Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this podcast. My name is Katie Donaldson. I'm the communication specialist for the School of Natural Resources at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture.
Thank you for joining us today. And our guest today is Ash Cable. Would you please tell me your major? Oh, yeah.
I'm actually a PhD student. So my major is natural resources and I work with bats. So that's my concentration. And recently you went on the study abroad trip, which was for the Wildlife Fisheries Sciences 425 course.
It was wildlife, tropical, ecology, conservation and field methods. And it was in Belize. Yes. So if you would mind, just kind of tell me a little bit about that trip.
So I went with Dr. Adam Wilcox and him and his wife, Dr. Emma Wilcox, have been leading this trip for almost a decade. And Emma didn't go this year and she gave me the opportunity to go in her place.
So I had the opportunity to be an instructor of record for the trip and teach the students as like a co-instructor with Adam. And we were in Belize for two weeks and we traveled around to different field stations and we saw all kinds of different cultures and different, we learned about different methods of how to survey for different types of wildlife and we learned about agroforestry and sustainable agriculture and illegal logging and all these like aspects of like tropical ecology and conservation that sometimes we don't really see up here. And I know part of the course, like you said, we don't really see that up here, but part of the course was taking the methods that we use here in Tennessee and applying them there in Belize. Yes.
How did that go? It went really well. So in wildlife, like you said, a lot of the methods we use for surveying wildlife we do use like universally. So we learned how to do point counts to survey for birds.
So we learned how to do mammal transects to record what mammal species are in the area. And we learned how to do timber inventory. So we do that here. Crocodile spotlighting, we don't really do that, but we spotlight animals to see, you know, to count them sometimes.
And we did bird misnetting and learned how like we catch birds with misnets and how to ban them. And then we also did a night of bat misnetting where we caught bats, a lot of fruit eating and nectar bats. And then we did a stream ecology workshop where the students surveyed with like these nets. They surveyed the stream and the insects and bird birds in the stream to like determine how healthy the stream was.
And we do all that here in the U.S. too. One of the animals you mentioned, a crocodile, which we have our neighbors here versus crocodiles there. Could you talk about the different animals that you came across while you were in Belize?
Yes. The diversity is incredible because it's like Central America. The birds are just amazing. There are so many different types.
And some of them are ones that we have here and like migrate there in the winter. Or they just have really large ranges and they are also there. But there are some really crazy birds. Like for example, like they have a species of turkey.
It's called, they're calling it the Yucatan turkey, but it's also called like the oscillated turkey. It's got like all these like colorful feathers and it's like ridiculous, like how amazing it is compared to like our like plain brown turkeys. I immediately like sent a picture to my grad student friend who's studying turkeys. I was like, look at this turkey.
It was pretty cool. Crocodiles were scary, but in like a cool big way. The bats are amazing. Because most of our bats here are just like insectivores.
At least in Tennessee, we only have insectivorous bats. So seeing like bats that eat fruit, bats that eat nectar, and some insectivores too. Like that was really cool. The monkeys there are sneaky and kind of mean sometimes.
Like they'll come out of nowhere, like to check you out. And then they're like swinging from the, so we saw spider monkeys and howler monkeys. So the spider monkeys would like come up to us like in the canopy and they would be like swinging and like throwing sticks at us. Like everything that they touch would just like fall down on us.
But they were cool. The howler monkeys are so loud. Like it's hard to even describe how loud they are. But that was crazy.
I saw some leopards in the pictures that you showed me. They're not leopards. Jaguars. Jaguars, yes.
Down there like the jaguar is like a sacred animal to the Mayans. And so there's a lot of Mayans still living in Belize and like carrying on their culture. And that was like really cool to hear the stories of like the jaguar. And we went to the Belize Zoo and we got to like feed them.
Well, we didn't feed the jaguars, but like the zookeeper would, he put like, you know, the chicken up to the fence and the jaguar would like jump up and like lick it. And it was crazy. And the students got to feed the tapirs and that was a big hit. Because these tapirs are crazy.
They're called mountain cows down there. And you don't, you see pictures of them online, but you just like don't know how big they are until you see them. And then they're related to horses. So I don't know if you've ever like fed a horse without a carrot.
And like it does the weird like lip thing where it's like, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Well, the tapirs do like the exact same thing. It's so weird.
But the students really like that. Speaking of students, what was it like being an instructor versus being a student on that trip? For me, it was like amazing. It was kind of like a full circle moment because like I did a study abroad 10 years ago, actually in 2013.
And I just remember like on my trip, like thinking this would be awesome, like to one day, like lead trips like this. And I remember it like changed my life, just the way that I see things. And so for me to like, for Emma and Adam to give me the opportunity, like I was, I was really grateful. And like, it was awesome.
Like, like teaching students and most of, I really didn't have to teach them a whole lot because we would go to these field stations and the, like the guides would teach them. And I was learning like with them, but then like just to be there, like to like chime in with, you know, this is, this is how they do it here. This is what we do in the US and like kind of compare. Like that was really cool.
And then like the whole time I was just like making sure students were okay, like handing out Band-Aids and Benadryl and hydrocortisone creep. Keep it all healthy. Yeah, just like making sure everyone gets out of Belize without like... That's important.
That's really important. I'm sure their parents really appreciate it. As far as the teaching goes, and you talked about how you also learned things, and you talked about the different cultures you experienced. So how varied were the cultures just kind of at all the different field stations that you were at?
It is incredible, like how culturally diverse Belize is. Like no matter, so when we were up at the north, um, and there was, um, like there are people who are, um, more of like, um, Hispanic Maya descent, and then, uh, in certain parts of the country, and then other parts of the country, there's more, um, like African descent, um, and, um, Maya, like the, and then when we were at, uh, Yakshate, Yakshate, um, we were at Yakshate, uh, like that community is a Mayan community, and so there were a lot of descendants of the Mayans, and we got to like hear about how they're, um, being like stewards of the land down there, and we got to visit, um, a Maya women's group where we learned like how they, how they cook traditionally, and, um, when we arrived, the students did like a traditional dance with them, and then they took us in, and they, they taught them how to make like chocolate and tortillas, and, um, and then we had a meal together, and it was, it was really cool. We learned about like different, how they use like different parts of the plant, um, for medicine, but also like how they cook like all the parts of the plant. That's cool.
Speaking of just food in general, I'm a big food person. Yeah. Um, do you recall your favorite meal on that trip? Yeah, I think my favorite meal is, um, like the standard meal that they have down there, which is like a stewed chicken, um, with rice and beans or beans and rice, and, um.
Is there a difference? There is a difference, and, um, Adam was like quizzing the students on like which, which was which, and the answer is like rice and beans has more rice, and beans and rice has more beans, so. Oh. And then sometimes they're served like separately, but sometimes they're like mixed together, but yeah, it was really good.
Yeah, it sounds like it. You talked about how you studied abroad in 2013, and then you recently went on this trip. What would you say to students who are considering studying abroad right now? If you can, um, like if you're financially and, and other, otherwise able to do it, then I definitely think that you should.
Um, it, it like really opens up your worldview, um, your perspective to like challenges that are going on like outside of the U.S., and in the U.S., we just have a very limited view of like conservation and, and, and like traveling to other countries, or even for other study abroad, it's not related to conservation, but just like whatever your field is, we have a very limited view of that, and seeing like those other perspectives, like it really like grows you as a person, and I think it like grows you like professionally also. So. One final question, as far as conservation goes, um, you were talking about all the different cultures. Is there anything they do differently that you think would benefit us here in Tennessee or in the U.S.
in general? Yeah, definitely. Um, there are things that we can learn from, from, um, Belize and other countries. Um, so tourism, for example, is, uh, one-fourth of their economy, um, and a lot of that, um, goes towards funding these like field stations and, um, conservation down there.
And here, a lot of our, um, conservation is funded by like hunting and fishing licenses, and so branching out a little bit beyond just that, like having all our eggs in one basket of like hunting and fishing licenses cannot, is not going to be good, um, especially as less, fewer and fewer people are hunting and fishing, like we should, we should consider like these other avenues, you know, like ecotourism, um, and yeah, and other things that maybe we just haven't thought of yet. Is there anything I haven't asked you that you think people should hear about? I don't think so. We had students, well, we had students from, um, multiple programs across UT on the trip, so a lot of them were in our School of Natural Resources, uh, either as like wildlife students or forestry students, um, but we also had like students from, um, uh, ecology and evolution and, uh, animal science, so it was kind of a, um, a group, a group from different disciplines, and so I don't think that you necessarily have to be in wildlife and fisheries to, you know, go, go and enjoy this trip.
Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us this week. Thank you, Ash, for coming on to us on the podcast.