
like he didn't want First he told me it was his property, it's
not. I showed him the city survey with the property lines of the city
property, and then he was like, okay, I'm just gonna call the
cops on you. The cop came was like, what the fuck am I
supposed to do? You know? And then that didn't work, so then
he called code enforcement and they were like, well, you got to take
it down. And then that's when I was like, well, there's other
street trees. Why don't you allow for planting street trees? What I have
to do, I'll file the permit whatever, like we don't allow that.
I'm like, you don't allow planting street trees? Like no, I'm like,
well there's already street trees there, and the lady, I shit you
not. This is the moment where I was just like, oh my god,
Gate mouthed the fucking stupidity. She's like they've always been there, and
I was like, what, Like they shouldn't say stupid whatever. She just
you know, just didn't there was no I think she just didn't care,
like they've always been there. You know, I'm like, they haven't always
and there they were planted. It's like that, whether it's in a knaqua
or whatever. You know. Ah, it was such a it was such
a bummer and so not it's just empty. It's hot, it's you know,
I could have had the way some of these things grow, like Lucana
Havardia, they grow so fast. I could have had like a fifteen foot
tree. They're providing shade for cars that park, cooling the landscape. No
one. You see the parking lots, right, and for example, you
go to HIV Walmart, right, people try to park under the trees.
Like what's so bad about plenty more trees? Right? Like, yeah,
I want to park your especially when it's this hot, you want to park
your car in some shade. But how can you getting your shade? We
won't even let you put it. You know a tree out there, right,
Yeah, it's insane. Yeah a naqua too, man, it's such
I used to because that's a that's a weed, that's a weedy, that's
a volunteer, right, but that's an amazing tree. You get. The
parakeets came this winter and we're just going ape shit over the berries. Yeah,
it's got those super scabber leaves. It's tough as nails. It can
beautiful when it blooms. Yeah, you can smell it from twenty feet away.
Yeah man, Yeah, yeah, that's the biggest you know, trying
to get these people out of, like that mentality that we need to plant
oak trees every year when you're plant you know, I don't know, and
lawns, right, that's what everyone wants here, lawns and the oak trees.
Teaching them that there's much more than just that beige in gray houses that
look like an Airbnb. Those are the Airbnb colors. Like when you stay
in at depressing Airbnb, it's like gray and oak trees in Saint Augustine.
Yeah, it's nuts, man, And that's what we got to change.
You have to show like, man, there's all this cool shitt You gott
appreciate where you so much more. You gott appreciate where you live. You
get all these damn geriatrics coming down here Winter Texans to bird and enjoy the
plant life. Like they're coming down there for a reason because they like the
flora and the birds down here. How do we get the people that live
there to appreciate the dominant culture to appreciate that. Yeah, I mean at
this point, you know that they hate that. What they need is for
you to show them the money, right, show them, you know,
numbers what it's bringing in. And there are numbers that show that, you
know, birding brings in about half a billion dollars to the real grand back.
That's crazy and so much all those are v parks that are stashing all
the geriatrics. You know, who do you where do you think that where
that money is? You know, that's a lot of money that's coming and
mostly when you're Texans that are coming down. Yeah, right, Like,
and so they bring in so much money, why are you, you know,
doing more to get that industry to come in. Yeah, amp that
up, you know, instead of just building retail slum after retails. Yeah,
build some nature centers. Use native street trees everywhere, Like Mission should
have a campaign to plant native street trees and Naqua's cordias ebonyes. Ebonies are
fucking beautiful. That's one of the most beautiful. They were just blooming in
my yard. I was like, God, damn, that smells incredible.
Yeah, And once that takes off, I mean, you have just like
the deepest shade, right, Yeah, and everything lives within an ebony.
Those ebony's house like tons of birds, tons of tons of like everything.
All these migrating birds always stop buying feet on ebonies. You know, it's
just bats too, which can they rehab the soil? I mean yeah,
the nitrogen fixing bacteria. Yeah, it's endless. The benefits that you get
from a single tree. We need more people on that. Yeah, just
hyping native plants and stuff. So for the native planted ordnance, you guys
have what is it? What do you what do you got in there?
Like? What have you had to think about? So we were in the
very beginning like planning stages of it, but right now we have sample ordinances
that you know, people have used in other cities for example like Austin,
right, that we can we can show, right, and we're what we're
gonna do is we're going to adapt it to the city of Mission right.
Personally, I'm working on a list of native plants, native trees that could
be used for the landscape, especially native trees, right, and then from
there just other shrubs and things that we could use to you know, just
enhance our landscape, make it a little bit better and make it, you
know, more adaptable. Right. So I'm working on that, and I'm
working on a list of native growers, right, showing them that, you
know, you can't just go to home deepot and you know lows to find
these past Yeah, you can. There's native growers. There's people you can
help here in the Rio Grand Valley, help our economy here while so buying
need of plants and you know, in improving our habitat within the city.
Right, So so you come off a plant list and then what other because
what's their angle when they're trying to mark people's yards, Like when they don't
get it and they're like it looks overgrown and like weeds. What this old
mentality, right, there's this old mentality that the line is what looks pretty.
But but the law itself, like the ordinance says plants can't be above
twelve inches unless they're cultivated. So how do you tackle that? You just
show like change it cultivated plants, you know, because that's what I said
too. I was trying to talk to someone about this at city Hall and
I was like, what about shrubs. They're like, well, those are
shrubs, And I'm like shrubs can be native plants. No, No,
they're not. I would I would again, I would. Just sitting there
gate, I'm like, oh my god, where do you start with this?
Holy hell? Yeah? Yeah exactly, I mean how do you Yeah,
it's just people don't understand. We can have some of the shrubs here.
You know, you can show them, for example, Cineso, right,
Leucophylum right, that's a perfect shrub. You can hedge it. You
can, you know, super plant in July used everywhere, right, So
show them. Look, here's a native shrub, right, Cordia, that's
one that uses everywhere. Show them this is a small tree that's native.
Right, you can you use it everywhere? Why is this one okay?
And not some other natives right? Right? So it's just a matter of
kind of you know, getting them to recognize what we're already using too,
I think giving examples to of like native plant landscapes, you know, because
like the quint essential native plant landscape is like a path that winds through shrubs
and little plan you know, there's other stuff, but there's no lawn,
you know, and so like when you go to cut a native plant landscape,
you use like electric hedge clippers to like basically that's what I do.
I give my yard a haircut so I can still walk through it. Just
hedge it just vertical lines so it's not growing under the path. Top it
a little bit if you need to whatever. Yeah, And it's I think
it's just showing that to them. Yeah, yeah, I think we could
definitely you start working on you know, looking at at yards like Betty Betty's
yard, right, and how I mean it doesn't look bad, right,
it's mulch. Mulch has got to be part of the equation here, Like
mulch has got to be heavy here with how hot it gets, it just
bakes that ground. Yeah. Yeah, And just showing them how we can
have yards you know that that look nice, that can still look especially Betty's.
I mean, once once you're a little bit of rain, Betty's yard
looks amazing. Right, All these plants are blooming. And what's crazy to
me is that the ordinance already allows for it. It says cultivated plants are
okay, these are cultivated plants. Yeah, I mean, like who is
man? It's yeah, I think it's a matter of working, you know,
working with the wording in the Ordnanses and trying to change that up.
Yeah, and also just being like, yo, the brush is what's native
here. The brush is cool, It's not something to be feared. Like
that was when I was filming this latest I filmed a little bit at this
destruction that we were they plow on this land for cattle graze man, and
I was joking. I was like asking a camera like why why do you
hate the native landscape? Why do you hate it? But there is there's
really like kind of almost like a deep seated hatred for the for the brush.
Yeah. Yeah, they called it monte. It's like it's like,
yeah, it's it's it's you know, just you know, inhabitable kind of
you know, because it's spiny and you can't walk through. And they don't
think of it like as a typical you know, temperate forest or a tropical
forest. These kind of more subtropical xeric short forests for some reason don't have
aesthetic values to people. Yes, we were filming kill your lawn. It
was something I always said, I I appreciate where you are. Don't try
to don't try to pretend you're somewhere else, you know, right, which
is what I feel like the valley does so hard. You see those lines
of Washingtonia palms, is that what it gets? Playing one of those tall,
skinny ones. Yeah, and then they take a palm tree that's amazing,
that provides so much habitat. It's got this huge skirt it's brought.
It actually gives some shade. Yeah, Washingtonia, they love it. Yeah,
and we bring these Washingtonians that provide no shade at all, right,
and you know they're and then they clip the skirt off of old friends yeah
too, which is useful. The only useful part for bats and birds and
all the stuff you want to eat, the insects, and yeah, that's
why. That's why Ken says, you know that that's the only useful palm
tree is a dead one, because that's that's the moment that they start getting
used here, right, woodpeckers start buildings in them, and you get all
the birds that start nesting on him. But what did he do they cut
that down to because it's a dead palm tree, right, So it's just
yeah, it's it's a lot of just backwards thinking. Man. I don't
know why people think that plants that you know, have to be you know,
this tropical look for example, or this like they have to have some
sort of really nice aesthetic value to them for or you know, nice in
there. Well, it's just weird what people's idea of aesthetic is too much.
Like I see all that home depot ship, those ornamental crotons with the
convergated leaves on that, I'm like, that looks fucking hideous. That looks
disgusting, it looks tacky, it looks weird. You've planted them all in
a line evenly space. Whereas I see like some of the native brush stuff,
especially when it's lit up, and I'm like, damn, that's so
soothing and nice. And it's like the tree crickets are in at night making
the nice noise, and the cicadas are in it during the day. It's
Yeah, I think it's changing that paradigm. It's changing that it's getting a
shift, you know, and showing people how cool the native plants are.
And I think you don't need to convince everyone. You just need to convince
a big enough portion of the population so that they start getting riled up and
upset when it gets destroyed and when other people come. Yeah, so it's
not a single person like Betty right, right, It's it's easy to you
know, just kind of push back. Some of the phrases are never going
to get it. They don't care. They want all the shiny shit,
they want the muscle cars and the dumb ass Gucci handbags, all this useless
garbage. But that's never going to go right, right, But you just
need enough people to actually get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so
that's what yeah, And I mean, thankfully, like you said, there's
you know, more people kind of getting into it, and slowly, I
think hopefully it'll change and you know, some of these things are going to
be like what we're doing now, trying to change this is just mission,
right, And my plan is hopefully once we succeed with mission, which seem
to be you know, kind of open to it at least, right,
they just don't know what what to do. Once we change that, then
hopefully we can start, you know, going to other cities. Yeah.
McAllen already I think, I mean parks in I've seen native plants and gardens
and McCallen, like, mccallen's always a little bit ahead of mission. Yeah,
and McCallen, I mean, they they're kind of the model city for
the valley. Right, So if we can get them to really change other
landscapes, then the rest of the value will likely follow. Soup. Yeah,
So McCallen Parks and Recreation. When I was at the McCallen Nature Center,
my supervisor worked with Parks and Recreation to get them to plant only natives.
Oh sh like in the city Yeah, within the city parks. So
from there on, all the plants that are planted in there our native plants.
There's a park and mission. I forget what it is, but damn
it's there's one. There's one I went through. There's a couple of natives.
It's cool. And now there's another that I went through. It's got
that hideous orange mulch. Oh and it's just like everything's dead. Yeah.
And it's like it was clearly obvious that whoever did this or they planned this,
didn't have a single brain cell. Yeah. Oh man. And it's
like you've got you could have planned if you planted in the winner, you
could have planted siniso and trixis and even the fiddle woods and this would all
look great. Now. Instead you've planted this home deepot garbage that is native
nine thousand miles away and it's all dead and you had to irrigate it too.
Yeah, I mean the La Joya School district. I'm kind of you
know, I went to school there. That's one of the places that I
kind of care about. Are you went to school in Lahoya? Yeah?
Yeah, And I would love for them to kind of like start adapting and
changing things, especially I mean, benefits everyone, but if it's a student's
benefits a city, there's less costs associated for example, right, and the
students can learn there, right, you know. They they have this like
one you know, median going into the high school that had like two us
bitansa you know shrubs. What I said, in full bloom Tacoma stands.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It was in full bloom. You know,
humming birds coming to come to it all the time. Our carpenteries love
it. Right. They cut it down, They cut both of them down,
and they put a bunch of gravel, right, and they put pots,
big pots with these non native shrubs, and they're like and so I
kind of was like, why would you do that? Right? Like Facebook?
Right, I told them, why why would you do that? That's
you know, you took took down these two plants that were doing fine in
the heat, right, and you put these plants that are not native and
you put them in pots to bake, right, and they're like no.
They still were like no, no, no, we were told these are
these are zeric adapted. Oh my god, you go now they're all dead.
Of course they were. Man a small volume of soil like that,
and if it's like a twenty gallon pot, it's going to bake. Even
native plants are you know, they struggle in pots like that, right,
especially with this heat. I have all those wildflowers in this one pot.
Yeah, I have to water that at least every two days because they struggle,
right, So imagine these non native plants. They're not going to make
it right, especially just open next was like that if they maybe only had
morning sun, like on the east side of a house. No, no,
they're right in the middle. Full sign. That's absolutely waste of money,
moronic waste of money for the school district right there. And now it
just looks depressed. Now, it's just like you drive by and it makes
you feel like shit, just like the strip malls and a fucking giant build,
led billboards and stuff yeah, and yet they still fight back. I
was like, you know, you could, you could have easily reached out
find someone. I'm sure there's one person out there close to La Huya that
can tell you, hey, you know, maybe you should plant some natives.
But no, they were like, oh, we know best, we
we already. So it's like the landscapers too, Like the landscapers there are
fucking clueless man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's insane. Yeah,
it's really sad. And those same landscapers are the ones that you know,
we'll do the same thing where you have abonees in the front yard and they'll
cut down the abonees and plant that light baut it drops, that drops all
the yeah, mature aboneese, beautiful abonees. Cut them down. Plant how
about some Saint Augustine. We'll get some weed fabric from the areas where you
don't we putting some irrigation tubing because the water is always going to be here.
It's they will never run out. And then that's why is that.
Well they can come back, right, they can, you know, say
oh we will do the meat your trees again. We'll come take care of
it. We can save all the exactly right, yeah, and so that's
that's it's it's capitalism, right, it's best there, that's not I mean,
that's like a really deranged form of capital though. That's like that's that's
like steroids. That's that Reaganist ship, you know that like, and that's
that short sighted, short term gaint. You're getting money from it, it's
not you, it's it's useless, right yeah, yeah, fuck fuck long
term sustenance in life, you know we need Yeah, No, I don't
want this tree that's not going to need water all the time. It's a
slash and it's that slash and burn economy. It's fucking idiotic, man.
It's so it's like the same ship they do to the tropical rainforest. Yeah,
I will just kill all the forests grow here for a year or two,
and then the soil burns out because it's turns off tropical soils aren't that
fertile? And then we just move on. Yeah, And that's why you
need a pint here. Don't don't necessarily do well, right The only way
they're doing well right now is thanks to American forests and US fishing walleife doing
all this restoration. Yeah, the all like the growers are just like backyard.
Yeah, and so they only grow in that sense and the few customers.
You know, they'll get a few customers here and there that will buy
needed plants. Yeah, but there's no you know, big scale kind of
operations going on because they're not sustainable. And you know this environment where people
prefer to go to home depot and buy these plants that are not getting buying
apples and pear trees and planting them down here because Home Deeper sells them its
stupid mulch, died mulch in the home Deepo stuff or you know, they'll
go the landscapers will go take out all these you know, leaves from an
oak tree, right and then I cut them. You know at home Deepo.
We had this trailer filled with bags right with oak tree leaves and then
they came out with bags of mulch. Jesus Christ like, this is just
that shit is rich? Leave it on the ground, man, Yeah,
either on the ground. You know, it's again you know they can make
money off of it. That you can make money off of breaking up and
leaves and then putting much in there. Imagine that if that was the only
wealth you knew was like money, like just worshiping money. That's something that
I see a lot. I mean it's all over the US, but especially
here, especially in Florida. It's just a weird you know. And I
get like the argument like, oh, well, you know, people need
to you know, people who grow up poor in middle class they want to
have nice things. That's not nice things to me, or whole fucking way
to quantify what is a nice thing needs to change, you know, being
able to like go on luxury cruises and buy all this dumb, shiny shit.
That's not a nice thing. That's not a good standard of living.
It's tacky, it's low class, it's lowest common denominator, it's poor taste.
To me, what's nice things is like my yard, you know,
a meaningful life, good relationships with people, with my friends, with you
know, actual honestly like you know, people I feel like I can tell
my shit where they don't have to put on a fake facide out or a
phony smile or anything. Yeah you can't, like you know, you don't
have to like post in front of it for yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Art art science like using my human mind the best of its capability, not
having the like lie to myself about shit, you know that stuff like that's
that's I don't know, that's the whole thing of like what makes it useful
or like a rich human life needs to change. I feel like, and
I see it down here, especially in many other places in the US,
it's like just the lowest common denominator ship. It's anti intellectual. That's what
I look I not to sound like an elitist prick, but I look down
at it. I'm like, you are not that. You got a ways
to go, you can change, but you gotta think you gotta start using
that fucking knocking a little bit more. Yeah, yeah, I mean the
potential is there right right, you're not using You're not using it. Yeah,
you're sitting in the fucking couch in the back. You know, I
don't know what the fuck I'm oblivious to the world. It's not you know,
yeah, I mean it's it's yeah, and I guess you know,
to a certain sense, it is capitalistic. But now it's social media too,
right, Like if you can't post that on there and get some attention,
like no one cares straight well, well, I always say this too.
It's like we're primate. It's like we're social primates, and so how
our peer group thinks of us is really important to us. We are conformists
by nature, that doesn't mean that's all we can be and we can't be
more than that. I'm just saying that's what the original wiring that we're born
with is. You know, we feel shame about certain things and blah blah
blah. And what the people I like are the people who have like transcended
that and been like, fuck it. I don't give a fuck people think
of me. I have built my own, like, my own set of
values. What I love, what I like, that's what's important to me.
What I think of myself as important as long as I've got you know,
compassion, not ego, but compassion. Egos the antithesis of self love
and compassion, you know. And I know, I know the things that
make my life rich. Like I've thought everything through, I've built who I
am. I know myself. A lot of people don't know. You need
that external validation, right right, people are trying to get usually off of
these yeah, and it's sad. And when you need that external validation,
those people fucking control you, man, and you're doing shit for them and
you're doing things that are us yeah, and it's and it's you're doing things
that are not good for your fucking health or for your future well being too,
you know, because you're doing them to impress other people or whatever.
So yeah, the muscle car thing down here. I know, I ship
on muscle cars the whole time. I've just never when I used to live
in Oakland, muscle cars you'd only see criminals riding them. And in that
case, it was like, all right, whatever you like, a fucking
you get a gangster, a thug, whatever, you know, that's cool.
I mean, it's not my game, whatever you probably doing. But
but here it's like you see everybody driving them like phrases, young kids whose
dads are quite obviously paying for the thing. And it's like, man,
this is what you value. This loud room room, step out of room.
It's really loud and people can hear me. Five blacks toad. It's
like, damn, just crack up in a fucking book and like, you
know, learn to assess the world. You could do some cool shit if
you tried change your values, you know. Yeah, but oh yeah,
I mean also for the Hispanic community here, A lot of people here like
maybe first generation you could say Americans, right, yeah, or first second
genera generation and a lot of them what they've been sold or even these all
these immigrants that are stalking by, they were sold on that American dream.
And what's that American dream? Right? Like these kind of like you know,
very expensive kind of lifestyle, right, Yeah, that's not sustainable.
You see so much of that in Mexico among the upper class. Yeah.
Yeah, there's like the white right, like yeah, yeah, the billboards
with the white ladies with all the rug on them, their like medicine,
but they look white. You know, it's this weird ship. Man.
It's like like to me, it looks like you know, I hear the
like in the background because it's that's terrifying to me. But that's what's put
in front of people's faces. Yeah, and that's what Yeah, Like I
said, I mean when people came over and immigrated with my parents, for
example, they were you know, I'm a first generation American. My parents
were born in Mexico. They came over here, right, they you know,
my parents were sold this idea of like, if you're not making money,
then you're not going to be happy in the US, right, So
when I was studying my you know, the first thing. Yeah, right,
and when I came here, you know, my first focused was to
or when I started going to college, maybe a focus was to going to
med school. Thankfully, I took an environmental science class and you know this
professor kind of really changed my mind there too. Yeah, and I kind
of like just changed the biology. But when I told my family that,
you're kind of like what like, no, no, you're not going to
make it up, Like how are you going to live? Like right?
Yeah? And I was like, I don't know, I'm going to be
happy, right, I'm going to live. You seem pretty happy to me
every time I talk to you, like mellow and in a good movie.
Yeah, yeah, I don't you know, I'm I'm sure I would be
miserable as a doctor right now, Like I could not, but you'd be
afraid to admit it, so you'd be hiding it so no one would know.
Sure, Yeah, but I could not. I couldn't live, you
know. Nine to five. They're like just kind of treating people all the
time and just kind of like where do you think this ship comes from?
Me? Because I mean Mexicans are Spanish and Native do you think this is
like one side of that getting uh advocate, not advocated, but accentuated more
like less of the native more of Spanish. Oh yeah, definitely, I
mean and you you hear that. I mean people thankfully again you are kind
of waking up to that. But even you know, when it comes down
to skin color, right, everyone's Mexican, but the darker skin, the
darker skin Mexicans. Yeah, yeah, those were you For example, you
see the lenovelas, right, they're very if you any dark skinned Mexicans in
there, right, or you know, all these like Mexican kind of actors
that kind of started getting famous the lighter skin ones first, and now you
get people like or yalitiaa right, that are indigenous Mexican people that are dark
skinned that are finally getting that. Yes, but they were told, like
you're they you know, you see their interviews. They were told you you're
not gonna make it, you know, skin that's so weird. And so
it's it's kind of this idea of like, you know, being this sort
of white, light skin Spanish European sort of lifestyle that's better than you know,
you know, having these indigenous cultural values. Because I see indigenous culture.
I'm like, damn, this ship is rich. This is rich,
you know, and the Spanish stuff, I'm like, it's just more like
corny Latin American phrases. Shit, fuck, I don't care, it's boring.
Right, there's actual culture with you know, indigenous culture in Mexico especially,
and that comes back all to this this habitat stuff. Right again,
what are they trying to, you know, kind of portray with these lawns.
It's these ideas of these oh God, that had all this space in
Europe, right, and what did they have. They have these lawns with
like their labyrinths and stuff, right, killed along within yourself, and that's
what people want. They don't see that, you know, this also has
value, or this has put even more value, honestly, right. That
was one of the most startling things to me when I moved here, because
I was used to Latin America's mostly Mexicans in Guatemalans. You don't get many
Puerto Ricans where I used to live in Oakland. It was mostly Mexicans in
Guatemalans, maybe speople from Honduras, but it was like brightly painted houses.
It was free to callow paintings. In someone's branny's house. It was fucking
streets named after Caesarshavez. You don't see any of that here. You see
very little, very very little. There are lots of beisi and gray,
lots of lawns, lots of put your head, keep your head down,
don't stick up, don't you know? It's so weird. Is that just
the Is that just the result of the ship because it's Texas like repression or
is it probably if you go to Mexico, if you go deep into Mexico
outside of the cities, you know, don't don't you know, stick to
like mont right right, you see that? Oh yeah, beautiful, yeah,
beautiful, like you fucking hock and mountain community or people were happy,
you know, they're they're they're very warm, right, they're passionately. They
have native plants around them, they're all growing food. Everything's clean, right,
yeah, But it's just it's part of that, I guess. I
would say that European kind of culture and influence that came in and kind of
changed that up. But Texas especially it's like Tucson and like this so much.
It's kind of areas, I'm sure pockets, but the Tucson's a lot
of bright ship, a lot of like bright colors. It's fucking alive California.
Other California's fucking life. You go there, they're like those motherfuckers.
Let you know, they're Mexican, they're Latino, you know, and that's
not here in Texas. I don't know why. It's it's kind of like
almost like, oh no, I'm not. I think it's there were well,
you know, our southern California. They had zootsuit riots, they had
uh was that there was southern California. I think there's there was you know,
there was people stuck up. They were like fuck, you know,
this is not how it's going to happen to the dominant culture. But yeah,
I mean I I kind of grew up like that, and I was
kind of like also like almost ashamed, you know my skin color, right
because I'm so dark skinned and people would even you know, make fun of
me. But I didn't you know, really thinking that, yeah, it's
all Mexican here. Yeah, I mean why we're pretty much the entire population
of students, it's pretty much Mexican, right, Yeah, But you know
it's little by little I kind of started pulling away from that and realizing like,
no, I'm should be proud of this, like, yeah, that
shows that I have, like right, like indigenous roots, right, yeah,
and I belong here, right And if I now, if I've I've
looked into my family history and my ancestry, my family's been here forever,
here since like you know coil techn like what does it come up? Because
it's cool. I did twenty three and me like my daughter, and it
comes up that little portion like South Texas, Yeah, because that's where that
happens. Yeah, Reo Graham Valley specifically and Noble Leon that's kind of where
I have at least from and so cool and so you know, I'm rooted
here, and so I realized, you know, I need to be proud
of that, right, like I belong here. This is this is this
is where I'm from. This is your Yeah, this is this is where
your family, the land, your family's lived foreverties are the plants you've been
around forever. It's fucking awesome. And so that kind of goes back to
me trying to preserve it. Right, there's so little of bit, I
might as well try to, you know, help it out. If that's
yeah, man, I imagine if everybody could love where they lived and like
appreciate where they lived, you know, and the plants more than anything composed
what that is, you know. I mean yeah, and you know,
going back to that, like the skin stuff. I mean, my grandmother
was a very light complected woman, and she, uh, she grew up
she was born in here in Donna. She was you know, she grew
up during the times of segregation, right, and she she was from nineteen
twenty two, so she's pretty yeah, and so she I mean, she
she was Mexican, but she was a light skinned Mexican. So she tried
everything, you know, she could to make sure she uh, you know,
kind of blended in more with white people because she, you know,
she was she knew that the darker REvil were repressed, right or like kind
of pushed back in there. Yeah. I think it's just the Texas thing,
man. I think his Texas has been so fucking hard. I mean,
there's a lot of ugly history in the state. Yeah, there's a
lot of really dark anyway. Well, okay, what I want to keep
going for a few for like twenty more minutes, you got time or yeah,
So came back after a little pe break okay, So okay, so
Ernest looking through his phone, what did you say, brush? It's just
brush the brush. Yeah. So the City of Palm View ordinances uncultivated vegetation,
grass and plant growth is pretty much considered considered unsightly and unsanneditary. So
they don't want that unsanitary The lawn is unsanit theory. It's an unsanitary mind
that needs to be cleansed. Yeah, it says it includes any species of
weed, grass, or vegetation and plant growth which might or may tend to
be unhealthy to individuals reciting in the general. Las are so archaic, it
makes so disconnected. Yeah. Right, so then we we buy that ideology,
then we should remove all those things that are those allergen kind of non
needed plants. Right, they're cutting down a non native oak trees because that's
that's what I was. That's what's funny too, is they plant that oak
tree ship that suburban American idyllic suburban American ship way to pretend that you don't
live where you do. But they're not even planting. There is a Qrcus
virginia on an ecotype that grows in the sandsheet, but they're not planting that.
You know, that's that's something that's actually been selected for over over,
however, many tens of thousands of years on the sands sheet there the nutrie
and poor very hot sands. I gotta get more HELI at the psycho philist
seed and just start throwing that everywhere. Yeah, it's such a fucking beast
man. It's such a cool sunflower. The ones in my backyard are fifteen
feet tall right now. Yeah, and they just receded from last year.
And then it's a living bird feeder. Uh at the end of the season.
Yeah, there's you know, there's another one all ranking all uncultivated vegetation
glasser plant matter, grasser plant matter, which has grown to more than twelve
inches of night. This is written by someone who obviously held no idea slightly
unwholesome or unsanitary cut. It's unsanit theory. You know what your problem is?
Just your yard is unsanit theory. You make it sound like there's like
human shit, like piles of human shit and dead cats or something in the
Okay, well, I want to ask you about it. I want to
ask you about a couple more plants. The Uh, what's up with the
Crowton diversity in South Texas and come a little bit closer to the mic just
so it's so there's so many fucking crotons here. Yeah, yeah, Signas
is my favorite one. I think in Signys, I like Ciliado Glendulifra,
just because you know they has like have you a shorter one, right,
Yeah, yeah, it's a shorter one. It just has like all these
like cilia along the leaves. Yeah, it's just it's it's pretty cool and
like, yeah, there's plenty of them out here. I mean I don't
even know, you know, most of them, because I get just confused
with all. I saw one that was a tree in Brazil in the Atlantic
Forest. I mean that genus is everywhere. It's like eaphobia. It's probably
I don't know how to fuck it got around. But but the ones in
South Texas are nuts. I saw that Parksyi, that one, the Sanchi
you know that one. Yeah, yeah, I feel like a Red Stemenson
annual. Yeah that's wild man, Yeah, weird one, but amazing.
They're all. But it's just crazy how much variation there can be on the
theme of a single genus. Like it's do you know why there's so much
diversity here. I don't know, I mean, honestly, I mean,
I have no idea what's going on with that. Yeah, but they all
got a little bit of fuzz on them. Generally speaking, they all do.
They all kind of smell good, the leaves do when you crush them
for the most part. Yeah. Yeah, God, it's so fucking you
know that Genus probably just has the right characteristics for this area, right,
Yeah, man, I just yea, Cory, I that's a sandsheet one.
Yeah. Yeah, So have you spent much time on the sandsheet.
I have not. It's just most of the stands sheets privately owned, right,
and you don't know the people in those ranches, right, like the
East Ranch ranch. Yeah, you know, it's kind of hard to get
in. And the few places that I have been in the sandsheet are either
you know, just County Road right aways. And then I have like two
friends that have property out in the sandsheet. Oh and yeah, well another
person that I know also has one. But they have that cool red sand
as well, which is yeah, what's up with that? Because that's further
west. Yeah, it has like you know, these like iron deposits within
it. And I am not sure why. You know, I've talked to
geologists. Someone you know, came up with this crazy idea that, you
know, that it was the Saharan sand depositing there. I was like,
no, that's not true. So no, I mean, I haven't gotten
a true you know, a good I guess, like at least idea of
why that red sand is out there, but it's it's something that was happening
in the Eocene or ologa scene in a I guess that was the coast back
then, right, yeah, maybe just water just stood there for a long
time and it became fairs, right yeah, Or there was organic material.
It was maybe a swamp and it became kind of lateritic or something. I
don't know, but you do get you see iron deposits and like tropical like
laterites I think are just like more iron rich tropical, Yeah, format tropical
areas. But I'm sure it was a lot hotter. That's what I always
wondering about, Like it's hot as hell now, but like you know,
during the Eocene, it was super hot, like how But again, life
wasn't the whole planet wasn't cut up by humans and the freeways and agriculture and
all this stuff. But I wonder about how, you know, what life
had to adapt to back then, how hot it was because you had alligators
in Wyoming for folk's sake. And also you know, looking at the plants
here and how heat tolerant they are, like the potential just to study how
plants will adapt to clim a change like this is where people need to be
looking because yeah, I had to do it, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you have to figure it out, right. I have, you know,
a court kind of like more New York professor here in the biology department
u g RGV that he's that's kind of what he studies. He's he's looking
at what he calls the winters and losers of climate change, right, and
so he stood looking at plant traits, you know, and seeing what what
plant traits are kind of you know making it. What plants are adapting and
you know, are able to you know, live in these like extremely hot
conditions, and which ones are which is not making it. I wonder if
there's I wonder if more things are going to evolve to be annuals like they
are in the Mahabi. There's a lot of annuals in the Mahabi because all
all you need is two or three months of decent cool temperatures, moisture,
produce a bunch of sea than you die and the sty do. And there's
not a lot of annuals here. There's a lot of perennials. But yeah,
yeah, especially in the thorn forest storm scrub areas. I mean,
that's all perennials, right, You don't really find it annuals except for the
edges and so yeah, it's just you know, one of those things where
I don't know, I really don't know which direction it's going to go in,
but hopefully you know, there's a few remnant for it. It's crazy
because I think you know, there's like Moretonia, Gregie, that's the plant
you get on the Goliad formation here on the rocks. You know, celestracy,
really cool little shrub that's really common, just like heck diaglomorata in the
Sarah Madred just south here, which you can see from bluffs in Star County
on a good day when the sky's not too smoky, so things can get
and of course there's elevation. Things can go up in elevation a little bit
if things warm too much down here. But then there's a lot of stuff
that doesn't occur over there. That's literally only just in the Rio Grande Valley
in northern Mexico. In southern Texas. Yeah yeah, right, Like there's
a bunch of plants I have that distribution Plansia Bailey for example. Right.
Yeah, that's a good example of one that I mean has an extremely restricted
range. And I actually haven't even seen any observations in Mexico on a naturalist.
Well, so tell about one about that, because that's a really cool
to lamsy. It's a quote unquote air plant. It gets really big giant
bombas, right, And yeah, it's found you know in these kind of
riparian regions, especially around like kind of the browns lower Rio Grand Valley area,
right, like kind of very lower Real Grand Valley. And it's found
on these like ripe aerian areas, like growing on ebonies and cedar elms.
I've seen them, and I think I've seen them on some ash trees,
right, But it doesn't come too far inland. It doesn't come too far
inland, and it goes just a little bit. I think the most northernmost
observations are in like Balfuri area and that's it. They have an extremely restricted
range and it's one of those rare plants, right that's out here. And
I don't know if that's one of the plants that's that's gonna make it,
right, It just guess hotter and drier when you come further inland. Yeah,
and it needs that coming off the river. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
definitely, because those are places where you find it next to kind of
you know Resaka's or next to the river, right everybody Issaka is basically you
know, these old what we call distributaries of the river, right, So
it's where the river were kind of drained out and they, uh, they're
very interesting. They're not drainage in a way. You know, when it
rains, water isn't drain into these rosccas. They're actually higher elevation, but
they are distributaries off of the river and they're you know, you find a
bunch of remnant ones, especially out in the Brownsville area and they have some
cool plant communities out there. But they're they're basically oxbow lakes like that was
the course of the river. Yeah, so they once they become disconnected is
where you know they formed these ox bow lakes because Yeah, they were old
you know, I guess channels, channels of the river. Yeah, exactly,
And so it's it's all part of the delta, and these Oxbow Lakes
as far north as a Royal City port and Mansfield and then south into you
know that Laguna Mather south further south. Yeah. If you look at old
areos and just kind of look at the soil patterns, you can see where
there used to be older soucus out there, but most of them are destroyed
because of agriculture. So the Rio Grand then that's what you're talking about,
the Delta. The Rio Grand used to hit the Gulf Way further further south.
Yeah, wow, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like I said,
a quarter is probably in the in the US. Quarter of the Rio Grand
Delta is in the US, and then the other three quarters are in Mexico.
And that's I mean that Laguna Mather, the southern Laguna Mather in Mexico
is thankfully, I mean now it's protected by the you know government in Mexico.
It's by Guanavillo and they, I mean, I think that's amazing.
They protected a whole ecosystem right here here. We're like we protect little pieces
of habitat here and there. And that's saying the South Pod, right,
I mean, I hope I have. I have a fear that like development
is just going to keep going north up that island, definitely going up north
in everywhere, Like it just keeps spread, like it doesn't stop, like
people want to go there because none of that ship is there. Yeah,
you start building dumb shit everywhere. It's you're you're taking a quality away.
Yeah, and they don't understand the importance of those barrier islands. And we're
learning more and more at Barrier islands are important to like, you know,
mitigate the effects of like you know hurricanes, right, and buildings are huggy
to do that, right, So just continue building, continue tearing off these
like mangroves and like you know coastal communities and what's gonna happen anytime a hurricane
hits us. It's really going to devastate, you know, the inland portions.
You know what's cool about that area too, is like you're there at
the right time of the year and there's fucking mangrove seats everywhere. Yeah,
everywhere in that say cell Peny of bond Duke or what is it not.
It's not say cell opinion now now it's the one that you saw. Oh
yeah, man, I forget the new genus I saw. I saw a
different species in the genus and Dominican Republic. It's got a really spiny fruit.
It's insane. Yea with magaphon obviously, But no, yeah, I
mean there's some good communities. But like I said, those are important in
communities because they're extremely resilient. They withstand these like high winds, right,
and and they're also you know, important for drainage and all sorts of things.
So we start adding more and more imprevious services like that bay is going
to fill in at some point eventually anyway, right you think so, I
mean maybe yeah, probably, yeah, just what Deltas do. Yeah,
it's going to expand and then maybe there'll be a barrier island further out.
I don't know, but probably a hurricane is going to destroy a lot of
issues at some point or another. I mean, they didn't stop islands already,
you know, kind of woken up in that sense, and that they're
like, oh, they started restoring the dunes right along the beach. Yeah,
so they started restoring them and planting, you know, a lot of
native vegetation along them, and so before you know, there were no like
walkways into the beach, like it was pretty much everything, you know,
everything was eroded. There was no dunes or anything because they had scriped everything.
Yeah, everything had just in a way, and they didn't realize the
importance of it until they started flooding right like the waves would come in,
you know, all the way into like padry Woolliward, which is that main
road alongside Pa Dragon right the alongest center. And now they're like, oh
see this connection, the disconnection that blows my mind. It's like even if
you don't realize the pragmatic nature of keeping the floora there, it's like,
isn't it just I mean, first and foremost, like any any like evolved
society or civilization would just want plants around anyway, because they're nice to have
around, like native plants, like scraping it looks like shit, it's you
know. And then of course when it starts impacting you know, your insurance
rates and destroying your cities every once in a while, now it's like now
you have to appreciate it. Yeah, now you have to go back and
try to restore it, but you're never going to get back to how it
was right. And you know, it's after all this damage is done that
they're like, oh shit, yeah, we need to fix this. But
it's it's it's insane. It changes the entire topography of the area. It
changes so much. There's a there's I like going. You know, I
do a lot of mapping stuff. I do a lot of g I stuff,
So I tend to look at historical areals, right, and I like,
uh, you know, I tend to do that in the region.
I noticed this area in Boca Chica the moment highway for going into the beach
was built that disconnected the northern and southern wetlands, and that started forming dunes.
On the southern part, the dunes weren't there. It's just kind of
wild. Can kind of look at this, man, there's some fucking cool
places where you can just pull off right there, and it's like there's like
drunk fishermen and stuff hanging out on the second fishing and you go and you
look under some of those shrubs. There's all these cool cacti. There's all
this cool stuff like Lino phylum, that cool crass, relacious thing. Oh
yeah. Yeah, that becomes super weedy. And yeah it's cool. It's
like that thing, like that thing takes off. You bring a couple of
leaves of that, it just goes everywhere. Beautiful. I love it.
Yeah, I was it. Bonito Travino was a month or two ago.
He's like, oh, I guess this is native, but it takes over
everything. That's where I found it. Yeah, wild, it doesn't.
I found it there in the salt pockets, like kind of Oh you found
it growing native out there? Yeah? Oh wow. In Star Yeah,
close to Erilla. It was like a bunch of very Oh. I thought
it was just coastal surveying for for star cactus, you know. So I
was like, yeah, and I found that. Have you been to many
star cactus populations that are different or no, there's one I haven't We found
star star cactus populations outside of the known ones. Yeah. Yeah, even
though you know, I've surveyed some of these ranches out there that are pristine,
right, I found this. I went with this one ranch at the
county line of Sapata and Star County just packed with pod hundreds of pods everywhere,
But we didn't find a single star cactus try to survey, you know,
as much as we could. We found uh Franka, which is pretty
cool. Yeah, but we didn't back when it was still protected. But
now you know, we didn't really find we were looking for starcactus, didn't
find anything. The stars not, the astrophy is not and it's not super
common. It's yeah, it's just I don't I can't figure out exactly why,
you know, it's declined so badly, but it's something killed. I
think it just it doesn't have a tap root and pigs. There's a couple
it lost the stress where I saw pigs and just taking huge chunks out like
it was ridiculous. In Jesus, I have a few like people that I
follow from, like biologists from Mexico, and went specifically from Reinosa in the
outskirts of Reinosa the west, the west side. There's there starchactus out there.
Really yeah did it seemed like a healthy but that's that's Narco conservation.
Probably nobody wants to go there and poach it because they might get it too.
But yeah, he found he found a population of starcactus out there,
which that was pretty cool. So it's I mean, it's it's out there.
It's just you know, I don't know why, it's just not more
whites spread. It's such a party cactus too, right, we should reintroduce
kaput maducie up here. Yeah, And they're like, I'm gonna start playing
in yards or some ship because that's such a cool one. And it grows
kind of close by. It's just over the border, man. Yeah.
Yeah, that thing's insane. I mean, that just shows you how much
plasticity there is. And a cactus genome suddenly a tubercle becomes this elongated tentacle
and you graft them and they take off. No, yeah, exactly.
And you know, I really wish kind of that whole cartel thing would kind
of get out of the way at least all these border tension would get out
the way, because for a conservation it would be amazing to see, you
know, what might have been here, what is along like on the other
side, just on the other sidond border. Make believe that we have been
cut down, you know, on this site that we just just make believe.
Yeah, but yeah, I'm sure there's some populations of plants out there
that could show us what might have been you know here, right, But
it's got to get better at some point, man, because it's just insane.
I mean, this is like really high level fucking violence and just craziness
that makes everything so and just you know, in conservation wise, it's it's
it would make a huge difference that we had this you know effort on both
sides of the river to protect it much more than well you talk though,
you know old timers there, like, yeah, we used to even like
year two thousand and one, we used to go to Mexico all the time.
You could go to Mexico before and just come back in and they like
the same way they asked you a checkpoints, are your American citizen? That's
what they used to do. They didn't ask for you know, documentation ranking.
You just say that and you come in and it's so easy and you
can go in now. And Mexico is you know just we for example macallum
Renosa, we're a full kind of urban you know, metropolis. I guess
you could say writer system. Right, they work together and the moment you
know, border tensions started getting so bad, you see the disconnect. You
even see it in areos. You see how things changed even in areos,
right, like just it's wild. How you see you see for example,
uh got more cement more in previous services over there. It's it's weird.
I don't know how that changed so much, right, but it's because before
we used to have you know, just people would come in and out so
easily. And you see it over there, and what Arizona, same thing,
right. Once that border walking went through, it changed the communities on
both sides, and I mean like urban communities, not even talking about plant
communities at this way. Urban communities changed completely just because of that. You
know, these crazy made up you know, political boundaries. So what you
were saying that cartel stuff got really bad after cold of Ron was that because
he was he did like a war on drugs thing. So when that started
the war, so we cut the head off the thing and created like a
multi tentacled Yeah, I guess, I guess because they were they were more
kind of you know, it's terrible to say that, but they were more
corrupt in a way before where politicians cartels work together and so everything was kind
of on the down low, right, But once that kind of got severed,
once people started fighting started fighting that I mean, that's when the cartels
were like we're going to fight the government too. And that's one of the
zayas. I was reading the book about this, they got like the military,
they got more paramilitary, yeah, influence, and they started doing really
they shook over and now you know, the Mexican government or Mexican militaries kind
of then there was two yeah, one cartels split into two, and then
they were fighting against each other right on the border. Oh yeah, the
Gulf cartel and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's
crazy. Just you know how that one moved by a president media. I
understand what he was trying to do, right, you kind of try to
fight it's like big cartels. But it changed. Well, look at what
the war on drugs did, hear. It's created endless suffering and misery and
a black market for you know, all this. You know, it was
just and then of course, like you had legalized the opioid epidemic that killed
way more people than illegal drugs as ever did. Yeah, just madness.
Man. Well anyway, all right, well, I guess, uh,
I don't know. I want to ask you about a couple more plants,
and I'll let you go talk about plants. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
so that because there's that you get that tur down here and start counting.
But I've noticed a lot of plants don't like this heat and humidity that you
get that are more common further west. And you notice that, I mean,
what, like, do you see that tura here? Not further into
the eastern Riogrand Valley now, no further west? Seen a few here?
Yeah, yeah, it's not seen something. Start counting, but like one.
And I was like, because there was on the right of way,
maybe it came in with some filled soil, right, because they would get
huge in California where it's more arid. I've had them in my yard before
and they get enormous. Yeah, but they're not native. I don't see
it. Yeah. People say they're introduced, and yeah, if you look
at historical records, they weren't really here, Like that's a plant they would
have usually found. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. And then Aristolochia,
you get it's mainly just a wrector that you get down here, which
goes all the way up north into Austin. Yeah. Yeah, it's wild
that that one plant. You know, it's kind of it's kind of widespread.
It's just kind of hard to find, right, But I mean I
feel like the butterflies alone tell you that it's everywhere, right, and they
find it really quick. But now, those fucking butterflies are huge pollinators too,
so it's like it's you know, they're massively important to a lot of
stuff. Yeah that grows there, But do you see people growing that?
Yeah, not at all there. I think there's not a lot of seed,
you know, availability, Yeah, I give you some seeds recently,
right, Yeah, And that's one of the few pots I've ever found.
Right, I sewed them. They haven't come up, I think because it's
got hot, yeah afterwards, but yeah, I haven't tried growing those.
But but yeah, I mean that's a plant in my opinion. I mean,
the butterflies would love that excited for something like that. And I've got
to Yeah, a couple of my backyard that I just that, you know,
getting nibbled down by swallowtail caterpillars and come right back. Do you get
fruits of those? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, but they fucking ate my
fruit. Last I don't even know how you can keep those categoris of the
fruit because yeah, it's a beautiful butterfly, but goddamn. Yeah, But
yeah, I don't know. I think that's why we need like a because
right now it's just like Mike Heap, right and like Butterfly Center, like
for native plant nurseries, right, and need like a back growing out.
You know that he's not growing much anymore. No, not at all.
And yeah, there's very Mike Heap is probably the biggest needed plant operation.
But it takes a while to learn the nuances of growing things in a certain
place. Like you can't germinate seeds right now, really right, no,
no, except for like cow pen, daisy, bourbon scene hours, like
just the weedy stuff, but like all the cool stuff you want to grow.
That's the seeds won't germinate and they won't come out. They just won't.
They come up when like rains and November just right, yeah, like
this November December to like April. Yeah, yeah, and with some some
good ring because even like you know, just handwatering it, like you know,
water from the water or whatever, some of that won't Germany eat the
seeds they need to, so they need like a cold So yeah, time
off for Luca that came up and when it was cool, yeah exactly,
yeah, exactly. I think like also it has to do a lot with
like kind of ambient conditions, right yeah, yeah, yeah, man,
I don't know that's what That's what's been killing me, is like I don't
like just germinating stuff. It's I can only do it in winter. Yeah.
Most of the wildflowers year especially you grow them, you know October November,
that's when you saw them, and they'll they'll germany at that time.
They'll stay small of winter and then spring. You know what about cool perennials
like that Mortonia or any of that, you know, imagine that's around the
time they Yeah, because especially like Moretonia, it's you know it's out in
Star County and super like some of the those xeric conditions, right yeah,
and yeah, I would imagine they also need like cool, you know,
wet conditions those you know a few months that there is or a few days
weeks that there are, right, I would imagin And what is it?
What's the hell Helliera? Yeah, that's it's an evergreen member of the citrus
family, your tasty. It's got incredible smelling leaves and grows on these bluffs.
Yeah. Yeah, and that's another one that's people can't grow it and
we've gotten seeds several times, and really you've never been able to Germany.
Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to Germany that one, and I imagine it's
very specific conditions as well to get that otherwise it all over. Yeah,
but we the few that we have at the Macalla Nature Center, for example,
we got him from transplants from projects to put him out there and they're
doing great, but you know we need some some same with guk Nadia too.
Yeah, that's another another one that just won't Germany. Right. I
had I sent seed to some dude at Mobot who was studying seeds, and
he would he said that all everything I sent them was empty. Yeah,
so it didn't get Maybe a lot of the seeds are just dude, what's
that other one? I mean? Also the big U FORB sort of seedsticle,
like how do you It's everywhere right when you find them. But I've
never been able to get the seeds to Germany. Well, yeah, they
probably need some sort of scarification or something like this. Do you see some
dude just germinated produced texanoicity. They saw them, but that's pretty cool.
He took the seed coat off. So I'm thinking the hot stratification is not
chemical. It just means that long summer just slowly decays the seed coat until
water can get in there. Like blue bonnet, seeds are extremely hard,
right and slowly over over time, but you get scarfied and the that's if
you can get somebody to crack all these codes though and germinate these things,
you can get more native plants around there. Like fucking burretta. Man,
that's such a cool plant. It's like a conical small tree. That would
be great. Man. Imagine like you have to drive into some miserable shopping
center and there's like Burrettas everywhere. Probably love Brettas would probably and they smell
so good when you crush those leaves up, probably using cooking or something,
but like the Barretta, they would probably do well. And and like concrete
areas because they where they grow. It's just gravel tiles. Man, it's
just all the highest environments out there, right, yeah, the top of
the bluff too, right, so not even in the nice little think about
getting stuck in places like that during a heat wave and like having to walk
five miles and that's that is that's the scariest ship to me. Man.
It's like a horrible way to die if a rattle sink doesn't get you underway
or something. Right, Yeah, yeah, okay, well I'll let you
go after this, But I want to ask about Texas tortoises because their range
has been declining. Yeah, right, what's up with them? They're a
member of a genus that's actually you got you got one in Florida, you
got one in Arizona, Sonora, and then you got the Mohave tortoise.
Yeah yeah, I think more than anything that has to do with just habitat
fragmentation, because they're again a very hardest, hearty species. They'll do fine
if you just kind of leave them out there, right. But you know,
the more we keep building roads, the more we keep disconnecting their habitats,
it's it's harder for them to kind of, you know, meet each
other in mate, right, yeah, and so and then the roads I've
I swear I've seen so many Texas tortoises, you know, just run over.
Because what happens is that a dream breat you know, mating season,
the males roam, right, the females stay within their their kind of territory,
but the males start roaming. And that's kind of when all these mortalities
happen. Right, So you have these males all dying, right, you
know, you can't really get those females to start reproducing. And so to
me, it has to do more more than anything with habitat fragmentation. Absolutely,
wherever you find them, they're abundant. Right. That was what blew
my mind is because the Mohave tortoise is super rare. I was botanizing in
the Mohave for eight years before someone and I've seen probably nine, man maybe
six or seven, but they're super rare out there. When I came to
Texas, I was like, wow, these are everwhere. They just look
like a little Mohave tortoise. Yeah, they don't need bunch, they really
you don't need much. They do well and you know some of the harshest
conditions, right, But it's not really about that. It's more about just
you know, getting that this habitat fragmented and you know, like I said,
building more roads, building more, you know, more strip malls more.
I found out this dude that I know I told you about him was
poaching him. He used to poach him in something, some dude in Mexico,
which I found out. I just found out that out two weeks ago.
I used to go, Yeah, I used to go to a shopping
and renosa at the mall that they had this like mall just across the border
from here. You could go there and they would have Texast tots and they
had home horned lizards for self. Jesus, yeah God, what were you
doing? Right? Yeah? And I remember thinking like I want to buy
those and bring them over here to release them, right, but like the
incentive the border, they're not gonna yeah. And also at the border,
they weren't gonna let me right yeah. Yeah. I found out when that
when the wall, when we were doing that wall rescue for plants, he
found the Texas tortoise and told them. Another friend of mine that was like,
hey, can you take this for me? Put in your bucket and
this guy will buy them, yeah, you know, and my friend was
like, fuck, no, man, I'm not doing that. No.
I love those things. Yeah. You still see it on posts here in
the Rio Grand Valley where if you're on any of those like RGV Lost Pets
or Lost and Found Pets, people will occasionally post the Texas tourists are like,
hey, I found I lost my tortoise and I'm like, that's a
Texas tourist, right, you know, or or people will be like I
found it, I found it. What I do with it? Right,
And you'll tell them, you know, you should leave it. And then
you'll always see a comment here or there where someone's like, hey, I'll
take it right, and it's like, you know, these these what would
incentivize market posting though, well, I don't know. I think it's just
you know, people are people like turtles, right, turtles and tortoises.
You know. The Valley Nature Center, It's really interesting what happens just once
people find out, right, Valley Nature Center in Westlego had these kids go
in and they killed these tortoises. They like they had cameras and they on
these kids that put the tortoises in the pond and like held them under so
they drowned. Oh my god. It's kind of like this like terrible thing.
It is a few right, yeah, kids, I know, kids
said and they apparently got in quite a bit of trouble with the law,
but because they're protected species. But so this came out in the news and
people in Westligo, just random people that had them started all donating them to
the came out like everyone's got one, everyone's but I guess they found you
know, some people don't know they're protected, right, some people have no
idea either. Just the whole mentality too, is fucking wild to me.
And again, this ship would I feel like California now it's so like ingrained
in the culture. They're like, you don't fucking dig plants, you don't
take things like there's such a culture of shame. I mean, California's kind
of love to shame other people in general. But this is a valid cause.
But uh uh anyway, but but but you know here like that,
I'll just go to the mentality like I'll just go and I'll take it's mine.
Yeah, why not? Yeah? You know yeah, and the more.
And even if you tell people, hey, no, like you should
leave it, they're like no, no, no, no, like you
know, and it's gonna die, It's gonna die, and they're gonna die.
Yeah, it's there, it's been there for a while, probably like
it probably has his home rings there. Just leave it. No, But
people are you just don't understand for some reason, you know. But if
people have these like captivity, the breed too, Like someone's telling me that
happened, like they had them in captivity and they were breeding, like they're
yeah, yeah, do very well. They do well easily. But it's
just you know, and then I think we need to figure out some sort
of the way between kind of you know, helping them, you know,
with it. Because everyone knows that people have Texas stories in their backyard.
It's like lots of people, right and the game war didn't know and everyone
knows that, right, But it's just how do you kind of help this
species, right? You know, and while not getting in trouble with the
law as well, somebody should just they should allow for just breeding them so
that you can sell bread ones that are proved to not come from habit that.
Yeah, and that'll decrease pressures on Hambita like same ship they were doing
with Dudley. As when Dudley where plants were getting poached in California that would
mean flood the market. Yeah, maybe we just needed to delist them then
maybe, yeah, I don't know, or allow for I don't know,
man, there's got to be a way to do a loss so that it's
like you could protect them and habitat but yeah, keeping with plants, I
mean, it's not that difficult to have dangered pats. I mean any you
can have endangered plants at your home, right, and as long as they
haven't been poached for you know, someone's land or federal or state lands,
it's fine, right, and and you know, it's actually even encouraged to
you know, sell them. But i've heard cases where like Texas, Texas
State bonus and stuff, we're still harassing people for having some do which is
like, man, come on, they're propagating and you're making more and you
know those people people are like actually planting them and letting you. Yeah,
it makes no sense. Just you're just being a ball, like I said,
as long as you're not going you know to like the people like Big
Band right and poaching them from there. And that's the thing though, is
you can tell, like a seed grown plant from a poacht one. The
seed grown ones look way fucking healthier. Yeah, the past ones never do
right. Yeah, come on, man, there should be they should allow
for that. Yeah. But I heard that, I heard like Texas State.
I've heard there's multiple sources both here and in West Textas, like a
few of the Texas they buy us were adamantly breaking people's balls for just growing
them and having them growing them from seed, doesn't matter if they were you
know, it's like, man, that's so stupid. That's kind of intuitive.
The conservation. That's how you prevent people from poaching, you know,
grow a thous grow of thousands of yeah, and in the market. Right,
and then someone's like, well, why would I go poach this thing
in the heat and risk getting shot at and risk getting arrested when I buy
it for three bucks? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I mean I agree
with that. That would be a much better approach. Yeah, astro fight
them. It grows beautifully and they grow so easy, man. Yeah,
they get big quick. Yeah, And I think that would be a great
idea and a great way to get people to stop. Yeah, they get
the grapefruit size within four years if you give them enough moisture. But they
just need heat and a lot of water. Yeah. But all right,
And lastly, the Indigo snakes. Do you see those populations declining? You
see them common still or what? Yeah? No, I think they're still.
That's another one, like the Texas ortus. If you find a population,
they're abundant, right, and so it's the same thing. It's just
you know, these stinks can't cross the road easily without getting renold. They
just need to be left alone and not fucked with and given habitat. Yeah,
they do so well. That's another stink that's so well beautiful. Those
things. Man, they never get aggressive with people. No, never.
You could pick them up. The six foot long black snake, Yeah,
super cool. Look, man, I gotta love them so much. Man.
Yeah, I know they're I mean, they're wonderful over the area.
They you know, they kind of keep especially like kind of these cane toads
they eat those. Yeah, they they're herb specialists, right, so they
eat frogs, they eat their snakes, right, and lizards. I don't
know if they eat tortoises, but it wouldn't that they eat small tortoises.
Wow. But but yeah, that's like kind of their specialty there. You
know, they're amazing organisms and it's just a matter of just leaving habits of
those. Do those breed pretty easily and yeah, pretty easily in captivity.
Yeah, another that they're delisted, I'm sure it's you know, people are
hopefully someone doing that giving them a really nice luxury lifestyle. But also making
sure they make babies, yeah, and trying to you know, at least
start releasing them in the area, right yeah, yeah, yeah, again,
you know, I'm not against you know, it's it's kind of difficult,
right, Like you're trying to protect this species, so that's why you
create these laws. But also that hinders you from, you know, these
people that actually have good intentions from you know, creating more of them,
helping them out. Yeah, So there has to be some middle ground.
There has to be permit stone should not be too difficult to get right,
and they are a little difficult nowadays they are. To breathe these tortoises,
you would need it that you need years and years of experience apparently, oh
god. And you know, can't just be someone who has good intentions.
So anybody who needs who wants to do this is doing it under the law
now, doing on the radar. Yeah, yeah, hopefully there's people out
there all right, man, thanks a lot, Thank you for doing what
you do. And I really appreciate you being dow to come on this and
I can talk to you for another few hours. Yeah, let you go.
Yeah, thanks Joaie for having me. I really appreciate this. It's
great for sure. Man. Yeah, you want to put out I don't
know any way people can learn more about what you do or anything like that.
Or do you got like a you should do a website? Man,
we should do like a Yeah, I mean at some point be nice.
I mean for now, I just you know, just continue doing self text
Flora website or do you want to what's your naturalist? Naturalist is Ernest five
reach you are n Est five each, so you can see all my observations.
There's tons of cool things you've seen. You've seen like everything here.
Anything I have not seen, I will definitely take a picture and on there.
So yeah, it's it's just one of those things. I love recording
the Rio, Grand Value, Flora and Fan. Yeah all right, brother,
thanks a lot. I really appreciate the hell out of you. So
all right, man, take care, all right, everybody else go pick it back