This is the Pepperwood podcast, a production of Pepperwood, a non-profit conservation organization based at a 3200 acre nature reserve near Santa Rosa, California, in the heart of the traditional homeland of the Wappo people.
At Pepperwood, we aim to inspire conservation through science, and on this show we talk to scientists, stewards, and environmental educators about what they do and how they do it. We hope to give you a glimpse into the real experiences of folks who devote their lives to taking care of local ecosystems and sharing them with others.

Welcome to episode 3! I am Julianne Bradbury, your host and an environmental educator at Pepperwood. I hope that life is treating you well out there in podcast land and that you are getting a chance to get outside and experience nature in whatever season this episode finds you.

As we're preparing this episode for release, we're in the midst of the Californian autumn, which means that we are hopefully near the end of a long dry season here in our Californian climate. Sidebar. The climate in our region is often referred to as Mediterranean climate in textbooks and such. I'm on a personal mission to start calling it the Californian climate, or something more
generalizable and at least slightly less based on settler politics. After all, the
climate conditions that we experience here have been what they are for probably about as long as the Mediterranean region has been what it is, so why should they get the benefit of naming it? There are some widely accepted naming conventions for climate zones that we could turn to based on the work of various climate scientists from the late 19th to the mid 20th century. According to those classifications, we at Pepperwood experience a wet CS climate that is wet as in water and capital C lowercase s. Wet CS refers to a temperate dry summer zone with at least 90 centimeters of precipitation per year and that is certainly us, but as a title wet CS is such a bummer of a name that even the climate maps fall back to refer into it as Mediterranean as a shorthand, so forget it. I'm gonna say Californian climate until I hear a better idea. In fact, if any of you listeners have a better idea, send it in. What do you think we should call our local climate? Maybe you like wet CS or think we could get used to it, or maybe you have an idea I haven't thought of yet. Send it in to podcast at pepperwoodpreserve.org. Perhaps together we can figure out a way to describe our climate that feels right to everyone. Okay, sidebar slash rant over. 

The point is that as I record this, it is a dry November near the end of a long dry season and we're presenting a conversation from back in the early days
of this dry season, a chat that I had back in July with Pepperwood's dedicated
and savvy research specialist, Makayla Freed. I loved getting a glimpse into
Makayla's process of gathering information about Pepperwood's forests,
starting with a very practical reality of the physical challenges that our field
scientists face on this rugged landscape. You'll hear that Makayla had just
sustained an injury that kept her on desk duty for a little while this summer. A
rare but perhaps statistically inevitable experience for someone who spends
long days scrambling up and down the hills of our beautiful landscape. Our
conversation also includes some reflections on the process of thinking
scientifically, including how careful scientists have to be when drawing
conclusions and how the relationship between scientific research and
stewardship plays out here at Pepperwood. On a technical note, I, your
intrepid host slash sound engineer, have to apologize for the sound quality of
this interview. This was one of my first recorded conversations and the sound
equipment we used ended up being nothing more sophisticated than the voice recorder app on my smartphone. The words still come through clearly, but when you experience the acoustics, I think that you will join me in thanking Zach Winter, Pepperwood's chief operations officer, for approving the purchase of the proper microphones and other equipment that I have been using recently. I hope I haven't scared you off because the conversation has such great content, you might just forget the middle-ean recording quality. So please enjoy this conversation between myself and Pepperwood's research specialist, Mikaela Freed, which took place in July of 2024. 

Thank you so much for taking some time out, although right now I know that you are in sort of data input mode because you have sustained a battle wound in the field. 

That's part of the nature of this work sometimes, right?
Is that you know you try to keep yourself as safe as possible, but you never
know. So I just was hiking out in the slopes, you know, the steep slopes out in
the hills, actually getting done with some of my forest monitoring work and
wrapping some of it up for the summer even, which is really exciting and maybe the excitement's part of what had me galloping up the hill too fast. I slip, my fist went forward into a rock and I got a boxer's fracture in my metacarpal.

Oh my goodness. 

You know the good thing is we've just wrapped up so much data collection type stuff that now I was actually kind of going to naturally be doing some of that anyway. There's still plenty of work to be done, but you know at least I have data to enter, right? 

Yes, well that's a mark of the season. So as we're recording this, right, we just hit July 1st, so you just have finished up sort of the lion's share of your fieldwork for this season. So that's good to know that you do have those data entry seasons sort of planned in anyway. So good timing with your injury. 

Yeah. It worked out. I mean there are still, you know how it is, there's always more to be done and especially we, you know, we installed a couple more plots recently, which is super exciting and we wanted to get those instrumented and we've got them partially instrumented, but we want to tag some trees and get some baseline data on our trees and shrubs, seedlings coming up, things like that. So we did a good amount of work so far and we do have time. It's not like not doing this is going to put us off too bad, but it'll just be something we're gonna kick the can down the road for. It's a long game regardless, right? 

Yeah, absolutely. Well that's fantastic. Speaking of setting up new plots, that might be a great entry point to talk about what these forest monitoring plots, that I've heard so much about, are all about. So start off with who or what are you monitoring out there in the forest? 

So much. I think it was around 2019 we installed or started installing forest monitoring plots and Pepperwood already has many plots set up. Many of the ones that people think about are David Ackerly's plots. So David Ackerly at UC Berkeley, he has his whole network of forest monitoring plots out here upwards of 50. 

Wow. 

But then through funding from California Department of Fish and Wildlife, we were gonna get the opportunity to install our own forest monitoring plots and also be kind of more specific with what we at Pepperwood maybe specifically want to learn about. 

Great. 

The Ackerly plots have been primarily, so there is some soil moisture type work done in there. There are data loggers called "hobos" that are constantly logging information on relative humidity and temperature in those plots, but they're mainly related to vegetation, which is great. We want to know a lot about vegetation, but we said okay, with these CDFW plots, how about we do vegetation and we expand upon it. So we have certainly work with trees and shrubs, seedlings coming up, so we look at seedling recruitment for trees and shrubs as well. We monitor the herbaceous layer, so think forbs, grasses, but we also have coverboards that we've installed.

So we have nine per plot, which with now 15 plots, that's a lot of cover boards,
and we use those to monitor herpetofauna, so reptiles and amphibians in our
forests. We also have hobo data loggers, so we're constantly getting information on relative humidity and temperature as well in these little micro climates. There is a surprising amount of variation in the micro habitats, micro
climates around the preserve, and so having these hobos is a really neat way
to be able to say specifically, okay, this is what the climate is like at this spot, and also relate that to what kind of vegetation we're seeing there, what kind of herpetofauna activity we're seeing. Maybe the mammals moving through, so we also have wildlife cameras at the center of each plot that are constantly
taking a look at what kind of wildlife we're seeing, so mammals, right? So
there's a lot of really cool work that we do. We are also hoping to expand upon it. We're planning on adding fungal surveys to the picture as well, which
would be cool, because it's ecology, right? 

Ecology is so dynamic, it's so diverse that there really is no end to what you can do in these, but we're just trying to kind of balance that out with, okay, what are our interests, what kind of time and funding do we have? 

Gotcha. 

We also do fuels monitoring, and so that's an important part of the picture if you're thinking about things like the management that we're doing, so what kinds of stewardship techniques are we putting out there. 

Right. 

Also for us to have data related to, oh, now there's a wildfire, and we have data related to what kind of fuels were out there. 

Gotcha.

Before the wildfire, but obviously we're especially monitoring that with the idea of stewardship involved, so if you were to do some thinning work, if you were to do some prescribed burning work, being able to understand fuels on the ground, so that's using Brown's transects is what we call them. Okay. So fuels really, that goes for all plant life in a way, yeah, all different sorts, because everything is flammable, however big it is, right? 

Exactly, 

and then we go more in depth as far as fuels are related. When we are doing our tree surveys, we also do a ladder fuel height for our living trees, so essentially think of a ladder. Ladder fuels can carry fire upward, have the potential to carry fire upward, and so understanding where our ladder fuels are located can help us to understand the part of the kind of fire conversation related to how high might this fire, might a wildfire go, or might a prescribed burn go, and let me say there's a lot that goes into it, it's a lot more than just where are your fuels located, right?

There's a lot that goes into it, wind, and if it's prescribed burning where the
ignition takes place and temperature, I mean all kinds of things, but ladder fuels like I say can be a part of the conversation that can really help us to
understand what potential effects fire might have, whether it's a living tree
that's still standing, or maybe we're thinking about the herbaceous layer. So
again with ecology, you know, kind of the main theme is having a bunch of things that all speak to the conversation, and they can answer a lot of different questions, but it's ecology, and so they're all surprisingly connected in ways that you might not even think, and it's important to keep in mind with this conversation with these ideas that it can be very easy as humans for us to
say, I saw this thing and then this event happened, let's say it's a prescribed burn, or whatever, and then I saw this other thing happen. So A plus B always equals C, and that means that the result that I saw is due to that prescribed burn, right? That's tricky, and I would be careful with saying those things, and you know, at Pepperwood the research team really tries to keep that in mind and take that into consideration, because even though you can draw correlations and you can suspect certain things, there's a lot of information that goes into it, and that's a part of collecting all these data, right, and being able to have these conversations with the Ackerly Lab about what kind of data they're seeing as well, what things they're seeing out in the field, and be able to kind of add to that. So as much as we are trying to monitor these different things, there's always kind of that little piece in there where it's like taking it with a grain of salt. 

Yeah, a little skepticism. 

Yeah, just being, I think science at its best is kind of hypercritical of itself, and it's best. Sure. It could be a lot of ego that goes into it, but I think at its finest, it's gonna be really looking at the different parts of the picture and understanding, okay, you know, these all could be the case, but this is kind of where things seem to be trending as far as the data, as far as what's really being seen. 

Right. 

A lot of this takes a lot of time, right, a lot of time to gather this information, look and actually speak to it years down the line rather than just the year after or something. 

Absolutely. Well, it sounds like you kind of walk around with a healthy conservative look at the data that you're taking, because it's easy to get excited about numbers when you're gathering them. 

Right.

So I love that idea. Alrighty, so you've got this fuels data that relates to both
the woody and the herbaceous, herbaceous beans, kind of anything that's growing as a plant, but not woody, and you've got soil moisture and both humidity and temperature coming in, and then you have these coverboards and these cameras, and I don't know, those sort of the outliers as far as being geared toward animals, is that kind of the data that you're taking there? 

Yeah, I would say that. We also added "audio moths" recently, so listening to birds in our forests, and we also had the question, well, usually these are used for birds, can we use them for bats? And so that's something that we're currently exploring. 

Excellent. 

It's a very recent installation, and we just kind of gathered our first round of data on that, so I have yet to learn anything about that, but it's kind of a real kind of point of excitement for a lot of people. 

Sure. Yeah. Through the coverboards, who are you looking at? 

Yeah, so yeah, as far as what you said a second ago, this is sort of the outlier, if you will, in terms of we're wanting to know, okay, what's the animal situation? It's very easy to monitor plants because they sit still for you, generally speaking, right? They might wave in the wind and hit you in the face a little bit, but the animals, they're kind of moving around, and so, okay, how do we, how do we learn about them? And so that was the idea with the coverboards, is you lay down these pieces of plywood and these set locations on their own
transects, right, different than the herbaceous transects, and then we go
through, right now we have a December through June cycle, with the idea of
capturing the amphibian kind of activity, as well as reptile activity, and kind of
everything that will in between transition zone, if you will, and we go in there, like I said, so we bi-weekly December through June, and we lift these boards, we take soil moisture measurements at these boards with these these soil moisture probes called hydrosens, and we document who we're seeing underneath, and we also add it to the conversation well, you know, we don't
really have any information on invertebrates, so let's just add that as well, these are often the food sources for these animals, so let's indicate that as well, and then the cameras, obviously, are constantly sitting there, they're
motion-sensored, and so they will trigger and snap a few shots of the wildlife
that we see as well coming through, so the larger mammals. So that covers kind of a lot, right, you've got your birds, maybe your bats, through audio, you've got cameras for sort of like larger megafauna to be to be taken care of, and then under the cover boards, you're getting some interesting things, right, you're getting, you know, your reptiles, your amphibians, are you also experiencing a little bit of the small mammals through that? We are, yeah, so two of the most common disturbances we see under our cover boards are rodent disturbance and ant disturbance, so that could be anything from a rodent that's built a nest or built tunnels underneath, sometimes you'll lift a board and it's just filled with a pile of nuts that have been ripped open, you can tell a rodent has, you know, kind of cashed them under there, so we do get, you know, a variety of disturbance there, and obviously the ants is kind of what you can imagine, oftentimes you lift a board and there's just this horde of ants all over the place, and the idea behind documenting these disturbances is that these could be impacting what herpetofauna are under there or are not. 

That's interesting, yeah, if your original goal was sort of to capture the herpetofauna, the reptiles and amphibians, it's funny what we sort of quantify as a disturbance versus data, which I mean, I think it sounds like you're treating disturbances as its own kind of data, for sure, but it's funny to think of like signs that rodents were there as like, oh, this is getting in the way of my data, when it's also totally data on its own, right? 

Yeah, and it could be, you know, we talk about a disturbance, like I said, it's an impact, a potential impact, potential impact of how herpetofauna may or may not be using that board. So rodents, for example, if you are a snake, that's probably gonna be more of an attractant, right? It's that sort of activity, whereas who knows, maybe for amphibians, I don't know, maybe they are less likely to want to go under there, maybe they don't care, it's hard to say, but it's something that we know, but yeah, we do note if we see any mammal activity, and sometimes we do, it seems like every year, at least a couple times, you lift the board and there is an active, a rodent literally under there, so they use these as well, yeah, and we try to minimize our own disturbance as much as possible, that's why we're doing a bi-weekly, you know, so around two times a month. Right, so you're not, yeah, you're not, the human traffic isn't so high that all the animals decide that they want to be elsewhere, for sure. Yeah, and actually related to human traffic, I just want to say this piece, because we've kind of, we're learning the hard way and we're adjusting, we're pivoting based on this, but because, so the cover boards are the most trafficked project, if you will, in these plots, most of these plots, it's like, oh, we, you know, we went out in spring and we collected some data on the herbs, and we went out a couple months later and collected data on the trees, and then I come in there every now and again and collect data from the cameras,
but as far as regular visits, that's where the cover boards come into play,

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and we really try to do, you know, pairs, the buddy system obviously for safety, but

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sometimes it's three, maybe even four people in these plots, and that heavy foot

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traffic shows in these plots, so we're kind of doing a, oh shoot, you know, let's

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pivot now, right, we're learning from this situation, where if you send feet, foot

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traffic there long enough, pretty soon you see trails go in there, and you see an

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impact on the herbaceous layer very, very easily, I mean, as clear as the eye can

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see, right, you just look there and you see, yeah, it looks like people have been

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walking through there, and especially along our cover board transects, because

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those are where people are going, right? So yeah, so that's, it's something we

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don't always think about when it comes to monitoring impacts, right, and we always

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think about, well, you know, it's expensive to have all these man hours,

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like, you know, people are the most expensive part of any project, so like

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getting this long-term data monitoring, it's important to, you know, get funding

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or whatnot, but in some cases it's like, well, it's not just the cost of, you know,

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the upfront cost of getting that done, it's also that, like, the more you may,

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the more you observe something, the more you're impacting, you know, you can't,

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you can't observe a system without changing it at least a little bit, so,

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yeah, having a light hand in that way is another really important consideration.

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Yeah, so there are discussions being had about, okay, what do we do going forward?

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Do we give these a year of rest? Do we make the survey season shorter, or do we

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survey only once a month? We're figuring this out, we're having these

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conversations, but yeah, it's something like I said, that you learn the hard way

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and then you adjust based on it, you have to always be willing to adjust, and

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that's where our protocol has really been all about too, is, okay, we wrote this

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out and this seemed like the right idea, and maybe we referenced a few other

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protocols, but then once you go out and feel, no matter what, it seems like

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there's always this tiny little, even rare situation that comes up that has you

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all kind of scratching your heads and flipping through the pages of the protocol

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and saying, you know, this really doesn't address this properly, we need to go in

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and make a few changes or something, and that's, I mean, it's constantly being updated.

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Well, you just can't think of everything ahead of time, you just can't do it.

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No, you can't, you try your best. Absolutely, and of course, yeah,

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whenever you're creating a project, right, you'll, the whole idea is like, well,

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we're just gonna make our protocol and we stick to it, and that, when that has

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to shift a little bit, you have to make some really important decisions there,

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saying like, okay, well, the data after this point won't be as, we can't compare it

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perfectly to the data we were taking before we changed that process,

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but we're not disturbing the area in the same way that we were, right? That can be

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really important. Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. So, so we'll see, we'll see, it's an

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ever-evolving process. I'd love to hear about just any ideas you have about

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fungal surveys. Do you have any idea how those might take place, or have you

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talked about that at all? Yeah, so we do, we did write up a protocol, which we will

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certainly go out and use, and it'll certainly work in some ways, and it

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certainly will not work. There we go, and you'll learn from it.

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But yeah, we're planning, so we don't want to do anything too intense, and we

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certainly don't want to do anything too invasive, because when it comes to fungus,

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you can be, you can go crazy on it. There are fungi that only exist, you know,

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they parasitize animals basically, so you can be looking for insects,

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you can be flipping rocks and logs, right? We don't want to do anything that's

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that invasive, we just want to kind of start to gain an understanding of what

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kind of fungal species we're seeing out in our forests, because we don't really

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have many long-term surveys related to this. So this is an opportunity

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to start to get at that question. Okay. So right now I believe the plan is we're

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going to go to a certain amount, certain select plots that we have. Some of them

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are harder to access than others, and if you're thinking about it, the peak

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fungal season is when the roads are going to be wet and muddy. Oh yeah. Some of them

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are just not going to be super accessible. So it's a little bit like grasslands

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where like if you go out in the wrong season, it's just identifying species is

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just much much much more difficult. Yeah. Okay. Or you're going to miss species

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altogether because they have a certain window that you missed. Right. Where they're showing themselves.

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Yeah. And that's the thing too, if you want to be all-inclusive, you would go a

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whole year round and you probably would, you'd lift everything, right? You might

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check every nook and cranny. But you don't want to tear apart every nook and cranny.

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Exactly. We're not trying to be too invasive. So I think right now we're going to be

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planning on setting a, so these at the select locations that are going to be able to be

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traveled out to by foot and not have to drive anywhere, you know, muddy, right? Because there

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are a there are a couple plots in particular that it's like we would love data from these spots,

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but it's not going to be possible like starting around November, right?

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Right. Yeah. Very practical considerations come into consideration. Yeah. Right. It's like,

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if only these were accessible all the time, you know, when is our network of zip lines going to be

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put in front of the preserve? I was picturing more of like a, what's the Star Trek teleportation

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device? Oh, okay. Yeah. Anyway. I'm sticking like a jet pack. A jet pack is fun. All right. We got

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all kinds of ideas. We got zip lines. We got jet packs. We got, you know, transporters. Transporters.

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That's what I was looking for. One day. Absolutely. But as far as like our plan right now, I believe

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the way that we have planned it out is at these certain plots. So we, you know, I'll get to my

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plot, right? And then I'll set a timer for 15 minutes. It might be, it might be 30 minutes,

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because I think we might have said, then we could do 15 per person, because the idea is, and we do

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the same sort of thing in herbaceous monitoring as well. With herbaceous monitoring, we do an

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all around plot survey, because there are just some plants that we're not capturing in our

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herbaceous transects that are located in the plot. So then you kind of bonus added a little area

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search along with doing the transect. Exactly. And so with the herbaceous, with the herbaceous

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monitoring, and when we go and we take a plot level species list, we, it would be an hour for one

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person, but if we have two people, okay, well, then we do 30 minutes a person, considering it the

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same amount of effort. Many hands like work. Exactly. Exactly. And so we're doing a simple

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similar thing for the fungal surveys. Like I said, I think it might be 30 minutes with like 15 minutes

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per person. That's another thing that my injury has reiterated is, you know, thankfully, I was able

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to get out of the field on my own just fine. But there is so much work around here that needs to be

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done. And it can be really hard to find a field buddy. It can be really hard. I know I wanted to

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be your field buddy a lot of times and I couldn't do it. So I will speak to that for sure. Yeah. And

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I mean, we have some wonderful volunteers who are willing to do anything and everything too,

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but schedules don't always line up or something comes up in their volunteers. You can't expect

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to do everything obviously, but it just means that there's a lot of times where we have to go out on

329
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our own. Yeah. And this sort of thing happens. And so with the fungal surveys we kept in mind too,

330
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well, we really would like to continue this buddy system. Yeah. Now the tricky thing I would say,

331
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and this is just kind of coming from me, is that fungus, they are so diverse. Bungi are so diverse.

332
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There are a lot out there. Yeah. And so being one person trying to assess species is like you'd

333
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have to have an encyclopedic knowledge. Oh my gosh. Right. So it's almost the same problem as,

334
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it's not, every person who goes out isn't going to take the same data. This is a very skill-based

335
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monitoring process. Yeah. And that's really hard to fit the bill. So you don't just need

336
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person hours. You need very specific person hours like skill set person hours. Yeah, exactly.

337
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Yeah. There's only, that's an even more precious commodity. I know. It really is. So we're going

338
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to see how this last one, I was able to hike around and kind of just eyeball and get a sense of what's

339
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out there, which was a chance for me to kind of get my practice in. But yeah, as far as training

340
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someone else or whatnot, it's going to be tricky, but we're going to go out and we're going to start

341
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to get information on our fungal species out there. And it's going to be exciting. I saw my first

342
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death caps on the preserve just this past winter. I knew they were out there somewhere. I've seen

343
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:45,760
them in different parts of the county, but it was an example of like, hey, this is kind of cool.

344
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This is anecdotal information. I wasn't taking data down anywhere or anything, but it's something

345
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where you can kind of start to tell people, oh, this is what we're seeing. Once you can gather

346
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numbers related to it and get species written down, that's an exciting process. Well, and I mean,

347
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on one hand it's a headache because you're trying to get data and have it all be lined up and quality

348
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checked and all of that. But it also is like this great opportunity for you as a professional to be

349
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learning a whole identification for a whole new kingdom of species. So that's like what an incredible

350
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thing as far as the experience. Totally. It's going to be a huge developmental opportunity for me

351
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very wise. And I want to spread that to other people too. I love to educate people on this as

352
00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:39,280
well and get them jazzed about it. So what a better way to do it than to start learning more

353
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:44,800
things myself and being on the student side of things, which I always try to take time in my

354
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life to make sure I sit in that seat because it's just fun. And you learn stuff. Absolutely. Well,

355
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we're going to return to that in a little while when we talk about what makes this work possible.

356
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But for now, I'm curious, what you envision, how might the data that you're taking at these forest

357
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monitoring plots, how can that potentially impact future work here at Pepperwood? Like,

358
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for instance, the stewardship work or the prescribed burns or anything, what do you envision?

359
00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:19,840
Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, A plus B isn't always equal C. You still do occasionally

360
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find trends. Like that's what science is all about is really finding statistical significance

361
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between certain things, right? Legitimate patterns. Yeah. Yeah. Find those patterns and be able to say,

362
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you know, I'm noticing a pattern and write on that, right? And educate people about that. And so I

363
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think if we can continue finding patterns through these data, and as it relates to prescribed

364
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burning, like I think that's a really beautiful opportunity we have here. We have the research

365
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and preserve management team. So ideally, those two things would marry together. I don't want to

366
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say perfectly because not a perfect fit ever. However, you learn things on the research side,

367
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and then maybe you pivot or you do things on the stewardship side, or you do things on the

368
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stewardship side. And we learn on the research side, what kind of effects we're maybe seeing,

369
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what kinds of results we're seeing. So I think doing that on site is fantastic. What a unique

370
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and awesome opportunity that we have between the two teams to be able to gain that kind of information

371
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and have that kind of background on what's being done out here. But also to be able to expand it

372
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and allow that elsewhere. So that's the other beautiful thing about science, I think, is being

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able to communicate it and share it among others. Right. So be able to show others these cover

374
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boards, right? Like I said, like anecdotally, a lot of foot traffic in there, we need to knock that

375
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off. Right. We need to like slow down on that a little bit. Right. That was one pattern that

376
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:52,240
you've noticed here, which is, oh, you know what, if we go out there every two weeks,

377
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:56,720
it starts to look kind of trampled. Right. So that's not even, you know, that's just me,

378
00:30:57,360 --> 00:31:02,640
that's just me and a few of us going and looking and saying, man, those look really trampled.

379
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:08,080
Yeah. And being able to communicate to other people, like, hey, this is what you've noticed,

380
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:12,240
if you do cover boards, like be warned, right? Learn from our mistakes. And I think that's another

381
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:19,600
opportunity that the data that we're gaining will provide is, oh, you know, we did this forest

382
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thinning work and we really didn't like it or we did like it or we pile burned afterward and we

383
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:29,680
found that that was a really good way to reduce some of the fuels before prescribed burn. Whatever

384
00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:35,280
the situation is, that to me is the ideal is being able to inform our own stewardship and

385
00:31:35,280 --> 00:31:40,240
inform stewardship and research elsewhere with what we're gaining here. And I think that we have

386
00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:46,000
a really cool opportunity to do that. And because there are some other places that do this as well,

387
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:50,400
we're able to gain information from them too about what they're doing and just learn from each

388
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:55,120
other. Yeah, either back up each other's claims or notice when there's exceptions or all those great

389
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things. And through climate change too, there's always monitoring is always such an important,

390
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:06,560
crucial piece. Because if you're not necessarily, we didn't have journal entries from naturalists,

391
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for example, who were seeing things happening phenologically in the past with certain plants,

392
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we wouldn't necessarily know today that those were observations being made. And we might just

393
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:21,360
make assumptions about, oh, it's this plant's always flowered this time of year, right? So it's

394
00:32:21,360 --> 00:32:26,640
a similar thing of like data through time, right? How was it speaking to what's happening through

395
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:32,880
time with climate change, with habitat fragmentation, whatever it is. So how, how, you know, well, the

396
00:32:32,880 --> 00:32:40,240
trees are surviving whatever impacts they're going through, right? Whatever the sort of ambient

397
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experience is going to be, right? Whatever the temperature is, whatever the humidity is, keeping

398
00:32:44,720 --> 00:32:49,680
track of that and watching, yeah, what's the survivability or like, how well are they recruiting

399
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:58,160
new plants? Yeah, like all of that is data that can really show big long term changes. Exactly.

400
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:05,360
And scientists already have ideas and predictions of what may happen. So to be able to speak to that,

401
00:33:05,360 --> 00:33:08,960
right? They're saying, we're totally seeing that same thing, or, you know, that's not really

402
00:33:08,960 --> 00:33:14,720
happening the way you thought is, is cool, is a really cool thing to have a part in. Well,

403
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:21,360
long term monitoring data sets are like notoriously difficult to even make happen. So it's incredible

404
00:33:21,360 --> 00:33:26,480
that Pepperwood is investing in these things, right? Like really taking the time to set these

405
00:33:26,480 --> 00:33:32,800
things up and follow through with it. What makes it possible? So like I mentioned with these

406
00:33:33,600 --> 00:33:38,240
plots that we installed recently, funding from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife

407
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:43,280
has been a huge part of that. Obviously, we're non-profits. So a lot of the stuff that we do

408
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:48,320
has to do with donor funding as well, whether it's related to the tools, the scientific equipment we

409
00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:53,920
get, you name it. So that's a piece as well, like generous donations, but also, yeah, grant funding.

410
00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:58,320
And like I said, this big funding that's come through with California Department of Fish and

411
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Wildlife has been a huge piece of making this possible. We also have volunteers who have helped

412
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with some of the data collection as well. That's a huge piece and staff who've been, you know,

413
00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:13,680
ready willing and able to participate in whatever way is possible and pick up the slack in whatever

414
00:34:13,680 --> 00:34:19,920
way is possible, especially with my, you know, hand situation. Right, I know. So that's a part

415
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:24,560
of it as well. And just these continued partnerships, like I mentioned to you, Dr. David Ackerly,

416
00:34:24,560 --> 00:34:31,440
like he already had this plot network set up. And so that was another piece. There are many

417
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protocols and different things that we've been able to reference and just peeling through various

418
00:34:36,960 --> 00:34:41,360
studies where we've been able to kind of take bits and pieces and, oh, these people have noticed

419
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:47,040
this thing or those people have noticed that thing and incorporate lessons learned by others

420
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:54,240
into what we're doing as well as, like I said, David Ackerly, whose work is going on site.

421
00:34:54,240 --> 00:34:59,840
And so being able to be like, hey, you're doing some of these very similar surveys going on.

422
00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:04,640
We really want to do that for our own pepperwood forest monitoring as well. Right. And they've

423
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:10,160
already worked through maybe some of the kinks that's come up site specific or even some have

424
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:16,320
like found some of the interesting results that you want to continue to monitor and see if they

425
00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:21,920
continue. Exactly. That's so true. That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. But what's been cool with some of the

426
00:35:21,920 --> 00:35:28,320
CDFW funding is that we have been able, so often the case with grant funding is they want you to do

427
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:35,760
something new, right? Right. And so, and that's, it's so hard because new is great and we love new,

428
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:40,640
but also it can mean that some of the really cool stuff that we want to continue goes by the wayside.

429
00:35:40,640 --> 00:35:44,320
It's like it's old news. So we want to sweep that out of the rug and we want to focus on something

430
00:35:44,320 --> 00:35:49,040
else, but it's so important and it's long-term monitoring, right? So it's like, what are you missing

431
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:54,480
out on by having to drop things, potentially drop things that you could otherwise be continuing.

432
00:35:54,480 --> 00:36:01,040
So, yeah, that speaks to that crux, that point where it's grant funding is such a wonderful

433
00:36:01,040 --> 00:36:09,520
resource, but so often it just structurally undervalues long-term monitoring processes because

434
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:15,120
every grant does want to have a little something to say for itself. It created something new. It

435
00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:20,880
doesn't want to just give credit into a long-term monitoring plot. So maybe it's just that much

436
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:26,480
more important that in addition to grant funding, which I'm sure gets a lot of work done here at

437
00:36:26,480 --> 00:36:30,960
Pepperwood, it's so important that we do have the community support that just says,

438
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:36,000
Pepperwood, we want Pepperwood to keep Pepperwood-ing. We want it to keep doing what you're

439
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:43,280
doing and that's kind of where the non-grant-affiliated just donations come into play, right?

440
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:50,720
So that's really important that, yeah, that's the beauty of a donation is that it's often,

441
00:36:50,720 --> 00:36:56,320
it's not coming with these sort of like addendums and quid pro quo, it just sort of comes and says,

442
00:36:56,320 --> 00:37:01,600
we trust you to do the right thing with this funding and to advance science.

443
00:37:01,600 --> 00:37:08,720
Exactly. And if we don't have the support, we can do the work. We just can. Yeah. If we have,

444
00:37:08,720 --> 00:37:14,240
you know, grant there, that's great. But if we don't have any funding that's there, we literally

445
00:37:14,240 --> 00:37:18,480
have to sit down and say, we can't do this anymore. And it is a very helpless feeling,

446
00:37:18,480 --> 00:37:24,080
but it's the way things go a lot of times. So the fact that we've been able to do this for as

447
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:30,160
long as we have, like I said, I think these plots began being installed in 2019 and bit by bit,

448
00:37:30,160 --> 00:37:34,960
we've added a little bit more and more through funding, through grants, through donations,

449
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:41,280
whatever we have out there with just adding two more at a further point of the preserve

450
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:48,480
that we haven't had any of our own forest monitoring plots before. It's exciting and it's

451
00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:56,000
so grateful that we can do it because otherwise we literally would just say, well, too bad so

452
00:37:56,000 --> 00:38:01,200
sad. We can't continue gathering that information that is pretty cool. And I mean, plenty of places

453
00:38:01,200 --> 00:38:06,080
think it's pretty exciting that we have this information. We do too. And it's a victory to

454
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:12,320
have kept this project going and growing for five years. And yet from a long-term data set, like

455
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:17,360
you're hoping that that's just the beginning, right? Yeah. Yeah. You want decades of data. You

456
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:24,880
want decades and decades. And if you think about it too, COVID came in right toward the beginning of that, right? And so you would think there are a lot of things around the world, research-wise, life-wise, you name it, that had to get a big put-on pause or had to end all together because of this pandemic. And somehow, some way, with a lot of things still pausing around here, even at Pepperwood, we were able to keep this project alive and going by some miracle. 

All righty. So is there anybody else that you would like to shout out in particular, as far as like what makes your work work here? 

You know, there are just so many specific names that could be called out, but the thing is I would miss one and feel horrible. So I'll just kind of leave it at large and say our phenomenal volunteer community has made a lot of things a possibility, has kept a lot of this stuff going and has aleviated a lot of the pressure off of staff. So they're phenomenal and can't thank them enough. We have a really great research and preserve management team who work together beautifully to make these things happen. And as far as other people to think, like I mentioned, we have that wonderful grant funding from CDFW that has gotten a lot of this able to be done and then support from donors. Because again, if the support isn't there, we can't do it. Well, I'm glad it's being done. It sounds like it's really very inclusive approach to sort of monitoring forests. And I'm going to talk separately to Michelle about her experience with the grasslands. And I'm interested in how that that's going to be a different story and how to what extent it's going to be the same. So thank you so much for talking to me about this. 

Yeah, thank you. I'm excited to get this featured. 

Welcome back to better recorded audio. I know that transition is pretty jarring. And thank you again to Makayla for sharing her experience and thoughts with us. If that conversation sparked questions in your mind, please send them into podcast at pepperwoodpreserve.org. And we will do our best to answer them in upcoming episodes. Our gratitude to the whole Pepperwood team for their support of the podcast. And one more special shout out to Zach Winter for helping upgrade our recording equipment so that future conversations will come through with much better sound quality.

And now it's time for the next installment of the Nature Sound Guess Who Game. Last time on Nature Sound Guess Who we heard this curious sound clip. 

A few guesses were submitted on our social media posts at Facebook, where we are pepperwood and Instagram where we are pepperwoodpreserveCA. Your guesses included mountain lion, otter, and a general guess for some kind of carnivorous mammal. 

Very good indeed listeners. It is a mammal and they do often eat meat, although they are not obligate carnivores. They actually tend to eat also quite a bit of fruits, nuts, and grains. That vocalist you heard was the Gray Fox. That wonderful recording was taken at Pepperwood by one of our fabulous volunteer stewards, George Jackson, who posted the observation to iNaturalist.org in July of 2021. Gray Foxes are scientifically known as Urocyon cinereoargenteus and I defy you to pronounce that any better. They are delightful little omnivores who are known for being accomplished tree climbers. They are active all year round, primarily at night or at dawn and dusk, but can occasionally be seen during the day. In fact, one of the visiting elementary school groups in Pepperwood's students conducting environmental inquiry program or scenic for short was lucky enough to spot a fox on the trail just a few weeks ago. Tragically for me, I wasn't the lucky hike leader on that one. Heartbreak! If you'd like to learn more about our charming Gray Fox neighbors, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has a set of life history summaries and range maps for many California species available on their website. That's where I double checked my information and we'll include a link to that webpage in our show notes. 

Now get your ears and brains ready for the next Nature Sound Guess Who Game Challenge. 

Here comes the next mystery sound clip in 3, 2, 1...

and again in 3, 2, 1...

As always submit your guesses to podcast at pepperwoodpreserve.org or to the episode 3 announcement on our Facebook or Instagram. Thanks again for listening and until next time, keep your ears tuned into nature!