Probable Destinies: The organic evolution of HonduHerp, a conservation organization

Tasman Ezra talks about HonduHerp, the conservation organization he founded with fellow reptiles and amphibian lovers.

Tasman Ezra’s path to zoology was destined from birth when his reptile-enthusiast parents put newborn Ezra in the “snake room” where they kept their 67 pet king snakes. He credits reading WashU Professor Jonathan Losos’ book Improbable Destinies when he was a teenager as the event that sealed his fate, leading him to his current research interest in herpetology. Ezra is a first year PhD student at WashU and intends to join the Losos Lab to complete his thesis. He founded the conservation organization HonduHerp with like-minded friends and colleagues in 2023.

“I grew up in South Florida on the edge of the Everglades, a place full of both wild and introduced exotic reptile and amphibian species. I spent my childhood chasing alligators, crocodiles, and snakes in the swamps, along with invasive species like Burmese pythons. My back yard had four species of anole lizards, the ones that Jonathan Losos studies. I had all kinds of ideas about what I wanted to be when I was older, but nobody is surprised that I am an evolutionary biologist,” Ezra laughed.

He completed his undergraduate degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences with a concentration in Paleontology and Geobiology at Yale University. He was admitted to the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology PhD program at WashU, but deferred his enrollment to complete a master's degree in science education at Harvard University. He always knew he wanted to pursue both biological research and teaching as symbiotic aspects to his career in biology.

During his undergrad time at Yale, Ezra had been taking Carlos Mercado, a friend from high school, on his fieldwork trips to Maine where they observed salamanders. Mercado became interested in reptiles and amphibians and asked Ezra to accompany him on a trip to visit family in Honduras. Mercado’s brother, a local farmer, was involved with the Honduran Ministry of Environment and a local NGO (non-government organization) working on breeding deer for reintroduction in the flagship national park, Parque Nacional Celaque. Mercado’s brother organized a herpetological expedition in the park, focusing on the jade palm pit viper (Bothriechis thalassinus), which Ezra particularly wanted to photograph. Through this experience, Ezra met over a dozen herpetologists and maintained relationships with them, leading to numerous collaborations.

The Honduran herpetologists repeatedly invited Ezra to accompany them on Forest Service expeditions to explore new regions. Ezra noticed that some sites they revisited had been clear-cut for farming coffee and cattle. Concerned, he asked the locals to let him know if they heard about plans for clear-cutting new areas to see if he could find a way to help. Three months later, he was notified of plans to clear-cut a mountaintop. The owner planned to sell the land for timber and coffee farming to pay off debt.

“It sounded like the only thing we could do to protect this mountain top from getting clear-cut was for us to match the offer and buy it ourselves. We had to come up with $50,000. As a grad student, that’s a lot of money for me, but it seemed like an achievable amount of money to source. I told my colleague Alex Alvarado, If you go there tonight and find one of these vipers, I will find a way to make this happen. Alvarado found three vipers in one night, within a few minutes of searching! I reached out to a bunch of my grad student buddies, also passionate about snakes, and everybody got in touch with their families. Within our networks, we were able to raise the money. That was the seed of HonduHerp,” Ezra explained.

HonduHerp, is dedicated to conserving reptiles, amphibians, and their habitats in Honduras. The organization executes that mission three ways: land protection, community engagement, and scientific research. They have a network of three reserves in southwestern Honduras so far.

Community engagement

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Bothriechis thalassinus

HonduHerp sends experts to primary schools to help young children understand the importance of conserving biodiversity, along with eroding fear of snakes and reptiles, which is common in communities across the globe. They also talk with older students and farmers about the differences between venomous and non-venomous snakes. They do identification training, and general venomous snake avoidance training.

“Unfortunately, people tend to assume every snake species is venomous or confuse harmless species with venomous ones. People are often bitten by venomous snakes because they're trying to kill them, when the best thing they can do is avoid them altogether. We communicate this and educate people on snake characteristics, which also executes our mission of conserving these reptiles and amphibians. There are local myths about salamanders being venomous, when in reality all salamanders are harmless. We are combating cultural stigma around reptiles and amphibians, supplementing the locals’ lived experience in these environments that they've grown up in with scientific knowledge,” Ezra said.

Scientific Research

HonduHerp has ongoing reptile and amphibian monitoring across the cloud forests of Western Honduras, especially focusing on endangered species. A lot of the basic science is poorly understood in these regions regarding reptile/amphibian species because they're so poorly sampled. Understanding the general distribution of these endangered species and making general natural history observations is the first step in research. This includes figuring out what they are eating, their habitat associations, the elevations they reside in, and more—basic, general things that need to be understood before asking more complicated ecological and evolutionary questions, and confidently making management decisions about their conservation. More recently, the group has begun collecting venom samples and investigating patterns in snakebite incidence across western Honduras.

Organic evolution

HonduHerp consists of a group of collaborators from the United States and Honduras who are all passionate about conservation. Not everybody is an academic. Some are people in the communities who became invested after going out to look for snakes with Ezra. Until 2025, the people involved were government employees or volunteered their time, but the organization raised funds to employ their first two staff members earlier this year.

One person, Francisco Cueva, a campesino (peasant farmer) who lives at the base of the reserve, now has his dream job as a full-time ranger. Many locals did not attend school past the age of 10 or 12. Though he has no formal biological education, he has intimate knowledge of the landscape from hunting. Ezra and other scientists have been training Francisco in reptile and amphibian identification, and general ecology, blending his traditional knowledge base with a formalized scientific knowledge base.

They’ve also hired a regional community coordinator to continue outreach work with schools, farmers, and local governments. The coordinator will act as a liaison between these communities and the national government. Luckily, the current administration is deeply invested in land protection and supportive of HonduHerp’s mission and activities.

“The key to our success is that all of the right people happened to come together organically, bringing different talents, capabilities, and resources to the table. Officials in high-ranking government positions, local hunters and farmers, educators, hobbyists, scientists, all have a common goal uniting them—habitat conservation. I've worked on conservation in the United States, and there's a lot more doom and gloom around it. Down in Honduras, you can feel the enthusiasm, collaboration, and support for this work. The focus is more on the success stories and positive impact that people can have at all levels,” Ezra beamed.

The Honduran Ministry of Environment hosted a conference in September about conservation and coexistence in the biological corridors of Honduras. A few HonduHerp group members gave talks, and the organization was honored with a recognition of appreciation. They’re working with the national government right now on establishing a management plan for protected areas in the region.

Funding and long-term goals

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Bolitoglossa

All of the funding so far has been public funding, mostly from the US, but some donors in Honduras as well. Now that they are officially a tax-exempt organization in the US, they are working on grant applications. The Honduran government has been funding collaborative ventures, helping to coordinate expeditions, paying costs, and waiving fees.

“When you have a national park in the US, there is a general expectation that there is enough funding and enough of a workforce to enforce the protection of that land. That is not necessarily the case in Honduras. Some of the most rampant rates of deforestation are actually in these national parks. Having more private, small-scale reserves within communities that are educated and invested in how to protect the habitat is key to the prevention of deforestation there.”

“We also want to be conscious of how it looks (or how it might actually be) in terms of a colonialist framework—Americans coming down, purchasing land, and making it a protected area that's closed off to the local people. We are trying to navigate that as honestly and deftly as possible. It's tough to place the burden of conservation on small farming communities in the hills of Honduras. They are cutting down the forest because they want to plant more coffee so that they can have a little more money. Helping locals find other sources of income is one way to help the situation. Educating on sustainable coffee farming practices without deforestation is another part of the solution. These are the other education pieces,” Ezra explained.

Part of the community engagement lens is trying to stimulate the economy in more sustainable ways. Traditionally, that path often defaults to eco-tourism. Bringing in visitors and tourist dollars to the local economy through paying guides, cleaning staff, cooks, etc. can be part of the solution. But lessons from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on tropical tourist destinations in 2020 caution against putting all eggs in one basket. As soon as borders were closed to travel, deforestation rates increased because there weren’t enough sources of income outside of ecotourism.

There's also the lack of infrastructure in many parts of Honduras to support heavy tourist traffic, plus the waste that comes with having a large tourism economy. Not to mention, transmission of biological and wildlife pathogens is often a result of human movement. Nearly a third of amphibians are threatened by chytrid fungi, which was likely spread in part by recreational tourism.

Coffee: time to wake up and make a difference

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Duellmanoyhyla soralia

Coffee is the number one export of Honduras. The coffee plant loves the same cloud forest elevations as the bulk of unique amphibian and reptile species there. A critical component to conservation in Honduras is working with farmers to educate them on solutions to getting more “bang for your bean” without the need to clear-cut for coffee farming.

“There's tons of coffee being produced everywhere, and people are willing to pay more for higher quality coffee, accompanied by more sustainable practices. You can have a smaller footprint, fewer plants, and invest more in each plant—growing them organically in ways that are synergistic with conservation goals, and you can actually get more coffee for your beans. We have some farmers who are already on that path, and we're trying to elevate them as models for other farmers in the country,” Ezra explained.

Coffee is one of the most universal beverages in the world. When you brew your morning coffee, do you think about where it comes from, or how it may have supplanted habitat for endemic herp species? You can make a difference by buying more sustainable coffee at home. HonduHerp recently began a partnership with a coffee roasting business in Charleston, South Carolina. They have an e-commerce site called Cold Blooded Caffeine, started by a reptile enthusiast. When you purchase this coffee online, HonduHerp receives a percentage of every bag sold. There is also a St. Louis-based regenerative Honduran coffee company called Luna Maki Coffee. They have a small-scale regenerative coffee farm near Comayagua, Honduras. Consumers making informed choices can help stop deforestation.

Learn more about HonduHerp here and follow them for updates here.