Attendees touch a frog during the UTA Herpetology Club’s night hike Sept. 11 at Elmer W. Oliver Nature Park in Mansfield, Texas. Frogs, toads, snakes and spiders were found during the hike.
Under a pavilion at the Elmer W. Oliver Nature Park in Mansfield, Texas, a group gathered on the muddy ground — wet from the recent rain.
Each person had their own look of anticipation as Waylon Shinn, president of the UTA Herpetology Club, walked up with a plastic bucket and a cast net.
Shinn smiled at the group before leading them toward a small pond, the first location of many for the club’s night hike.
The hike is a recurring event that gets students outdoors and educates them on the environment around them, Shinn said.
“We love teaching students how to identify plants and animals outdoors,” Shinn said.
Environmental science junior Tobi Mojtaheb said she looked forward to enjoying a night of nature and connection.
“We’re spending time with other people,” Mojtaheb said. “It’s a nice community thing.”
John Winkler, visual communication design sophomore, left, learns how to document animals from Waylon Shinn, president of the UTA Herpetology Club, during the club’s night hike Sept. 11 at Elmer W. Oliver Nature Park in Mansfield, Texas. Attendees used the iNaturalist app to document animals they found.
One of the things the club educates students on is venomous snakes in the area, Shinn said.
The most common venomous snake in Dallas-Fort Worth is the copperhead, which Shinn said students shouldn’t be scared of but should avoid touching.
Herpetology Club officer Finnly More said events like this are important because they teach people who may not regularly connect with nature why they should care about it.
“People have this inherent fear of reptiles and amphibians,” More said. “I’m just trying to show them, ‘Hey, these aren’t scary creatures. They’re animals and we’re in their environment. Let’s respect them and understand how fascinating they are.’”
Shinn’s excitement for nature was mirrored by the awed faces looking back at him as he explained plants and animals along the trail.
One way attendees could learn more about what they were seeing was through the iNaturalist app, which helps students identify plants and animals while collecting the data for scientists and conservationists.
“We need to do more to protect a lot of these areas and a lot of the species that are in these areas,” biology senior James Wilhelm said.
Apps like iNaturalist help and encourage the community to become scientists in their own way.
“To get people to understand why things are important, we have to get them out to community events, and to do that, we have to make it seem like a thing that everybody is welcome to,” Wilhelm said.
Waylon Shinn, president of the UTA Herpetology Club, holds a small fish during the club’s night hike Sept. 11 at Elmer W. Oliver Nature Park in Mansfield, Texas. The Herpetology Club focuses on the captive care, field observation and biological study of reptiles and amphibians.
The app also benefits naturalists like Wilhelm, whose research delved into information collected on iNaturalist.
“I just recently worked on a project with iNat data that helped us learn a lot about a certain species,” Wilhelm said.
Environmental science junior Adriel Castro said events like the night hike were important to encourage community science.
“A big part of why we’re losing so many natural spaces is that there’s a disconnect,” Castro said. “We spend so much time in our houses that we don’t see the nature around us.”
The hike was one of many that the Herpetology Club will host throughout the fall semester, with their next night hike being on Oct. 9, according to the club’s Instagram.
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