 Hello. Welcome to session two of our workshop, discussing and understanding animal welfare challenges in research and education on wildlife, non-model species, and biodiversity. I'm Sharon Shriver, Senior Director of Programs at Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research, Primer, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance the highest ethical standards in research by providing support to the human and animal research oversight communities. I'll be the moderator for the session today. In part one of session two titled Review Laws, Regulations, and Permits Associated with Fish and Wildlife, our speakers will identify the diverse regulatory requirements unique to wildlife that exist at multiple levels, including international, national, state, and local, including native lands. The presentations in this study include Adam Ferguson from the Field Museum of Natural History, who will present Animal Welfare Challenges in Research and Education on Wildlife and Natural History Museum Perspective. Lori Baton from the National Park Service will present Challenges from the National Park Service Perspective, and Caleb Hickman, representing the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Office of Fisheries and Wildlife Management, will present Research on Tribal Lands, unique examples. I'll now turn the session over to our speakers. So thanks. I'd like to start by thanking the organizers of this workshop, very important workshop, in particular Dr. Bob Sykes for inviting me to give a talk today on the museum perspective related to regulations for animal welfare and wildlife versus laboratory animals. And I'd also like to thank Sharon, Caleb, Lori, and the rest of the crew for some really productive discussions about this. So before we begin I'd just like to provide a brief introduction. I am currently the Nagani collection manager of mammals at the Field Museum of Natural History here in Chicago. That job entails managing the more than 245,000 specimens of mammals, which range in size from pygmy mice to elephants with everything in between. And my time is split among care, access, and support of the collection at 80% and research at 20%. And just below there are some timelines of my career trajectory, finishing with my PhD in 2014 on skunks up through today. So from our training we're all aware that science starts with good questions. And this quote by the American novelist Thomas Berger that the art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge, I think aptly sums up, you know, the pursuit of knowledge through the scientific process. However, in reality, lots of logistical and real-world problems or phenomenon can structure either how those questions are asked or even which questions we can ask. So the reality of pursuing and developing such questions are often influenced by two major factors, some of which are knowledge and oftentimes are not. And that's regulations in fact can drive research, which is what we're here to talk about today. But at the same token, emotions can drive these regulations, which often impede or limit the scientific process, especially as it relates to museum science as I'm going to discuss today. So regulations can drive research in a number of ways by influencing which species to study, for example, studying invertebrates versus vertebrates, to not have to deal with IUCOOK regulations, study objectives and methods, whether you do domestic or international work, as well as in particular lethal versus non-lethal sampling. And in turn, emotions can drive these regulations. I'm going to argue and point outside that there's a taxonomic bias associated with how animals are treated across the board. There's also the context I think of scientific resentment, this idea that scientists do whatever they want and don't adhere to regulations and rules. The who cares factors, like why is this important? Why should we collect more perimiscous miniculatus or deer mouse, the most common mouse in the United States? And that ties into that, why do we still collect? And oftentimes, pursuing these questions, in my mind, are equivalent to the game of candy land where you're moving across the board, trying to achieve your objective. And along the way, you encounter various regulations that influence how you pursue that question or if you can even pursue that question. And then just a few of those are illustrated here, starting with obviously the most important of the ethical treatment and care and use of animals and research through the IUCOOK committees, such things as Animal Welfare Act or even international treaties, such as the Convention of Biological Diversity. Well, I'm excited today to present the museum perspective, because I think museums provide a unique relationship to the regulations that we're discussing in today's workshop. And I'm not going to get into the discussion about the ethics and morality of killing in the name of science. There's some great articles and philosophical discussions about that, but simply to point out that for museums and natural history museums, they equal specimens. And these specimens are invaluable, especially in the context of the growing mass extinction and the idea that we are losing species before we can even describe them. And natural history museums provide this expertise and the specimens for recording that taxonomic and biodiversity. In particular, next generation collections also facilitate studies of complex biological interactions. And this is in particular in regards to the holistic and extended specimens, which can facilitate novel and interdisciplinary studies. There are often several examples of modern studies impossible without fresh material. And finally, bats such as those illustrated here in this drawer, specimens such as the bats in this drawer represent time capsules for studying change over time that are pretty much not represented in any other form or fashion. And this can include everything from disease, pollutants, extinction and genetic diversity through time. And so the fact that museums depend upon specimens and active continued collecting of specimens is partially one of the reasons and ways that these regulations impact us in a unique manner. When it comes to permission for research, and in particular to collect, there tends to be a taxonomic bias associated with the types and particular mammals you are interested in studying. For example, sampling non-native rats, leafy would tend to invoke a mild to happy reaction as indicated in this emoji, whereas that for primates might lead to downright anger or frustration. And although there are biological realities to why certain animals can't be sampled in the same fashion, often these are emotional knee jerk reactions to the request. So regulations are often not only biased in terms of permission to collect, but they are taxonomically structured. And I have a case here provided in hand for the Centers for Disease Control to CDC and how certain mammals are regulated. And I apologize, I'm a mammologist, so nearly all of my examples for the rest of the talk come from mammals, although obviously there's a lot more different kinds of animal diversity in natural history museums. But for example, bats and non-human primates are regulated by the CDC through the Division of Special Agents and Toxins. In contrast, African rodents and certain small carnivores, such as the genetier and the family viperity, are regulated by the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine. Then you have other taxonomic groups, small mammals such as shrews, which are often collected given their cryptic nature. And there's no real clear distinction as to where these individuals fall under either of these agents when it comes to importation or dealing with them in research settings. Following the example of the CDC, I wanted to point out a situation where the law as written does not follow biological reality. This is the case of when you are required to have an import permit regarding a potential specimen being infectious or non-infectious. And as the law states, with the exception of bat or non-human primate specimens, a permit is not needed if it's rendered non-infectious, including the treatment of formalin. So under this legal definition, treating a bat and tissues as such with formalin would not render it non-infectious. In contrast, if you were to take a rodent and treat it in formalin under the way the law is written, since it's not included in the exception of a clause there, it would be considered rendered non-infectious, which does again make no biological sense from a tissue preservation fixation component. When it comes to mammals moving on from rodents and bats alone, it's somewhat of a choose-your-own-adventure in terms of the types of permits and different agencies under which you would need to work with to obtain permissions to study them and conduct research. For importing and exporting, obviously US Fish and Wildlife would be involved in all of these as well as animal care and use committees, but certain individuals or certain taxonomic groups such as bats and non-human primates include additional regulatory agencies and requirements through the CDC and CITES, or for marine mammals, the Marine Mammal Act involves NOAA as well as other groups, and for TENREx and Brushtail Possums, you have the application of USDA and Ungulus USDA as well. And the reality is these changes, sorry, the amount of regulations and or permissions, the ability to obtain permissions to study or collect these animals has rendered certain groups not to be collected by museum scientists ever even in the sense of salvage ranging from marine mammals, non-human primates, and ungulus. In an attempt to demonstrate how the different perspectives discussed in this section, whether that's the National Park Service, tribal communities, or natural history museums, have to navigate the regulatory path work that does mimic Candyland at times. We wanted to pick common animals and what it would take to actually set up a study or research questions related to those animals. In the case of the Natural History Museum, I focused on two Martin species, one that's domestically distributed in the US and North America, and another that is found internationally in our case, which is the Yellow Throated Martin. For both cases, you'll see text highlighted in red for those that are associated with this study species that might work to hinder research or pursue research questions related to that animal, whereas attributes of the animal or regulations related to set animal that facilitate research highlighted in green. So as previously mentioned, the taxonomic bias associated with small carnivores would come into play as potentially hindering research, as well as the fact that state regulations differ. Compare, for example, Wisconsin, where this species is treated as endangered with no harvest, to that of Montana, where it's treated as a furbearer with no limit during a certain season. This latter component also brings up the issue of different how regulations are applied to commercial interest versus scientific interest. The no limit in terms of how many animals can be lethally harvest from a commercial perspective, so long as you follow the standard guidelines, would be in stark contrast to a scientist applying to collect as many American farms as possible in that state. Therefore, the lethal study could hinder research on the species of this status. The fact that it's done within our own country makes it a little easier and that the species is not listed as protected under SIDES, ESA, or of conservation concern through the IUCN. Although similar to the American Martin in terms of the impacts of its taxonomic trophic status on studies, in particular lethal studies involving this animal, there are other obstacles and barriers with regulations, in particular one related to animal care and use committee, and that is obtaining and transporting appropriate drugs for euthanasia or anesthesia, which is often illegal given the illicit nature of these drugs in the U.S. and other countries. It also brings in the issue of specimen ownership, if you're collecting animals in another country, who owns that of the country itself, the museum that where it's permanently stored, the people in the community in which that animal is taken from, etc. And then you have other regulatory bodies, in this case SIDES, where the country of India has listed the species as SIDES-3, which means if you study it anywhere outside of India, it still requires a certificate of origin related to SIDES. It is IUCN's least concern, which again, although not a regulatory body, actually does influence permission to study these animals, as I found. So in relation to the animal care and use of animals in research, we're often discussing the 3Rs, right? The replace, reduce, and refine. And these are very good guidelines for following and setting up studies and sign up questions for these animals, but they often are difficult when terms apply to natural history museums. So for example, replace the use of animals whenever possible. There literally is no substitute for physical specimen in a natural history museum. So this replacement is almost impossible in terms of how we go about do that. Reduce the number of animals and get to a minimum. This is possible. You can control or limit the number of specimens you collect, but that also limits your ability to study such things as variation, or example in disease. If your prevalence is .01 and you're only allowed to collect five animals, your probability of detecting disease or certain parasites, if that's the objective of your study, becomes infinitesimally small. And oftentimes we find these limits are very subjective and not based on species biology. We often get that you're allowed to collect 10 per animal per species per site, which is not based in biological reality. And studies that have looked at the impacts of lethal collecting on these populations show that there are minimal or limited impacts on diversity measured in different ways for especially small mammals. So we need more studies and more limits based in biology and not on a gut feeling or knee jerk reaction to which animals can tolerate which levels of lethal control. Sorry, our lethal collecting and refine tests to cause animals the least amount of distress. So we aren't testing animals or testing certain things and animals typically in natural history museum settings, but guidelines do exist and are refined constantly with this in mind, including minimizing stress caused on animals trapped or collected in different settings. So in the context especially of a museum perspective, I think it's worth adding and science in general, a fourth are responsibly, which is the idea that we should responsibly represent research and regulations to match biological reality, which often isn't the case. That is assigned as we should use objective data driven reasons for regulating and setting these regulations not how emotion or personal opinion based on lack of strong data allows those regulations to be implemented or set up. So these include one of the most impressive things I found about animal care and use committees in the country of Australia is that all studies, whether ecological or museum based, require deposition of incidental mortalities into a scientific collection. So I think this is the elephant in the room. In many cases, the idea that ecology studies don't result in death, whereas natural history studies that are seeking voucher specimens are explicitly focused on lethal sampling of animals and the idea that animals are dying in these situations that are not required to be deposited in a natural history museum, I think is a big loss in terms of adding additional value to those specimens and reconciling the fact that non-lethal studies often result in incidental mortality. I think it's also important that we regulate the justifiable lethal take of animals based on biology and not emotions that we work to realign regulations aimed at scientists to match other sectors. So I mentioned earlier the bias between the private sector and scientific sector and not to pick on Montana in that example. For example, in Texas, the mountain lion, puma cone color is a non-game animal, which as long as you possess a valid hunting license could be killed without any limit and done with as you please. Whereas as a scientist to collect such animals, it would be nearly impossible. I think it's important that we work to re-examine restrictions not founded in these biological realities such as the formal infixation one, which is actually I think under the in the process of being re-evaluated by the CDC, but it takes months or years to change these laws once they're written. Finally, reinforce effective communication and dialogue between scientists and regulators. I think this workshop is a great start. We're not enemies, we're actually working together to achieve the best scientific practice for the animals and scientists involved. And also I think finally to recognize the fact that regulations can and do often hinder research and the types of questions we ask, which is a natural inhibitor or blockade to advancing scientific research and knowledge. I hope today's talk was informative and although we couldn't cover all the topics regarding regulations even alone for mammals, I tried to cover some of the central themes including the disconnect between biological reality and permissions obtaining or pertaining to certain regulations. And with that, I hope this generates some discussion and I'm happy to take any questions, comments, suggestions or advice. Good morning. I'm Laurie Baten, the attending veterinarian and chair of the Animal Care and Use Committee for the National Park Service. As part of the biological resources division, we use a one-health approach to protect and promote the health of wildlife, humans and the environment within our national parks. These efforts focus primarily on managing and researching free-ranging wildlife populations. I have over 20 years of experience working with a wide variety of species ranging from rodents, birds and small mammals scaling all the way up to moose and camels. I've worked for several federal and state agencies where the primary focus was on wildlife research and management projects. These experiences involve the use of wild caught or captive bred animals maintaining captivity as well as free-ranging wildlife. Most of my veterinary careers focus on disease ecology and wildlife species, but I also have been involved with development of wild animal research models and disease surveillance programs. The National Park Service interacts with wildlife in a variety of ways. Many of the national parks have long-term inventory and monitoring programs. Most parks use an integrated management approach for monitoring and controlling pest species. And biologists use a diverse set of management tools for monitoring and maintaining populations within various ecosystems. These are all in addition to conducting or hosting a wide variety of research projects. Park staff often work closely with surrounding state and tribal agencies on both management and research projects as well as the many collaborative efforts with academic institutions. Under the direction of my predecessors Margaret Wilde, John Bryan and Tracy Thompson, the NPSI Cook was established in 2010. The committee consists of 15 park staff with representation covering all 12 park regions. These staff are also chosen to provide a range of expertise for the species commonly involved with research projects across the service. In addition we have two community members and an administrative assistant. We are registered as a research institution with AFIS. The NPSI Cook reviews approximately 150 protocols and amendments per year with half of those received from academics with concurrent I Cook reviews. We follow the IRAT guidance and review all protocols that involve the handling of vertebrates. There are over 400 locations managed by the National Park Service. These include the large national parks as well as the smaller national monuments, preserves, historic sites, military parks or battlefields. This makes it challenging because each unit establishes their own risk tolerances and resource management criteria. It also makes it difficult to offer training opportunities, provide technical assistance or conduct post-approval monitoring. Conducting research within the National Parks requires park specific scientific collection permits. This process can be cumbersome as researchers are required to have a separate permit for conducting research within multiple park units. Since wildlife do not recognize park boundaries, many research efforts also need to be coordinated with surrounding state and tribal land agencies. These are all in addition to other federal requirements for endangered species regulations. The NPSI Cook is tasked with reviewing all proposed research projects within park boundaries and tries to work closely with permitting staff at each park to assure a compliance. In review of academic submitted protocols, the NPSI Cook may differ final animal welfare oversight to the concurrent institution, but often finds that modifications are needed to some activities to meet the higher standard of care expected to assure integrity of all the park's natural resources. We find that we often need to add conditions for approval to protect the welfare of non-target species and considerations for visitor and environmental impacts. We focus on seasonal impacts such as during breeding and rearing stages, the use of appropriate euthanasia methods, capture methods including appropriate trap checking intervals, as well as biosecurity measures. Another challenge we are facing is the recent change by journal editors to require ethical review statements with submissions of manuscripts. This is having impact on the park services ability to utilize data collected from the many long-term inventory and monitoring programs in scientific publications. The park services philosophies have varied since the first park was established in 1916, but current policies allow for the management of wildlife populations as long as the management efforts do not cause unacceptable impacts. Management may be necessary because populations are unbalanced within an ecosystem or efforts are needed to protect cultural resources, other flora or fauna species within the ecosystem, or provide protection for humans, property, or accommodate development. One of the most common questions that comes to the IACUC inbox is, does this proposed activity require an IACUC review? Discussions then ensue to determine whether the activity should be considered as a field study, a research project, or a management effort. As mentioned, the NPSIACUC reviews protocols when they involve any vertebrate species. In our initial assessments, we tend to consider any capture and handling as having the potential to materially alter behavior, so we suggest that protocols be submitted for review. I think most of us working in the wildlife field will agree that there is a poor distinction between research and management. This is complicated by the lack of definitions for management, harm, or assessment of materially altering behavior in the animal welfare act. The one I struggle with the most is defining what is considered momentary pain or suffering. This in my mind clearly varies when comparing the impacts of routine procedures for a lab animal species and trying to apply that to a free-ranging wildlife species. To help researchers, biologists, and academics who wish to work within the parks, the NPSIACUC developed a flow chart. This refined decision-making model shown here provides clear definitions and decision points to address the challenges of differing perspectives or interpretations. Using laws, policies, and guidance from the USDA, the criteria to distinguish research versus management activities is based upon the intent of the proposed work. To highlight the lack of differentiation between research and management, I offer the following two scenarios that we can then evaluate with the decision-making model. The first is a project proposed by a park biologist who is interested in re-establishing a population of martins that had been extirpated from the park. The plan is to release captive bred martins from a zoo into their national park using established release protocols. All of the animals will be fitted with collars to monitor survival. The second project is proposed by researchers from an academic institution who are interested in trapping and collaring a population of martins in another park. The intent for this study is to assess habitat use and reproduction in wilderness areas and compare that to martins living in high human traffic areas. In both instances, martins will be handled, collared, and followed for several years, both projects hoping to recapture animals when collar batteries are due to fail. Animals are essentially handled in the same manner. Using this decision-making model, we can break down these two projects to help determine if they should be considered as research or a management project. We start by asking, what is the intent of the project? Does it achieve a desired resource objective? If so, then it could be considered as animal management. These activities are typically proposed by wildlife biologists or natural resource managers, and these management efforts are usually based upon well-established scientific knowledge. Examples include population control or stewardship actions. Many parks take actions to decrease human health risks from contact with wildlife. These involve well-established management protocols for dealing with situations such as human-havituated large carnivores or removal of bats or rodents from high human traffic areas to decrease the risk of transmission of zoonotic diseases. These types of activities might also include animal handling and testing to monitor for disease emergence such as white-nose syndrome or chronic wasting disease surveillance programs in many of our parks. Where many of us wildlife professionals struggle is the fact that in accordance with the Animal Welfare Act, these management activities are not subject to review, regardless of whether animals are harmed or under growth stressful procedures. So considering these, the first Martin project might be considered management because it meets the desired resource objective of establishing an extirpated population. If the intent of the project is to answer a scientific question, it is considered to be research based upon our decision-making model. These types of projects will use a scientific study designed to test a hypothesis, compare or refine different techniques or treatments, or improve our understanding of a biological or ecological system. We would also review projects as research if they involve the use of animals to teach science or animal research procedures, as well as if the intent is to generate a peer review scientific publication. So considering these criteria, the second Martin project would likely be considered as a research project. But what if the biologists and the zoo staff in the first project want to generate a scientific publication using the captive release survival data? Then wouldn't both protocols require eye-cook review? There are many projects occurring in parks that are purely observational or use humane methods for lethal removal of specimens for archiving in park or museum collections. As Adam reviewed earlier, these types of activities are exempt from the Animal Welfare Act. We have other projects that we finally refer to as bioblitzes. These are inventory and monitoring projects that involve minimal handling. Animals are captured by minimally invasive methods, and handling does not cause harm or procedures do not materially alter animal behavior. These include projects such as inventorying of amphibian species in watersheds or bat species in caves. These activities are intended to be repeated at regular intervals to detect changes over time and often help to inform management decisions. As described in the recent AFIS Animal Care Tech Note, these activities would be considered as field studies. The MPS eye-cook has a specific submission form for these, and they are reviewed to confirm that activities meet the criteria for a field study. We then issue an approval memo indicating the protocol has been reviewed and deemed to be a field study. No further eye-cook oversight is required unless significant changes are made to animal and handling activities. Looking back at our Martin scenarios, either research group might choose to refine their animal monitoring procedures in future years and switch to the use of camera capture to collect reproduction data at den sites. As such, their monitoring efforts could now be considered as field studies. The current trend for biomedical research is the emphasis on non-lethal experimentations. Domestic species such as cats, dogs, rabbits, horses that are used in research projects are subsequently put up for adoption or can be used in multiple research projects over time. As such, the question is to whether or not animals brought into captivity should be returned to the wild as often brought up for discussion. Similar considerations could be applied to reintroductions with captive bred wildlife species. The Park Service does not have any dedicated research facilities but does have a few that temporarily house wild animals for various reasons. These include a captive breeding and release project as well as the California condo facilities where they treat condors with lead poisoning and release them back to the wild. Animals captured in parks and transported outside of the park for research purposes does occasionally happen and the IACUC does not recommend the return of these individuals but final decisions are made at the park level. When this does happen, strict biosecurity measures are outlined in written protocols. Animals are returned to their site of capture and seasonal considerations are made to assure there are no disruptions to breeding or rearing. The emphasis here is to maintain the park's natural resource stewardship where considerations are taken for the risk of disease transmission, possible alterations to genetic and ecological integrity and concerns for overall animal health as a result of being held in captivity. In closing, I have included here some reference materials that I always find helpful to share with individuals that are new to the review of wildlife protocols. The first is the citation for the decision-making model that should be in press shortly. The other article I would draw to everyone's attention is the 2013 paper by Kerser and others outlining a nine-hour theory for ethical considerations and assessing impacts to animal and environmental welfare. I regret that I may not be able to attend the workshop in person due to work duties but encourage anyone with questions to reach out to me by email. Thank you for your time and attention today. Osho and the God. Hello everybody. I'm Caleb Hickman and I'm the supervisory biologist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and today I'm going to talk a little bit about research on tribal lands. This largely comes from my experiences. I'm a tribal citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and I work for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina which is in the Southern Appalachians. I spent the last 20 years doing a variety of research projects on many different game non-game species I've managed and done my own research over the years and for the past eight years I've also included research with tribes and I've had a lot of experience and worked on projects with the other tribes as well. Here I provide some examples of the types of projects that we work on which range from inventory monitoring management and research of a variety of species ranging from fish to large mammals. Many other tribes have the same types of projects especially when it deals with regulatory processes or trying to understand their resources and harvesting potentials. It's noteworthy that we do all of this with just a few staff members and some tribes don't have any biological staff at all and still have to achieve the same goals. A lot of these projects if they have any sort of animal care and use is through partnerships with universities. So it's first important to recognize who tribes are. Tribes are recognized by the United States government and this is a government-to-government relationship. Currently there are 574 federally recognized Native American tribes in the United States. Many of these tribes have their own form of government. They may or may not have land but they all have this relationship with the United States and this is largely through the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. One important aspect about tribes is the natural resource management and how it's performed. Tribes are very diverse throughout our continent having different languages and cultures and in different ecosystems. An important aspect that's different from states is that tribes are recognized by the United States government as sovereign nations with independent governments themselves and also that land ownership can be a little bit different as well. The idea of ownership is probably foreign to many of the tribes but is important because these lands are protected largely by the tribes but also by the United States government and that what this results in is a large biodiversity that rivals public lands and some of the most some of the world's most protected lands. So tribes have a long history connected to these environments and it's valuable for researchers in managing and adapting to dramatic changes. So unlike states we have that special relationship with our federal government and we also share resources with state federal and private land holders as animals and the war waterways move across boundaries. Tribes also deal with large inequalities and these are largely between states and tribes in comparison such as internal funds. Tribes vary greatly in the amount of funding that they receive from revenue internally or from the federal government. Most tribes in average are at a 25 percent poverty rate that's three times that your Americans or states themselves. There's also poor representation in academia there's only 41 tribal colleges and very few of these have any sort of research focus. There's also limited research and management capacity with the tribes and nationally with only 0.7 percent of biologists that are tribal citizens and most tribes can only afford to pay a single biologist and a couple of technicians to do a variety of projects like I previously listed. They might work on all manner of fish and wildlife for economic development for harvesting and for regulatory processes that I'll get to in a minute. What this results in is that tribes are now reliant on partnerships or they risk mismanaging these resources. A tale of two Martins from the tribal perspective could include a couple of different areas and one is the federal protections or regulatory processes that come into play when an animal is protected or general research of a species on tribal lands for a variety of reasons might be a bit different from other places. Because of the protected land aspects that tribes have they're often tied to the BIA process. BIA is responsible for 68.5 million acres of trust land for which they protect for the tribes and 57 million acres of subsurface minerals. Tribes often work through the Bureau of Indian Affairs process but end up taking upon a lot of the work themselves to work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service for protecting species and this includes a lot of different normal federal processes that you might see on national park or national forest lands. The difference is the tribes have to live and grow an economy on these lands as well. So these can be difficult hurdles for different tribes to approach. So under section 7 of the Endangered Species Act there's a process at play. This largely will influence any federally recognized tribe that has protected lands of significant size or habitat diversity and this will result in the possibility where species may be listed under this ESA and there are different permitting process such as a 404 permit but these ESA guidelines are built to ensure that federal agencies act out programs for conservation of endangered species and tribes can be part of this as well. And this is called an interagency cooperation. It's a mechanism by which federal agencies ensure the actions they take including those that they fund such as protection of certain tribal lands or the management of those lands for the tribes. They don't jeopardize the existence of any listed species. Based on secretarial order 3206 it's important that tribes do not have a disproportionate burden based on the conservation of listed species. These federally listed species however do end up having a disproportionate burden on tribes compared to our state neighbors. It's obvious when people have trouble building a house or cutting a tree that might even fall in that house because they have to do surveys of these species before either of those could even take place. So how do we ensure that these burdens don't exist? One way to ensure that these burdens don't exist is through alleviating the burden through regulatory compliance processes that are laid out so that partners both federal tribal and researchers can work together to limit these burdens and this starts with obtaining proper funding which can be difficult but is possible through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. You can also hire specialists on these particular projects if capacity is minimal. There also needs to be input from tribal citizens and then a plan can be developed and these plans are also very important to be done with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and this is often considered a programmatic process. However these processes never have any sort of animal care and use even though there are studies that take place and potential threats to these animals. However if there are endangered species there has to be endangered species permits through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. So researchers may approach a tribe to work with a Martin for example or other species and they do this for a variety of reasons. The species may be important to science in some way and may only exist on tribal lands or the species may cross boundaries and it's important for researchers to study the organism on state, federal and tribal lands. Tribes hold a significant land base so including tribes in the research could be important but also tribes are often included in research these days through these new perspectives or perspectives new to science today which is a traditional ecological perspective of tribes. This topic has become a lot more interesting to folks recently and in 1993 Berks had come up with this table but it's really grown since this period and has become a topic that's interesting for many people. But to do work on tribal lands takes different kinds of permitting. It may not take animal care and use permitting but working with tribes and the people could include a significant process as well. So even though researchers can obtain permits and work with tribes on different species on tribal lands there can still be problems that arise and some of these cases I can list right here but it's a lot more extensive and it's different across different tribes but the western science can also be considered a settler colonial science to many tribes and that's because it's often invasive where people are just searching for grants it can be paternalistic in the way they approach the tribes or it can be extractive so the information that is gathered is never shared back with the tribe or it's helpful for the tribe at all. So how do you combat settler colonial processes in science when researchers work with tribes largely through the co-production of knowledge and what this is is a contribution of knowledge sources through a variety of of different stakeholders and this could be folks that that seem to think that the projects and working with tribes on an even footing is productive this is largely important especially if animal care and use is required or needed in research areas tribes become reliant on these partnerships most tribes can't afford having a animal care and use process in place however by working with universities or even federal partners we can institute more research but this does take away from the sovereignty. It's also good to point out that many tribes have their own processes it might not be in the animal care and use process the tribes are often approached by researchers and have their own processes like the institutional review board or IRB it could be through medical research but also through cultural resources from which many natural resources are are contributed to. Here is an example of just a simple description from the eastern band of Cherokee Indians there aren't many tribes that even have these but there are partners that do include this in the work so anytime people are interviewed or part of the process for your research on tribal lands an IRB is necessary and could help you in your research as well and finally I've listed a few references that might be of some help with that I hope you've enjoyed learning a little bit more about tribes and how it might relate to some of the work that you do thank you. Hello welcome to session two of our workshop discussing and understanding animal welfare challenges in research and education on wildlife non-model species and biodiversity. I'm Sharon Shriver senior director of programs at public responsibility in medicine and research primer a non-profit whose mission is to advance the highest ethical standards in research by providing support to the human and animal research oversight communities I'll be the moderator for this session today in part two of session two we'll hear three speakers present case studies and examples related to the laws regulations and permits associated with fish and wildlife which we heard about in part one our speakers will discuss the realities of field research with respect to issues such as the diversity of species and types of studies acquisition of animals methods of capture and non-target species the focus of this session is to establish the scope of diversity for wildlife as compared to work with domesticated species and labs in terms of spatial scale number and diversity of animals and types and goals of animal activities the presentations in this session include Lisa Tau from the University of California at Davis who will present unique challenges when working with free-ranging wildlife hummingbirds is a case study Larry Heaney from the Field Museum of Natural History will present conducting biodiversity surveys in a new age of wildlife discovery and Heather Bateman from Arizona State University will present field research involving reptiles and amphibians remote study sites and undergraduate students I'll now turn the session over to our speakers good morning my name is Lisa tell and for my presentation today I will be highlighting challenges that researchers face when working with wildlife compared to traditional laboratory animals before we get started I was asked to provide a little bit of background about myself I'm a veterinarian and a faculty member with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine historically I was trained clinically at the National Zoological Park and I've been very fortunate to have worked with wildlife for the past 32 years I'm boarded in avian and zoological medicine and oversee the UC Davis hummingbird health and conservation program I would say that working with wildlife has been a really wonderful experience however there are unique challenges given the substantial diversity in anatomy behavior and physiology you also find yourself working in an uncontrolled environment and investigators find themselves having to balance the needs of the animals and the investigative team while still trying to accomplish research objectives when working with free-ranging wildlife I find that it really pays to plan ahead you have to obtain permits and get institutional animal care and use approval before you can even start your work being in genitive is also helpful because there are fewer commercial products for wildlife compared to laboratory animals since wildlife and the working environment can be unpredictable meticulous planning is essential for protecting animal and human health lastly if you're going to work with wildlife I think that you have to be mentally committed to spending more time on tasks such as data reporting developing field protocols and planning for emergency situations being a veterinarian who's worked with birds my whole career I realized that there's a really steep learning curve when working with wildlife so I authored this monograph which is published by the Texas Tech University and I hope that it helps people navigate the process and highlights the importance of having a welfare conscious approach when working with wildlife even though it is hummingbird specific it includes permit and general concepts that might be helpful for other animal species during today's presentation I will use hummingbirds as a case study to highlight some of the challenges that investigators might encounter when working with wildlife so before any research can start one essential task is obtaining permits and institutional animal care and use approval depending on the type of work and the location where the work will be done multiple federal permits may be necessary and you also might need state permits and land use permits given that the I cook committee members might not be as familiar with wildlife species getting institutional approval might require educating committee members and that might possibly delay the process therefore timing can be a challenge to ensure that all permits and protocols are in place when the work is supposed to start one dilemma that seems to occur is that often I cook might want to see approved permits and the permitting agency might want I cook approval before they'll issue the permits therefore the investigator has to balance those two demands this is a portion of a table that's published in the monograph that shows details of what is and what isn't covered by different agencies issuing permits it is really important for investigators to understand the conditions of their permits so that they can ensure that all activities they are performing are authorized for example holding a hummingbird in captivity for less than 24 hours for research purposes is only covered by my us fish and wildlife service permit my bird banding laboratory permit allows me to hold a hummingbird in captivity for less than 24 hours only to ensure its safety and well-being but not for collecting research samples such as urine and feces these distinction can be very nuanced and complicated but they're really important for researchers to understand so that they can be compliant with the various rules and regulations when working with free ranging wildlife there's a broad array of situations and special considerations and you really don't have the advantage of commercial products a controlled environment and standardized protocols that exist with traditional laboratory animal species the items on this list are just a few things that make working with free ranging wildlife a bit more challenging and I'll be covering these today but the list is definitely way more extensive and throughout this workshop I'm sure that you'll hear a plethora of challenges the training necessary to properly handle wildlife is often extensive people on the research team need to be proficient at proper restraint techniques because there might be safety issues for both the animal and the handler wildlife can range from venomous snake to a large vertebrate therefore special training is necessary the diagram on the left side of this slide shows the anatomy of a hummingbird which is fundamental to understand so that a bird can be handled safely since birds don't have a diaphragm the keel has to be able to freely move up and down so that air can move in and out of the respiratory tract these images show a method for restraining a hummingbird for eye examination as you can appreciate with this case there was trial and error and ingenuity to really figure out a system that would work and be good for both the bird and the investigator this restrained block was designed by a colleague it's a foam block that has a cutout central compartment that is used to contain the bird's body dual lock strips help keep the bird secure now this looks like a relatively simple design but there are some important nuances one of them is that the foam can't be too firm or it inhibits the bird from being able to breathe but it also can't be too soft or the bird weiggles out of their strained block and escapes when working with some species of free-ranging wildlife you have to determine the age sex and species of the animal whereas with laboratory animals this information is commonly known an example of this is with hummingbirds it's easy to identify the age sex and species of adult males but it takes specialized training to be proficient at identifying the species of adult females and immature males and females the image on the left shows a close examination of the beak and what we're looking for are corrugations which help age the bird the image on the right shows the tail feathers and these can be used to identify the sex and species of a hummingbird for research studies animals are often tagged or marked to identify individual animals one consideration with free-ranging wildlife is to really think about how marking or tagging will impact the bird and balance that with the research objectives these images show the bands that i used to identify individual hummingbirds as you can see these bands are extremely small but that really isn't surprising given the size of the hummingbirds that i work with which range from anywhere from about two and a half to four and a half grams and body weight the image on the top left shows a band holder and this was made by a colleague of mine it helps to contain the bands so that i don't lose them when i'm working in the field the bands are secured on the rods using large earring backs and it's the silver earring back that indicates the end where the band which will be used next is located the image on the bottom right is of a passive integrated transponder i use these pit tags to identify individual birds and track their presence at research sites in order to reliably get tag weeds i designed a system that requires the bird to fly through the antenna to get access to the hummingbird feeder what's a hummingbird is inside the enclosure the birds pit tag is read every 10 seconds then the top of the enclosure is open and that allows the hummingbird to exit since hummingbirds tend to fly to the highest point the next slide will be a video of this system in action my intent of showing these methods is to demonstrate that a simple task of animal identification might require extra efforts when working with wildlife blood sampling is routine in a laboratory animal facility but i think it requires special considerations when working with free-ranging wildlife if possible and if it doesn't disadvantage the animal i will mark individual animals so that they are not resampled inadvertently i also tend to reduce the traditional blood sampling volume since the animal's health status is unknown or they might lose a little bit more blood than expected and i want to maximize their fitness when they are released the images on this slide are histologic sections of birds cut toenails cutting a bird's toenail is one method for obtaining blood samples but it's important to know that they have bones in their toenails and you don't want to amputate the bone when taking a blood sample therefore as a best practice when i'm working with humming birds i make sure to bleed them when it's nice and warm so that they have good blood flow to their toes and i only cut the tip of the toenail so that i ensure that i'm not cutting at the level of the bone taking feathers from birds is another common sampling technique since free-ranging wildlife are not in temperature controlled rooms it's important to ensure proper thermal regulation therefore when i take feather samples from humming birds i minimize the number of feathers that i take this does limit the number of feathers that i sample but the bird's welfare is more important when i take feather samples from humming birds i carefully sample small numbers of feathers from different areas and i make sure that there is never any exposed skin this is really important since humming birds don't have any down feathers when sampling tail feathers i'm mindful of the fact that for some species of birds the males tail feathers make chirping sounds that attract females during the breeding season sampling primary feathers is extremely rare and they should never be sampled when the humming birds are migrating when working in the field with free-ranging wildlife another added responsibility is to ensure the safety of the research team i feel like you have to constantly watch for weather conditions and in california we also have to be aware of active fires mapping out the most efficient route to the nearest hospital could really save someone's life in my case when we're working in the field the research team commonly encounters bees since we can't administer epinephrine to someone unless they have a prescription for an epi-pen i advise people to bring fast-acting diphenhydramine even if they don't have a known allergy to bee stings also when working in areas with rattlesnakes i make sure to know which hospitals have anti-venom emergency protocols are really central when working in the field also if you're able to have team members take specialized training for emergency support measures that can be really helpful the last topic i'm going to cover is challenges of euthanizing animals in the field if an overdose of inhaled anesthetic is going to be used you have to be very careful to not have any fluid leaks so you don't endanger the person driving and transporting the anesthetic i personally prefer not to have controlled substances in the field so i have this mini co2 chamber available that i designed for hummingbirds in case they are permanently injured and have to be euthanized fortunately i've never had to use it but it has a small co2 cartridge that is connected to a regulator to help control the release of the co2 and an outlet hole at the top any animal that is euthanized in the field with an overdose of drugs should be removed to avoid secondary poisoning of another animal these are the take home messages from my presentation today first of all working with free ranging wildlife takes a strong commitment and researchers will want to be ready to face the challenges often due to limited fundamental information or the lack of commercial products working with wildlife requires thinking outside the box definitely being organized and having good time management skills in order to be successful in achieving research goals and also being able to spend grant money within the funding period finally i have found that working with free ranging wildlife is a privilege and can be extremely rewarding in closing i'd like to thank the workshop organizers for taking the initiative to tackle this important topic the video on the next slide is one of my favorites and represents the ultimate goal for our research team which is to successfully release a hummingbird thank you very much for attending today's session hello everyone my name is larry haney i'm the nagani curator of mammals at the field museum of natural history in chicago i'm going to talk today about some issues that come up with conducting biodiversity surveys in the current age of discovery of new species of mammals in particular the issues are are broadly applicable though uh to many many other groups of organisms there is a widespread perception that mammals as a group are pretty well known at this point so we know how many species there are we know approximately where they live and we've got basic information on their ecology some of them are well known some less less well known but we know you know we know what's out there well research that's been done over the over recent years has shown that that is actually not the case a recent review by bergen et al shown here has shown the pattern of the number of recognized species of mammals beginning in 1750 and going up through the 2010s and what you can see is that although the numbers have fluctuated over the years and the number of species that were described in the early 1900s formed the greatest peak the number of species being recognized now the number of increases in the numbers of species of mammals that we recognize is going up steadily in the 2010s the estimate is that there were approximately 418 species added to the list that had not been there previously the some of these are the result of detailed studies of things that had been previously recognized as subspecies for example but at least half of these are the result of brand new discoveries of mammals that we had not known existed previously the result of this is that the number of species of mammals that have been recognized continues to increase steadily the number currently is somewhere around 6500 estimates are that we probably will hit at least 8000 before this this number of plateaus out and there are suggestions that it may go up as high as 10,000 we have a very long way to go before we really understand mammalian diversity sufficiently well rather than talk about this phenomenon on a global basis i'm going to give an example from research that i and my collaborators have done in the philippines map on the left shows the location of the philippines in asia it does lie within the tropics like a lot of tropical countries there's been a tremendous amount of destruction of the original habitat throughout the country this map shows some information about that in 1900 it's estimated that 70 percent of the country was covered by old growth rainforest of some type plus some additional second growth by 1992 less than 8 percent of the original old growth was still present plus roughly 12 second growth since then there's been a small decline in that little bit of remaining old growth to about six percent but the amount of second growth has actually increased to about 18 percent loss of habitat from agricultural expansion and from logging activities often in in rather steep mountainous areas has had a devastating impact tremendous amounts of erosion and periodic floods that have a tremendous negative economic and social impact on the country now a bit about some of the mammals that we study there the first group that i want to mention are ones that are known as cloud rats because they most of the species live at high elevations in cloud forest these animals range in body size from the species that's down in the bottom right hand corner at about six pounds to the little bitty one that's in the corner on the far left side upper corner that weigh only about 18 grams these animals are sometimes described as being the philippine equivalent in some respects of the lemurs of madagascar there are boreal animals that feed only on plant material the second group that i want to mention are the ones that we refer to as earthworm mice these are animals that live on the surface of the ground they feed mostly on invertebrates of various sorts most of the species particularly enjoy eating earthworms this is a morphologically very diverse set of animals ranging less in body size than the cloud rats but much more diverse in their foraging ecology some of them are burrowers others skitter around on the surface of the ground and so on we know that the common ancestors of each of these two groups arrived in the philippines a long time ago in each case these in these entire branches on the tree of life occur only within the oceanic portions of the philippines in the case of the cloud rats their common ancestor we estimate arrived 14 or 15 million years ago and have been diversifying within the philippines mostly within luzon island ever since in the case of the earthworm mice again it's an entire branch on the tree of life that occurs nowhere else in the world not even elsewhere in southeast asia most of them are on luzon island their common ancestor arrived about eight million years ago and they've been evolving and diversifying there ever since so where does the information come from that i just presented to you about the diversity of these organisms well in the year 2000 my collaborators and i compiled information on the mammals known from luzon island which is the largest island in the philippines at that time we knew of 28 species of native non-flying mammals so this excludes bats they fly there somewhat different patterns of diversity and distribution 28 species of those 20 species occur nowhere else in the world not even elsewhere in the philippines this map shows the locations of the species that are that were not widespread throughout the island what you can see is that there are a number of mountainous regions that have locally endemic species of mammals one of the immediate questions that we asked was why why are there not more of them why are there some places where we know of no endemic species of mammals when we looked at the data the answer became immediately obvious literally no one had gone to look so my collaborators and I began a program of of comprehensive biological survey concentrated particularly in the areas where there had been no mammal biodiversity surveys done previously where we simply had no information about what lived there the map on the left shows the locations where we conducted our surveys this continued over the period from 2000 to 2012 accumulating a total of 37 team months in the field collecting specimens collecting vouchers specimens for our taxonomic studies that allowed us then to document the extent and habitat use and so on for the animals in these areas the results of that that field-based biological inventory was even more dramatic than we expected at the outset again here's that same map from what we knew in the year 2000 and what we know now you can see that the number of species of native mammals living on Luzon Island doubled as a result of this 28 previously unknown species of mammals discovered in the course of this project 93 percent of those species occur nowhere else in the world not even elsewhere in the Philippines these findings also has some significant impacts on conservation of of this wonderful set of animals in a country where where habitat destruction environmental degradation is a is a very serious problem one of the things that we've learned is that people get very very excited when they're told that there is something that is absolutely unique that occurs in their backyard the media in the Philippines really love hearing about this kind of thing as part of our efforts to promote conservation in each of the areas where we've worked we have produced posters showing the animals to engage people further since often the people who live in towns have not seen these things themselves we print up anywhere from 200 to a thousand copies of these posters and distribute them to conservation organizations schools government agencies basically anybody who might possibly be interested this project of course has been conducted in in collaboration with people from many many organizations within the Philippines universities museums conservation organizations and government agencies in particular when information is compiled then by the national government for their national red data lists much of the information that goes into those those efforts about mammals comes from the work that our collaborative research group has produced when it comes time to produce strategies and action plans for protected areas of course the kind of information that we've gathered that I've shown you about centers of endemism is critically important for all of the planning that takes place another area of in which this work has had an impact on conservation has has pertained to specific national parks and the development of new national parks we can divide this up into three different categories first areas where we discover large numbers of species of mammals that are previously unknown that are confined to a particular area is it has a considerable impact when we go into a government office particularly the ones in Manila that make decisions about protected areas and say there's a place that has more species of endemic mammals than most countries in Europe and it's just one mountain range we suggest that you might want to consider having a national park there the response very often has been that sounds like a good idea so the first five that are listed here are places where our discoveries of of new species of mammals help to kick off this process now of course this is a more complex matter than this there are lots of people who get involved get involved lots of different issues but the discoveries of these mammals actually has had a significant impact there are others substantial number of others where that had already been declared but a fair number of these were paper parks that were largely being ignored the discovery of these new species helped to push them to a much higher level of attention and finally on the right there's another set of species of areas where we've documented the shown number of new species of mammals that are under consideration for being declared as protected areas so at this point I hope that you see that there is some real value to doing this kind of research I want to mention now very briefly some of the challenges to actually carrying this out I think that probably for many of you some of the issues have already become apparent let me give one example at this point and that has to do with the kinds of questions that are typically posed by an institutional animal care and use committee so in this case they typically will ask some version of what species will be the target of your research how many do you propose to collect and how abundant are they typically in the area where you're going to be working well in this case by definition we do not know what species we will encounter the primary purpose of the research is to find out what's there to discover new species and to obtain the first information on distribution evolutionary history and the ecology of these animals that will allow that kind of question to be answered in the future once we leave the united states and arrive in another country we of course are absolutely obligated to follow their legal requirements and you know much of the time that that is their requirements are very consistent with those in the united states but not always I can give you an example that's a bit extreme but I think carries the point well quite a few years ago I was very strongly recommended to use a euthanasia drug to kill any animals that we were going to keep as voucher specimens for our taxonomic and anatomical studies if I had used that euthanasia drug if I had it in my possession I would have been immediately subject to arrest and imprisonment other kinds of things can come up to cultural practices in the tribal areas where we've worked out of course absolutely must be respected and sometimes that can require some some flexibility we've worked in some places where the local people have said yes you're you're quite welcome here we're happy to have you but you must spend the night in the village you may not go out into the forest at night that requires some flexibility on our part of when we check the traps that we have placed out in the forest we can't necessarily do it on a a schedule that one might follow elsewhere okay to wrap this up 40 to 50 previously unknown species of mammals are discovered around the world each year and those numbers are increasing steadily there is every reason to think that during the 2020s 500 or more species of mammals that are that were previously unknown will be formally described the information that we gather as a result of the discovery of those animals and their formal descriptions and the patterns of diversity and ecology that comes from those studies is absolutely essential to promoting successful conservation we need that information one of the one of the greatest requirements in order to have this research proceed is a certain level of flexibility in the in the the regulations that are are in place while simultaneously maintaining high standards for animal care and use I think that the this final topic is one that's going to be discussed at some length during the much of this this workshop thanks for your attention look forward to talking with you all hello my name is Heather Bateman I'm an associate professor from Arizona State University so today I'm going to draw on examples from several different research agendas our lab focuses on applied research and so we're often relating wildlife such as amphibians and reptiles to management actions such as controlling non-native plants or also relating that to the natural resource values of say wild and scenic streams and working in river systems means that we work across different jurisdictions for example one project looking at bio control and how that changed the structure of habitat and how reptiles and amphibians responded to that occurred along the Virgin River and so we had scientific collecting permits from three states in the west and two federal entities one was a national park one is Bureau of Land Management and then on top of that we also have our institution animal care and use protocols to follow as well so it can be complicated when you're working across different boundaries we have a project that's long-term in nature and this is a mark recapture project we've collected 12 years of data on that so I'll be giving you some examples from these this is just a brief overview of some of our life trapping methods where we do mark recapture research and so the setup that you see here is the classic drift fence array and there's several methods here so the drift fence is intercepting animals as they're moving across the landscape and directing them into a trap and so in the central area there's a pitfall trap which is just a five gallon bucket set at either end of the drift fence along the fence are funnel traps and so this method for amphibians and reptiles in the southwest this is a good method for catching things like lizards and smaller snakes and some anurans it's not great for large-bodied snakes or even really big lizards like chakwalas and desert iguanas a lot of times they could still be able to escape say the pit the pitfall traps and so this equipment is not fancy and it's not anything you can buy on amazon so you have to build it in place which means you have to carry the gear out there and part of the protocol is once these traps are in place and they are in the open position animals fall in and then we check the traps every 24 hours and that's part of our protocol once we capture an animal we measure it identify it and give it a unique mark and we have made refinements to our methods over time as I mentioned some of our projects are over a decade long and the state of knowledge can change in animal handling and understanding of maybe vertebrate pain for example so the methods that we use to mark lizards is toe clipping and we've chosen this method there's a variety of methods that researchers can use to mark animals lots of considerations in terms of pairing the method to the research question we've chose to have marks that are permanent because we go back to the same location year after year and we want to track individuals over time and we also catch individuals of all different ages so for example when we catch hatchling lizards that are a quarter of a gram you couldn't use something like a pit tag for example and some of the refinements that we've made kind of the motto of iacook is reduce refine replace and so we have made modifications to our methods we've used lidocaine for for pain during toe clipping and we've also made decisions to not mark all taxa one example that I wanted to give about a refinement was a way to reduce predation in traps and the picture you see here at the zebra tail lizard that is a PVC pipe that acts as a refuge or a hide when you get more than one animal in the trap especially if one of them is a mammal lizards are often on the receiving receiving end of a predation event and so having some way for animals to space themselves is really helpful and lizards use this hide so I think it also helps reduce stress as well but the decision that we made to use the PVC pipe happened during a field season so we sort of had to make this decision on the fly we're communicating with our iacook community committee that hey we're having some predation events we're going to try a few things to see if it works so we were able to have before and after data to say yeah this really does help and so now this is part of our standard method but communication was was really helpful and again needing to be able to make refinements during the field season also was helpful examples here are unexpected situations that arise when doing fieldwork and the first example is wildland fire so we had a project on the San Pedro and our field technician was getting ready to deploy acoustic loggers to record toads at night and you know the field site is on fire so terrifying it's important to keep everybody safe we have standard operating procedures that include a list of emergency phone numbers so that folks can call wildland fire and report that we weren't able to obviously the next day go in to our study sites and check trap arrays because they were now burning so we were able to communicate with the iacook hey there's going to be a situation where we're not able to follow our protocol which means we can't check traps in a 24-hour period another example is like a road closure we often work in in pretty rural areas and there's a situation where we were driving out to check sites and the county was replacing a cattle guard for three days and you know they didn't know about us we didn't know this was happening and so again had to communicate with iacook and say hey we're we're not able to gain access to our sites these are these are fairly rare there's been just a few occasions where we haven't been able to check in a 24-hour period and I just can't stress enough having good communication with your iacook because sometimes the unexpected does happen we can have record heat we can have record rain the second example is a pitfall trap with several sonoran desert toads and this happened this last summer and the situation was we had really record rainfall during the summer and so we had a lot of recruitment of toads and then they started moving around on humid nights and so this is from our long-term trapping data and so after 12 years you know the most toads that we'd seen in that entire time was eight and then we go out over a three-day period and we encounter close to 80 so again we were communicating with our iacook committee because we did have some mortality of toads they were desiccating in the traps so we had to make some decisions that day to get sponges and and add little tubs with water so that toads weren't desiccating in the field but you know that was some back and forth with with iacook about that our lab has both undergraduate and graduate students that work together and so working with undergraduate students is really rewarding and also requires some consideration so for undergraduates that are working in the lab and doing fieldwork and maybe having a summer technician position this might be the first time students have had a job in the field or as a technician or worked outside and so students come often without much experience but a whole lot of enthusiasm and we also talk about things like social media and good practices if we're working with particularly rare or threatened and endangered species we want to protect that location and we also want to make known that our work is also under permit. I often encourage undergraduate students that are working on our projects to start thinking of maybe their own inquiries thinking about some questions that they might be interested in and data that they could collect while they're working on on projects for example as a summer technician. I teach applied herpetology and I carry an iacook protocol for class activities and this allows students to handle animals during field trips and also on projects and these experiences are as we mentioned are important for giving that hands-on experience to students that often sparks an enthusiasm for nature. We participate on field trips with wildlife professionals and so that allows students to visualize career paths that maybe they didn't know of before taking the class. Field trips are looking a little bit different during the COVID pandemic. We've been able to continue doing field trips mostly day trips or some evening trips. We can keep folks distance in the field and we mask up when we're in close conditions so that has added another element of keeping everybody safe and thinking of making sure we have places for folks to be able to wash their hands and just access to sanitation when we're in the field. I will say that after sort of these lockdown measures that many of us experienced being able to come together and be outside and engage in a field trip has been really a wonderful experience. Everybody was feeling sort of isolated and this was a nice way to keep people safe and still engaging in the content. When working with students not only do we have permits for animal handling but we also have safety protocols to keep people safe in the field and we have standard operating procedures that outlines some of that. So when running things like field trips I'm becoming more and more explicit about what students should expect in the field and that's because our population at Arizona State University mostly comes from Phoenix and the surrounding areas. So students don't necessarily come from a background where they've been hiking and camping before. These might be very new experiences to them. So we include things like a checklist, what type of gear to bring, what kind of food to bring, what's the toilet situation when you get on site and there's lots of great YouTubes and links out there to talk about sanitation in the field. So I include that information. Students tend to not have the gear they need to be safe in the field. So we've been thinking about how can we make sure that students have that access and we talk about having field PPE. So students are familiar with this term but we also need to wear protective clothing to protect us from the sun, thorny plants, venomous reptiles, etc. And so one thing we're trying this year we haven't done it yet but I'm sort of excited about it is hosting a field fashion show. I've seen other programs do this as well. So you recruit students that have these experiences to sort of model this is what we wear in the field to stay safe and also where would you get this type of gear? So gear can be very expensive, very technical, but not all of it needs to be bought at high in outdoor stores. There could be a lot of shopping done at Goodwill, for example. And so talking about that, also talking about how to prepare meals and types of food to carry when you're going to be away from the car and camp all day long. So maybe having something that requires refrigeration isn't the best idea. What type of water bottle should students take, etc. And part of this field fashion show we're going to do a gear drive. For example, this year we've been able to gather gear from our own collection that's used and work with Arizona Game and Fish donated us several backpacks for students to carry. And so we're going to talk about this to make sure that students have the gear that they have that access to be able to participate and enjoy these field trips. Along the lines of equity and inclusion in a field environment, I've listed several resources here for folks to follow up on. But we know that these authentic experiences and these hand-on experiences benefit students, especially students from underrepresented groups. So these activities are helpful for bringing in diverse groups into the sciences. And fieldwork can put, it's important to realize that some individuals might be harassed in certain settings. And being in a field might put people into uncomfortable positions or dangerous positions. Working across private land and being threatened in that regard. Or working in an urban setting. I often work in urban ecology as well in Phoenix. And we want to make sure that our students and technicians and mentees are safe. And so that means maybe working in teams. So there's multiple people together. And also thinking about how to have individuals in official looking attire so that they avoid being harassed and having the police called on them. And it's very important for supervisors to do the homework and to educate themselves and learn about the risks of negative field environments. So here's just a list of some recent publications that talk about making science more equitable. And so I found it to be a pretty helpful literature here. Thank you for your time today. I really enjoyed putting this presentation together for the National Academies to share some of the experiences that I've had over the past 15 years or so working with reptiles and amphibians in remote areas. And especially working with undergraduate students. I'm pretty passionate about mentoring. And it's really one of the great joys, the many joys of being a wildlife ecologist is also working with people. And so thank you so much for the invitation and thank you for your interest.