Guidefitter Spotlight Episode 07: Jason Corbett, Bat Scientist from Bat Con International

Transcript

Bryan Koontz (00:05) Hey everyone, the following is a conversation with Jason Corbett. Jason's a Guidefitter member that I happen to meet through chatting over Guidefitter and a very interesting individual. He is a wildlife biologist, but for an animal that is poorly understood, that everyone knows about and has questions about, I'm sure, and that is a bat. He is an interesting guy who has served in the military.

He started getting into wildlife conservation at the age of like eight with his brother chasing little critters all over the desert and being paid to do that to capture video and has gone on to now be literally one of the world's leading scientists studying the bat all over the world. Jason's got some really interesting content to share, including being shot at by narcos in the desert while researching bats.

and some other interesting ideas around wildlife conservation for game and non -game animals. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jason as much as I did. Welcome to the Guidefitter Spotlight.

Bryan Koontz (00:38) This is awesome that we're finally getting the chance to do this. And I remember, what was it, a couple months ago that we kind of met over at Guidefitter and just started talking. And then I encourage you to share some content about your research. And I remember you saying, no one like.

Jason Corbett (00:44) Yeah, no, no, that's for sure.

Bryan Koontz (01:06) I'm not a wildlife biologist when it comes to game animals. Is anyone going to care about this stuff? And I think you saw that when you started posting these cool pictures of you in a boat underground in a bat cave, that it piqued people's interest. And I like the one comment from one of our members who said, I have learned more about bats in the past seven days than I have in my entire 62 years, or something like that.

Jason Corbett (01:06) Right.

Yeah, yeah, yep.

Bryan Koontz (01:32) And Jason, in honor of this conversation with you being like one of the world's most preeminent bat scientists and the Batman, I have to do this. I have to do it.

Jason Corbett (01:43) Oh, awesome. All right. Yep, you got me beat. Yep, yep. All right, good. That's a great starting point, because it's like, who doesn't love Batman, you know? Like, it's just, it's fun.

Bryan Koontz (01:47) In honor of this conversation, game on. All right, I'm prepped. I'm prepped. Well, there you go.

When I was, I don't know how old, I was little, maybe seven or 10 or something like that. I was, I remember, man, I remember this so clearly. It's weird how the brain works. I was with my mom and my now late uncle, he was a World War II vet, awesome dude. And we were in this little small town in Maryland called Lightersburg, Maryland. And I think there was like a public auction or a sale or something going on in this little town. And I was just kind of wandering around bored, you know. And there was a vacant church.

Jason Corbett (02:32) Yeah

Bryan Koontz (02:35) an old vacant church near where the auction was taking place. And I remember as I was just walking around, probably like just left my mom, just started walking around, there was a dead bat on the front porch of that church. And I remember thinking how cool that was, because I've never been able to get that close. I remember crouching down and just looking at it and kind of poking at it. And I probably picked it up and looked around. And that stuck in my brain because not many people, I think bats are

poorly understood. I think people are still terrified of them. Some people still believe that you're going to get rabies if they even fly near you. And you of course, in popular culture with movies and all that stuff. So I think they are really cool creatures. But how in the world did you ever find yourself being one of the world's leading experts in bats? That's wild.

Jason Corbett (03:25) Yeah, so yeah, great question. I mean, when I started in wildlife, I was real fortunate to get a, I think what most people would think of as a real early start. So about seven years old. And so I was born and raised down in Tucson, Arizona, which for those who don't know is kind of in the southern part of the state and sits pretty much right in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. So really ecologically diverse environment. So our cacti that maybe you've seen on your salsa bottle or things like that, if you're not.

from that area. You know, nope, they're not in Texas. It's in Arizona. So it's seven years old, a wildlife cinematographer moved next door to us. And by that point, I had my maternal grandparents lived out west of Tucson in the Tucson Mountains. And it already spent a lot of time playing around out in the desert. That was actively encouraged by my parents and also with my grandparents. My grandpa, also a World War II vet, really enjoyed just getting out and just like,

hiking the heck out of the mountains out there and he took us with him. So I already had a pretty good understanding and just was fascinated with being outside like probably most little kids that gets to play outside. And when the cinematographer moved next door, he was coming straight from Indiana and Arizona was a new place for him and his wife. And he knew nothing about it. And so,

pretty gregarious guy who was in his early thirties and just like super pumped up on life, clearly in a career field that he loved. And when they moved in, talked to my parents and anyhow, they kind of built a relationship right off the bat. And he, maybe just a couple of months after that came next door, asked her parents like, Hey, can I pay your boys to come out and help on my films? Cause I could really use some help with getting these wildlife shots. And mom and dad, thankfully were like,

Yeah, hey, why not? You know, like we trust the guy. He's, you know, good upstanding dude. So we started going out into the desert and like film assignment number one for my brother and I was to get a road runner panting. I didn't know road runners panted. And I thought this is insane because like, how are we even going to get a road runner to pant? Like,

Bryan Koontz (05:40) Ha!

That's an oddly specific video request. Yeah, you're right, yeah.

Jason Corbett (05:46) Isn't it? Yeah. So my brother and I, and this is, I don't know, sometimes I think about the proof of providence if you believe in such things, but like, I kid you not, Brian, the first road runner we found was a one -legged road runner. It wasn't panting yet, but I suspect it probably took about 300 % less effort to get that thing to pant than if we had come across a standardly equipped...

Bryan Koontz (06:03) who was panting?

Sure.

Jason Corbett (06:16) uh, road runner, cause you know, this thing's can really move. They're called road runners for a reason. They can hold that. So my brother and I kind of came up with a flanking thing and just started trotting along out in the desert. And within probably about 25 minutes, we were able to kind of hoot and holler to Keith who was lugging along like a 40 pound camera and got the thing cornered in a prickly pear where it started to pant cause it was pretty warm out and bam, he was absolutely amazed. He's like,

Bryan Koontz (06:21) Sure.

Jason Corbett (06:44) There's no way. Like, I didn't think you guys could do this. And they were like, well, of course, Keith, we've been out here in the desert for, you know, like seven, I don't know, maybe only three years. We're little kids, but of course we could do it. So that really set up a good kind of a good paradigm with him. What we really started to do was wrangling the animals for these wildlife films. So catching geckos and handling Gila monsters and chasing jackrabbits around to get the sunlight.

Bryan Koontz (06:46) Ha ha ha.

Jason Corbett (07:12) highlighting their ears, all that kind of stuff. The real key part there was that by doing that, and because we were having to sometimes manipulate wildlife, Keith had to get permits from the state wildlife agencies and from the public land management agencies. And so I got to start meeting all of those people. And, you know, a little boy interested in wildlife, and thankfully all of them were like, well, this is really cool. A, they thought the filming was neat.

Bryan Koontz (07:30) Oh.

Jason Corbett (07:40) Keith was just a really, really wonderful person to work with, great personality. And so he was able to really like bring those people into those experiences. And I was a part of that and my brother was a part of that and they were a part of that. And I showed a lot of interest and I started asking a lot of questions and came to realize like, whoa, I could have a career doing this like more than just, you know, like 10 bucks an hour or whatever Keith was paying us.

And so I started asking a lot of those questions, like, how did you get into this role? How did you do this? And I'd say within a couple of years of that was pretty dead set on like, this is what I want to do, not like chasing roadrunners through the desert, but being a wildlife biologist. And so I just kept working with Keith all the way up through high school and up through college and really got onto the career track of wildlife biology.

Keith was the guy that again kind of really got me dialed in on bats. He was filming one of the species of nectivores that lives in Southern Arizona and migrates through. They pollinate the Saguaro cactus blossoms, organ pipe, and then agaves, which I think folks are probably most familiar of because those get distilled into tequila and Bacchanora and mezcal. So helped them set up a really interesting

camera platform out in Saguaro National Park to film bats coming in and pollinating Saguaro cacti. So that was the first opportunity I had to really see them up close because sitting up on the observation platform all these bats would kind of hover on into a flower. They had to do that, they do that kind of slow and then we're also filming in slow motion a lot of the time. So we got pretty up close, we weren't handling any of these bats at the time they were an endangered species but had gotten the permits to be able to film them.

Bryan Koontz (09:27) Hmm.

Jason Corbett (09:30) So yet another connection because we had to get permits to use US Fish and Wildlife Service and then was also working with the National Park Service on their park units around Tucson. And so that was a real, I'd say pretty defining moment. I think I was probably about nine or 10 years old when that film occurred. And I filed it away as just like, wow, bats are really cool. But there's a lot of other cool wildlife, like desert tortoise and river otters and all sorts of things. So.

Bryan Koontz (09:50) Wow.

Jason Corbett (10:00) where I encountered bats the second time. And what really got me set into this world was when I went to college at Northern Arizona University and Flagstaff and got connected to a wildlife ecologist by the name of Dr. Carol Chambers in their school of forestry. I got hired on as a small mammal technician trapping species of voles that lives out in a lot of the meadows kind of in Northern Arizona. And within a pretty short period of time, she saw, hey, I was...

Bryan Koontz (10:53) Yeah.

Jason Corbett (10:55) Fair to call it North America's showiest bat. It's got really giant ears that are pink. Its fur is black and then it has three white spots on its back. Big pink wings. It's got really kind of long fur. It's pretty fuzzy, soft bat. Very gentle disposition, which is nice. They're not real bitey when you get them in hand. It's common for them to get it.

Bryan Koontz (11:18) Not real bitey. Is that a scientific term? Not real bitey?

Jason Corbett (11:22) Not real bite. It is. You ask anybody in the bat world, especially here in North America, like, what bat bites you the most? And the answer would be the big brown bat. You pull them out of a net and they just, they go to town. Spotted bats, they pull their ears back and usually just like go to sleep. It's kind of, kind of nice, very mellow. So started working with her on that and one thing led to another. Started doing a lot of rope work. Carol didn't do rope work. Spotted bats roosted in crevices and cliffs.

Bryan Koontz (11:33) Gotcha.

Jason Corbett (11:50) I did a lot of radio telemetry for them and that kind of got me set up by the time I was done with my...

Bryan Koontz (11:55) You mean, you mean rope work like you're like, like rappelling down to them or climbing up to them like to film them and study them in the cliffs. Okay, wow. So you got to be a mountain. So you got to be good at mountain climbing to be a bad scientist too. Okay.

Jason Corbett (12:00) Yeah, correct. You know, it is one of the skills that's handy. I'll say I'm not like some amazing trad climber. The area we're working in was Grand Canyon. So Grand Canyon kind of runs east -west. Marble Canyon leads up to Glen Canyon. That runs north -south. So we were working with Spotted kind of on BLM land.

and Forest Service land on the west side of Marble Canyon and then Navajo Nation land on the eastern side. The bats that we had tagged were in cracks and crevices in the cliffs within Marble Canyon. And so for folks that haven't seen that, setting that up, those are vertical to near vertical cliffs anywhere from about a thousand to 800 feet. And unlike Grand Canyon, you don't have that kind of rolling terrain profile. It's just...

Bryan Koontz (12:53) Holy moly.

Jason Corbett (12:57) You get up to the edge of marble and look down and like, whoa, that's a big drop. So we would repel off the top of that to try and get the, find the bats actually in the crevices they're in. There's a lot of descriptive biology because it's a rare bat, it's not caught often and hard to capture in the roost and get an idea of what this bat does. So you can even figure out like, are there conservation actions or management actions needed?

Bryan Koontz (13:02) Oh my god.

Jason Corbett (13:26) to help it. So all of that was pretty early on that set me up to then go on and work for the Park Service in between my bachelor's and master's where I continued working with bats and Park Service liked me and said, hey, we'll pay for your master's if you do it with this professor at NAU. And I'm like, all right, well, who? And they're like, Carol Chambers. I was like, ah, twist my arm. So back to school with Carol, I did my master's on the roosting and foraging ecology of the big free -tailed bat, which is, um,

Bryan Koontz (13:48) Nice.

Jason Corbett (13:57) In the same family of bats as the bats that are at Carl's Bad Cavern, you think of these big flights of critters coming out of the ground. Those are Brazilian or Mexican free -tailed bats, depending on where you're from and what you call them. Same family as that.

Bryan Koontz (14:10) Why I think that's, isn't that the one, so I lived in Austin for a long time and I think it's the Mexican free tails that live under the Congress Avenue bridge. Is that, that's, those are the ones, okay, yep. Yep.

Jason Corbett (14:14) Yes. Ah, yep, yep, yep, you're 100 % spot on. So the big free -tailed bat is, shockingly, just like that, except a lot bigger. It's, I think, the second largest bat in North America. It's got about a two -foot wingspan on it. But when you look at it, similar morphology. It has very short, joined, swept forward ears. The wings are long and narrow. When you think of the Mexican free -tailed bats and those free -tailed bats, think of them like,

fighter jets, that's how I think of it. These things are like F -16s, they've been clocked at 100 plus miles an hour in flight. They're foraging sometimes 10 ,000 feet off the deck, they forage up in the airstream, or in the jet stream, getting moths that are migrating from Mexico to Canada. I mean, just fascinating critters, so. Yeah, no joke.

Bryan Koontz (14:49) Whoa, whoa.

Jason Corbett (15:10) I think peregrines when they're doing dives are faster than that, peregrine falcons, but it's certainly, as far as I know, the fastest mammal other than, you know, the guys that are in F -35s and F -22s. I think they're cheating, but you know, it's okay.

Bryan Koontz (15:14) Okay. Okay. Yeah. And I think it's the, what is it, the herriundae? I'm screwing up the Latin, but the birds, those birds that like feed in the air, like swallows and stuff like that, like they're, they're pretty swift, but not that fast. Like the.

Jason Corbett (15:36) No, not quite as fast as that. It's pretty amazing when you get one of these things in hand. You look at that creature and I mean, bats, when you see them, seem so fragile. They're small to begin with. Their wings are, you know, it's just skin. The bones look really fragile. But I mean, talk about nature perfectly designing them for what they're supposed to do. It's amazing.

Bryan Koontz (15:51) Yeah.

Holy cow.

Jason Corbett (15:59) So that bat, I was looking at its foraging ecology, like where did this bat forage, what does it eat, and then where does it roost. They also were a crevice stalling bat in cliff faces, so back on rope and back over to the cliff faces in Marble Canyon, Grand Canyon, Canyon De Chey. And then Carol and I, because those two species of bats, the big three -tailed bat and the spotted bat are inhabiting kind of the same space as we're able to do our

kind of research parallel with each other, help each other out and go on that route. And so Carol, just an amazing individual, an incredibly humble person. You know, a lot of times there's big egos in academia, not a whiff of one with Carol. She did an incredible job of mentorship and really setting me up to either continue to move on in the bat world,

or at least have a successful career in wildlife biology. She freely shared her contacts throughout the bat world and here in Arizona within Arizona Game and Fish Department. They have many folks that are also pretty dialed in and, you know, bat specialists as well like Angie McIntyre, who's the state coordinator, Tim Snow, who was the state coordinator before her. And, you know, in Arizona, like a lot of states, there's non -game wildlife biologists in the state agency and...

So here in Arizona, those folks cover bats and because Arizona has second highest bat diversity in the country, they do spend a fair amount of time working on bat related issues. So got to meet all those people and then just kept rolling.

Bryan Koontz (17:39) Is that, when you mentioned non -game, and I know we're gonna talk a little bit about this a little bit later, but is that generally how state wildlife agencies are divided, like the game folks and the non -game folks? Or is that, I don't know, like how that's usually laid out.

Jason Corbett (17:46) Sure. Yeah, I'd say, I would say generically from my experience, yeah, sometimes they're called non -games, sometimes they're just called habitat specialists that are covering kind of, you know, everything but game. You know, I think you know the term hook and bullet. That's a common term to denote that there's kind of the game wildlife biologists that are working on.

Bryan Koontz (18:03) Mm.

Yep, sure.

Jason Corbett (18:22) migratory fowl and fish and then everything else oftentimes does get kind of lumped into the non -game category. That could include a lot of invertebrate work too because some of the agencies are dealing with that since those are all part of the food system. Yeah. Yep.

Bryan Koontz (18:32) Sure.

Make sense. Right, right. Now, how did you, I know we got a lot to cover and I want to be mindful of the time, but how did you get to BCI, bad conservation or not? Because that's where you are now. And I bet most people don't even know about BCI. It sounds like a really cool organization. And I would love just a couple minutes on that and what do they do? I mean, you've been, remember you shared with me.

Jason Corbett (18:48) Yes, correct. Yep.

Yeah, fair enough.

Bryan Koontz (19:02) You've been rappelling down into more interesting places than off a cliff, from what I understand, in parts all over the world. So I think that's all been through BCI.

Jason Corbett (19:08) Sure.

Yeah, most of it I have that experience with prior to BCI as well, which that kind of set me up to how I ended up landing the position that I got. So BCI came about and I was finished up. So I was in the Arizona Army National Guard from January of 2001 to essentially January of 2007, did a six year hitch in there. And...

Bryan Koontz (19:34) Oh, wow.

Jason Corbett (19:36) When I was done with my masters, I ended up moving back to, or my wife and I ended up moving back to Maine. I got a job with a consulting firm back there as a bat biologist running their bats and wind energy side of things. So doing a lot of compliance work in the Northeastern US. For those that don't know, wind turbines on the landscape actually kill a pretty huge number of bats each year, huge number being probably about a half million from our estimates. It's not a particularly good.

good situation. We've seen declines in a couple of species as wind energy has increased. So everything has its cost. Those things are not the... Well, anyhow, we won't dive into too much of that. But anyhow, worked on that. She finished up with the schooling that she was doing and we wanted to move back out west. That kind of coincided with some family stuff that I needed to go help with.

Bryan Koontz (20:14) Mm.

Yeah, interesting.

Jason Corbett (20:32) So I ended up moving back to Arizona, working at a consulting firm. And you know, the two firms I was at, Brian, I learned a ton from the folks that were there. It's a bit, you know, those are for -profit businesses. They're often doing compliance work for power line construction and all of that stuff. So it wasn't really where my heart was at, but it was honestly, it was really good work. I was working with a lot of really, really good people who, again, like just...

Bryan Koontz (20:48) Mm.

Jason Corbett (20:59) had a lot of good mentors that were training me on kind of the business aspects of things and as well as all of the nuts and bolts of kind of not just wildlife biology but just wildlife ecology, ecology in general because all that stuff kind of tied in with being able to do the work at those firms. At a certain point however I was kind of like well like I've learned a lot here but I'd love to I'd love to get into the conservation world.

I started ferreting around and got in touch with someone from from back conservation international who said well, hey, thanks for calling 20 you should ask we're getting ready to fly this position and stand up a new program called the subterranean program and Maybe be interested in applying them like well, yeah, why even apply to hire me? I'm perfect for that job. So thankfully that that Supervisor that guy he showed up in Tucson works is where I was based at the time at a conference and

Bryan Koontz (21:42) Yeah.

Jason Corbett (21:52) I had the chance to meet up with them and put in my application and one thing led to another. I got an interview with them and then ended up starting in January of 2008. So I think I just hit my 16 year anniversary with BCI which yeah, it's been a heck of a ride. So that, I just haven't looked back. I've worked for the federal government, state government, private for -profit and now private nonprofit.

Bryan Koontz (22:04) That's awesome.

Jason Corbett (22:17) And I really just enjoy the NGO world. We have a lot of nimbleness, a lot of flexibility. And it's kind of an environment where you have to bring a lot of passion to the table to these conservation projects. It's not like you get winds overnight. Typically, some of these conservation efforts can be decades in the making. And a lot of times, we're working with species that are literally on the very brink of extinction.

where there's one cyclone away from just getting wiped off the face of the earth because they're down to one roosting cave or one little patch of forest. I mean, it's complex, but man, you've got to be on your toes and thinking every day about bringing solutions to the table, not just for bats, but we work with, obviously, a ton of people. And that's one of the great joys of the job as well as all the people that I get to work with who are...

Bryan Koontz (22:53) Wow.

Jason Corbett (23:11) in different ways, shapes, or form, whether they're a farmer in Fiji or a forest supervisor over in New Mexico looking at managing a three million acre forest. Like, they're all people that care about the resource in one way or another. It might not be the same perspective or reason I might care about it, but there's always that commonality of, hey, yeah, this is something that we all equally value, maybe for different reasons, but we all value it. So let's figure out how to protect it. So, yeah.

Bryan Koontz (23:36) Totally.

Wow. So back to your military service. So I think keeping the timeline straight. So was that, did you essentially sort of hit pause on your wildlife biology endeavors while you served in the military and then kind of picked it back up after you served? Did you go into the military after college and then before? Where did that take place? Did I have that right?

Jason Corbett (24:00) So when in Deer, yep, so I was in the Guard, so I was able to do that part -time and that's what allowed me to dovetail in. Yep, so I enlisted my, that would have been my sophomore year and figured that that'd give me a good chance to say like, well, am I gonna wanna go full -time in this? Or maybe, you know, stay in the Guard for maybe make that a career while also pursuing the civilian career. Because I always, again, taking it back to when I was pretty young, like,

Bryan Koontz (24:05) Ah, gotcha. Right. Gotcha.

Jason Corbett (24:30) I had a really strong drive to do the wildlife biology and thought like, okay, well, I'm pretty well along this route here. I'll really push and push hard on that and see if I can make that work. And sure enough, I did. So the garden is up being a really, really good set for that. It was a really good experience. That kind of ran parallel as I was working on wildlife and ended up being a real enriching thing. I mean, I draw on that experience every day in conservation and I'm in a...

management role and leadership role. I'm the director of the habitat protection and restoration program and there's I 40, 44, 45 of us in that program now. So, you know, it's a really I'm in a leadership role and it's a real joy to kind of pull from all those past experiences and training to get folks really humming along on achieving our mission. So, yeah.

Bryan Koontz (25:23) That's awesome. And I can see you still hold on to your military history with your headphones there. They're awesome. I need to find those. Bluetooth, yeah, I need a pair of those. They look really cool. So you were telling me with BCI traveling around the world, I think you posted on Guidefitter one of your first posts was like, I think it was a picture of you in the canoe in an underground aquatic cave. And you.

Jason Corbett (25:36) Yeah. Yep.

Bryan Koontz (25:50) You mentioned something like you've been shot at by narcos. You've repelled down into like a uranium, like still a tower or something or a hole. Like what are, what are like some of the craziest experiences? Cause you know, you have to agree. Like you have it, you have a pretty unique profession, right? I mean, traveling all over the world and studying bats, it leads you no doubt into some pretty interesting situations. So what are everyone who does cool things like you do has stories. Like what are some of your like,

Jason Corbett (26:05) Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (26:20) fun stories to tell about situations you've been in.

Jason Corbett (26:23) Sure. So yeah, there's plenty of them. Most people think of going into abandoned mines as like it's a pretty foreign thing, especially caves. Like I know there's a subset of people that are like, oh caves, it's cool man, I love them. I went into this one time and it was a show cave and that's awesome. It's a great way to get a connection to the, to get like the general public connected to those types of resources.

Bryan Koontz (26:31) Ahem.

Jason Corbett (26:49) That's typically not where we're doing our work and especially with the abandoned mines, like you mentioned, the uranium mines. It was back in, I think 2010 is when I first started really getting dialed in to those because I'd heard some whispers that the Department of Energy was going to start doing a lot of remediation work with abandoned uranium mines. And you know, they're a hole in the ground like an abandoned gold mine or zinc mine or coal mine or whatever. So meaning we presume the bats would be using them.

There wasn't a lot of information on it because folks were, I think, justifiably a little leery about going into those environments for all sorts of different reasons. But, you know, pick up the challenge, learned a lot about the radiological hazards, the type of mining that they were doing, the geology of where those things were driven, and kind of how all of those things would coalesce together to ensure that I could make a determination on how it would be safe to get into them. So...

Bryan Koontz (27:23) Yeah.

Jason Corbett (27:45) Yeah, those are their own animal. They're driven in horizontally bedded sedimentary rocks of sandstone. The stability of them doesn't tend to be great. And yes, I mean, the radiological hazards are primarily alpha radiation, meaning radon, so an inhalation hazard. So I think one of the photos I put on there recalling into that shaft, they had a half -faced respirator on. The next iteration of that is that we wear self -contained breathing apparatuses. So the same systems that municipal firefighters wear.

Bryan Koontz (28:01) Mmm.

Jason Corbett (28:15) So, you know, full face mask or breathing canned air. I did that because I've had a few more hollitins go down from lung cancer. Never looked like fun. And I thought, you know what, like a half face is good, but what if we just breathe canned air and then we just don't have to worry about that? And, you know, as I started hiring more people, yeah, exactly. So we eventually switched over to that. And that's kind of the standard that we do now since radon is, you know, the

Bryan Koontz (28:32) Yeah. I would do that.

Jason Corbett (28:44) primary threat, specifically radon decays into, so it goes from a gas to solids as its decay chain, which is really kind of bizarre. Those solids that are part of that decay chain are what you can breathe in, they're radioactive, they get lodged in your lungs and can cause lung cancer. So none of us want that, but in the meantime we figured out safe ways to do it.

Bryan Koontz (29:04) Hmm.

Jason Corbett (29:09) And bats definitely use those. So yeah, but rappelling down a rope with an SCBA on into a 100 foot clogged up shaft with junk on it is not all that fun. You've got to watch your clock because you only have so much air. But while at the same time trying to move thoughtfully and carefully through these potentially hazardous environments. So that's neat. Like probably one of the weirdest things that happened to me was I was doing some.

Bryan Koontz (29:22) Yeah.

Wait, wait, back to those. So bats live down there? And they don't, they're not, can they get, you know, sicknesses from all of that? Like, it's amazing that they can live in such a caustic environment like that, but is it a threat to them or just humans? Like, how does that work?

Jason Corbett (29:39) They do, yeah. Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah, great question. That was part of how, so after getting started into that, a couple of agency partners asked that exact same question. So we set up a master's project and took a look at it to see. The real short answer is no. Bats, because they tend to roost up above in the working. So like if you just picture walking into a mine, we'll say it's six foot high, three and a half feet wide. Bats roost.

pretty much up at like head level. Radon is heavier than air and so it stratifies lower in the air column. So in a undisturbed environment, like if a bat just flies in there, their wings don't cause enough disturbance to kick up the radon and mix the air. They end up roosting up and out of the column of air. What we discovered when we were doing this work is that just by walking into a mine,

Bryan Koontz (30:43) Crazy.

our movement, our legs would kick up the radon that had settled out and then start mixing it with the air column. Because when we put radon monitors up high versus low, you would get this clear, clear dichotomy, like low radon, super high radon at the floor. And so just by nature of where the bats are roosting and how they're roosting, it's like they pretty much avoid inhalation of radon. So yeah, I know.

Bryan Koontz (31:02) Hmm.

That's wild. Huh. And so it's almost like a built -in moat, you know, protecting them against other things that might come in there from time to time. Huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Corbett (31:19) Huh? Yeah, it is. Yeah. And bats are kind of roosting up because, you know, there's terrestrial predators that like to eat them, like skunks and raccoons and snakes and all that. So six feet up is typically good enough. Spotted skunks, ringtails, they can be really good climbers. One of the weirdest things I saw was kind of duck walking through this short little mine to the west of Phoenix.

Bryan Koontz (31:27) Sure.

and I saw this pile of bat wings on the floor and was like, huh, all right, well maybe a ring -tailed cat, because some of these animals, when they eat a bat, they'll treat it like an insect. They pull off the wings and go for the squishy bit, if that's right. So I thought, huh, okay, well that's interesting. You know, mine's in the desert. Spend a lot more time looking at your feet. Rattlesnakes love those things. And confined space with rattlesnakes is always a good cardiac check.

Bryan Koontz (31:58) The juicy middle. Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Jason Corbett (32:14) paying attention to that. So I'm looking at my feet to do this thing, get to this corner and like look up and I'm like face to face with a spotted skunk that was at head level. And the spotted skunk is what had been eating the bats. They're really, really good climbers. And it looked just as surprised as me. It was like, you know, stuck on the rib like, hey, what the hell is that? And I'm like, oh my gosh, skunk, you know, start backpedaling and that ended just fine. Nobody got sprayed and.

Bryan Koontz (32:32) Oh my gosh.

Jason Corbett (32:40) But you never know what you're going to see underground. I've encountered cows underground, which is disconcerting, I guess, a cow. Yep, like rangeland cow. I think just getting out of the desert sun. But again, not like the exact kind of circumstance I'd want. Thankfully, that was mellow. Bighorn sheep. I've encountered bighorn sheep. I've seen a lot of mountain lion sign, but thankfully not.

Bryan Koontz (32:42) Wow.

A cow.

Yeah, right, right.

No.

Jason Corbett (33:09) not been immediately underground with a mount lion. Bear, I have been underground with. They hibernate in mines sometimes, or sometimes are just back in there getting water, because sometimes mines serve as a freshwater resource for a lot of animals. Havalina, they often will actually den in abandoned mines and use them over multiple generations. Bobcats, seen them underground where they've been raising litters.

Let's see, what else? Rabbits. Almost every species of rattlesnake you can imagine. Yeah, I know. People. Sometimes people like living in these things. It's always a little odd. Usually, no joke.

Bryan Koontz (33:45) My gosh. Sheesh.

Wait, really? Someone's like, just built a little camp inside the mine. They've been living in there. Wow. Huh.

Jason Corbett (34:00) Yeah, yeah, which you can probably imagine those are folks that maybe are, you know, kind of on the fringes of society. I think it's maybe a polite way to put it. Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (34:08) Sure, sure. Yeah, they don't really want you in their home. Yeah. Yeah, right. Right, right, right, right.

Jason Corbett (34:12) No. No, and no bad things there. The stuff with the Narcos, like, have done a lot of work along the border. And, you know, I was born and raised in Tucson, and like I mentioned, spent a lot of time working, you know, just out in the desert. And, you know, the mantra was always just like, live and let live. You see somebody out in the desert, just give them big old wave and a howdy, and you mind your business, they're gonna mind theirs. I forget what point it was when...

the cartel started taking over human smuggling. But that went from like the local coyotes, and when I say coyote, I mean a human that's acting as a, yeah, a transfer agent, there we go. Those local coyotes kind of moved out of the chain of conveyance of materials across the border, including people. And now a lot of the folks that were moving across, meaning migrants, started carrying drugs and therefore there was a.

Bryan Koontz (34:47) Yeah, sure. Transfer agent.

Jason Corbett (35:08) commodity and so it kind of went from like yeah you'd see people out in the desert whatever no big deal like you just went doing your stuff to groups out in the desert and you're like well are those are they carrying a bunch of drugs are there armed people with them all of that and so started seeing those so it was probably maybe it was 2012 -13 I was working down in a mountain range about 30 miles south of Tucson and was on the kind of southern slope.

this really big limestone fin sticking out of the mountainside. And by big, I mean, it was like 25 feet high. So I was moving perpendicular to that. And at a certain point, I was like, OK, I don't really feel like scaling over that. So I was going to go downslope to where that fin kind of trailed off, cut around the toe of it, and then go back up. And there was a whole bunch of mines in that region I was looking at just getting kind of inventory information on.

So as I started to go down, I looked out and down in the creosote flats, maybe a quarter mile away, there's a big, big group of people out there. I'm like, all right, well, whatever. You know, I'm here to do one thing. I'm not here to do that. So continue on with what I'm doing. And I must have made it maybe 50 feet down that sand when pop pop pop, you know, I had a few rounds impact around me. It was clearly a handgun, wasn't a rifle. And I thought, well, hell, that's rude. But they must have seen that I was.

Bryan Koontz (36:38) Yeah, right.

Jason Corbett (37:02) you know, just a couple more shots in the general direction of like, yes, I get it. Do what you're, do you need to do, whatever. And I'll just, I'll just hang here and take some notes for a bit. You know, not like you want to get into an argument. Yeah. So, I mean, but that's, that's awkward. Yeah. Yeah. I,

Bryan Koontz (37:07) Oh my gosh.

No, no. That's wild. Just another day at the office. Yeah. Sure.

Jason Corbett (37:27) It's a reality. I mean, people encounter all sorts of stuff when out doing things.

Bryan Koontz (37:32) Well, I guess the point to be made there is that the critters that you're studying live all over the world, including into some pretty unfriendly to humans, certainly unfriendly to Americans, certainly places, but they still need studied nonetheless. And I guess, does it take, how are most governments, and maybe that's a gross generalization, but when you try to get permits or gain entry to other countries,

to study bats? Like, is generally, are those countries understanding, like, yeah, OK, that's cool? Or is it still really difficult because maybe they think you're a spy just pretending to be a scientist or something like that?

Jason Corbett (38:11) You know, it's for the places that we've worked as part of the assessment. So I've got a colleague who is the director of the Endangered Species Interventions Program, Dr. John Flanders. And John is a man, what an awesome guy. Anyhow, he's British by nationality, but also became an American citizen a few years ago. And John is like your quintessential traveling business, you know, business guy. Like he's...

impeccable in how he is able to set up getting and working within these countries. So it hasn't been hard, but part of the assessment is, is it feasible to do a conservation project in that country? I mean, we're often working with the government, but usually focused more on the community that happens to be in the immediate area of the bats that we're working with. And so those things usually are running parallel. There are places that we haven't worked or we've had to not.

Bryan Koontz (39:23) It's probably just, it's easier to say no rather than imagine the risks if they say yes or something. Yeah.

Jason Corbett (39:26) Yeah, exactly. And you know, there's, I think John actually ran into that very scenario you're talking about when he was doing some work with bats in China. And I think he ended up under house arrest and they were accusing him of a spy. I don't think he can go back to China anymore. He's not welcome. But I think he's the only one on staff that's kind of run into those issues. And

literally doing nothing wrong and following all the rules. He did everything absolutely right. And so we just try and avoid the situations where like that kind of thing could happen because, you know, yeah.

Bryan Koontz (39:55) That wild. That is wild.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah being locked up or caned or whatnot isn't worth it. Yeah, that's that that so what um Wrapping up on bats a little bit. So, you know again I go back to what I said at the beginning where I think I think bats are one of those little critters that are really poorly understood by most You know, of course when I grew up it was all like off a bat, you know touches you you're gonna get rabies and all that What are like, I don't know three ish. What are a couple?

Jason Corbett (40:11) No, no, definitely not.

Sure.

Bryan Koontz (40:34) of the biggest sort of myths about bats that you've heard, that you can maybe dispel or little known facts or something like that that people would take away from this.

Jason Corbett (40:43) Sure. Sure. Yeah, well the first one that seems to still be persistent because it's a, you know, a common thing like blind as a bat. Bats actually have really good eyesight. They, you know, some of them flying foxes have kind of big eyes on them. A lot of our bats here in North America have relatively small eyes. The thing to know about bats' eyes is that their vision is attuned to the environment that they're operating and living in. So,

Bryan Koontz (40:52) Ah.

Jason Corbett (41:10) It's not that bats have like super awesome night vision, but their vision is evolved specifically to be optimized for low light conditions. And so for bats that are living underground and you get kind of twilight zones or dim conditions like that, they actually see really, really well in that. Because running parallel with that, people know that that's echolocate. Echolocating is really energetically expensive for bats. And so...

Bryan Koontz (41:28) Hmm.

Yeah.

Ah, they can turn and they can just turn that on and off. That's like a brain thing. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Huh.

Jason Corbett (41:40) It's like talking. Yep, exactly. Yep. And to give you an idea of how like loud that is, I think it would be over 170, 200 decibels. It's like we can't even yell as loud as the equivalent amount of energy is when a bat echo locates. And oddly enough, they don't blow their ears out from doing that. What they often do in flight is time.

Bryan Koontz (41:59) Wow.

Jason Corbett (42:08) time the pulses of echolocation with wingbeats so that it's like pumping their lungs. And I know. Yeah. Yep.

Bryan Koontz (42:13) Whoa, to get that energy, to let it rip. And that comes out of their mouth? Like what is the, okay, okay, okay. And is that in an audible frequency that us humans can hear? Or is it, it depends on the bat?

Jason Corbett (42:20) Yep, yep, yeah, it's a vocalization, yep.

Some species are what we call the audible species because they're echolocating below, we'll say, 15 kilohertz maybe. As you get older, your range of hearing starts to drop out. But you and I could probably still hear bats in the 15 kilohertz range. Certainly, we could hear bats down at, we'll say, 12 kilohertz, so the spotted bat I was talking about earlier.

Bryan Koontz (42:40) Okay.

Well.

Jason Corbett (42:57) That's an audible bat. You can hear it kind of clicking. The big free -tailed bat is also an audible echolocator.

Bryan Koontz (43:04) And they make noise when they're not echolocating, I'm pretty sure. Because I know just this summer, here at my house, I have a Montana, one of the rear doors has like a really big eave. And I walked out at dusk and I'm like, what is that noise? And it was just this high frequency thing. And then I look up and I see the bass. So there must be a little nest up and under the eave. But I heard that. So I guess it's a question. Do they make noise?

Outside of echo locating or they just like kind of talking to each other without like doing that thing or or or no

Jason Corbett (43:38) Yeah, they definitely do. Yeah, no, they can vocalize. Many bats vocalize within the roost, especially if they're a colonial roosting species. So the free -tailed bat we were talking about earlier, they're known for forming these huge, huge colonies of bats, millions of them. And it's been found that the males actually will form harems of females. They've got a repertoire of like 200 songs that they can actually like will sing. And that there's other vocalizations that bats are using.

Bryan Koontz (44:01) Oh, whoa. That's wild.

Jason Corbett (44:07) in between to communicate. We don't in some cases really know what they're doing, but yeah, they absolutely do communicate outside of that. So, yeah.

Bryan Koontz (44:08) Okay.

Wow. OK, so blind as a bat is a myth. They actually have eyes and can see, and they can echolocate, and it zaps their energy. What other things? What about the rabies thing? Because I know a ton of people still talk about that.

Jason Corbett (44:26) Yeah, so it's thought that less than one half or 1 % of all bats have rabies. The thing that's confusing for the general world is that bats show, there's still an ongoing question of like, are bats a reservoir for hosting the rabies virus? And by and large, like, you know, I don't know if there's really an answer that's been arrived at on that. That's...

like rabies is a mammalian virus, so skunks have it, dogs can get it, cats, like kind of everything. Good question, and I honestly think that probably came about over time because of really what you had mentioned. So when you think about it, if you ask most people, like, have you seen a bat up close? They go, well, no, as a kid I saw him flying around a streetlight near our house or.

Bryan Koontz (45:00) Sure. So why do the bats get a bad rep is the issue. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Corbett (45:21) Yeah, we had a barn on the property and they're always up in the eaves of it, but we were told not to go touch them or anything like that. So for most people, the only chance they've ever had to see a bat up close is when you see it on the ground. And that's not normal, right? So like if you see a bat on the ground, uh -huh, yeah, there's something has probably happened to it. And so I think that's where a lot of times people, you know, go pick that thing up and then they get bit or something like that.

Bryan Koontz (45:36) Yeah, it's sick or something. Yeah, right.

Jason Corbett (45:50) So the sample size, I guess what I'm saying is most people don't see bats because when bats are healthy and operating normally, you're just not going to see them. But when they're sick and you're most likely to encounter them is when people encounter them, touch them, grab them, you know, pick them up and then they get bit. And there's a higher correlation to those sick bats probably being ones that might have rabies. But that being said, it's a pretty small incident. I think most people around the world end up getting rabies by dogs.

Bryan Koontz (46:19) Sure, right, yeah. It's kind of like if a raccoon lets you get close to it in the middle of the day, yeah, don't touch it. There's probably something wrong with it. Or bite you or both. Yeah, that's right. That's right. The trash panda. Well, I know we only have a little bit of time left, but I wanted to cover one more thing, which I think is, which you had brought up when you and I were talking on the phone a couple of months ago, which I thought was really interesting. So.

Jason Corbett (46:24) It's either gonna steal your lunch money or yeah, there's something wrong with it, right? Uh -huh. Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (46:47) So you like to hunt? Yeah, I think we got, yeah, yep.

Jason Corbett (46:51) Yeah, yeah, not a huge hunter. I mean, I'll say like I primarily have focused in my life on so I grew up in junior high and high school. I fur trapped so various fur bearers down there primarily coyotes. But then I've always enjoyed hunting cottontail rabbits, two different species of jackrabbits. And then in southern Arizona, at least there were three species of quail and as well as morning doves. And so have maintained really kind of the rabbit, jackrabbit, quail, occasionally duck.

Uh huh, yeah, yep. I've done a little bit of bow hunting for mule deer and coos deer, but I always enjoy the small game hunting. I love kind of just roaming around and man, you can cover big distance and, you know, good time outside and usually find a critter or two and go for it. So, yep. Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (47:20) some upland, a waterfowl and upland stuff, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally. I started to get into waterfowl hunting. Some guys here in the Guidefitter office are big waterfowlers and they took me a couple times this year. And man, I can really, I've never really gotten into that and I can see the appeal because you can kind of hang out in the blind, chit chat. One day we made breakfast in the blind and then, you know, it's sort of a very social, you don't have to be quiet and you know, and all that, but it was a lot of fun. But I, so, you know, I think one of the, one of the interesting things that you had brought up is you were telling me about,

as an example, some projects that you do through the program that you ever see that are like spring restoration projects where you will dig out the entrance way or the exit, the exits of streams coming out of the mountains and stuff that have been maybe clogged by grazing cattle or whatnot. And you kind of dig those out, fence them off, pipe it so that the water can run outside. And that creates a great place for the bats to come get.

hydrated and all that because bats like any other living creature need water. I think the point you made is, you know, about how that is a project that was done by folks and interests for a non -game species like a bat. But that if you look at the side effect of that, that that also, depending on where it was, you know, that pipe providing the water that's now flowing more freely than ever is also providing water to elk and bighorn sheep and all the other critters that live and cohabitate in the same.

Jason Corbett (48:37) Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (49:03) environment than bats. And so you would mention some really interesting sort of points about, you know, why don't agencies that are sort of the non -game and game and even people with completely different, you know, outlooks on life, but all share an interest in wildlife and wildlife conservation, maybe for different reasons. Some folks like to hunt them and protect them. Some folks are very against hunting them, but still like to see them and protect them. But maybe you could just comment on that, because I thought that those points about coming together and have interagency cooperation,

Jason Corbett (49:27) Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (49:33) in the future could be a really important thing, I think.

Jason Corbett (49:36) Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's one thing I've loved about working within the NGO world, Brian, is that we're like kind of middle of the road. We've got to, I mean, as I always tell my folks, like we live and die by our partnerships. And so because of that, the view of working with this particular taxa that, like you said, is anywhere from like people are happy to help out to like much maligned and really misunderstood, we have to be skilled that

kind of building coalitions and doing the work that we're doing. And it's a weird thing. I've always, like being in the conservation world and the conservation community, I'm quite aware that there's, you know, like a stigma around the environmental community or conservation community. There's been plenty of times where I've walked into offices where I'm meeting a partner for the first time and they didn't expect to see a guy with a flat top walk in.

Bryan Koontz (50:33) Yeah, like long hair in Birkenstocks is what they were expecting maybe. Yeah.

Jason Corbett (50:35) I'm not sure, but I have noted and registered the surprise and they're like, you're the bad guy? I'm like, yes, I'm the bad guy. Oh, oh what? Like, let's talk. So yeah, the point is like, you're right. There's these weird, or maybe not weird, maybe it's perfectly normal, kind of like just divisions. You've got folks that are generally in the hunting community.

Bryan Koontz (50:47) That's funny.

Jason Corbett (51:02) And then you've got folks in the conservation community and then you have the general public. And I think a lot of times, you know, you have folks who are saying, well, I'm all for conservation and like hunting is bad. I just feel like there's been, there's this like increasing disconnect in the nation where people don't quite understand the environment that all of us, and I mean all of us are able to enjoy. It's, it's, we're the only place in the world where any one of us can go out.

and go to a sporting goods store and get the equipment that we need and then go somewhere and get a hunting or a fishing license and go out and enjoy wildlife. And every single time when one of us does that, if I go get a new Ruger American rifle or you go get a new Benelli for doing waterfowl hunting, I think it's about 11 % of that is there's an excise tax to the what's called the Pittman Robertson Act that goes right back into wildlife conservation.

So the model that all of us have partaken in is called the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. And that idea really came to be in the late 1800s when a lot of game animals in this country had been hunted by market hunting almost to extinction. And so the genius of it is that all of the participants in hunting and fishing and all of that stuff are directly, and I mean directly funding the conservation. I think it's...

75 % of the revenues that come in from the Pittman -Roberton Act are what are funding our state wildlife agencies. And in 2022, I think that was about close to one and a half billion dollars that was flowing to those agencies. When that money comes in, that money has to be spent right back on wildlife conservation. And so, you know, all of the folks that are out there like, I really love hunting. Well, they can also justifiably.

and very much say, well, I'm also very much a fan of wildlife conservation because I'm literally putting my money where my mouth is. When they're out there on the landscape hunting a bighorn sheep or an elk or a deer, you know, that's money that's going straight back into the agency people that are then doing the scientific management of those species to ensure that we have wildlife forever. And for people who might be anti -hunting to say,

Bryan Koontz (53:21) Totally.

Jason Corbett (53:26) I'm against hunting. I'm pretty sure the revenues coming into Pittman Robertson are likely a lot higher than what are coming in from some of the other sectors of conservation. And so I'm not saying that to like take a swipe at it. It's just, I would love for more folks to, you know, the hunting community, I think could do maybe an even better job of understanding like, hey, they're actually part of the system that is.

Bryan Koontz (53:53) Totally. It's.

Jason Corbett (53:54) the reason why we all have wildlife to enjoy.

Bryan Koontz (53:57) Yeah, I mean, think that's the key point that a lot of people overlook, especially folks that don't disagree with hunting or are really activists anti -hunting and all that, is that there is a big, I'm an engineer, there's a big control system here, right? And in that control system are many things. There's natural mortality, there's poaching, there's getting hit by cars, there's all the things that can,

Jason Corbett (54:13) Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (54:25) kill an animal or what not, habitat, you know, declination and all that. And when it comes to the hunting side of the things, that's why we have wildlife biologists that study creatures and have wildlife management units that like the whole state of Montana is not equal. There's a unit up there that's different than a unit over there. And all of that comes together in the back, like you said, this North American model, and that's like tag allocation and all of that, all of that involves the hunter as a part of the predation system.

Jason Corbett (54:44) Thank you.

Bryan Koontz (54:54) which goes into this overarching picture of conservation. And I know we've got a couple minutes, we'll wrap in a second, but I just thought it was interesting that I talked to, I also had the chance to talk to Jenny Burby. Jenny Burby is the president of the Colorado Outfitters Association. She spends a lot of time helping that association lobby in Colorado with the Wildlife Division there. And this is interestingly,

Jason Corbett (55:18) Hmm?

Bryan Koontz (55:21) One of the topics that came out of that conversation is how things are changing in Colorado and other places where individuals who are getting in leadership positions around wildlife are more and more coming at it from the let's just save the animals. And they're not really looking at hunting as a component of save the animals and studying them. So I think there's a lot to what you're bringing up. And I think that that would make for a really interesting follow on topic with you and some other folks, because I think there's.

Jason Corbett (55:36) Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (55:50) work to be done there to come together. So, but anyways, well, Jason, I, this has been an amazing conversation. I hope, I hope others from Guidefitter and you know, the guide for the community and beyond enjoy it. It's, I think it's a Testament. My, my excitement for talking to you is a Testament to just everyone that works here. Like we just love animals. Like we just love the outdoors and animals and like, yes, we love to hunt and we love all this stuff. We just like being outside and seeing all the crazy stuff that happens and.

Jason Corbett (55:57) Yeah, that's been fun, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (56:16) And you know, I don't know if I'm quite ready to repel down a thousand foot sheer cliff wall, but you know, I'll look at the photos you take, but I really appreciate you being on and taking the time to talk and please do post some of those pictures of the spotted bat. Was that what it was? Yeah. Yeah, that would be, that would be amazing. And look forward to seeing more of that. And thanks again, Jason. Jason Corbett with the Bat Conservation International. It's been an awesome talking to you. I appreciate it.

Jason Corbett (56:32) I'll make sure and get some of those posted. Yep.

Cool. Likewise, Brian, thank you so much for the invite. And yeah, people, you can, you find me on the platform. Happy to answer questions. It's, you know, it's fun talking wildlife and, and, you know, love the platform as well, Brian. You guys are doing a good job. So yeah, thanks for the invite and great talking with you.

Bryan Koontz (56:59) and we'll look forward to seeing pictures and videos of a panting bat.

Jason Corbett (57:03) I've got a video of a feeding bat that like a little nectar bat that needed to get needed to get nectar out of a tube. When you catch them when they come out of the roost the first thing they want to do after they've been sleeping for 10 hours is eat. So like you catch them you got to feed them. So yeah I've not seen one pant though.

Bryan Koontz (57:18) Yeah, sure. Awesome. All right, Jason. Hey, thanks again.

Jason Corbett (57:26) Yep, thank you.

Bryan Koontz (57:31) All right.