Field ethics
Herping has a problem, and anyone who has spent time in this world knows it: the line between photographing animals and damaging the places they live gets crossed casually and often. These are the rules on my trips. They are not negotiable, and if they are not what you are looking for, we are not a good fit.
Animals stay where they are
Almost everything we find can be photographed exactly where it sits, and that is the default. I handle an animal when there is a reason to: an identification that cannot be made otherwise, a snake on a road that will be killed by the next car, or a research protocol I am working under. Venomous species I handle myself, with the right tools and only when it is warranted. You do not handle them, and nothing is picked up for a photograph.
Nothing is collected
No animals leave the forest, alive or dead, for any reason.
Microhabitat is left as we found it
No bark stripped from trunks, no logs left overturned, no rocks displaced and abandoned, no leaf litter raked out. Anything we lift goes back exactly as it was, with the animal released on the same side it came from.
No baiting, no playback abuse, no staging
We do not move animals to prettier perches, chill them to slow them down, or arrange them on substrate they were not on. A photograph of an animal where it actually was is worth more than a staged one, and it is the only kind I will help you take.
Lights are used carefully
Low power for approach, full power only briefly, and never sustained on an animal’s eyes. Amphibian skin and nocturnal eyes are not built for a three-thousand-lumen beam held for five minutes.
Hygiene between sites
Boots and gear disinfected when moving between drainages and between regions. Chytrid fungus and Ophidiomyces travel on footwear, and the second of those is what my undergraduate research was about. I am not willing to be a vector.
Records are shared
Locality data from our trips goes to the relevant databases and, where useful, to researchers working on those species. Precise localities for species vulnerable to collectors stay out of public posts.
Permissions are real
We work in reserves and on private land where night access has been agreed in advance. No fence-hopping, no working protected areas after hours without authorisation.
Tell me what you want to find
A shortlist of ten species is more useful to me than “snakes”. Planning costs nothing, and the more specific you are, the more useful my first reply will be.