U.S.

Raising Frogs for Freedom, Prison
Project Opens Doors

Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times

Taylor Davis, left, and Carri LeRoy counted frogs to be released near the Cedar Creek prison inLittlerock, Wash.
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: September 27, 2012
LITTLEROCK, Wash. — The birdman of Alcatraz became famous. But the frogmen ofCedar Creek are still anonymous beyond the tiny cult world of amphibian science.
For now, they say.
Mat Henson, 25, serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence for robbery and assault,
and his research partner, Taylor Davis, 29, who landed in the Cedar Creek

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Corrections Center here in central Washington for stealing cars, raised about 250
Oregon spotted frogs in the prison yard this summer.

Working with biologists, Mr. Henson is now helping write a scientific curriculum forother frog-raisers, in prison or out. A previous inmate in the program, released someyears ago, is finishing his Ph.D. in molecular biology.
When asked about his plans after he is released from prison in 2014, Mr. Henson
paused only a moment. “Bioengineering,” he said.

The state program that connected the dots — or rather the felons and the frogs — iscalled Sustainability in Prisons. Nationally, it is unique in enlisting inmates to help
rescue imperiled species like the Oregon spotted frog, which is threatened acrossmuch of its range. Who really gets saved, though, is an open question.

“A prison, when you stop to think about it, is a place that should be able tocontribute beyond just locking people up,” said Dan Pacholke, the Washington State
director of prisons, who helped found the project in 2004 when he wassuperintendent at Cedar Creek, a minimum-security 500-bed prison. He still jointly
directs the project from his office in the capital, Olympia.
The program’s broader goal of bringing nature and sustainable practices to prisons
is echoed across the nation as states seek ways to run prisons more cost-effectively.

Utilitarian practicality led Wisconsin in 2008 to begin having inmates grow much of
their own food. And federal energy rules are pushing the goal of zero-net energy use
in federal prisons by 2030.

Indiana and Massachusetts have become aggressive in reducing energy and water
consumption and waste in their prisons, and tough renewable energy mandates in
California are pushing alternative generation and conservation at prisons there, said
Paul Sheldon, a senior adviser at Natural Capitalism Solutions, a Colorado-based
nonprofit that works with government agencies and companies on sustainability
issues.
Mr. Pacholke can rattle off statistics. The amount of waste generated per offender in
Washington State has fallen from 2.9 pounds a day in 2004 to 1.5 last year throughinmate-operated recycling and composting.
Because of practices like collecting rainwater, use of potable water has dropped by
100 million gallons a year even as inmate populations have increased.

But Washington State’s overlay of science — offenders in four state prisons work on
projects involving the spotted frogs (Rana pretiosa), wild prairie grasses andbutterflies — is also addressing a budget gap in habitat restoration and ecology.

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Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times

Signs hang outside the tanks where Oregon spotted frogs, a threatened species, are raised at theCedar Creek prison.

Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times

Inmates there tended a garden, one way states are seeking to run prisons more cost-effectively.

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The New York Times

Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times

Oregon spotted frogs at the Cedar Creek prison.
The prisoners, who trained with a state biologist but also learned from one another,must compete to enter the program and maintain a record of perfect behavior tostay in it. They are paid 42 cents an hour, standard prison wages, for 10-hour
workdays that involve sometimes tedious tasks like monitoring the frogs’ watertemperature or harvesting the hundreds of crickets grown for frog food —something that even an oppressed graduate student might avoid at real wages.

But there may be some intangible benefits for inmates who are being exposed to thescientific process, many of them for the first time, said Carri LeRoy, a professor ofecology at Evergreen State College in Olympia, and co-director of the Sustainability
in Prisons project.

Science, she said, is about procedural order, point A to point B, with every stepmeasured and marked for others to check and follow. And when the focus of thatwork is a creature that undergoes a profound metamorphosis from egg to tadpole toadult, the lesson is also one about the possibilities of change. In a prison, Professor
LeRoy said, that is a big deal.
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The New York Times“This image of transformation, I think, allows them maybe to understand their own
transformation,” Professor LeRoy said.

This week at Cedar Creek the day finally arrived, anticipated by inmates andscientists alike, for the frogs to leave their tanks and go off into the wild, six months
after hatching.
Their new home is Muck Creek, about 90 minutes away in an area of the Joint Base
Lewis-McChord military compound near Olympia. Scientists and volunteers inwaders and rolled-up jeans carried the boxes to the water’s edge. Tree frogs, one offive or so frog species on the base, chirruped from the sidelines.
“Get out of here, you’re free!” said Andrea Martin, a graduate student at Evergreen
State College who has been working with the inmates at Cedar Creek. She held up
one of the frogs in a swampside goodbye, then carefully opened her hand.
The frog leapt and was gone.

Yet it was a moment that Mr. Henson and Mr. Taylor could not witness. Militaryrules barred the inmates from participating in an event on Department of Defense
property.
Both men said they understood. Rules define prison life, they said.

The frog shed is only a few yards from the chain-link and razor-wire prison
enclosure. As the frogs were netted, counted, placed in plastic bins and carried out
to an S.U.V. for transport, Mr. Henson said he would picture his slimy charges finallyswimming free.
“It’s a good feeling to know they’re going to be released,” he said as one furtive frog,
hiding motionless in a dark corner of the tub, was fished out. “When you go to a zoo,
you see the animals; they’re not really happy.”

With the frogs gone, it was time to start preparing for next year. Over the winter, Mr.
Davis and Mr. Henson will rebuild the frog shed’s roof so that by March, when thenext eggs arrive, a sun-and-shade system will be in place that better mimics theworld the frogs are bound for.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/us/raising-frogs-for-freedom-prison-project-opensdoors.html?_r=1&ref=science
A version of this article appeared in print on September 28, 2012, on page A21 of the New
York edition with the headline: Raising Frogs For Freedom, Prison Project Opens Doors.

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