Can endangered reptile species be saved through captive breeding? Biologist Terry Lilley began one of the first captive breeding and release programs for reptiles in the world. Today many of those species are reaching a more sustainable population in the wild. The USA’s Endangered Species Act outlined how Terry approached his work.

Well, hello, happy 2022.

This is my first episode opening up the 2022 year.

Wow.

Can you believe this is actually episode 156.

Well, thank you so much for listening to all of these amazing and exceptional, positive imprints.

Well, I'm Catherine, your host for the podcast, your positive imprint, the variety show, featuring people all over the world whose positive actions are inspiring.

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Exceptional people rise to the challenge.

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What's your PI.

have you ever thought about the harmony between animals species and how they continue to live together over thousands and even millions of years?

Terry Lilley is a renowned biologist living in Hawaii, who today studies Marine life and coral reefs all over the world.

His work is used by national geographic, especially the cinematography on sharks.

His positive imprints and work within the global community is extensive.

Today's episode features has reptile breeding center.

Terry ran an endangered species rehab and release center for reptiles.

And that work that he did is certainly a legacy of positive imprints as several reptile species are reaching sustainable populations.

As a storyteller, Terry Lilley shares his incredible past and how it moved him forward into the undersea world.

I dated for 10 years, my girlfriend, her name was Solidad.

She was graduate in biology from Mexico city.

And we started a captive breeding crocodile farm in Oaxaca, in a little town called () uh, up in the mountains, right below, Mexico city.

And I spent five, 15 years every summer, touring all around Mexico, studying and collecting rare and endangered reptiles.

And then I had that captive breeding center in San Francisco, California for rare and endangered reptiles and I captive bred them and distributed them all back into the jungle , native habitat

We kind of started all of that in early 1980s.

And we, uh, connected with zoo curators all around the world.

We have a pretty cool network of scientists.

I had over 80 zoo curators around the world, 80 different countries that I communicated with.

And I ended up still having them, uh, having the largest amount of worldwide endangered species permits, uh, than any human being on earth, 380 international endangered species permits.

And so I have all these old letters of writing people, uh, zoo curators and scientists around the world, trying to figure out how to captive breed reptiles for everybody, including writing letters to the Darwin

What motivated Terry Lilly in the direction of conserving and preserving wildlife?

Just kind of walking backwards since I was a little kid, my mom and dad said, I used to go out and catch snakes and lizards when I was three and

When it comes to nature, you're kind of born with it.

You know, maybe something you did in a past life, but it wasn't something that you particularly learned as a kid.

You were either connected to these animals or you weren't connected to them.

And so by the time I was 12 years old, I had over 500 reptiles that I was raising.

And this was, back in the sixties and the seventies.

So I went to college at San Luis Obispo.

And I graduated in biology and I did my senior project on learning to captive breed reptiles.

And by the time I was going to college, I had over 1500 different reptiles that I was raising.

And I've been all around the United States and Mexico collecting some of the rare and endangered reptiles because what was happening, and it really made me angry from a

The reptiles in the wild live underground.

They live in a hole.

They don't live around or near people as a general rule.

And so you take them out of their native environment you put them on display at a zoo, the average reptile in 1980, when I did my, uh, senior project, uh,

So every three to four months zoos around the world would buy another half million rare reptiles to put them on display and they would die.

Six months later, they would buy them again and they would die.

These are animals like Komodo dragons, Gray's monitor from Philippines.

Uh, Fiji island Iguanas.

These animals due to habitat destruction were very few left alive on earth and were headed to be going extinct, but the zoos were buying them.

And so I got really frustrated and mad at that and said, well, wait a minute, we have to be able to learn how to captive breed these predators, you know, they breed in the wild.

We can learn how to breed them in captivity.

So make a long story short

in 1980, I started a project learning how to captive breed reptiles.

But 20 years later, I'd produced over 125,000 babies in captivity, 125 species.

So I had the first ever captive breeding of and five of them were thought to be extinct at the time.

So incredibly successful programs.

So over a number of about 10, 15 years, I learned not only how to captive breed, the reptiles, but that process in captivity gave the people that were studying the reptiles in the wild, a lot of

One of the lizards had the first breeding of is this monitor lizard from Australia called the goanna.

That's what they call them in Australia.

And Steve Irwin had told me that they were almost ready to go extinct because of habitat destruction and people were eating them and no one knew how to captive breed them.

So when I learned how to captive, breed them, we found out that the lizard kept their eggs at 92 degrees for nine months.

And in the wild, they did that by laying their eggs in termite mounds, and the termites regulated the temperature of the termite mound.

So I know there's stuff we learned about this is just unbelievable.

And so the bottom line was I learned how to captive breed them, and then gave that information back to Steve.

And then they realized then if they could protect the termitemounds in the central part of Australia, they indeed, would save the species from going extinct.

We had other species like, uh, a little gecko that comes from the Solomon Islands and new Caledonia.

And they were thought to be extinct at the time.

And so I sent somebody over to, uh, uh, Solomon Islands.

And then we've got about a dozen of these geckos out of the wild.

Everyone thought they were extinct.

Some of the native tribes knew where they were.

We brought them back to my research center and we've produced 22,000 babies in captivity.

And we distributed those babies to zoos all around the world, almost every zoo right now has some on display and then we released over 5,000 babies back into the wild.

And now the species is completely thriving again, uh, on their native islands.

So it was really rewarding and learning how to captive, breed these animals.

But at the same time we were there for keeping people from taking them out of the wild, because if we had a beautiful, captive, bred reptile that was captive bred in front of people and

I just went to San Diego zoo

and some of my first captive bred, reptiles are still at the zoo and they're over 40 years old and we believe a lot of these reptiles now can live to be 60, 80, 90 years old.

So now you go all the way to current time right now, 95% of the reptiles in the nation's zoos are captive produced.

Whereas we started, there were none.

And so what that has really done is that's eliminated people from taking them out of the wild and smuggling them out of the wild because those animals, when they get on captivity die

So a really successful program and that led to the understanding and captive breeding , many, many, many, many different species of wildlife around the planet.

And it also gave us a lot of information about the nutrition.

Things that you couldn't study out in the wild and, uh, and so really fascinating program.

And was super happy that I did it.

So how did you get the funding to help pay for the housing, the food, the traveling?

Yeah.

This is really quite a, quite a story.

Later on in my career, I had some help from people like Michael Jackson.

Uh, he helped fund my research center and I had some funding from some zoos.

I raised a quarter million dollars in one day with a suit and tie on in wall street, New York stockbrokers for a captive breeding, endangered species suit for reptiles.

So I had some grants.

I had some funding that came in from big corporations, but for the first 10 years, I literally just learned how to captive breed a couple of the reptiles from California and the babies

And so I offered everywhere from the Frankfurt Zoo to San Diego, to the Moscow zoo, Tokyo's Mexico city zoo, all these zoos around the world,

I offered them captive produce reptiles that were not taken out of the wild guaranteeing that they would live in captivity.

And they were half the price of the smuggled wild reptiles.

And so within about the first 10 years from 1980 to 1990, I captive produced over a million dollars worth of rare reptiles.

And it wasn't a commercial operation.

It was a non-profit operation, but the funds that we created went back into building new research centers to learn how to captive breed, endangered species that were ready to go extinct.

Some of these reptiles, it took me over 20 years and trying before learning how to captive breed them., uh, one of them was on a national geographic show called the Gray's monitor from the Philippines.

And they thought the animal was extinct, what I produced my first 15 babies.

So it actually self perpetuated because the animals were so valuable and then they were sold at the zoos.

That gave us the money to take the other half the babies for releasing them back into the wild when we could.

And then that paid for the study and research of learning, how to captive breed, uh, reptiles like the Galapagos tortoise, and completely saved a couple of the species down in the Galapagos from going extinct.

So, uh, it was really, really pretty cool.

I did a lot of Hollywood movies too, like Raiders of the lost Ark.

Uh, I supplied a lot of the reptiles for Hollywood because I raised them in captivity and they were tame and you could deal with them and they wouldn't hurt you.

And, uh, so it became really kind of a popular deal.

And then when we had the terrorist attack that ended the whole captive breeding operation for the time being because after September 11th, we were not allowed to ship live reptiles on commercial airlines.

And so when that happened, I had my captive breeding research center that this one was 15,000 square feet.

It was the size of a football field.

We had over 3,800 breeding reptiles in the research center.

And, uh, I had 16 employees at the time and, but we couldn't ship the babies around the world anymore on the airlines.

And so we ended up having really, really high overhead, like $12,000 a month just for electrical bills.

And so I ended up winding down the whole breeding operation , but it was okay because we successfully saved the species we needed to.

So I felt like I was really, I was kind of done with it.

I did the mission that I wanted to do.

And so I sold it and that's what paid for my around the world, underwater Marine life series for schools.

And that was kind of the game plan.

So I've been around the planet to mostly countries studying reptiles and at the time diving and surfing, because that was just fun.

Got to go back around the world again now to do a underwater educational series of Marine life.

So it all turned out good.

So going back to your research center, what was the name of the center and is the name still the same or did the new change?

I'm still the same, but the new owners who bought it changed it more into a product company, a supply product company.

So I don't know what they're doing now, but it was called central coast reptile research center.

And then I had a TV show in California called reptile world USA.

And that was in part sponsored by SeaWorld at the time.

And then I helped Steve Irwin start his crocodile hunter TV show in Australia.

And so my research centers supplied a lot of the captive produced reptiles, uh, for Steve's crocodile hunter show later on in his career.

I had the first ever in 1981, national geographic special, uh, called the remarkable King snake.

And it was the first time on live TV , a snake hatch out of an egg.

That was pretty cool.

That was back in 1981.

So it was a fascinating career.

And kind of ironically, one of the things we learned about the reptiles was their sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation.

I've got literally 40 years of experience on high power lines.

Okay.

Microwaves, antennas, telecommunication.

So I have lots of experience on how that affects cold blooded animals.

And back in the 1980s, we were not studying effects of electromagnetic radiation on humans or warm blooded animals, but we were studying cold blooded animals because the zoos that were built in areas that had

So they would get captive bred reptiles from me.

And those reptiles were dying.

Whereas the captive bred reptiles that were sent to all the other zoos on earth, were thriving and we couldn't figure out why.

And then, so we finally did a study where Icaptive produced 50 to 80 bearded dragons.

They're really quite popular now in the pet trade.

And so we took these baby bearded dragons and we raised 30 of them at my research center.

We raised 30 of them at a zoo, which were all out of the same bunch of eighties, 30 of them at the zoo that had high power lines above- all 30 of those died.

And so we started doing very intense studies on reptiles because they're so closely related to the earth.

They live on the earth they're from the earth reptiles eat rocks and minerals that they assimilate to be able to grow.

Reptiles, have to have sunshine, ultraviolet light to grow.

So reptiles have been around for 250 million years.

So reptiles are kind of like mother earth.

They have all of the parts of the earth that the earth has to give to them.

And so electromagnetic radiation makes a frequency that is bad for cold-blooded animals and it interrupts their uptake of trace elements and minerals.

And then the animals die basically because of lack of nutrition.

When you were doing your research and your captive breeding, did you have to have any exotic permits at that time?

Another question you could answer in a very cu t chase, way.

Is Terry, how many times have you been arrested?

That answers that question.

Okay.

I actually was a part of in 1972, the initial writing of the U S Endangered species act.

Endangered species act is the law in my eyes that has saved wildlife on earth.

It is the most precious law and most beautiful law.

We call it the People's Law..

Wasn't written on behalf of the government.

It was written on behalf of the people of the United States of America, to be able to protect the habitat of the animals that were becoming rare.

A fellow named Craig Potter who's kind of my protege and teacher.

He was the attorney that wrote the law for the EPA in 1972.

And then it was ratified in 1974, by Congress.

So what happened is in the endangered species act, we are protecting habitat of endangered and rare species, which was really necessary at the time, but there was no captive breeding laws

So it really wasn't written into the law.

So when I started captive breeding reptiles it through a real loophole for the fish and wildlife service, because now I'm not taking them out of the wild I'm captive producing existing animals.

I'm distributing those animals so people don't take them out of the wild.

So everything I was doing was good and needed, but technically it was in violation of the Endangered Species Act, the act that I promoted and was part of.

And I even had a school in California, on on teaching Endangered Species Act.

And some of my clients were by the way, big time attorneys, Caltrans, PGand E, and a Monsanto, the U S military.

These were some of my clients I was teaching about the endangered species act.

So what happened is I got in a conflict for a few years with Fish and Wildlife

over the captive breeding of endangered reptiles.

And so I won't go through it all.

It was quite a mess for a few years of dealing with these government officials to get them to change the law.

But finally, through a court case, I got the endangered species act partially rewritten.

And now in the law, there's a captive bred wildlife clause.

So if you're captive breeding endangered wildlife, it's now encouraged in the law to distribute those animals, to zoos and research centers and universities worldwide, to keep people from taking them out of the wild.

So it was a long haul, but I'm very proud to say because of some of the court work that I did and working with Craig Potter and other attorneys showing

And so now there are certain set of rules that you need to follow if you're going to captive, breed an endangered species and you get a captive bred wildlife permit, which takes care of all that.

But back in the 1980s, we had to go through a lot of hassles.

I mean, being arrested at airports and all kinds of crazy things happen because at the time, technically by the wording, the law I was violating the very law I was trying to support, but that all got changed around.

So you mentioned with the endangered species act, which I very much like.

Question,.

What about getting them back into the wild?

, I know that some zoos, when they breed, they do rerelease animals back into the wild.

Is that part of the clause or is that just a

practice?

Yeah, I mean, that's a yes and no question, and that depends on each individual species.

So I'll give you some examples, uh, on the Galapagos islands, they recently found on Fernandina island, one remaining Galapagos, tortoise of one of the species there, that they thought to be extinct.

They said they only have like one animal this point in time.

And hopefully through a tracking of satellites, we're going to find a few more of them.

And then you take in the Galapagos islands, uh, Lonesome George, you know, big for, for it is, it was one of the last ones, his species that died.

And then you take a very successful program.

Uh, one of the Galapagos island tortoises is called Diego is he was from San Diego zoo

and Diego is captive produced I think now 800 babies.

And so I was in the Galapagos was helping out with the raising of those babies to be released into the wild.

So sometimes the only way you're going to save these species is to captive breed them.

And hopefully you can utilize the ones that are already in captivity.

We took very few animals out of the wild.

but you also run the risk if you're reintroducing an animal in the wild, you're going to reintroduce bacteria and viruses from captivity that could kill the wild populations.

But with most of the reptiles we have found, if you simply give mother nature a break, she will take care of her own problems and rebuild her own population of animals.

At the same time, the captive breeding, we can understand the animals, reproductive ability and find out why it wasn't breeding in the wild so we can take care of the habitat problems.

So you really have to look at each individual species and make that decision.

Uh, on whether or not you want to rerelease them.

The international law for the trade of endangered species and that's the international law Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species that's called CITES..

So CITES is signed on by 102 different countries.

That's an international law,

The endangered species act is United States.

So the endangered species act says.

You can not alter, harm, you cannot change the feeding, breeding, behavior, and nesting or migration of any animal that's listed on the, Endangered Species Act..

And then we also have international laws, Called the Lacey Act about shipping animals

and then we have the migratory bird act uh, that's been around since 1890.

So we have a whole series of set of laws.

What is misunderstood most of the time is the laws weren't written to protect endangered species.

We're using it a lot here in Hawaii right now to protect our sea turtles from some of the abuse of the tourist industry.

The law was written to protect the habitat of endangered species.

And so if anything affects the habitat of endangered species, technically that action can not take place, whether it's a pipeline across Northern Idaho or Northern North Dakota, okay.

Or anywhere in the United States, that if there's any action- pipelines, pollution, construction, no matter what it may be, that may interfere with a habitat

of a listed endangered species then you have to have a very detailed long-term study done called the habitat conservation plan to see if that project

The idea is to have the endangered species to become plentiful again, because their habitats are protected then to take them off of the endangered species list.

See the whole idea like the bald Eagle for instance, the whole idea is to number one, protect the habitat because these animals are getting rare.

Number two then is to have those animals all on their own, in the wild, repopulate where you hopefully don't have to reintroduce, but you may, but repopulate

and then once habitats protect the animals have repopulated, then you remove it from the Endangered Species Act.

So that's the way the law's functionally are supposed to work.

And the beauty aboutthat law the endangered species act is that it's run by the people of the United States of America, not the government.

Endangered species are owned by the people in the United States.

They're not owned by the government.

They're not owned by an oil company.

They're not owned by the White House.

They're not owned by Congress.

They're not owned by fish and wildlife or NOAA.

They're owned by you and I.

And the people are the one in the United States in charge of protecting the habitat of endangered species and the people can sue and take into court

anybody, including the president of the United States, if they're harming the habitat of endangered species.

And so the people have the power in the United States, I've actually sued and gone to court.

I think I've been in court 60 times under the endangered species act.

I won a case against the U S attorney general in California.

I've won cases against the U S military all by myself, one individual person, because the endangered species act is made to have any individual person

And it's an incredibly powerful law and really good for wildlife and really good for the public

if they learn how to use it.

There's two different scenarios.

One is the listing and delisting of endangered species.

That's a different process and I'm not a, expert at that.

Okay.

Because that is a very distinct process under a given set of laws.

And it's usually best dealt with by environmental attorneys, endangered species attorneys.

When an animal is listed, the protecting of that animal in the wild, that's where I come into play.

I've worked with these laws since the very first ones that were ever written.

I worked with the animals and actually in the wild and how these laws actually take place.

Now, the people you and I.

I actually just, for instance, threaten the us military under the endangered species act in 2015 in Kaua'i.

And said that their Naval operations, their submarine activity are ruining the habitat of, our endangered monk seals and green sea turtles.

And I had proof to show that.

I filed with the U S military intent to Sue under the endangered species act to stop the military from ruining the habitat in Kaua'i of the endangered species.

The military turned around and said they were going to move their entire operation 30 miles off the north shore of Kaua'i, . I just love to have people read about the endangered species act.

It's very empowering.

I didn't have to prove it.

I only showed enough scientific in physical data, videos and pictures that electromagnetic weapon has the likelihood to harm the monk seal,

When there's only a few of them left.

And Any citizen can file a complaint in federal court to protect endangered wildlife.

The endangered species act also says the willful omission of not employing endangered species act is a criminal felon.

They, what that means is that Noah and the U S fish and wildlife service and the EPA, if they know of a violation of the endangered species act and they don't act upon it, they can be held in criminal contempt.

They can be held responsible personally, under criminal law.

This is heavy.

That is good to know.

Absolutely good to know.

Yes.

Uh, thank you so much for sharing that absolute wonderful explanation of the endangered species act.

I was not aware of all of those parts to it.

And I am glad to have that information

and so my main focus has shifted a little bit and the first part in my life, I really wanted to study nature to see how it works, because if I don't,

You know?

I mean, I I'm, I have a curious mind, I want to know how the heart works, how the lungs work, , how all parts of the body work, not just my little cell, my little part of my little part of the body.

And so I lived with animals all around the world, reptiles sharks, fish, birds, and Hawks Falcons, and studied them to see how they actually connected with each other and nature.

And then I did a lot of captive reproduction and projects biologically oriented to find out how they internally tick.

. I needed to know, how that reptile in the wild interconnected with the bigger their nature is.

They're all highly interconnected.

I did, mineral and rock studies to find out how zinc and magnesium and calcium and all of that effect, sperm counts on reptiles.

So how do animals inter relate and share energies with the actual physical earth.

It's all very fascinating.

So my main focus right now is trying to document as much of this planet as I can.

There's lots of people out there documenting lions and tigers, zebras, elephants, and bald eagles and so forth and so on.

So I really choose because I have a connection there is to document worldwide, the most amount of the Marine life on earth that I possibly can.

So before we get to the last segment, which is your inspiring words, let me remind listeners where they can find you on social media.

YouTube Underwater2web, the website is underwater2web.

And of course Google T E R R Y L I L L E Y.

You might get his prison record?

Uh,

no, I even did that the other day, just to find out.

Terry Lilley, this has been so enjoyable, so educational and, I'm anxious to hear your last inspiring words.

We have to reconnect with nature.

We're not talking about changing the entire human race here.

Spend 10 to 15% out in nature, enjoying all of the beautiful things that are on this incredible planet and all around you.

You'd actually make a huge impact in the harmony of this

entireplanet.

Yeah, and I, I, anything I could ask for, and that's what I recommend.

Well, I know that that is very important to you because that is something that you shared on the last episode.

Terry Lilley, thank you so much for sharing your positive imprints.

On this podcast, I meet so many people around the world and each of them changes me in a different way.

And you certainly have made me much more cognizant of my own actions with regard to our worldwide ecosystem.

So thank you so much for that change for me in the inspiration, Terry Lilley.

Thank

you.

Well, we'll stay in touch obviously, so, it's fun doing these programs.

You're more than welcome and the animals will thank you very much.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

Aloha, your positive imprint.