AmericanBlackBear_Triage_Evans_Jonah_BoerneTX_3December2020_Reel4041.mp3

Jonah Evans [00:00:00] So as the mammalogist for Texas Parks and Wildlife, my job is focused on non-game and rare mammals in the state. And bears are one of the species that's under that umbrella. There's a lot of others.

Jonah Evans [00:00:15] And the thing about bears is, while they are considered threatened in Texas and there's not very many of them in the state, and we want to see them recolonize, there's a lot of other animals that are in real dire straits that are needing a lot of time and energy, because they're facing much bigger problems.

Jonah Evans [00:00:34] You know, bears are, bears are doing extremely well in most of the country, like all of the Appalachian chain and all through the Rockies, there's a lot of bears. And, and so they're at no risk of extinction and their populations are in some big decline or anything. In fact, they seem to be doing pretty well.

Jonah Evans [00:00:56] So as far as the allocation of time for me goes, right? So you sit in my job and you look out at the state and you say, "all right, what are the big problems facing mammals, non-game mammals in Texas? And what should I spend my time working on?"

Jonah Evans [00:01:14] Well, we have the Texas kangaroo rat up in the Panhandle that is only found now in five counties in the whole world. And if it goes extinct in those counties, it's probably, I mean, it's done. It's just extinct. And so we have the Texas kangaroo rat. And, and we're doing a lot of work on that species.

Jonah Evans [00:01:33] And we have a bunch of bat species that are being hammered by white nose syndrome as this disease spreads across the state, you know, spreads from across the country, and now is in Texas. We had a bunch of myotis velifer, or the cave myotis, die last year. And we're doing a lot of research and treatment work. And, you know, I've written a lot of grants and studied this problem really hard to try to find ways to support bats in the face of this really devastating disease that's coming through. So there's that issue as well.

Jonah Evans [00:02:12] There's the swift fox, which was historically found in up to 78 Texas counties, which is now found in one, partially, you know, a tiny bit in a second. So, so swift fox was once found, and swift fox has been seeing big declines in a bunch of other states as well.

Jonah Evans [00:02:29] And, and, you know, quite a few more. I mean, we even have ocelot. Now, ocelot is sort of like bears in a way. There's, they're common in parts of Mexico and, and south. And so should we spend a ton of time working on them? Maybe that's debatable based on the fact that they're, they're existing in other areas.

Jonah Evans [00:02:49] But anyway, there's a lot of different conservation problems and challenges. And, and bears I think are an important one, especially because of the interest, but, but they end up when I do all the math and I look at the ones that are the of the biggest conservation concern for the state, you know, they usually end up ranking kind of low.

Jonah Evans [00:03:13] And so I definitely try to put, I mean, they get more of my time than they deserve, based on their conservation rank alone. And I think that's largely because of the public interest in bears and because of the, the potential to interact with people and livestock and be threatening. But strictly from a conservation need perspective, and when we do sort of objective rankings of what the threats are and what the need is, they don't rank super high.

Jonah Evans [00:03:43] So, so I you know, I usually try to explain that to people when they're asking, like, well, why haven't you guys done this and this and why aren't we doing all this different stuff with bears? You know, the reality is there's some really big, daunting problems facing certain Texas mammals. And, and there's one of me for the whole state. And, you know, I get spread pretty thin, trying to trying to do all that stuff.

Jonah Evans [00:04:08] So I feel like we've done a lot with bears based on, you know, the limitations that we have. But, but we also have to make some real kind of hard triage-like strategy decisions to decide sort of where to spend our time and energy.