Chris Best, State Botanist - USFW

<v Speaker 1>Okay, Chris Best, State Botanist, State botanist for US Fish
<v Speaker 1>and Wildlife Service for the State of Texas. How are
<v Speaker 1>you doing, good morning.
<v Speaker 2>I'm doing fine. Thank you so thank.
<v Speaker 1>You so much for being down to do this. We
<v Speaker 1>got a lot to talk about, a lot of things
<v Speaker 1>I want.
<v Speaker 3>To ask you about that.
<v Speaker 1>I'd love to hear your two cents sounds, so let's
<v Speaker 1>just launch right into it. I guess tell everybody what
<v Speaker 1>you do, your background, how you got interested in this
<v Speaker 1>field at botany, et cetera.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I think that, you know, an interest in nature,
<v Speaker 2>a love of nature and plants in particulars just been
<v Speaker 2>with me as long as I can remember our family.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I grew up in Missouri, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>family thing was to jump in the canoe and float
<v Speaker 2>down the streams and the ozarks, and you know, that's
<v Speaker 2>just kind of my background. And I had gotten a
<v Speaker 2>master's degree in botany in the mid eighties, and from
<v Speaker 2>there I joined the Peace Corps and went to Guatemala
<v Speaker 2>and worked on reforestation and soil conservation, and I did
<v Speaker 2>that for four years, did some consulting work, and then
<v Speaker 2>I came back to the US and I was really
<v Speaker 2>very lucky to get the job of plant ecologist at
<v Speaker 2>a place called Lower Rio Grand Valley National Wildlife Refuge,
<v Speaker 2>nice down along the border. Yeah, my home, right, Yes.
<v Speaker 1>So you were in Guatemala for four years, four years
<v Speaker 1>and you were were you what were.
<v Speaker 3>You working at?
<v Speaker 1>Lower elevations, higher elevations everywhere because they got cloud forests,
<v Speaker 1>they've got the lower elevation jungle type environment. What were
<v Speaker 1>you dealing with? Mostly?
<v Speaker 2>Well, the first two years I was in the municipia
<v Speaker 2>of Colmont in the department of Hutiapa, which is right
<v Speaker 2>on the border with El Salvador. And the town was
<v Speaker 2>at about four thousand feet elevation, and some of the
<v Speaker 2>villages I worked in were in these canyons down along
<v Speaker 2>the real Pas, so they were less I think less
<v Speaker 2>than a thousand feet elevation. So it was a huge,
<v Speaker 2>huge variation in temperature that you could experience just in
<v Speaker 2>a walking for two or three hours. And then I
<v Speaker 2>spent another over a year in the municipal of puru
<v Speaker 2>La in the department of bajaved APAs, and that's all
<v Speaker 2>cloud forest, what's left of it. The bel Topo del
<v Speaker 2>Katsal is located there. I actually, you know, I saw
<v Speaker 2>keatsals coming, you know, within a block of my house.
<v Speaker 2>Incredibly beautiful landscape. The people there speak the Kichi language,
<v Speaker 2>it's a Mayan language. And then you know, but regardless
<v Speaker 2>of where I was, you know, the job consisted of
<v Speaker 2>hiking and hiking and hiking. It was like more walking
<v Speaker 2>than than anything else because you you know, you're just
<v Speaker 2>going off road, off the beaten track to find these
<v Speaker 2>villages and you know, work with people to protect their
<v Speaker 2>their resources and their soil. It's very mountainous country, and
<v Speaker 2>you know, the rich people, powerful people with guns, took
<v Speaker 2>all the good land and all the poor people get
<v Speaker 2>pushed up, you know, on the mountain sides, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>the soil quickly washes away and their poverty becomes more extreme,
<v Speaker 2>and uh, you know, and and as that happens, people
<v Speaker 2>pack into these you know, slums in huge cities and
<v Speaker 2>or they in desperation, they leave their families behind and
<v Speaker 2>try to find opportunities up here. You know. So working
<v Speaker 2>with these communities just made sense all around. And I
<v Speaker 2>as long as I live, I'll think that I'll always
<v Speaker 2>believe that was the most important educational experience that I've had.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, both on a human level and plant level probably too,
<v Speaker 1>So you were already into plants when you went down there.
<v Speaker 2>Definitely, yes, because there's some.
<v Speaker 1>Wild in Guatemala. I mean, there's really some really cool stuff,
<v Speaker 1>especially you get up in those cloud forests. I mean
<v Speaker 1>I've never been. I just know that, you know, a
<v Speaker 1>lot of plant species that I love that I know
<v Speaker 1>from Mexico, you know, their southern extent is in Guatemala
<v Speaker 1>and cloud forests.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and you know it's I had a when I
<v Speaker 2>lived in Purula. It's you know, this is trivia, but
<v Speaker 2>it's actually pour uja, which in Shei means snail of
<v Speaker 2>the water. And so there was this little stream that
<v Speaker 2>ran right in front of my house and it was
<v Speaker 2>just loaded with these little black snails and that was
<v Speaker 2>the Purula that was the name of the river. And
<v Speaker 2>so I had a friend who worked in Saloma, just
<v Speaker 2>on the other side of the mountains, and one time
<v Speaker 2>she and I walked up over the cloud forest and
<v Speaker 2>down the other side is Salomi. It's like you know,
<v Speaker 2>on the on the east side of the mountains. She
<v Speaker 2>was just going through this incredible cloud forest where the
<v Speaker 2>catsals hang out. The trees are just you know, draped
<v Speaker 2>with so many orchids and bromeliads and ferns and things.
<v Speaker 2>A lot of times you can't really see what species
<v Speaker 2>the tree is, and the trees would just disappear the clouds.
<v Speaker 2>You know, you're talking like one hundred and twenty foot
<v Speaker 2>tall canopies go up over the top and within a
<v Speaker 2>few hundred meters it's already pine oak forest because you're
<v Speaker 2>on the lee side of the mountains. And then it
<v Speaker 2>was I think we walked thirty thirty five kilometers. It
<v Speaker 2>was an all day walk and solemise down in this
<v Speaker 2>valley and you're you're looking at huge cactuses and it's dry,
<v Speaker 2>you know, so you can see just amazing, you know,
<v Speaker 2>changes in ecosystems just just in a day's walk.
<v Speaker 1>Oh god, I bet man. You know that should be
<v Speaker 1>a policy too. It's just like, you know, for American
<v Speaker 1>kids just ship their asses to you know, other countries
<v Speaker 1>for three years. It's like you have to do it,
<v Speaker 1>and you got to like help people in those countries.
<v Speaker 1>You got to help them out somehow. You have to
<v Speaker 1>like perform a service, you know, Like every fucking American
<v Speaker 1>kid should just be shipped over straight out of high school. Now,
<v Speaker 1>I just go over you know whatever. It's like, I
<v Speaker 1>don't know what age were you when you went went there?
<v Speaker 1>Were you straight out of high school? You were straight
<v Speaker 1>out of college?
<v Speaker 2>Huh? On the I had just finished my master's degree,
<v Speaker 2>I had turned in my thesis four days before I
<v Speaker 2>shipped out, and I arrived in Guatemala on the day
<v Speaker 2>of my twenty eighth birthday. Wow, so that made me
<v Speaker 2>relatively old. A lot of people going to the Peace
<v Speaker 2>Corps right out of college. This is not a bad idea,
<v Speaker 2>but you know, among the many experiences that I think
<v Speaker 2>are worthwhile, it's just that every time I hear someone
<v Speaker 2>trash United States regards. You know, of course we have
<v Speaker 2>many things we need to improve, but when they trash
<v Speaker 2>United States, I want to turn to those people, or
<v Speaker 2>they trash our government, and I want to say, you
<v Speaker 2>have never lived overseas, right, you don't know how good
<v Speaker 2>we have it here? This is you know, we are imperfect,
<v Speaker 2>but yeah, we're way you know, we're way ahead of
<v Speaker 2>the norm.
<v Speaker 1>I think I think also like that criticism would be
<v Speaker 1>easier to listen to if if people had done that,
<v Speaker 1>I could be like, Okay, if you've actually experienced things
<v Speaker 1>and you've still got some criticisms. I can maybe I'll
<v Speaker 1>listen to them, but right right now, you know, if
<v Speaker 1>you've got no context for the world, I just I
<v Speaker 1>can't take people seriously if they don't have any context
<v Speaker 1>for the world and they haven't traveled but they're voicing
<v Speaker 1>strong opinions to begin with in the first place, you
<v Speaker 1>know that, I just can't. It's like the you know,
<v Speaker 1>with the public land in Texas thing. I posted something
<v Speaker 1>about how Texas doesn't have any public land and it's
<v Speaker 1>really frustrating, and how that's comparison with every other state
<v Speaker 1>in the Western United States except for North Dakota that
<v Speaker 1>has a large degree of public land. And I would
<v Speaker 1>get all these triggered, you know, chads from Texas being
<v Speaker 1>like brod like they weren't listening to it. They just
<v Speaker 1>took it as a swipe. It's like, I'm not knocking
<v Speaker 1>your state. I'm not knocking private life ownership. I'm knocking
<v Speaker 1>not having that land accessible to people, the people that
<v Speaker 1>live there who can enjoy it, and not having it
<v Speaker 1>protected because you know, and it was like, Okay, you've
<v Speaker 1>just then I realized that there a certain point, you've
<v Speaker 1>never left the state, You've never traveled, You don't know
<v Speaker 1>shit about the world. You have all the experience of
<v Speaker 1>a fart in an elevator, Like I don't need I
<v Speaker 1>just don't need to listen to this anymore, you know.
<v Speaker 1>But it's funny too, what you mentioned about Guatemala, about
<v Speaker 1>rich people living in the lowlands and that you know,
<v Speaker 1>forcing the poor up to the top. It's funny because
<v Speaker 1>you know, in places where the vehicle is so common,
<v Speaker 1>the automobile, like in San Francisco. You go to, like
<v Speaker 1>a city like San Francisco, all the rich people live
<v Speaker 1>up on the hills and the poorer neighborhoods are down below.
<v Speaker 1>It's the I've seen that. It's the opposite in many
<v Speaker 1>Latin American countries. It's the poor people that are forced
<v Speaker 1>up to the top and the rich people, you know,
<v Speaker 1>tend to occupy. It's just weird that class stratification with
<v Speaker 1>you know, I guess it's they don't want to watch.
<v Speaker 2>Certainly Monterey, if you've been there, you know, if you've
<v Speaker 2>ever been to the Chippinke Ecological Park, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>it's surrounded by the wealthiest neighborhoods. And I've never been
<v Speaker 2>to LAPAs, Bolivia, but I think I've heard. I think
<v Speaker 2>it's like elevation nine thousand feet, so you know, even
<v Speaker 2>for people who are accustomed, you know, it's pretty high elevation.
<v Speaker 2>So the wealthy, I think they're the wealthy people live
<v Speaker 2>in town and the poor get pushed up slope. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>so it varies, you know, it depends on where you are.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's all just because the car, you know,
<v Speaker 1>the car, if you can drive there, the rich one
<v Speaker 1>to live up the top. But if you're if you there,
<v Speaker 1>you know, it's not very common or whatever. The streets
<v Speaker 1>aren't built for cars. They're too narrow. Then they like
<v Speaker 1>shuffle the poor up there. You know, you were saying
<v Speaker 1>mont Ray is like that or what is it?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the wealthy neighborhoods do tend to push up slope,
<v Speaker 2>you know, where there's more trees and everything, a little
<v Speaker 2>more space. So yeah, it just depends, It just depends.
<v Speaker 2>You know, there's some pretty gritty neighborhoods down toward the center.
<v Speaker 2>It's very industrial, yeah yeah, yeah, but also it's the
<v Speaker 2>most modern Mexican city and very vibrant. You know, it's
<v Speaker 2>you got a lot going on.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, they got wast com canyon too, which is
<v Speaker 1>nice that the Sierra Madres right there.
<v Speaker 2>You know, yeah, I been there.
<v Speaker 1>But okay, well I wanted I want to ask you too,
<v Speaker 1>So how did you so you're in a peace corps,
<v Speaker 1>you come back, how do you end up in Texas?
<v Speaker 2>Well? I was desperate to get a job after being
<v Speaker 2>gone for four years, and I you know, I grew
<v Speaker 2>up in Saint Louis and I wasn't getting anywhere up there.
<v Speaker 2>And I had a friend that lived in Albuquerque, and
<v Speaker 2>I knew there were a lot of federal offices out there,
<v Speaker 2>and I knew that, you know, having Spanish fluency could
<v Speaker 2>give me, you know, an edge. Plus it was something
<v Speaker 2>you know, it's like if you you really work hard
<v Speaker 2>to learn something like a new language, you want to
<v Speaker 2>keep using it. So I went to Albertquerque and this
<v Speaker 2>guy let me stay there and every day I had
<v Speaker 2>a little laptop, computer and printer, and I would go
<v Speaker 2>into federal offices and get their job postings. It was,
<v Speaker 2>you know a little more this is pre internet really,
<v Speaker 2>so this is nineteen early nineteen ninety and you know
<v Speaker 2>I would just I think I applied for like forty
<v Speaker 2>jobs over a period of weeks and I was running
<v Speaker 2>out of money, so this is interesting. I had a
<v Speaker 2>return flight to Saint Louis and so one day and
<v Speaker 2>it had snowed and this my friend loaned me like
<v Speaker 2>an old balloon tired bicycle, and I was riding down
<v Speaker 2>this main boulevard towards I think it was six hundred
<v Speaker 2>Gold Avenue where the federal office is are. And it
<v Speaker 2>was like my third time back to the Forest Service,
<v Speaker 2>and a miraculous thing happened under I was riding over
<v Speaker 2>like rough ice in the gutter of this very busy street,
<v Speaker 2>and I saw a little green rectangle and I was like,
<v Speaker 2>that's interesting, and I dropped the bike and went back
<v Speaker 2>and I used my Swiss army knife and excavated a
<v Speaker 2>twenty dollars bill that was lying in the gutter right,
<v Speaker 2>and that gave me enough food to last the rest
<v Speaker 2>of my trip. But I also took it as this
<v Speaker 2>incredible sign. And I went in and the lady in
<v Speaker 2>the Forest Service personnel office said, you know, I've been
<v Speaker 2>looking at your application, and I have a friend who
<v Speaker 2>works for Fishing Wildlife Service, and they've been having a
<v Speaker 2>real hard time filling a position down in South Texas.
<v Speaker 2>Would you consider working there, And I said, ma'am, I
<v Speaker 2>would take a job on the moon right now, you know.
<v Speaker 2>So where were you right now? Where were you with this?
<v Speaker 2>This is an Albuquerque. So I went up there, I
<v Speaker 2>applied for the job, and then you know, interviewed later
<v Speaker 2>and I got the job and started in May of
<v Speaker 2>nineteen ninety. And so the job was that the refuge,
<v Speaker 2>they're trying to create a wildlife core or you've got
<v Speaker 2>all this very isolated fragments of habitats that are you know,
<v Speaker 2>fragmented by farmland and so and a lot of this
<v Speaker 2>farmland was losing productivity due to solidification. Things would happen
<v Speaker 2>like irrigation and drainage systems would break down because they
<v Speaker 2>were you know, like eighty years old. And the landowners,
<v Speaker 2>you know, faced with spending a million dollars to you know,
<v Speaker 2>redo their drainage system or sell the land of the government,
<v Speaker 2>they would voluntarily sell the land of the wildlife Refuge.
<v Speaker 2>And then my job was to figure out some way
<v Speaker 2>to get native vegetation to grow there again. So and
<v Speaker 2>I went there, and they'd had pretty sketchy success, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Every now and then they things would work, but a
<v Speaker 2>lot of the early efforts were not very successful. And
<v Speaker 2>I noticed that they were growing native plant seedlings in
<v Speaker 2>these commercial peat moss based hutting soils, and they you know,
<v Speaker 2>and they said, yeah, seedlings don't work. And they took
<v Speaker 2>me to show some of the places where they'd planted trees,
<v Speaker 2>and they most of the trees would be dead trees
<v Speaker 2>and shrubs, you know whatever. And I can remember like
<v Speaker 2>grabbing some dead seedlings by this them and lifting them
<v Speaker 2>this is a year after they're planet and you can
<v Speaker 2>just pull them right out of the hole that they
<v Speaker 2>were in in the ground. The roots in the potting
<v Speaker 2>soil never entered the native soil around them.
<v Speaker 1>Right, of course not. They've got all that nice peat
<v Speaker 1>to sit in. It's and it's so different from the
<v Speaker 1>native field.
<v Speaker 2>Soil too, yes, exactly. I mean the peat moss is
<v Speaker 2>like commercial potting soil. Usually the pH is maybe like
<v Speaker 2>six and the surrounding soil would be pH eight eight
<v Speaker 2>and a half. But I think and I had done
<v Speaker 2>my master's research on our buscular microizel fungi in plants
<v Speaker 2>that were colonizing acid strip mine spoils. This is in
<v Speaker 2>southern Illinois so fast, so you know, our buscular microizing.
<v Speaker 2>You know, they say, if you're a hammer, the whole
<v Speaker 2>world looks like a nail. But you know, so microhiz
<v Speaker 2>fungi was, you know, my thing, and it occurred to
<v Speaker 2>me that some of these plants would grow fine in
<v Speaker 2>potting soil. But it occurred to me that the problem
<v Speaker 2>may be not just a difference in pH but that
<v Speaker 2>they were getting or buscular micorize, which are these you know,
<v Speaker 2>microizi are very very important for most plant species to
<v Speaker 2>establish in the wild. Maybe they're getting the wrong micorisi
<v Speaker 2>and then those fungi are not able to survive in
<v Speaker 2>these really harsh alkaline soils. So thinking back to my
<v Speaker 2>experience in Guatemala where they were you know, the programs
<v Speaker 2>we established there. We go out to a village, find out,
<v Speaker 2>you know, are they interested in reforesting land, and a
<v Speaker 2>lot of it was agro forestry, where people were planting
<v Speaker 2>you know, useful trees on their land and often interspersed
<v Speaker 2>with their corn and their beans, which in that environment
<v Speaker 2>works really well. So this was really really you know,
<v Speaker 2>appropriate tech stuff we could you know, there would not
<v Speaker 2>be any possibility of purchasing potting medium, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>we just scraped up dirt and we would mix it
<v Speaker 2>with manure. We would mix it with leaf mold that
<v Speaker 2>I remember, you know, going up and scraping leaf mold
<v Speaker 2>by hand into buckets. And one day we were doing
<v Speaker 2>this and there was a stick lying in the way
<v Speaker 2>and I grabbed it and tossed it aside. Well, it
<v Speaker 2>wasn't a stick. It was a huge scorpion like six
<v Speaker 2>seven inches long, and I had grabbed it. I grabbed
<v Speaker 2>it by the tail and flung it aside. And all
<v Speaker 2>the guys that were with me, these you know comp casinos,
<v Speaker 2>they jump back and they're like, oh, look, come on,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and uh And I said, man, what is
<v Speaker 2>that thing? You know? And they told me and I said,
<v Speaker 2>what would what would have happened? What is it? You know?
<v Speaker 2>They said it stings you seven times? And I said,
<v Speaker 2>and then what? And they go and then you die. Anyway,
<v Speaker 2>we would just use local materials based on you know,
<v Speaker 2>local dirt, and we were growing them in poly bags,
<v Speaker 2>which are the world's worst containers, but they're very very cheap.
<v Speaker 1>Were you were you really quick? Were you mixing pummis
<v Speaker 1>or anything into it for drainage or no, just straight
<v Speaker 1>organic or what?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, just straight organic, because that's what we had in
<v Speaker 2>other parts of Guatemala. You had these massive, huge, tough beds,
<v Speaker 2>and people do it looks just like peer life.
<v Speaker 1>I was at somehow you're in West Texas. Just yeah,
<v Speaker 1>we drove some by some in West Texas. Now I
<v Speaker 1>was like, shit, I wish I had a bucket with me.
<v Speaker 1>Would get by Yeah, get some but anyway. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>So that's so you were You were becoming a soil
<v Speaker 1>artiste already. I mean you were just which is I
<v Speaker 1>love thinking about that, like different soil mixes, how they
<v Speaker 1>affect plants and so so you were doing this in
<v Speaker 1>Guatemala already, and it kind of prepped you for South Texas.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. So I started growing you know, native seedlings in
<v Speaker 2>dirt and you know, mixed fifty to fifty with vermiculite
<v Speaker 2>and all the ribbings I got. Oh my god. People
<v Speaker 2>were like, what does he think he's doing? And know
<v Speaker 2>that guy, he's trying to change everything, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>you know, and why I don't know why they were
<v Speaker 2>so grumpy when things weren't working anyway, you gotta try
<v Speaker 2>something doesn't work, try something new. And then that lasted
<v Speaker 2>like a couple of years, I started showing that hold on,
<v Speaker 2>hold on, hold on.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, there we go. Okay, we're starting to get Kelsey
<v Speaker 1>was dropping some oaks off. Sorry, the dogs, you know,
<v Speaker 1>they need to feel like they have a purpose, you know,
<v Speaker 1>so anyway, you know, want to be pinkertons over here.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, So yeah, so let's talk.
<v Speaker 1>So you were in Guatemala, you were just working with
<v Speaker 1>what you got to make soil, and then you realize
<v Speaker 1>in South Texas this because I mean, I think about
<v Speaker 1>planting seedlings in Pete in South Texas, it seems insane
<v Speaker 1>to me because the soil down there is unlike anything
<v Speaker 1>I've ever seen. It's very silty, It's very fine, particled,
<v Speaker 1>silty clay loam. It turns into a brick when it's hard,
<v Speaker 1>when it's dry, and then when it gets wet it
<v Speaker 1>turns into mud. It seems like it would be just
<v Speaker 1>behave terribly in a pot. And I remember my friend
<v Speaker 1>Zach when he was you know, he's he's like a
<v Speaker 1>New York too that moved to South Texas. But he
<v Speaker 1>was like, you know, he's like, yo, what do you
<v Speaker 1>think about that native soil? I was like, the native soil,
<v Speaker 1>it's shit, man, you can't use that in pots. He's like,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, James Lovegren uses that native soil, you know,
<v Speaker 1>And I'm like, all right, well, yeah maybe. But then
<v Speaker 1>I realized what James Levern was doing is he's mixing
<v Speaker 1>formaculite in with it, which I've never used for meculite.
<v Speaker 1>And I didn't realize that he got that recipe from you.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we started doing that and nineteen ninety nineteen ninety one.
<v Speaker 2>I actually I can tell you how James Loverick Grinn
<v Speaker 2>got into growing native plants. His son Phil contacted me
<v Speaker 2>one day and he was looking for an eagle scout project.
<v Speaker 2>And James his dad was a scout master. And so
<v Speaker 2>Phil built a little nursery to grow native grasses which
<v Speaker 2>we were going to use in a landscape along the
<v Speaker 2>entrance to Santa Anna. And Bill did. It's just fantastic job.
<v Speaker 2>He built, you know, this little nursery bench and it
<v Speaker 2>was all automated, all the watering. You know, he could
<v Speaker 2>he could be lying in bed and turned the watering
<v Speaker 2>system on. And so he got his eagle scout and
<v Speaker 2>he went on and has had a pretty remarkable career.
<v Speaker 2>But a couple of years went by, and one day
<v Speaker 2>I got a call from We had a grant from
<v Speaker 2>the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and the lady that
<v Speaker 2>managed that she said, look, Chris, can you get any
<v Speaker 2>more seedlings grown in nurseries. We have two dollars left
<v Speaker 2>over that we can't spend in another grant, and if
<v Speaker 2>I can allocate it today, Cob, we can. We can
<v Speaker 2>use that money and but if not, we know will
<v Speaker 2>lose the money. It goes back to treasury. And I said, well, okay,
<v Speaker 2>it's kind of late in the year, but let me call.
<v Speaker 2>And I called all the nursery SEE contacted, including like
<v Speaker 2>Benito Trevino and and everybody said, man, it's I'm just
<v Speaker 2>at capacity. I can't take on any more plants. So
<v Speaker 2>I was about to call. I think the lady's name
<v Speaker 2>is Jill, and I was about to call her back
<v Speaker 2>when a phone rang and it was Sue Lovegren, that
<v Speaker 2>Phil Lovegren's mother, and she said, you know, I am
<v Speaker 2>sick of teaching school in westco with the discipline problems,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and she said, I was wondering if we
<v Speaker 2>could get into growing native plants. It was just like that.
<v Speaker 2>It was just amazing, you know, it was like finding
<v Speaker 2>a twenty dollars bill when you're starving and exactly. And
<v Speaker 2>I said, well, if if you can come up here
<v Speaker 2>inside of a contract today, I can get you a
<v Speaker 2>small contract for twenty eight hundred dollars. So we did that.
<v Speaker 2>They did a beautiful job. James is a carpenter by trade,
<v Speaker 2>and so he started building benches and they just went
<v Speaker 2>on from there. I think that next year they had
<v Speaker 2>a you know, ten thousand dollars contract and then it
<v Speaker 2>just you know, and he says, such a brilliant guy.
<v Speaker 2>They're all their whole family, they're just all like real brainy,
<v Speaker 2>brainy people.
<v Speaker 1>Well these were fishing wildlife contracts or what were were
<v Speaker 1>they for for like restoration projects or what?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, for re vegetating restoring native vegetation on all this
<v Speaker 2>farmland so that you know, this gets back to the
<v Speaker 2>wildlife corridor where you know, you've got all these isolated
<v Speaker 2>fragments of habitat that individually have little benefit to especially
<v Speaker 2>too larger you know, megafauna like you know, ocelots. Jag
<v Speaker 2>Arund's right, you know, they need a lot of turf,
<v Speaker 2>and one hundred acres here, five hundred acres there, just
<v Speaker 2>isn't going to do it. So the idea was to
<v Speaker 2>restore native vegetation on all these intervening blocks of farmland.
<v Speaker 2>If if people wanted to sell them to us, we couldn't,
<v Speaker 2>you know, we weren't expropriating land or anything like that.
<v Speaker 2>And then you know, ten small habitats could be licked
<v Speaker 2>to linked together with you know, several thousand acres of
<v Speaker 2>you know, revegetated land, and now you've got a big
<v Speaker 2>block of habitat. Animals can move up and down the
<v Speaker 2>Rio Grand. They can connect from the Real Grand into
<v Speaker 2>the Seattle Picachos in Nuevo Leone. They can connect to
<v Speaker 2>the coastal Quarder with Lagua Tascosa, with the Luguna Madre
<v Speaker 2>de Tamulipas, you know. So that was the strategy.
<v Speaker 1>I want to I want to talk about this because
<v Speaker 1>those parcels of habitat are so important. If they if
<v Speaker 1>there weren't places like La Puerta or Etteria Brush Track,
<v Speaker 1>that there'd be nothing in South Texas. And it's it's
<v Speaker 1>a fucking travesty because there's so many cool plants down
<v Speaker 1>there that don't grow anywhere else in the United States.
<v Speaker 1>And it's you know, when I first moved there, I
<v Speaker 1>was blown away at how little people the dominant culture
<v Speaker 1>seem to care about plants. And I'm used to that
<v Speaker 1>wherever I go, but especially there. I mean even like
<v Speaker 1>a lot of the botanists didn't know Latin names of plants,
<v Speaker 1>which is like, come on, man, this is a this
<v Speaker 1>is a genus. It's got fifteen other species in it
<v Speaker 1>that you'll encounter if you ever leave the Rio Grand Values.
<v Speaker 1>You can at least learn the genus name, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like why are you calling it these goofy common names
<v Speaker 1>that no one knows outside of this region. But anyway,
<v Speaker 1>I want to get to that. I want to get
<v Speaker 1>to all those that that whole fish and Wildlife quarter thing.
<v Speaker 1>But first I want to focus on this soil issue
<v Speaker 1>because I thought when I when I saw that soil mix,
<v Speaker 1>it blew my mind. I'm like, damn, this is so
<v Speaker 1>this is so cool, and it's so different from you know,
<v Speaker 1>the way a lot of native plant nurseries do it,
<v Speaker 1>where they'll grow a bunch of seedlings and then they'll
<v Speaker 1>pull each one in a gallon pot, and gallon pots
<v Speaker 1>are kind of lousy for growing individual plants.
<v Speaker 2>You know, they're worse, way worse than right.
<v Speaker 3>And that makes these super you know.
<v Speaker 1>I had a friend here who was growing a bunch
<v Speaker 1>of native plants, and she would put it in these
<v Speaker 1>that peat mix super rich, and the root systems wouldn't build.
<v Speaker 1>But when I got to South Texas and then they
<v Speaker 1>you know, getting them established, they'd be all leggy, and
<v Speaker 1>you'd try to tip the pot over to plant it
<v Speaker 1>and the soil ball just falls out, like the root
<v Speaker 1>just falls apart, or not the root, but the root ball,
<v Speaker 1>you know, because there is no rootball. But then we're
<v Speaker 1>going down there and seeing the soil mix that a
<v Speaker 1>lot of these growers would use mostly for fish and
<v Speaker 1>wildlife contracts, you know, selling tubes, those paper tubes like
<v Speaker 1>inch and a half by inch and a half. There
<v Speaker 1>are two inches by two inches a milk crate full
<v Speaker 1>of fifty really healthy looking blackbrush seedlings, all grown in
<v Speaker 1>paper tubes that are two inches wide by ten inches
<v Speaker 1>eight inches deep. And then the soil, then the soil
<v Speaker 1>you take them out of these tubes and it pretty
<v Speaker 1>much stays together. I was that was a game changer
<v Speaker 1>for me to see that. So the whole idea of
<v Speaker 1>mixing vermiculate with this almost adobe like silty sandy loam
<v Speaker 1>calcareous clay. What was the purpose of the vermiculate.
<v Speaker 2>Well, yeah, in the wild, soil is going to have
<v Speaker 2>all kinds of cracks, and you know, the channels that
<v Speaker 2>the root of a plant made that then dyed can
<v Speaker 2>then be used by other plants to get down through
<v Speaker 2>that stuff. But in a container we don't have that option.
<v Speaker 2>You have, you know, in containerized seedling production, you want
<v Speaker 2>the most massive root that you can possibly get, and
<v Speaker 2>so the vermiculite breaks up that clay structure so that
<v Speaker 2>the roots can find a way through. But the most
<v Speaker 2>important thing, whatever container type you use, it needs to
<v Speaker 2>have openings on the bottom and the whole thing is
<v Speaker 2>supported on hardware cloth, on some type of frame. We
<v Speaker 2>built frames out of angle iron. We would just weld
<v Speaker 2>them together. So most of the plants in that region,
<v Speaker 2>the woody plants, put a great deal of their early
<v Speaker 2>growth into a tap root. Yeah, and I've seen things like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, where the bank along the real Grand is
<v Speaker 2>sort of caving away, you can see a little Texas
<v Speaker 2>ebony tree that's you know, knee high, and you can
<v Speaker 2>follow that root system going down twenty thirty feet Jesus Christ.
<v Speaker 1>That makes so much sense though, because it's so insanely
<v Speaker 1>hot there, and it's not like West Texas, where there's
<v Speaker 1>no humidity to hold the warmth then, so temperatures cool
<v Speaker 1>off at night like there it is. It's there's no
<v Speaker 1>different there's barely a differentiation. There's like fifteen degree fluctuation,
<v Speaker 1>twenty degree fluctuation between day and night time temperatures because
<v Speaker 1>of all the humidity.
<v Speaker 2>Well, and the other thing that's true for much of
<v Speaker 2>South and central and West Texas is that you've got
<v Speaker 2>this enormous variation in rainfall from year to year and
<v Speaker 2>season to season, and there isn't really a regular isn't
<v Speaker 2>a dependable rainfall pattern. Now, once you get down into
<v Speaker 2>the tropics far enough, you get the the intertropical convergence zone,
<v Speaker 2>which drags bands of rainfall with it north and south,
<v Speaker 2>north and south every year reliably, you know, you know,
<v Speaker 2>depending on your latitude. You know, yes, it should start
<v Speaker 2>raining around May first. Now where we are, it's like
<v Speaker 2>May fifteen, so you can plant your corn and you know,
<v Speaker 2>but South Texas it's just you know, one year you
<v Speaker 2>get like the first year I was there, they got
<v Speaker 2>twelve inches of rain and at Santa Ana and then
<v Speaker 2>average was twice that. So surviving plants there they just
<v Speaker 2>invest a lot in a tap root. So you put
<v Speaker 2>a tap rooted plant in around gallon pot. That root
<v Speaker 2>will grow around and around and around in a spiral
<v Speaker 2>in the bottom. And then when you plant that thing,
<v Speaker 2>that plant is likely to become stunted or it if
<v Speaker 2>it does live that spiral of tissue eventually, as it's
<v Speaker 2>trying to grow, it gets in its way and it
<v Speaker 2>just literally chokes itself off. They call that. There's a
<v Speaker 2>there's a technical term for that. I can't remember it
<v Speaker 2>right now, but yes, exactly. So when you air prune plants,
<v Speaker 2>meaning you have an open container over hardware cloth, that
<v Speaker 2>taproot hits the air and goes dormant. It doesn't die,
<v Speaker 2>it goes dormant. When it goes dormant, lateral roots are released.
<v Speaker 2>You know, there's all these nodes along the route pressed
<v Speaker 2>by hormones made by the actively growing root plant plant
<v Speaker 2>growth hormones. So when it goes dormant, the letteral roots
<v Speaker 2>come out, they grow down to the bottom, they go dormant,
<v Speaker 2>more letter roots come out, and then after say six months.
<v Speaker 2>You know, if you do peel a part that cardon
<v Speaker 2>plasticized carbon plant band and and put put the plant
<v Speaker 2>on a screen and wash the dirt away, and you'll
<v Speaker 2>see that you've got a stick full of roots.
<v Speaker 1>Beautiful root system right. Yeah, that root pruning shit is real, man.
<v Speaker 1>I remember they make these pots. They look like they
<v Speaker 1>look like the Divo hats kind of you know, like
<v Speaker 1>that kind of like an upside down pyramid. And there
<v Speaker 1>was a nursery in Chicago that was growing prairie plants,
<v Speaker 1>best fucking root systems I've ever seen.
<v Speaker 3>They had to water them a.
<v Speaker 1>Lot more because they there was more exposed to the area,
<v Speaker 1>you know with it, because it went the pot tapered
<v Speaker 1>incrementally in steps towards the bottom. But that root pruning,
<v Speaker 1>you know, it basically it's like pruning. It literally like
<v Speaker 1>pruning the root. And when just like with shoots, when
<v Speaker 1>you prune a shoot, it stops growing up, it'll form
<v Speaker 1>lateral buds, It'll sprout lateral buds and send out lateral roots,
<v Speaker 1>you know, whereas if you just grow it in a
<v Speaker 1>one gallon pot, it goes down circles around and then
<v Speaker 1>you've got no But you've got no lateral roots structure,
<v Speaker 1>it doesn't fill the rest of the pot. You're giving
<v Speaker 1>it way too much space. So man, I've just I've
<v Speaker 1>seen so many of those too, like tubes of blackbrush,
<v Speaker 1>and that's the way people grow stuff down there, And
<v Speaker 1>it makes so much sense, Like like Mike keeps selling
<v Speaker 1>tubes of blackbrush, and they're cheap too, because it's you're
<v Speaker 1>not wasting all this money on soil. It's like three
<v Speaker 1>or four bucks for a blackbrush seedling. Throw it in
<v Speaker 1>the ground, it takes off. It's it's deep enough, it's
<v Speaker 1>already established. But we should mention too that the purpose
<v Speaker 1>of that tap root too, is not like, oh, it's
<v Speaker 1>going down looking for water. It's trying to build most
<v Speaker 1>of its mass down into the soil and kind of
<v Speaker 1>form a storage organ so that if you know, it
<v Speaker 1>hits like a dry spell of one hundred and five
<v Speaker 1>degree temperature no rain for three months, it's already you know,
<v Speaker 1>I can kill the vegetative stuff up top and just
<v Speaker 1>dive back to the root, which is what so many
<v Speaker 1>of the plants do there. A friend that you know
<v Speaker 1>was trying to grow Pruna's Texana, and he sent me
<v Speaker 1>a photo. Once he got the seed link with a
<v Speaker 1>seed to germinate and and like the vegetative parts to
<v Speaker 1>shoot was like two inches and the root was like
<v Speaker 1>ten inches deep. He was growing in the two liers
<v Speaker 1>so well.
<v Speaker 2>I wanted to give a shout out to some of
<v Speaker 2>the people that I think did a lot of the
<v Speaker 2>early development and native plant propagation. There was a guy
<v Speaker 2>named Tim Fulbright who was at A. And M. Kingsville
<v Speaker 2>at the Caesar Kleeberg Wildlife Institute, and he started doing
<v Speaker 2>native plant restoration experiments and stuff. And to my knowledge,
<v Speaker 2>I think he's the first person in South Texas to
<v Speaker 2>use those plant bands, the plasticized carton container. And then
<v Speaker 2>there's a guy I went to graduate school with named
<v Speaker 2>Scott Josiah, And right about the time I got back
<v Speaker 2>to you know, started working in South Texas, I came
<v Speaker 2>across a paper that he wrote and he at this
<v Speaker 2>time he worked for the World Bank and advised their
<v Speaker 2>forestry programs, and he wrote this beautiful paper about air pruning,
<v Speaker 2>why it's so important to air prune seedlings and oh
<v Speaker 2>I'm trying to remember, Oh my god, my first mentor
<v Speaker 2>in native plants down there was this crusty old guy
<v Speaker 2>and oh, his name will come to me. But he
<v Speaker 2>was a plant pathologist at what was then ut pan
<v Speaker 2>Am if you remember that. And Richard Hoverson. So are
<v Speaker 2>you still there?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, I'm here.
<v Speaker 1>I'm lissing.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, yeah, good. Richard Hoverson. I think he passed away
<v Speaker 2>in two thousand and five. But he he did a
<v Speaker 2>lot of contracted habitat restoration for private landowners. So he
<v Speaker 2>was using these plant bands to grow native seedlings. And
<v Speaker 2>then there's other folks down there that you would remember
<v Speaker 2>the name of. But you know, so these people had
<v Speaker 2>already been doing this and I learned from them. Hoverson
<v Speaker 2>was quite a character, by the way, and he grew
<v Speaker 2>plants for US under contract for several years. And then
<v Speaker 2>one day he dropped off a load and he goes, well, Chris,
<v Speaker 2>that's the last load of plants I deliver for you.
<v Speaker 2>And I said, oh, doctor Hoverson, are you retired? And
<v Speaker 2>he said, no, I'm not retiring. And I said, well,
<v Speaker 2>is you know, are we not paying you enough? You know,
<v Speaker 2>how much? How much do you need? You know, make
<v Speaker 2>a bid? And he said, oh no, the price is good.
<v Speaker 2>He said, the problem is, Chris, you work for the
<v Speaker 2>evil Empire, and I'm no longer willing to. Oh he
<v Speaker 2>was kind of far right, you know, had had conspiracy
<v Speaker 2>theories about the federal government.
<v Speaker 1>But a guy takes all kinds, takes all kinds.
<v Speaker 2>He was still a great guy, and we continued to
<v Speaker 2>you know, I like I say, I learned. One of
<v Speaker 2>the most important tips that I learned from him was
<v Speaker 2>using aer ration. So when you know, a lot of
<v Speaker 2>these native plants are very strongly dormant, The seeds are
<v Speaker 2>dormant and will remain dormant, so you know, you want
<v Speaker 2>them to germinate now in your nursery. And they're like, no,
<v Speaker 2>evolution is taught me to wait.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that doesn't make any sense, right exactly. A lot
<v Speaker 1>of people don't even know that. They think it's just
<v Speaker 1>like tomato seeds, you sew them all, they all everything
<v Speaker 1>should germinate at the same time. That doesn't make evolutionary sense.
<v Speaker 2>So we put the seeds in you know, mason jars
<v Speaker 2>of water, and you stick a fish tank aerator in
<v Speaker 2>there to keep keep the oxygen gen levels high, and
<v Speaker 2>several times a day strain out the water and add
<v Speaker 2>new water. Now, the purpose of the aeration is so
<v Speaker 2>that if and when the seeds do start to germinate,
<v Speaker 2>they don't suffocate. Yeah, and most plants need maybe one day,
<v Speaker 2>and some plants we would errate as much as three days.
<v Speaker 2>You never want the seeds to germinate in the water,
<v Speaker 2>so it takes a little bit of experience.
<v Speaker 1>You know, we looking for a radical just popping out
<v Speaker 1>of that seed.
<v Speaker 2>We don't even want to wait that long. Well, if
<v Speaker 2>you see the seed imbibing, plant immediately if it swells.
<v Speaker 2>But one of the things that this does is that
<v Speaker 2>the reason many seeds are dormant is that there are
<v Speaker 2>inhibitory hormones or growth regulators in the seed coat, and
<v Speaker 2>what nature has designed them to do is that they
<v Speaker 2>break down very slowly or they leach out of the
<v Speaker 2>seed coat every time it rains. So that seed it's
<v Speaker 2>sitting in the soil, you know, it rains once, it
<v Speaker 2>doesn't german rate. It rains ten times, doesn't germinate. You know,
<v Speaker 2>maybe the twentieth time that inhibitor is finally leeched out
<v Speaker 2>enough and allows the seed to germinate. So you're trying
<v Speaker 2>to fast track that by soaking it in water and
<v Speaker 2>just changing the water so Holbersen taught me that and
<v Speaker 2>many other might. Heap, by the way, is another guy
<v Speaker 2>down there. He was Struck biology instructor. Yeah, yeah, terrific guy.
<v Speaker 2>He did grow plants for us on contract for a
<v Speaker 2>while and uh, you know, again from I learned a
<v Speaker 2>huge amount from him. Benito Trevigno is another grower and
<v Speaker 2>well known conservation activists down there. Benito walked into the
<v Speaker 2>refuge I'm going to say maybe six months after I
<v Speaker 2>got there, and he said he had just moved back
<v Speaker 2>to Tech, you know, Sar County where he grew up.
<v Speaker 2>He had been working for the oil industry and Alaska.
<v Speaker 2>He had been in Vietnam. He worked for the you know,
<v Speaker 2>was in the Air Force and stuff. He said, I
<v Speaker 2>want to grow plants for the refuge as a business,
<v Speaker 2>and so we both kind of we both kind of
<v Speaker 2>started out at the same time. Well, our office was
<v Speaker 2>at Santa Ana and then you know that's the headquarters
<v Speaker 2>for lower Rio grand Valley National wil Effort, which has
<v Speaker 2>well over one hundred tracks spread up and down the
<v Speaker 2>Rio Grande and then around LaSalle del Re, Las al
<v Speaker 2>Viega and then reaching out over towards Luguna Tascosa. So
<v Speaker 2>the three refuges together are joined into South Texas Refugees
<v Speaker 2>Complex and I worked there from nineteen ninety to two
<v Speaker 2>thousand and six. So yeah, Benito walked in. You know,
<v Speaker 2>it was just like again it was finding that twenty
<v Speaker 2>dollars bill under the ice to sky. You know, a
<v Speaker 2>brilliant guy with great ideas walks in and says, I
<v Speaker 2>want to do you were hoping to find someone to do,
<v Speaker 2>and so, you know, and it was really interesting at all.
<v Speaker 2>In those early days, all the nurseries sort of cooperated,
<v Speaker 2>you know, shared ideas with each other and with me,
<v Speaker 2>and I would share ideas with them. And every time
<v Speaker 2>somebody learned how to grow a new species, you know,
<v Speaker 2>we would let everybody else know. And you know, Benito, he's,
<v Speaker 2>you know, again a really brilliant guy. You know, like you,
<v Speaker 2>he doesn't come into the the field through academia. He
<v Speaker 2>came into it out of you know, his love for
<v Speaker 2>for the resources. And so, you know, which actually segues
<v Speaker 2>into a topic that I think is you know, really
<v Speaker 2>relevant to what you do. The role. You know, there
<v Speaker 2>are so few of us actually employed as botanists or
<v Speaker 2>plant conservationists. Areologists for federal and state agencies. I mean
<v Speaker 2>in all of Texas. You know, it's me and an
<v Speaker 2>A Strong and Jason Singhurst and TPWD right for a
<v Speaker 2>country or a state the size of like France.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, there's no funding for it because crime pays but
<v Speaker 1>bodany doesn't. But yeah, I get, I get what you're saying.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, no, totally.
<v Speaker 3>It's it's crazy.
<v Speaker 2>But one thing we do have is an extended network
<v Speaker 2>of interested citizens, scientists, you know, people like you and
<v Speaker 2>many many others who are there are eyes and ears.
<v Speaker 2>And to be honest, it's kind of it's very euphemistic.
<v Speaker 2>My title is euphemistic State Bondanist. I'm really the only
<v Speaker 2>Bondanist for Fishing Wildlife Service in Texas. So yeah, it's
<v Speaker 2>not like I command this vest infrastructure, right, and I
<v Speaker 2>rarely get to do any bodany work. You know, I'm
<v Speaker 2>more like a botanical scribe. Do all this background work
<v Speaker 2>and you know, literature searches and finding you know, who
<v Speaker 2>is knowledgeable about these species. And then you know, we
<v Speaker 2>prepare species status assessments when species are listed, we prepare
<v Speaker 2>recovery plans, We do five year reviews, We prepare documents
<v Speaker 2>that end up you know, being publicized that explain to
<v Speaker 2>the public, you know what we're doing and what our
<v Speaker 2>rationale is. Yeah, you know, what did we base this on?
<v Speaker 2>But when the projects where I actually go outside and
<v Speaker 2>do stuff, they never I cook those up on my own. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I had to ice grounds those up. And
<v Speaker 2>I get you know, and it's like, as long as
<v Speaker 2>you keep up with the stuff they pay you to do,
<v Speaker 2>then they'll let you go out and do the fun things. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>It's like an end, you know, it's like a way
<v Speaker 1>to Yeah, exactly, It's like, I'm glad your position exists,
<v Speaker 1>and I'm glad you're doing what you're doing. I couldn't
<v Speaker 1>do it. I wouldn't. I'm I'm perfectly happy where I am.
<v Speaker 1>I don't have to worry about, you know, my reput
<v Speaker 1>I don't have to worry about my reputation, any of that.
<v Speaker 1>I could just do. I could be loose, I could
<v Speaker 1>be free. It's it works for me. The Bennies would
<v Speaker 1>be nice, the healthcare would be nice. But you know,
<v Speaker 1>that's about That's about it. But but man, some of
<v Speaker 1>the stuff, I mean, that's why I wanted to talk
<v Speaker 1>to you, because I kept turning your name and just
<v Speaker 1>all these cool plant species, which I certainly want to
<v Speaker 1>get to talking about, but more specifically, like, what do
<v Speaker 1>you think it is? But South Texas is an anomaly.
<v Speaker 1>It's so weird. There's so much cool stuff down there.
<v Speaker 1>The soils aren't anomaly, the plants aren't anomaly. All the cacti.
<v Speaker 1>There's so many cacti species that you don't get anywhere
<v Speaker 1>else in the United States. And the cacti species that
<v Speaker 1>you get in South Texas and in West Texas, a
<v Speaker 1>lot of them look way different. They have a different ecotype.
<v Speaker 1>The population is, you know, phenotypically different from the West
<v Speaker 1>Texas populations, which makes sense that South and West Texas
<v Speaker 1>are worlds apart climatically. What do you think it is
<v Speaker 1>about South Texas? I mean, especially with why is there
<v Speaker 1>so little? I guess the thing that kind of shook me,
<v Speaker 1>and this goes into what you were talking about, is like,
<v Speaker 1>it really is up to private citizens in this state
<v Speaker 1>to do a lot of conservation. It's up to backyard growers,
<v Speaker 1>it's up to the you know, the culture, the culture
<v Speaker 1>of people that's starting to care more about this stuff,
<v Speaker 1>killing their lawns plenty native plant gardens, keeping private citizens
<v Speaker 1>keeping track of rare plants. You know, if the state
<v Speaker 1>is not able to do it, what do you think
<v Speaker 1>it is about? I mean, do you see more of
<v Speaker 1>an uptick in awareness of the living skin of Texas
<v Speaker 1>the plants than there was in the past, or is
<v Speaker 1>it about the same or what?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? No, I do think that more and more people
<v Speaker 2>are becoming aware of native species, importance of you know,
<v Speaker 2>conserving native plants and animals, and just our impact on
<v Speaker 2>the environment in general. And so, you know, this is
<v Speaker 2>a private land state. About ninety five percent of the
<v Speaker 2>land is privately owned, and you know, traditionally you have
<v Speaker 2>this concept of Texas landowners, you know, being very wary
<v Speaker 2>of federal and state governments intrusion and you know, their
<v Speaker 2>private rights and everything. But those fears, you know, a
<v Speaker 2>lot a lot of the fears kind of were based
<v Speaker 2>on misinformation as well as missteps by government agencies from
<v Speaker 2>time to time, like the whole Falcon Reservoir thing. But
<v Speaker 2>you know, more and more private landowners approach us, and
<v Speaker 2>they come to us and they say, look, you know,
<v Speaker 2>we love our land. We you know, we don't know
<v Speaker 2>too much about it. We want to learn more, we
<v Speaker 2>want to conserve what's out there and and uh, you know,
<v Speaker 2>can you help us? And yes, and that's uh, you
<v Speaker 2>know we have fishing. Wildlife Service has a Partners for
<v Speaker 2>Fish and Wildlife program that's specifically about, you know, working
<v Speaker 2>with private landowners. And I have gotten to work with
<v Speaker 2>a number of private landowners over my career, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>I would have to say that's really been the high
<v Speaker 2>point of my careers, you know, working with people who
<v Speaker 2>who take an interest in natural resources and want to
<v Speaker 2>practice conservation on their on their land. So you know
<v Speaker 2>that that's really I think that's the key to doing
<v Speaker 2>what I do well is the you know, developing those
<v Speaker 2>relationships with private landowners and also you know, recruiting that
<v Speaker 2>that army of citizens scientists who are out there, who
<v Speaker 2>are you know, working out of out of love. You know.
<v Speaker 1>The naturalize is huge. It's such a huge help. I'm
<v Speaker 1>so glad that exists. It's so important, I mean, and
<v Speaker 1>it teaches I think it's such a great educational tool.
<v Speaker 1>It can teach people about the things growing around them.
<v Speaker 1>They can help them keep track of it. What was
<v Speaker 1>that plant I saw last years? It didn't pop up
<v Speaker 1>this year, But what was that? What was that plant
<v Speaker 1>that I saw? Last year that grows here and they
<v Speaker 1>can look it up on on their own account. The
<v Speaker 1>the talk about some of the fears that may have
<v Speaker 1>been unfounded, like this thing about, oh, I don't want
<v Speaker 1>to know there's an endangered species on my land. I
<v Speaker 1>don't want to let botanisign there because they're going to
<v Speaker 1>discovering endangered species. That doesn't really that's not really as
<v Speaker 1>big of a deal as some you know, private property
<v Speaker 1>rights people might think it is.
<v Speaker 2>Right. Uh, there are people who, for whatever reason they have,
<v Speaker 2>you know, they have exaggerated, you know, fears about you know,
<v Speaker 2>if a plant species is on your land and it's
<v Speaker 2>listed under the Endangered Species Act, you know, the government's
<v Speaker 2>going to take over or whatever. And nothing could be
<v Speaker 2>further from the truth. When we list a plant is
<v Speaker 2>endangered or threatened and it occurs on private land, we
<v Speaker 2>actually have no authority over what the landowner can do
<v Speaker 2>with their land. They can destroy it, bulldoze that put
<v Speaker 2>a condominium on top of it. They could even dig
<v Speaker 2>it up and sell it as long as it's not
<v Speaker 2>sold in interstate or international commerce. But our authority is
<v Speaker 2>over other federal agencies that and so a federal agency
<v Speaker 2>that carries out funds or regulates an action that may
<v Speaker 2>affect an endangered plant on private land. That agency has
<v Speaker 2>to consult with us through what's called the Section seven consultation.
<v Speaker 2>And you know, the long and short of it is,
<v Speaker 2>it would it's we essentially almost never have ever stopped
<v Speaker 2>any project, which is a great disappointment to some people
<v Speaker 2>in the environmental movement because they think, hey, we'll get
<v Speaker 2>this species listed and then we'll stop this this road
<v Speaker 2>or this pipeline, and it doesn't. It just means the
<v Speaker 2>federal agency has to console with us. So I'll give
<v Speaker 2>you some examples. There have been a lot of oil
<v Speaker 2>and gas pipelines that have gone from the Permian Basin
<v Speaker 2>to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico. This really started
<v Speaker 2>picking up in about twenty eleven. And these pipelines stretch
<v Speaker 2>through the Edwards Plateau, and in a number of cases
<v Speaker 2>there was a may effect for a listed endangered cactus
<v Speaker 2>called a tobush fishhook cactus. So now the thing is
<v Speaker 2>there has to be what's called a federal nexus. So
<v Speaker 2>these pipelines were regulated by the Army Corps of Engineers
<v Speaker 2>under Section four h four of the Clean Water Act.
<v Speaker 2>So every time a pipeline crosses a stream of some kind,
<v Speaker 2>Army Corps engineers has some jurisdiction. So it used to
<v Speaker 2>be that if there was a federal nexus over any
<v Speaker 2>part of a project, that the whole project considered a
<v Speaker 2>federal nexus. So you have a five hundred mile pipeline
<v Speaker 2>probably cosses you know, ten miles of water courses and
<v Speaker 2>the entire thing, and so they called that the large
<v Speaker 2>handle nexus, I guess, And in more recent years there's
<v Speaker 2>been pushback on that, and so now the federal nexus
<v Speaker 2>is really just within the vicinity of you know, where
<v Speaker 2>that authority of the Clean Water Act is in that case.
<v Speaker 2>So then here's toebus fish hook cactus up high and
<v Speaker 2>dry on a hill, you know, miles from the nearest
<v Speaker 2>water course. So is do they consult on that or not?
<v Speaker 2>And most of the applicants that people who want to
<v Speaker 2>develop these pipelines have kind of said, hey, you know what,
<v Speaker 2>we're going to go ahead and consult with you because
<v Speaker 2>you know, we're concerned about our image well you know,
<v Speaker 2>and really so then where our authority comes in is
<v Speaker 2>to prevent jeopardy to the species, meaning you are you know,
<v Speaker 2>appreciably are pushing the species closer to extinction. And so
<v Speaker 2>here's this pipeline and it's going to take out one
<v Speaker 2>hundred tobush fishook caccus. So we can request voluntary conservation measures,
<v Speaker 2>but our negotiating power is from a position of weakness.
<v Speaker 2>And there are some pipeline developers that have just said, no,
<v Speaker 2>we're not going to do it, and we'll, you know,
<v Speaker 2>we will want them to survey. And you know, I've
<v Speaker 2>had these people say, yeah, we sent out surveyors, we
<v Speaker 2>didn't find any tobush fishook cacus. And I know and
<v Speaker 2>they know, and they know that I know that they're lying.
<v Speaker 2>But that's as far as it goes. But that has
<v Speaker 2>been the exception. Almost all of the developers are like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, when you talk about the millions and millions
<v Speaker 2>of dollars it costs to build a pipeline, you know,
<v Speaker 2>spending ten or twenty or thirty thousand dollars for an
<v Speaker 2>endangered plant is a pretty small I mean, you know,
<v Speaker 2>they could just consider it a public relations expense, I suppose.
<v Speaker 3>And they could.
<v Speaker 1>They could make it shiny, put on some glossy paper,
<v Speaker 1>but they'll get volunteers in there or something at least,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like let people come in who you know
<v Speaker 1>aren't going to protest or whatever, and dig them up
<v Speaker 1>and move them to the botanic garden or something.
<v Speaker 2>You know. So that brings up another topic of real
<v Speaker 2>interest to be So, what is what these the developers
<v Speaker 2>in their environmental consultants have been willing to do. Again,
<v Speaker 2>this is voluntary conservation. So I can't say this is
<v Speaker 2>what I want you. You know, they could. They'll ask me,
<v Speaker 2>they say, what do you recommend? And I'll say, you
<v Speaker 2>usually give them a range of stuff, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>we see how far we can go, we see what
<v Speaker 2>we can get, and and so what they've often been
<v Speaker 2>willing to do is salvage and relocation, dig this plant
<v Speaker 2>up usually. You know. The problem is the time to
<v Speaker 2>find something like Tobosh Fisher cactus is when it's flowering
<v Speaker 2>in February February March. The time to put it in
<v Speaker 2>the field would be in the fall, after you get
<v Speaker 2>some rain. Okay, So there we usually recommend an intermediate
<v Speaker 2>step where the plants would go to a botanical garden,
<v Speaker 2>put in a a soil medium that would survive in
<v Speaker 2>the wild, and then in the fall plant them out.
<v Speaker 2>So I can tell you this was done for I
<v Speaker 2>believe it was the Whistler pipeline. I think there was
<v Speaker 2>fifty two cactuses that were found. Tobush fish hook in sistraka.
<v Speaker 3>What is that brevihimatis.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think we're using the classification of Sclero Cactus
<v Speaker 2>brevi hamitis subspecies Tobushii.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think it's I think it's ancestro Now on APG,
<v Speaker 1>that's what that because I've seen that before. It's a
<v Speaker 1>cool one. Looks like a squat just like the ancestro
<v Speaker 1>shiria that we get done here, but like a squad one.
<v Speaker 1>But either way, so yeah, taxonomy.
<v Speaker 2>So they dug up fifty two. They went to San
<v Speaker 2>Antonio Botanical Garden. San Antonio Botanical Garden kept twenty six
<v Speaker 2>and we planted twenty six on the lands of a
<v Speaker 2>private landowner in Edwards County. And the consultants were like, Chris,
<v Speaker 2>we want you to tell us how to do this.
<v Speaker 2>And I was involved in every step, and we actually
<v Speaker 2>put these wire cages over the plants, because when you
<v Speaker 2>stick something new into the wild, it attracts the attentions
<v Speaker 2>of coyotes and other wildlife. And so after two years
<v Speaker 2>twenty four out of twenty six survived, and I have
<v Speaker 2>to tell you that's excellent.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, that's pretty good.
<v Speaker 2>But you think about it, we lost for that half
<v Speaker 2>of it. Now the other twenty six I think are
<v Speaker 2>being used for other purposes. But you lose twenty six,
<v Speaker 2>you gain twenty four. So technically I am sliding towards jeopardy.
<v Speaker 2>There's a net loss. And what I've been trying to
<v Speaker 2>get people interested in is collecting seeds, propagating them, and
<v Speaker 2>then putting out because then and to give you this
<v Speaker 2>just an example from that project, I went out there
<v Speaker 2>with the consultants after two years and we noticed that
<v Speaker 2>there were still some dried fruits. These plants flowered in
<v Speaker 2>the first year, they flowered the second year and the
<v Speaker 2>third year, and they made seeds, and we noticed a
<v Speaker 2>lot of baby to bush coming up around them. But
<v Speaker 2>I collected seeds that remained on several cactuses that the
<v Speaker 2>fruits just hadn't you know, They had dried up and
<v Speaker 2>they got stuck there. So I ended up with two
<v Speaker 2>hundred and he it was two hundred and fifty eight seeds,
<v Speaker 2>and I planted them in a small nursery. I got
<v Speaker 2>one hundred and ninety five germinated, and they're now fifteen
<v Speaker 2>months old. I have one hundred and ninety two still living.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my god, they were Well where is this there
<v Speaker 2>in my backyard.
<v Speaker 1>And in Austin or what kind of clim Yeah, that's
<v Speaker 1>fucking great.
<v Speaker 2>Man. Now they're getting up to a diameter of about
<v Speaker 2>two centimeters. It would take them in the wild nine
<v Speaker 2>years to reach that size. And you know, the survival
<v Speaker 2>of cactus seedlings to maturities, you know, in the wild,
<v Speaker 2>it's like vanishingly low. But I got you know, so
<v Speaker 2>now we're looking at I probably could have transplant them
<v Speaker 2>this year. I just didn't expect them to grow that fast.
<v Speaker 1>That's amazing. Wait really quick, did you did you use
<v Speaker 1>humidity on them or were they just outside in tubes
<v Speaker 1>or what were what were that? What was your setup?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, cactuses, to my knowledge, all, or certainly most cactus
<v Speaker 2>seeds germinate from the surface of the soil, and they
<v Speaker 2>require exposure to light and high humidity. So I used
<v Speaker 2>a substrate. There's a retired e collegist from Saint Edward's
<v Speaker 2>University named Monica Schwartz who shared with me her mix
<v Speaker 2>and I kind of modified it. So it's basically very
<v Speaker 2>fine limestone gravel a sixteenth to an eighth inch leaf,
<v Speaker 2>mold worm casting sand turface, which is the stuff they
<v Speaker 2>put on baseball diamonds and a little bit of diatamacious
<v Speaker 2>earth to discourage arthropods. And then I collected from wild sites,
<v Speaker 2>soil from wild habitats, and so initially I planted, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I like to uh, well's see, I'm trying to think
<v Speaker 2>sometimes it's a good idea to sterilize soil, like with
<v Speaker 2>a pressure cooker. I think in this case, I did
<v Speaker 2>not because there was organic matter in there. If you
<v Speaker 2>pressure cook organic matter, you make a lot of ammonia
<v Speaker 2>that can be toxic. So anyway, it was unsterilized. I
<v Speaker 2>planted the seeds at the surface, and I had the
<v Speaker 2>containers of soil in a rubber made tub with and
<v Speaker 2>then I had bought a plexiglass slab that I put
<v Speaker 2>on top of it, and then I have a grow
<v Speaker 2>lamp on top of that, and so the German cactus
<v Speaker 2>seeds germinate fast. I have it, Yeah, that they started.
<v Speaker 2>I've got the data somewhere, but I mean I think
<v Speaker 2>they started coming up in five or six days, and
<v Speaker 2>I think they were all done and within about two weeks,
<v Speaker 2>and I can say one hundred and ninety two out
<v Speaker 2>of one hundred and ninety five are living and healthy.
<v Speaker 1>All in the same pot. Or did you sew them
<v Speaker 1>in divisional?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So I think I had the two hundred and
<v Speaker 2>sixty or so seeds in six two by two by
<v Speaker 2>two inch plastic pots, and then after they'd grown for
<v Speaker 2>oh maybe six or eight weeks, I transplanted them so
<v Speaker 2>that I had one seedling in each pot, and it
<v Speaker 2>was the same mix. But at that point I added
<v Speaker 2>to each one right next to the ceiling, I put
<v Speaker 2>in the soil that I had harved basically collected in
<v Speaker 2>the field from wild populations. So what I'm trying to
<v Speaker 2>do is inoculate the root systems, which yeah, man, we collected.
<v Speaker 1>Big on the Michael rise Man, sorry to interrupt you.
<v Speaker 1>I just I love how into the fucking soil by
<v Speaker 1>on you are keep going?
<v Speaker 2>Sorry, right, Well, the collective term is rhizosphere symbians, right,
<v Speaker 2>and this is this is actually a kind of a
<v Speaker 2>new field. Might you know. Micro rhizel funge I have
<v Speaker 2>been known for over one hundred years, but now they're
<v Speaker 2>realizing that there's a lot of other stuff in the
<v Speaker 2>soil that is beneficial to plant growth. So one example,
<v Speaker 2>you've probably heard of the cardone cactus of the Sonoran Desert. YEP,
<v Speaker 2>it's a pack of Sirius fringly eye, and so researchers
<v Speaker 2>are like, how do these things grow? And cracks in
<v Speaker 2>a rock that has no soil, and these thinks can
<v Speaker 2>get up to like sixty feet tall, twenty five tons
<v Speaker 2>of weight.
<v Speaker 1>Huge. I'm obsessed with them.
<v Speaker 3>I was.
<v Speaker 1>I went down to behind twenty twelve and was like,
<v Speaker 1>I got to see these fucking things, and that's kind
<v Speaker 1>of what got me hooked on cacti postplaces.
<v Speaker 2>So it turns out in the roots they have colonies
<v Speaker 2>of a symbiotic bacterium called azospyrillum, and it fixes nitrogen
<v Speaker 2>just very much like the rhizobium fixes nitrogen and legium
<v Speaker 2>nodules and so. But if you grow a cardone cactus
<v Speaker 2>and pete moss, they're not going to get any arbuscular
<v Speaker 2>microhizol fungi or not. They they won't get the right ones.
<v Speaker 1>Moss is so terrible, man, It's like, I don't know
<v Speaker 1>why people still use A little Bit's fine, but okay,
<v Speaker 1>I keep in up to keep going. Sorry.
<v Speaker 2>Peat moss is great for growing geraniums, cannabis plants, if
<v Speaker 2>that's your thing. You know what I'm saying. Tomatoes, tomato, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Just grow yeah, cookies.
<v Speaker 2>You know. Cultivars, you know. Cultivars are former wild plants
<v Speaker 2>that humans have influenced through you know, selection and right
<v Speaker 2>social tools.
<v Speaker 1>They're the poodle version of a wolf. Right, I want
<v Speaker 1>the species. I want the exact species, right, So okay,
<v Speaker 1>So anyway, so keep going.
<v Speaker 3>So where the hell were we?
<v Speaker 1>I was lost? How do we get to talking about this?
<v Speaker 1>We were talking about your sister.
<v Speaker 2>Because yeah, so anyway, you know, it's like, okay, originally
<v Speaker 2>they lost fifty two to bush from the habitat, we
<v Speaker 2>put twenty six in the wild. Twenty six are being
<v Speaker 2>used for research and seed production. And but now from
<v Speaker 2>the plants we put in the wild, I now have
<v Speaker 2>one hundred and ninety two more, and we've talked to
<v Speaker 2>the landowner. I think he's okay with us putting more
<v Speaker 2>plants out there.
<v Speaker 1>And they're all individual already, they're all by themselves. You
<v Speaker 1>have to separate them. They're already in plant bands. In
<v Speaker 1>those paper two.
<v Speaker 2>Well what they're actually in two by two by two
<v Speaker 2>inch plastic pots. But they are open bottom, and I
<v Speaker 2>have them on hardware cloth, and.
<v Speaker 1>You take the humidity off or they did, you acclimate
<v Speaker 1>them to more aertic.
<v Speaker 2>They will the final hardening off will be, say like
<v Speaker 2>in the month before they go out where I'll start.
<v Speaker 2>I do have them under shade cloth because I've got
<v Speaker 2>them with a bunch of other I'm doing the very
<v Speaker 2>similar project with black lace cacus that next month are
<v Speaker 2>gonna We've got fifty black lace cacus that are going
<v Speaker 2>onto Lagolandrina Ranch in La Salle County where a pipeline
<v Speaker 2>went through in twenty twenty and it went right through
<v Speaker 2>a population of black lace cacus.
<v Speaker 1>Chris, I had no idea. You're such a gangster of
<v Speaker 1>cactus growing. I must say, I'm very impressed.
<v Speaker 3>This is pretty cool.
<v Speaker 1>So when you acclimate them from humidity from the humidity
<v Speaker 1>chamber to aria, how do you do it?
<v Speaker 3>Tell us the process?
<v Speaker 2>Well? What we you know this? When I was managing
<v Speaker 2>the revegetation program at lower Real Grand Valley, again, we
<v Speaker 2>would start seedlings under lush conditions. We would use a
<v Speaker 2>peat moss based medium as a germination medium, just because
<v Speaker 2>it's fairly sterile. And then once the seedilings, you know,
<v Speaker 2>they reach as certain size, they get transplanted into the
<v Speaker 2>you know, the dirt vermiculate mix, or quite often we
<v Speaker 2>would direct seed to containers and have that peat mix
<v Speaker 2>in the upper inch, just like a dough soil that
<v Speaker 2>they might find in the wild. And then everything's under
<v Speaker 2>shade cloth and you got missed watering. But as you know,
<v Speaker 2>and once there the ceilings are established in the containers,
<v Speaker 2>we take the shade cloth off. But you're going to
<v Speaker 2>continue to water throughout the summer, but in the final
<v Speaker 2>months you want to start holding off on the water.
<v Speaker 2>In the case of a cactus, I will just stop
<v Speaker 2>watering at all. We want the cactuses to be dormant
<v Speaker 2>when they hit the ground, so that if it doesn't
<v Speaker 2>rain after that, I mean, we're going to transplant in
<v Speaker 2>the rainiest time of the year when it fall In Texas,
<v Speaker 2>autumn is the best time because you get tropical storms
<v Speaker 2>and not this year, but we often get tropical storms
<v Speaker 2>that induce a little rainfall, you know, pattern that might
<v Speaker 2>last a few weeks and you get shorter days. You know,
<v Speaker 2>it starts to cool off and the sun angle is lower,
<v Speaker 2>so then the plants are rooting into the ground during fall.
<v Speaker 2>They may go dormant for a while in the winter
<v Speaker 2>spring it's still pretty nice. They got all, you know,
<v Speaker 2>they have six months to get roots down into the
<v Speaker 2>ground before it just gets massively hot and dry again.
<v Speaker 1>They get the piss beating out of them in summer, right, yeah, right, so,
<v Speaker 1>but but how do you acclimate them from humidity, because
<v Speaker 1>you got to it's best to grow cactus ceilings in humidity, right,
<v Speaker 1>that's yeah, you can keep open their initially.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but all my plants are outside. I mean once
<v Speaker 2>I once, by the way, I I started growing cactuses
<v Speaker 2>in twenty twenty because of the the black lace cactus
<v Speaker 2>issue at Golandrina Ranch. We didn't know black lace occurred
<v Speaker 2>at that that far west in LaSalle County. And the
<v Speaker 2>ranch manager Golandrina is about eight thousand acres. It's east
<v Speaker 2>of Kotula, and the ranch manager is a just a
<v Speaker 2>brilliant guy named Asa Wilson, who he has a master's
<v Speaker 2>I think from A and M, you know, Caesar Kleeberg.
<v Speaker 2>And he recognized it and he said, oh man, look
<v Speaker 2>at this, this pipeline he saw the cactuses that got
<v Speaker 2>wiped out. So they called me through their consultant and said,
<v Speaker 2>can you come down here and confirm this? And so
<v Speaker 2>I went down there, took photos. I said, yeah, it
<v Speaker 2>looks like black lace. I sent the photos to the
<v Speaker 2>world's leading expert in a kindo, Sirius Peter Beresford, who
<v Speaker 2>lives in near Yorkshire, England. Right and so then and
<v Speaker 2>then the next year Peter flew down from Yorkshire at
<v Speaker 2>his own expense. We went to Golden Drain and he's like, yeap,
<v Speaker 2>that's black lace. But you know, I got interested in.
<v Speaker 2>You know, for years, like I said, I've been trying
<v Speaker 2>to get these consultants interested in instead of this salvage
<v Speaker 2>and reintro where at most you get one gain for
<v Speaker 2>one loss, to add into that collecting seeds, growing plants
<v Speaker 2>and then putting them out the wild. So that's my
<v Speaker 2>ulterior motive is the reason nobody's doing this is just
<v Speaker 2>nobody wants to take the risk of, you know, telling
<v Speaker 2>an applicant, yeah, if you do this, you've fulfilled your
<v Speaker 2>voluntary conservation measure, and then it doesn't work or people
<v Speaker 2>don't know. Okay, how long is it going to take.
<v Speaker 2>How much will it cost? So I just said, man,
<v Speaker 2>I'm just gonna do this on my own. Yeah, right on.
<v Speaker 1>I know tons of people that would love to do it.
<v Speaker 1>Is I know tons of lovable nerds who would love
<v Speaker 1>to grow a fucking endangered species, get really good at it,
<v Speaker 1>master it, and that because I mean, honestly, that's the
<v Speaker 1>the state government in Texas isn't going to do anything.
<v Speaker 1>There's there's they're not gonna do anything. I mean, I'm
<v Speaker 1>not knocking your employer or anything, but there's good they
<v Speaker 1>do some. But the private citizens, they're the backyard growers,
<v Speaker 1>the nerds who are just doing what you're doing. That's
<v Speaker 1>what's going to save a lot of these plants. That's why,
<v Speaker 1>like I've been hyping to kill your lawn things so much,
<v Speaker 1>also because it's really nice to sit in the native
<v Speaker 1>plant garden. But they're the one ones who are going
<v Speaker 1>to do a lot of the work. I mean, there's
<v Speaker 1>a lot of institutions doing good stuff, but especially you
<v Speaker 1>know the role of citizens too.
<v Speaker 2>Because really I think that the best possible scenarios where
<v Speaker 2>you have this really effective government private cooperative effort. Again,
<v Speaker 2>you know, it's like we don't have enough bondness to
<v Speaker 2>work for agencies. There are a lot of interested people.
<v Speaker 2>Now that the caveat is just simply propagating rare plants
<v Speaker 2>and sticking them ound the wild, it is possible to
<v Speaker 2>do more harm than good. And this has a lot
<v Speaker 2>to do with genetic management. So one of the examples
<v Speaker 2>is a very well intentioned agency led project in Hawaii
<v Speaker 2>with the I think it's called the Hawaiian silver Sword.
<v Speaker 2>It's this incredible plant that grows on high up on volcanoes. Yes, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And people collected seeds and they grew them in a
<v Speaker 2>nursery and they put them out in the wild, and
<v Speaker 2>then they found that they got almost no seed production
<v Speaker 2>even out of the plants that were already there. And
<v Speaker 2>it turned out that they had the plant requires outcrossing
<v Speaker 2>and they had over amplified a very small portion of
<v Speaker 2>the genetic diversity. And so plants were all the plants
<v Speaker 2>near each individual plant, they were all too closely related,
<v Speaker 2>so all of a sudden, all your pollen is coming
<v Speaker 2>from your second cousin or your first cousin, and they
<v Speaker 2>couldn't make.
<v Speaker 1>Seeds stacking up, and it's yeah, it's inbreeding.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, there could be there are genetic mechanisms that
<v Speaker 2>prevent out or to prevent self fertilization and so forth.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know what's operating there, but you know, subsequently
<v Speaker 2>they fixed that by bringing in more diversity. So the
<v Speaker 2>thing is that what really would work the best is
<v Speaker 2>when you've got this, you know, this workforce of interested
<v Speaker 2>volunteers who are coordinating with you know, the people with
<v Speaker 2>the PhDs in academia or in the government agencies or
<v Speaker 2>whatever kind of guiding this effort. And I think that's
<v Speaker 2>the best case scenario. And I can give a couple examples.
<v Speaker 2>There's this guy named Jay David Bamberger who founded churches
<v Speaker 2>Fried Chicken. He made a huge pile of money, he
<v Speaker 2>retired young, bought five thousand acres in Blanco County, and
<v Speaker 2>devoted the rest of his life to conservation of natural resources.
<v Speaker 2>And he's now I think he's ninety six, and he's
<v Speaker 2>told me, he said, I'm a businessman, I don't know
<v Speaker 2>anything about natural resource. But he just talked to lots
<v Speaker 2>of people, and he tried stuff on his land and
<v Speaker 2>he learned on his own, and that's amazing. He actually
<v Speaker 2>one of the plants that he took up as his
<v Speaker 2>cause is this beautiful rare like small tree or shrub
<v Speaker 2>called the Texas snowbells, and it's in three counties and
<v Speaker 2>the Edwards Plateau, and we figure there's probably more of
<v Speaker 2>it out there, and most of it, almost all of
<v Speaker 2>it is on private land. Yeah, yeah, subspecies Taxanas taxanum.
<v Speaker 2>Take Anyway, he was a private landowner. He could go
<v Speaker 2>to his neighbors and other landowners and they would trust
<v Speaker 2>him to to work with him on this. And so
<v Speaker 2>you know, if I go out there somebody from TPWD,
<v Speaker 2>they might be like, no, you can't come on my land,
<v Speaker 2>but they would trust him. And he did this for
<v Speaker 2>twenty more than twenty years and was able to re
<v Speaker 2>you know, collect seeds, propagate, reintroduced populations, he discovered new populations,
<v Speaker 2>and last year Fish and Wildlife Service gave him a
<v Speaker 2>Coveted Recovery Champion Award, And so that was that was really.
<v Speaker 1>I'll never look at Church's chicken the same way again.
<v Speaker 1>That's cool. I mean I love going to someone's house too,
<v Speaker 1>like you know, or someone's backyard more specifically, and just
<v Speaker 1>being like, damn, you've really nailed this down. I've got
<v Speaker 1>friends like that that I've just you know, I didn't.
<v Speaker 1>And they're my friends now because I you know, there's
<v Speaker 1>such good growers and plant people and just seeing what
<v Speaker 1>they do. Like there was a my friend Christy Davis
<v Speaker 1>was growing. She's the one that was I know Davis. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>she's amazing, man. She is a yes, fucking wizard of
<v Speaker 1>growing native and she would you know, she would grow
<v Speaker 1>these tomato caacters and just put them in straight tubes,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and they.
<v Speaker 2>Would You got some growing in my Nursery's.
<v Speaker 3>Like, that's the way I do it.
<v Speaker 1>I don't even mess with them inside anymore. And in humidity,
<v Speaker 1>I just grow them under you know, a bright shade cloth,
<v Speaker 1>water them every day and a.
<v Speaker 3>So that's why.
<v Speaker 1>Like like when I was asking you about the ancestro
<v Speaker 1>cactus brebhemadas, Like when you were growing those, you grew
<v Speaker 1>them in humidity with the plexiglass. When did you start
<v Speaker 1>taking the plexiglass off and acclimating them to you know,
<v Speaker 1>the more arid atmosphere.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, basically that high humidity is just for the germination phase. Now,
<v Speaker 2>if you're into growing, if you're a cactus collector, and
<v Speaker 2>that's what you know, you've got your collection, you know,
<v Speaker 2>there's people who are real fanatics about that. They'll keep
<v Speaker 2>they will keep plants in humidity much longer because they
<v Speaker 2>want to get them big fast. I've been trying to
<v Speaker 2>get them acclimated quickly. So once germination is done, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I might keep them in the humidity for like I say,
<v Speaker 2>maybe six to eight weeks and then you know, take
<v Speaker 2>the plexiglass sauce, but you know, use a misted sprayer
<v Speaker 2>to keep the moisture up and then then start taking
<v Speaker 2>then bring them outside in the middle of summer.
<v Speaker 3>This is inside.
<v Speaker 2>I say, yes, I've started everything inside. Then they go
<v Speaker 2>outside in the spring or fall under shade and then
<v Speaker 2>gradually and that's where where I've lost seedlings. It's in
<v Speaker 2>that acclamation phase.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, they got to be it's too much of
<v Speaker 1>a window. Yeah, it's like a narrow window between rotting
<v Speaker 1>and drying out.
<v Speaker 2>You know. Yeah, that's the problem with the high humidity
<v Speaker 2>cactuses in general. Just they're very susceptible the fungal rot or.
<v Speaker 2>You'd get fungus gnats, which are really really good. I
<v Speaker 2>mean they just they get into a growth chamber and
<v Speaker 2>wipe out everything fast.
<v Speaker 3>What are they are? They the fungusnts.
<v Speaker 1>Are they eating the plant or they're just transporting fungus,
<v Speaker 1>they're farming fungus.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know much about their biology, but they definitely
<v Speaker 2>eat plants. Okay, yeah they lit They just like yeah,
<v Speaker 2>yeah yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So the thing with you know, with when you're talking
<v Speaker 1>about these like moving plants and private man, there was
<v Speaker 1>a solar farm that went up in South Texas. There
<v Speaker 1>was astrophied them all over one of the rarest plants
<v Speaker 1>that they and these idiots they dug it up. And
<v Speaker 1>I know because I had a friend who was working there.
<v Speaker 1>He's not working there anymore, so he probably doesn't care
<v Speaker 1>that I'm talking about it. But he was working for
<v Speaker 1>a private consulting firm. They were there for some bird
<v Speaker 1>and I think for Texas tortoises too, And he told
<v Speaker 1>me about the astrophight him and so I called. He
<v Speaker 1>put me in touch with his boss and I was like, man,
<v Speaker 1>can we please have them. We'll get them back in
<v Speaker 1>the ground somewhere. I know how to monitor this thing,
<v Speaker 1>please and they and the guy was like, well, no,
<v Speaker 1>we want to. This could be a great public relations
<v Speaker 1>thing for us, you know, the company because he was
<v Speaker 1>subcontract for some contracted by the company that was putting
<v Speaker 1>up the solar farms, and I was like, man, you
<v Speaker 1>can't plant these things, even if they're the size of grapefruits.
<v Speaker 1>You cannot plant them in July and the ground and
<v Speaker 1>expect them to do well. They need to be monitored
<v Speaker 1>by someone who knows about the plant, who if it
<v Speaker 1>starts yellowing or rotting or you know, astrophy. Them tend
<v Speaker 1>to need a lot of water, especially if it's hot.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, who knows. If they see that stuff, they
<v Speaker 1>know what to do for it. And the guy just
<v Speaker 1>didn't listen. He put them in the ground. Every single
<v Speaker 1>one of them died. They just like they just slaughtered,
<v Speaker 1>like fifty astrophied. I mean, it's really rare cactus. I
<v Speaker 1>was like Jesus Christ man, like this is shameful. It's nuts,
<v Speaker 1>you know, like just for a public relate, how's that
<v Speaker 1>for your public relations? You just killed fifty of this
<v Speaker 1>endangered plant species.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 1>But I've got friends who are also growing them by
<v Speaker 1>the hundreds from native wild seed, you know, and trying
<v Speaker 1>to find places to put them back where they'll do well.
<v Speaker 1>But you know, it's sad.
<v Speaker 2>There was a project. Going back about twenty years, there
<v Speaker 2>was a pipeline that was going through Star County. A
<v Speaker 2>bunch of star cactus were being affected, and the consultant
<v Speaker 2>are the developer, agreed to let them be dug up.
<v Speaker 2>I think the Nature Conservancy was evolved in this, and
<v Speaker 2>then the cactuses were sort of re rooted in containers,
<v Speaker 2>first at San Antonio Botanical Garden, and then they got
<v Speaker 2>moved to the USDA Plant Materials Center in Kingsville, and
<v Speaker 2>then finally they were planted back out on another I
<v Speaker 2>don't know if it was the same property or a
<v Speaker 2>different one. I think the delay was just that it
<v Speaker 2>took time to find some place to put them. So
<v Speaker 2>that's often the problem is we can salvage stuff, but
<v Speaker 2>that we often don't have anywhere to put it right away.
<v Speaker 2>And it's just exactly like you're saying, the time, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the timing of you know, the bulldozers moving in and
<v Speaker 2>we need to get these things out of the way
<v Speaker 2>often doesn't coincide with the ideal time to put them
<v Speaker 2>in the field. So that's where we'd like to have
<v Speaker 2>an intermediate step they need where there's a nursery that
<v Speaker 2>so the plants go to a nursery. They get real
<v Speaker 2>you know, they grow new root systems. Yeah, you just
<v Speaker 2>can't get the whole root system up, so they grow
<v Speaker 2>new roots systems. Then you plant them out in the
<v Speaker 2>field when it's sweet. You know, it's like it's November October, November.
<v Speaker 2>You wait till it rains. You go out there after
<v Speaker 2>the rain and again, you know, cooler days, longer nights,
<v Speaker 2>lower sun angle, and they've got they've got till you know,
<v Speaker 2>April May June to get roots out in the ground
<v Speaker 2>again before it gets hot. And that's where you have
<v Speaker 2>the best survival rates.
<v Speaker 3>That is it does that speak? Especially? Is so bizarre.
<v Speaker 1>I remember I had one that was grown in cultivation
<v Speaker 1>when I lived in Oakland and California. Horrible climate for
<v Speaker 1>astrophy them. It needs that heat and it needs a
<v Speaker 1>lot of moisture. It needs not a lot of water
<v Speaker 1>and heat. It grows like I've seen him growing in
<v Speaker 1>mudbeds before, you know, and so it would I had
<v Speaker 1>it like in a sunny window, I didn't know it
<v Speaker 1>anymore because it's like twenty fourteen. Had it in a
<v Speaker 1>sunny window, and it would the ribs would suck in
<v Speaker 1>like it wasn't getting it was deflating, it didn't have
<v Speaker 1>enough moisture. And then I would try to water it.
<v Speaker 1>But I'd try to water it. I was watering it
<v Speaker 1>when the temperatures were like seventy five, and this thing
<v Speaker 1>grows and like perpetually ninety five to one hundred degree,
<v Speaker 1>you know, most of the year. And so they would
<v Speaker 1>just rot then because they couldn't They had water, but
<v Speaker 1>they couldn't really suck it up. Their metabolism wasn't moving it,
<v Speaker 1>and so I just was killing them. And I see
<v Speaker 1>people doing that with them all the time, and it's.
<v Speaker 3>It's weird because you'll go I'll go to.
<v Speaker 1>Places and habitat where there some places they're growing in
<v Speaker 1>those gravel beds, and then other places like there's a
<v Speaker 1>private landowner who who I know, who's taking really good
<v Speaker 1>care of them, and where they grow there they're growing
<v Speaker 1>with that Virilla texana, that succulent astoracy and all these
<v Speaker 1>in really salty soil, like that's a good salt indicator.
<v Speaker 1>And they're just sitting in this muck and like when
<v Speaker 1>it rains, the water it stays wet for three days,
<v Speaker 1>like it's just super muddy and nothing else can grow there,
<v Speaker 1>Like it's probably because of the salt and I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>but it grows in these areas where the thornbrush kind
<v Speaker 1>of tapers off. You know, you'll never see it growing
<v Speaker 1>next to you know, for instance, payote or kind of
<v Speaker 1>serious well, I mean's some some kind of serious fitch.
<v Speaker 1>He actually grows there. But it's just a weird it's
<v Speaker 1>a weird species.
<v Speaker 2>Man.
<v Speaker 1>What do you have to say about that? With your
<v Speaker 1>experience with it? What do you think of it?
<v Speaker 2>Well, it's it's like many of our cactus species that
<v Speaker 2>it actually doesn't require those harsh soils to live. It
<v Speaker 2>tolerates them. So and the prostrate milkweed is another plant
<v Speaker 2>that you know, I saw your podcast on that's that's
<v Speaker 2>another species that occurs in very similar soils. It's about
<v Speaker 2>the bladder pod is another one. So these plants don't
<v Speaker 2>require harsh soils, they tolerate them. But by doing that,
<v Speaker 2>they're avoiding competition, right, because even buffalo grass doesn't grow
<v Speaker 2>well in some of these places. And so if you're
<v Speaker 2>the only guy that can live in a place, you know,
<v Speaker 2>then that's you know, you do well there and you know,
<v Speaker 2>no competition and you know, The other thing is you
<v Speaker 2>don't need to grow fast. All you need to do
<v Speaker 2>is survive. And that's you know, that explains many many
<v Speaker 2>cactus species. They're in no hurry, you know, they're they're
<v Speaker 2>going to take their time and they can live a
<v Speaker 2>very very long time.
<v Speaker 1>Right Yeah, same thing you see with a lot of
<v Speaker 1>adapt endemism, like serpentine. You know they don't need it,
<v Speaker 1>but they don't. What they do need is lack of
<v Speaker 1>competition and they can grow in a place where a
<v Speaker 1>lot of other plants can't grow on that serpentine. But
<v Speaker 1>those those gravel beds that astrophy them occurs on. Do
<v Speaker 1>you know the geology of that? Those are all just
<v Speaker 1>river transported but like last five million years? How recently?
<v Speaker 1>I mean, what what's going on there?
<v Speaker 2>Best to talk to a geologist, But yeah, that's my
<v Speaker 2>understanding is it's all stuff that washed out of the
<v Speaker 2>rocky mountains as the mountains were growing, and you have
<v Speaker 2>various you know, river deltas that crossed through there and
<v Speaker 2>deposited gravel beds. And then the calich that we have
<v Speaker 2>in South Texas is it's really interesting stuff because you know,
<v Speaker 2>like limestone, it's mostly calcium carbonate, but it formed differently.
<v Speaker 2>It was not sediment at the bottom of a you know,
<v Speaker 2>lagoon or ocean. It formed by precipitation of calcium carbonate
<v Speaker 2>out of the soil water and so it usually forms
<v Speaker 2>you know, pretty close to the surface of the soil
<v Speaker 2>and it's coliches of various kinds are found throughout arid
<v Speaker 2>regions of the world where you know, you have you know,
<v Speaker 2>the water is probably coming from, like you know, the
<v Speaker 2>wherever the Gulf of Mexico was at that time. It's
<v Speaker 2>pretty close. So you got all this water going into
<v Speaker 2>the soil and then you know it kind of you know,
<v Speaker 2>moves laterally and then as as water is evaporating out
<v Speaker 2>of the ground, it leaves all the minerals behind, and
<v Speaker 2>then over geologic time it can become indurated so that
<v Speaker 2>you know, basically it looks just like limestone. And you know,
<v Speaker 2>the one difference is you won't find any fossils in it.
<v Speaker 1>Right, right, it's dissolved from limestone originally, though a lot
<v Speaker 1>of it is.
<v Speaker 2>Well that must be where the calcium came from, right, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>just moving around the earth. Well place to that, I guess.
<v Speaker 1>This is a nice segue to talk about a really
<v Speaker 1>cool plant. I just saw that we had talked about
<v Speaker 1>briefly before, Paranikia congesta, which is also an extremely rare plant.
<v Speaker 1>We get Perinikia james the eye, just these cool little matted,
<v Speaker 1>carryophyllacious things, you know, carnation family with tiny flowers. All right,
<v Speaker 1>paranickad james. They is more common. But this Perinikia congesta,
<v Speaker 1>what's up with this? When did you first encounter this
<v Speaker 1>and what do you know about it?
<v Speaker 2>Well, it was it's known officially from two very small
<v Speaker 2>populations in northwestern jim Howk County, and there was a
<v Speaker 2>landowner there who was very open to having researchers come
<v Speaker 2>out and study it. But in nineteen ninety four, when
<v Speaker 2>he found out that it might be listed under the
<v Speaker 2>Endangered Species Act, he said, no, I don't like this,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and wouldn't let people on the land, and
<v Speaker 2>I take the other population it's like down the road
<v Speaker 2>aways and it belonged to his brother. So at that point,
<v Speaker 2>really it was not in the Fish and Wildlife Services
<v Speaker 2>interest to list the species if the landowner, you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's only known from these two private properties, so we
<v Speaker 2>we just we didn't act on it. And you know,
<v Speaker 2>in hopes that you know, maybe new populations might be
<v Speaker 2>found somewhere, maybe landowner changes his mind or whatever. But
<v Speaker 2>what happened is you had an environmental group based West.
<v Speaker 2>They were called Forest Guardians, and then they changed their
<v Speaker 2>name to Wild Earth Guardians. But in two thousand and
<v Speaker 2>seven they submitted a petition to list four hundred and
<v Speaker 2>seventy five species as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
<v Speaker 2>So at that point we we you know, this is
<v Speaker 2>all a very formal process. When we are petitioned, we
<v Speaker 2>have to respond to that. So Peranikia james i, the
<v Speaker 2>bushy widlow ward was one of the species that was petitioned.
<v Speaker 2>You mean, oh, sorry, what did I say, Paranikia James Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but yeah, yeah, yeah, Congesta, right, so we have to
<v Speaker 2>address that. And then that you know, came to me.
<v Speaker 2>I did the species status assessment on it. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>you can't reach any other conclusion if it's only known
<v Speaker 2>from two spots, even though okay, so where it occurs
<v Speaker 2>is these only these two spots are right where you
<v Speaker 2>have the Goliad formation, which is I think Miocene age
<v Speaker 2>lies the Catahula formation, which I think is yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and at various places in the Goliad you have formations
<v Speaker 2>of caliche, which again you know, it's like calcium carbonate,
<v Speaker 2>which can be either soft or hard. And at various
<v Speaker 2>places in the Catahula you have deposits of tough. So
<v Speaker 2>tough is volcanic stuff, you know, it's it's silica that
<v Speaker 2>was molten in it got blown up into the atmosphere
<v Speaker 2>during volcanic eruptions, and it's full. It has a lot
<v Speaker 2>of dissolved gases when it's molten I don't know, CO
<v Speaker 2>two or whatever, and it blows up into the atmosphere
<v Speaker 2>and all these gases start bubbling out of these particles
<v Speaker 2>and then they solidify and they come down out of
<v Speaker 2>the and you know, huge quantities informed these huge beds
<v Speaker 2>that can be you know, in Guatemala you'd see beds
<v Speaker 2>of this stuff that are hundreds and hundreds of feet thick.
<v Speaker 1>Ash beds right, and this stuff too. I mean when
<v Speaker 1>you see a bed of to right, it didn't hit well,
<v Speaker 1>it's not like limestone where it was probably formed over
<v Speaker 1>ten thousand to a million years. It's probably when you
<v Speaker 1>see a three foot bed of tough, that was probably
<v Speaker 1>all a single event, like a few days of this
<v Speaker 1>stuff falling.
<v Speaker 2>Right right, and so just like all that gravel that
<v Speaker 2>you see in places in Star County and so forth,
<v Speaker 2>the tough you know it, you know, huge amounts of
<v Speaker 2>it dropped out and then was carried down by rivers,
<v Speaker 2>and then it reached the Gulf of Mexico right when
<v Speaker 2>the gulf was where it was, and formed you know,
<v Speaker 2>sedimentary beds in these shallow lagoons, and then of course
<v Speaker 2>as the mountains rise, Gulf of Mexico treats and so
<v Speaker 2>that's so that's where all these tough beds came that
<v Speaker 2>are located not contiguously but basically I think, and my
<v Speaker 2>geology may be incorrect, so someone hearing your podcast may
<v Speaker 2>want to correct this. But you know, it's like every
<v Speaker 2>time you find a bed of that Katahula tough you're
<v Speaker 2>looking at where there was a bay along the Gulf
<v Speaker 2>of Mexico.
<v Speaker 1>I didn't know that. But it's not coming out of
<v Speaker 1>the sky, okay, I did.
<v Speaker 2>It came out of the sky. It got washed downstream,
<v Speaker 2>ended up in these bays. The golf re treats, and
<v Speaker 2>you have other geological ages. More stuff gets piled up
<v Speaker 2>on top of it, and so imagine, like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the Katahula being this sort of dashed line of tough beds,
<v Speaker 2>and then the Miocene is another dash line of coliche beds,
<v Speaker 2>and in some places that caliche overlies the tough and
<v Speaker 2>when that happens, all this calcium carbonate has leached down
<v Speaker 2>into this real porous tough and then it's sort of
<v Speaker 2>solidified down there and made this really really weird stuff,
<v Speaker 2>this collechified tough. And then if you had that happen
<v Speaker 2>and you have a drainage to some kind of arroyo,
<v Speaker 2>you know, that cut through all these layers and then
<v Speaker 2>exposed that at the surface, That's exactly what we have
<v Speaker 2>in the two known locations of this exceedingly rare plant.
<v Speaker 2>And so it may not be correct, but I basically
<v Speaker 2>made the assumption that that explains the species distribution because
<v Speaker 2>it just hasn't been found anywhere else.
<v Speaker 1>It's restricted to that specific adaphic situation, the specific substrate.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, right, So I modeled potential habitats as being places
<v Speaker 2>where you've got the Miocene overlaying the Catahoula and you
<v Speaker 2>have slopes you know of you know, a certain amount,
<v Speaker 2>you know, because the slopes would indicate where there's an
<v Speaker 2>arroyo that's exposed these this combination of calliche and tough
<v Speaker 2>to the surface. So but within that modeled habitat, how
<v Speaker 2>much of it actually has this this unique combination. It's
<v Speaker 2>probably a very small percent.
<v Speaker 3>It's so weird.
<v Speaker 1>I was at a private ranch north of the known
<v Speaker 1>occurrences and I saw the satellite image of the slope
<v Speaker 1>and the ranch owner a super cool She was like, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>just go out there, and so we went out and
<v Speaker 1>I thought, I didn't know that it was the tough
<v Speaker 1>out there. I was familiar with the tough from other
<v Speaker 1>exposures in Star County, but here, you know, this is
<v Speaker 1>in Webb County, slightly north of Jim Howk, and I
<v Speaker 1>didn't know that the tough was out there, but I
<v Speaker 1>just assumed it was colleche. When I got up close,
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, wait, this is ash, this is volcanic tough.
<v Speaker 3>What the hell?
<v Speaker 1>And then it just made it even more weirder. But
<v Speaker 1>I again, we surveyed that whole area, tons of cool stuff,
<v Speaker 1>No Peranikia congesta, and no none of that weird liatris
<v Speaker 1>punctata population that grows there too, which was really curious.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, you've seen that population there too, right.
<v Speaker 2>I okay, I have to confess I've never seen paraniki
<v Speaker 2>congesta I had because we didn't have access to the
<v Speaker 2>land when I was working on this, Missus. I think
<v Speaker 2>it's Holbein was still alive and a strong from Texas
<v Speaker 2>Park's and Wildlife Department had been out there. She got
<v Speaker 2>permission to access the land. And also our good friend
<v Speaker 2>Martin Terry had done some research out there and he
<v Speaker 2>had gotten permission. So basically, you know, the most recent
<v Speaker 2>data I have for it is what Anna collected and
<v Speaker 2>you know, very kindly shared with us. And I put
<v Speaker 2>word out through Anna, through Martin, through another TPWD County
<v Speaker 2>wildlife biologist and all these people, you know, please ask
<v Speaker 2>the whole beings if they would allow me to come
<v Speaker 2>out and you know, take photos or whatever. And I
<v Speaker 2>never heard back. So and then I heard that she
<v Speaker 2>had passed away. And I don't know the current situation
<v Speaker 2>with the landowners, but you know, hopefully people can see
<v Speaker 2>by that that a I can. I'd lose my job
<v Speaker 2>if I go trespassing on someone's land looking for a
<v Speaker 2>nagerent plant. I have to have their permission for our
<v Speaker 2>agency will accept verbal permission TPWD. They got to get
<v Speaker 2>a signed permission form and you're you're federal. I'm federal, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>fish and wildlife, so you know. But I I have
<v Speaker 2>worked with many private landowners who are okay with this,
<v Speaker 2>and basically they tell us what they want. And some
<v Speaker 2>people are like, yeah, I don't care, you can you
<v Speaker 2>can publicize this, uh you know, and and other people
<v Speaker 2>will say I'm okay with you, you know, collecting data.
<v Speaker 2>I don't want this publicized. I don't want any records
<v Speaker 2>of it. And so what we have to do in
<v Speaker 2>those cases is because uh, everything we have records of
<v Speaker 2>can be access through the Freedom of Information Act. And
<v Speaker 2>so if they're serious about that, we say, okay, I
<v Speaker 2>can't do not email me about this, and I won't
<v Speaker 2>email anybody else. Key, we have no we will have
<v Speaker 2>no written records. And in cases like that, we often
<v Speaker 2>work through an intermediary who's non federal, you know, a
<v Speaker 2>researcher or somebody like that.
<v Speaker 1>And it's crazy, though, we go ahead, sorry.
<v Speaker 2>Well, we just we do everything we can to respect
<v Speaker 2>that private landowners interest because if we don't have their support,
<v Speaker 2>we can't go out there.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the balls in their court. I just what's crazy
<v Speaker 1>to me though, is that you know this it's well intentioned,
<v Speaker 1>this move to make it in danger, but it's in
<v Speaker 1>doing so, it spooked the landowner and it kind of
<v Speaker 1>makes it more hot, like it blows up the spot.
<v Speaker 1>And that's the thing is like you know, wild Earth
<v Speaker 1>Guardians or whoever I mean. And I'm never like, I'm
<v Speaker 1>never like a nativist like Texas only should deal with Texas.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not like that. But someone who you shouldn't, you know,
<v Speaker 1>they kind of made it worse by doing this, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like what would have been the thing to do is
<v Speaker 1>someone in Texas who knows the system and how things
<v Speaker 1>work there and can be more strategic about it, comes
<v Speaker 1>up with a conservation plan without making the species hot,
<v Speaker 1>which then spooks the landowner and then gets them to
<v Speaker 1>just shut down and be like, no, get the.
<v Speaker 3>Fuck out here.
<v Speaker 1>I don't want anyone. I don't want this. That's it.
<v Speaker 1>I don't want anyone dealing with this, you know.
<v Speaker 2>But well that's you know, like I say, that was
<v Speaker 2>That's why, you know, before we received the petition that
<v Speaker 2>we're legally required to honor, we were okay with just
<v Speaker 2>you know, you know, we didn't want to tip the canoe.
<v Speaker 2>We had a very similar situation with this rare aquatic
<v Speaker 2>moss called don Richardsia. It's only known from one spring
<v Speaker 2>in Edwards County. The landowner has worked with us with
<v Speaker 2>our partner Sufficient Wildlife Program, He's done a lot of
<v Speaker 2>conservation work, but he just doesn't He just it's his
<v Speaker 2>personal thing. He doesn't want a dangered species. We got petitioned,
<v Speaker 2>we had You couldn't reach any other conclusion. This thing
<v Speaker 2>is probably applies to seeing reliced. You know, as a
<v Speaker 2>climate warmed. It only remained at this one spring and
<v Speaker 2>he's not going to let us go there and look
<v Speaker 2>at it. And you know it's unfortunate, but that is
<v Speaker 2>that is the landowner's right. Uh that that does bring
<v Speaker 2>up an interesting case though, so part of the okay.
<v Speaker 2>Listing a plant as endangered or threatened can have both
<v Speaker 2>benefits and detriments. The dutchment that you bring up is
<v Speaker 2>that you know it could be based on misinformation. But regardless,
<v Speaker 2>some landowners are wary of government intrusion. They could have
<v Speaker 2>a very legitimate concern about loss of privacy. They may
<v Speaker 2>fear that this could lower the value of their land.
<v Speaker 2>That's on the detriment. On the benefits side, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the species conservation can benefit from. Increased awareness makes it
<v Speaker 2>a lot easier to get funding to do you know,
<v Speaker 2>proactive conservation work. And it also invokes those Section seven
<v Speaker 2>protections which actually can work in the landowner's favor. So
<v Speaker 2>you have this balance. But in addition to listing species,
<v Speaker 2>there's this thing called critical habitat where we're supposed to
<v Speaker 2>designate the habitats that that species that are essential to
<v Speaker 2>that species. So I got into a real headbutting contest
<v Speaker 2>with some headquarters level people a few years back when
<v Speaker 2>we were listing the prostrate milk weed. So there were
<v Speaker 2>some private landowners who were totally into conservation, and there
<v Speaker 2>was several wildlife refuge tracks where the species occurred, and
<v Speaker 2>I designated critical habitats there. We had a bunch of
<v Speaker 2>little tiny spots on the map where the species had
<v Speaker 2>been reported like twenty years ago. We had you know,
<v Speaker 2>GPS coordinates. But you know, a consultants had gotten permission
<v Speaker 2>to go on the land. They were looking for star cactus,
<v Speaker 2>and this researcher would say, oh, look here's some prostrate milkweed,
<v Speaker 2>and we ended up with that data. So I didn't
<v Speaker 2>designate critical habitats there because we don't know if the
<v Speaker 2>species is still present, We don't know what the landowner's
<v Speaker 2>attitudes are, We don't know what the habitat is like.
<v Speaker 2>You know, how can I say this is essential to
<v Speaker 2>its survival. They made me designate every last one of
<v Speaker 2>those little dots on the map. And I argued, and
<v Speaker 2>I argued, and I said, listen, you know, you don't
<v Speaker 2>understand this part of the country. People haven't forgotten the
<v Speaker 2>government the federal land grab when they built Falcon Dam.
<v Speaker 2>That one act is you know, people are still mad
<v Speaker 2>about that. And what if we started, well, the government
<v Speaker 2>to make Falcon Reservoir. Both the US and federal government
<v Speaker 2>expropriated land that would be under the lake and actually
<v Speaker 2>where the dam itself was built. And people felt that
<v Speaker 2>they were misled, they were not given fair value to
<v Speaker 2>the land. You know, you're talking land that's been in
<v Speaker 2>a family for two hundred years. You know they don't.
<v Speaker 2>So they haven't forgotten that. And I said, now, listen,
<v Speaker 2>if we start designating a lot of critical habitat on
<v Speaker 2>private land where we don't know the landowner's' values, some
<v Speaker 2>of these people are going to get mad and the
<v Speaker 2>gate will be locked. And it won't just be locked
<v Speaker 2>for prostrate milkweed. It's going to be locked for ocelots,
<v Speaker 2>jag Rundy's, you know everything all you know, tortoises, anything
<v Speaker 2>you want to work on. And it's not just that individual.
<v Speaker 2>They're going to go down to the coffee shop and
<v Speaker 2>tell their neighbors, and their neighbors tell their neighbors, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and it's and that's you know, and that's that's something
<v Speaker 2>we've been working for decades to try to prevent and
<v Speaker 2>try to you know, get over the the uh, the
<v Speaker 2>uh misinformation. So what happens when critical habitat is designated
<v Speaker 2>Practically nothing, see uh, it doesn't. It's just like listing.
<v Speaker 2>It doesn't give us any authority over the private land.
<v Speaker 2>It doesn't create a park or reserve or you know,
<v Speaker 2>landowner can bulldoze it, build condominiums, drill for oil, whatever
<v Speaker 2>they want to do. The only difference it makes, again
<v Speaker 2>comes under the Section seven consultation for a project that's
<v Speaker 2>being done by a federal agency. So for example, a
<v Speaker 2>pipeline or maybe you know, maybe textatus is expanding a highway,
<v Speaker 2>building a new highway, and and it has federal funding.
<v Speaker 2>If it's if it's not federally funded, there's no federal nexus.
<v Speaker 2>So it's so now the consultation is not just for
<v Speaker 2>individual of this prostrate milk grad or starcactus or whatever.
<v Speaker 2>It's also the critical habitat. And so you know, if
<v Speaker 2>the project would result in adverse modification, then basically that
<v Speaker 2>you get back to the whole conservation measures thing. Does
<v Speaker 2>it stop the highway? So in section seven you get
<v Speaker 2>into this avoid, minimize, and mitigate. So the best thing
<v Speaker 2>is avoid. Could the highway move a little bit? Could
<v Speaker 2>we put a curve in it? And then they're like,
<v Speaker 2>in this case, yes, maybe in another case you go, no,
<v Speaker 2>that would create a hazard of drivers.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it's pretty loose, right, It sounds like it
<v Speaker 1>doesn't really do much.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well it can. You know in other cases I
<v Speaker 2>can say, yes, we can curve, but not that much.
<v Speaker 2>So now you're minimizing the damage or we're we can't
<v Speaker 2>change this, we must go through it. So now you're
<v Speaker 2>mitigating losses. And so it gets back to that whole
<v Speaker 2>thing of jeopardy where you're you know, an action is
<v Speaker 2>increasing the threat of extinction, and we can consider the
<v Speaker 2>incremental effects of each project individually on jeopardy. So like
<v Speaker 2>this one project, you know it's going to take out
<v Speaker 2>you know, fifty starkagus. That's not going to cause the extinction,
<v Speaker 2>but one by one by one, all these projects could
<v Speaker 2>extinct the species. So that's where you know, we want
<v Speaker 2>these conservation measures. Let's say, okay, we lost fifty star
<v Speaker 2>cactives there, but we want you to, you know, pay
<v Speaker 2>some consultants to collect seeds. We're going to grow them
<v Speaker 2>out on a botanical garden. We're going to plant them
<v Speaker 2>back on the habitat. And for those fifty that were lost,
<v Speaker 2>we now have five hundred and so now we've done
<v Speaker 2>you know, we like say, we're not going to stop
<v Speaker 2>any highways or pipelines or anything. What we're trying to
<v Speaker 2>do is make sure that all of this development as
<v Speaker 2>it happens, doesn't, you know, incrementally push all these species
<v Speaker 2>towards extinction, right right, And that's the most. That's the
<v Speaker 2>most we can do.
<v Speaker 1>Right off, there's there's not much protection again, which again
<v Speaker 1>is why growing these things from seed is so so important.
<v Speaker 2>I feel we're bang for the buck. Yeah, totally.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, So let's I want to talk about. I want
<v Speaker 1>to talk about, you know, some other rare plants on there,
<v Speaker 1>like physariat m naphula or the quote ashy dogweed, Thimaphila,
<v Speaker 1>Tephra luca, which that thing is like, you go to
<v Speaker 1>San Antonio Botannic Garden, They've got a huge bed of it.
<v Speaker 1>It thrives in cultivation. You can plant the seedling in
<v Speaker 1>the heat of July and as long as you water
<v Speaker 1>it a couple times a week, it gets established. It
<v Speaker 1>turns into a mat. I mean, it's just so hairy.
<v Speaker 1>It loves full sun, happy as a pick and shit
<v Speaker 1>does really good, really cool groundcover, goes great up against
<v Speaker 1>like a sidewalk or something. One of those plants where
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, why is this not being grown in cultivation? More,
<v Speaker 1>what's the story with that? Because there's only one or
<v Speaker 1>two places where it's publicly accessible on a road side
<v Speaker 1>it grows into sand. It's Zapota County. How how big
<v Speaker 1>is the range in that and did you work with
<v Speaker 1>that at all or what?
<v Speaker 2>I've only seen it once on private land in I
<v Speaker 2>guess it was Sapata County. It was out of the
<v Speaker 2>range of the Wildlife Refuge where I worked so you know,
<v Speaker 2>we didn't. I wasn't working with it directly, but yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it occurs mostly in like really loose sand and kind
<v Speaker 2>of in a band that like the knowme populations extended
<v Speaker 2>from northern Stark County through or into uh Sapata and
<v Speaker 2>I think Webb County. And yeah, it's just in this
<v Speaker 2>one sand formation. Now, could it be elsewhere? Very very possible.
<v Speaker 2>I had the great fortune to spend three days this
<v Speaker 2>spring on San Antonio Viejo Ranch, which is part of
<v Speaker 2>the East Foundation, which has San Antonio Viejo is one
<v Speaker 2>hundred and fifty thousand acres in Jim Hogg and Star County,
<v Speaker 2>and there are beautiful habitats there and it's just this
<v Speaker 2>amazing thing where I think his name was Robert East
<v Speaker 2>was the heir and he loved wildlife. And when he
<v Speaker 2>passed away, I think in two thousand and seven, he
<v Speaker 2>left the five of his ranches to this foundation dedicated
<v Speaker 2>to the principle that's sustainable while life stock raizing is
<v Speaker 2>compatible with wildlife conservation. So they have over fifty employees.
<v Speaker 2>Half of them are cowboys and half of them are
<v Speaker 2>wildlife biologists. It's just incredible and they are engaging in
<v Speaker 2>some conservation agreements with Fish and Wildlife Service, and they
<v Speaker 2>want to find endangered plants on their land. So I
<v Speaker 2>had the opportunity to go down there and work with
<v Speaker 2>some of their biologists. We didn't find any endangered species,
<v Speaker 2>but man, is there a lot of good habitat and
<v Speaker 2>there's a very very similar sandy formations on a lot
<v Speaker 2>of that land, and I would you know, the Ashley
<v Speaker 2>dog wee could certainly be there. Then you know, there
<v Speaker 2>was a historic population pretty damn close in northern Star County,
<v Speaker 2>so it could very well be there. Maybe we'll find it.
<v Speaker 1>But do you know anything about that Euphorbia anti syphilitica,
<v Speaker 1>which is actually a different species, But there was a
<v Speaker 1>Star County population. I saw it and collected it, and
<v Speaker 1>then it was destroyed for a solar farm. But we've
<v Speaker 1>got some in cultivation. But it's a friend of mine
<v Speaker 1>who studies Euphorbia told me, oh, that's actually a different species.
<v Speaker 1>Look at the flowers and compare with true anti syphilitica
<v Speaker 1>when it blooms. And I did, and I was like,
<v Speaker 1>holy shit, this is a wholly different thing. This is undescribed,
<v Speaker 1>there's no And then I saw the same one done
<v Speaker 1>in Nuevo Leone too, So there is a population in
<v Speaker 1>Neuevo Leone.
<v Speaker 3>But do you know anything.
<v Speaker 2>About since that? I had always heard about that, and
<v Speaker 2>I knew this old guy, Bill mccorter, wonderful guy, very
<v Speaker 2>learned a lot about native plants from him. And he
<v Speaker 2>took me to see where there was some anti syphilitica
<v Speaker 2>on one of the refuge tracts. I think it was
<v Speaker 2>Kuaivitas Trek and it just been bought for the refuge,
<v Speaker 2>and and I looked at it, and I was like,
<v Speaker 2>he knew right where it was. And you looked at it,
<v Speaker 2>and you look at the soil was obviously kind of
<v Speaker 2>disturbed around it, and there was some difference in the soil.
<v Speaker 2>And I was like, no, Bill, did you plant this here?
<v Speaker 2>And He's like, m yes, So it wasn't. It wasn't.
<v Speaker 2>Actually I don't know where it came from. But I
<v Speaker 2>was like, Phil, now you know, we can't really count that.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god, No, I would love to find that again, man,
<v Speaker 1>I would. It was and it grows in such a
<v Speaker 1>weird habitat, like it grows in the thorn brush and
<v Speaker 1>just spreads razominously. I don't know if it was brought
<v Speaker 1>by indigenous people hundreds of years ago and planted.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you wonder because it's it's you know, so disjunc
<v Speaker 2>and from the West Texas populations and.
<v Speaker 1>From like Xico, because it's the Mexico populations are much
<v Speaker 1>closer than the West Texas. So yeah, and that's what
<v Speaker 1>it's actually got more in common with, you know, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>it's its own species. It's not anti syphiltica. The flowers
<v Speaker 1>look totally different. But yeah, I was wondering if you
<v Speaker 1>that's another plant I want to locate again.
<v Speaker 2>There was an.
<v Speaker 1>Erbarium record collected in the seventies by a guy I forget,
<v Speaker 1>Ken King told me his name. I've seen the urbaran collection.
<v Speaker 1>It was at UTRGV and their.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Ken King because he's another
<v Speaker 2>one of those plant geniuses, said I learned a lot
<v Speaker 2>from Yeah. Yeah, and these are people you know again,
<v Speaker 2>you know, because they get to spend more time outside,
<v Speaker 2>they know those native plants much better than I do. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>But that okay, Well, so there was there was actually
<v Speaker 1>dog weed. You so a lot of these sand endemics
<v Speaker 1>like that that actually dog weed. The Thymophyla tepta luca
<v Speaker 1>that was growing with the prostrate milkweed at one of
<v Speaker 1>the sites that I saw on just right off eighty three.
<v Speaker 1>Do you think they don't need sand there just growing
<v Speaker 1>because that's lack of competition or what.
<v Speaker 2>Well, you know, that's a great question. It's just like
<v Speaker 2>the cactuses that we find growing in really harsh sites
<v Speaker 2>that don't require all those toxic minerals. They just tolerate them.
<v Speaker 2>So I've understood that Ashley dogweed. Can you know it's
<v Speaker 2>it certainly occurs in real loose sandy soils, and I
<v Speaker 2>think some of the sites were not like loose sand
<v Speaker 2>but more like sandy silt, sandy loam something like that.
<v Speaker 2>But I would I would expect that it's pretty limited
<v Speaker 2>to soils that have a lot of sand, you know,
<v Speaker 2>good drainage. And you know, again it's it's a species,
<v Speaker 2>it's you know, tolerates that habitat really well. And you know,
<v Speaker 2>when you go into the habitats that I've seen for
<v Speaker 2>it are pretty open. You know, you have some misquit,
<v Speaker 2>you got some shrubs species, but there is not like
<v Speaker 2>you know in in you know, iwoll County where it
<v Speaker 2>would take you five minutes to go ten feet, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I mean they're not contiguous, right like, they're separated. You
<v Speaker 2>can walk between. And then there's a lot of grass
<v Speaker 2>and form vegetation, and even the grasses are not just
<v Speaker 2>wall to wall, you know, you know, and there may
<v Speaker 2>be some buffalo grass, but it's not just taking over.
<v Speaker 1>When did the buffalo grass get really bad? Like how
<v Speaker 1>long ago?
<v Speaker 2>Well, it was introduced I think in the nineteen fifties
<v Speaker 2>and there was this guy trying to remember his name,
<v Speaker 2>but he wrote an article called Buffalo Grass South Texas
<v Speaker 2>wonder Grass. You know, it's like after the thirties, the
<v Speaker 2>droughts of the thirties and the droughts of the fifties,
<v Speaker 2>you know, ranchers were desperate to you know, improve their
<v Speaker 2>uh you know, cattle forage, and the natives had been
<v Speaker 2>grazed out, and so people were experimenting with these you know,
<v Speaker 2>introduced grasses. And you know, back then there wasn't the
<v Speaker 2>concern about endangered plants and native plant conservation and you
<v Speaker 2>know they were just looking at us, right well, the land,
<v Speaker 2>the land is the factory that grows cows, right well.
<v Speaker 1>There was no ecological awareness to back then very little,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I don't even think was ecology a field
<v Speaker 1>in the fifties, I don't know, but this this species
<v Speaker 1>really got bad, like one did it really get bad?
<v Speaker 1>Because I heard it wasn't always like that like eighties
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't, you know, it was more open like Ken
<v Speaker 1>King tells me about back then, you would just go
<v Speaker 1>into the understory or go into some of these habitats
<v Speaker 1>and there wasn't any buffal yet, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I guess if you go back far. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>you know, like I say, they started introducing it in
<v Speaker 2>the fifties, and you know, guinea grass is even more recent,
<v Speaker 2>and we actually know a little bit of the history
<v Speaker 2>of that. And I think it was it was Richard
<v Speaker 2>Hobson again that told me about that. That the the
<v Speaker 2>experiment station, the USDA Agricultural Experiment Station in westco was
<v Speaker 2>testing out, you know, different grasses it could be used.
<v Speaker 2>And I think this is in the nineteen seventies and
<v Speaker 2>they had a patch of guinea grass. Now, most guinea
<v Speaker 2>grass around the world, you know, originates from you know,
<v Speaker 2>equatorial West Africa, and it's a big, tall, erect thing,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and grows in full sunlight st you know,
<v Speaker 2>the flowering stalks get like ten feet tall, and there
<v Speaker 2>were various attempts to introduce that in South Texas that failed.
<v Speaker 2>I've seen it near Brownsville in a few places, and
<v Speaker 2>I saw it along the Big Ditch north of westco
<v Speaker 2>in one place. But mostly it didn't establish because it
<v Speaker 2>just doesn't have the cold tolerance. But then USDA had
<v Speaker 2>found another cult you know, variety or you know, subspecies,
<v Speaker 2>and some taxonomists do have it as a separate species
<v Speaker 2>of Megathersis. But anyway, it's it's scandent, you know. It's
<v Speaker 2>that guinea grass that it's shade tolerant, and it can
<v Speaker 2>grow in the open, but when it grows, it loves
<v Speaker 2>to grow through other shrubs and things, right, and it
<v Speaker 2>is that particular subspecies or whatever it is, is more
<v Speaker 2>frost tolerant. So USCA had this plot of that stuff
<v Speaker 2>and a landowner from Mercedes looked at it and said, man,
<v Speaker 2>it looks like that it'd be great forage. And he
<v Speaker 2>just helped himself to a few pocketfuls of seed and
<v Speaker 2>went home and planted them on his land and it
<v Speaker 2>took off and then from there it just spread over.
<v Speaker 2>And that's like the seventies, early seventies, you know, and
<v Speaker 2>then by the time I got there and twenty years later,
<v Speaker 2>it was just everywhere.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it mothers everything. That guinea and buffalo just smother everything.
<v Speaker 1>They just I mean literally they cause extinctions in South
<v Speaker 1>Texas or extir patients more appropriately. It's wild man. But
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, I would love to have seen the
<v Speaker 1>habitat before that movie. And you know, like walk you
<v Speaker 1>go to Soal Delray and the hike there. It's just
<v Speaker 1>just monocultures of buffal just everywhere. It's us sad. But
<v Speaker 1>do you know are there I've heard too this is
<v Speaker 1>kind of unrelated or just going back to growing things
<v Speaker 1>from seed? Are there restrictions and I've heard different from
<v Speaker 1>at least from some of the state people that they
<v Speaker 1>don't want people growing endangered plants from seed? Is that true?
<v Speaker 1>Is there any truth behind that, because that seems kind
<v Speaker 1>of crazy to me. If that that is the case.
<v Speaker 2>Well, first of all, again, you have the limits of
<v Speaker 2>our authority, and so the the the Endangered Species Act
<v Speaker 2>has stronger protections for land that are quote under federal jurisdiction,
<v Speaker 2>you know, federal lands, you know, a wildlife refuge at
<v Speaker 2>National park, a military base, that sort of thing. But
<v Speaker 2>an endangered plant growing on private land, you can collect
<v Speaker 2>those seeds, you can propagate it with the landowner's permission
<v Speaker 2>if you're not the landowner. One of the few protections
<v Speaker 2>of endangered plants on private land that work in a
<v Speaker 2>landowner's favor is that if you violate a state law
<v Speaker 2>and you impact, you know, have an effect on this plant,
<v Speaker 2>now you're violating the federal Dangered Species Act, and that
<v Speaker 2>includes trespass. So let's say somebody breaks your fence or
<v Speaker 2>whatever and they go four wheeling on your property and
<v Speaker 2>that four wheeler cuts through a patch of you know,
<v Speaker 2>whatever any elimit teris or something that now they're not
<v Speaker 2>only subject to state criminal trespass, but then when that's done,
<v Speaker 2>we get to slap an endangered species violation on them.
<v Speaker 2>And so that that works in a landowner's favor and
<v Speaker 2>increases the protection of their own land. So knowing that,
<v Speaker 2>you know, if I would if I had private land
<v Speaker 2>out there, I think I would want more endangered plants
<v Speaker 2>on it. But so, but getting back to the propagation,
<v Speaker 2>so you couldn't trespass on someone's land and steal the
<v Speaker 2>seeds and grow them. But if the Lennard says, sure, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>go ahead and grow them and give me some you
<v Speaker 2>can do that. But again, you know, we would we
<v Speaker 2>would like for people with that interest to work with us,
<v Speaker 2>you know, contact us or or someone in academia that understands,
<v Speaker 2>you know, plant population genetics and that sort of thing,
<v Speaker 2>so that we can advise you and or you know,
<v Speaker 2>one thing that a person could do. The Center for
<v Speaker 2>Plant Conservation has published this set of guidelines that you
<v Speaker 2>can download now off the internet. It's like three hundred
<v Speaker 2>and fifty pages. It's really really well done, and they
<v Speaker 2>touch on the whole topic of, you know, managing the
<v Speaker 2>genetics of rare plant populations when you're propagating them, what
<v Speaker 2>to do and what not to do. Yeah, so you know,
<v Speaker 2>there's all these guidelines like, you know, try to collect
<v Speaker 2>from at least this many individuals, keep track of source
<v Speaker 2>plants so that you know, okay, I got one hundred
<v Speaker 2>progeny here that came from this one source plant, and
<v Speaker 2>I've got fifty that came from this other one, and
<v Speaker 2>yeah and so forth.
<v Speaker 1>Genetic diversity. Maintains genetic diversity and also pay attention to
<v Speaker 1>ecotypes or at least have an understanding of what an
<v Speaker 1>ecotype is.
<v Speaker 2>You know, yeah, that's also very important.
<v Speaker 1>But I had a friend who was growing you know,
<v Speaker 1>wild collected, astrophied and mysterious that he got with permission
<v Speaker 1>from the landowner. And he was just he's really paranoid
<v Speaker 1>about you know, some of the state botanists seeing his
<v Speaker 1>astrophy and he's growing these for restoration. He's not selling them,
<v Speaker 1>and I'm like, man, it's not you're kinda don't worry, Like,
<v Speaker 1>tell them the fuck off. Don't worry about it. No
<v Speaker 1>one's going to get you in trouble. You're not breaking
<v Speaker 1>any laws. You collected the seed with permission. You're doing
<v Speaker 1>a good thing. But he's just got this paranoia. And
<v Speaker 1>I was like, don't worry. It's fine, man, don't worry
<v Speaker 1>about it. But then I have heard a state botanist
<v Speaker 1>harassing people for it, which seems just totally nuts to me.
<v Speaker 1>It seems crazy, you know, I've heard it from a
<v Speaker 1>number of sources. Now, so I was wondering, I know
<v Speaker 1>that's not your field, your federal but but that whole thing,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, that's that works against the conservation if that
<v Speaker 1>is true, you know, it's.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well, yeah, again, we don't have the authority. It
<v Speaker 2>would only be say like if there were collecting seeds
<v Speaker 2>from an endangered plant on a wildlife for a national
<v Speaker 2>wildlife refuge. Yeah, and it's it still can be done.
<v Speaker 2>It just takes another step, right, it takes an endangered
<v Speaker 2>species permit. So you can't do this just because you're
<v Speaker 2>a plant collector. We wouldn't give people permit for that,
<v Speaker 2>but we would give them permits to do research that
<v Speaker 2>would benefit the species recovery, you know, or or a reintroduction.
<v Speaker 2>So it's a bit of a you know, it's you know,
<v Speaker 2>you have to get to go through this permit process,
<v Speaker 2>and it's kind of it's a little bit slow because
<v Speaker 2>we're required to publish all the permits in the Federal Register.
<v Speaker 2>So other than that, you know, you got to if
<v Speaker 2>you want to do this kind of work and you
<v Speaker 2>want to get seeds off of private land and you
<v Speaker 2>have a good or public land, I mean, and you
<v Speaker 2>have you know, a good justification for it, you just
<v Speaker 2>had to plan ahead.
<v Speaker 1>Right with private land and just yeah, don't even have
<v Speaker 1>to worry.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah you can. You can propagate in endangered plants from
<v Speaker 2>seeds that came from private land, and we we cannot
<v Speaker 2>tell you not to. We can advise you. We'd be
<v Speaker 2>had we'd love to advise you. We we'd love to
<v Speaker 2>get the data that you're getting learn from it. And
<v Speaker 2>you know, with my you know, I've been growing native
<v Speaker 2>plants for almost forty years and there I know that
<v Speaker 2>from my experience, we can learn a whole lot about
<v Speaker 2>plants that is very difficult to learn from the wild,
<v Speaker 2>you know. And just one one example is we're very
<v Speaker 2>interested in our vuscular micro risie they grow on cactuses. Well,
<v Speaker 2>I went out with some researchers earlier this year. We
<v Speaker 2>were trying to get root samples from star cactus and
<v Speaker 2>other native cactuses that are in the wild and then
<v Speaker 2>you know, take them back and you know, make microscope
<v Speaker 2>slides and see what we can see. Well, it was
<v Speaker 2>really difficult, and basically we gave up because by that
<v Speaker 2>by the time I could unearth enough you know, roots
<v Speaker 2>from soil, you know, and it has to still be
<v Speaker 2>connected to the plants so you can say, yes, this
<v Speaker 2>root came from that plant. That we realized we were
<v Speaker 2>just going to be having too much impact on the plants.
<v Speaker 2>But these I told you about the black lace cacus
<v Speaker 2>that I'm growing from Golandrina ranch seed. So I inoculated
<v Speaker 2>those plants with soil that came right from next to
<v Speaker 2>other wild black lace cacus. And then I want to see,
<v Speaker 2>okay or do they have micro rhizoal colonization. And it's
<v Speaker 2>so easy for me to take this little two inch pot,
<v Speaker 2>dump it out on a screen, wash the soil away,
<v Speaker 2>and there's all the roots, and damned if they aren't
<v Speaker 2>covered with fungi. And they have really really interesting root
<v Speaker 2>more flogy that I've never seen described anywhere. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 2>there is something very interesting going on with that. And uh,
<v Speaker 2>but then and then I take that plant and replot
<v Speaker 2>it and it, you know, I harvest one root out
<v Speaker 2>of like you know, twenty on it or something and
<v Speaker 2>it doesn't even know the difference. Yeah. You know.
<v Speaker 1>The thing that's what I wanted to ask you about too,
<v Speaker 1>is the theres so endo micael riise slash arbuscular michael
<v Speaker 1>rise am fungie different from Ecto micaelriise, which associate with
<v Speaker 1>pine and oaks. Endo are on the vast majority of
<v Speaker 1>plants associate with endo. A much smaller percentage of plants
<v Speaker 1>associate with ecto. So the end though, actually go into
<v Speaker 1>the cells and penetrate the cells there. I mean, you've
<v Speaker 1>done not many people have studied this. I mean I've
<v Speaker 1>I've looked for this before on papers, on Google, scholar
<v Speaker 1>on you know what endo, Michael Rise associate with cacti.
<v Speaker 1>What what do you know about this? There's not much
<v Speaker 1>research on this out there.
<v Speaker 2>Well. Uh, it used to be thought that cact i
<v Speaker 2>don't make our buscular micarizie, and that was just kind
<v Speaker 2>of accepted as you know, truth until it wasn't until
<v Speaker 2>I think it probably around the nineties, some people started
<v Speaker 2>looking into this and they were like, hey, wait a second, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>we're getting our buscular micarizi. So it does occur. I'm
<v Speaker 2>not sure if everything that I'm seeing is our buscular microorizie.
<v Speaker 2>It could be some different type of fungal association that
<v Speaker 2>I'm seeing. It's definitely not pathogenic. I mean, these roots
<v Speaker 2>are healthy, they look great, and they're covered with fungi.
<v Speaker 2>I haven't seen our buscules yet, which is kind of
<v Speaker 2>like that's your you know, your gold standard.
<v Speaker 1>Have you dissected the roots and cross section to look
<v Speaker 1>inside the roots?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? You you have to sacrifice the root. You clear
<v Speaker 2>them with carefully wash it or away. Clear the potassium
<v Speaker 2>with potassium hydroxides so you can see through the structures.
<v Speaker 2>Then you stain with this this stain called tripan blue,
<v Speaker 2>or you can there's some types of ink, you know,
<v Speaker 2>multile or fountain pen ink.
<v Speaker 1>Thing that can use that bonds with fungi specific.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, it binds to the cell wall of the fungus,
<v Speaker 2>but not the plant. So you can see fungal structures
<v Speaker 2>going into roots. And so the only thing our buscules
<v Speaker 2>tend to be kind of ephemeral, and it may be
<v Speaker 2>that they're just occurring during certain seasons and then they
<v Speaker 2>sort of dissolve away. So I've I've seen a lot
<v Speaker 2>of stuff that look like they could have been our buscules.
<v Speaker 2>I haven't definitively seen in our buscle yet, but I
<v Speaker 2>am seeing intra medical hyphie. You know, they're they're growing
<v Speaker 2>outside the route and they're penetrating the roots and they're
<v Speaker 2>growing around inside. So but anyway, so much easier to
<v Speaker 2>get that data from a plant and cultivation. Yeah, because
<v Speaker 2>I'm and I'm not harming any of the wild individuals.
<v Speaker 1>But it's it's fascinating stuff. I mean, I would love
<v Speaker 1>if someone could sequence, you know, DNA sequence whatever's growing there.
<v Speaker 1>Look see if they can find out what specie, probably
<v Speaker 1>not what species is probably undescribed, but find out even
<v Speaker 1>what type of fungi it is. Is it glamorro my coda,
<v Speaker 1>you know, is it? What? What is growing there? Because
<v Speaker 1>there's so little research. I mean, if you type in
<v Speaker 1>our buscular micro rise cactus on Google scholar, you get
<v Speaker 1>a couple interesting papers influence the particular am fungy and
<v Speaker 1>biomass production by pack of series pecked and aboriginal.
<v Speaker 2>That's right. Yeah, I've seen that article.
<v Speaker 1>Nino serious Kara Tara Wentz is another one Opuntia.
<v Speaker 3>But no doubt.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I'm man, I'm sure there's stuff going on
<v Speaker 1>there that no one's resourched. I would love for somebody
<v Speaker 1>to do that. You know, so what So what is
<v Speaker 1>the process? I mean, how do you prepare a slide
<v Speaker 1>of cactus route?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Again, you you know, carefully wash it. We're looking
<v Speaker 2>at pretty you know, roots like not more than two
<v Speaker 2>millimeters diameter on down and wash them and then clear
<v Speaker 2>and potassium hydroxide ten percent and then you're ins it
<v Speaker 2>you acidify it and then uh stain with tripe and blue,
<v Speaker 2>which if you're going to use it, just you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's a likely carcinogen, possible to retogen, so you would
<v Speaker 2>use it carefully. You could use certain kinds of fountain
<v Speaker 2>pen ink or whatever, so there's a staining period, you know,
<v Speaker 2>maybe something like six hours or something, and then rinse
<v Speaker 2>that out. And I've been making permanent mounts on glass
<v Speaker 2>microscope slides with PVA lactophenols, some kind of standard stuff
<v Speaker 2>for making fungal specimens. PVA's polyvinyl alcohol lactophenol. It's just
<v Speaker 2>a mixture of lactose and phanol and water, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and then it takes several days to harden, and then
<v Speaker 2>you look at them under the microscope and you can
<v Speaker 2>see some of these structures, you know, forty to one
<v Speaker 2>hundred magnifications and then really get a good look at
<v Speaker 2>an r BUS school you're doing four hundred or one
<v Speaker 2>thousand magnifications. And then the other side of the coin
<v Speaker 2>that you mentioned is you know, taking soil samples from
<v Speaker 2>around the planet and then doing you know, basically e
<v Speaker 2>DNA where you're you're trying to find what identify species
<v Speaker 2>through their genetic fingerprint, but you kind of need both.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, that's the better method now for identifying you know,
<v Speaker 2>what species of fungus is out there, or at least
<v Speaker 2>what genus. But you still have to do the microscope
<v Speaker 2>work to show yes, we are having we do have
<v Speaker 2>an arbuscular microisal colonization here, so you know, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>the the DNA method is kind of expensive and requires
<v Speaker 2>you know, pretty sophisticated lab and the microscope method is laborious.
<v Speaker 2>It's not very expensive, but pretty time consuming.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you still need my Crosby. Yeah, that's man. It's
<v Speaker 1>really fascinating stuff. Though I wish there was more of
<v Speaker 1>bailable on that. Do you know anything, I mean, how
<v Speaker 1>do you feel about some of those micro rhizol preparations
<v Speaker 1>for it, like you're doing, you know, for mixing in
<v Speaker 1>with soil, doing for doing restoration, putting certain seedlings in
<v Speaker 1>like trichoderma, and some of a mix of some of
<v Speaker 1>the am I know, there's a lot of snake oil
<v Speaker 1>out there that doesn't do anything, but some of it's
<v Speaker 1>you know, I've heard people swear.
<v Speaker 2>By Yeah, well, certainly results count. I know, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I had a salesman once try to sell me micro
<v Speaker 2>rhyzol inocula that for use in our revegetation program. And
<v Speaker 2>I said, man, you know, I mean these plants. First
<v Speaker 2>of all, you know, you have so much ecotype variation
<v Speaker 2>just in the host plant, you know, the tree or
<v Speaker 2>shrub or trying to plant. And I can't believe that
<v Speaker 2>the symbiotic soil organisms aren't also ecotypes that are specifically
<v Speaker 2>adapted to these really harsh soils. And he was like, no, no,
<v Speaker 2>We've got this stuff works there. We developed it in California,
<v Speaker 2>and you know it works all over the world, you know.
<v Speaker 2>And it's like I was like, well, thanks, but no thanks, right,
<v Speaker 2>you know, so remains to be proven, but I'm very
<v Speaker 2>skeptical of this sort of one size fits all, you know,
<v Speaker 2>like this one you know, this one species of this
<v Speaker 2>one group of Michael Risey work for every plant in
<v Speaker 2>every soil on the planet. They may have broad use,
<v Speaker 2>you know, it may be great for you know, I
<v Speaker 2>don't know, planting trees and tempered environments or something, but yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I don't know. I'm skeptical on that.
<v Speaker 1>Notes we're talking about Michael Risey. What do you think,
<v Speaker 1>what do you know about madrones? Because that's a pretty
<v Speaker 1>cool species, that's pretty rare in certain areas. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>do you I've seen, man, I just saw two that
<v Speaker 1>were growing like in the middle of the total desert environment,
<v Speaker 1>but in an arroyo. They were old trees. They were relics, obviously,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, what do you what do you know about
<v Speaker 1>that species?
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's funny that you bring up the madrone
<v Speaker 2>right after this discussion on Mike Rising, because I was
<v Speaker 2>talking to this retired ecologist Monica Schwartz, and they had
<v Speaker 2>wanted to plant madrones in their yard here in Austin
<v Speaker 2>and they had failed, and then they got one of
<v Speaker 2>those commercial microwizel inoculants and establish it. And then then
<v Speaker 2>the madrone they planet did real well. So, uh, you know,
<v Speaker 2>making a liar out of me, which I don't know,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I'm going to go cut that tree down,
<v Speaker 2>I think, really, but no, I get you. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but it wasn't exactly a controlled experiment either. So but Monica,
<v Speaker 2>did you know she said that she believes that, uh
<v Speaker 2>you know, Michael RISEI is important for the establishment of madrones.
<v Speaker 1>Oh for sure. Yeah, they've got our bat. That whole
<v Speaker 1>subfamily's got really fine hair like roots for the specific
<v Speaker 1>kind of Michael Rise the harbor harbor.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, erquoid, microisi or different stuff.
<v Speaker 1>But so yeah, do you know is that species in
<v Speaker 1>any kind of danger or populations declining? Because I see
<v Speaker 1>a lot of unhappy ones and in the wild.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, good question. I don't have an answer to that.
<v Speaker 1>M M all right, Well it's I know of one
<v Speaker 1>nursery in Kerville that sells them. Kind of expensive. They're
<v Speaker 1>like twenty five for a like tiny plant, but it's
<v Speaker 1>better than no one selling them. I just I wish
<v Speaker 1>more people like everything. I wish there were more people
<v Speaker 1>growing it, you know, embracing the native the native flora
<v Speaker 1>on them. Okay, lastly, and I'll let you go after this.
<v Speaker 1>I really appreciate your time. By the way, for Lofafra,
<v Speaker 1>which is of course Paoti cactus, populations have been declining.
<v Speaker 1>There's been habitat destruction. There's also a yearly harvest, so
<v Speaker 1>there's a demand no matter what, a yearly legal harvest
<v Speaker 1>by members of the Native American Church. With your work
<v Speaker 1>with that, have you seen, I mean, what's the status
<v Speaker 1>of it? I know, you know, you talk to people
<v Speaker 1>who know about that, talk to some of the Potero's
<v Speaker 1>they say they've had declining harvests. You know, these are
<v Speaker 1>licensed payote dealers. And then you've got this whole contingent
<v Speaker 1>of Native American church that wants to absolutely keep it
<v Speaker 1>illegal and prevent it from being decriminalized, which it sounds
<v Speaker 1>like that might you know, inhibit you know, xtitute conservation
<v Speaker 1>if people are trying to grow them, even out of state.
<v Speaker 1>What do you what's your what do you know about
<v Speaker 1>this plant? I mean, is it is it in danger
<v Speaker 1>in Texas or what?
<v Speaker 2>It is not either state or federally listed. Uh, it
<v Speaker 2>is a species of conservation concern, and I think it's
<v Speaker 2>unique because it's both you know, a native species that
<v Speaker 2>we would like to be able to you know, prevent
<v Speaker 2>it from declining. You know, it's conservation is important and
<v Speaker 2>it's a sacrament two for indigenous indigenous religions that have
<v Speaker 2>existed for six thousand years, and that's important to protect also,
<v Speaker 2>and being a small cacus, you know, it's very very
<v Speaker 2>slow growing. It has it's very its fecundity is very low.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, you know night flower. Once a year, the
<v Speaker 2>little fruits might have ten seeds in them. You know,
<v Speaker 2>how many of those seeds actually establish and grow to maturity.
<v Speaker 2>You know. It's so we know that it was much
<v Speaker 2>more abundant in you know upland areas of South Texas
<v Speaker 2>in the past. It's declined to land use changes, you know,
<v Speaker 2>root plowing, pipelines, oil wells, roads, highways, wind turbines and
<v Speaker 2>so forth. And in addition to that you have over harvesting,
<v Speaker 2>which you know probably supplies not just to the Native
<v Speaker 2>American Church, but also you know the people interests, you know,
<v Speaker 2>non Indians who who are looking for you know, psychedelic experience.
<v Speaker 2>So work with it. I haven't done because, as you know,
<v Speaker 2>I'm not a member of the Native American Church. I'm
<v Speaker 2>not a Native person. It's not legal for me to
<v Speaker 2>like possess it or carry it or move it around.
<v Speaker 2>Of course, yeah, so I can't, you know, I would.
<v Speaker 2>When I was at Lower Real Grand Valley, there was
<v Speaker 2>a population of peyote on one of the refuges near
<v Speaker 2>Rio Grand City. I remember seeing it right after we
<v Speaker 2>bought the land. We estimated there was like two thousand plants.
<v Speaker 2>The next time I came back, there were two thousand
<v Speaker 2>holes in the ground and he was just wiped out
<v Speaker 2>and I would have loved to work with it, but
<v Speaker 2>you know, we we couldn't do it, and I don't
<v Speaker 2>think any of the managers would have been willing to
<v Speaker 2>let that happen. It's to controversial.
<v Speaker 1>Don't touch it with a ten foot paul when it's
<v Speaker 1>a schedule one substance. I mean, when you're trying to
<v Speaker 1>work with something that's an important part of an ecosystem,
<v Speaker 1>but it's also a schedule one substance, it's unfortunately, there's
<v Speaker 1>nothing you can do now. No one wants to work
<v Speaker 1>with it, understandably.
<v Speaker 2>Right, But and so you know, my personal opinion is,
<v Speaker 2>you know, we really should respect the traditional native use
<v Speaker 2>and whatever Aliti is out there should be reserved for
<v Speaker 2>that use and not Yeah, I mean it's like, okay,
<v Speaker 2>if people, if non Indians want a psychedelic experience, there's
<v Speaker 2>a whole lot of you know, sources that you know,
<v Speaker 2>they can grow mushrooms or something or you know, or
<v Speaker 2>get some synthetic substance. I don't know, but it's just
<v Speaker 2>but I I am struct struck by the fact that
<v Speaker 2>it's just a very very slow growing plant with very
<v Speaker 2>low fecundity that you know, I've heard various systemates, but
<v Speaker 2>I think it must take you know, twenty or thirty
<v Speaker 2>years to reach a harvestable size in the wild.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And you know, if a thousand seeds get put out there,
<v Speaker 2>how many would make it to maturity? Probably not that many. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>What's so what drives me nice though, is that it
<v Speaker 1>is that I think, you know, the drug war almost
<v Speaker 1>increased demand for it. You make something, you make something taboo.
<v Speaker 1>And now, I mean there's plenty of plants Heimias, solicifolia,
<v Speaker 1>other ones that are psychoactive and legal, and people are like, eh,
<v Speaker 1>it's interesting, I don't really care. But then you know,
<v Speaker 1>some of like the Facebook drug bros or whoever, they're
<v Speaker 1>all interested in payote they all want, you know, and
<v Speaker 1>it's and and that's because of the drug war, because
<v Speaker 1>it's illegal and it's taboo. And that same illegality prevents
<v Speaker 1>you know, federal and state agencies from being able to
<v Speaker 1>work with it in conservation. It prevents some little old
<v Speaker 1>lady that just wants to grow it, has no interest
<v Speaker 1>to psychedelic use, just wants to grow because it's a
<v Speaker 1>cool plant, same way that she grows astropht them or
<v Speaker 1>something else. Nope, No, can't do and now you've got,
<v Speaker 1>you know, a demographic or a cultural demographic wanting to
<v Speaker 1>keep it illegal, or elements parts of a culture demographic
<v Speaker 1>wanting to keep it illegal as a way of gatekeeping
<v Speaker 1>it using a law that was originally created due to
<v Speaker 1>racist intentions, I would says, the racist or cultural war intentions.
<v Speaker 1>It kind of boggles the mind, you know. And then
<v Speaker 1>it's go to Canada. It's legal when he plays in Europe,
<v Speaker 1>totally legal. My concern with it is just the conservation,
<v Speaker 1>Like that's what same way I'm concerned with astropt them.
<v Speaker 1>It's a living piece of this larger machine that is
<v Speaker 1>the ecosystem. And I you know, I just it just sucks.
<v Speaker 1>I've seen so much destroyed, you know, bulldozed for whatever
<v Speaker 1>reason by some by state agencies, some by private landowners.
<v Speaker 3>It sucks.
<v Speaker 1>Just don't know where it goes. And it blows my
<v Speaker 1>mind that there's people that want to keep it illegal
<v Speaker 1>because there's ways to protect cultural heritage or make it
<v Speaker 1>you know, illegal to use, but legal to possess whatever.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, But but do you think, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>are there were there at some point people talking about
<v Speaker 1>making it endangered, which I don't think would be a
<v Speaker 1>good idea, but was that ever on the table.
<v Speaker 2>I actually we have employees who are liaisons with the tribes,
<v Speaker 2>and so one of them contacted me, I think it
<v Speaker 2>was just last year, and he asked me, you know,
<v Speaker 2>basically the same question, what do I think about that?
<v Speaker 2>And so, you know, it does kind of get back
<v Speaker 2>to that whole benefit detriment stuff, but it you know,
<v Speaker 2>it could be a wise move on the part of
<v Speaker 2>the Native American Church to actually be the ones to
<v Speaker 2>petition the listing okay and enter into what's called a
<v Speaker 2>candidate conservation agreement with Assurances CCAA. And what that would
<v Speaker 2>do is they would say, Okay, we are going to
<v Speaker 2>engage in these conservation measures and we're also going to
<v Speaker 2>continue to harvest and use this according to our tradition.
<v Speaker 2>And then if the species is listed later there and
<v Speaker 2>they fulfill their agreements, they get to keep doing what
<v Speaker 2>they're doing. So CCaaS are they're an important tool. Let
<v Speaker 2>me tell you. The monarch butterfly was petitioned in twenty
<v Speaker 2>fourteen and it's earned you know, a lot of entities
<v Speaker 2>and text Dot among others saw that. It was like,
<v Speaker 2>oh my god, if they list the monarch. What are
<v Speaker 2>they going to do. They're gonna tell us we can't
<v Speaker 2>let people drive down the highway because they'll smash monarch
<v Speaker 2>butterflies or something. So they entered into a CCAA with us,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, basically it's they're creating monarch habitats on
<v Speaker 2>highway rights of way and they're doing this, and they're
<v Speaker 2>doing that and the other thing, and so now and
<v Speaker 2>there's supposed to be a decision on this in December.
<v Speaker 2>If we do list the monarch butterfly, TPWD is already covered,
<v Speaker 2>they can continue maintaining their highways, building new highways. And
<v Speaker 2>because they're covered, because they've you know, they've already done
<v Speaker 2>these conservation actions and we'll continue to do them. See
<v Speaker 2>what I'm saying. So you could you can use this
<v Speaker 2>to your benefit. And so it's you know, especially considering
<v Speaker 2>that there are other organizations out there that will you know,
<v Speaker 2>sooner or later, somebody is probably going to petition us
<v Speaker 2>to list Peyote. So better to be out ahead of
<v Speaker 2>the game, you know, get a CCAA now, you know.
<v Speaker 2>And here's the thing, you know, so this would probably
<v Speaker 2>be something I would work on while I'm here. And
<v Speaker 2>if this came to me. You know, I would really
<v Speaker 2>it would be my priority to prioritize priority. I would
<v Speaker 2>prioritize the conservation of a traditional religion right alongside with
<v Speaker 2>the conservation of the species. But I'm going to retire soon,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I keep pushing back retirement and some that
<v Speaker 2>follows me. And you know, once I retire, will they
<v Speaker 2>even replace me with a botanist or they just get
<v Speaker 2>some generic, generic wildlife biologist. I mean, you know, it's
<v Speaker 2>this agency higher had. You know, even thirty years ago
<v Speaker 2>when I started, they had very few botanists and half
<v Speaker 2>of those are gone. They don't as people move on,
<v Speaker 2>they don't fill the positions with botanists. So you know,
<v Speaker 2>and whoever comes after me, who would be working on
<v Speaker 2>something like this, would they have any sensitivity towards Native religions?
<v Speaker 2>You know. Uh, it's kind of a roll of the dice,
<v Speaker 2>you know. So you know, that's why I say this
<v Speaker 2>listing Lofophora could be good for the Native American Church.
<v Speaker 2>It could stimulate funding to support more conservation efforts, you know,
<v Speaker 2>who knows it might they might even create an entire
<v Speaker 2>new wildlife refuge, you know, to protect uh, you know,
<v Speaker 2>lands in the natural habitats so that you know, you
<v Speaker 2>would permanently protect the habitat. I mean, I'm yeah, it's
<v Speaker 2>kind of a pipe tream, but you know, it could
<v Speaker 2>go in that way, or it could it could go
<v Speaker 2>in the other way. It could, yeah, make things just
<v Speaker 2>more difficult.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it could handle so right, So it's it's nuts, man,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, I don't know what I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it's and it's yeah, it's one of like
<v Speaker 1>thirty species in Texas that I'm concerned with.
<v Speaker 3>It's like that are.
<v Speaker 1>Rare and at risk and all right, well, I'll let
<v Speaker 1>you go here, but let me ask one more questions.
<v Speaker 1>This is more of a philosophical thing, do you know,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, what's your opinion and a stay where there's
<v Speaker 1>so little regard among the general populous for this kind
<v Speaker 1>of thing, for the living skin of the state of
<v Speaker 1>the earth, whatever the plants, what do you think is
<v Speaker 1>important for just connecting people to land more, you know,
<v Speaker 1>especially say, you know, you know in a spot where
<v Speaker 1>say you grew up in the suburbs of Dallas, where
<v Speaker 1>everything's been destroyed. You just live in cul de sacs
<v Speaker 1>and lawns and all this shit. And you've got no
<v Speaker 1>chance to connect to these things. What do you think
<v Speaker 1>how do you think it's What methods do you think
<v Speaker 1>are there to connect people to this and not unlike
<v Speaker 1>some corny, wholesome way, but just to get them more
<v Speaker 1>aware of plants and biology in general. On how cool
<v Speaker 1>you know plants that evolve in a place can be
<v Speaker 1>native plants. It's the whole point of what, you know,
<v Speaker 1>why we look at native plants. They evolve in a place,
<v Speaker 1>they're specific to a place, They've evolved there on those soils,
<v Speaker 1>with those pollinators. What ways are there to get people
<v Speaker 1>to connect with that and start to give a shit?
<v Speaker 2>Do you think, Well, certainly, what you're doing is one way.
<v Speaker 2>You know, with your podcast, you're reaching a lot of people,
<v Speaker 2>and sometimes these are people, you know that wouldn't be
<v Speaker 2>paying attention to, you know, the documents that a federal
<v Speaker 2>agency produces. So yeah, I think I think that there
<v Speaker 2>is a general increasing awareness of of people and acceptance
<v Speaker 2>of the importance of native plant and animal conservation and
<v Speaker 2>you know, ecological protection in general. So I don't think
<v Speaker 2>there's any one answer. I think there's lots and lots
<v Speaker 2>of different answers, And I think that. You know, the
<v Speaker 2>traditional private landowners actually are very accepting of this concept.
<v Speaker 2>They take a lot of pride and their management of
<v Speaker 2>the land, even if they don't want to work with
<v Speaker 2>a government agency. Right. The problem is that more and
<v Speaker 2>more people today live isolated from nature. We live in cities,
<v Speaker 2>we drive, you know, disconnected, yeah, you know, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>we're living in an environment that's increasingly harsh, and we
<v Speaker 2>are enclosed in our air conditioned spaces day and night.
<v Speaker 2>You know, people keep their cars in an air conditioned
<v Speaker 2>garage so they don't even have to walk outside. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>people are sealed off and they don't know. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>they may accept the concept of environmental conservation but have
<v Speaker 2>no experience in nature and no, you know, really no awareness.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, that's that's also happening.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's what I think is that's what's tragic.
<v Speaker 2>Is this.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, it's it's it's part of our DNA to
<v Speaker 1>want to connect to this stuff, and separating people from
<v Speaker 1>it is is wild. Whether it's you know, because you've
<v Speaker 1>destroyed all the habitat, or laws have allowed for all
<v Speaker 1>the habit that to be destroyed without any crumbs preserved
<v Speaker 1>or whatever. I mean, there's just to have no awareness
<v Speaker 1>of what is real around you, and all that's around
<v Speaker 1>you is the BUCkies or the Chick fil A or
<v Speaker 1>the Walmart in the parking lot, and you drive here
<v Speaker 1>and you drive there and you're trapped in a car.
<v Speaker 1>There's like there's no room to breathe. Man, it kills
<v Speaker 1>people on the inside, whether they know it or not.
<v Speaker 1>And I think for me, you know, for me especially,
<v Speaker 1>this isn't just like, oh, I'm interested in conservation and
<v Speaker 1>this makes me feel good. It's like this, I need
<v Speaker 1>this stuff to survive, Like I fucking lose my mind.
<v Speaker 1>If I don't have it, I'll turn into an asshole.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what I'll do. I mean, this is
<v Speaker 1>my escape, and it's not really when you think of it,
<v Speaker 1>it's not even really an escape. This is the real world.
<v Speaker 3>The world that we've made.
<v Speaker 1>Is humans is not the real world. That's kind of
<v Speaker 1>this make believe shit. So I'm escaping back to what
<v Speaker 1>makes complete one hundred percent sense, you know, to what
<v Speaker 1>real you know, out of this like dark, increasingly dystopic
<v Speaker 1>world we've created. But it doesn't even need to be
<v Speaker 1>negative like that. For some people, it just feels good
<v Speaker 1>to be around and I think, you know, whether it's
<v Speaker 1>having a native plant garden, it's so much more than
<v Speaker 1>just gardening or being into or having a hobby where
<v Speaker 1>I go look at bugs or whatever. It's it's a
<v Speaker 1>connection to something much larger than myself. And it feels
<v Speaker 1>this philosophical void. So I hope more people get turned
<v Speaker 1>on to that and realize it's a lot, you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's not just this kind of like vanilla nerd status
<v Speaker 1>thing anymore. This is this is like a there's a
<v Speaker 1>deeper sense of spirituality and philosophy and lifestyle in all
<v Speaker 1>of this, you know.
<v Speaker 3>And it's just cool.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's I love being able to unlock mysteries of
<v Speaker 1>the land. And that's what a lot of these things are.
<v Speaker 1>These relationships between plants and certain pollinators, or plants and
<v Speaker 1>a certain soil type. That's that's a mystery. It's a
<v Speaker 1>mystery that I want to understand. Like I get to
<v Speaker 1>the habitat and I've got questions. I'm like, why does
<v Speaker 1>peranikia congest to just grow here? Why is it so restricted?
<v Speaker 1>What do the seeds look like? What disperses them? What
<v Speaker 1>is this substrate that it's on? I mean that one
<v Speaker 1>hundred times, over a thousand times over with so many
<v Speaker 1>different plant species, you know, and it's.
<v Speaker 2>Really well and you can have your experiences in nature
<v Speaker 2>like that, or alternatively, you can take some antidepressant medication, right.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, that's the problem with you know, modern society,
<v Speaker 2>is it. I Mean, my theory about it is just
<v Speaker 2>that we are leading lives that we were not designed
<v Speaker 2>for our bodies and our psyches, in our minds, you know,
<v Speaker 2>we come from you know, ten thousand generations of hunter
<v Speaker 2>gatherers who lived outside most of the time, and we're
<v Speaker 2>in tune with nature, and we're creating this increasingly artificial
<v Speaker 2>environment where there people have more and more you know,
<v Speaker 2>psychological issues because or or as you say, spiritual issues
<v Speaker 2>because we're dis connected. And so yeah, you can you
<v Speaker 2>can take some you know, anti depressants or or go,
<v Speaker 2>you know, visit a wildlife refuge or a national park. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>get about for a while.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, where they exist, thank god, you know, where where
<v Speaker 1>a few we're prior generations were smart enough to put
<v Speaker 1>them into place and make sure that they're accessible, you know.
<v Speaker 1>But it's what makes me really sad is how many
<v Speaker 1>people are suffering on the inside and taking antidepressants or
<v Speaker 1>doing whatever. And I'm not saying I'm not knocking anti
<v Speaker 1>depressents at all. Some people need them. Yeah, but what
<v Speaker 1>drives me nuts is that how many people are out
<v Speaker 1>there what's so sad and don't know that this is
<v Speaker 1>a possible option to that. Getting in touch with the
<v Speaker 1>living world around you, like we've been doing for tens
<v Speaker 1>of thousands of years is another option too. And don't
<v Speaker 1>know how disconnected they are or they grew up. You know,
<v Speaker 1>that's so tragic, man, that's crazy. Yeah, you know those
<v Speaker 1>are the people I want to hit with this stuff
<v Speaker 1>and be like, hey, look, come here, come sniff on this.
<v Speaker 1>This is good stuff, you know. Yeah, so well, thank
<v Speaker 1>you man.
<v Speaker 2>Chili pickin, Yeah yeah, go ahead, right.
<v Speaker 3>Right, and chili peckin. That's a cool one.
<v Speaker 2>Man.
<v Speaker 1>What's what's the biggest that's the native chili for anyone
<v Speaker 1>who's not from South Texas, what what is what's the
<v Speaker 1>biggest one of those you've ever seen? They can get
<v Speaker 1>kind of large.
<v Speaker 2>The biggest chili pikin, well probably like fingernail size.
<v Speaker 1>Well the plant, you know plants, like how tall the plant?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Oh gosh, yeah, I mean I've seen some that
<v Speaker 2>are tall as I am. That's not saying much, but
<v Speaker 2>you know, especially you know they it's kind of an
<v Speaker 2>understory shrub and so it likes to grow up sort
<v Speaker 2>of co mingled with other shrubs and can reach a
<v Speaker 2>good size.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's so cool.
<v Speaker 2>And the live several years, you know, they can. They're perennial,
<v Speaker 2>kind of short lived perennial.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, Chris, thank you so much for doing this.
<v Speaker 1>And I hope that, if anything, too, this conversation has
<v Speaker 1>inspired someone out there to start looking more closely at
<v Speaker 1>the rhizosphere and the microbiome, the soil biome, the microbial
<v Speaker 1>ecology is some of the soils out there, because in Texas,
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure there's a lot of undescribed species of fungi
<v Speaker 1>and bacteria out there. So someone needs to pull an
<v Speaker 1>Alan Rockefeller and get a PCR machine thermocycler and start
<v Speaker 1>sequencing organisms in the soils.
<v Speaker 3>So thank you so much for your time.
<v Speaker 1>Man, Is there anything anything, any last words you want
<v Speaker 1>to put out there before we cut the podcast off.
<v Speaker 2>We'll save those for the next one. And thank you
<v Speaker 2>so much for the opportunity to talk with you. And
<v Speaker 2>these are just you know, fascinating subjects and keep up
<v Speaker 2>the good work at you do.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, man, thank you for being down to share your
<v Speaker 1>knowledge and man, I appreciate the sh of you.
<v Speaker 3>So thanks a lot. Thank you sir.
<v Speaker 2>Great bye, take care bye,