Catching up with an old friend from Alpine

It has easily been over 30 years since I have had the opportunity to spend anytime catching up with my old friend Roy McBride from Alpine. Roy and I worked on our Masters Degrees at Sul Ross State University when I first moved to Texas in 1974. Back in those days Roy was a living legend of sorts because of his experience and knowledge of predators in the Southwest. As a result when the time came to launch an emergency rescue effort to save the Mexican wolf from extinction, Roy was the man the US Fish and Wildlife Service called to take the lead.

During the time that we were riding around West Texas together talking about wolves, bears and mountain lions we shared a lot and for a short time I lived with him and his wife Jerry while I was still in school. I was saddened to learn when we talked last week that Jere had passed away 14 years ago. She was a wonderful lady and I have very fond memories of her.

I wrote about those days and the Mexican wolf in a chapter I wrote for a book called War Against the Wolf. That was back in 1995 and I hope to someday update my reflections in my own book. The book is a comprehensive history of American sentiment about the wolf and is still available on Amazon.com.

Roy is still out working with predators helping with conservation efforts and keeping his business going in Alpine. I hope we can meet and catch up in person soon.

Below is an excerpt from the chapter I wrote entitled 1995: Aqui No Hay Mas Lobos where I wrote about Roy. Later I posted an old 8mm film on YouTube that I took of one of the last wild wolves from Mexico that Roy captured for the captive breeding program that is now helping to restore the species in the wild.

If anyone knew where to find wolves in Mexico and how to capture them, Roy was the man. It was ironic that after playing a small part in helping to bring the species to the brink of extinction, he was now being asked to help save it. One of the last wild endangered Mexican wolves known to science glared at me from inside a large enclosure on McBride's small ranch. I can still picture it's shaggy gray-and-rust- colored coat and how out of place it looked from behind the wire fence. A three-minute 8mm movie film refreshes my memory of that haunting day. My heart is filled with sadness at the thought that to save the species we had to capture the last known survivors and keep them and their descendants in pens until the time that it will be safe to release them back into the wild.

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Kids love bugs, big time!by Rick LoBello

Make Plans to attend Bug Awareness Weekend at the El Paso Zoo – August 2-3

The harmless vinegaroon is found in the desert areas of El Paso. It gets its name from a vinegar like smelling acid that it will squirt at its enemies.

Do you know of any children that like bugs? The El Paso Zoo does and every year we break out the bugs just for them. It’s a back to school “bug out” and our educators with lots of help from zoo keepers, volunteers and our resident chef, get all buggy just thinking about the fun weekend ahead. Bug lovers you say? Yep, kids love bugs; you can see it in their faces, no doubt about it.

Children at the Zoo enjoying a close up look at a tarantula.

Now if you are an entomologist, you know that of the more than one million different kinds of bugs scientists have described so far, “true bugs” belong to the insect order called Hemiptera. These are the oval shaped insects with flattened bodies and mouths that let them suck blood or juices from plants, animals or humans. They include cicadas, aphids (like the ones you find in vegetable gardens), leafhoppers, kissing bugs and bed bugs.

Here at the Zoo and pretty much across the country, most people refer to the entire world of creepy crawlers as bugs, no matter what order they are classified in. The Zoo’s bug collection is used mainly for education presentations called Zoo Adventure Programs offered to school groups. We also show them at special animal encounter programs for the general public in our discovery centers. The list of species living here includes tarantulas, scorpions, centipedes, millipedes and insects like whirligig beetles, diving beetles and water bugs. Most of what we have lives right here in El Paso, but they are rarely seen because of their nocturnal lifestyles.

The Zoo plans to feature an exhibit with bugs as part of a new Chihuahuan Desert experience exhibit expected to open in 2018. As you enter the area you will have an opportunity to go inside an abandoned ranch house where an amazing array of insects and small animals have moved in and taken over. Until then our educators will feature our bugs during special events and educational programs. Currently we maintain a collection of over 25 species including a new red clawed scorpion, Brazilian black tarantula and giant African millipede.

Our Bug Awareness Weekend will tie into the three geographic regions featured at the Zoo. In the El Paso Electric Kalahari Research Center we will have some bugs from Africa. In the El Paso Water Utilities Discovery Education Center we will have our largest collection of bugs from the Americas. Across the Franklin Canal we will have some bugs from Asia in the Asia Discovery Center.

Some zoo-goers can’t get enough of our cricket- chocolate-chip cookies.

You definitely will not want to miss the amazing bug dishes that our resident Chef, Miguel Guillen will be cooking up. Last year we had long lines of bug eaters from across the city coming by to eat up everything the Chef created including Grasshopper Stir Fry, Sweet Cricket Popcorn and Roasted Leaf Cutter Ants. Don’t say “ugh bugs”, all around the world people eat bugs as part of their daily diet. The term entomophagy is used to describe how people eat bugs. Did you know that people have eaten bugs including their eggs and larvae since prehistoric times? Eating bugs is rare in the developed world, but it seems to be growing in popularity here at the Zoo. Who knows, perhaps someday a major TV network will host a bug cooking reality show and we can host it right here in El Paso!

This year I am scheduled to tell some of my favorite desert bug stories in the Cisneros Paraje Discovery Center. Do you know about the amazing relationship between desert termites and spadefoot toads? Years ago a friend of mine who was making a documentary on the Chihuahuan Desert discovered an insect using a tool! At the time I thought only higher primates like humans had that kind of intelligence. During my presentation I will show an amazing video clip of his discovery.

For more information on the event visit our website at www.elpasozoo.org.

Bugs to look for at the Zoo during Bug Awareness Weekend:

Asian forest scorpion
Bahia scarlet bird-eating spider
Bark Scorpion Centruroides
Black velvet spider
Black Widow Spider
Brown tarantula
Centipede (Vietnamese)
Chilean Rose Tarantula
Cobalt Blue Tarantula
Common Emperor Scorpion
Desert Hairy Scorpion
Flat rock scorpion
Giant Sand Scorpion
Indian ornamental tarantula
Madagascan Hissing Cockroach
Pink-toed Tarantula
Sonoran Centipede
Sunburst Diving Beetle
Tailless Whip Scorpion
Tanzanian blue legged centipede
Texas Tan Tarantula
Vinegaroon
Whirligig beetles
Green diving beetle
Water scorpion
Ferocious water bug
Giant water bug

The Chihuahuan Desert

      Biologists have identified five major desert ecoregions in North America.   Here in El Paso we live in the               Chihuahuan Desert.

I first came to know the Chihuahuan Desert while working as a park ranger naturalist in Big Bend National Park back in 1975.    Here is a picture of me during my ranger days standing in Green Gulch, one of my favorite places in the world.  For those not familiar with the park, Green Gulch is the valley that the road to the Chisos Basin climbs on the way to Panther Pass and the trail head to the highest elevations of the Chisos Mountains.

Back in those days I spent most of my time helping park visitors understand how to enjoy the park and understand the park's complex ecosystem.   Nearly 40 years later I find myself continuing that effort as Education Curator at the El Paso Zoo and on the local boards of the Chihuahuan Desert Education Coalition and the Sierra Club.  This year marks the 10th anniversary of the organization my 40th year living in the Chihuahuan Desert.

My passion for this ecoregion is sustained by my long time studies and passion for communicating to others about the biological riches of the desert ecosystem.  

To learn more about this fascinating place I encourage you to discover for yourself some of the interesting areas protected by our federal, state and local government.   On the Chihuahuan Desert Education Coalition website there is a page called Desert Links.   Check it out and begin your personal journey into the wild.  Connect with others by joining a local conservation group.  You can find many of them on this page and with a little searching you can connect with others on facebook too.