Wetlands, Habitat Restoration, and a Really Great Field Story with Mark Ray

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Mark Ray, environmental consultant about Wetlands, Habitat Restoration, and a Really Great Field Story.   Read his full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
1:49 - Share your Field Notes!
3:38 - Interview with Mark Ray Starts
12:35 - Mitigation Banking
23:24 - Challenges Starting your own business 
31:55 - Mark Rays Field Note!

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Mark Ray at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-ray-3504659/

Guest Bio:
Mr. Ray has a Master of Science in Environmental Science with a concentration in Applied Ecology from Miami University. He is the Principal of RayEA, LLC.  Mr. Ray has been involved with the Habitat Restoration and the Mitigation Banking industry since the late 1980s. He has worked all over the U.S. in varied ecosystems. He has restored mountain streams to coastal wetlands and many ecosystems in between. He has worked directly with 26 mitigation banks in 14 states.  He specializes in many types of endangered species surveys. Some current projects include whole forest ecosystem banking and long-term ocean weather monitoring.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiasts, Nick and Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I talk about field notes. We also talked to Mark Ray about wetlands, habitat restoration, and a really great field story. And finally, sea turtles are obviously amazing. We all know that, but only 1 in 1000 will make it to adulthood. There was a study done that determined that saving 1 adult is worth saving countless babies, and it's actually what I based my thesis on. So, every time I hear sea turtles, it makes me smile, and I'm really, really excited that we got to talk about them, even if it was just for a hot second. So, there you go, uh, big soft spot in my heart for all turtles. Absolutely.

 Hit that music. Looking to get involved or further your experience in specific knowledge areas, NAP has several working groups in the following areas biological resources, brownfields, and remediation, cultural resources, emerging professionals, geospatial, N for practice, offshore wind environmental professionals, socioeconomics and community impacts, transportation, technology and environmental planning, water and coastal. If you would like to join one of those groups, you can find them and how to join at NAEP.org. 

Let's get to our segment. 

Hey Laura, do you remember that time that we didn't record, um, and then we did record and your mom was like, are you recording yet? Uh, definitely didn't almost just happen. So huge save from the team. Yes, thank God my mom is not here now. Yeah, yeah, she'd never love it, but you live it down. Oh, but you just have something on your mind that you wanted to bring up. Yeah, I wanted to talk about our field notes segment cause we've been doing that for a long time and we would really love to see more submissions because I love those stinking stories. I know they're so good and we have a really great one coming up, and I think that's kind of the joy of these segments is getting a really good field notes story. And I think we're going to make. Make it a little easier, right? Like we're actually gonna have a form that everybody can fill out and write their story. It doesn't have to be long, but like, these are all fun stories. I think we've, you've heard us talk about getting stuck in the mud, thinking I was gonna get struck by lightning, knocking myself out. I think that was like, yeah, I mean, gosh, I mean, like, we had a harrowing story where people are actually, yeah, like actually died. It was, it was wild and you know. But these are the stories that connect us. 

Yes, 100%, from funny to scary. I mean, they're all real. It's not fun to wake up on your back in the field and wonder how you got there. That's not a great feeling, you know, and you're like, oh yeah, I stepped and hit my head on a tree. Not great, you know, but it's a life lesson, you learn a whole lot about yourself, the two buddy system, I think that's a, it's a really important thing for me because of what happened to me. Exactly. Yeah. They're good stories about safety, about camaraderie, and sometimes just like plain old common sense, or knowing who will help you in a crisis and learning who your friends are. Yeah, exactly. Like if a turkey scares someone in the woods and they run away from that, you are done. If there's anything else out there. So yeah. And let's be honest, all the cool episodes read stories from their people, so we want to hear from our people. We would love to. So send us notes, check us out at www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com. Yeah, check out that new form. Let's get to our interview. 

Hello and welcome back to EPR. Today we have Mark Ray with us. Mark is the principal of Ray EA LLC, an environmental consulting firm specializing in ecological assessments and permitting. He's worked as an environmental consultant for nearly 40 years. Welcome, Mark. Great to have you here. It's great to be here. All right, yeah, so you spent the majority of your career in environmental consulting, and that's kind of, uh, my bread and butter as well. So what pulled you into the field? Why did you start doing it? And why are you still doing it? Well, first of all, you said I've, I've been doing it nearly 40 years, so I guess I could say at this point I'd probably qualify as senior ambassador status. But I mean, I always had a fascination for living things. I used to beg my. Parents to take me to a zoo on a hillside in West Virginia where I grew up. And even as I went through high school and started to study biology, and at that point, ecology and environmental regulations and things were just beginning to form, and there weren't even really a lot of college programs in that regard, but I considered being a paleontologist, as most 3rd graders do. Um, and I considered being a forester, and then, of course, I got interested in Habitat restoration, environmental science as I went through high school and college. That's very cool. I, I can relate to wanting to be a paleontologist. I tell everybody that I'll listen that Jurassic Park came out at a very important time in my, my childhood. And so after that movie, I was like, I'm gonna study dinosaurs cause that was the coolest movie I've ever seen in my life, you know. But I love how that. Almost everybody, uh, almost everybody wants to be a paleontologist or maybe, uh, a marine biologist was a big thing too. 

There was Jacques Cousteau and now there's, uh, even his grandson. I'm involved with still tinkering with coastal restoration and oceanography. He used to teach marine science for many years, but Yeah, the paleontology was a very early interest, and I used to do a lot of dioramic models and things of that sort, you know, typical nerd kid. And, uh, the forester came along because I lived in a paper town and I actually made my way through college by working in a paper mill. So that was a natural consideration. But I had different ideas about what I would ultimately like to do a little broader, and then I really got fascinated with habitat restoration, and that's been. A big part of my career and continues to be. That's very cool. Like, man, I mean, we can go so many different directions, but it's funny because you say paper mill, and there was one near-ish to my hometown growing up and we would drive by and you'd know it was there. You could smell it, and you're like, yeah it smell like? I don't know what a paper mill smells like. Not great. It smell like a college education to me. I love it. It's really cool that uh, that you kind of wove your way through. So when it comes to like consulting, so you know, you're doing a lot of different things. Was there ever a moment where you're like, I'm gonna jump from one thing to the next, or you just kind of like, as your career developed, you just started finding more and new interesting things and that's how you got to habitat restoration? Well, when I started out, Again, since I put myself through school, that was really the best part of my education was learning was figuring out how to put myself through school. And so, when I went to school, I was there with purpose. I wouldn't have went to college. I was not. Someone who had, I was first generation in college, so my dad wasn't saying you're gonna go to my alma mater or anything like that. As a matter of fact, he said, you can go to college. 

He said, you can go or you cannot go, but I can't help you pay for it. So when I went to school, I went with purpose. I wasn't one of those people that said, yeah, I don't know what I'm majoring in or I don't care. I had a plan at the very beginning of what I wanted to do in general with environment with biology, e. and environmental science as it was forming through undergrad and grad school. And then after that, it was just the opportunities that came available to me. I originally worked at Argonne National Lab and was doing pure research, but then I leaned back into my applied ecology concentration of grad school and realized I wanted to solve problems in the field in boots and blue jeans instead of sit in the lab with the white lab coat and ask questions. I just wasn't that much of an egghead, but I wanted to go out and, and, and make a difference in the environment. That's really awesome. I also paid my way through school for the most part. My grandfather was kind enough to help me here and there, and I always made sure to send him my report card and tell him that I was, this money was going to get used. That, his investment report, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Uh, I'm not taking your money and, and, uh, doing the whole college experience with it. I was a little bit older too, so I had a plan to get in and get out. But What advice do you have for others that may be doing the same thing or haven't started, but might be interested in like, oh, I might have to pay for myself to do this? Yeah, I have a, an employee that also works as an ambassador for, I think it's called a first-generation program, and they help, for one thing, there's a big adjustment when you're not coming from a college culture to figure that out. And of course, there's usually 5. Financial challenges as well. In my case, I paid for the first year with lawn mowing money. And then subsequent years, I had to talk myself into a job in the paper mill. But that's a whole long story. 

I didn't have, it was definitely based on nepotism and I didn't have that connection. So I basically had to talk myself behind the desk and get hired or I wasn't gonna go back to school. So that's how it worked for me, but, um, Yeah, no pressure. Exactly, right. No, but you did it though. I'd love to talk a little bit about habitat restoration with you, because that's something that my company is starting to work on and we're doing more and more of that, and it's very rewarding work. It's really challenging in lots of different ways, and it also matters very much on where you are in the site itself. Every site's very different. So what kind of restoration are you doing? Is it mostly coastal? Is it, you know, inland? What are you doing? I've done a real mix. It actually started with Prairies in the Midwest. Then it went to Midwest Oak savannahs, and that was a very simple transition to then go into Longley Pine. I was always, I always did a lot of work in the Southeast, even though I began in the Midwest, then I, I just really enjoyed the type of work that was available in the Southeast, and especially with herbs and things of that sort too. They've got such great diversity. And of course, the Midwest Oak savannahs became, as you can easily guess, longleaf pine savannahs. And also, we had already done quite a lot of wetlands in the Midwest, and it's easy to do wetlands in the Midwest because there's a lot of drained farmlands and such, and the farmers get tired of trying to drain them and so you can do several 100 acres at a time. Uh, yeah, so my primary specialty for a long, long time with wetlands, and frankly found it relatively easy to do. You just basically get out of the way. You know, uh, whatever vegetation removal, drainage had occurred and grading, you apply a similar energy level to put the soils back and let the water go back to natural patterns, and then, of course, the vegetation tends to follow and sometimes would help if you don't have good context. 

And so, yeah, a lot of people say it's complex and you have to have all these different sciences to do it and in a sense, that's true, but ultimately, it boils down to just getting out of the way and letting the natural processes of nature make up for all your mistakes. That's a great way of phrasing it because I tell people all the time, it's like when you take away a wetland, right, there's a reason it's wet, right? There's a reason there's water there and the water collects. And if all you do is get rid of it and then put something on top of it, the water's gonna go to where you, where it used to go. Like it's gonna go to the building or whatever it is that you built. And so you have to, have to have some kind of plan. And it's amazing to me how often there isn't one until after something's built, and that's when you get a call, right? Like, hey, can you fix this? Yeah, I mean, we deal with that. I'm in the upper Piedmont, so you've got high topography situation and of course people build houses and there's an area where there used to be a wooded hill slope here and there's a creek that diagonally goes, uh, displays itself now and then under high rainfall as it goes through my neighbor's backyard through my front yard. So we installed a couple of rain gardens on either side to help hold that water and infiltrate it back again. But basically, the land has a memory, right? So the way I would teach this with my students was I would get a brown rubber band, a green rubber band, and a blue rubber band and go through that same process we talked about where If you pull that band apart, let's say it's the green one, you're clearing the land. You pull the blue one, you're draining, you pull the brown one, you're, you're grading it, and it stays that way as long as you maintain that pressure. When you pull those energies away, the land slash rubber bands have a memory and they go back to their former condition. Yes, yeah, that's really cool. 

I like that. So how do you, how do you work with mitigation banking? How do you, what's the process there? We've talked a little bit about mitigation banking on the show, but I'd love to hear, refresh folks on what it is and why it's important. OK. Yeah, well, you know, like I said, at this point, I could claim senior ambassador status and one of the most telling incidences is that very early in my career was when Congress, when they reauthorized the Clean Water Act, they said, hey, we're not, we're not actually And enforcing any of this stuff. So, right about the mid 80s, and from 72 to 86, it didn't really happen much. And at that point, boom, people were starting to go to jail and what have you. So and then, uh, the Corps of Engineers put out their manual. I had to get a copy of that manual and, and basically memorize it within two weeks and then do. 500 acres on 5 sites in North Carolina around Charlotte because the red clay was busting in every direction in Charlotte at that time. And so basically, I could pretty clearly say I've been delineating as long as anybody has because of the, and I've went through all of the different manuals and the different regional supplements and the different, of course, legal pendulums over the years, but very early, like maybe 2 years later after that, we were already doing a lot of On-site mitigation like modifying a stormwater basin behind a Walmart to try to create wetland mitigation. And we found out very quickly that it didn't make sense on the landscape, and it didn't make sense money-wise or management wise or attention wise. Walmart businesses selling widgets, not making widgeons. I just thought of that. OK, anyway, um, and so that down. But we started looking at the watershed-based thing, which has come forth as it keeps returning the whole watershed idea is that if you can find a good regional location to do something in a land use planning fashion, to take together maybe 100 different mitigations and put them in a larger area that a widgeon would actually look at that ducks would actually reproduce in that has greater wildlife value. Water quality value, flood control value, and we began to do things like that. 

Early on in this process, we did. Sinclair County across the Mississippi River from St. Louis was entirely rural, but it was gonna get, it was very sleepy, but it was going to get a big boom because they were going to put a Metrolink across the river and attach it to Lambert Field and Scott Air Force Base was being privatized. And so all of a sudden they realized, hey, there's something called land planning, and we looked at 60 sites and created 10 plans in a can and 5 different basins to provide for mitigation along the American bottoms there where they're a big box industry and other things like that. And that gave us a great opportunity to apply the watershed level planning on basically carte blanche, you know, it was all farmland, so we could plan on a blank slate and move forward with that. So, It started with donation and permitting, of course, and then on-site mitigation, and then mitigation banking came out of that as a really good cottage industry situation that was good for the economy, good for the ecology. So it's become a robust and we're pretty much in the 2nd generation of that now. There's a lot of the old guard moving along and a lot of new people getting in it, but I've helped folks from France and Australia move it into their countries as well, via some of the old National Mitigation Banking Association conferences that we had, um, and now there's Yeah. Anyway, it's, it's getting merged together with other environmental business situations that relate to endangered species and wetlands. We're working on some whole forest mitigation ideas in Florida right now too. 00, very cool. Yeah, and it kind of like leads into a couple of questions that we have here too. So, I mean, you've worked a lot on, you know, over 650 projects in 34 different states, and you've done it over a long period of time. 

So you talked about like how Mitigation banking has changed over the years. Like, like, how has it? Like, what have you seen in your career as far as big changes to conservation and permit? Well, a lot more people in it, a lot more people that understand about it, a lot more agencies that have finally embraced it or gotten to a point where they could be comfortable with it. That was a long, hard process, and it even involved going before Congress and helping with the 2008 mitigation guidelines and kind of a lobbying status in a sense, but I've always remained in a middle position. I didn't go there for the National HomeBuilders and I didn't go there for National Wildlife Foundation. We were just looking at a good balance to try to create something that was good for all those things, right? And could manage development and also manage wildlife conservation. I think that it's become more sophisticated. There are still some that don't work so well. I looked at buying one up in Minnesota recently and just got too many rusty gears in the box to buy that. That old jalopy, but, uh, on the other hand, on the other hand, there's really good ones. I mean, Georgia, where I'm at right now had a very robust, like 100 active banks at one point until Fish and Wildlife and EPA got together and decided they were making too much money and kind of raised the bar so high that all the private money decided, oh, we're gonna go to surrounding states and do this instead. Um, and sometimes there's the state programs that said, you know what, I think we can do this, but they typically have failed under governmental management because there's not, frankly, the profit incentive, tell you the truth, and most of them, it's just too difficult to make, get things on the ground when they just put money into a, a coffer. Sometimes that money has been diverted into the wrong directions too early on in New York and other states, but other places, it's almost a model situation. 

North Carolina, the high river basin, they moved into nutrient trading and nutrient banking as well. A fellow that I brought into the industry is doing very well with nutrient banking in Carolina now. And so it started largely with wetlands. Moved into streams, which are a lot more technical. I, I basically went through a level 4 program for stream restoration. It's, it really is equal to another college degree, and there's a lot of engineering to give you headaches, but, and there's a lot of risk when you're dealing with the energy of water, which does not mess around. But we just finished a, a head cut, a triple head cut repair in Chattanooga last fall that's gonna protect the A nature center and an arboretum from having a culvert and a road washout that was the only way in and out of that place. And that was very successful because I had a very good operator that took my ideas and put it in the ground. But endangered species are increasingly coming into the fray in terms of another layer of mitigation banking. Of course, climate, carbon sequestration, banking, very similar kinds of ideas and a and a global airshed as opposed to watershed. And then, as I said too, we're looking at whole ecosystem forest banking because the tree ordinances, tree protection ordinances are incredible across the landscape from counties and cities, it's like a patchwork quilt, but that quilt is not good quality. It's got holes in it, a lot of things don't work. So we're working on a, for instance, in the state of Florida, again, we're working on a whole state standard tree protection ordinance that can be applied. by different municipalities, and that will also help to support the predictability and the business case and the regulatory stability to bring whole ecosystem forest banking into the picture as well. So you have to have the technical stuff, you have to have regulatory support, and you have to have an administrative environment that works so that it comes together for a successful business. So when you have like, even, so none of that works if the site doesn't work, or if you don't have a good site. 

So how do you how do you start with what makes a site good or bad? What's the first thing you look at? Well, of course, it depends. If you're looking at an endangered species, it's what are the various requirements, geohydrologically, biologically for that species, what's The structure of the habitat that it needs. If it's a wetlands, you're looking at soils that, as you said before, are hydroc soils, meaning that they formed in wetland conditions to begin with. So that you've got something to work with. If you don't do that, now you're into construction and now you're increasing your risk of maize. So you want to try to include. All of the historical sources of water, which would be surface water, groundwater as well. Very often groundwater is predictable, but in some cases it's been diverted there or, you know, drawn out by wells and different things like that. So it's not just precipitation and not just inflow from streams, but that groundwater support is really important if you're talking wetlands. And then, of course, just creating conditions that allow appropriate mix of native vegetation to take over and hopefully not have too much of an invasive species issue that gets you on the tail end on monitoring, maintenance or remediation. 

With streams, you have to listen to the river, uh, in a sense, and that's not metaphysical, it's just that a lot of data collection, understanding what that stream is. Doing geologically on the landscape, the physics of it, the hydrology, how much sediments coming down the river, and what are the outside stressors upon that river, and then how can we bring it back to a state of repose, of dynamic equilibrium, where it's always changing, yet staying within a natural realm. And then when you have that, you also have the biological diversity that follows. So that's a very fine art as well. Yeah, I can imagine. I absolutely love all the work that you're doing and could listen to you talk about habitat restoration all day. I was habitat restoration manager for the Environmental Protection Commission in Hillsborough County for a time, and uh this part is, yeah, yeah, so much fun and the people you get to work with are so much fun. I think if I was looking for a job, I'm gonna keep your website in my pocket in case I'm ever looking for a job again. I've enjoyed bringing this out and teaching it too. Like one of my favorite things to say is fluvial geomorphology because it sounds really fancy sounds really smart, but I've taught, I've taught classes in fluvial geomorphology at Barry College and environmental science, several other places as well, and marine biology, as I said. So I really enjoy, you know, handing on to others whenever I've gathered that I've been able to. Learn in my career, because then it can maybe help them from making all the mistakes I've made, because one of the very accurate definitions of an expert is someone who's made every mistake possible in a very small area of endeavor. Yeah, and speaking of, you loved it enough to start your own company. So what kind of challenges have you had, you know, over the years doing that? Well, you know, it's not as difficult as it may seem sometimes. 

I mean, a lot of people that could have their own business don't because they fear they couldn't do it well. Now, having said that, there are some that go into it that maybe ought not, but I think the larger population is the, is those. That could, that don't. And I had an opportunity in a couple of different places. Sometimes you hit a bump in the road and you get an opportunity to do something. Like 25 years ago, I first started, then I went back into corporate partnerships for a while and did different things like that. But then I realized that what I really wanted to do in the very best situation, that the recruiters contact me all the time, but I just tell them, I says, you couldn't create a corporate position, I'd even be. Mildly interested in because it's just, it's worth the effort and the risk to have your own thing because we have a very, I mean, I'm going to meet 4 other people down here. We're gonna have a great time. We're gonna actually work all weekend and then into the next week, but we have a lot of fun. We do well. I treat all my employees very well. I, I pay them very, very well. I'm happy. To have them work with me. It's a pleasure to be able to provide them with income and just do what we love. And there's no finger pointing, there's no politics, because guess what, you know, if something goes wrong, I have one finger to point and that's looking in the mirror. So, and I like that. I like that. 

I like it very much. It's refreshing and I enjoy taking that risk. So, but there is reward of all sorts. And so, yeah, it was, uh, a wonderful adventure. I'm helping my son to start his own business right now. And the data engineering, yeah, it's an entirely different realm. It's data engineering, but the basics are initially identical. And so we've been going back and forth this week about him launching his initial couple of contracts and getting an LLC started. And all of that, and I, I'm just so proud of him and happy for him because it's a great way to go. Yeah, that's awesome. So yeah, so it is rewarding work and running the company yourself. You have the reward not only of the work and the outcomes, but also the relationships that you're building and the people that you're employing and changing lives. So what would you say? Are some of the most proud moments, projects, things that you've worked on? Because I know the few years I was doing habitat restoration, there's still, I, I drive through Hillsborough County and I'm like, I worked on that. I worked on that. It makes me happy. So you must have hundreds of places like that. Oh gosh. Well, yes, and, you know, certainly some of them stand out. Yeah, we don't have enough time to go through all of that. I would say there's a whole bunch of them around the coast of Florida, right? The Tampa Bay, we did a lot of work there. Sometimes I've done some very different things as well. It's not all just habitat restoration, although we did the Grove Historic Landmark in Chicago. We saved that area from ecological destruction. That was very satisfying because it's both culturally and The natural history importance. We've helped moderate mining impacts from fracking sands in Michigan to metal mining out west. That's been satisfying and all the mitigation banking all over the US. 

But I would say that some of the more interesting ones have been the more challenging ones too, like trying to figure out how to indeed retain groundwater input into an Alabama pitcher plant fog potential wetland that needed restored. It was ran over with bamboo vine and, uh, Galberry and it had all This potential for a fully natural wet prairie and then moving into a deep marsh, but there was a sand bridge between the Gulf, about 1 mile back from the coast that was going to be developed. And if it was developed and the stormwater was diverted, that area would never have its potential. We're talking like 100 and some acres of mitigation area. So we worked with the county and said, hey, we'll just, let's do infiltrated design. We'll have no off-site stormwater diversion. And the city engineers and then the inspector was sitting in the room, the inspector said, can't do that. I can't inspect them. And I said, don't worry, we'll write inspection specifications for you, you know, it's like outside the box though. So that's really satisfying when you change not just one site, but the potential for that to be done in a larger area. But as I was starting to say, sometimes it's not just the project and habitat stuff, which is, it's really great to have. Like when my son was young, I could put him on my shoulders and we walk out and watch Woodcocks at dusk flying up into the sky off of the wetland that you restored. That, that's a major payoff, but. Some of the more, sometimes it's disasters that have actually forged some of the more satisfying opportunities. 

We brought back a lot of housing in Mississippi after a 30-foot storm surge from Katrina. Storm, it was like 15% of it was 20 ft high concrete construction, so it was storm solid, storm sustainable, but 85% of the site was all restored as serene and coastal marshland and prairie, the Deepwater Horizon spill. An incredible tragedy, but I was able to find myself down there under contract, elbow to elbow with the BP people and saying, Aren't you tired of all this collateral damage and you're getting busted by the media and every state around you for tearing up dunes and seabird rookeries and wetlands and getting into archaeology sites. So we launched a program with the Natural Resource advisor. Program and ultimately hired 150 people, trained them and put them out in the field and cooperation with fish and wildlife as well to help minimize the people that were cleaning up the oil were focused on that. So we helped them get in and out and avoid these other collateral impacts. And President Obama came down like right in the middle of the sea turtle nesting season and said, you know, you got to redouble your efforts. And I thought, Oh, so I'm already working 20 hours a day. I get to work 40 hours a day. I don't work. But the one thing that happened was that the oil was hard to clean up during the summer in the sand. So night operations would help bring the oil out of the sand. So you had these giant machines with lights going up and down the beaches right in the middle of when sea turtles are still nesting and some of the nests, and the nests are coming out and they're going back into the ocean. It was a perfect storm. So when they said they were gonna start doing night operations at that point in time, the, the hair went up on the back of the necks of anybody who knew anything about turtles, we had to, my 150 NRAs couldn't handle it. 

So we, in this case, we trained 300. Local volunteers that were already involved in, in turtle stuff and trained them to not get killed by the machines and to not let the, the turtles get killed by the machines at night with, you know, with red lights and all that stuff. So, super challenging. I would never want to do it again, but in the end, very satisfying and an unusual highlight in a career that was based on, you know, a natural disaster really. Yeah, wow. That is. Definitely the good work, you know. Um, so real quick, we want to get to your field stories before we run out of time, but I did want to ask about this program you have coming up called the Wild Woodpecker chase. What's that about? Oh, you're talking about, yeah, I've got a couple of friends that are bird brains. I mean, in every way you can imagine, and they want to go on a wild, I call it wild woodpecker chase because they want me to rent a boat and take them down the Pearl River and look for ivory built woodpeckers this next winter. Oh. Which if you know anything about that, it's like, yeah, OK. Almost next to Sasquatch at this point. Exactly. I was about to say it's like uh it's not even, not even a wild goose chase because you can find a goose. Well, you know, it's all about the camaraderie and the hijinks, and all I can imagine is I'm gonna get the boat stuck between a couple of cypress heads out in the middle of nowhere and that'll be the fun part. Oh yeah, it's like, um, going fishing. Did you catch anything? No, but I had a great time, you know. Exactly. That's pretty much the whole, that's the whole shtick, yeah. And I've, I've known these gentlemen for, for many years and so, yeah, it's kind of a, it's something to do to get together. It's, I mean, it's either Dungeons and Dragons or you'll look for ivory bills, you know. Well, that's very cool. So we have a segment called Field Notes, and that's part of the show where we talk to our guests about memorable moments doing their jobs. 

So we ask our listeners to send us your funny, scary, or awkward field stories to us so that we can read them on future episodes and you can send them to info@environmentalprofessionalsradio.com. So Mark, tell us how you ended up piggybacking a 240 pound weightlifter through a swamp in North Carolina. Yeah, you did set me up on that one, didn't you? I mean, if you say Gary and funny and awkward, this has got all that. So, yeah, it's interesting because I'm talking with a fellow right now about who I got into the business in 1990, and he ended up with his own business as well. And we're talking about doing even a, a closer collaboration than we've done in the past, but this goes way back to Yeah, 1990, and we're going up the coast of Eastern North Carolina with US 17 at that time, up towards the Virginia line, and it's either sniper swamps or peanut fields and little else. And so he had an intern that he had brought from Columbia working with him. Jose Plaza, was his name. I should try to look him up. But, and this is Jim Spangler. I'm gonna call him up on the way down here. I'll tell him I told this story. So, Jim and Jose and I are out walking through the swamp along the alignment for the new highway, and all of a sudden, Something just hits me very hard along my waders on my left calf. So almost by instinct, I jumped up on a cypress knee, but you know, they're not really that big. And they're pointy and I grabbed. Yeah, they're pointy, yeah. And so I've got both my feet on top of a cypress knee and I grabbed like a 1 or 2 inch sapling. And I thought, OK, that's cool. Except now, here comes my, I was probably like 185 pounds sopping wet, right? And Jose is this big solid weightlifter. Well, next thing I know, he's on, he's piggybacking. He jumped right on my back because he, he's thinking, hey, if this guy, if this guy's jumping out of the water, I'm jumping out too. And so now, Jim has the best seat in the house because he's probably 30 ft to our left. And he's watching me as Jose is on my back. I'm standing on a cypress swamp and we're swinging in a wide circle hanging on to that sapling. And he's just busting my guts because he knew what actually happened. 

So, in between me and him, and I think I may have seen a smidgen of this, but it was like a torpedo going through the water. My first thought, of course, was a possible water moccasin cause they can and will strike underwater. They eat fish after all. But it happens to be that Jim had simply flushed a very large carp, and That thing bumped against my leg going as fast as it could go, and that's what precipitated that very funny, awkward, and scary moment. Yeah, it's, yeah, I love that because it's 100% true. You never know what it is and something hits you that large, yeah, I totally get it. That's great. Um. Yeah, yeah, I've never been bitten by a venomous reptile. I've had plenty. Many people are very fearful of snakes and such, and those that don't go in the woods much, everyone they see is venomous. I very seldom do see them, although I'm in the habitat all the time. And when I do, of course, they're always benign, and I've never been bitten. I've almost stepped on some diamondbacks, which wouldn't have went well. But, uh, yeah, for, I've never been bitten all the time I've spent in the field, which has been a great deal. Well, let's hope that track record remains. Um, uh, we're getting close to time though. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about that we didn't mention? I hadn't really thought about any particular agenda. I just wanted to be open, and I do want to say that for those listening, that one of the things I do very much, always have enjoyed is taking other people under my wing from very early in my career, hiring people in, working with them and enjoying. Doing work together and learning to do it well. And that's what I really like to do with my work now, is I work with a lot of younger people coming into the field and may even still be in school, undergrad or grad school. And so when I go visit colleges and give presentations, that's pretty much all the recruiting I have to do. And I just love the on the job training. 

It gets, it puts something on somebody's resume that's not even an internship, it's an actual job. And it's been a good springboard for many, many people that I know a young professional now has probably been doing it for 5 or 6 years, and she'll probably very soon start her own company because I think I put that confidence bug in her ear because I saw all the trappings of, of the trappings, but all, all the potentials in her to do such a thing, and I think she's gonna go there and I'm very proud of that. Yeah, that's awesome. I think that's a great thing to leave people with. So thank you. It's been great having you here and talking about these fun stories, but where can people get in touch with you if they'd like to learn more? Well, first of all, I really appreciate y'all reaching out or being given the opportunity to do this, but I would say probably the easiest way is. Just to go to our website, https://www.rayeallc.com , and there's a place to contact down there and there's a Facebook link too, but I'll give out my phone number as well. It's 678-378-7561 or mray@rayeallc.com is my email. Well, awesome. Thank you, Mark. Yeah, it's been a real pleasure. I, it's great to get to meet you and learn a little bit more about y'all too, Lauren and Nick, and I wish you the very best in your continued careers as well. Awesome, I appreciate that. And that's our show. Thank you, Mark, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. See you, everybody. Bye.