Today we have at the zoologists' campfire a masters of science in evolution ecology and
biodiversity if I say so correctly and who is about to start his PhD it is Rool Wouters
a fellow Dutchman but will be speaking English today and he despite being very early in his
career he has already traveled the world visited five continents doing fieldwork everywhere
chasing venomous animals from snakes down to mosquitoes and has just racked up an incredibly
impressive first part of his career and we're very much looking forward to how that continues
in your PhD in Prague is that right Rool?
That's definitely right although today we will not talk about mosquitoes they are exciting
but they're not that exciting compared to all the snake work I did and you get in way
more weird situations when you do snake stuff than when you work on mosquitoes so yeah.
Good.
Yeah I've been incredibly grateful during my studies and also beyond the scope of my
studies but part of my academic life in the sense I have been lucky to travel indeed to
a lot of different places from tropical systems to desert systems also to beautiful European
systems.
Yeah is that something you really go for fieldwork that what drives you?
Well I always liked it definitely I never could have been budgeted looking back at the
past eight years of studying here in the Netherlands I would be so well traveled but yeah from
one thing comes the other and it's how it goes and when people know that you are a hardworking
tropical field biologist and people tend to ask you for a second or third time so that's
how I ended up in all these fun projects and fun places and definitely will continue that
during my PhD over the next four or five years.
Awesome so what was one of your favorite places to visit?
Well definitely one of the nice places I visited was actually last April in 2023 when I was
traveling in Borneo I was an instructor of the Natura Alis by the British Centre field
course and we went I actually after the course ended I traveled alone for another week and
then I went to Tawa Hills National Park which is in the south Sabah which is the Malaysian
part of Borneo this border in Kalimantan the Indonesian part of Borneo and it's a very
non-touristic area and they have a national park there which hardly anybody visits and
it's super special to be all on your own literally all on your own in the middle of a forest
and it's such a beautiful forest it's quite a high altitude forest very wet, lot of rain
a bit haily, bit mountainous and the things you see is just incredible especially when
you're alone when you're quiet early in the morning I remember bathing in the river and
some gibbons were checking me out in the trees and they were just as curious in what I was
doing there then I was curious in what they were doing there so that's definitely one
of the nice places I visited and recently I came back from a trip in Montenegro here
in Europe and that also really and I was also really impressed by Montenegro the amount
of remote and pristine forest they still have I never imagined that we still in Europe have
this beautiful beautiful regions of nature that are also very undiscovered where hardly
any people went and we did a biodiversity inventory of a specific area that's under
threat of development but it's a very difficult to enter a canyon and hardly ever there's
no tourism at all there's just some locals that go fishing there but and also the it
always feels tropical actually it's not tropical but like it has the same challenges as you
experience in tropical systems that we still have that in Europe yeah I was really amazed
by it and I and I also felt a little bit guilty or in a sense from like I should have I should
have traveled more in Europe instead of going to all these exotic places because they have
beautiful places in Europe of course and so with that also where you had and some adventures
in the field or what was that yeah definitely but I wanted to I wanted to start with another
adventure which is actually an adventure very close to home which is actually in Netherlands
so together with with my buddy Jorrit van Tiel we have a project on on the variation
of venom in European adders and and and as a case study we take we take the the Dutch
the Dutch populations of European adders because they are extremely isolated and we are interested
in the ecology of the venom so how does the venom vary between these populations in the
Netherlands between these isolated populations and and are there ecological factors that
we can link to them so that's a bit the scope of the project right that's that we've been
started in 2019 with a little grant for that and and we've been doing a lot of field work
in the Netherlands which is super interesting because you you get to visit these very special
highly protected areas where people can walk through on the on the on the on the main paths
obviously but you hardly ever have the chance to to really go off-roads and going more deep
into these areas and they are some of the very vulnerable heathland systems that we
have that are very much under threat by by nitrogen depositioning that we have now in
the Netherlands but it's also home of the European adder yeah yeah and and that brings
me to to the first so the Netherlands you have to imagine is a very well organized country
which means you also need like a package of permits when I go in the field so I'm right
my backpack always has such a a thick pile of permits and obviously we always go with
permits otherwise we don't do it and I speak to some fellow colleagues who work on other
species and and they and they never ever ever ever ever have been checked by authorities
but I have been checked already in multiple times when I'm in the really yes yes so I'm
I'm always the the unlucky or lucky guy why I permit so it's not a problem but we have
one very very funny situation which was last year in 2022 and you go in the summer I imagine
right you go when when it's yeah we go in in in because they hibernate in in in in in
in winter so the season mostly starts end of February beginning of March and then all
the way till end of September beginning of October and it's a kind of a free a free time
voluntary project so I go whenever I have time and I try to schedule once a month a
field trip and then I mostly join local volunteers who are monitoring the situation for for the
for the working group at a research in Netherlands so I'm I'm mostly I hardly ever go alone
in the fields I mostly join a lot of local volunteers who know the area or know the adders
in the area some some of these people have been working there for over 30 to 35 years
so they have extensive knowledge and they also know the the forest managers so we can
always let us let them know that we're in the fields and they don't have to be very
disturbed by us however we were last year in 2022 we were in a system in in in the area
of stop or switch is a very small and notorious place very religious place in the Bible belt
it's the art of the Bible belt yes yeah but they also have a beautiful system with a lot
of unique wildlife including many rare bird species last time I was there which was a
few weeks ago I saw fresh traces of wolves so it's a it's a very very nice wild area
and it's also home to a very nice population of others and so we were I was in that area
with the Renee who which is a volunteer and we always carry this this liquid nitrogen
tank with us it looks a bit like a mushroom shaped tank and that's restored of venom so
so we can remain remain remain the venom intact so it can be used for functional tests and
whatnot so mostly we just dump the nitrogen tank at the at the main path because it's
too well heavy and and and doesn't make sense to carry it through the heat and and then
we look for others we take the venom and I bring the venom to the tank right we were
there on a I think it was a Friday or a Saturday and it was very busy in the area a lot of
people hiking and and hiking their dogs and just a very busy area and then all of a sudden
we were a few hundred meters from the main path in the field and then all of a sudden
we we are a motorcycle crossing through the area and then it's not that you're not allowed
to drive to drive a motorcycle in that area it's really strictly prohibited but it was
but it was the police okay yes and he whistled and well we got the cue so we we walked to
the main path and we went to him and it was a very northeastern person very strict very
strict not not a smile not a joke okay and he he got yeah he got a report from people
in the area that there was drugs waste in dumped in the forest okay yeah but the moment
he saw us and he saw our our shirts with volunteers and he immediately realized that we were not
there were not dumped waste and we explained situation what we were doing there he did
not even ask he did not even ask asked for for for our permits I don't think he realized
that we needed them because it's not his jurisdiction but he he he kept being very strict and he
was also a bit emotional because it just came from a a death the crash so he was really
fed fed up that he had to come all the way into the forest with his motorcycle for this
this rubbish so they thought the people walked by thought your your liquid nitrogen tank
was something like something like or something yes yes yes yes yes it was drug waste which
is very normal in netherlands especially in these rural areas yeah it's a problem we are
we are ecstasy producers number one so there is a little drug waste illegally dumped so
i am i understand the the confusion and but but it was uh yeah and and and ripney who
really knows the local uh scientists quite well oh sorry local forest managers quite
well he was not very happy uh that uh that they that he didn't call the forest manager
in the first place before we're entering the forest to ask like uh we got we got a report
from this and that and and then and then also the speed the speed which with which he drove
through through the through through the forest was just absolutely uh anyways but he left
after after a quick talk uh he wasn't very interested he just uh he was just happy there
wasn't a lot of work he he left again yeah but that's uh i mean what can you do with
a motorcycle if there's drugs waste you cannot take it with you i mean that's that's a bit
silly right no i think he was just going to check out the situation but it was a bit of
a weird uh weird situation um and yeah in a way it was also kind of a funny experience
uh with the authorities here in netherlands yeah uh but since then i have uh i have put
on a label on the liquid nitrogen tank with the scientific research for any questions
uh my phone number so uh yeah so that yes that kind of solved the problem immediately
yes yeah yeah right you shouldn't leave stuff yeah uh wow i don't know i i i think i know
the bottle you you're talking about it looks it's a weird really big mushroom shaped weird
thing i could imagine people think this is an alien ship or uh something from a chemical
lab which it is yeah i mean it's yeah yeah it is it is yeah it looks very very out of
place in the forest i understand yeah cool yeah that was uh that was the police on the
motorcycle yeah and then uh in 2019 just very quickly to add my experience with authorities
in 2019 i was traveling with yori in arizona we were doing field work from that goods lab
uh in uh in chirugawa desert and we were catching rail snakes um and oh and then we were where
is that desert sorry sorry where where it's a chirugawa desert is the south of arizona
it's close to the mexican border so now uh and it's a very beautiful area also a lot
of reptile diversity a lot of bird diversity it's just a very interesting area and this
desert with the big cacti or is it more yuccas or no it's uh it's actually a quite a mountainous
area so you have um you have desert at the bottom but then you have a lot of you have
a mountain range and you get the city's forest up the top a pile yeah mixed forest also finds
but so it's like a nice gradient and that's also why you have these rock specialists on
the top uh like rock rail snakes and tiger rail snakes where you're going more south
you get your diamondback rail snakes whatnot so you have a lot of the different species
of rail snakes there and we were we had to collect a few rail snakes for uh for an ongoing
study and uh that's it and we were with students and students of the of matt goods lab in the
field but matt wasn't there and uh we didn't have a permit on paper we had a permit with
matt's group and matt said just mention my name they know they know who i am and then
you will be fine and of course we were stopped again uh and uh and that's the that's even
that's a different joke than uh than the netherlands in netherlands you can you can explain and
you can laugh a bit you can make a joke but in the states i felt really uh impressed by
uh by this intimidating isn't it yes yes yes it was all it was dark and we weren't expecting
it we're in the middle of nowhere and then all of a sudden you have a car behind your
back who uh who starts uh starts flashing his alarm anyways yeah so but he made a big
problem of us not having the uh permits on paper and and in the end uh i will not mention
any names but in the end uh we found out matt told us that it was a formerly rejected pc
student who became an uh officer so he had a bit of personal beef with matt and uh yes
yes so it was so he made us he made us have he gave us a very hard time uh but he did it
probably on purpose because after he did his official thing and he gave us an official
warning no no no uh no actual money was involved but just an official warning uh then we had
a lovely chat about reptile conservation in the area yeah and uh we spoke we spoke to
him about certain species so in the end it was all fine but he gave us a really hard
time and we were really impressed and then later uh and later when we told matt when
we came back uh he said oh yeah i know this guy so that was my um my experience with authority
which also kind of shifts me to my next story i wanted to tell maybe we can go there no
carry on carry on what part of the world are we going to now as yeah we're going to bolivia
now which is uh maybe the most impressive trip i've made and i went there in 2016 i
was 19 years old at that time so it was really uh for me was the first time out of europe
and immediately to a very challenging country as bolivia but our main our main goal was
to uh to uh go and look for um for anacondas which uh which were very well studied in that
specific area so we wanted to join uh with a group to uh to find them and and the people
in the area they are studying them and um yeah they have you have all three species
or at least three species there in that region you have uh the yellow anaconda you have the
green anaconda you also have the bolivian or beanie anaconda in that area oh i didn't
know that third species that's very interesting yeah it's it's it's been described by that
by that group actually it's uh unectus beanieensis which is uh quite an it looks like a green
anaconda or it looks actually a bit like an ivory between green and yellow anaconda and
there is also some suggestions that it might have been a a speciation event for hybridization
um but it's very uh located to the areas around the beanie river which is where we were um
and we found it also it's it's a bit different it's a has some lighter parts uh compared
to green anaconda you know but even if i look at the even if i look at the photos to myself
after all these years i find it hard to distinguish but the people the the experts in the area
told us it was a beanie anaconda so i believe them all right um but to get there it was
quite challenging so we we arrived i was with my my my my friends uh of flake and yip who
are both well were both biology students now both biologists and uh we we we arrived in
la past which is the capital city of uh of bolivia but it's uh that's andy's that's
four and a half kilometers height altitude and we had to go to the lowland forests um
near the peruvian border uh and uh well you could take a plane when we thought that was
boring and now you can't take a plane anymore because in covid the little plane company
that flew that went bankrupt so now there's no uh no plane travel anymore okay um um but
but we you can take a bus but we also thought that was boring you could also take a boat
and almost no one does that because it takes three days uh through through the heart of
marina national park which is uh um um yeah a very nice beautiful and huge um lowland
amazon rainforest but we did that and we went with the guide uh who uh who bring us in three
days to uh to the destination we had to be and um um for us to enter marina national
park you have to normally pay a fee um to the navy so that's interesting about bolivia
they don't have a sea but they have a very active navy because they still have the hope
that once they conquer back or get back to sea that at least they have a very good navy
so they have one of the best navy for naval forces in south america actually and every
little village in bolivia every little even jungle village have a very active marine base
and a lot of young people join in the navy um so we we had a we had to pay a fee to the
navy for entering the national park yeah and and that was in a way very funny because um
since we were not we were not really tourists because we were there with purpose so our
our guide was like no i'm going to put you in the books as volunteers then you don't
have to pay a fee uh because you're you're doing important work here and uh and then
we can uh then we can go on but the navy the navy uh they they didn't uh they didn't believe
the story they thought we were tourists and we were just going to have fun in the area
and i i don't blame them because we in a sense in a sense we were we were westerners that
were visiting an area so of course i mean it's it's a couple of bucks we wouldn't have
mind but then uh he came up with a solution we had we could pay one third of the price
and he would put us in the books as volunteer
yes so we bribed we bribed the bolivian navy okay
don't let them hear you say that yeah yeah yeah well well and yeah it's what it is just
it's what happens in these kind of in these kind of situations especially so remote but
we we did not expect and that's actually where i'm going it's uh might be the most impressive
and sad story that i have encountered during field work is that we would we would actually
need the navy just two days later we were um we were going um upstream the river and
no down downstream the river downstream river and um after a day or two we saw a lot of
black had been soldiers uh in the middle of the river and an incredibly uh uh awful smell
and uh our boat our boat driver said um could be an animal that's deceased and and floating
on the river but be prepared it could also be it wouldn't be the first time if we find
if you found a human uh a human body in the river and upon arrival yeah we saw uh indeed
it was a it was a girl that that uh that drowned and drowned from the village yeah drowned from
the village a day a day ahead of us and uh they knew because they they had seen the signs
that she was missing um right but she uh yeah and and yeah she was at least like five or
six days uh uh uh deceased because she was already floating and that was a really awful
look um yes and yeah that's something you don't expect when you're in such a romantic
place looking for wildlife seeing parrots fly over and then all of a sudden you find
a a dead girl very young still um but it's and but also makes you realize that you're
a part of a very very tough system and um yeah in in that in those regions especially
Bolivia is a very poor country and a lot of these people are dependent on the river for
fishing for washing the children washing the river they play in the river but they can't
swim because they never learned to swim so the current the current takes them and sometimes
yeah they drown and uh wow yeah that's where he says in this case it happened the call
the navy at that point to uh to warn them yeah so so uh so there was a satellite phone
on board and they uh they they called the navy and uh to collect to collect her body
so uh because yeah we we we couldn't take her it was just uh we had we had another night
and they'd go and it was uh it was so extremely smelly uh and we were with a very small boat
and uh a very slow boat like a canoe with a motor and and uh um so we uh we called the
navy and the navy went to uh collect her with a motorboat and they brought her back to the
village she came from oh wow yeah that's that's that's another side of the it's not a fun
story but it's a very story that made a lot of impression yeah i can imagine and and did
you eventually also go to the village where she came from yes we went to the village yes
yes uh we we we obviously we didn't have any contact with uh with her family whatnot because
yeah it's not that we saw we saw indeed the the especially the the poorest part of the
the village that lived on the river so we yeah you could imagine how the situation happened and
uh yeah that was quite sad so wow for your first trip to to outside yes that is quite
impressive yes but oh yeah it also and that's also kind of beauty of it makes you realize that you
are we we often think as as people that we are uh we own the nature we own the world but then in
these when you are in these systems uh you realize it no it's not true you uh you you are just part
of a system and yeah yeah you can be taken by it in a minute without without you realizing so
yeah i think it's also that's also the beauty in a way like it's we still have these remote parts
in the world and it's incredibly important i think and um but yeah that was uh that was a
tough one to swallow and i yeah so uh that made a lot it stick with me for a few days and then
yeah obviously we found we found the anacondas and we found a lot of all the wildlife so it kind of
tweaks your attention a bit but yeah i've been looking looking back and thinking back about it
for for yeah for many years even even now again i thought this we're preparing this podcast i
thought yeah this is a it is a story that actually i should i should tell um because yeah such an
impression and it's something you don't expect but something that can happen and and it's weird
that in that system i don't know if i would react if i would find somebody deceased in the streets
of of my of my town here that would maybe make a very different impression on me than when you
find somebody in a in a system where where life and death are are such a normal part of uh of the
natural dynamics and and it's also yeah makes you kind of feel exposed to to the dangers of nature
right i mean to see yeah exactly it can actually take a life like that yeah and you're you're
enjoying it and and you're almost a tourist uh wow yeah i can see and especially if you were 19 at
the time yes that's yeah yeah yeah we were very very inexperienced also it was uh that was the
word i was the worst prepared for for a trip effort and that that's with broken boots and
whatnot and well anyways but we learned we learned from that and it was you found the anacondas
in the end yeah yeah we found how was that how was that was that at least a high to balance the
low yeah definitely yeah yeah we were also looking off to see uh a jagarundi and an
ocelot so two felines which is quite rare to see yeah uh and a giant giant ant eater and a lot of
other wildlife so kind of definitely wait wait out but um now the anacondas was was very very cool it
was in a wetland area very um wet literally very wet area it's kind of a um an area that's linking
to the pantanal region in brazil so it borders that that corner with peru brazil and it's also
an area that's in in the rainy season is completely wet and now it was in the dry season so it was
more like a swampy walk through it but you were some at some points you were still here in the
water so it sounds very convenient wow quite quite difficult also spotting them because they are uh
you only see a face on the surface uh-huh um but yeah you're never worried i mean i i imagine
people listening to this who are think okay you're 19 your first time i said if you're up you're up
to your neck in the water when you know they're anacondas i mean i can imagine some people
freaking out just at the idea of that right so is that it didn't worry you at all no no no that was
uh that's that's the part of who i uh i was who i wanted to be and who i became i guess so
no i was and especially because you're surrounded by people who have done this a million times
and so it's not uh right there i'm not there on my own and we were there with uh with a decent
group of people who have who had a lot of experience so i felt very comfortable with their
expertise and that's actually how it always goes still now when you go to areas you always work
together with local scientists local experts yeah because then that makes sense they know the area
they know the dangers so and then yeah being reminded of uh you know the fragility of life
you were not not worried about your own i'm just just curious um you go everywhere and and i'm sure
for your phd you will go chasing geckos all around the world again um is there a particular animal
or particular place you still want to see that's really high on your list what's the top of your
of your list of things to see um yeah everywhere i guess but no that's but uh i know um i i have
been uh i haven't been to central africa and i really uh um so for me one special so i was
in borneo last year and also a few years ago and and i saw wild orangutans and uh for me that's
actually and i had to cry when i saw them so for me that was a really special moment because
we share 96 of our dna with these primates um we uh we we we've cut down 40 percent
borneo for palm oil plantations yeah and horrible and i've been there too it's
staggering to see what it turned into yeah and uh and and we were actually on a field center with
with the students from line university here um which which particularly studied the impact of
palm oil plantations on on wildlife so we were very close to monoculture kilometers of monoculture of
of palm oil and we were in one of the last pieces of secondary forest so it's highly disturbed
forest all the big dipter carb trees had been cut out and it was really surrounded all all
around by palm oil plantation so we were in a last resort uh for um for wildlife so very high density
of big mammals a lot of birds reptiles um a lot of everything actually but also a lot of orangutans
uh higher density than actually is natural so you get all these weird behaviors and a lot of uh
fights between orangutans which normally you know cure yeah um but
but yeah we were lucky enough to see them and um and for me it's a very special moment when you
look into the eyes of an animal that's that you share 90 of your dna with and realizing that
you're also causing the end of the world for them and for them a lot sooner than for us i guess
and i'm yeah i'm i would be really uh it would be really special to uh to once encounter uh the
other apes the african apes that are even closer to us the gorilla the chimpanzees the bonobos
and i don't know why i have this i have decided not to travel anymore without a purpose so if if
i can do field work in the area and we encounter them so be it uh i'm i'm not planning on visiting
them as a tourist because i think yeah i travel enough and it's not worth it to uh to make useless
trips but that would be very special if i if i could have a chance before they perish to see the
great apes yeah that that would be yeah i think people don't understand how small these
remnants of forests are if you if you go i also went through to borneo here five hours on the boat
just passing industry and pond plantations after pond plantation and then you come to this tiny
you know five by five kilometer bit of forest that's it that's what you you know that that's all
there is and it's just shocking really you think of borneo as as the island jungle field island but
oh oh it's not anymore and no nice yeah now i actually see a lot of similarities between uh
our dutch agriculture agriculture and the bornean system is it just monocultured with ditches
and yeah it looks it looks tropical because palm oil trees are four five six meters high and they
look they feel tropical they are tropical but it's not that different from a grass meadow in the
netherlands uh yeah that that separates nature and makes it makes it creates isolated patches of
nature with isolated populations and and all the problems that come with it so yeah for me it was
quite quite shocking also realizing that actually most of that palm oil produced in borneo is coming
to the rotterdam harbor for processing so we have we are also in that way related to borneo
yeah in the deforestation i guess as dutch people yeah but it's it's a it's a very difficult
situation of course you know because uh we also need to feed a lot of people palm oil is highly
efficient so it's yeah well i hope as as we are looking in the netherlands to buy biodiversity
inclusive farming i hope that's something uh that that would be be the future for borneo as well to
create bio biodiverse biodiversity ecological friendly farming to see if we can at least
maintain and manage what we have in a way but yeah that's uh that's it's not always uh it's
it's mostly romantic being in the field you you visit these beautiful and amazing places
but in some cases uh you also work also with the mosquitoes you work in very dirty areas
it on trash trash bins uh in rural areas in urban areas uh so it's it's it is romantic but very
often it's uh it's also very um confronting in a way what a mess are we making on the world
well and that's why we want to hear from uh people from the field like you to uh to hear what it's
like to actually be a biologist and go to all these places and have some adventures and have some
um yeah ups and downs thanks a lot to rule for for coming and uh telling your stories and i think
we'll have more stories from you in the future by the sound of it well that's i'm looking forward
to the next time my my next trip will be panama for my phd uh field work yeah we're chasing lizards
in very remote areas so uh next stories are already uh on the blast yeah fantastic well thank you very
much for coming on and good luck with the phd thanks for your invitation bye bye