What are some "secret hazards" naturalists should know about your area?

Here in Georgia the worst offender is definitely poison ivy. I learned the hard way multiple times that it can be anywhere and if you’re incredibly sensitive to it like myself it can deliver a solid month or more’s worth of agony.

The worst time was when the urushiol got into open wounds I sustained from crashing through brush, so apart from the unbearable itching the scabs swelled up, turned orange, and leaked pus for a week.

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Coming from Germany, I was clueless about poison ivy at first and apparently had no reaction to it the first time I touched it. The second time my body was sensitized and did react in a big way - put me in the emergency room with a systemic reaction, eyes nearly swollen shut, and in need of steroid shots. Learned that lesson the hard way! It’s certainly something I watch out for now, along with the tell-tale holes of ground-nesting wasps hiding under or along less frequented trails in late summer.

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Honestly, on the other side of the coin, I think people freak out about Mutilids way too much too. Painful sting? Yes, but they will NOT go out of their way to actually use that sting unless you step on em barefoot or like, grab em barehanded and freak them out, they’re very passive little things and they rely so much more on just running away and having one of the more insanely tough insect exoskeletons (not ironclad beetle levels of bad, but still enough to dent pins and get chewed by lizards without a scratch)
As more of an aside too Mutilids have hilariously not-toxic venom, I think the ld50 value for D. klugii is somewhere around 70 mg/kg, as opposed to more like, 3 mg/kg for honeybees. Gonna take an unreasonable amount of cow killers to kill a cow haha

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It is above 40C for much of the year where I live, and despite the low population, every other year, someone dies of heat exhaustion in the sheer remoteness of the place. One young man was found dead after being reported missing by his employer. He’d come up from Perth and gotten his motorcycle bogged in dirt, and lost consciousness while trying to free it…
…he had a tent and three days of food and water on it. Just simply fainted and never woke up again.

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Oddly, I don’t think I’ve ever had it, and I’ve spent a significant part of my life roaming through bush in shorts. No clue why. One of my sons reacts strongly to it, so I understand it’s nastiness.

Other than people it’s pretty safe, there’re close to none drug creating-related danger, but a serial killer, someone drunk or if you flash expensive things in a wrong place, those instances can be dangerous, but for the most part even in really poor places you’ll be alright. If you go in actual wild forest you should be ready for occasional big mammals, it’s hard to meet one, but you likely don’t want to see a bear close to you.
Then I’d say rabies, it’s found quite often and people die, so don’t touch mammals, even hedgehogs if you don’t wanna get shots immediately or to say goodbye to this world.
Ticks have some nasty things on them, like Tick-borne encephalitis which you can get vaccinated from and Lyme desease that you can’t do anything to avoid, so in spring/early summer check clothes and all the body each 30 mins, better if you’re not alone.
There’re not many dangerous plants, but even if you find Daphne mezereum or Aconitum attractive it’s better avoid hugging and kissing them. Heracleum sosnowskyi is not a thing to touch, make pipes or crowns from (saw all in my experience), unless you want long-lasting burns.

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I would so love to visit Oman someday. We’re still on pandemic self-lockdown, but maybe one day…

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My brother made the mistake of making a whistle out of our native Heracleum when we were kids. His lip and hand were basically single giant blisters for weeks, it was awful!

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Oh man, making a pipe out of Heracleum sounds like a bad time, and quite possibly something that might kill you if you got enough of the toxic compounds in your lungs. I don’t think we have that particular species around where I live, but hogweeds in general are no joke.

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This incident left half-circle burn on the upper lip, not too serious, it wasn’t as bad as when my relative fell from a bike right into the plant in the middle of the summer day and didn’t know what it was, he had a burn over most of his leg. The worst part is that it was a kid with a pipe and I told her grandparent that this is not the plant they think it is, but they didn’t care and there was nothing I could do. Our native species is pretty safe compared to others, but there was a campaign (failed) to use sosnowskyi to feed cows and now it’s #1 pest.

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This is really one of the most important ones. With climate change comes unusual weather extremes, and a lot of areas that are usually hot and arid have had some bouts of hot and humid. You can so easily succumb to heat stroke thinking “85 isn’t that hot” when you’re only used to <40% humidity. Shade, wind, and water can only do so much.

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Hyperventilation can be a problem at high altitudes. I experienced it only once, on a hike to or from the top of Mt. Whitney, when we were crossing a huge snowfield at a scary incline. Suddenly I was unable to breathe at all and in a panic. Luckily one of my companions whipped out a brown paper bag and told me to breathe into it, and that worked right away. I’m not sure how that would have played out without the bag.

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Agreed; I’m not saying they’re dangerous, just something naturalists should be aware of. I know if I was unfamiliar with them, I would be the first to scoop up a harmless-looking adult female and get a full dose from a weird, long modified ovipositor. I was just trying to give an example to keep others from ending up in similar situations, not fear-mongering or sensationalizing. I hang out with too many of the little guys to throw them under the bus like that. Thanks for sharing!

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I discovered the hard way that I start getting altitude sickness at the lofty elevation of 7,000 feet! I start feeling dizzy and faint and nauseous.

Good thing there’s plenty of good stuff to see at sea level.

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This year I was in “real” mountains for the first time, flying from the plaine to 1,500m and the next day driving to 2,200m and having to go up to around 2,700m in less than 2km totally unexpected, that was the hardest day of my life physically, never enough air, breathing like a dog and have to sit like every ten metres cause legs don’t get enough oxygen and it felt like I ran marathon before that from the moment I got out of the car, wild terrain, no walking sticks and 4kg camera really added to the experience of 4,5 hours of going up.

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First thing you should know about my area, there are very low naturalist here like catergory near extinct, only 1 or 2 naturalist are left here, as they are mostly equipped with cameras and binoculars and all, so this behaviour is considered weird here so u can easily caught here by police, so before putting out your camera you should see the area around yourself, if there many people there its best to put your camera in bag, or just see if there are no women or children are around you because no other will be a cause of harm for you(I am not saying that women is this or women is that, I am just saying is that crowd think that u click photos of women and do weird stuff, so to avoid suspicion) and also don’t chase any wild species wildly here, because if it is a residential area it is not worth chasing and also don’t try to click photos of dogs, because they don’t care who you are if they found you weird they will bite you and they are not worth messing with because they are in large number here so they are not worth messing. So places for nature are limited here that are safe for naturalist like me
like wild life sanctuaries and national parks are one of them, and also I do birding from my terrace which is safe too. But I am trying to expand my area of observing by travelling more and I try to talk to people about what I am doing hopefully I succede :)

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Focusing only on where I’m currently working…

Going off trail is slow. A while back a 1.5km survey took us 5 hours to complete even using a known route and not stopping often. Even open, well maintained trails are slow as the landscape is like someone dropped a bag of Lego and someone else turned the vertical exaggeration up several notches.

The landscape is heavily weathered tropical karst (limestone in this case), so the exposed rocks are wickedly sharp and where they are not they’re slippery with algae, and there are deep sinkholes with limestone spikes in them scattered around. The tops of the ubiquitous cliffs are sometimes crowned with multi-ton caps of stone that look like Sauron’s crown and are loose to the touch. One of my staff was navigating around one that was probably in the 10 ton range and the entire thing pivoted under his hand as he passed by.

It’s hot and humid during the summer, so heat exhaustion is a real concern, and there is rarely any surface fresh water, so you have to bring all water you might use with you since filtering found water is generally not an option.

To get to any moderately distant place you need to use a boat as there aren’t roads to trails to get to many of them, and even where there is a trail it’s slow going.

There aren’t many dangerous plants, unlike some other areas, but some do have wickedly large and sharp thorns. However, we do have a number of extremely venomous snakes. Those are generally not much of a danger though.

There is a mild risk of violence from poachers, although that depends on the specific situation. They’re usually more likely to try to evade you.

Many areas are off limits to human activity other than by the rangers and my team, or a few specially invited guests who have proper government permissions.

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Based on my past 2 years of exploring wildlife around the area here. I’d say there are a few things that require attention but nothing too dangerous.

For environment-related risks, it’d be the occasional hill fires during the dry season, flash floods & landslides during the rainy seasons.

For wildlife-related risks, as long as you know what you are facing issues rarely arise. Monkeys in certain locations are definitely a nuisance and would actively snatch your belongings so do pay attention to that. While there are quite few snake species that have lethal venom as long as you keep your distance and don’t corner them they are basically harmless (deaths from snakes haven’t occurred in decades). Definitely do not forage here if u don’t have extensive knowledge of plants/fungi (especially fungi are very much understudied here) the amount of species that kill u/lead to serious medical complications are pretty high. Stories of idiots of picking stuff in the countryside, only to end up in the hospital later do appear occasionally on local new outlets.

For people-related risks, since the population density here is high you do end up trespassing into private land quite frequently even in the countryside. For the more welcoming villagers they won’t really care what you are doing as long as you don’t bother with their lifestyles. For the more wary ones you’d get chased out by angry villagers, or they may scare you away by releasing and sending out their dogs (and I must say some are quite aggressive…). Worst case scenario you get the cops called up on you, luckily there are no issues with firearms here.

While poaching activities are quite prevalent they are usually done by trapping, so you just need to keep an eye out on the trail and smash’em up with a nearby rock or sth similar when you encounter one then you’ll be good to go. There was also this experience of escaping from suspected illegal immigrants but those are quite rare, basically a non-existent risk.

I guess that’s it :thinking:

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Oregon coast: Logs at the beach. They are usually so firmly stuck two or three people can’t move them – but the sea can. The sea does. Every year somebody dies because they were on or near a log when a wave came in. Often not a big wave either, just enough to float the log a little bit.

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