Article • NCBN Highlights | FY24

Stewardship Savvy Ep. 02: Knee-deep with peepers, pools, & The Rolling Stones

new episode out now

Wrapping up our year...

Highlighting the work of the Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network in FY24.

Last spring, Michaela Compo, NCBN Science Communication Lead, and Kristin Vinduska, Visual Information Specialist at Saratoga National Historical Park, sat down with Bob, and hit record on a conversation that transcended decades of his noteworthy career, touching upon everything from peepers and the seashore to the Rolling Stones.

Scientist stands, pointing off into the distance at a vernal pool. — Bob describes the behavior of wood frogs in a vernal pool on Cape Cod.
Michaela Compo / NPS Photo

Bob Cook

Herpetologist
Cape Cod National Seashore

"I just sat down in my waders in that pond. And I could literally, in my chest, I could feel the pressure waves from their calls.

It was a visceral feeling.

You could feel the sound waves from all of the calling of these hundreds of spring peepers hitting your body."

We had the opportunity to hear firsthand about Bob’s career beginnings, up through his time at the seashore and into his current day life and advice for the future. On a second day of recording, we joined Bob out in the field, walking through vernal pools to look out for wood frogs and spring peepers. Later that evening we met back up with him after dark to go out on the marsh to find spotted salamanders. We were able to capture the two days in the form of a second episode to our network’s podcast, following up on a first episode with Mark Adams, retired GIS specialist from CACO.

Click below to listen to Bob's interview and find other episodes of Stewardship Savvy here.

Episode 2: Bob Cook
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This second episode of Stewardship Savvy follows us as we wade through the vernal pools of Cape Cod National Seashore with retired herpetologist Bob Cook.

Credit / Author:

Kristin Vinduska & Michaela Compo

Date created:

06/26/2024
Audio Transcript

Bob: Hi, this is Bob Cook. We are at Eastham vernal pool E 01. It is 3/27, 2023. 5:15 PM. And we're listening to a loud chorus of spring peepers, calling code index three and sounds like about two wood frogs on the far side of the pond index code 1.

[intro music]

Narrator: This is a story about discovering the wildlife that make our natural spaces so special and about a natural resource specialist’s experiences at different National Park Service sites over his career. This show is Stewardship Savvy, a show from the National Park Service about the people behind the iconic Arrowhead Patch, who use their skills to make the National Park Service mission possible: to preserve America's cultural and natural resources. My name is Kristen Vinduska, a science communication technician at Cape Cod National Seashore.

Narrator: And I'm Michaela Compo, science communicator with the Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network Inventory and Monitoring program.

Narrator: For this episode, we spoke with Bob Cook, a wildlife ecologist who worked at several National Park Service sites as a natural resource specialist over his career. Bob shares where his interest stemmed from, where he got his start, and his experiences at different sites. Michaela and I had the privilege to join Bob in the field where he gave us insight into monitoring processes and shared some of his favorite memories. He spent much of his time at Cape Cod National Seashore working on herpetology monitoring. Herpetology is the study of amphibians and reptiles. In the introduction, you can hear Bob talking about the species we are hearing, and their calling code index, which is a classification used to gather data on the species that are present. More on this later in the episode. First, Bob shares about his work.

Bob: Over the course of my 37 or so career years with the National Park Service, I was in a variety of positions that all centrally focused on natural resources, natural resources management, inventory and monitoring of natural resources. Planning relating to those types of activities. I had multiple titles, but they usually had biologist or natural resource management specialist or ecologist somewhere in the title. Just by virtue of background, I’m a wildlife ecologist with broad interest in all vertebrate and invertebrate groups and ecology, primarily in the northeastern United States.

Narrator: How does a person get interested in pursuing a career in natural resources? Bob said trips that his family took out of the city while he was growing up, where he got to explore the outdoors, might be what informed his interest in wildlife ecology.

Bob: I grew up in Queens in New York City, so for us, those summer holidays involved going out onto Long Island to some of the large kettle pond lakes that back in the 1960s, Suffolk County, you know, halfway out on Long Island was still a somewhat rural landscape. It wasn't the 24/7 traffic jam that it is today. So, there were, in fact, you know, places you could go to kind of get away from being in the city. So there, and in, in Pike County, Pennsylvania, which is just about 50 miles West of the city. Along the Delaware River, in places that that subsequently became part of Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, again the same thing. Cabin colonies around ponds where you could go swimming and row a boat and catch fish and catch frogs and things like that, so. We got to do that one week, sometimes 2 weeks a year. So that was that was really my sort of my one time of the year that I could spend time out of the city. In nature, so to speak, and I did particularly enjoy catching fish and catching frogs when I was a kid. So that's probably what got me into where I ended up going.

Narrator: Among the top titles one thinks of when they picture a scientist, a herpetologist might not come to mind, as vital as their work is to understanding healthy ecosystems. In fact, when Bob went to college, he found that most of the education and research projects were largely focused on game species, or species that are commonly hunted. He was open to new opportunities, and this is where he was presented with a chance to become involved with herpetology. Bob brought along reports and projects he had written over his time in college and in his professional career for Michaela and I to review with him. You can hear us flipping through these well utilized documents as Bob speaks about his work.

Bob:

This is from 1977. And this is the publication that came out of my master's thesis. I was a Master's student at UMass Amherst. I started there in September of 1975. I had been an undergraduate in wildlife biology at SUNY ESF in Syracuse. Wildlife management back in those days was really, you know, game management. There wasn't much, most of the non-game stuff was zoology. It wasn't wildlife. It was more the science of zoology. I sort of got into the idea that I wanted to do, you know, urban wildlife, non-game wildlife, and UMass Amherst had some people on the faculty there that were getting into that. They hooked me up with a fellow on their staff by the name of Skip Lizelle who was a herpetologist. So, Skip came along and met me at UMass, and said “yeah, I'm interested in, concerning there have been these reports about acid rain killing population, killing off the eggs of spotted salamanders, and I have a little bit of money to help support it. Are you interested in it?” And I said, “yeah, sure, that sounds great.” And that's what got me into herpetology. So, I've always sort of to been conflicted in the course of my career, between herpetology and birds. But, I ended up all of my degree. research projects were all herpetology oriented.

Narrator: After college, Bob had interest in working at a Wildlife Refuge that was close to where he grew up. This is where he started his career with the National Park Service working at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in New York.

Bob: I started work for the Park Service in July of 1979 at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, which is in Queens and Brooklyn in New York City, not too far away from where I grew up. So, the interesting thing is: I never really aspired to work for the National Park Service. What motivated me was, by that point in time, I had gotten fairly heavily into birding, and Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is, and was, a preeminent location in the northeastern United States for bird watching. It was great. Those are some of the best years of my life, working at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

Narrator: Michaela and I asked Bob to share about one of the first projects he worked on while at Jamaica Bay.

Bob: The biggest thing that in terms of a project that was actually my concept and that I initiated was something that became known as the. The Gateway Herp Project. But, in 1979, I wrote this report. Half of the time I wrote that that thing I was assigned to the visitor center desk at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, and in between talking to visitors, I wrote this. This proposal to transplant native, locally collected amphibians and reptiles to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge for the purpose of establishing populations of these locally native species that were not present at that site. At that point in time I had come to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge with an interest both in birds and in herpetology. And I started, you know, kind of looking to see what species of herps we could find, and I also, you know, made friends with some of the longtime, very, very incredibly knowledgeable naturalists that were, you know, frequent visitors to that site. We sort of figured out, you know, there's only a small handful of species of amphibians and reptiles that are, as well as mammals, that can be found at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. In spite of the fact that there are a few 100 acres of upland habitat and freshwater habitat. And this is considered one of the one of the largest, and most important wildlife habitat patches in the city of New York. There's really no way, given the history of the fact that those uplands had been artificially created in the in the early to mid 20th century. While the surrounding areas of Brooklyn and Queens were undergoing intense urbanization pressures. There's no way that natural colonization of most of the local and amphibian and reptile species could have occurred, and so I articulated all of that in this proposal that I wrote, and explained that there was a lost opportunity to not have an animal community there that was more representative of the animal community, that would occur in that type of habitat, in that area, under natural conditions. And at the very least, if we got all these frogs and snakes there, there'd be more things for the birds to eat. So, it was a question of making the food chains and energy webs more complex, as well as trying to save some of the local biodiversity, because local populations of a lot of these species were continuing to be wiped out by, you know, ongoing urbanization and development pressures. So, I wrote that thing and said within about six months of just starting there and submitted that. From the point of view of the Chief Scientist's office, they wholeheartedly supported the idea and urged us to go forward with it. Which I did. And I ended up not realizing it, but ultimately more than anything, that defined the rest of my career with the National Park Service. When I wrote this, I was a GS-4 park technician. When I wrote this, I was a, you know, wildlife ecologist at Cape Cod National Seashore, 29 years later. But it’s all a common thread. It's all one project.

Narrator: Bob worked several seasonal positions with the National Park Service. In 1984, Bob was hired for his first permanent position.

Bob: I worked at Jamaica Bay, and then at the larger Gateway National Recreation Area from ‘79 to roughly 1996. And in the course of that time, I met my wife Mary, who was working at Jamaica Bay. By the mid ‘90s, I was sort of ready for a change of pace from Gateway. I took a job with the Park Service at the National Park of American Samoa, out in the South Pacific, and we were out there for about 3 years.

Narrator: Bob recalls his experience working as the first biologist at the National Park of American Samoa. Not long after its establishment.

Bob: When I joined the staff of the National Park of American Samoa, my arrival increased the staff by 50%. There was a Superintendent, and a cultural liaison, and then there was myself, as the biologist. It was a brand-new park. I was the very first biologist at that park. We were literally just an office with maps and planning documents. We did not even own a staple gun or a hammer or anything. It was a park that had been just created, less than 10 years ago, through an act of Congress. So, this was like the first baby steps of becoming operational. Going beyond just being a planning concept. When I arrived there, we did not own a vehicle. I think we had one or two computers for the entire park. All of our everything with then was, you know, e-mail. The Internet was just starting to happen in the mid ‘90s. E-mail was done through telephone modems. We had to do our e-mail by making a long-distance phone call from American Samoa to Honolulu to pick up our e-mail. So, we only actually did that twice a day because of the expense of keeping that phone connection going. The park itself had been established based on a couple of different significant natural resources, and concerns regarding them. One of the one of the motivations for the establishment of the park was the recognition that the islands in American Samoa contains some really significant tracts of undisturbed tropical forest. And that tropical forest in turn, supported significant populations of two different species of fruit bats: the Tongan flying fox and the Samoan flying fox, which was indigenous to the Samona Archipelago. We ended up doing surveys for rare tree snails and, you know ,finding new populations of endemic species that, you know, species that would never recorded on certain islands. We were getting records of and things like that there. So it was some pretty, pretty neat stuff. I did a lot of lot of interesting things there, but none of it involved birds, and none of it involved herbs. Which I'd spent most of my time at Gateway working on.

Narrator: After a few years on the remote island, Bob, his wife, who also worked as a natural resource specialist, and kids knew they wanted to get back to the northeastern United States, as that is where they had family and friends. Positions opened up at Cape Cod National Seashore, and they decided that it might be a good fit for them. This is where Bob continued his herpetology work, developing monitoring protocols and compiling species reports for many National Park Service sites across the Northeast region. When Michaela and I joined him in the field, he shared about what one monitoring process looked like. When he, and fellow employees, would embark into the woods to the ponds across the national seashore. Equipment in tow, and ears ready to listen, to see what species of amphibians and reptiles they could identify.

Bob: If we were doing this as a nighttime calling survey, what we would be doing is we would sort of be stopping here, and starting the survey, and just for a 5-minute period, we would be listening to see which species of amphibians we hear calling. And assigning them a calling index code number, a number from 1 to 3. Of course, the value of 0 is something that something isn't heard. So you see, the peepers are starting to call again now that we're standing still. So usually you wait till the end of the five minute period to decide what the highest index level of the given species is. And the attempt, if possible, to indicate the numbers of individuals. But, that's only something you can do when there's only a few of them. The whole calling index in this protocol is designed just to use a code number 1, 2, and 3. And code one is one or a few individuals calling, with no overlap between the call. Two is there are individuals calling, with overlap between the calls, but you can hear each individual. You can kind of identify the sounds of each individual ones. #3 is that they're calling, so many are calling, with so much overlap, that you can't tell where one individual's call ends and another one starts.

Narrator: During our field visit with Bob, Michaela and I joined him and our borrowed, ill-fitting waders, as he navigated us through the murky waters of a pond to show us wood frog and spotted salamander eggs. Teaching us how the monitoring team would run a transect across the ponds. Bob strode through the water with ease, confirming that he had done this countless times before. Michael and I couldn't help but laugh at our clumsiness, as the soft mud under the water grabbed out our feet like shackles, ready to pull us down. My sole motivation for not falling into the water, was not wanting to ruin the audio recording equipment I had clutched tightly in my hands.

Bob: I spent much of my professional life in chest waders in ponds in the spring. You gotta get your sea legs.

Narrator: Yes. I honestly just think it's funny. [laughter]

Bob: Spotted salamanders, the eggs are, inside the gelatinous envelope that encases all of them. And so, each amphibian egg, you've got an embryo and then you have a series of concentric membranes that surround that embryo. And in the case of the spotted salamander egg mass, all of those embryos and the membranes are then inside the gelatinous mass. Such that, if you were to take that mass away, well, if you want to carefully open up that egg mass and extract the embryos and their membranes intact, when you removed all of the embryos, the mass material itself would still be there.

Narrator: Oh, wow.

Bob: So imagine a bowl with marbles and Jell-o. You make a mold with the marbles inside Jell-o, and you can remove the marbles and the Jell-o remains. The wood frog egg masses are more like, take a bunch of marbles and get a whole bunch of glue, and cement them together into this one ball where they're all stuck together. But when you pick it apart, marble by marble, you're kind of not left with anything else other than the marbles. So that's kind of how the wood frog egg masses are, and because they're rounder, and a lot more egg masses in them.

Narrator: Bob is a fantastic teacher, showing us how different species utilize the water in different ways. His passion of being a steward of the landscape, and an ecologist, whose curiosity for monitoring these species never dimmed, was evident during our visits with him.

Bob: Species we're hearing, here, are the spring peeper and the wood frog. The spring peepers makes a high-pitched peep, as well as -- see that drilling -- those are both vocalizations of the spring peeper. And the other one is a wood frog, which is more like has like a clucking of a duck. More guttural sound to it. The purpose of the call in frogs, so only the males of frogs call, and the purpose of the calling is essentially to attract females to the pond and also in some ways to differentiate themselves from other individuals.

Narrator: Bob's advice for any aspiring natural resource specialist is to teach yourself as much as you can, and learn how to identify species. For a scientist, the curiosity and monitoring of the world around them does not stop when they clock out for the day. When you live amongst the environment you work in, you are constantly making observations, and perhaps, new discoveries.

Bob: You learn a lot about what's in the park, just incidental to living there and working there. The collection of data is not limited to the time on the clock. When you flip the switch and say “I'm gonna go collect data.” In fact, often some of the most significant biological information, particularly regarding the occurrence of species, occurs just incidental to walking around, driving around, being there.

Narrator: Bob experienced many changes throughout his career, and was no stranger to the challenges that can come along with working in the conservation field. Like witnessing the effects of climate change. Wildlife habitats and National Park Service sites across the nation are being altered by the changing climate. It is a priority of the seashore to closely monitor it and better understand the effects of increases in air temperature, precipitation, and sea level, that are predicted in future decades. Monitoring programs are in place to investigate long-term trends in coastal marsh, vegetation, water quality, and others. These efforts will help to resolve questions regarding the resources of the national seashore as they pertain to climate change in the 21st century and beyond. Bob spoke to us about the goal of keeping common species common. Which can mean proactively monitoring a species, where the goal is to keep those common species intact, so they never end up with a threatened or endangered status.

Bob: Now with the benefit of the Endangered Species Act, the next step was to let's be more proactive in preventing species from become, you know, needing to become listed as endangered species by working to keep common species common. Because if the goal is in fact healthy functional ecosystems, all of the ecosystem processes that common species engage in, part of the reason why they have that ecosystem level impact is because there's lots of them.

Narrator: Bob also shared with us the importance of communicating the science to create advocates for the protection of our natural spaces.

Bob: It's really critical important to pass this information on to park employees and to the general public, because I think kind of the feeling I’ve generated, in order to properly protect the wildlife of a park, both park employees and interested members of the local community also have to know about this. Because often it's those members of the local community that may be necessary to come to the defense of the park, and the park’s wildlife.

Narrator: To create advocates, it helps to have a passion for the place yourself. We ask Bob what makes Cape Cod National Seashore special to him?

Bob: What's most incredible about the seashore is that packed into such a relatively small area, there's such an incredible diversity of different habitat types and experiences that they offer. You know, in a very short period of time and space, you can be hopelessly trapped in the in the mud and thicket of a vernal pond, and then in the short distance of time and space, be hopelessly trapped in the mud of a salt marsh. But anyway, seriously, just that within such a small area, you have all these different, you know, because I often ask myself, “What? What picture is truly representative of Cape Cod?” And for most people, it's the view of the beach, or of the ocean, or the salt marsh. And those are all true. But for me, it's also being in that dune slack wetland or being in the middle of that vernal pond, or literally being in being in the middle of that thicket of scrub oak along the top of the scarp, where you have the stunted forest. That is, the oak trees are only 15 feet tall. There's just so many different types of scenes that come to my mind. If you walk the roads between like Long Nook Road and Old Dew Line Road. Walking through those sprawling oak forests, with the huge, deep, dry kettle holes, and all of these things. It's all Cape Cod National Seashore. There's just so much of that variety to it, and in the course of a couple of hours walk, you can experience all of that, if you know the route to take. And that's what I love about about the place.

Narrator: A burning question we think you might have is: what does a wildlife ecologist do in their free time, when they're not listening to a beautiful course of frogs. Go to one or two... maybe... 16 or 17 Rolling Stones concerts.

Bob: For me, my two forms of religious experiences are being outside in the natural world, often just by myself. I don't mean to be antisocial, but for me, just being alone with nature is a religious experience. But the other religious experience for me has been being at a Rolling Stone concert. I've only been to really about 16, 17, I don't know, that many, over the years. That makes me a lightweight compared to some of the hardcore people who go to every single show.

Narrator: As much as The Rolling Stones can provide a wonderful musical experience, we think Cape Cod National Seashore compares. The iconic soundtrack here includes the crashing of waves, the peeping of piping plovers, the whipping of wind, the gobble of turkeys, the rustle of waves, and the chorus of frogs and toads. Bob speaks about his experience with natural soundscapes at Cape Cod National Seashore.

Bob: One, I suppose, would be the spadefoot toads, and being in the middle of mass emergences of spadefoot toads in the Province Lands. There, everywhere you go, the whole landscape is spadefoot toads, you hear them everywhere. But the other one, on a more intimate type of experience, is one time going to a vernal pond, in Eastham, a small vernal pond, probably in May, when spring peepers are really hopped up on the temperature. When you go in early spring when the spring peepers just start calling, they're kind of cold, and they're very sensitive to disturbance, so they stop calling when you get there. But by May, things are so warm. They are just so cranked up that nothing you do is going to make them stop. I just went. I was wearing chest waders, and the water wasn't too deep in that pond. So I just sat down in my waders in that pond. And I could literally, in my chest, I could feel the pressure waves from their calls. It was a visceral feeling. You could feel the sound waves from all of the calling of these hundreds of spring peepers hitting your body.

Narrator: Bob may have picked up a thing or two from his time in the field. Michaela and I heard a rumor that Bob could do a mean spadefoot toad impression, so we had to ask. Here's the spadefoot toad, performed by Bob Cook.

Bob: Better warm up here.

[spadefoot toad impression]

Something like that.

Narrator: I'm convinced.

Bob: Something like that. Well, you can. You can. You can compare it to a real recording.

[spadefoot toad recording]

Narrator: Once the scientist, always a scientist. Even though Bob is now retired, he continues to work on reports and research projects. He splits his time between Cape Cod and Alaska, where his wife works. As a steward of natural resources, Bob makes the time to take a walk in the woods, ready to listen and observe.

[outro music]

Narrator: Thanks for listening to Stewardship Savvy. This special episode was written and produced by Michaela Compo and Kristen Vinduska. If you want to learn more about Cape Cod National Seashore or how the National Park Service is studying and protecting public lands, there'll be resources linked in the show notes.