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incredulousTopic: Frog Blog Profiles
Here is another Frog Blog exclusive for you. Bill Yule has done a little bit of all sorts of natural activities. From his passion of mushrooms to herps, he is a great advocate of the natural world.
Top Ten Questions on the Board
Wendell's Frog Blog Online Interview
1)WFB: Name, Rank and Serial Number. Tell us a little bit about
yourself. Where are you from? Where did you go to school? Maybe a
little about your family? (Married? Siblings?) Hobbies?
BY: I am Bill Yule, "Nature Nut," better-days-prospector and Environmental Educator. I live in Connecticut on a 200 year old defunct dairy farm surrounded by money-grubbing McMansion trolls from the urban sprawl capitol of the world, Fairfield County. Actually, most of my neighbors are quite nice, forget that troll comment. Anyway this used to be rural but now it's sprawl-burbia and I'm lucky enough to have a beautiful wet meadow in the back pasture with sweetflag and cattails and eight different sedges and hordes of peepers and spotted salamanders and four different snakes and three turtles all in my back yard, though the trolls in their SUV's kill vast numbers of them every spring and so I started about 16 years ago doing an anonymous late-night public service of crossing salamanders from upland to vernal pools. Now lots of people do this and it's cool.
I went to a bunch of colleges...studied philosophy at New York University in the 60's and then I took my philosophy seriously (what was I thinking?) and so I quit school and became a wandering gypsy nature-nut which in those days they called hippies but I was never really sure what that term meant since the media just made it up so lets say I got some education by gypsy-ing up in Cape Cod and then the Florida Keys and then New England...went back to school later and got a degree in biology and then studied Environmental education at the graduate level for years and I still do that and got certified to teach ...even though I'm 57 years young....and taught school some and worked at many odd things like carpenter, bartender, landscaper, free-lance naturalist, eco-tour guide, and now I work for the Connecticut River Museum as a educator and I work on a river boat as a naturalist and I'm still kickin around swamps and stuff every chance I get...and I read and write...my wife is a social worker helping teens learn to survive...she teaches life skills to urban youth...my son is 26 and home bound with chronic Lyme Disease and he's a great powerful kid and an inspiration...that's kind of where I'm coming from...
Photos provided by Bill Yule and cannot be used without permission.
2)WFB: What sparked your interest in amphibians? What is your
favorite amphibian, and why?
BY: My interest in amphibians is a karmic debt I'm re-paying 'cause I used to shoot frogs with my bb gun as a kid and now it's payback time and so I advocate for them...vernal pool activities, amphibian monitoring volunteerism, writing about them, fighting to save habitat 'cause nothing else works as well as that...save the habitat, forget the frog, save the habitat and the frogs will return. I have to admit I'm CRAZY about Gray Tree Frogs, coolest tree climbing singing slippery animal I know of...once my friend Mike and I saved about 50 tiny little day-glo green baby gray tree frogs from the bottom of a dried up swimming pool...fed them all summer...it was the most fun and educational and just a blast watching them hop around a catch all the little bugs I netted for them every morning and Now I love em...and every time I hear one sing I try to find but of course I can't cause that's impossible (almost) but there it is, I try anyway. When I was young I spent all my free time roaming around a huge wetland overflow of the Connecticut River called the Cromwell meadows and that's where I learned about nature...and now some 40 years later my occupation is to teach people about the ecology and preservation of the Connecticut River in my job as a Naturalist...kind of a nice circle I've been through.
3)WFB: Do you keep any pets?
BY: I follow the path of my friend and neighbor Cindy by raising a little miniature vernal pool menagerie every spring ...wood frogs, spotted salamanders, dragonfly larva, water tigers, diving beetles, fairy shrimp, whatever I can catch....and then I let everybody free...free willy....oh yeah, two cats too.
4)WFB: How are you involved with amphibians and their conservation?
BY: I've done vernal pools mapping and field trips and education stuff...been an amphibian monitor for the state...now-a-days I mostly introduce kids to the local fauna.
5)WFB: How did you get involved in this?
BY: One thing leads to another....I've spent my whole life outdoors...nature is my hobby and my passion.
6)WFB: What has been the most fulfilling part of working with
amphibians for you?
BY: I love spring migration and vernal pools...I'll always be active in those...
7)WFB: What would be the best way for others to get involved as you
have?
BY: I believe strongly in local action...young people should be introduced to Inland Wetland Commissions before they get to high school...biology classes should take their students out to get muddy and wet every year to catch some frogs, net some water beetles, see what's in their backyard...I think every elementary school in the country should have an adopt-a-vernal pool policy...the kids learn the organisms, monitor the pool and then teach the adults in their community. Until our public schools start to value environmental education though you might have to send kids to summer nature camp to get them what they need to get going in the right direction.
8)WFB: How did you learn about amphibians to do what you do?
BY: I used to be a little boy...I caught frogs, snakes, turtles and brought them home...there was no internet, electronic games, i-pods or other electric distractions...I studied amphibians and ecology in college...I banded together with like minded people and went out and learned all I could...one summer we made it a quest to find all the salamanders and frogs native to Connecticut...that was at the bequest of John Himmelman who has just published an amphibian book...
9)WFB: What is the most important thing you want others to know?
BY: Some of the most interesting beautiful creatures on the planet are right in your backyard...all you have to do is go look...then work to save the habitat.
10)WFB: Do you have anything else you would like to share?
(websites, contact info, other affiliations)
BY: Leo Kenny's "Big Wicked Puddles" is a great place to visit, Yahoo vernal pool group is local, Mass and CT but it's good...go on the internet and find images of poison arrow frogs, or Harlequin toads...is there anything more spectacular"?
"For those who hunger after the earthly excrescences called mushrooms."
I would like to thank Bill for a wonderful interview and for all he has done making the world a better place. He is a very inspiring individual.
Posted by wendellsfrogblog
at 7:41 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, 24 May 2006 5:07 PM EDT
