Saving Endangered Reptiles Through Captive Breeding. Terry Lilley
Can endangered reptile species be saved through captive breeding? Biologist Terry Lilley began one of the first captive breeding and release programs for reptiles in the world. Today many of those species are reaching a more sustainable population in the wild. The USA’s Endangered Species Act outlined how Terry approached his work.
Transcript
Well, hello, happy 2022.
Speaker:This is my first episode opening up the 2022 year.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Can you believe this is actually episode 156.
Speaker:Well, thank you so much for listening to all of these amazing and exceptional, positive imprints.
Speaker:Well, I'm Catherine, your host for the podcast, your positive imprint, the variety show, featuring people all over the world whose positive actions are inspiring.
Speaker:Positive achievements.
Speaker:Exceptional people rise to the challenge.
Speaker:Music by the talented Chris Nole., check out his music and learn so much more about his background.
Speaker:Download his music and also some of his written compositions for piano.
Speaker:His ability to entertain on the piano is pretty rad and pretty amazing.
Speaker:Maybe someday you will get to see him live.
Speaker:Well, yes, this is his music playing now.
Speaker:One of my favorites, Gumbolaya which is also used in the intro.
Speaker:But for the podcast, Chris composed elevated intentions, a perfect title, which I use at the end of the show.
Speaker:And Chris's music may be found at ChrisNole.com.
Speaker:that's c h r i s n o l e
Speaker:Follow me on Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker:Your positive imprint.
Speaker:Connect with me on LinkedIn, check out my YouTube channel.
Speaker:My website is your positive imprint.com where you can sign up for email updates and learn more about the podcast.
Speaker:The website of course has information , as well as the people behind the show.
Speaker:You can also go shopping for your positive imprint merchandise on my website
Speaker:You can listen to the show from my website, yourpositiveimprint.com or of course listen from any podcast platform, apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, or simply your favorite podcast platform.
Speaker:I will have a change in my guest list, but more on that later,
Speaker:I will mention that I have received positive reviews of my themed collection of quotes of guests so I will continue to occasionally do those shows.
Speaker:Today's intro's a bit longer as we enter the new year and I provide you some information.
Speaker:Thanks for listening and supporting the show.
Speaker:And don't forget to share episodes, download, subscribe, or follow this podcast and leave positive reviews.
Speaker:And if you don't know how to do one or all of the above, send me an email.
Speaker:Happy to help you out.
Speaker:Enjoy the show and get inspired to activate your own positive imprint.
Speaker:Your positive imprint.
Speaker:What's your PI.
Speaker:have you ever thought about the harmony between animals species and how they continue to live together over thousands and even millions of years?
Catherine:Terry Lilley is a renowned biologist living in Hawaii, who today studies Marine life and coral reefs all over the world.
Catherine:His work is used by national geographic, especially the cinematography on sharks.
Catherine:His positive imprints and work within the global community is extensive.
Catherine:Today's episode features has reptile breeding center.
Catherine:Terry ran an endangered species rehab and release center for reptiles.
Catherine:And that work that he did is certainly a legacy of positive imprints as several reptile species are reaching sustainable populations.
Catherine:As a storyteller, Terry Lilley shares his incredible past and how it moved him forward into the undersea world.
Terry Lilley:I dated for 10 years, my girlfriend, her name was Solidad.
Terry Lilley:She was graduate in biology from Mexico city.
Terry Lilley:And we started a captive breeding crocodile farm in Oaxaca, in a little town called () uh, up in the mountains, right below, Mexico city.
Terry Lilley:And I spent five, 15 years every summer, touring all around Mexico, studying and collecting rare and endangered reptiles.
Terry Lilley:And then I had that captive breeding center in San Francisco, California for rare and endangered reptiles and I captive bred them and distributed them all back into the jungle , native habitat
Terry Lilley:We kind of started all of that in early 1980s.
Terry Lilley:And we, uh, connected with zoo curators all around the world.
Terry Lilley:We have a pretty cool network of scientists.
Terry Lilley:I had over 80 zoo curators around the world, 80 different countries that I communicated with.
Terry Lilley:And I ended up still having them, uh, having the largest amount of worldwide endangered species permits, uh, than any human being on earth, 380 international endangered species permits.
Terry Lilley:And so I have all these old letters of writing people, uh, zoo curators and scientists around the world, trying to figure out how to captive breed reptiles for everybody, including writing letters to the Darwin
Catherine:What motivated Terry Lilly in the direction of conserving and preserving wildlife?
Terry Lilley:Just kind of walking backwards since I was a little kid, my mom and dad said, I used to go out and catch snakes and lizards when I was three and
Terry Lilley:When it comes to nature, you're kind of born with it.
Terry Lilley:You know, maybe something you did in a past life, but it wasn't something that you particularly learned as a kid.
Terry Lilley:You were either connected to these animals or you weren't connected to them.
Terry Lilley:And so by the time I was 12 years old, I had over 500 reptiles that I was raising.
Terry Lilley:And this was, back in the sixties and the seventies.
Terry Lilley:So I went to college at San Luis Obispo.
Terry Lilley:And I graduated in biology and I did my senior project on learning to captive breed reptiles.
Terry Lilley:And by the time I was going to college, I had over 1500 different reptiles that I was raising.
Terry Lilley:And I've been all around the United States and Mexico collecting some of the rare and endangered reptiles because what was happening, and it really made me angry from a
Terry Lilley:The reptiles in the wild live underground.
Terry Lilley:They live in a hole.
Terry Lilley:They don't live around or near people as a general rule.
Terry Lilley:And so you take them out of their native environment you put them on display at a zoo, the average reptile in 1980, when I did my, uh, senior project, uh,
Terry Lilley:So every three to four months zoos around the world would buy another half million rare reptiles to put them on display and they would die.
Terry Lilley:Six months later, they would buy them again and they would die.
Terry Lilley:These are animals like Komodo dragons, Gray's monitor from Philippines.
Terry Lilley:Uh, Fiji island Iguanas.
Terry Lilley:These animals due to habitat destruction were very few left alive on earth and were headed to be going extinct, but the zoos were buying them.
Terry Lilley:And so I got really frustrated and mad at that and said, well, wait a minute, we have to be able to learn how to captive breed these predators, you know, they breed in the wild.
Terry Lilley:We can learn how to breed them in captivity.
Terry Lilley:So make a long story short
Terry Lilley:in 1980, I started a project learning how to captive breed reptiles.
Terry Lilley:But 20 years later, I'd produced over 125,000 babies in captivity, 125 species.
Terry Lilley:So I had the first ever captive breeding of and five of them were thought to be extinct at the time.
Terry Lilley:So incredibly successful programs.
Terry Lilley:So over a number of about 10, 15 years, I learned not only how to captive breed, the reptiles, but that process in captivity gave the people that were studying the reptiles in the wild, a lot of
Terry Lilley:One of the lizards had the first breeding of is this monitor lizard from Australia called the goanna.
Terry Lilley:That's what they call them in Australia.
Terry Lilley:And Steve Irwin had told me that they were almost ready to go extinct because of habitat destruction and people were eating them and no one knew how to captive breed them.
Terry Lilley:So when I learned how to captive, breed them, we found out that the lizard kept their eggs at 92 degrees for nine months.
Terry Lilley:And in the wild, they did that by laying their eggs in termite mounds, and the termites regulated the temperature of the termite mound.
Terry Lilley:So I know there's stuff we learned about this is just unbelievable.
Terry Lilley:And so the bottom line was I learned how to captive breed them, and then gave that information back to Steve.
Terry Lilley:And then they realized then if they could protect the termitemounds in the central part of Australia, they indeed, would save the species from going extinct.
Terry Lilley:We had other species like, uh, a little gecko that comes from the Solomon Islands and new Caledonia.
Terry Lilley:And they were thought to be extinct at the time.
Terry Lilley:And so I sent somebody over to, uh, uh, Solomon Islands.
Terry Lilley:And then we've got about a dozen of these geckos out of the wild.
Terry Lilley:Everyone thought they were extinct.
Terry Lilley:Some of the native tribes knew where they were.
Terry Lilley:We brought them back to my research center and we've produced 22,000 babies in captivity.
Terry Lilley:And we distributed those babies to zoos all around the world, almost every zoo right now has some on display and then we released over 5,000 babies back into the wild.
Terry Lilley:And now the species is completely thriving again, uh, on their native islands.
Terry Lilley:So it was really rewarding and learning how to captive, breed these animals.
Terry Lilley:But at the same time we were there for keeping people from taking them out of the wild, because if we had a beautiful, captive, bred reptile that was captive bred in front of people and
Terry Lilley:I just went to San Diego zoo
Terry Lilley:and some of my first captive bred, reptiles are still at the zoo and they're over 40 years old and we believe a lot of these reptiles now can live to be 60, 80, 90 years old.
Terry Lilley:So now you go all the way to current time right now, 95% of the reptiles in the nation's zoos are captive produced.
Terry Lilley:Whereas we started, there were none.
Terry Lilley:And so what that has really done is that's eliminated people from taking them out of the wild and smuggling them out of the wild because those animals, when they get on captivity die
Terry Lilley:So a really successful program and that led to the understanding and captive breeding , many, many, many, many different species of wildlife around the planet.
Terry Lilley:And it also gave us a lot of information about the nutrition.
Terry Lilley:Things that you couldn't study out in the wild and, uh, and so really fascinating program.
Terry Lilley:And was super happy that I did it.
Terry Lilley:So how did you get the funding to help pay for the housing, the food, the traveling?
Terry Lilley:Yeah.
Terry Lilley:This is really quite a, quite a story.
Terry Lilley:Later on in my career, I had some help from people like Michael Jackson.
Terry Lilley:Uh, he helped fund my research center and I had some funding from some zoos.
Terry Lilley:I raised a quarter million dollars in one day with a suit and tie on in wall street, New York stockbrokers for a captive breeding, endangered species suit for reptiles.
Terry Lilley:So I had some grants.
Terry Lilley:I had some funding that came in from big corporations, but for the first 10 years, I literally just learned how to captive breed a couple of the reptiles from California and the babies
Terry Lilley:And so I offered everywhere from the Frankfurt Zoo to San Diego, to the Moscow zoo, Tokyo's Mexico city zoo, all these zoos around the world,
Terry Lilley:I offered them captive produce reptiles that were not taken out of the wild guaranteeing that they would live in captivity.
Terry Lilley:And they were half the price of the smuggled wild reptiles.
Terry Lilley:And so within about the first 10 years from 1980 to 1990, I captive produced over a million dollars worth of rare reptiles.
Terry Lilley:And it wasn't a commercial operation.
Terry Lilley:It was a non-profit operation, but the funds that we created went back into building new research centers to learn how to captive breed, endangered species that were ready to go extinct.
Terry Lilley:Some of these reptiles, it took me over 20 years and trying before learning how to captive breed them., uh, one of them was on a national geographic show called the Gray's monitor from the Philippines.
Terry Lilley:And they thought the animal was extinct, what I produced my first 15 babies.
Terry Lilley:So it actually self perpetuated because the animals were so valuable and then they were sold at the zoos.
Terry Lilley:That gave us the money to take the other half the babies for releasing them back into the wild when we could.
Terry Lilley:And then that paid for the study and research of learning, how to captive breed, uh, reptiles like the Galapagos tortoise, and completely saved a couple of the species down in the Galapagos from going extinct.
Terry Lilley:So, uh, it was really, really pretty cool.
Terry Lilley:I did a lot of Hollywood movies too, like Raiders of the lost Ark.
Terry Lilley:Uh, I supplied a lot of the reptiles for Hollywood because I raised them in captivity and they were tame and you could deal with them and they wouldn't hurt you.
Terry Lilley:And, uh, so it became really kind of a popular deal.
Terry Lilley:And then when we had the terrorist attack that ended the whole captive breeding operation for the time being because after September 11th, we were not allowed to ship live reptiles on commercial airlines.
Terry Lilley:And so when that happened, I had my captive breeding research center that this one was 15,000 square feet.
Terry Lilley:It was the size of a football field.
Terry Lilley:We had over 3,800 breeding reptiles in the research center.
Terry Lilley:And, uh, I had 16 employees at the time and, but we couldn't ship the babies around the world anymore on the airlines.
Terry Lilley:And so we ended up having really, really high overhead, like $12,000 a month just for electrical bills.
Terry Lilley:And so I ended up winding down the whole breeding operation , but it was okay because we successfully saved the species we needed to.
Terry Lilley:So I felt like I was really, I was kind of done with it.
Terry Lilley:I did the mission that I wanted to do.
Terry Lilley:And so I sold it and that's what paid for my around the world, underwater Marine life series for schools.
Terry Lilley:And that was kind of the game plan.
Terry Lilley:So I've been around the planet to mostly countries studying reptiles and at the time diving and surfing, because that was just fun.
Terry Lilley:Got to go back around the world again now to do a underwater educational series of Marine life.
Terry Lilley:So it all turned out good.
Catherine:So going back to your research center, what was the name of the center and is the name still the same or did the new change?
Terry Lilley:I'm still the same, but the new owners who bought it changed it more into a product company, a supply product company.
Terry Lilley:So I don't know what they're doing now, but it was called central coast reptile research center.
Terry Lilley:And then I had a TV show in California called reptile world USA.
Terry Lilley:And that was in part sponsored by SeaWorld at the time.
Terry Lilley:And then I helped Steve Irwin start his crocodile hunter TV show in Australia.
Terry Lilley:And so my research centers supplied a lot of the captive produced reptiles, uh, for Steve's crocodile hunter show later on in his career.
Terry Lilley:I had the first ever in 1981, national geographic special, uh, called the remarkable King snake.
Terry Lilley:And it was the first time on live TV , a snake hatch out of an egg.
Terry Lilley:That was pretty cool.
Terry Lilley:That was back in 1981.
Terry Lilley:So it was a fascinating career.
Terry Lilley:And kind of ironically, one of the things we learned about the reptiles was their sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation.
Terry Lilley:I've got literally 40 years of experience on high power lines.
Terry Lilley:Okay.
Terry Lilley:Microwaves, antennas, telecommunication.
Terry Lilley:So I have lots of experience on how that affects cold blooded animals.
Terry Lilley:And back in the 1980s, we were not studying effects of electromagnetic radiation on humans or warm blooded animals, but we were studying cold blooded animals because the zoos that were built in areas that had
Terry Lilley:So they would get captive bred reptiles from me.
Terry Lilley:And those reptiles were dying.
Terry Lilley:Whereas the captive bred reptiles that were sent to all the other zoos on earth, were thriving and we couldn't figure out why.
Terry Lilley:And then, so we finally did a study where Icaptive produced 50 to 80 bearded dragons.
Terry Lilley:They're really quite popular now in the pet trade.
Terry Lilley:And so we took these baby bearded dragons and we raised 30 of them at my research center.
Terry Lilley:We raised 30 of them at a zoo, which were all out of the same bunch of eighties, 30 of them at the zoo that had high power lines above- all 30 of those died.
Terry Lilley:And so we started doing very intense studies on reptiles because they're so closely related to the earth.
Terry Lilley:They live on the earth they're from the earth reptiles eat rocks and minerals that they assimilate to be able to grow.
Terry Lilley:Reptiles, have to have sunshine, ultraviolet light to grow.
Terry Lilley:So reptiles have been around for 250 million years.
Terry Lilley:So reptiles are kind of like mother earth.
Terry Lilley:They have all of the parts of the earth that the earth has to give to them.
Terry Lilley:And so electromagnetic radiation makes a frequency that is bad for cold-blooded animals and it interrupts their uptake of trace elements and minerals.
Terry Lilley:And then the animals die basically because of lack of nutrition.
Catherine:When you were doing your research and your captive breeding, did you have to have any exotic permits at that time?
Terry Lilley:Another question you could answer in a very cu t chase, way.
Terry Lilley:Is Terry, how many times have you been arrested?
Terry Lilley:That answers that question.
Terry Lilley:Okay.
Terry Lilley:I actually was a part of in 1972, the initial writing of the U S Endangered species act.
Terry Lilley:Endangered species act is the law in my eyes that has saved wildlife on earth.
Terry Lilley:It is the most precious law and most beautiful law.
Terry Lilley:We call it the People's Law..
Terry Lilley:Wasn't written on behalf of the government.
Terry Lilley:It was written on behalf of the people of the United States of America, to be able to protect the habitat of the animals that were becoming rare.
Terry Lilley:A fellow named Craig Potter who's kind of my protege and teacher.
Terry Lilley:He was the attorney that wrote the law for the EPA in 1972.
Terry Lilley:And then it was ratified in 1974, by Congress.
Terry Lilley:So what happened is in the endangered species act, we are protecting habitat of endangered and rare species, which was really necessary at the time, but there was no captive breeding laws
Terry Lilley:So it really wasn't written into the law.
Terry Lilley:So when I started captive breeding reptiles it through a real loophole for the fish and wildlife service, because now I'm not taking them out of the wild I'm captive producing existing animals.
Terry Lilley:I'm distributing those animals so people don't take them out of the wild.
Terry Lilley:So everything I was doing was good and needed, but technically it was in violation of the Endangered Species Act, the act that I promoted and was part of.
Terry Lilley:And I even had a school in California, on on teaching Endangered Species Act.
Terry Lilley:And some of my clients were by the way, big time attorneys, Caltrans, PGand E, and a Monsanto, the U S military.
Terry Lilley:These were some of my clients I was teaching about the endangered species act.
Terry Lilley:So what happened is I got in a conflict for a few years with Fish and Wildlife
Terry Lilley:over the captive breeding of endangered reptiles.
Terry Lilley:And so I won't go through it all.
Terry Lilley:It was quite a mess for a few years of dealing with these government officials to get them to change the law.
Terry Lilley:But finally, through a court case, I got the endangered species act partially rewritten.
Terry Lilley:And now in the law, there's a captive bred wildlife clause.
Terry Lilley:So if you're captive breeding endangered wildlife, it's now encouraged in the law to distribute those animals, to zoos and research centers and universities worldwide, to keep people from taking them out of the wild.
Terry Lilley:So it was a long haul, but I'm very proud to say because of some of the court work that I did and working with Craig Potter and other attorneys showing
Terry Lilley:And so now there are certain set of rules that you need to follow if you're going to captive, breed an endangered species and you get a captive bred wildlife permit, which takes care of all that.
Terry Lilley:But back in the 1980s, we had to go through a lot of hassles.
Terry Lilley:I mean, being arrested at airports and all kinds of crazy things happen because at the time, technically by the wording, the law I was violating the very law I was trying to support, but that all got changed around.
Catherine:So you mentioned with the endangered species act, which I very much like.
Catherine:Question,.
Catherine:What about getting them back into the wild?
Catherine:, I know that some zoos, when they breed, they do rerelease animals back into the wild.
Catherine:Is that part of the clause or is that just a
Terry Lilley:practice?
Terry Lilley:Yeah, I mean, that's a yes and no question, and that depends on each individual species.
Terry Lilley:So I'll give you some examples, uh, on the Galapagos islands, they recently found on Fernandina island, one remaining Galapagos, tortoise of one of the species there, that they thought to be extinct.
Terry Lilley:They said they only have like one animal this point in time.
Terry Lilley:And hopefully through a tracking of satellites, we're going to find a few more of them.
Terry Lilley:And then you take in the Galapagos islands, uh, Lonesome George, you know, big for, for it is, it was one of the last ones, his species that died.
Terry Lilley:And then you take a very successful program.
Terry Lilley:Uh, one of the Galapagos island tortoises is called Diego is he was from San Diego zoo
Terry Lilley:and Diego is captive produced I think now 800 babies.
Terry Lilley:And so I was in the Galapagos was helping out with the raising of those babies to be released into the wild.
Terry Lilley:So sometimes the only way you're going to save these species is to captive breed them.
Terry Lilley:And hopefully you can utilize the ones that are already in captivity.
Terry Lilley:We took very few animals out of the wild.
Terry Lilley:but you also run the risk if you're reintroducing an animal in the wild, you're going to reintroduce bacteria and viruses from captivity that could kill the wild populations.
Terry Lilley:But with most of the reptiles we have found, if you simply give mother nature a break, she will take care of her own problems and rebuild her own population of animals.
Terry Lilley:At the same time, the captive breeding, we can understand the animals, reproductive ability and find out why it wasn't breeding in the wild so we can take care of the habitat problems.
Terry Lilley:So you really have to look at each individual species and make that decision.
Terry Lilley:Uh, on whether or not you want to rerelease them.
Terry Lilley:The international law for the trade of endangered species and that's the international law Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species that's called CITES..
Terry Lilley:So CITES is signed on by 102 different countries.
Terry Lilley:That's an international law,
Terry Lilley:The endangered species act is United States.
Terry Lilley:So the endangered species act says.
Terry Lilley:You can not alter, harm, you cannot change the feeding, breeding, behavior, and nesting or migration of any animal that's listed on the, Endangered Species Act..
Terry Lilley:And then we also have international laws, Called the Lacey Act about shipping animals
Terry Lilley:and then we have the migratory bird act uh, that's been around since 1890.
Terry Lilley:So we have a whole series of set of laws.
Terry Lilley:What is misunderstood most of the time is the laws weren't written to protect endangered species.
Terry Lilley:We're using it a lot here in Hawaii right now to protect our sea turtles from some of the abuse of the tourist industry.
Terry Lilley:The law was written to protect the habitat of endangered species.
Terry Lilley:And so if anything affects the habitat of endangered species, technically that action can not take place, whether it's a pipeline across Northern Idaho or Northern North Dakota, okay.
Terry Lilley:Or anywhere in the United States, that if there's any action- pipelines, pollution, construction, no matter what it may be, that may interfere with a habitat
Terry Lilley:of a listed endangered species then you have to have a very detailed long-term study done called the habitat conservation plan to see if that project
Terry Lilley:The idea is to have the endangered species to become plentiful again, because their habitats are protected then to take them off of the endangered species list.
Terry Lilley:See the whole idea like the bald Eagle for instance, the whole idea is to number one, protect the habitat because these animals are getting rare.
Terry Lilley:Number two then is to have those animals all on their own, in the wild, repopulate where you hopefully don't have to reintroduce, but you may, but repopulate
Terry Lilley:and then once habitats protect the animals have repopulated, then you remove it from the Endangered Species Act.
Terry Lilley:So that's the way the law's functionally are supposed to work.
Terry Lilley:And the beauty aboutthat law the endangered species act is that it's run by the people of the United States of America, not the government.
Terry Lilley:Endangered species are owned by the people in the United States.
Terry Lilley:They're not owned by the government.
Terry Lilley:They're not owned by an oil company.
Terry Lilley:They're not owned by the White House.
Terry Lilley:They're not owned by Congress.
Terry Lilley:They're not owned by fish and wildlife or NOAA.
Terry Lilley:They're owned by you and I.
Terry Lilley:And the people are the one in the United States in charge of protecting the habitat of endangered species and the people can sue and take into court
Terry Lilley:anybody, including the president of the United States, if they're harming the habitat of endangered species.
Terry Lilley:And so the people have the power in the United States, I've actually sued and gone to court.
Terry Lilley:I think I've been in court 60 times under the endangered species act.
Terry Lilley:I won a case against the U S attorney general in California.
Terry Lilley:I've won cases against the U S military all by myself, one individual person, because the endangered species act is made to have any individual person
Terry Lilley:And it's an incredibly powerful law and really good for wildlife and really good for the public
Terry Lilley:if they learn how to use it.
Terry Lilley:There's two different scenarios.
Terry Lilley:One is the listing and delisting of endangered species.
Terry Lilley:That's a different process and I'm not a, expert at that.
Terry Lilley:Okay.
Terry Lilley:Because that is a very distinct process under a given set of laws.
Terry Lilley:And it's usually best dealt with by environmental attorneys, endangered species attorneys.
Terry Lilley:When an animal is listed, the protecting of that animal in the wild, that's where I come into play.
Terry Lilley:I've worked with these laws since the very first ones that were ever written.
Terry Lilley:I worked with the animals and actually in the wild and how these laws actually take place.
Terry Lilley:Now, the people you and I.
Terry Lilley:I actually just, for instance, threaten the us military under the endangered species act in 2015 in Kaua'i.
Terry Lilley:And said that their Naval operations, their submarine activity are ruining the habitat of, our endangered monk seals and green sea turtles.
Terry Lilley:And I had proof to show that.
Terry Lilley:I filed with the U S military intent to Sue under the endangered species act to stop the military from ruining the habitat in Kaua'i of the endangered species.
Terry Lilley:The military turned around and said they were going to move their entire operation 30 miles off the north shore of Kaua'i, . I just love to have people read about the endangered species act.
Terry Lilley:It's very empowering.
Terry Lilley:I didn't have to prove it.
Terry Lilley:I only showed enough scientific in physical data, videos and pictures that electromagnetic weapon has the likelihood to harm the monk seal,
Terry Lilley:When there's only a few of them left.
Terry Lilley:And Any citizen can file a complaint in federal court to protect endangered wildlife.
Terry Lilley:The endangered species act also says the willful omission of not employing endangered species act is a criminal felon.
Terry Lilley:They, what that means is that Noah and the U S fish and wildlife service and the EPA, if they know of a violation of the endangered species act and they don't act upon it, they can be held in criminal contempt.
Terry Lilley:They can be held responsible personally, under criminal law.
Terry Lilley:This is heavy.
Catherine:That is good to know.
Catherine:Absolutely good to know.
Catherine:Yes.
Catherine:Uh, thank you so much for sharing that absolute wonderful explanation of the endangered species act.
Catherine:I was not aware of all of those parts to it.
Catherine:And I am glad to have that information
Terry Lilley:and so my main focus has shifted a little bit and the first part in my life, I really wanted to study nature to see how it works, because if I don't,
Terry Lilley:You know?
Terry Lilley:I mean, I I'm, I have a curious mind, I want to know how the heart works, how the lungs work, , how all parts of the body work, not just my little cell, my little part of my little part of the body.
Terry Lilley:And so I lived with animals all around the world, reptiles sharks, fish, birds, and Hawks Falcons, and studied them to see how they actually connected with each other and nature.
Terry Lilley:And then I did a lot of captive reproduction and projects biologically oriented to find out how they internally tick.
Terry Lilley:. I needed to know, how that reptile in the wild interconnected with the bigger their nature is.
Terry Lilley:They're all highly interconnected.
Terry Lilley:I did, mineral and rock studies to find out how zinc and magnesium and calcium and all of that effect, sperm counts on reptiles.
Terry Lilley:So how do animals inter relate and share energies with the actual physical earth.
Terry Lilley:It's all very fascinating.
Terry Lilley:So my main focus right now is trying to document as much of this planet as I can.
Terry Lilley:There's lots of people out there documenting lions and tigers, zebras, elephants, and bald eagles and so forth and so on.
Terry Lilley:So I really choose because I have a connection there is to document worldwide, the most amount of the Marine life on earth that I possibly can.
Catherine:So before we get to the last segment, which is your inspiring words, let me remind listeners where they can find you on social media.
Catherine:YouTube Underwater2web, the website is underwater2web.
Catherine:And of course Google T E R R Y L I L L E Y.
Catherine:You might get his prison record?
Catherine:Uh,
Terry Lilley:no, I even did that the other day, just to find out.
Catherine:Terry Lilley, this has been so enjoyable, so educational and, I'm anxious to hear your last inspiring words.
Terry Lilley:We have to reconnect with nature.
Terry Lilley:We're not talking about changing the entire human race here.
Terry Lilley:Spend 10 to 15% out in nature, enjoying all of the beautiful things that are on this incredible planet and all around you.
Terry Lilley:You'd actually make a huge impact in the harmony of this
Terry Lilley:entireplanet.
Terry Lilley:Yeah, and I, I, anything I could ask for, and that's what I recommend.
Catherine:Well, I know that that is very important to you because that is something that you shared on the last episode.
Catherine:Terry Lilley, thank you so much for sharing your positive imprints.
Catherine:On this podcast, I meet so many people around the world and each of them changes me in a different way.
Catherine:And you certainly have made me much more cognizant of my own actions with regard to our worldwide ecosystem.
Catherine:So thank you so much for that change for me in the inspiration, Terry Lilley.
Catherine:Thank
Terry Lilley:you.
Terry Lilley:Well, we'll stay in touch obviously, so, it's fun doing these programs.
Terry Lilley:You're more than welcome and the animals will thank you very much.
Catherine:Yes.
Catherine:Thank you so much.
Catherine:Aloha, your positive imprint.