HM: To start, can you tell us who you are, what you do, and a brief background of your time with herps?
MC: Like many, my fascination with herps started at a very young age. I grew up in the Mojave Desert, and there was a lot of wildlife just naturally in my backyard so chasing lizards and snakes was just natural to the area. I do recall at 6 years old playing in a pee-wee soccer game and it was my turn to be the goalie. Instead of defending my position, I noticed a large coachwhip in the distance. I ran off to catch the snake and the other team scored, so I was never again allowed to be goalie. My mom said it was a chore to get me to want to read in elementary school, but I couldn’t get enough of the herp books, so she’d take me weekly to the library to rent the same few books over and over again, including the usual suspects like the Audubon reptile and amphibian field guide, wright and wright, and a few of the kids books on king cobras and yellow bellied sea snakes. Seeing the fascination encouraged me to learn they really supported me taking an interest in herps, and well the rest is history I guess.
Today I am a Natural History filmmaker and television producer, having filmed, produced, and created programming for National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, Netflix and Animal Planet to name a few. In 2018 I founded Pelamis Productions, which does a variety of production work including two seasons of Beyond The Glass for Zilla Pet Products. Outside of work I am an active board member with the International Herpetological Symposium, the longest running non-profit reptile and amphibian symposium in the United States, co-founder and President of Herpetological Conservation International, occasional author, occasional herpetology contributor. I’m grateful to those who partner with me in said dablings, because to be blunt I feel vastly under qualified, but I’ve surrounded myself with good people to help keep that ball moving forward. Most recently I published an observation in the journal Biawak on Varanus salvator behavior observed while filming Dead By Dawn, and on that one Robert Mendyk was a huge help.
I have four other publications in the works ranging from some hefty taxonomic work to general observations, and again, absolutely zero of those would be possible if it were not for the folks I am working with on them. I am also dabbling in some writing right now, with my current book contributions being a massive work on aquatic snakes with John Murphy. John is an aquatic snake legend, so it’s a pretty big honor for a wet snake nerd such as myself to have any part in it. And when I am not doing any or all of that at the same time, I love field herping around the world. On that note, I have a snake hook line with Get Hooked hopefully coming out soon, inspired by my personal preferences for a luggage sized hook. I also maintain a small menagerie of oddball herps (with aquatic species being my specialty), and enjoy visiting my 30 acres in Costa Rica where I hope to someday develop a sustainable eco-lodge catering to naturalists of all sorts.
HM: What is Herpetological Conservation International and how did you get involved?
MC: Herpetological Conservation International is probably best described as a grass roots reptile and amphibian conservation effort, which is at the moment fueled entirely by the herp community. I had originally planned to pursue academia as a career and through a random string of events found myself in TV instead. TV paid well, but that longing to do something impactful in the conservation space was still there. And I wasn’t alone, my friends Chip, Bruce and Devon, and wife Rebecca all shared similar aspirations. It was something we’d all talked about off and on, but never pulled the trigger on. Then about 6 years ago, Devon Massyn and myself were in South Africa looking for Midlands Dwarf Chameleon (Bradypodion thamnobates) off of the famous Nottingham road. Being their first hand changed everything, it was remarkable how small their range was. Species like this are so vulnerable and fragile, and the major NGOs usually target more charismatic animals like Pandas and furry things. There was an obvious gap that could use a bit more attention. Not to say there aren’t other great orgs with similar ambitions, but honestly there needs to be more.
That too has been a lot of our outlook– we see other orgs doing similar work as partners in a common goal, not competition. So with that chameleon trip inspiring us we hit up the team up, put our own money together to get the 501c3, and founded HCI. One of core principles we have never backed down on, is that not a dollar of the funds we get go into any of our pockets what-so-ever, and we’ve all individually donated funds to the organization when stuff needed to happen, because this isn’t a business to us, it’s a genuine grass roots effort as I said. Michael Dee was our first team addition, his experience in the NGO and animal world was a huge asset– he was our sage wisdom. Sadly Mr. Dee has since passed away from cancer. The Michael Dee Grant is named in his honor.
HM: What is the process behind choosing a species or particular focus project with HCI?
MC: It’s complex, but in short we look for animals in critical need, that with our limited funding and resources we can greatly impact. There’s a lot of research and dead ends to tell you the truth. Sometimes it’s things we brainstorm internally, sometimes, like our partnership with The Gerry Martin Project in India, it’s stuff brought to us. Other times it’s like our upcoming chytrid awareness project, where a light bulb goes off and you run to the group idea in hand. Right now we have 4 projects right now in various stages of pre-announcement, and one thing we’ve learned the hard way is you really need to iron every glitch out before setting your hopes too high, there are so many hurdles you’d never expect doing this sort of thing. Of those four, two are pretty big, but I can’t say anything yet until it’s fully lined up.
HM: What is HCI currently focusing on?
MC: We just announced our Michael Dee Grant winners, so now that the grant process is complete for this year there are two big pushes for early 2021. The chytrid project I mentioned earlier is a big one for us this year, and we are also very excited about a very important research project we are funding for a critically endangered snake species. That project we are hoping to see blossom into a full fund dedicated to the topic. We also haven’t let up on the Bradypodion conservation efforts we sort of launched with, though we’ve certainly become wiser about our methods forward. Again, too soon to announce anything there, but hopefully that continues to move in a direction where we can announce something soon.
HM: You’ve done two seasons of Zilla’s Beyond the Glass but it sounds like COVID put a halt to season three. Are there plans to get that started back up in 2021?
MC: I wish I could say there will be a season three, but unfortunately that aspiration became a casualty of COVID. We received over 2.25 million views on facebook over just 24 episodes, so I am happy with the reception, but it would have been fun to make more. Who knows, maybe the opportunity will arise again, but in the meantime there are no immediate plans to revive it unless someone comes forward to back it. In which case I’d saddle right up and make some time to see season 3 through. We had Seasons 3-5 planned out, but as they say sometimes the best laid plans catch a nasty virus… or something like that, I am bad at phrases.
HM: What was your personal favorite out of the episodes in the two seasons?
MC: Tough one. I love the season finale of Season 1, because we snuck a lot of good conservation in there. Season 2 probably had some of my favorite animals, the File Snake was a big one for me, the second species I’ve ever seen in the wild and I love those guys. But it is hard to pick, because each really had moments I enjoyed. That show was really a passion project, and what mattered most was people really taking a different look at their “collections” and hopefully maybe considering ways they could enhance their own care. Hopefully it was inspiring- that’s what was important to me about it.
HM: Where would you like to go for one of these episodes and which species would you be looking for?
MC: Well, if it were up to me we’d look for stuff no one keeps, but I also have to remember the audience. If it were just for fun, I’d love to find Elephant Trunk Snakes in the wild. They are not a species many keep well, so the double edged sword is I don’t really love the idea of promoting an animal people will likely not do justice too, but I mean if we are talking about the adventure, I love the aquatic snake hunts.
HM: You travel a lot but still have a private collection of herps, what species are you keeping?
MC: I don’t keep a ton these days due the fact I am on the road often on short to no notice, but I still dable in aquatic snakes, maintaining two locals of Marine file snake (Acrochodus granulatus), the world’s only know T- albino Elephant Trunk snake (Acrochordus javanicus), and Puff faced water snakes (Homalopsis buctatta). As for the dry guys I still maintain some African File snakes (Mehelya/Limaformosa) and a couple old odds and ends I never had the heart to part with, like my childhood ball python I got as a Christmas present when I was 7. The fully aquatic snakes are by far my favorite. While they are challenging they allow for multi-species beneficial interactions unlike anything you get on land. So I house 13 different species of crabs, 3 species of shrimp, 3 species of snails, 1 species of freshwater prawn and various non-food fish with them. Each has a role to play in the mini-ecosystem, from sifting sand, to cleaning algae, to keeping snails in check, to eating detritus to even trimming the countless species of live plants I keep with them. Ok the vampire crabs don’t serve much purpose, but they are rad, so there is that. All that said, I can’t emphasize enough how despite what you read in a classified ad, none of the aquatic snakes are at all a cake walk, and you better be ready to have a massive aquarium with lots of needs and high upkeep cost. But… done properly they are my favorite and I’ve been working with them since 2004 so luckily at this point I don’t suck at it anymore.
HM: Lastly, how can people get involved with HCI or any of the other organizations or projects you’re working on?
MC: In terms of my professional work, I can’t tell you how many people say they’ll carry my luggage or something to join me on a film shoot, but unfortunately that’s not how it works. So before I get flooded with messages for that– I don’t actually have the option to bring folks along for the ride. For HCI, we could always use a hand or two. It’s not always the grand trekking through the jungle adventure people imagine, but if you really want to help, we usually find a way to put folks to work. To streamline that we’ve added a volunteer button on the page. The link is: https://herpconservation.com/volunteer.html
