WEBVTT - Ep. 474: Animal Diseases 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:13.320 This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:18.360 bug bitten, and in my case, underware listening podcast. You 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.919 can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:24.800 you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:28.240 deer stands, or scouting for ELP, First Light has performance 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:31.440 apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:34.320 out at first light dot com. F I R S 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:39.640 T L I t E dot com. 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:42.159 Hey everyone, fill the engineer here. We will get right 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:44.920 to our conversation with doctor Kristin Schuler, but I just 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:46.800 wanted to let you all know that there is actually 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:49.880 a video component to this podcast as well. If you 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:52.040 would like to head over to the meat Eater YouTube channel, 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:54.440 you can check out a little tour that we had 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:58.040 of the knee cropsy lab at the Cornell University Animal 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:01.160 Health Diagnostics Center. We got a tour from Kristin and 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:04.320 a pathologist, doctor Gavin Hitchner, and he went over some 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:06.240 of the basics of what their team does over there 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:10.280 when studying animal mortality and trauma and whatnot. And get 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:12.920 a look at an eagle, a bobcat, even the turtle. 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:15.960 So again, head over to the meat Eater YouTube channel 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:18.479 if you want to see about thirteen minutes of some 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:21.240 really cool video footage we got over at Cornell. 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:22.160 Thank you. 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:33.360 Okay, we're at Cornell University's Animal Health Diagnostics Center next 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:38.840 to a stuffed two headed calf with Kristin Schuler, a 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:45.640 wildlife disease ecologist. Explain that to me, like the ecologist part, 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:49.040 the wildlife disease part I get okay, wildlife disease expert, 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:50.160 I get sure. 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:55.080 A collegist Okay, you know what ecology is, right, So 0:01:55.240 --> 0:02:02.160 studying the linkages between things, so with wildlife diseases, trying 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:04.680 to put all that together with like the biology, but 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:11.640 then also thinking about communication other social sciences, like human dimensions. 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:17.520 There's economic elements that I pull in my research. There's 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:21.560 political angles and things like that. So trying to put 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:25.320 the whole synthesis together, all the way from the animal 0:02:25.400 --> 0:02:29.200 to people and rules, regulations and how we can make 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:32.480 that better for wildlife populations. 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:35.000 Got it and explain? Or I can run through it, 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:37.079 or you can run through the scope of things you're 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:37.520 working on. 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:39.880 We can run through it together. 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:45.760 Steve all Right, current projects very diverse in scope and species. 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:48.919 You head up the New York State Interagency Working Group 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:54.000 on Chronic Wasting Disease. Yes, and you're again we're at 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:58.600 Cornell in Ithaca. Yes, New York and New York is 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:01.640 not yet a CWD state. 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:06.840 Well, New York has the distinction of being the only 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:10.400 state that has eliminated CWD once it was found in 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:14.120 the wild. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation actually 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:17.280 found it first in captive deer and then in wild 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:21.919 deer in two thousand and five, and they responded pretty aggressively, 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:24.799 and they formed a containment area. They depopulated the two 0:03:24.840 --> 0:03:28.639 herds where they found CWD. They subsequently found two deer 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:33.279 in the wild when they were doing some management activities, 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:36.760 and in the seventeen years since we haven't detected it. 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:42.200 Knockunwood Man, the only state that's done that. Yep, I 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:43.960 didn't even know until you just said that, I wouldn't 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:45.200 known that had ever happened. 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:46.680 Yeah, it's I mean, I. 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:49.400 Would have known that it's ever been eliminated from a state. 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:55.600 Yeah, I mean it was, you know, either good or lucky. 0:03:55.640 --> 0:04:00.200 Either way, it's helped out New York a lot where 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:02.640 we haven't had the disease to deal with There have 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:05.440 been other what we call one and done's where it's 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:08.920 been found in a single location and you go in 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:12.000 and do management activity and don't find any subsequent cases. 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:16.160 So there are conditions where that can happen, but it 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:17.039 isn't the norm. 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:22.280 You feel it's uh, we'll come back around talk about 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:25.760 this a bunch more later. But do you feel that 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:28.440 it's inevitable it'll come. 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:30.760 Back inevitable to New York? 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:36.039 Yeah, yeah, potentially, but you're creasing all forty eight, like 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:37.920 eventually all forty eight states will have it. 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:42.800 Well, even even with all states having it, you know, 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:46.119 if we say that, you know there's thirty plus states 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:49.200 that have it. Now, it's not everywhere, and there's certain 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:53.560 conditions that seem to support it better than others. So 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:59.840 I think if we can do regulations that prohibit movement 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:03.240 prews so you don't introduce it to new areas, and 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:07.120 then you set up the environment where it's not the 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:10.080 disease is going to take off once it's there. It's 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:13.520 not necessarily inevitable that it's going to be everywhere, and 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:14.839 I think you can do a lot of stuff to 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:17.160 prevent it from getting there faster. I think right now. 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:19.279 We're helping it along quite a bit. 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:24.159 Got it? And I guess it's like you mentioned, it's 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:29.360 not everywhere, so the state's almost become I guess talking 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:31.440 about it in the state sense is almost a little 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:35.320 bit arbitrary, as opposed to maybe looking at it at 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:36.440 like a county. 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:38.120 Wide exactly right. 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:41.800 Like across the lower forty eight, that you'd look at 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:45.040 it by county or something rather than by state, because 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:47.560 the lines are kind of arbitrary, and a state could 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:49.680 be surrounded by it, but it just hasn't turned up 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:53.719 in the state, but often cases managed at the state level, 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:55.720 so it's in some way it is a reflection of 0:05:55.720 --> 0:06:00.920 what a state might be doing or not doing exactly. Yeah, okay, 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:10.400 you do that. You a bunch of stuff here, Moose healthy, 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:13.560 moose health and the Adirondacks. I want to talk about 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:14.200 that a whole bunch. 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:15.000 Uh. 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:21.240 Geographical epidemiology of bear mange ye meaning black bears mange 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:26.680 and black bears white tailed, do your fawn survival, historical 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:28.960 accounts of lead and bald eagles which we looked at 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:35.240 a bald eagle this morning in your lab, and how 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:42.640 do you pronounce this blank fun fungus in Eastern hell benders. Okay, yeah, 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:46.320 I find I've been I kind of got into hell benders. 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:49.680 I didn't know that hell benders were a thing. I 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:52.000 mean I knew like big, you know, aquatic salamanders, but 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:53.880 I had no idea there's one as big as a 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:54.440 hell bender. 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:54.720 Yeah. 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:56.919 They seem made up, don't they. They can get up 0:06:56.920 --> 0:07:00.720 to two feet long. Yeah, and yeah some of the 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:03.640 the names for them like snot. 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:05.240 Otter, OLSONI sides. 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:09.200 Yeah, it's really They're really interesting animals and they're super 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:10.440 slimy and hard to hold on to. 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:14.720 So is what is like real briefly, what is going 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:15.680 on with hellbenders? 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:21.120 So hellbenders throughout most of their range have been extirpated 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:25.240 or you know, aren't found anymore, just because of things 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:29.240 like water quality. They need really clear, clean fascillating stream, 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:31.960 so you know, damming rivers and things like that isn't 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:38.600 good for them sedimentation. And they are also being impacted 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.760 by this Caittrid fungus, which is a fungus that has 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:46.440 decimated some frog populations all globally. And there's a new 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:51.240 strain of Kittrid called B sal which affects salamanders as well. 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:56.160 So we've done some work here on captive hellbenders trying 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:58.760 to see if we could vaccinate them against this fungus. 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:02.560 So we had them here at the lab and you know, 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:06.320 gave them some topical killed fungus just like you had 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:09.600 get in sort of a vaccine, and it really didn't 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:12.320 do much to them. You know, they got sick, but 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:14.720 they didn't die. We were expecting them to die from it. 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:18.120 And so what we've seen in working with partnerships with 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.840 the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.920 Seneca Nation of Indians, is that it looks like they 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:26.880 can survive with low levels because this Kittrid fungus is 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:30.800 found in the water and so it's kind of ubiquitous everywhere, 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:35.320 and so you know they're at low levels anyway just 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:38.840 because of habitat conditions. But this is just another challenge 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:40.640 that they sort of have to deal with. But it 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:42.680 seems like they're dealing with it okay. 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:44.280 And that came from somewhere New. 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:52.240 Kittred. It's been introduced all over the world. Basically, the 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:56.280 way that they used to test for pregnancy was through 0:08:56.400 --> 0:09:00.959 xenopus frogs. These African Claude frogs and they had kittred, 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:02.480 and you. 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:05.280 Know, hospitals for human pregnancs. 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:08.520 Yeah, like people. So I don't I don't know the 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:12.120 intricacies of it, since I'm not you know, a human person, 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:18.880 a human doctor, human person. But they would use frogs 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:22.920 and inject them to see if they would start producing eggs. 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:26.240 And it was a way to tell if human females 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:28.320 were pregnant. And so a lot of the hospitals that 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:32.480 had these frog colonies to test for pregnancy release them 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:35.000 after they you know, developed new tests, and so that 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:36.480 sort of when was that? 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:37.160 When was that a. 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:38.439 Thing decades ago? 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:42.040 So a hospital to keep a little gang of frogs around, 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:43.360 That's that's the story. 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:45.720 I was not alive when this was all happening. But 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:50.520 there's other species now that can harbor kittred, like American 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:53.720 bull frogs can have kittred, and then it gets in 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:56.400 the water and other species are exposed to it, so 0:09:56.400 --> 0:09:58.760 it can do a number on native frog species. 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:01.800 So at some point they cut their frogs loose, their 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:06.160 pregnancy tester frogs. This is perhaps an explanation. They cut 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:09.120 the frogs loose, and these frogs had developed this. 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:12.440 They had the fungus like they were used to it 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:13.600 and fine with it. 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:15.839 But then introduced it into the wild. 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:19.400 Yeah, we see. I mean there's introduced pathogens all the time. 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:21.480 So we can talk more about that with some of 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:24.120 these other things that come from different places and then 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:26.360 native species can't handle them. 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:27.040 Got it? 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:28.040 Uh? 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:31.679 I want to hit a crackh real quick from someone 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:36.480 we both know, Jim Hefflefinger. The other day we did 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:42.400 a we're standing also where did it go? It was 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:46.400 like a puppy display. Oh, there it is, all those 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:50.680 puppy feet on display. We recently did an episode what 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:55.640 episode number was it cream with Doctor Perry. It's the 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:58.600 whatever the hell it's called dire wolves and ancient honeydogs. 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:04.880 We got to talking on there about taxonomic lumpers and 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:06.240 taxonomic splitters. 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:08.640 Episode four sixty six. 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:10.800 Episode four sixty six, we got to talk about the 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:14.640 taxonomy of wolves, and I use an example of what 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:21.000 I use an example of the somewhat arbitrary divisions that 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:25.080 will occur in wildlife. Meaning, once upon a time you 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.320 had wolves that if you just look at the western hemisphere, 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:30.880 you look at North America, let's just say North America. 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:34.920 You add wolves that existed from the top of Alaska 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:42.320 way down into Mexico, and there was no distinct borders 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:45.600 between these different wolf groups. So at some point you 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:49.000 kind of divide them up, even though no matter where 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:52.080 you put a division line, there's like genetic crossflow. So 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:56.160 if you'd traveled from Alaska, northern Alaska down into the 0:11:56.160 --> 0:12:00.400 Sierra Madre of Mexico, let's say you would have always 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:04.680 been by wolves, and you would gradually notice that those 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:08.200 wolves changed, but there wouldn't have been actual lines of 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:12.640 demarcation between these wolves. They would just get smaller in 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:16.160 different colors. But there's no You wouldn't have been able 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:18.960 to really say they were all canis lupis. You would 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:20.840 never been able to say, like, oh, these wolves are 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:25.000 fundamentally different than the wolves a mile that way, right 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:28.880 a line of continuity. I'm looking at Christ but this 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:30.319 isn't her, this isn't your area. 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:31.720 I don't know where you're going. 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:35.880 So I use an example of the Mexican wolf. Okay, 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:38.920 and I was using the example of the Mexican wolf, 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:43.599 and I forty meaning that they're saying that there was 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:46.480 this sort of arbitrary division where if a Mexican wolf 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:51.000 crosses IE forty, it becomes a normal wolf. That was wrong. 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:54.800 I was saying if a Mexican wolf crosses IE forty 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:58.959 going north, he becomes a different wolf. Heffelfinger was rolled 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:03.240 in to say. Frequent gas and commentator Jim Heffelfinger was saying, 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:09.800 they're always Mexican wolves, Okay, when they crow, well, he says, 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:12.760 what yours. Here's what he says, you're screwing up. When 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:19.280 they cross IE forty going north, they leave the experimental 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:26.920 non essential ten j area, okay, and become a fully 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:31.160 endangered Mexican wolf. So south of I forty they have 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:38.120 greater management flexibility because they're an experimental introduced population. There's 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:41.680 just a different management structure. So that thing remains a 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:44.600 Mexican wolf, it just enters a different management zone when 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:48.160 it crosses I forty. He goes on to further correct 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:53.960 Mexican wolves are physically, genetically and ecologically different from southern 0:13:54.320 --> 0:14:00.600 planes wolves that were in northern Arizona and northern New Mexico. 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:04.640 He says, there's no way they could have retained those 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:08.400 differences that they freely interchanged with wolves in the north 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:13.240 like you said they did. Mexican wolves existed in almost 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:17.960 complete isolation in the Sierra Madre of Mexico in the 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:23.000 sky islands of southern Arizona and New Mexico, with large 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:26.720 expanses of dry desert and a lack of ungulates between 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:31.240 them and the wolves to the north. This is why 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:34.520 they are listed separately from other gray wolves on the ESA. 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:39.280 People who are not I'm good. This is all giant quote. 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:42.400 People who are not familiar with wolf distribution historically in 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:45.720 the Southwest often like to say that Mexican wolves just 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:50.880 naturally blend into other wolves without a definite break. I 0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:54.200 think most of the other subspecies did blend into one 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:58.400 another because of their adjacent distributions. But he points out 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:04.320 that is not the case in his argument with Mexican wolves. 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:09.920 That's a correction, Christen, excellent, good job, Jim uh. 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:12.760 Okay, let me meet with another thing from the news. 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:14.960 Remember I told you this is a news item, but 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:19.720 I'm moving into it not a news item. 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:17.040 Okay. 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:23.120 We're gonna talk a bunch about c WD and some 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:29.160 other wildlife diseases. And you and I were recently at 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:33.040 a little conference about CWD and kind of like updates 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:35.720 about c WD, and for your listeners who are unaware 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:38.600 of c WD is as we say, chronic waste and disease. 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:44.760 It's a it's a preon disease. It's an infectious disease. 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:46.600 Right, Yeah, you've got ten out of ten in your 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:48.280 quiz at the meet inside that. 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:52.360 Uh, that's great. I don't think I told Krann about 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:53.640 that my high score? 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:55.400 Did you read prody? 0:15:55.600 --> 0:16:00.680 It's an infectious disease that tax deer tacks all servids 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:03.560 not sorry, what am I saying? Not all services? 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:06.880 Not all? Yeah, it's mostly white tailed deer, mule deer, 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:07.840 elk moose. 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:10.040 Okay, what servant has never had it? 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:15.160 Like fallow deer and some of the other uh. Like, 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:18.280 I mean you can use like munch jack deer and 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:22.240 give it to them experimentally, but like naturally infected deer. 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:25.400 It's only those four species so far? Is that not 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:28.800 cariban caribou? Yes? 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:31.680 Because I thought in Europe they had a caribou. 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:35.320 They do. Yeah, sorry, I was just thinking in North America, 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:39.520 But yeah, reindeer in Scandinavia. 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:43.960 Have reindeer in Scandinavia. Okay, but it's so far, like, 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:47.360 so far, not in any North American cariboo. 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:51.800 No, uh they've done some experimental trials and so there's 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:55.640 concern about them, but they haven't been listed by the 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:58.760 USDA yet, even though they seem like they're susceptible. 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:03.960 Okay, so to date and maybe forever, I don't know, 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:06.360 to date. White tail deer, mule, deer. 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:08.880 Elk, moose, Yeah, North America. 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:13.120 Okay, in North America. Uh So, a news piece came 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:19.760 out reported from where is this damn thing? Got it? Okay? 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:25.200 You w Madison researcher have found that black legged tis 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:29.560 commonly referred to as deer ticks, can harbor transmissible amounts 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:33.520 of prions. Are you a prion or preon person? Preon 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:37.800 the protein particle that causes chronic waste and disease and 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:39.199 white tail deer? What do you make of that? 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:43.720 Well, there's a couple different parts of it. So I 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:47.399 guess I'm not surprised that they found preons and blood 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:51.040 because we knew that happens already, that preons are found 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:55.200 throughout the animal, the infected animal's body. It's just different concentrations. 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:57.040 So the most preons are going to be in the 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:01.359 central nervous system like the brain, the spine cord. In 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:06.119 other lymphatic tissues, which is why we sample the lymph nodes, 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:09.200 like the things in the throat there that are easiest 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:13.399 to get at. Spleen are pretty high, eyeballs are pretty 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:16.679 high in preons, but they're in the blood, they're in 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:20.840 muscle tissue, they're in urine, but in much much lower concentrations. 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:26.200 And now we have very sensitive assays where we can 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:30.879 detect those lower concentrations which weren't previously available. One that 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:33.640 I think was used in this study is called rt 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:37.320 QUICK or real time quaking induced conversion. If you're familiar 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:40.240 with PCR, which is a lot of you know testing 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:42.600 that we do, it's sort of like that, so if 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:45.400 you have one little piece of something, you can amplify 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:49.720 it multiple times. And so you know, they were able 0:18:49.760 --> 0:18:56.600 to feed ticks on membranes with preon infected blood and 0:18:56.640 --> 0:18:59.160 then look at the ticks and yeah, there was still 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:03.760 preons in there. And they also collected preons off of 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:07.080 deer in the wild that we're CWT infected, and they 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:10.720 were able to find preons in that blood too. So 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:16.680 that's that's another way that preons could get around, I guess, but. 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:21.639 Because it's not but it's not totally. I guess why 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:25.000 I bring up with something that, like I should clarify 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:29.760 my question about it is we can't always explain how 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:33.280 it moves right right, It'll just it'll emerge in some 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:36.640 that the disease will be found in some place. And granted, 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:40.919 you're not able to test every deer, right, you know, 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:43.840 we're not testing every deer on the planet. 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:46.040 Yeah, we can, we can get to that. Let me 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:49.600 just finish this one thing where you know, they say 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:52.680 transmissible amounts, but that's the issue that we don't really 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:57.159 know what transmissible amounts of preon are yet, and we 0:19:57.200 --> 0:20:01.399 don't know that a tick feeding on something else would 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:05.840 have the mechanism to push the preons back into whatever 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:09.240 they're feeding on, because usually after it tick feeds, it 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:12.439 molts and goes through another growth phase or you know, 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:15.600 if it's an adult, it lays eggs and you know dies, 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:18.560 So the odds of it, you know, a nymph that 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:22.080 would feed on a deer that has preons like then 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:25.000 molts and goes through another stage and feeds on another 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:27.760 deer that it would have enough preons to push through 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:30.919 the skin into the blood to cause an infection, Like 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:33.080 I don't know that that's happening. 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:34.560 Yet I see what you're saying. 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:36.840 So, you know, I'm sure preons could be there, but 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:39.000 whether that's actually going to do anything or not, we 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:39.480 don't know. 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:42.000 Do you feel that when you see that kind of 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:47.200 story and it makes a suggestion of that, do you 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:49.879 feel that there's a risk of it being misunderstood? 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:55.720 Well? I think CWD is a really complicated disease in general, 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:58.399 and the one truth that I've kind of found with 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:01.160 it is it always gets worse. Call the news always 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:04.520 seems to get worse. So I think it's hard to 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:09.639 sometimes talk about these scientific discoveries because they're interesting, but 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:11.919 you know, as far as what that means in the 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:16.560 grand scheme of things and how how we should take 0:21:16.600 --> 0:21:19.959 that is scaling it up to management at you know 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:24.240 for a state wildlife agency is sometimes a little bit challenging. 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:28.480 But you asked about movement of preons, and that's something 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:31.040 that I work a lot on and I'm really interested 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:35.320 in because in New York we were one of the 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:38.240 first states to write a risk minimization plan, and it 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:41.880 was pretty simple, you know, like one, don't bring preons 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:45.359 into the state. Two, don't let preons be out in 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:48.960 the environment where deer scavengers can access them. And three 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:52.520 educate the public about it. So by taking steps not 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:54.720 to bring preons into the state, and that could be 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:58.240 in a live deer or dead deer, you know. So 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:01.960 that involves the captive survey industry, and it involves hunters 0:22:02.480 --> 0:22:05.919 and making sure that there's steps taken so they're not 0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:09.720 bringing preons in. And then don't let preons get out 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:14.959 into the environment. By educating hunters about how to dispose 0:22:14.960 --> 0:22:16.800 of carcasses. You know, if you're going out of state 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:19.199 to hunt, what should you bring back, what's legal, what's not, 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:23.360 How can you process your carcass, and you know, debone 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:25.919 it so that you're bringing back the meat, you know, 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:28.320 the antlers or whatever other things you want to bring 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:32.119 back in a safe manner. Those are the type of 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:35.040 things that I'm interested in. So like when people get 0:22:35.080 --> 0:22:38.479 all wound up about birds moving preons or you know, 0:22:38.760 --> 0:22:43.480 coyotes or ticks, that could be a problem, but it's 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:46.560 probably like infinitesimally small compared to what people are doing 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:47.440 moving stuff around. 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:50.680 Oh, I got you, Yeah, can you explain where we 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:51.680 spent time this morning? 0:22:52.280 --> 0:22:56.560 Sure, we were in the n cropsy Lab of the 0:22:56.600 --> 0:23:02.240 Animal Health Diagnostic Center at Cornell, and that is a 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:06.000 place where we bring in animal carcasses. So I deal 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:09.719 with wildlife. So we bring in uh specimens that may 0:23:09.720 --> 0:23:11.920 be found by the public or the New York State 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:15.560 Department of Environmental Conservation. Biologists want to find out why 0:23:15.600 --> 0:23:19.040 something died, they bring it in and then we go 0:23:19.160 --> 0:23:22.879 through a whole process called ane cropsy, which is the 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:27.359 equivalent of an animal autopsy, and we take tissues for 0:23:27.480 --> 0:23:30.719 testing and examine the animal and try to figure out 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:36.600 why it died and collect specimens for other research or archiving. 0:23:37.359 --> 0:23:41.000 Yeah, this morning, we looked at a bald eagle. We 0:23:41.040 --> 0:23:45.520 looked at a turtle. We looked at a bobcat, looked 0:23:45.520 --> 0:23:46.240 at a horse. 0:23:46.800 --> 0:23:48.520 Well, we didn't look we looked at a horse. We 0:23:48.560 --> 0:23:50.000 didn't like look at us said, we. 0:23:49.920 --> 0:23:50.480 Looked at a horse. 0:23:50.560 --> 0:23:53.080 Well, yeah, we didn't examin exam there you go. 0:23:53.200 --> 0:23:55.800 There was a there was a horse that was collaterally observed. 0:23:56.280 --> 0:23:59.840 There was a collaterally observed horse, and we partially examined a. 0:24:00.040 --> 0:24:02.000 I don't want people think I'm looking at horses on 0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:02.440 the side. 0:24:02.720 --> 0:24:05.280 No, No, it was there was a horse presence. Yes, 0:24:05.400 --> 0:24:08.040 other people had interest in the horse, and we just 0:24:08.119 --> 0:24:13.040 observed the horse being there. Uh so I've done this before. 0:24:14.040 --> 0:24:17.680 A person, you know, a hunter, fishermen, a homeowner, whoever 0:24:18.680 --> 0:24:24.040 comes out and they they shoot or discover or whatever 0:24:24.560 --> 0:24:28.399 something that doesn't look right. Yep, it's acting weird. A 0:24:28.480 --> 0:24:31.800 coyote shows up in their yard, it's missing its hair, 0:24:32.720 --> 0:24:37.919 it's trying to bite their dog. They call their game warden. 0:24:38.040 --> 0:24:38.240 Yep. 0:24:38.280 --> 0:24:40.919 Whoever, like, something's not right with this thing. What's going on? 0:24:43.000 --> 0:24:48.320 It by some avenue winds up with folks like you. 0:24:48.680 --> 0:24:52.359 Yes, So there's a whole process, and we go out 0:24:52.400 --> 0:24:56.399 and do training for the biologists in the state to 0:24:56.440 --> 0:25:00.000 tell them, you know, what to look for and try 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:02.600 to educate them about different diseases. So if it is 0:25:02.600 --> 0:25:06.840 a coyote with hair and missing, they are familiar with 0:25:06.960 --> 0:25:11.159 mange and they know what to tell the homeowner. And 0:25:11.320 --> 0:25:14.160 if it's something serious that they want us to take 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:16.880 a look at, they'll, you know, either tell the homeowner 0:25:16.920 --> 0:25:19.600 to shoot it or they'll come out and euthanize the animal. 0:25:20.160 --> 0:25:22.960 They know how to keep it cool enough so the 0:25:23.359 --> 0:25:26.400 carcass is still in good shape to get it to us. 0:25:26.440 --> 0:25:29.400 And so there's our lab here in Ithaca, but then 0:25:30.359 --> 0:25:33.119 the New York Department of Environmental Conservation also has a 0:25:33.119 --> 0:25:36.879 Wildlife health unit over by Albany, New York. So having 0:25:37.320 --> 0:25:40.399 multiple locations makes it so they can get carcasses. The 0:25:40.440 --> 0:25:44.280 biologists can get the carcasses to us relatively quickly, so 0:25:44.320 --> 0:25:49.119 we can figure out what's going on. So they let 0:25:49.240 --> 0:25:52.720 us know what species they want to prioritize looking at, 0:25:52.760 --> 0:25:57.320 you know, which populations, which areas are important to them. 0:25:57.400 --> 0:25:59.560 And we also let them know what diseases to look 0:25:59.600 --> 0:26:01.920 out for or what might be coming down the pike 0:26:02.119 --> 0:26:04.879 that we've heard about from you know, other surrounding states 0:26:05.000 --> 0:26:10.800 is being problematic and ask them to be on the lookout. 0:26:10.880 --> 0:26:13.560 So like for chronic wasting disease, we always want to 0:26:13.560 --> 0:26:18.359 hear about sick or abnormal deer. So those are ones 0:26:18.359 --> 0:26:20.280 that we say yes, like if you get a call 0:26:20.480 --> 0:26:23.800 from anybody about that, go out get that deer. We 0:26:23.840 --> 0:26:26.480 want the whole thing to come in here and take 0:26:26.520 --> 0:26:30.080 a look at it. Whereas like bear marange, we did 0:26:30.080 --> 0:26:32.600 a pretty intensive study for a few years and we said, yes, 0:26:33.000 --> 0:26:36.480 we want to know about every report of bears with mange, 0:26:36.640 --> 0:26:38.320 and if you can get your hands on any we 0:26:38.359 --> 0:26:41.960 want you to bring them in. We published a paper 0:26:42.000 --> 0:26:43.639 on that. We said, okay, you know, we kind of 0:26:43.680 --> 0:26:45.200 know that we have bear range. Now we know where 0:26:45.200 --> 0:26:49.240 it's happening. But right now there's sort of a larger 0:26:49.280 --> 0:26:52.560 regional study where other researchers from the University of Georgia 0:26:52.600 --> 0:26:55.120 came to us and said, hey, we want samples from 0:26:55.240 --> 0:26:56.879 all these states. Can you help us out and we 0:26:56.920 --> 0:27:00.480 said okay. And there's different protocols, so if a byllogist 0:27:00.520 --> 0:27:02.920 is out there, he can he or she can do 0:27:03.200 --> 0:27:05.760 different things anywhere from like taking a skin scraping to 0:27:05.800 --> 0:27:08.359 bringing in the whole animal, and we'll take samples and 0:27:08.359 --> 0:27:10.960 then send them to Georgia for participation in that. 0:27:11.240 --> 0:27:13.280 Is black bear mange killing black bears. 0:27:14.200 --> 0:27:17.640 It does kill black bears, and Pennsylvania has been doing 0:27:17.640 --> 0:27:21.919 a lot of good work on this because when we 0:27:21.960 --> 0:27:24.000 first started with mange, we kind of said, okay, if 0:27:24.440 --> 0:27:27.719 fifty percent of the body is hairless and the animal 0:27:27.720 --> 0:27:29.960 looks pretty bad, you should probably euthanize it. We don't 0:27:29.960 --> 0:27:33.560 think it's going to recover, but some of the work 0:27:33.600 --> 0:27:38.879 being done now indicates that you can treat bears and 0:27:38.960 --> 0:27:41.920 they recover. But some bears even with severe mange seem 0:27:41.960 --> 0:27:44.560 to recover on their own, so it's kind of a 0:27:44.960 --> 0:27:48.080 crapshoot on whether they're going to recover or not. 0:27:48.400 --> 0:27:49.880 But well, how is it new? 0:27:51.760 --> 0:27:57.680 It's expanded in its range, so it didn't really occur 0:27:57.760 --> 0:28:02.320 in New York until you know, I'll probably get the 0:28:02.400 --> 0:28:04.520 year wrong, but in the last decade or so, it's 0:28:04.600 --> 0:28:07.240 become more prevalent. And so one of the questions was 0:28:08.680 --> 0:28:11.520 is it a specific it's our Coptis scaby but is 0:28:11.560 --> 0:28:13.800 it specific to bears or is it the same it 0:28:13.840 --> 0:28:19.359 sar copty scabye that occurs on coyotes and foxes, because 0:28:19.359 --> 0:28:22.040 we know red foxes get mange and it usually kills them. 0:28:22.600 --> 0:28:25.080 So did it jump from a species or did it 0:28:25.119 --> 0:28:28.919 become more speciated to just being a bear one? But 0:28:28.960 --> 0:28:31.080 it looks like it's spilled over from other species, and 0:28:31.240 --> 0:28:33.720 just as going through bears now like. 0:28:33.880 --> 0:28:37.840 At some point that that happened here or at some 0:28:37.920 --> 0:28:39.040 point it happened somewhere else. 0:28:39.760 --> 0:28:43.640 It's probably spilled over multiple places because in New York 0:28:43.680 --> 0:28:47.040 there's two sort of different areas of bears, So you've 0:28:47.040 --> 0:28:49.200 got the southern tier and the cat skills, which is 0:28:49.240 --> 0:28:52.560 continuous with Pennsylvania and bears you know, move across the 0:28:53.040 --> 0:28:56.160 PA line, and then there's bears up towards the Adirondack, 0:28:56.240 --> 0:28:58.360 so there's sort of the northern population, and then there's 0:28:58.400 --> 0:29:01.200 a strip kind of where were bears are just sort 0:29:01.240 --> 0:29:04.160 of coming into to being here they weren't there. 0:29:04.480 --> 0:29:06.960 More and more of them and that and that mange 0:29:06.960 --> 0:29:09.560 will hit them and they'll lose their hair, yeah. 0:29:09.360 --> 0:29:14.200 Yeah, and they get it's actually called lignification like a 0:29:14.240 --> 0:29:19.200 lichen where they get really thick skin and they'll have 0:29:19.240 --> 0:29:22.880 bacterial overgrowth on their skin, and you know, their eyes 0:29:23.000 --> 0:29:25.920 might crust over and they're super itchy, so they've just 0:29:25.960 --> 0:29:30.160 got a lot of ooze and crustyness. Yeah, they smell 0:29:30.240 --> 0:29:30.640 bad too. 0:29:31.000 --> 0:29:32.960 Really really, how many of those come through here. 0:29:33.960 --> 0:29:36.880 We would see a few a year, and when we 0:29:37.560 --> 0:29:40.640 look when we did that research study, we found it 0:29:40.720 --> 0:29:43.760 was more likely to be adult females. We would get, 0:29:44.040 --> 0:29:46.600 you know, not a ton of them, but we would 0:29:46.600 --> 0:29:49.120 probably have you know, a dozen a year, and then 0:29:49.160 --> 0:29:51.880 there would be more reports. One of the big things 0:29:52.120 --> 0:29:55.320 is that these bears with mange usually end up in 0:29:55.400 --> 0:29:57.760 bad places where they shouldn't be, so they'll be on 0:29:57.840 --> 0:30:00.720 like people's porches, or they'll be more likely to have 0:30:00.840 --> 0:30:03.920 an interaction with a human because they're starving to death. 0:30:04.600 --> 0:30:07.120 They're they're in bad shape, and so then we get 0:30:07.120 --> 0:30:09.480 calls about them and then they get euthanized. 0:30:18.960 --> 0:30:21.360 How does something get how does something get mange? Like 0:30:21.360 --> 0:30:24.800 I remember when I was a kid, even older than 0:30:24.800 --> 0:30:29.640 a kid, but high school encountering just like an encountering 0:30:29.680 --> 0:30:33.080 red foxes with mange, and a strong association with red 0:30:33.080 --> 0:30:36.440 foxes and mange. Even in the trapping world. It would 0:30:36.480 --> 0:30:39.120 be that I got a red fox but it had mange, 0:30:39.600 --> 0:30:41.320 and it was just taken as like, you know, a 0:30:41.360 --> 0:30:44.080 thing that happened. They were out there, but people it wasn't. 0:30:44.120 --> 0:30:46.600 People weren't seeming like alarmed by it. 0:30:47.120 --> 0:30:49.800 Yeah, I mean, red fox mange has been around for 0:30:49.840 --> 0:30:52.720 a long time. And so these mites can live off 0:30:52.720 --> 0:30:55.240 the animal for a little while, you know, depending on 0:30:55.320 --> 0:30:59.480 the conditions and the moisture, they can last in burrows 0:30:59.560 --> 0:31:02.960 and things like that for a few days. So then 0:31:03.080 --> 0:31:06.240 another animal comes along and uses that burrow and might 0:31:06.240 --> 0:31:09.160 pick up the mites, and then the cycle starts again. 0:31:09.240 --> 0:31:12.720 So it's moved, like the disease is moved from animal 0:31:12.720 --> 0:31:16.040 to animal by a mite. Nothing's born with mange. 0:31:16.280 --> 0:31:20.000 No, No, it's a parasite. So they pick it up 0:31:20.000 --> 0:31:24.280 and then the female is you know, burrow into the 0:31:24.320 --> 0:31:26.720 skin and lay a bunch of eggs and those hatch 0:31:26.720 --> 0:31:29.440 out and then they start burrowing and lay more eggs 0:31:29.480 --> 0:31:31.360 and the infection just gets worse and worse. 0:31:32.480 --> 0:31:36.080 And then talk to what's going on with moose right 0:31:36.120 --> 0:31:38.320 now and what you're interested moose because when you when 0:31:38.360 --> 0:31:41.000 I read that you were looking at moose, I assumed 0:31:41.000 --> 0:31:44.520 it's what we keep hearing about with moose, which is 0:31:44.600 --> 0:31:46.280 like some tickborn. 0:31:46.080 --> 0:31:49.920 Pathogen winter tick. 0:31:49.280 --> 0:31:51.800 Killing a lot of moose. But you mentioned another thing 0:31:51.880 --> 0:31:52.440 killing moose. 0:31:52.680 --> 0:31:58.160 Yeah, So we have a project on moose right now. 0:31:58.240 --> 0:32:00.680 We've caught moose with a helicopter after the last two 0:32:00.760 --> 0:32:04.719 years and put GPS collars on them. There's a student 0:32:04.800 --> 0:32:10.720 out there with camera traps and within New York it's 0:32:10.720 --> 0:32:13.640 a pretty small population. This is like the southernmost part 0:32:13.680 --> 0:32:16.479 of moose range, so we know, you know, moose are 0:32:16.560 --> 0:32:21.440 challenged by warm temperatures and then throughout most of the 0:32:21.600 --> 0:32:25.920 range moose have problems with brainworm or parallelristrongelst tenuous which 0:32:25.960 --> 0:32:30.320 is really long long word, and that is a parasite 0:32:30.360 --> 0:32:34.760 that's carried by deer and there's an intermediate host, which 0:32:34.800 --> 0:32:37.840 is a snail. So if moose accidentally eat that snail, 0:32:37.920 --> 0:32:41.480 they can get infected. And the parasite migrates through the 0:32:41.480 --> 0:32:44.400 spinal cord up into the brain and sometimes it ends 0:32:44.480 --> 0:32:47.080 up in the eye and it causes damage in moose. 0:32:48.040 --> 0:32:49.240 Tell me the life cycle again. 0:32:50.040 --> 0:32:56.080 So deer are infected, they poop, the larvae come out 0:32:56.080 --> 0:32:58.880 in the poop, The snail feeds on the poop, and 0:32:58.920 --> 0:33:00.920 then a moose acts the larvae. 0:33:01.480 --> 0:33:03.080 It's a snail larvae. 0:33:03.320 --> 0:33:07.880 No, the worm, the parasite larvae is in the deer poop, 0:33:08.360 --> 0:33:10.920 and then the snail comes along and likes to feed 0:33:11.040 --> 0:33:14.160 on the poop. It takes the larvae actually burrow into 0:33:14.200 --> 0:33:18.560 the snail and then the you know, snail gets infected. 0:33:19.720 --> 0:33:22.800 Moose comes along accidentally eats a snail and then they 0:33:22.880 --> 0:33:24.600 get infected because. 0:33:24.400 --> 0:33:26.080 The snails on a piece of grass or whatever. 0:33:26.240 --> 0:33:29.680 Right, they're just cruising on the convoluted path. 0:33:29.920 --> 0:33:31.960 I know. Wait until you hear about the liver fluke. 0:33:32.000 --> 0:33:33.040 It's even crazier. 0:33:33.200 --> 0:33:34.960 Well, that's what I'll make sure I got it right. 0:33:35.600 --> 0:33:39.280 So the deer that poops out the larvae. How did 0:33:39.320 --> 0:33:40.480 it get infected anyway? 0:33:41.040 --> 0:33:46.080 Uh, same process where it accidentally ate something that was infected. 0:33:46.120 --> 0:33:48.680 So there's enough stuff out there. There's enough stuff out 0:33:48.720 --> 0:33:50.920 there accidentally eating snails. 0:33:50.440 --> 0:33:51.760 To keep this going apparently. 0:33:53.720 --> 0:33:53.960 Yep. 0:33:54.880 --> 0:33:59.360 But the parasite is not a snail, correct, It's just 0:33:59.400 --> 0:33:59.920 a carrier. 0:34:00.080 --> 0:34:00.680 It's the worm. 0:34:00.760 --> 0:34:01.760 What is the worm? 0:34:01.920 --> 0:34:04.480 The worm is parallepistron, just tenuous, that's the par. 0:34:04.760 --> 0:34:08.280 What does it ever have a does it remain a worm? 0:34:08.440 --> 0:34:11.200 Does it ever have a bug phase? Okay, so it's 0:34:11.239 --> 0:34:12.920 just a worm, just a worm, I got it. 0:34:13.040 --> 0:34:13.239 Yeah. 0:34:13.320 --> 0:34:14.919 It goes into your brain, all right. 0:34:15.239 --> 0:34:17.320 So a deer gets infected. 0:34:19.440 --> 0:34:21.520 And they pass it through. 0:34:21.640 --> 0:34:25.400 Yep, winds up in their digestive system, they poop. 0:34:25.760 --> 0:34:29.319 Yeah, there's a whole complicated process because it goes to 0:34:29.360 --> 0:34:32.520 their brain too, and then it lays eggs and that's 0:34:32.560 --> 0:34:33.200 what comes out. 0:34:33.440 --> 0:34:34.479 Lays eggs in their brain. 0:34:36.040 --> 0:34:38.400 Yes, and that actually can cause some problems with deer, 0:34:38.480 --> 0:34:43.439 but usually deer fine with it. But yeah, they they 0:34:43.920 --> 0:34:47.760 lay eggs, it goes, the eggs end up in their lungs. 0:34:47.760 --> 0:34:49.399 They cough them up and then they poop them out 0:34:49.800 --> 0:34:53.520 and then through the poop through the snail and a 0:34:53.560 --> 0:34:54.719 moose accidentally gets it. 0:34:54.960 --> 0:34:59.440 But if the mood k let's say, a moose ate, we. 0:34:59.400 --> 0:35:03.160 Need to get a die like some animals to like Okay, 0:35:03.200 --> 0:35:04.200 here's the poop. 0:35:04.120 --> 0:35:05.919 But if the moose ate the poop, that doesn't work. 0:35:06.719 --> 0:35:10.239 No, it has to go through the snaw. Yeah, just 0:35:10.280 --> 0:35:12.440 like what like yeah, I know, right. 0:35:12.880 --> 0:35:16.640 I mean it just seems like something that would just 0:35:16.680 --> 0:35:19.960 be so random, I mean, not random, but so isolated 0:35:20.280 --> 0:35:22.480 the fact that this is happening enough to have population 0:35:22.640 --> 0:35:23.400 level impacts. 0:35:23.440 --> 0:35:27.400 Yep. Then well, I guess if you're a moose, you're 0:35:27.440 --> 0:35:30.160 eating a lot of stuff, so you're gonna. 0:35:30.000 --> 0:35:32.680 Big mouthfuls and stuff. And you know, I've gone out 0:35:32.719 --> 0:35:34.960 to my garden right and we're eating. I remember we 0:35:35.040 --> 0:35:37.320 have a story that floats around in our family where 0:35:38.360 --> 0:35:41.560 my I used to have a little greenhouse and I 0:35:41.800 --> 0:35:43.600 didn't wash the lettuce out of the greenhouse, so I 0:35:43.600 --> 0:35:46.120 thought nothing could get on it because it's in the greenhouse. 0:35:46.360 --> 0:35:46.640 Yep. 0:35:46.880 --> 0:35:50.399 And there's a story where I look over and there's 0:35:50.440 --> 0:35:55.440 a ranch dressing coated worm making a break forward across 0:35:55.480 --> 0:35:58.680 my kid's plate. Oh yeah, so yeah, you're just eating stuff. 0:35:58.719 --> 0:36:01.400 I stopped growing broccoli for that exact reason. Those things, 0:36:01.480 --> 0:36:03.200 like the little worms that get in your broccoli are 0:36:03.200 --> 0:36:05.319 the same color as the broccoli. And I'm pretty sure 0:36:05.320 --> 0:36:07.000 I more worms than broccoli. 0:36:07.080 --> 0:36:07.400 Maybe. 0:36:07.480 --> 0:36:10.240 Yeah. And I've read that people would like to point 0:36:10.239 --> 0:36:12.640 out that, like, oh, a vegan, you can't be a 0:36:12.680 --> 0:36:16.279 vegan because of vitamin B twelve. But someone's saying that 0:36:16.640 --> 0:36:18.960 there's you get you need such a small amount of 0:36:18.960 --> 0:36:20.880 B twelve that you're going to get it through insect 0:36:20.960 --> 0:36:23.840 contamination on produce. Yeah, it's just not a problem. 0:36:23.960 --> 0:36:24.200 Right. 0:36:24.800 --> 0:36:26.640 So back to these moose. 0:36:26.719 --> 0:36:27.640 Okay, back to the moose. 0:36:27.680 --> 0:36:31.760 So we're talking about we're talking about the winter okay. 0:36:31.960 --> 0:36:35.040 So yeah, there's there's a whole bunch of parasites that 0:36:35.080 --> 0:36:37.239 moose are dealing with right now. So we just went 0:36:37.280 --> 0:36:41.839 over brainworm. M h, winter tick are one. 0:36:42.160 --> 0:36:43.840 Well I want to go back to brainworm from it? 0:36:43.960 --> 0:36:45.200 Okay, you'd like brain worm? 0:36:45.360 --> 0:36:47.200 Well no, no, I just want to I want to just 0:36:47.200 --> 0:36:51.759 make sure I'm understand it right. It doesn't bother white 0:36:51.760 --> 0:36:57.920 tail deer mostly, okay, but it so most mostly doesn't 0:36:57.920 --> 0:37:01.040 bother white tail deer, but it mostly bothers moose. Like 0:37:01.080 --> 0:37:06.600 it's it's hard on moose. Yes, why why? 0:37:06.640 --> 0:37:13.719 Because we're not entirely sure yet. But my theory on 0:37:13.760 --> 0:37:17.000 this is that the worms get lost and they think, 0:37:17.400 --> 0:37:19.839 you know, they're they're used to migrating a certain way 0:37:19.880 --> 0:37:21.840 and a deer, and like a deer is much smaller 0:37:21.840 --> 0:37:24.880 than a moose, and so they kind of get lost 0:37:25.000 --> 0:37:28.240 along their way and will end up in weird places 0:37:28.280 --> 0:37:34.160 like the eye. So when we have moose acting abnormally 0:37:34.800 --> 0:37:40.759 or are emaciated, we usually suspect that is brainworm associated mortality. 0:37:41.120 --> 0:37:45.520 But it moose are what's called an aberrant hoast, and 0:37:45.719 --> 0:37:49.359 other things like lamas and alpacas also can get brainworm 0:37:49.719 --> 0:37:53.200 and die from it. And so these species that haven't 0:37:53.239 --> 0:37:57.400 adapted with this worm may have more of a reaction 0:37:57.600 --> 0:38:01.120 to it migrating through their scent nervous system in their 0:38:01.160 --> 0:38:05.160 brain than whitetail deer do, and so that reaction may 0:38:05.200 --> 0:38:07.240 cause more problems for them. 0:38:07.320 --> 0:38:10.759 Well, okay, if it comes to something like this, how 0:38:10.880 --> 0:38:14.200 is the worm so picky? Anyways? Why would the worm 0:38:14.440 --> 0:38:18.360 Let's say you ate the snail? What is it about 0:38:18.440 --> 0:38:21.239 your What is it about a human's body chemistry that 0:38:21.280 --> 0:38:23.520 would make it that the worm didn't take off that 0:38:24.080 --> 0:38:25.600 the worm didn't go into your brain. 0:38:26.520 --> 0:38:28.480 I don't know because I don't study people. 0:38:28.760 --> 0:38:31.359 Okay, but like do we know that it doesn't. Yeah? 0:38:31.680 --> 0:38:33.920 Well yeah, well, I mean there's a bunch of worms 0:38:33.960 --> 0:38:36.480 that do. Like we don't hear about brainworm being a 0:38:36.520 --> 0:38:39.240 problem in people, But there are other ones in raccoon 0:38:39.320 --> 0:38:44.040 called Ballis ascaris. That's problematic. That's in raccoon poop. And 0:38:44.080 --> 0:38:47.280 so they tell people like cleaning out addicts and stuff 0:38:47.280 --> 0:38:51.840 to make sure that you wear you know, a respirator 0:38:51.880 --> 0:38:54.080 or something and wear gloves because if you inhale these 0:38:55.000 --> 0:38:57.360 eggs from raccoon poop, then you can get infected. And 0:38:57.360 --> 0:38:59.320 that one ends up in your brain and causes problems. 0:38:59.360 --> 0:38:59.759 Oh it does. 0:39:00.080 --> 0:39:00.799 Yeah. 0:39:00.840 --> 0:39:03.280 And then what's the one what's the cat scratch fever? One? 0:39:04.560 --> 0:39:05.720 Is that bord oftella? 0:39:06.320 --> 0:39:09.200 No, that's doc plasmosis. Oh, that's what I'm thinking of. 0:39:10.200 --> 0:39:14.960 Toxic plasmosis. Yeah, that is another one that you know, 0:39:15.040 --> 0:39:19.120 you get from feces, like inhaling the eggs and everything, 0:39:19.280 --> 0:39:21.200 so and that can be a problem from Yeah, that 0:39:21.280 --> 0:39:24.560 one also can end up in your brain. It's a 0:39:24.600 --> 0:39:28.520 different type of parasite though, So it's a like an 0:39:28.560 --> 0:39:30.960 intracellular one that causes a lot of problems. I did 0:39:30.960 --> 0:39:34.520 some work on sea otters and they would get that 0:39:34.560 --> 0:39:38.240 one a lot. And they think it's from cat feces 0:39:38.360 --> 0:39:41.719 washing out into the ocean. What yeah, and other and 0:39:41.800 --> 0:39:46.279 snails might be involved in that one too, So okay. 0:39:46.200 --> 0:39:48.040 Back the brain weren't from men now, and then we're 0:39:48.080 --> 0:39:52.680 jumping around a bunch. That's all right, Uh, I have heard, 0:39:55.320 --> 0:39:57.879 and I might be getting part of this wrong. I've 0:39:57.920 --> 0:40:02.600 heard that we're seeing that one of the problems for 0:40:02.719 --> 0:40:07.160 moose that are enorming in the northern latitudes. Okay, one 0:40:07.160 --> 0:40:11.160 of the problems for moose has been as white tailed 0:40:11.160 --> 0:40:20.200 deer populations have expanded, habitat changes Okay, Warmer winters have 0:40:20.320 --> 0:40:24.000 allowed white tail deer to move and croach on areas 0:40:24.000 --> 0:40:27.640 that were historically moose. Yes, they've always you know, there's 0:40:27.640 --> 0:40:30.239 probably always been some intermingling, but there's been a more 0:40:30.360 --> 0:40:34.319 radical shift of deer moving into moose areas and that 0:40:34.400 --> 0:40:39.319 being problematic for moose. Yep, this is what they're talking about. 0:40:39.360 --> 0:40:43.400 I gather exactly the movement of these parasites into moose. 0:40:43.480 --> 0:40:45.160 And so we'll talk about the other one that we 0:40:45.160 --> 0:40:49.600 think is affecting New York moose. Is liver flukeka. So 0:40:49.680 --> 0:40:53.319 this has anybody ever asked you about little livers, like 0:40:53.360 --> 0:40:56.759 if you if you're eating the liver. I actually had 0:40:57.080 --> 0:40:58.839 somebody ask me this and they're like, oh, what are 0:40:58.840 --> 0:41:01.360 those other little livers? They're kind of like leaf shape, 0:41:01.360 --> 0:41:01.759 they might. 0:41:01.640 --> 0:41:03.000 Get no, no, exactly. 0:41:03.560 --> 0:41:07.400 Yeah, so those are liver fluke, giant liver fluke, vaciloidis magna. 0:41:07.520 --> 0:41:09.879 Oh no, I'm not talking about that, Okay, I'm talking 0:41:09.880 --> 0:41:11.680 about like you know, there's like lobes of a liver. 0:41:12.360 --> 0:41:14.399 There's like a little side car liver on there. 0:41:14.600 --> 0:41:17.440 Sure, yeah, that's what I thought. No, but these are 0:41:17.520 --> 0:41:21.520 parasites that are in there that some people have fry 0:41:21.600 --> 0:41:22.359 up and eat. 0:41:24.880 --> 0:41:27.360 I'm back up on that. Yeah, tell me what it 0:41:27.400 --> 0:41:27.719 looks like. 0:41:28.239 --> 0:41:31.480 It's it's like yay big and it kind of looks 0:41:31.480 --> 0:41:34.319 like a leaf. We can I'm sure I can find a. 0:41:34.280 --> 0:41:35.560 Picture the girls on a liver. 0:41:36.080 --> 0:41:38.200 Yeah. It grows in the liver. So those migrate through 0:41:38.239 --> 0:41:40.920 the liver and make these cysts that are full of 0:41:40.960 --> 0:41:45.120 like brown gunk and they destroy the liver. And so 0:41:45.160 --> 0:41:46.120 that's the big problem. 0:41:46.280 --> 0:41:48.719 People like eating them or they're accidentally eating them. 0:41:49.000 --> 0:41:52.359 They probably accidentally eat them. I was just curious because 0:41:52.400 --> 0:41:54.200 you get a lot of weird questions. 0:41:55.080 --> 0:41:59.759 And the little sidecar thing I'm talking about. 0:42:00.160 --> 0:42:02.520 I know what you're talking about. Yeah, No, these are 0:42:02.640 --> 0:42:05.560 are parasites within the liver. The kind of they kind 0:42:05.560 --> 0:42:09.120 of look like a liver almost, I guess, like, but yeah, 0:42:09.480 --> 0:42:10.920 they're they're different. 0:42:12.160 --> 0:42:16.000 I want to ask you later about the the nasal bots. 0:42:16.120 --> 0:42:17.160 Oh, those are fun. 0:42:19.200 --> 0:42:19.920 But let's go on. 0:42:20.239 --> 0:42:24.160 We'll keep going, all right. So liver flukes also are 0:42:24.840 --> 0:42:29.200 carried by white tail deer and have a snail intermediate host, 0:42:29.640 --> 0:42:34.680 but these have an aquatic snail as the intermediate host. 0:42:34.719 --> 0:42:37.759 So it's even sort of more complicated. The moose have 0:42:37.840 --> 0:42:43.480 to get this aquatic vegetation where the the fluke actually 0:42:43.520 --> 0:42:47.360 insists on the vegetation and stays there, and then the 0:42:47.360 --> 0:42:49.280 moose comes along and eats it and gets infected. 0:42:49.480 --> 0:42:51.080 Okay, so he's got to be underwater. 0:42:51.400 --> 0:42:55.840 Well he can you know, eating in a wetland or something, 0:42:55.920 --> 0:42:58.839 you know, eating some plants out of there and gets 0:42:58.840 --> 0:43:02.160 it that way, and so out of the moose that 0:43:02.200 --> 0:43:04.200 we have on the air right now, I think we've 0:43:04.239 --> 0:43:07.880 had explain what that means with GPS callers on. Okay, 0:43:09.160 --> 0:43:12.400 that we've we've had about three already that have died 0:43:12.520 --> 0:43:15.760 from liver fluke and these were captured as year lanes. 0:43:16.400 --> 0:43:20.359 And so we're worried about the survival of juvenile moose 0:43:20.400 --> 0:43:22.480 in the Adirondack. So there's been a lot of studies 0:43:22.520 --> 0:43:25.759 by folks here at Cornell in the USGS co Op 0:43:26.000 --> 0:43:31.000 unit at the Sunni School Environmental Science and Forestry doing 0:43:31.120 --> 0:43:33.719 moose work, you know, to see if the habitats appropriate 0:43:33.920 --> 0:43:38.239 to look at adult reproduction. A few years ago we 0:43:38.360 --> 0:43:43.560 collared a bunch of females and all the signs pointed 0:43:43.680 --> 0:43:47.799 to juveniles as their survivorship wasn't very good. So that's 0:43:47.800 --> 0:43:49.880 why we're doing the study. And so the fact that 0:43:49.880 --> 0:43:53.120 we've already seen three die over you know, the course 0:43:53.160 --> 0:43:55.280 of our two years already. 0:43:55.000 --> 0:43:56.480 How many how many moose do you have out there 0:43:56.520 --> 0:43:57.319 with collars on them? 0:43:57.560 --> 0:44:00.480 I forget. I want to say we caught like fifteen 0:44:00.560 --> 0:44:02.560 the first year and nineteen the second year. 0:44:03.560 --> 0:44:05.799 And three have died from that? How many have died 0:44:05.840 --> 0:44:06.480 from other stuff? 0:44:08.800 --> 0:44:11.719 Jen, my PhD student, would have the numbers, but I 0:44:11.760 --> 0:44:14.560 don't think too many others. I mean we have, I 0:44:14.600 --> 0:44:16.799 think most of them are are still in the air. 0:44:17.360 --> 0:44:19.439 So you got a mortality signal, you go out there, 0:44:19.560 --> 0:44:22.680 you get it. Yep, you dissect it, bring it here 0:44:22.760 --> 0:44:26.200 or whatever. Dissect it, open it up. Liver flute. Yeah, 0:44:26.280 --> 0:44:27.160 the liver's destroyed. 0:44:27.360 --> 0:44:29.320 Liver's destroyed so much. 0:44:29.239 --> 0:44:30.759 As someone would know when you're looking at it. 0:44:32.440 --> 0:44:34.320 I mean, you have to kind of get a feel 0:44:34.480 --> 0:44:37.719 for what normal is. And when you have a liver 0:44:37.840 --> 0:44:42.120 that just looks like pulp. And the other thing was 0:44:42.520 --> 0:44:46.040 I was at one of the Moostnee cropsies and it 0:44:46.080 --> 0:44:49.520 was full of fluid, so like liver was failing and 0:44:49.560 --> 0:44:54.560 it couldn't process any any thing anymore. So it was 0:44:54.600 --> 0:44:57.080 just filling up with fluid. Like we punched a hole 0:44:57.080 --> 0:44:59.320 in it and had a five gallon bucket under the table, 0:44:59.440 --> 0:45:01.960 and it like it was overflowing. It had so much 0:45:02.000 --> 0:45:06.120 fluid in it, five gallons over five gallons. Yeah, there 0:45:06.160 --> 0:45:08.560 was so much pressure in its abdomen, Like the fluid 0:45:08.680 --> 0:45:11.960 was like shooting out a couple feet when we punched 0:45:11.960 --> 0:45:12.520 a hole in it. 0:45:13.200 --> 0:45:17.200 Oh how many flukes does it take to do that? 0:45:17.480 --> 0:45:20.680 I don't know, but it was a lot like it. 0:45:20.680 --> 0:45:23.680 It was pretty pretty trashed when you got to the liver, 0:45:23.840 --> 0:45:26.719 and for an animal that young to have that much 0:45:26.800 --> 0:45:28.200 damage when. 0:45:28.080 --> 0:45:29.640 You get to something like that, how do you ever, 0:45:31.400 --> 0:45:36.360 how do you ever make the determination that this is new? 0:45:36.520 --> 0:45:38.759 This has always been here but we hadn't noticed it, 0:45:39.160 --> 0:45:41.360 do you? I mean, like, how do you ever go 0:45:41.480 --> 0:45:42.160 down that path? 0:45:42.360 --> 0:45:45.279 Yeah, it's hard because you're just comparing it to what 0:45:45.360 --> 0:45:49.160 you know already. And that's why we have challenges sometimes 0:45:49.200 --> 0:45:51.840 with saying things are a problem because we get so 0:45:51.920 --> 0:45:56.160 many things opportunistically where we can't go out and just 0:45:56.200 --> 0:45:59.200 sample the population like we'd like to randomly and say, okay, 0:45:59.280 --> 0:46:03.200 is this normal or not normal? So yeah, we have 0:46:03.280 --> 0:46:07.680 to do some some creative statistics and just doing this 0:46:07.760 --> 0:46:10.560 work over time, you get a baseline so you kind 0:46:10.560 --> 0:46:13.200 of know are things you know, we've never seen this 0:46:13.320 --> 0:46:15.919 before in the you know, New York has a really 0:46:15.960 --> 0:46:19.960 long history of doing wildlife health and knowing what's normal 0:46:20.000 --> 0:46:23.399 and what's not. So those people are are really good 0:46:23.440 --> 0:46:26.799 resource of institutional knowledge to compare against to say, hey, 0:46:27.280 --> 0:46:28.560 what do you normally see. 0:46:28.719 --> 0:46:31.239 And to return that real quick to the work you 0:46:31.280 --> 0:46:33.440 guys are doing downstairs. But we're looking at this morning, 0:46:33.640 --> 0:46:38.160 is that gives you that influx of animals coming in, 0:46:38.880 --> 0:46:44.200 gives you a chance to look for this stuff. Meaning, 0:46:44.239 --> 0:46:47.200 someone hits a moose with a car, the moose comes 0:46:47.200 --> 0:46:50.560 in and you'd be like, oh, does not or does yeah, right, 0:46:50.600 --> 0:46:53.000 and it allows you to start getting a snapshot of 0:46:53.000 --> 0:46:55.000 what's going on out there, even though like we looked 0:46:55.040 --> 0:46:59.759 at a bobcat this morning that obviously ques. 0:47:01.160 --> 0:47:02.439 Pretty yeah, that one was. 0:47:02.440 --> 0:47:05.919 Fairly obviously like probably from the report of whoever brought 0:47:05.960 --> 0:47:08.439 it in, but also just like at a glance, it's 0:47:08.480 --> 0:47:10.320 like this thing's been run over by a car bad 0:47:11.680 --> 0:47:15.080 but you're able to check to see its other what 0:47:15.120 --> 0:47:17.200 its health might have been like prior to it getting 0:47:17.239 --> 0:47:17.560 hit by. 0:47:17.520 --> 0:47:19.960 A car, exactly was there something that may have predisposed 0:47:20.000 --> 0:47:22.640 it to getting hit by a car. So it's sort 0:47:22.680 --> 0:47:24.800 of a judgment call, Like we don't run every test 0:47:24.840 --> 0:47:28.400 on every animal because that would be prohibitively expensive, but 0:47:29.040 --> 0:47:33.400 by saving the tissues, if there's sort of you know, 0:47:33.520 --> 0:47:36.880 a potential smoking gun out there that might have caused 0:47:36.920 --> 0:47:41.319 something like you know, for some of these animals, like 0:47:41.600 --> 0:47:45.080 maybe they had something you know, on board, or maybe 0:47:45.080 --> 0:47:46.719 they were sick and that's why they walked in front 0:47:46.760 --> 0:47:48.279 of the car. Maybe they weren't quite right. 0:47:48.600 --> 0:47:52.080 So yep, you know, yeah, Christ was saying to me earlier, 0:47:52.120 --> 0:47:56.600 you were talking about found dead, and you were saying, 0:47:57.560 --> 0:47:59.600 tell me more found dead. 0:48:00.040 --> 0:48:02.200 Found dead isn't really helpful, Like we know the animal's 0:48:02.239 --> 0:48:03.279 dead already, like. 0:48:03.400 --> 0:48:05.800 Found dead below a power line. Yep, found dead and 0:48:05.840 --> 0:48:09.399 the birds nests found dead below a big window, right, 0:48:09.560 --> 0:48:12.480 found dead where yeah, found dead after it bit your 0:48:12.480 --> 0:48:13.640 dog exactly. 0:48:14.080 --> 0:48:16.400 Yeah. So one of the things when I go out 0:48:16.440 --> 0:48:20.319 and talk to the biologists about sort of doing like 0:48:20.680 --> 0:48:24.560 a crime scene investigation type work, because a lot of 0:48:24.600 --> 0:48:27.120 times they get tunnel vision on the animal and they 0:48:27.160 --> 0:48:28.759 go and pick up the animal and they're worried about 0:48:28.800 --> 0:48:31.359 putting their gloves on and doing everything right. But you know, 0:48:32.160 --> 0:48:35.960 letting us know what the situation is because that is 0:48:36.000 --> 0:48:39.120 really a huge part of solving the puzzle. You know, 0:48:39.320 --> 0:48:42.759 is it hot out? Is you know, is a species migrating? 0:48:42.880 --> 0:48:46.879 Is it? You know we've been seeing sort of low 0:48:46.960 --> 0:48:49.520 level of mortality in this area for a long time. 0:48:49.719 --> 0:48:53.080 Or you know, we found a twenty turkeys dead and 0:48:53.160 --> 0:48:55.680 there was a smoking tree because it got hit by lightning. 0:48:56.160 --> 0:48:59.880 You know, those types of things are really very helpful 0:49:00.080 --> 0:49:03.600 and getting a diagnosis because a lot of times carcasses 0:49:03.640 --> 0:49:05.640 will come in and you know, if it's found dead, 0:49:05.680 --> 0:49:08.399 you don't know how long this thing's been dead for. 0:49:09.080 --> 0:49:11.920 And if it's hot out, they tend to rot really quickly, 0:49:11.960 --> 0:49:15.839 and when that happens, the pathologist will call that autolized. 0:49:16.560 --> 0:49:20.440 And so you know, it's different than having a pet 0:49:20.560 --> 0:49:23.160 that might be euthanized at a clinic and then you 0:49:23.200 --> 0:49:26.320 open it up and it's you know, fresh, these things 0:49:26.320 --> 0:49:27.920 a lot of times we don't know how long they've 0:49:27.960 --> 0:49:31.920 been dead for, and you know, they rot pretty quickly 0:49:31.960 --> 0:49:33.080 depending on the conditions. 0:49:33.840 --> 0:49:37.120 When earlier we explored the idea of being a disease ecologist, 0:49:37.120 --> 0:49:40.640 and you talked about because you know, you're looking at 0:49:40.920 --> 0:49:47.759 a complex situation with all these other inputs. If you're 0:49:47.800 --> 0:49:49.919 looking at a bunch, if you're looking at a lot 0:49:49.960 --> 0:49:52.439 of moose and you're seeing that in northern New York, 0:49:52.480 --> 0:49:55.880 you're having a high prevalence of liver flukes in moose 0:49:56.400 --> 0:50:00.640 you call their moose. A significant percentage of those moose 0:50:00.680 --> 0:50:06.319 die from liver flukes. Who you're not the one that 0:50:07.239 --> 0:50:11.240 declares that liver flukes are having a population level impact 0:50:11.320 --> 0:50:15.680 on moose or are you or does that? Does that? 0:50:16.200 --> 0:50:19.480 Does that information then go to down the road to 0:50:19.560 --> 0:50:22.520 someone else who's doing population level work? 0:50:22.640 --> 0:50:25.480 Oh no, We so we work really closely with the 0:50:25.520 --> 0:50:28.680 New York Department of Environmental Conservation and so we have 0:50:28.840 --> 0:50:34.240 a PhD student working on this because it's a research 0:50:34.520 --> 0:50:38.080 project with them to try to define what's happening with 0:50:38.160 --> 0:50:43.000 the moose population. So, yeah, the student will do population modeling, 0:50:43.080 --> 0:50:45.680 will help out with that based on you know, the 0:50:45.719 --> 0:50:49.839 mortality information that we have from you know, collected over 0:50:49.880 --> 0:50:52.239 the years. She just sent me a manuscript about it. 0:50:54.200 --> 0:50:56.319 You know, we'll we'll try to figure out what's going 0:50:56.360 --> 0:50:58.760 on with that population and then we'll feed that directly 0:50:58.800 --> 0:51:01.839 to the state agency so they can put it into 0:51:01.880 --> 0:51:04.480 their moose management plan and decide how they want to proceed. 0:51:05.000 --> 0:51:10.040 Had it been flagged prior that moose numbers are declining, 0:51:10.160 --> 0:51:13.040 and that opened up the sort of investigation about what 0:51:13.120 --> 0:51:14.320 is going on exactly. 0:51:14.360 --> 0:51:17.719 So there was work done by a lot of other 0:51:17.800 --> 0:51:22.799 researchers looking at archery, hunters, fighting logs to try to 0:51:22.920 --> 0:51:27.040 estimate the population. There's been helicopter surveys for moose trying 0:51:27.040 --> 0:51:29.680 to estimate the population over time and see if it's 0:51:29.760 --> 0:51:34.920 you know, stable, declining increasing. So yeah, and then like 0:51:35.080 --> 0:51:37.719 all the mortality tracking that we've done and trying to 0:51:37.760 --> 0:51:41.360 determine cause of death, we did some preliminary modeling to say, okay, 0:51:41.400 --> 0:51:45.320 we think it's juvenile moose that are being most impacted, 0:51:45.360 --> 0:51:48.000 so those are the ones we should emphasize for putting 0:51:48.040 --> 0:51:50.960 the callers on. You know, there was a previous helicopter 0:51:51.560 --> 0:51:55.000 capture with adult females and with that we were able 0:51:55.080 --> 0:51:59.360 to work with other researchers to develop a test to 0:51:59.400 --> 0:52:03.000 look for brain worm. And when we tested those adult females, 0:52:03.040 --> 0:52:05.200 it showed that they had exposure to brainworm, but they 0:52:05.239 --> 0:52:08.400 obviously survived, So that kind of changed the dogma that 0:52:08.640 --> 0:52:11.799 brainworm might be a death sentence for moose because we 0:52:11.880 --> 0:52:14.600 think that these females got infected and they were able 0:52:14.640 --> 0:52:19.000 to survive the infection. So yeah, trying to get a 0:52:19.040 --> 0:52:21.440 sense of that, we knew the females were also pregnant. 0:52:22.440 --> 0:52:25.080 The state biologists walked in on a lot of these 0:52:25.120 --> 0:52:28.279 to actually get eyes on calves to see if they 0:52:28.280 --> 0:52:31.400 had you know, singles or twins, to kind of get 0:52:31.400 --> 0:52:32.879 those reproductive numbers as well. 0:52:32.960 --> 0:52:36.080 Yep, let's talk about the ego for a minute. 0:52:36.120 --> 0:52:37.879 Oh wait, we didn't finish winter tech though. 0:52:37.880 --> 0:52:39.279 Oh no, okay, let's go back to winter tix. 0:52:39.360 --> 0:52:42.960 Okay. So winter tick is a problem that they're seeing 0:52:43.120 --> 0:52:47.799 in Maine, in New Hampshire and Vermont pretty significantly, also 0:52:47.920 --> 0:52:52.879 killing juvenile moose, and they're trying some new management strategies 0:52:52.920 --> 0:52:56.319 to decrease the population density of moose to see if 0:52:56.320 --> 0:52:59.560 that slows down the transmission of winter tick. Because winter 0:52:59.600 --> 0:53:03.680 tick aren't another thing that deer carry. That deer can manage. 0:53:03.800 --> 0:53:06.680 They can groom themselves enough to get the winter ticks off, 0:53:06.719 --> 0:53:08.759 but moose don't seem to be able to do that 0:53:09.320 --> 0:53:11.640 quite as well. So when they. 0:53:11.239 --> 0:53:13.320 Trying to lower moose numbers. 0:53:13.080 --> 0:53:14.520 Yeah, just stop save moose. 0:53:14.680 --> 0:53:18.759 That that's a logic that is going to be that's 0:53:18.760 --> 0:53:21.759 a logic that's going to be challenged by a lot 0:53:21.800 --> 0:53:22.719 of moose hunters. 0:53:22.920 --> 0:53:25.600 Yeah. Well, I guess, I guess if you're a moose 0:53:25.640 --> 0:53:27.839 hunter right now, it's good for you, right like, if 0:53:27.880 --> 0:53:29.320 you're out there helping. 0:53:29.560 --> 0:53:33.840 That's how they're doing the boring of density. But you know, 0:53:33.920 --> 0:53:38.400 the old line, I don't know if it came from Vietnam, 0:53:38.520 --> 0:53:45.280 but the concept of burning a village to save it, right. Uh, 0:53:45.719 --> 0:53:46.600 that's hard for people. 0:53:46.760 --> 0:53:48.279 Oh, I know, I deal with that all the time 0:53:48.280 --> 0:53:52.719 with gronic wasting disease. Yeah, but in New York, we 0:53:52.840 --> 0:53:56.160 hadn't seen winter tick the same way that other Northeast 0:53:56.160 --> 0:54:01.120 states had until recently. So with some of the captured 0:54:01.200 --> 0:54:04.880 moose when they do assessments for winter ticks, so they 0:54:04.920 --> 0:54:08.200 look for them on live animals, and they found more 0:54:08.239 --> 0:54:11.560 than we had seen previously. And we're starting to get 0:54:11.600 --> 0:54:17.280 some game cam pictures in that looks like the typical 0:54:17.320 --> 0:54:19.759 hair loss pattern that you see on moose where they're 0:54:19.760 --> 0:54:23.320 missing hair on the shoulder. And some of the states 0:54:23.320 --> 0:54:27.160 that have it pretty significantly, like Maine and Minnesota, they 0:54:27.160 --> 0:54:29.399 actually call them ghost moose where they've lost so much 0:54:29.440 --> 0:54:32.120 hair that they appear more white because they've rubbed off 0:54:32.320 --> 0:54:33.720 all those guard hairs and everything. 0:54:33.800 --> 0:54:42.120 Really, yeah, let's say you knew, not that you don't know. 0:54:42.760 --> 0:54:46.400 Let's say we know that has a population level impact, 0:54:47.560 --> 0:54:49.919 or the brain worm for instance, or either one of these. 0:54:51.280 --> 0:54:54.200 There's nothing I mean, is there is there any control 0:54:54.360 --> 0:54:57.800 mechanism that would wind up being helpful? 0:54:58.440 --> 0:55:00.839 Well, if you didn't have as many white tail deer 0:55:01.120 --> 0:55:02.960 in moose territory that would be helpful. 0:55:03.160 --> 0:55:03.759 Yeah. 0:55:04.080 --> 0:55:10.719 So, I mean Maine is trying really hard to talk 0:55:10.760 --> 0:55:14.840 about chronic waste and disease and deer numbers and moose 0:55:15.719 --> 0:55:17.960 because a lot of the towns there have started feeding 0:55:18.000 --> 0:55:21.000 programs and those are really hard to stop once they 0:55:21.040 --> 0:55:23.480 get started, because then you have too many deer and 0:55:23.520 --> 0:55:25.680 then you know, people obviously don't want to see them 0:55:25.680 --> 0:55:28.240 starving in winter, so they keep feeding and keep feeding, 0:55:28.280 --> 0:55:32.120 and so then you just can't get people to stop 0:55:32.160 --> 0:55:33.800 it because they don't want the animals to die. 0:55:34.160 --> 0:55:39.000 You know. In Alaska, in eastern Alaska, they have like 0:55:39.239 --> 0:55:44.120 basically a shoot on site policy for meal deer coming 0:55:44.160 --> 0:55:49.640 into Alaska. Yeah, not welcome right around disease issues, right, yep, 0:55:50.000 --> 0:55:57.560 being that those deer are getting there due to human 0:55:58.200 --> 0:56:02.439 induced habitat changes yep. Following road systems, right. 0:56:02.640 --> 0:56:04.759 I mean you see that west with white tails edge 0:56:04.800 --> 0:56:07.000 habitats right, following rivers. 0:56:06.800 --> 0:56:10.320 Up, Yeah, and just and it's changed the policy on 0:56:10.400 --> 0:56:13.360 it's changed mildly, but basically it's like if you see it, 0:56:13.440 --> 0:56:15.279 kill it, yeah, like not wanting the man. 0:56:15.560 --> 0:56:19.880 I know, it's it's challenging because we've you know, I 0:56:19.920 --> 0:56:24.080 think people forget that we've altered habitats so significantly and 0:56:24.400 --> 0:56:27.280 have an impact, and that we're not We're not separate 0:56:27.320 --> 0:56:31.920 from nature. And you know, I hunt deer and you know, 0:56:32.040 --> 0:56:34.239 eat a lot of venison. But in a lot of 0:56:34.239 --> 0:56:36.920 places there's deer densities that are way too high, and 0:56:37.200 --> 0:56:39.400 they're problematic for a lot of different reasons, you know, 0:56:39.520 --> 0:56:43.719 chronic wasting disease being one of them. So, uh, if 0:56:43.840 --> 0:56:47.560 there are ways to lower deer densities or not encourage 0:56:47.600 --> 0:56:51.440 them to encroach in new areas, that's something that I 0:56:51.480 --> 0:56:52.760 think hunters should be behind. 0:56:55.360 --> 0:56:58.000 Can we talk about eagles? Yes, go ahead, you guys 0:56:58.000 --> 0:56:58.479 had an eagle. 0:56:58.560 --> 0:56:59.280 We had an eagle. 0:57:00.160 --> 0:57:02.839 Your interests we're looking. We're looking at an eagle. They 0:57:02.840 --> 0:57:07.120 hadn't begun the knee cropsy on it yet. I asked 0:57:07.719 --> 0:57:09.600 if eagle I could see if eagles were still in 0:57:09.719 --> 0:57:15.640 EESA species and Endangered Species Act Endangered Species Act, Protected Species, 0:57:15.640 --> 0:57:17.640 I could see that like every eagle that died, you'd 0:57:17.680 --> 0:57:18.880 want to take a gander at it. 0:57:19.000 --> 0:57:20.240 That's how it was for years, and. 0:57:21.720 --> 0:57:26.440 That's not the case anymore. Eagles are recovered, Eagle populations 0:57:26.440 --> 0:57:31.480 are increasing. What is why are you guys interest in eagles? 0:57:32.320 --> 0:57:33.560 And then I want to get to the turtle. 0:57:33.840 --> 0:57:36.160 Okay, we'll talk eagles. 0:57:37.160 --> 0:57:38.640 What's of interest about eagles? 0:57:38.960 --> 0:57:43.400 So, eagles are good indicator species for a lot of 0:57:43.440 --> 0:57:45.800 things because the public pays attention to them. You know, 0:57:45.840 --> 0:57:48.600 if people find a bald eagle, they feel compelled to 0:57:48.680 --> 0:57:50.320 report it, so they. 0:57:50.160 --> 0:57:52.760 Feel compelled to tell you that they're seeing one. When 0:57:52.760 --> 0:57:54.760 I have friends come up to my place in Alaska, 0:57:55.280 --> 0:57:58.400 I have to wait a few days for them to 0:57:58.440 --> 0:58:00.840 stop reporting to me that there's eagles. 0:58:01.320 --> 0:58:03.200 Oh, I've got to go to eagle in Alaska store. 0:58:03.720 --> 0:58:05.479 You know what, Wait a minute, and there'll be twenty 0:58:05.560 --> 0:58:07.560 in a tree. And at some point on this trip 0:58:07.560 --> 0:58:10.320 you're going to stop observing them. They're just there. 0:58:11.320 --> 0:58:15.520 I had in my previous job with the US Geological 0:58:15.520 --> 0:58:17.520 Survey at the National Wildlife Health Center. I would hear 0:58:17.520 --> 0:58:20.800 about these mass mortality events and do investigations on them, 0:58:21.320 --> 0:58:25.320 and one of them was about all these bald eagles 0:58:25.360 --> 0:58:30.120 in Alaska where if a truck leaves a fish processing facility, 0:58:30.160 --> 0:58:32.960 it needs to be covered because if it's not, the 0:58:33.000 --> 0:58:35.600 eagles will start dive bombing it to get all the 0:58:35.640 --> 0:58:40.240 fish parts and so one left and was not covered. 0:58:40.280 --> 0:58:43.120 Eagles started going into it and just kept like piling 0:58:43.200 --> 0:58:45.360 in on top of each other, and like twenty bald 0:58:45.360 --> 0:58:49.200 eagles died in this fish truck, just mothering each other, 0:58:49.400 --> 0:58:50.040 like trying to get. 0:58:49.920 --> 0:58:53.240 To thunds after a soccer tournament. Yeah, yeah, so like 0:58:53.280 --> 0:58:56.480 a stampede. It really. 0:58:56.640 --> 0:59:00.200 Yeah, so a bunch of eagles died just smashing each 0:59:00.200 --> 0:59:02.160 other trying to get to the fish parts. God, it's 0:59:02.200 --> 0:59:07.200 so like uneagle, Like everybody has these ideas of eagles 0:59:07.240 --> 0:59:08.400 being so majestic. 0:59:10.400 --> 0:59:10.920 Didn't like him. 0:59:11.600 --> 0:59:13.560 He wanted the turkey, right, Well. 0:59:13.200 --> 0:59:17.840 That's a myth, but he was being uh, he was 0:59:17.920 --> 0:59:21.680 very disappointed the eagle, and he when he threw the 0:59:21.680 --> 0:59:24.680 turkey thing, he was disappoint because the eagles are scavengers, 0:59:24.760 --> 0:59:26.960 and you know, I didn't think it was a great 0:59:27.000 --> 0:59:31.680 symbol for the country and the way most historians regard 0:59:31.760 --> 0:59:35.080 his comment about the wild turkeys. He was saying basically 0:59:35.200 --> 0:59:39.000 was like, puh, might as well do the wild turkey. Okay, 0:59:39.080 --> 0:59:44.600 at least he's vain, right, Yeah, it wasn't. It's not. 0:59:45.120 --> 0:59:47.720 It's but most people are. 0:59:48.040 --> 0:59:49.920 They don't get the attitude with it. 0:59:50.440 --> 0:59:55.040 Because he didn't write down. But you know that is implied. 0:59:56.360 --> 0:59:59.000 Just make it the turkey. At least he's vain. But 0:59:59.040 --> 1:00:03.040 it wasn't. They think it was in uh In the 1:00:03.080 --> 1:00:06.000 suggestion wasn't jestice, but he was legitimately not happy with 1:00:06.040 --> 1:00:06.440 the eagle. 1:00:06.640 --> 1:00:06.960 Okay. 1:00:07.200 --> 1:00:09.400 Well, yeah, a scavenger bird. 1:00:09.320 --> 1:00:12.280 Right, And we see like conspecific trauma all the time, 1:00:12.360 --> 1:00:15.960 like eagles puncturing each other from fighting and things like that. 1:00:16.200 --> 1:00:17.760 So yeah, I mean. 1:00:17.720 --> 1:00:20.760 But they're a good indicator species, right because people taking 1:00:20.760 --> 1:00:22.480 hovere of seb them exactly. And I did. Man if 1:00:22.520 --> 1:00:24.200 I was walking down the road and I saw a dead. 1:00:24.040 --> 1:00:26.200 Eagle, you do something I would. 1:00:26.520 --> 1:00:28.040 Let's say I was walking on the road and on 1:00:28.040 --> 1:00:29.760 the right hand side of the road is a dead eagle. 1:00:29.800 --> 1:00:31.280 In the left hand side of the road is a 1:00:31.320 --> 1:00:33.360 dead buzzard. I'm gonna pay way more attention to the 1:00:33.360 --> 1:00:33.800 dead eagle. 1:00:33.920 --> 1:00:34.120 I know. 1:00:34.160 --> 1:00:35.760 Buzzards don't get any love to. 1:00:35.720 --> 1:00:37.480 The point where I might even notify someone about it 1:00:38.000 --> 1:00:39.040 because I would think of. 1:00:39.080 --> 1:00:40.840 Someone shooting eagles exactly. 1:00:41.040 --> 1:00:43.560 They pissed at eagles, people having that eagle. 1:00:44.000 --> 1:00:58.560 Yeah, So we're looking at them for a couple different reasons. 1:00:58.600 --> 1:01:01.520 One of them is just to keep that historic trend 1:01:01.840 --> 1:01:04.200 going where we want to keep an eye on what's 1:01:04.240 --> 1:01:09.800 happening with them. I mentioned we just finished a study 1:01:09.840 --> 1:01:12.640 a few years ago looking at bald eagles and lead, 1:01:13.280 --> 1:01:18.560 and so we gathered data from seven different Northeast states 1:01:19.120 --> 1:01:24.920 and it was diagnostic labs, rehabers, you know, state agencies 1:01:25.440 --> 1:01:28.080 and put all that together to answer that exact question, 1:01:28.360 --> 1:01:32.200 you know, does lead have a population level impact on eagles? 1:01:32.760 --> 1:01:36.800 And so we put that together and then did some 1:01:37.040 --> 1:01:41.880 very fancy mathematics with my research associate, Brenda Hanley, and 1:01:42.680 --> 1:01:46.400 figured out that led you know, we all know eagles 1:01:46.400 --> 1:01:49.560 have recovered, like there's no debate about that, but the 1:01:49.640 --> 1:01:54.080 long term growth rate of eagles was depressed by three 1:01:54.080 --> 1:01:58.600 to five percent by lead poisoning. And so it wasn't 1:01:58.680 --> 1:02:01.360 that it stopped the the recovery. It was just like 1:02:01.640 --> 1:02:04.600 driving a car forward with your foot on the brake. 1:02:04.680 --> 1:02:08.480 So it just kind of you know, didn't didn't make 1:02:08.520 --> 1:02:12.320 it optimal, and so we used a bunch. 1:02:12.080 --> 1:02:14.440 Of slowing like slowing recovery. 1:02:14.600 --> 1:02:19.760 Yeah, so it it still happened, but it would have 1:02:19.760 --> 1:02:23.640 been more efficient if eagles weren't getting lead poisoning. 1:02:24.000 --> 1:02:30.000 So now would there be uh, we were talking about 1:02:30.000 --> 1:02:32.920 trigger warnings. I'm going to give it. I'm going to 1:02:32.960 --> 1:02:34.440 issue my first ever trigger warning. 1:02:34.560 --> 1:02:37.200 Really should I do I get like a plaque or something. 1:02:37.320 --> 1:02:38.400 No, you're not cann get triggered. 1:02:38.600 --> 1:02:40.800 Okay, but this is I was I was. 1:02:40.720 --> 1:02:48.600 Trying to see clarification about what. You know, I heard 1:02:48.600 --> 1:02:50.000 it all the time. I never knew what the element 1:02:50.800 --> 1:02:52.680 it would be. You notify someone if they were going 1:02:52.760 --> 1:02:56.480 to hear something upset. People get riled up about this subject. 1:02:56.760 --> 1:02:57.040 I know. 1:02:57.200 --> 1:03:02.439 You know, when we're talking about lead in birds, it's 1:03:03.080 --> 1:03:04.160 we're talking about bullets. 1:03:04.280 --> 1:03:04.560 I know. 1:03:05.240 --> 1:03:07.560 Okay, So for you people that are going to get 1:03:07.600 --> 1:03:11.800 all one way, like, no matter what, you're gonna if 1:03:11.840 --> 1:03:15.040 you hate lead ammo, if you love let ammo, here's 1:03:15.040 --> 1:03:18.439 a trigger warning, okay, because you're gonna hear yourself. 1:03:18.080 --> 1:03:20.400 To discuss something I know, right. 1:03:20.880 --> 1:03:23.120 And like, there's very few people who just want to 1:03:23.160 --> 1:03:28.439 discuss things. Not very few. There's a lot of people 1:03:28.440 --> 1:03:30.080 who just don't even want to talk about ship. 1:03:30.200 --> 1:03:34.000 Oh I know, yeah, I know, my dad not interested 1:03:34.080 --> 1:03:35.480 in discussing this whatsoever. 1:03:36.360 --> 1:03:38.480 They'd rather just be that I don't want to talk 1:03:38.480 --> 1:03:41.640 about it. But we're going to talk about it so, 1:03:42.240 --> 1:03:44.400 and I'll and I'll do my best to throw in 1:03:44.720 --> 1:03:47.840 I'll do my best to interject, like, well, what about isms? 1:03:48.080 --> 1:03:54.680 Okay, we're talking about bullet lead, Yes. 1:03:55.080 --> 1:04:01.200 And birds get bullet lead by eating shit that's been 1:04:01.200 --> 1:04:05.800 shot with a bullet. With a bullet. So you go, 1:04:07.320 --> 1:04:12.840 you get a deer, say you shoot a deer hid 1:04:12.920 --> 1:04:15.960 in the shoulder blade. You're using some kind of you know, 1:04:16.360 --> 1:04:19.120 jacketed bullet, some kind of bonded bullet. Whatever, it's a 1:04:19.280 --> 1:04:28.400 it's it's probably copper sheathed around of small what what 1:04:28.760 --> 1:04:31.920 what would strike you as a very small monol lead? Okay, 1:04:32.000 --> 1:04:35.000 so most bullets have there's a lot of different bullet construction. 1:04:35.120 --> 1:04:38.000 But if we're going to divide two big game, big 1:04:38.000 --> 1:04:41.680 game bullets into two classifications for our purposes here, we 1:04:41.680 --> 1:04:45.560 would talk about like monolithic, meaning that they're all copper 1:04:48.040 --> 1:04:51.040 or there are some combination of copper and lead. There 1:04:51.080 --> 1:04:53.400 was a time when it was just lead, but they've 1:04:53.440 --> 1:04:56.560 mostly most bullets are jacketed. So you shoot a deer 1:04:56.720 --> 1:05:00.560 hit in the shoulder blade, that bullet breaks up, sends 1:05:00.560 --> 1:05:04.640 little bits of stuff here and there, deer dies. Everybody's 1:05:04.640 --> 1:05:08.760 happy you except for the deer. Yeah, deer's dead. Everybody 1:05:08.760 --> 1:05:13.280 else is happy. You got the deer. Maybe while you're 1:05:13.280 --> 1:05:18.760 gutting the deer, you uh, you have some damage, some 1:05:18.800 --> 1:05:22.840 severe damage on the opposing shoulder. You cut that out 1:05:22.840 --> 1:05:27.040 and don't even bring that home. Later you butcher your 1:05:27.040 --> 1:05:30.160 deer at home. There's some parts that are shot up 1:05:30.360 --> 1:05:33.120 that you don't want. You take those and you go 1:05:33.160 --> 1:05:35.720 out and put them out back because you like to 1:05:35.760 --> 1:05:40.360 watch birds and whatnot. Whatever you dump in a ditch somewhere, 1:05:40.480 --> 1:05:43.720 whatever you do, and it winds up being introduced into 1:05:43.760 --> 1:05:48.480 the food chain in the wild. Things consume it and 1:05:48.520 --> 1:05:50.880 they can get let And if you're like we had 1:05:50.960 --> 1:05:55.120 mentioned earlier in a bald eagle whose specialty is scavenging, right, 1:05:55.800 --> 1:05:59.800 and your long lived bird, and you get tuned into 1:05:59.800 --> 1:06:02.960 deer gut piles, and you're like most things where you 1:06:03.000 --> 1:06:06.680 realize that a great place to there's certain great places 1:06:06.680 --> 1:06:08.920 to hang out in the fall because that's going on. 1:06:09.440 --> 1:06:12.200 I remember to give an example of how would animals 1:06:12.200 --> 1:06:15.560 ever tune into this. I remember hearing about this project 1:06:15.600 --> 1:06:21.320 where there's a particular highway in northern Montana where there's 1:06:21.400 --> 1:06:24.280 really high white tailed deer populations, and it would actually 1:06:24.400 --> 1:06:29.520 impact Golden Eagle distribution that there were eagles who would 1:06:29.560 --> 1:06:32.400 spend their winter they were specially they were roadkill specialists. 1:06:33.320 --> 1:06:35.400 It would spend their winter around ninety three. 1:06:36.400 --> 1:06:37.240 Yeah, psycha. 1:06:37.360 --> 1:06:40.680 You could make a living all winter flying up and 1:06:40.720 --> 1:06:43.920 down and picking off eat one carcass, go to the 1:06:43.960 --> 1:06:47.160 next carcass. So you're an eagle, you live a long time. 1:06:47.560 --> 1:06:50.880 Over the course of your lifetime, you'd enough little tidbits 1:06:50.920 --> 1:06:56.240 of lead that you get a lead poisoning, you get 1:06:56.240 --> 1:06:58.080 a fatal mono lettin. You're shaking your head. 1:06:58.120 --> 1:07:01.760 No, well potentially, yeah, But the way we looked at 1:07:01.760 --> 1:07:06.600 it was so there would be eagles that didn't have 1:07:06.680 --> 1:07:10.600 any lead on board, then there would be exposed eagles 1:07:10.840 --> 1:07:12.480 that had, you know, a little bit. And we have 1:07:12.560 --> 1:07:15.880 problems sometimes people talk about like chronic and acute, which 1:07:15.920 --> 1:07:18.400 you're kind of talking about like chronic over the course 1:07:18.440 --> 1:07:24.400 of your lifetime, and then there's sort of levels that 1:07:24.840 --> 1:07:26.640 are enough to kill. 1:07:26.440 --> 1:07:28.120 You over in a dose. 1:07:28.360 --> 1:07:31.840 Yeah, nice, and then that would be like lead poisoning. 1:07:32.320 --> 1:07:35.720 And so people would often term like if you get 1:07:35.800 --> 1:07:38.520 a big helping like if you ease lead sinker or 1:07:38.560 --> 1:07:41.840 something that would be acute lead poisoning and that would 1:07:41.840 --> 1:07:44.040 be a level you know, enough to kill you. 1:07:44.320 --> 1:07:46.200 So dying from a single meal. 1:07:46.600 --> 1:07:49.800 Yeah, we can't tell that the way that we get 1:07:49.800 --> 1:07:52.360 the data, So we don't know if they accumulate enough 1:07:52.440 --> 1:07:55.400 lead over time to kill you know, to get to 1:07:55.440 --> 1:07:57.960 that level, or if they just eat, you know, happen 1:07:58.040 --> 1:08:01.400 to get a fragment that's big enough. Because a lead 1:08:01.400 --> 1:08:04.120 fragment a small grain of rice is enough to kill 1:08:04.160 --> 1:08:07.320 an eagle because they have a very acidic digestive system 1:08:07.880 --> 1:08:11.520 and so they break that down a lot more than 1:08:11.600 --> 1:08:14.200 like people eating lead. You know, it tends to pass 1:08:14.280 --> 1:08:17.479 through and not get as digested as it might in 1:08:17.560 --> 1:08:18.040 an eagle. 1:08:18.520 --> 1:08:20.599 See, that's the thing I'll hear from people is they'll 1:08:20.640 --> 1:08:23.080 say that that lad and a lot of things that 1:08:23.200 --> 1:08:26.320 lead just passes through and you're not breaking it down. 1:08:26.600 --> 1:08:29.639 But we did. We're doing a study now looking at 1:08:29.640 --> 1:08:32.960 fissure so mammalian scavengers to try to figure out, you know, 1:08:33.439 --> 1:08:37.759 our other animals getting led from what we term attractive 1:08:37.840 --> 1:08:41.400 nuisances like a gut pile. And I want to say 1:08:41.520 --> 1:08:45.880 it's like seventy percent of the fissures we've texted from 1:08:46.080 --> 1:08:50.360 hunter from trapped animals had some levels of lead in them. 1:08:50.600 --> 1:08:53.240 So a lot of fishers are getting. 1:08:53.160 --> 1:08:56.160 Lead to some level led in them in what way 1:08:57.080 --> 1:09:00.360 from scavenging? No, no, but detected where in them? 1:09:00.400 --> 1:09:03.760 In their liver? Okay, So we asked trappers did to 1:09:03.800 --> 1:09:06.840 give us carcasses. We took out the livers and tested them. 1:09:06.880 --> 1:09:10.599 And you incinerate the liver and then it leaves behind 1:09:10.760 --> 1:09:14.200 these metal residues. Ye, you can find the lead. And 1:09:14.280 --> 1:09:16.120 how much lead might you get out of a fisher's liver? 1:09:16.880 --> 1:09:20.160 They were like just trace amount, so not not super high, 1:09:20.240 --> 1:09:22.919 not enough to kill them obviously because they were trapped animals. 1:09:23.240 --> 1:09:26.760 And I'm not trying to like create like a suspicion 1:09:26.760 --> 1:09:31.320 of doubt, but what else might they have done to 1:09:31.320 --> 1:09:32.920 get that lead? Is there any other. 1:09:33.439 --> 1:09:38.280 I mean, people throw out ideas like tire weights, you know, 1:09:38.320 --> 1:09:40.559 if there's tire weights that have been thrown off tires 1:09:40.600 --> 1:09:46.080 alongside the chewing on that potentially discarded batteries. 1:09:46.479 --> 1:09:47.439 And they're chewing on that. 1:09:48.520 --> 1:09:50.920 I don't but these are the things that people. 1:09:50.680 --> 1:09:53.799 To create a suspicion or to throw out some possible 1:09:53.800 --> 1:09:55.000 other explanations exactly. 1:09:55.040 --> 1:09:58.479 And so for some of the eagle stuff, we did 1:09:58.520 --> 1:10:03.040 try to look at the isotopes, the lead isotopes to 1:10:03.120 --> 1:10:05.240 figure out is it coming from bullets or is it 1:10:05.280 --> 1:10:08.640 coming from you know, lead paint chips or whatever. And 1:10:08.680 --> 1:10:13.719 so we did that analysis. But apparently because there's such 1:10:14.320 --> 1:10:18.240 a limited amount of lead smelting anymore, that a lot 1:10:18.280 --> 1:10:21.759 of the lead is recycled, so you can't tell where 1:10:21.800 --> 1:10:25.160 that lead actually came from. So we weren't able to 1:10:25.479 --> 1:10:26.200 identify it. 1:10:26.240 --> 1:10:29.240 But you know, logic bullet for bullet making, that's all 1:10:29.320 --> 1:10:31.559 recycled lead, right, so all from batteries. 1:10:32.680 --> 1:10:35.280 Yeah, we did try, but it wasn't helpful. 1:10:35.400 --> 1:10:38.000 Here's the thing people say, and this isn't your area, 1:10:38.120 --> 1:10:40.920 but this is a thing people would point to. Here 1:10:41.000 --> 1:10:44.400 you have that. Let's take the eagle example, and the 1:10:44.439 --> 1:10:46.360 eagle we look at today will have we'll be tested 1:10:46.360 --> 1:10:52.640 for lead. Yes, Okay, there's an argument that it's not 1:10:52.680 --> 1:10:54.439 an argument you can ignore really because it's a it's 1:10:54.479 --> 1:11:00.599 a sound argument. Be eagles were endangered, and they were 1:11:00.640 --> 1:11:04.599 endangered because of DDT Okay, they were endangered because of 1:11:04.640 --> 1:11:08.439 a pesticide that would cause their shells to be very thin, 1:11:09.280 --> 1:11:12.160 and they would kill their own shells, they'd break their 1:11:12.200 --> 1:11:17.320 own eggs when they incubated them. That's simplified, but that's 1:11:17.320 --> 1:11:21.760 what happened with eagles. The use of DDT was prohibited, 1:11:22.760 --> 1:11:27.400 eagle numbers started to increase. They were one of these few, 1:11:27.479 --> 1:11:29.200 I think one of I don't know what it is. 1:11:29.320 --> 1:11:31.679 Two percent of the species that go on the endangered 1:11:31.720 --> 1:11:35.599 Species list come off because of recovery. It's not very common. 1:11:37.680 --> 1:11:41.800 Some come off because they're gone, they go extinct. Some 1:11:41.880 --> 1:11:44.240 come off because we realized that they didn't warrant being 1:11:44.280 --> 1:11:51.160 on there anyway. But it's a rare thing to hit recovery, 1:11:51.160 --> 1:11:53.439 and it's always celebrated to hit recovery. The peregrine, faulk 1:11:53.479 --> 1:11:56.719 and bald ego actually hit recovery and now their numbers 1:11:56.720 --> 1:11:59.840 are growing. And someone would point to and say it, well, 1:12:00.920 --> 1:12:06.640 bullet lead, Yes, they're growing, but bullet lead is slowing 1:12:06.760 --> 1:12:13.800 the growth. And an argument, and it's true, would be 1:12:16.000 --> 1:12:18.880 there are many kinds of human cause mortality that are 1:12:18.920 --> 1:12:25.920 slowing recovery. Vehicles like they're increasing, Yes, would they be 1:12:26.160 --> 1:12:32.000 increasing faster without vehicles? Sure? Would they be increasing faster 1:12:32.120 --> 1:12:36.240 without power lines? Would they be increasing faster without X, 1:12:36.360 --> 1:12:39.719 Y and z? So there are many human cause things 1:12:39.720 --> 1:12:44.599 that are slowing the increase, but the increase is there, 1:12:45.360 --> 1:12:49.040 and they would argue this is an acceptable level. This 1:12:49.080 --> 1:12:52.840 is how the argument goes. It's a you know, like 1:12:52.920 --> 1:12:57.120 I said, can't be ignored. We as a species have 1:12:57.200 --> 1:13:02.080 an accepted level of human mortality. Meaning that's like they're growing. 1:13:02.320 --> 1:13:03.920 There are certain there's a bunch of things you could 1:13:03.920 --> 1:13:06.680 do to make them grow faster, but we're not going 1:13:06.760 --> 1:13:09.840 to do all those things because there's an inconvenience level. 1:13:10.120 --> 1:13:13.360 Well that I think that's the rub right there, is 1:13:13.400 --> 1:13:17.960 that if we're talking about lead from bullets and hunters 1:13:18.560 --> 1:13:23.480 are hunting because you know they're conservationists, they love the animals, 1:13:24.320 --> 1:13:28.320 to think about that you're causing you know, if you 1:13:28.320 --> 1:13:31.519 think about all the rules for shooting and know your target, 1:13:31.520 --> 1:13:34.280 what's beyond and one bullet one kill all those types 1:13:34.320 --> 1:13:38.200 of things. If you're leaving something out in the environment 1:13:38.280 --> 1:13:41.680 that's killing other animals that you didn't intend to know 1:13:41.800 --> 1:13:45.280 that that might be happening, I think is something that 1:13:45.720 --> 1:13:48.800 hunters should should know about. And you know, I'm not 1:13:49.160 --> 1:13:52.200 sitting here saying don't use lead bullets, but knowing that 1:13:52.240 --> 1:13:57.000 this is happening to other species, and if people want 1:13:57.040 --> 1:14:00.760 to make a change and how they hunt. Maybe they 1:14:00.800 --> 1:14:03.360 don't leave the gut pile out in the field. You know, 1:14:03.400 --> 1:14:06.639 if you want to shoot lead, okay, but don't leave 1:14:06.680 --> 1:14:09.920 that out there for scavengers. You know, if you want 1:14:09.920 --> 1:14:14.280 to change your AMMO, that's okay too. But just knowing 1:14:14.320 --> 1:14:16.960 that it's a problem and getting back to your argument, 1:14:17.080 --> 1:14:19.840 like there's a lot of things out there that they 1:14:20.040 --> 1:14:24.040 could slow the population growth, that's absolutely true. This is 1:14:24.080 --> 1:14:29.000 one where hunters are making this choice. And the thing 1:14:29.040 --> 1:14:33.320 that I thought was most interesting about the work we 1:14:33.400 --> 1:14:36.360 did with the population modeling. Yeah, people are like a 1:14:36.400 --> 1:14:40.200 three to five percent we can okay, it's not you know, 1:14:40.240 --> 1:14:44.160 stop the recovery. That's not a huge number. But one 1:14:44.200 --> 1:14:46.200 of the elements that we were able to look at 1:14:46.280 --> 1:14:50.400 was the population resilience. So how much flexibility does that 1:14:50.479 --> 1:14:57.479 population have to absorb other threats and keep operating. And 1:14:58.920 --> 1:15:01.599 bald eagles are kind of mac out, so they've stretched 1:15:01.600 --> 1:15:05.840 their population, and how much they can adjust their population 1:15:06.040 --> 1:15:10.479 parameters to make that recovery happen. And so in the 1:15:10.520 --> 1:15:13.519 paper we talked about how if other threats come along, 1:15:13.880 --> 1:15:17.519 you know, like you know, with climate change, we're talking 1:15:17.520 --> 1:15:20.200 about using more wind energy and if that, you know, 1:15:20.280 --> 1:15:24.360 the wind turbans are knocking down eagles and killing them 1:15:24.880 --> 1:15:27.920 or other infectious disease. And we actually put this paper 1:15:27.960 --> 1:15:33.080 out before highly pathogenic gaving influenza came out and then 1:15:33.280 --> 1:15:35.400 poof that happened and we saw a lot of ball 1:15:35.439 --> 1:15:39.320 eagles dying from that. So it's it's not that they 1:15:39.400 --> 1:15:42.919 can't absorb that stress. It's that you might be stressing 1:15:42.960 --> 1:15:45.200 them too much. So the same thing you were talking 1:15:45.200 --> 1:15:49.439 about with DDT, like maybe having lead and DDT was 1:15:50.040 --> 1:15:51.920 just too much for the eagles and that's why the 1:15:51.920 --> 1:15:54.200 population was crashing. So you can't just say it was 1:15:54.360 --> 1:15:57.760 just DDT that was doing that. And you also had 1:15:58.760 --> 1:16:01.960 the ban on ld A in waterfowl in nineteen ninety one, 1:16:02.240 --> 1:16:04.599 and so all the eagles eat a lot of ducks 1:16:04.600 --> 1:16:08.559 and you know, wounded animals, and so they we might 1:16:08.560 --> 1:16:13.120 have actually seen less lead poisoning recently, you know, since 1:16:13.200 --> 1:16:17.120 that ban, because they weren't eating you know, shot waterfowl. 1:16:17.960 --> 1:16:23.320 Now there's other places that are expanding use of bullets 1:16:23.360 --> 1:16:25.599 in different areas, like in New York, they're adding new 1:16:25.640 --> 1:16:29.160 counties that can use rifles instead of shotguns. So it's 1:16:29.360 --> 1:16:32.840 it's not necessarily things like shots. Uh, like slugs that 1:16:32.880 --> 1:16:36.240 are the problem even well, slugs a hell of a 1:16:36.240 --> 1:16:38.760 lot more lead, right, exactly a lot more lead. Yeah, 1:16:38.800 --> 1:16:41.040 So hopefully the eagle's smart enough that it doesn't eat that. 1:16:41.200 --> 1:16:45.760 But it's it's those small fragments when a bullet shatters, 1:16:45.920 --> 1:16:48.440 you know, that go everywhere, like up to thirty centimeters 1:16:48.439 --> 1:16:51.160 away from the womb channel that can be problematic. 1:16:51.320 --> 1:16:55.360 So I understand what, I understand the point you're making 1:16:55.439 --> 1:17:01.360 that three percent from this some percent for that years ago, 1:17:02.640 --> 1:17:04.880 I was looking at and had a conversation with someone 1:17:04.920 --> 1:17:11.920 about impacts of wolves on elk Okay. And you know, 1:17:11.960 --> 1:17:14.000 you start with this thing where let's say you look 1:17:14.040 --> 1:17:19.240 and you have one hundred calves, right, and you were 1:17:19.600 --> 1:17:24.360 maybe you were of those hundred calves you were always 1:17:24.439 --> 1:17:28.439 losing for many decades in the past, you were always 1:17:28.520 --> 1:17:31.519 losing thirty of those calves to mountain lions. And that 1:17:31.600 --> 1:17:37.440 stayed the same. And wolves come in, wolves are reintroduced 1:17:37.479 --> 1:17:40.800 into an area, and you see a real decline and elk. 1:17:44.160 --> 1:17:46.680 But the wolves aren't even eating as much, they're not 1:17:46.800 --> 1:17:49.600 killing as many calves as mountain lions are. But that 1:17:49.680 --> 1:17:52.240 mountain lion thing had always been there, right, you know, 1:17:52.439 --> 1:17:57.240 they were always carrying off thirty percent. Yeah, there was 1:17:57.280 --> 1:18:00.760 some sort of equilibrium there and you're used to that. 1:18:00.840 --> 1:18:02.280 But then you add another. 1:18:02.400 --> 1:18:05.400 Seven ye and it's enough to tip it to a 1:18:05.400 --> 1:18:06.040 different direction. 1:18:06.479 --> 1:18:09.519 You notice this thing, but you still look and everyone 1:18:09.560 --> 1:18:14.360 will be like, wolves are killing all the elk, and 1:18:14.400 --> 1:18:17.080 in some areas it's well, mountain lions are killing all 1:18:17.080 --> 1:18:19.880 the elk. The wolf thing is just a new additive 1:18:19.960 --> 1:18:24.839 thing that has disrupted what we've accepted to be normal 1:18:24.960 --> 1:18:26.720 exactly if you want to talk about what like when 1:18:26.760 --> 1:18:29.719 an elk calf hits the ground, its biggest risk remains 1:18:29.720 --> 1:18:33.679 a mountain line. But that's just always been so consistent 1:18:34.560 --> 1:18:38.320 and this is a new party. So I get the 1:18:38.400 --> 1:18:41.120 point that you know, with I think that you can 1:18:41.960 --> 1:18:46.120 that that someone could make the decision, you know, to say, 1:18:46.240 --> 1:18:49.679 like I use copper ammunition, I use ammunition with leading. 1:18:49.720 --> 1:18:52.920 It still all right, Like I'm pretty well versed on 1:18:52.960 --> 1:18:56.000 the pros and cons of it, the efficacy of it, 1:18:58.720 --> 1:19:01.720 the technology on copper. Animals come a long way, but 1:19:01.760 --> 1:19:04.400 there's some you know, when you get into efficacy, there's 1:19:04.439 --> 1:19:09.280 some definite arguments for there's some real arguments for lead ammunition. 1:19:09.800 --> 1:19:14.559 I have found generally that in cases where people are 1:19:14.680 --> 1:19:21.320 given in cases where people are offered an alternative, they'll 1:19:21.320 --> 1:19:25.280 often go for it. Voluntary compliance areas, here's free AMMO. 1:19:25.439 --> 1:19:27.120 You know, if you're gonna be hunting on the Kaibab 1:19:27.160 --> 1:19:32.080 plateau where there's a lot of condors, will give you 1:19:32.160 --> 1:19:34.800 AMMO to use. People are like eager to accept AMMO. 1:19:34.880 --> 1:19:36.599 We want you to remove your gut pile. People are 1:19:36.600 --> 1:19:44.639 eager to move the gut pile. That goodwill evaporates when 1:19:44.680 --> 1:19:48.680 it comes to mandatory Yes, the goodwill evaporates when it 1:19:48.720 --> 1:19:52.439 comes to mandatory restrictions. And a lot of it's driven 1:19:52.479 --> 1:19:55.840 by some amount of efficacy, for sure. A lot of 1:19:55.880 --> 1:19:59.760 that pushback, a lot of that goodwill evaporates also around 1:19:59.800 --> 1:20:00.200 call lost. 1:20:00.640 --> 1:20:02.599 Yeah, well, I mean it's hard. 1:20:02.600 --> 1:20:04.680 Very different cost card right now to get that to 1:20:04.720 --> 1:20:07.200 get to move away from lead amim what can be expensive? 1:20:07.200 --> 1:20:10.120 Oh yeah, for sure. And I mean just having ammunition 1:20:10.200 --> 1:20:13.400 shortages in general, trying to tell people to to use 1:20:13.439 --> 1:20:16.240 non lead when they can't find anything at all. So 1:20:16.439 --> 1:20:19.320 trying to make sure that that people sort of know 1:20:19.360 --> 1:20:21.800 what their options are and don't just say, oh, you know, 1:20:21.920 --> 1:20:24.720 using lead is bad. Like, Okay, if that's the only 1:20:24.720 --> 1:20:26.400 thing you can use, that's the only thing you can use. 1:20:26.520 --> 1:20:29.559 But you know, think about what you want to do 1:20:29.840 --> 1:20:31.040 after you pull the trigger. 1:20:31.200 --> 1:20:35.800 Yeah, I think that it's keeping all that in mind 1:20:35.880 --> 1:20:38.120 is important. But I also think it's important that people 1:20:38.160 --> 1:20:43.240 realize you make choices. I make choices, right, And it 1:20:43.280 --> 1:20:48.400 is like lead kills raptors. Now does that mean rather 1:20:48.479 --> 1:20:50.840 that we're gonna lose raptors, that they're you know, they're 1:20:50.840 --> 1:20:55.799 gonna vansh from the landscape, not necessarily, but it kills rafters. 1:20:56.840 --> 1:20:58.719 So it comes down what's your your choice? 1:20:58.800 --> 1:21:01.760 Yeah, one of being an uncalledfort reality that it's the 1:21:01.760 --> 1:21:05.120 thing that happens and how many how often do they 1:21:05.120 --> 1:21:10.720 come through here that you find, and what is the symptomology. 1:21:11.760 --> 1:21:17.120 So lead is really a tough thing that affects all 1:21:17.160 --> 1:21:21.960 sorts of different systems in the body. So it's a neurotoxin. 1:21:22.200 --> 1:21:26.240 It's bad for your kidneys, Like it gets circulated in 1:21:26.280 --> 1:21:28.600 the blood and taken up into your bones, so you 1:21:28.760 --> 1:21:31.519 kind of lose it constantly through your bones. I had 1:21:31.520 --> 1:21:35.400 one case a long time ago with a mountain lion 1:21:35.680 --> 1:21:38.240 that had eaten a whole bunch of lead shot from 1:21:38.439 --> 1:21:41.960 something or other, and the lion was so rotten that 1:21:42.000 --> 1:21:45.479 we actually tested the bones in its paw and it 1:21:45.520 --> 1:21:47.679 came out screamingly high for lead. 1:21:48.200 --> 1:21:51.760 So it had been like metabolized that fast. 1:21:51.520 --> 1:21:53.880 So that it killed it and we could find it 1:21:53.920 --> 1:21:56.639 in its bones already, So it goes throughout the body. 1:21:56.760 --> 1:21:58.840 And I mean the main thing that people focus on, 1:21:59.000 --> 1:22:02.240 especially like with chill and is the neurological development. So 1:22:02.280 --> 1:22:05.720 it's not necessarily you know, at this point, if you 1:22:05.800 --> 1:22:08.720 lose a few brain cells from eating lead, it's you know, 1:22:09.240 --> 1:22:12.000 hard to tell the difference maybe, but for kids that 1:22:12.040 --> 1:22:16.280 are developing, that's the real challenge, you know that. 1:22:16.439 --> 1:22:19.839 You know that work where they looked at rural people 1:22:19.880 --> 1:22:23.200 who had a high consumption of game meat versus urban 1:22:23.280 --> 1:22:27.320 people who had no consumption of game meat, but the 1:22:27.479 --> 1:22:30.480 urban people were having higher levels. 1:22:30.280 --> 1:22:31.920 Lead from paint chips. 1:22:32.000 --> 1:22:33.480 Yeah, yeah, just environmental. 1:22:33.640 --> 1:22:38.559 Yeah. We have had this working group on lead in 1:22:38.640 --> 1:22:40.720 New York for a few years. It's got Department of 1:22:40.720 --> 1:22:43.920 Health on it, it's got venison donation people on it, 1:22:43.920 --> 1:22:46.679 it's got autobond to talk about all these different issues. 1:22:47.160 --> 1:22:51.280 And I've done work here with people in the communications Department, 1:22:51.600 --> 1:22:54.280 And one of the things that we talk about is backlash, 1:22:54.360 --> 1:22:56.360 Like if you tell people like using lead is bad, 1:22:56.400 --> 1:22:58.840 then they're just going to dig in harder on that, 1:22:59.600 --> 1:23:02.639 so that, you know, really backfires. And what you want 1:23:02.680 --> 1:23:06.479 to do so just making people aware of what the 1:23:06.520 --> 1:23:10.599 issue is in a non judgmental way and letting them 1:23:10.640 --> 1:23:12.160 make the choice about what they want to do. 1:23:12.960 --> 1:23:16.320 I remember sending in some garden soil one time and 1:23:17.960 --> 1:23:19.360 the garden soil having. 1:23:19.400 --> 1:23:21.719 Oh yeah, it's everywhere, super high lead levels. 1:23:21.800 --> 1:23:23.679 The thing you can think, I was back from leaded 1:23:23.720 --> 1:23:24.639 gas exactly. 1:23:24.720 --> 1:23:26.800 I mean we used to have lead in everything. It's 1:23:26.880 --> 1:23:27.960 kind of interesting like. 1:23:28.040 --> 1:23:30.760 Leaded fuel would just like would drift down oh yeah, right, 1:23:30.800 --> 1:23:34.120 and getting your soil. And then then the recommendation was 1:23:34.120 --> 1:23:38.040 wash the produce that it's like the plants aren't taking 1:23:38.120 --> 1:23:41.400 it up. Yeah, it's just you're ingesting it because it's 1:23:41.439 --> 1:23:44.479 folded within the leaves of your spinach. Sure it's like 1:23:44.600 --> 1:23:47.400 you know, leaf like cabbage or whatever, things where it's 1:23:47.400 --> 1:23:49.840 hard to clean. Yep, we're more likely that you're going 1:23:49.920 --> 1:23:54.439 to be just consuming it. You know. I don't the 1:23:55.000 --> 1:23:56.800 lead thing, like one of the areas where I don't 1:23:57.560 --> 1:24:00.439 have personal concern I guess because it's me or whatever. 1:24:00.479 --> 1:24:05.160 I never have personal concern about personally ingesting it, but 1:24:05.200 --> 1:24:08.719 it weighs on me about the wildlife fissue, Yeah, especially 1:24:08.720 --> 1:24:10.320 when I learned from you today about fishers. 1:24:10.840 --> 1:24:14.080 Right. And it just depends. Some people are moved by 1:24:14.120 --> 1:24:17.519 the wildlife issues, depending on what your ethos is. Some 1:24:17.560 --> 1:24:20.040 people are more concerned about it, and you know, their 1:24:20.200 --> 1:24:25.120 their own human consumption. It just it's variable, you know, 1:24:25.200 --> 1:24:27.000 just the same way people punch for a lot of 1:24:27.000 --> 1:24:30.880 different reasons, whatever is meaningful to them. 1:24:31.120 --> 1:24:36.120 Uh, crystal ball, mean, give me some crystal ball stuff 1:24:36.120 --> 1:24:36.840 on CWD. 1:24:37.280 --> 1:24:43.040 On CWD. Oh man, that's that's sort of tough, I am. 1:24:43.280 --> 1:24:45.760 I know researchers get really uncomfortable with the crystal boy. 1:24:45.920 --> 1:24:49.439 I know we don't do that. We're looking backwards most 1:24:49.439 --> 1:24:49.920 of the time. 1:24:52.280 --> 1:24:54.040 So just give me some thoughts. It doesn't need to 1:24:54.040 --> 1:24:58.240 be predictions. Just give me some, you know, some thoughts. 1:24:58.560 --> 1:25:02.040 Well, U, I'll talk about one of the things that 1:25:02.080 --> 1:25:05.880 we're doing that I hope people can get behind. So 1:25:06.640 --> 1:25:11.559 right now, we have a large program called the Surveillance 1:25:11.600 --> 1:25:16.120 Optimization Project for Chronic Wasting Disease, and this started out 1:25:16.520 --> 1:25:20.519 as a way based on what we did here in 1:25:20.560 --> 1:25:24.280 New York with doing more risk based surveillance, because there's 1:25:24.479 --> 1:25:26.479 you know, still a lot of states that haven't found 1:25:26.479 --> 1:25:30.559 CWD and they don't necessarily know where to look. So 1:25:30.760 --> 1:25:32.639 like New York had it in two thousand and five, 1:25:34.400 --> 1:25:37.680 you know, sampled really intensively until twenty ten for their 1:25:37.680 --> 1:25:40.240 five years, and then they're sort of like, now, what, 1:25:40.520 --> 1:25:43.120 like what do we do? So we set up this 1:25:43.200 --> 1:25:48.240 risk based surveillance based on deer density, based on hazards, 1:25:48.320 --> 1:25:52.040 like you know, Pennsylvania's got a lot of CWD, so 1:25:52.080 --> 1:25:54.040 we want to make sure we sample intensively along the 1:25:54.040 --> 1:25:56.760 southern tier and then going back to the you know, 1:25:56.760 --> 1:25:58.559 how do preons get into the state and how could 1:25:58.600 --> 1:26:01.839 they get spread? We want to sample more around those areas. 1:26:02.520 --> 1:26:04.439 And so we did this for New York, and then 1:26:04.800 --> 1:26:08.400 Tennessee asked us to do the same surveillance program for them, 1:26:09.320 --> 1:26:12.879 So we did that and that was how they found CWD, 1:26:13.360 --> 1:26:16.640 and we've subsequently done it for seven other states and 1:26:16.680 --> 1:26:19.240 now Alabama found it and then Florida just found it. 1:26:20.640 --> 1:26:23.240 So we said, okay, we can't. We don't want to 1:26:23.240 --> 1:26:26.840 do this just for individual states anymore, like states are 1:26:26.880 --> 1:26:29.960 struggling spending a lot of money on CWD. How can 1:26:30.000 --> 1:26:33.880 they do their surveillance more efficiently and effectively? So right 1:26:33.920 --> 1:26:34.400 now we. 1:26:34.479 --> 1:26:40.479 Have uh kind of erupted from Yell, if you did 1:26:40.479 --> 1:26:42.439 it for a bunch more states, doesn't it make sense 1:26:42.479 --> 1:26:44.200 that you'd have a bunch more states, it would be 1:26:44.760 --> 1:26:46.480 the head CWD, meaning. 1:26:46.439 --> 1:26:48.920 Well some of them already had CWD, like Pennsylvania and 1:26:48.960 --> 1:26:49.759 Virginia Florida. 1:26:49.840 --> 1:26:51.800 This got added to the list. Yeah, and they got 1:26:51.800 --> 1:26:53.240 added the list because they went and looked for it. 1:26:53.280 --> 1:26:55.920 I mean, do you remember this conversation around COVID being 1:26:55.960 --> 1:27:00.559 like there'd be the arguments that, well, yeah, there's a 1:27:00.560 --> 1:27:05.280 lot you're seeing high levels of COVID seemed to go 1:27:05.320 --> 1:27:07.559 hand in hand with high levels of COVID testing. 1:27:07.640 --> 1:27:09.519 But the thing is, it's not that they're not looking 1:27:09.560 --> 1:27:11.640 for it, it's just they don't know where. Like they 1:27:11.680 --> 1:27:17.240 were doing surveillance, but it wasn't like innecessarily emphasized in 1:27:17.320 --> 1:27:20.680 the right places. So like Tennessee was doing about the 1:27:20.720 --> 1:27:23.920 same numbers as they were previously, but before they were 1:27:23.920 --> 1:27:26.720 getting samples where they were easy to get them, and 1:27:26.760 --> 1:27:29.439 so they kept coming from, you know, the same places 1:27:29.479 --> 1:27:31.839 where we're like, no, no, look in these two counties 1:27:32.080 --> 1:27:34.080 are your highest risk and that's where they found it. 1:27:34.160 --> 1:27:37.320 Yet you so. 1:27:36.520 --> 1:27:39.960 They might have been conducting some number one hundred samples 1:27:40.040 --> 1:27:41.040 kind of pulled from. 1:27:41.280 --> 1:27:44.720 Roadkilled deer, well thousands of samples, but you know, just 1:27:45.080 --> 1:27:47.320 not in the places where they needed to be getting 1:27:47.320 --> 1:27:47.800 them from. 1:27:47.920 --> 1:27:52.200 And so the so the idea or program or whatever 1:27:52.200 --> 1:27:55.760 that you were exporting was a was the more precise. 1:27:56.160 --> 1:27:59.760 Yeah, survey, collect data on where your risks are and 1:27:59.800 --> 1:28:04.280 then sample in those high risk areas. And we also 1:28:04.400 --> 1:28:07.639 know from other states that have CDBD like adult males 1:28:07.760 --> 1:28:10.400 are more likely to have you know, test positive than 1:28:10.640 --> 1:28:14.040 you know fawns usually don't test positive. So put the 1:28:14.120 --> 1:28:16.679 test costs the same whether you test an adult mail 1:28:16.760 --> 1:28:19.680 or a fund, so put your money into that. We 1:28:19.720 --> 1:28:22.080 don't get a lot of adult mails in just because 1:28:22.600 --> 1:28:24.559 they usually go to a taxidermist. So how can we 1:28:24.600 --> 1:28:28.200 engage with taxidermists to help us collect samples so that 1:28:28.240 --> 1:28:30.959 we can get those in and make it more efficient 1:28:31.080 --> 1:28:33.360 for the agency where the biologist isn't having to pool 1:28:33.400 --> 1:28:36.240 samples all the time. Kick some money over the taxidermists 1:28:36.280 --> 1:28:38.000 to have them do it for you. You know, they're 1:28:38.000 --> 1:28:42.360 just going to throw that stuff away anyway. So but 1:28:42.479 --> 1:28:44.720 every state sort of recreates the wheel and how they 1:28:44.760 --> 1:28:49.439 do this, and so they're collecting data separately. They're you know, 1:28:49.479 --> 1:28:53.280 spending a lot of time invested in surveillance and how 1:28:53.280 --> 1:28:55.439 they should do these things. When if we had a 1:28:56.320 --> 1:28:59.519 more regional or more collective approach, we could compare data 1:29:00.400 --> 1:29:03.280 across states. Other states would know, you know, like what 1:29:03.479 --> 1:29:06.679 their neighbors are doing, how much sampling they're doing, and 1:29:07.120 --> 1:29:10.519 they can have some decision making tools associated with that. 1:29:10.640 --> 1:29:12.920 So the management agency can say, hey, you know, we're 1:29:12.920 --> 1:29:16.400 mostly worried about you know, this particular area. What should 1:29:16.439 --> 1:29:19.080 we be sampling in there? How many should we sample? 1:29:19.439 --> 1:29:22.760 So we have software now that we're giving away to 1:29:23.520 --> 1:29:27.680 state agencies or tribes or provinces for free that they 1:29:27.720 --> 1:29:31.080 can use this system and use it to whatever. You know, 1:29:31.080 --> 1:29:33.600 if they want to upgrade from their Excel spreadsheet that 1:29:33.640 --> 1:29:36.639 they've been using, fine, If they want to run models 1:29:36.640 --> 1:29:39.840 in it to make decisions, they can do that. If 1:29:39.880 --> 1:29:41.760 they want to see what their neighbors are doing, it's 1:29:41.920 --> 1:29:46.160 useful for that. So that's that's sort of as far 1:29:46.200 --> 1:29:49.400 as you know, maybe aspirational crystal ball. I really want 1:29:49.439 --> 1:29:54.479 to see wildlife agencies sort of come together with more 1:29:54.520 --> 1:29:59.920 standardized work that can be compared across the country rather 1:30:00.040 --> 1:30:02.400 in each states were to doing their their own thing. 1:30:03.320 --> 1:30:08.800 And then if you look at a state, let's say 1:30:08.800 --> 1:30:11.400 take Florida, which was very recently added to the list 1:30:11.439 --> 1:30:16.200 of states that had a positive case in it they 1:30:16.240 --> 1:30:18.479 get a positive case, then there's kind of a you know, 1:30:18.600 --> 1:30:19.320 there's a so what. 1:30:21.320 --> 1:30:25.000 Or not? So what happens then? Or what does that 1:30:25.080 --> 1:30:25.880 mean for the public? 1:30:26.040 --> 1:30:29.920 Or yes, meaning meaning let's say you're doing a bunch 1:30:29.920 --> 1:30:33.880 of testing. Let's say all the states are doing the 1:30:33.920 --> 1:30:36.200 same testing. You can't expect that all the states are 1:30:36.240 --> 1:30:39.040 going to have the same response to the testing, because 1:30:39.040 --> 1:30:42.920 there's some there's some states, and where the agencies have 1:30:43.000 --> 1:30:45.760 a perspective, it's kind of like a little bit of 1:30:46.160 --> 1:30:50.599 inevitability doesn't matter. We're not going to do any kind 1:30:50.640 --> 1:30:56.680 of we're not going to do any real extreme containment measures. 1:30:57.640 --> 1:30:59.519 So that would lead you to be like, well, then 1:31:00.320 --> 1:31:06.760 perhaps testing isn't like valuable to them if you're you know, so, 1:31:07.320 --> 1:31:12.920 how are you from a national perspective? How are people 1:31:12.960 --> 1:31:14.360 coping with with that? 1:31:16.400 --> 1:31:16.639 Yeah? 1:31:16.680 --> 1:31:19.840 I don't know the ambivalent, like the ambivalence or great 1:31:19.920 --> 1:31:22.880 care or whatever that the state takes about the disease, right, 1:31:22.920 --> 1:31:23.360 And I. 1:31:23.320 --> 1:31:25.880 Know I sort of step out when it gets to 1:31:25.960 --> 1:31:30.200 management because it's so much people orientated and what they 1:31:30.200 --> 1:31:35.320 can do. So if you if a state finds CWD 1:31:35.600 --> 1:31:38.040 and they want to do something about it, their first 1:31:38.080 --> 1:31:42.839 detection is their best opportunity because from a human centric perspective, 1:31:42.880 --> 1:31:44.880 that's when people are fired up and care about it 1:31:44.920 --> 1:31:46.960 and like, yeah, let's get rid of it. I mean, 1:31:47.000 --> 1:31:49.800 I totally lean on New York having been the only 1:31:49.840 --> 1:31:51.280 state to get rid of it, to be like, yeah, 1:31:51.360 --> 1:31:53.880 we're we're going to try to kick its ass again 1:31:53.880 --> 1:31:57.400 if we find it, because that's the only real opportunity 1:31:57.439 --> 1:32:00.360 you have to do something. So it just depends on 1:32:01.120 --> 1:32:04.639 the management agency and what they choose. I mean maybe 1:32:05.000 --> 1:32:08.280 like with Tennessee, their first detection they had you know, 1:32:08.560 --> 1:32:11.799 over a dozen animals, so they're kind of like, crap, 1:32:11.840 --> 1:32:14.880 we're way further in it than you know, the very 1:32:14.920 --> 1:32:17.360 first detection. So like if you get a whole bunch 1:32:17.400 --> 1:32:19.040 all at once, you're like, Okay, we've had it for 1:32:19.080 --> 1:32:21.599 a while and just haven't found this pocket now we 1:32:21.720 --> 1:32:24.559 know what to do with it. But I think you'd 1:32:24.560 --> 1:32:28.439 be hard pressed to find any agency that wouldn't do something, 1:32:28.640 --> 1:32:31.719 you know, as far as like carcass or feeding or baiting, 1:32:32.000 --> 1:32:34.040 like bands that they would put in place on that 1:32:34.360 --> 1:32:37.639 to try not to spread it further. Because the thing 1:32:37.640 --> 1:32:41.080 that I talk about is, you know, CWD pools away 1:32:41.479 --> 1:32:45.479 resources from everything else in an agency. If you know, 1:32:45.680 --> 1:32:48.439 in some agencies they have their fish biologists out there, 1:32:48.840 --> 1:32:51.559 you know, pulling samples opening week in a gun season. 1:32:51.800 --> 1:32:55.080 So it's even if you don't care about deer deer hunting, 1:32:55.280 --> 1:33:00.280 like maybe your thing is butterflies, Like it's pulling resources away. 1:33:00.320 --> 1:33:03.360 So everybody should kind of care about it at that 1:33:03.400 --> 1:33:06.240 point because it's such a behemoth and it sucks so 1:33:06.360 --> 1:33:09.760 much money and time away from agencies that it's it's 1:33:09.800 --> 1:33:25.639 worth caring about. 1:33:20.680 --> 1:33:24.479 Doesn't Uh. There's gotta be some part of you. And 1:33:24.479 --> 1:33:26.320 I understand you know, if you if you got to 1:33:26.320 --> 1:33:28.519 punt this one, that's fine. There's got to be some 1:33:28.720 --> 1:33:32.280 part of you, because it definitely exists in my head 1:33:33.920 --> 1:33:39.920 that that it's just like an inevitability. Meaning I know 1:33:40.040 --> 1:33:41.080 New York did it, but. 1:33:42.760 --> 1:33:44.400 Like you said, you think it's just going to be 1:33:44.439 --> 1:33:45.719 everywhere at some point. 1:33:45.920 --> 1:33:48.320 Man, Like, let's say I had to make a like 1:33:48.360 --> 1:33:51.960 a huge bet okay, like every dollar I'll ever have 1:33:52.600 --> 1:33:55.160 or ever have had, and I had to bet it 1:33:55.240 --> 1:34:01.479 on that it'll uh me. This isn't a demonstration of 1:34:01.479 --> 1:34:03.720 what I'd like to see, Yes, but I've had it 1:34:03.760 --> 1:34:05.320 bet on what I thought would happen. 1:34:08.760 --> 1:34:09.639 Is there a time frame? 1:34:10.960 --> 1:34:15.120 I just like, I hate to say it by but 1:34:15.280 --> 1:34:16.880 I hate to say but I don't want to be dishonest, 1:34:16.880 --> 1:34:18.400 like it just feels unstoppable. 1:34:19.840 --> 1:34:23.599 I agree with you to some extent, but my point is, 1:34:23.880 --> 1:34:26.800 what's what's what's the time frame on that? You know, 1:34:26.960 --> 1:34:31.280 like are are we gonna you know, young people right 1:34:31.320 --> 1:34:33.479 now feel that way about the earth, like that the 1:34:33.520 --> 1:34:36.599 earth is just gonna die at some point? Like what's 1:34:36.640 --> 1:34:37.760 the time frame for that? 1:34:37.960 --> 1:34:38.680 So I feel like. 1:34:38.640 --> 1:34:40.879 It's a little bit of a way. That's that's bad parenting. 1:34:41.520 --> 1:34:49.160 Okay, Well we're not here to discuss guarantee. Yeah, I 1:34:49.479 --> 1:34:51.200 don't know. It's it's one of those like fight the 1:34:51.200 --> 1:34:54.280 good fight, like do what you can while you've got it. 1:34:54.720 --> 1:34:57.439 I understood that, but I wasn't talking. I know I 1:34:57.520 --> 1:35:00.800 was talking, and I know it's counterproductive. It's kind underproductive 1:35:00.880 --> 1:35:04.439 to point it out. But I just wish there were more. 1:35:07.520 --> 1:35:08.759 I wish there were more victories. 1:35:09.800 --> 1:35:13.040 I do too, and. 1:35:15.880 --> 1:35:19.559 To me, and I've had friends of mine and my 1:35:19.600 --> 1:35:22.639 friend Dog I'm sure is listening to every word I say. 1:35:22.720 --> 1:35:23.639 Right now, Hi Dog. 1:35:25.960 --> 1:35:28.519 If it pisses Doug off when I say this, but 1:35:28.560 --> 1:35:32.160 I've brought up to him, I've said I used to say, 1:35:33.800 --> 1:35:36.679 if I somehow knew that it would never jump to humans, 1:35:37.640 --> 1:35:42.479 I would care a lot less. Meaning like it's clear 1:35:42.479 --> 1:35:45.519 what I mean. Meaning when I think about chronic wasting disease, 1:35:45.760 --> 1:35:49.880 I think about it's never happened, But I think about 1:35:49.880 --> 1:35:55.120 how catastrophic it would be to deer hunters, to deer 1:35:55.200 --> 1:36:00.880 hunting if we suddenly had these cases. You know, some 1:36:00.920 --> 1:36:09.040 community or some family that they developed some novel, uh 1:36:09.240 --> 1:36:12.160 you know, they developed some novel version of mad cow 1:36:12.240 --> 1:36:16.000 disease and chacka kreutz felt whatever the hell they call it, 1:36:16.640 --> 1:36:19.800 and it, you know, killed some family and it turned 1:36:19.840 --> 1:36:24.720 out that that family had, you know, eating some quantity 1:36:24.720 --> 1:36:27.719 of infected deer meat, and it became you know, the 1:36:27.720 --> 1:36:31.400 Holy cow. Right, it would be catastrophic. It would change 1:36:31.439 --> 1:36:34.400 the way people think about deer. It would change. 1:36:34.120 --> 1:36:35.959 The way people peons. 1:36:36.640 --> 1:36:40.599 It'd be like you'd look at now you look at 1:36:40.600 --> 1:36:44.360 deer and you get excited. It's great. People are excited 1:36:44.400 --> 1:36:46.760 to see deer, they're excited to see deer tracks in 1:36:46.840 --> 1:36:50.519 new places, like and if it was, if it was 1:36:50.600 --> 1:36:56.639 a disease causing animal, it's just it's so devastating, right, 1:36:57.120 --> 1:36:59.760 and you can look and and and be that. And 1:36:59.800 --> 1:37:01.519 I'm remember one day you and I had an argument 1:37:01.520 --> 1:37:04.120 about this where I said, and I stand by it. 1:37:04.560 --> 1:37:08.200 I've said, hundreds of thousands of people have eaten CWD 1:37:08.360 --> 1:37:10.120 infacted deer. Maybe it was you, maybe as someone else 1:37:10.160 --> 1:37:15.160 that said hundreds, not tens. And then then that caused 1:37:15.200 --> 1:37:16.760 me to think about it a bunch, and I thought 1:37:16.800 --> 1:37:17.719 about it a bunch. 1:37:17.520 --> 1:37:19.559 And man, it's like sticking with hundreds hundreds. 1:37:19.720 --> 1:37:22.759 Okay, hundreds of thousands of people have eaten CWD infected 1:37:22.760 --> 1:37:24.599 deer meat, but it has to be true. 1:37:24.680 --> 1:37:25.400 Yeah, I don't think so. 1:37:25.560 --> 1:37:28.200 But okay, how about ninety nine. 1:37:28.479 --> 1:37:29.240 Ninety nine people? 1:37:29.360 --> 1:37:30.920 Ninety nine thousand, No. 1:37:31.640 --> 1:37:32.600 Come on, I don't think so. 1:37:32.960 --> 1:37:37.320 Give me your number lower prices, right, tens of thousands. 1:37:37.360 --> 1:37:39.439 There's no way you're going to argue there's a case 1:37:39.479 --> 1:37:40.960 for one hundred people in one meat. 1:37:41.320 --> 1:37:44.839 That was in New York. I'll give you ten thousand. 1:37:46.200 --> 1:37:50.599 It's okay, hundreds of thousands, tens, okay, whatever the hell 1:37:50.600 --> 1:37:51.280 it is a. 1:37:51.200 --> 1:37:55.040 Lot, Okay. People have eaten infected deer and have not 1:37:55.240 --> 1:37:57.720 gotten CWD that we know about, we. 1:37:57.720 --> 1:37:59.880 Know about have not yet. Okay. So I look at that, 1:38:01.040 --> 1:38:05.000 and that's heartening. I'd rather that than the opposite, for sure, 1:38:05.240 --> 1:38:09.760 anybody would. But people, there's no one that can come 1:38:09.800 --> 1:38:12.439 and tell you. There's no one that can come and 1:38:12.439 --> 1:38:15.000 tell you. And if someone does like you can't believe them. 1:38:15.040 --> 1:38:16.960 There's no one could come and tell you that it's impossible. 1:38:17.360 --> 1:38:17.599 Right. 1:38:18.520 --> 1:38:22.400 So in the past I have brought up that if 1:38:22.680 --> 1:38:26.320 if I knew somehow for some as some fact, which 1:38:26.360 --> 1:38:28.960 is impossible, but if I knew as a fact that 1:38:29.520 --> 1:38:34.840 it wasn't possible, my concern about it would go way 1:38:34.920 --> 1:38:42.040 way down. But now there's emerging evidence in places where 1:38:44.640 --> 1:38:49.280 they're seeing evidence of population level impacts. Because it used 1:38:49.320 --> 1:38:51.559 to be that you could look and you'd look at 1:38:51.560 --> 1:38:55.840 these areas of CWD and they oddly would be areas 1:38:55.880 --> 1:38:57.160 that had some of damned. 1:38:56.880 --> 1:39:01.560 Dear right, Yeah, because GWd. 1:39:01.280 --> 1:39:04.360 And Southwest Wisconsin's like, why South Wisconsin has some many 1:39:04.400 --> 1:39:08.280 deer and they got all these giant bucks. So how 1:39:08.320 --> 1:39:10.160 do I look at that and get worried If I'm 1:39:10.160 --> 1:39:13.400 not worried about catching it and dying And there are 1:39:13.439 --> 1:39:15.840 places that have have a lot of deer and they're 1:39:15.840 --> 1:39:19.280 still shooting big bucks, I'm not going to worry about that. 1:39:20.280 --> 1:39:23.280 But the but the emerg like this emerging stuff, and 1:39:23.320 --> 1:39:25.519 I haven't looked at it a lot, but I've heard it. 1:39:25.640 --> 1:39:29.040 I've seen it demonstrated by people that I have faith in. 1:39:29.120 --> 1:39:32.839 That it's beginning to see where the populations can't support 1:39:32.880 --> 1:39:36.680 it exactly, and that you might wind up down the 1:39:36.760 --> 1:39:43.439 road with really damaged deer populations exactly. 1:39:43.840 --> 1:39:46.799 I Mean we were talking earlier about kids and hunting, 1:39:47.240 --> 1:39:50.960 and so when I first started studying CWD twenty years ago, 1:39:51.080 --> 1:39:53.320 I'd say, you know, this probably isn't going to impact you. 1:39:53.720 --> 1:39:55.400 It's probably not going to impact your kids, but it 1:39:55.479 --> 1:40:00.040 might impact your grandkids. And now the speed with which this, 1:40:00.720 --> 1:40:03.559 like the prevalence curve, you know, the exponential curve of 1:40:03.600 --> 1:40:08.400 how the disease takes off once it gets told, like 1:40:08.439 --> 1:40:12.320 I'm worried about my son hunting and like the opportunities 1:40:12.320 --> 1:40:14.720 that he's going to have or if he even wants to, 1:40:14.840 --> 1:40:17.080 because you know, it's not much fun going out and 1:40:17.520 --> 1:40:19.519 you know, shooting a deer and you come up to 1:40:19.560 --> 1:40:22.519 it and it's all scrawny and sickly, and I mean, 1:40:22.600 --> 1:40:25.320 like on Doug's place, they can practically identify them by 1:40:25.360 --> 1:40:28.559 sight now because they know they have the disease and like, yeah, 1:40:28.560 --> 1:40:29.599 that one's probably infected. 1:40:29.760 --> 1:40:32.080 Yeah, and you're when you're shooting deer in an area 1:40:32.120 --> 1:40:35.080 and the majority of the deer you're shooting are positive. Yeah, 1:40:35.120 --> 1:40:37.880 if you've made the call that, if you've made the 1:40:37.920 --> 1:40:41.800 call that you don't want to eat it. I came 1:40:41.880 --> 1:40:43.080 up with a test. 1:40:43.320 --> 1:40:46.560 I haven't done it yet, Okay, I'm curious. 1:40:46.280 --> 1:40:48.200 When I'm talking to friends of mine, and I got 1:40:48.200 --> 1:40:52.120 a lot of friends who really don't they're not hostile, 1:40:52.200 --> 1:40:54.919 Like they'll listen to us have this conversation. They're not hostile. 1:40:54.920 --> 1:40:56.840 They discussing it, but in the end of the day, 1:40:56.880 --> 1:41:00.439 they don't care. Yeah, and it's like, not these are 1:41:00.479 --> 1:41:05.000 not dumb people. It's like they don't care because they 1:41:05.000 --> 1:41:10.839 have a hard time with the population level decline, especially 1:41:10.880 --> 1:41:13.840 when people say, hey, the cre to CWD is the 1:41:13.840 --> 1:41:16.839 lower deer numbers, or else they might get a disease 1:41:16.920 --> 1:41:19.320 that will lower deer numbers. And then it's like, okay, 1:41:19.400 --> 1:41:21.839 well is the is the medicine worse than the sickness? 1:41:22.640 --> 1:41:24.920 You're telling we should kill all of our deer so 1:41:24.960 --> 1:41:28.280 that all of our deer don't die. It's like a 1:41:28.400 --> 1:41:31.000 challenging logic. Yeah, I'm just trying. 1:41:30.800 --> 1:41:33.200 To get boys back to the burning down the village 1:41:33.240 --> 1:41:33.680 to save it. 1:41:34.000 --> 1:41:37.200 Burning the village to save it. And also they're like, 1:41:37.560 --> 1:41:39.840 no one's gotten it. What are the chances I'll get it? 1:41:39.880 --> 1:41:43.360 And so really smart people, really smart people who are 1:41:43.640 --> 1:41:50.680 not adverse to scientific information, have decided that they're not 1:41:50.680 --> 1:41:53.120 concerned or they're not as concerned as they are about 1:41:53.120 --> 1:41:56.520 other stuff. And I'll debate this with them, but I formulate, 1:41:56.800 --> 1:41:59.560 like there's a test I would like to do, and 1:41:59.840 --> 1:42:01.880 I've talked was before. I would like to go and 1:42:01.920 --> 1:42:07.120 get deer meat. I'd like to find twenty CWD positive 1:42:07.160 --> 1:42:12.360 deer sick looking ones and get all that meat and 1:42:12.360 --> 1:42:16.639 make a burger. Okay, and I make a big batch 1:42:16.640 --> 1:42:21.160 of burgers. And when I meet a friend that says, 1:42:21.200 --> 1:42:25.320 they don't care. I make them that burger. I fry 1:42:25.360 --> 1:42:28.120 them that burger. Yeah, okay, this is me making the patty. 1:42:28.240 --> 1:42:29.720 Okay, good visual. 1:42:30.960 --> 1:42:32.080 Fry just how they like it. 1:42:32.720 --> 1:42:36.559 Meet him rare because killed by cookie, him rare. 1:42:36.720 --> 1:42:39.200 Pickles who pickles? 1:42:39.439 --> 1:42:41.639 And I and I would say to them, I'm like, man, 1:42:41.680 --> 1:42:46.120 in the minute you eat that burger, I'll talk to 1:42:46.160 --> 1:42:47.559 you about how you don't give a shit about c 1:42:47.720 --> 1:42:50.000 w D exactly. And I want to know how many 1:42:50.000 --> 1:42:52.080 burger takers. And I've got people that said, you do it. 1:42:52.120 --> 1:42:53.040 I'll eat that burger. 1:42:53.400 --> 1:42:53.679 Man. 1:42:53.880 --> 1:42:59.720 Here's the thing. If if I made that burger and 1:42:59.720 --> 1:43:01.679 and someone said, okay, I want you to give those 1:43:01.720 --> 1:43:06.000 burgers to your kids now, dude, right sitting where I'm 1:43:06.000 --> 1:43:09.960 sitting right now, there's no even if I could hide 1:43:10.000 --> 1:43:13.360 it from my wife, which is probably not smart, there 1:43:13.439 --> 1:43:16.080 is no I just like, right now what I know 1:43:16.240 --> 1:43:18.679 right now, and i'd like pay a lot of attention, 1:43:18.760 --> 1:43:21.920 and I try not to be alarmist, right and I'm 1:43:21.920 --> 1:43:26.160 not alarmist. I could not give that burger to my kid. Yeah, 1:43:26.960 --> 1:43:27.559 I couldn't do it. 1:43:27.960 --> 1:43:31.920 I agree, I couldn't do it either, you know, knowing 1:43:32.439 --> 1:43:37.280 that similar disease in sheep scrapy. They've never had a 1:43:37.320 --> 1:43:43.040 documented human case that they've known about, even with mad cow. 1:43:43.600 --> 1:43:45.720 You know, there, I would agree with you about the 1:43:45.840 --> 1:43:49.479 hundreds of thousands of people. It was only you know, 1:43:49.520 --> 1:43:53.040 there's been two hundred plus people that have ever gotten 1:43:53.439 --> 1:43:57.439 mad cow, and they likely have some genetic makeup that 1:43:58.120 --> 1:44:00.800 you know, made them susceptible to get that, And I 1:44:00.840 --> 1:44:03.879 suspect it's the same way that there is some genetic 1:44:04.080 --> 1:44:06.840 makeup in humans that would allow that preon to cross 1:44:06.840 --> 1:44:07.880 that species barrier. 1:44:08.040 --> 1:44:10.840 If you know, you're making me want to eat the burger, But. 1:44:10.880 --> 1:44:13.840 How do you know? Right? Like, so I don't can they? 1:44:14.200 --> 1:44:15.920 Yeah, that's what we need to find out, so you 1:44:15.960 --> 1:44:18.440 can test and they give you the green light on burgers. 1:44:18.600 --> 1:44:22.040 But it's very human centric, isn't it, Like we only 1:44:22.120 --> 1:44:25.760 care if it's going to affect us, Like, why not 1:44:26.080 --> 1:44:30.240 care if it affects the wildlife population? Why not care 1:44:30.400 --> 1:44:33.640 that deer dying this horrible disease that puts holes in 1:44:33.680 --> 1:44:36.480 their brain? You know, we say we love these animals, 1:44:36.960 --> 1:44:40.439 but yet we're not willing to do the few steps 1:44:40.760 --> 1:44:44.160 or like let the management agency take some action in 1:44:44.240 --> 1:44:47.400 the short term to try to stop that disease because 1:44:47.400 --> 1:44:49.200 it might be inconveniencing us. 1:44:49.680 --> 1:44:51.920 I'll tell you a thing. Let's move on from burgers 1:44:51.920 --> 1:44:53.360 from it. Let's just talk about big giants. 1:44:53.360 --> 1:44:55.679 How you're making me hungry, I know, but let's. 1:44:55.520 --> 1:44:56.639 Talk about big giant bucks. 1:44:56.680 --> 1:44:57.080 Okay. 1:44:59.320 --> 1:45:02.639 This is This is to my friends who aren't concerned 1:45:02.680 --> 1:45:08.240 abouty eating burgers they haven't yet seen or are convinced 1:45:08.280 --> 1:45:12.479 about they haven't yet seen, and are not convinced about 1:45:12.520 --> 1:45:17.000 population level declines, but they love big giant bucks, and 1:45:17.080 --> 1:45:20.799 all of their recreational free time is put into the 1:45:20.880 --> 1:45:27.920 finding of the making suitable habitat for big giant bucks. Now, 1:45:28.000 --> 1:45:29.760 I was recently in a room with you, and we 1:45:29.760 --> 1:45:33.200 were looking at prevalence rates and the fact that it's 1:45:33.280 --> 1:45:37.559 always fatal, right, always kills you. Yep, there's no getting 1:45:37.560 --> 1:45:39.519 around it. You get it. A deer gets it. That 1:45:39.560 --> 1:45:40.360 deer is gonna die. 1:45:40.439 --> 1:45:42.919 Yes, probably sooner than it would have otherwise. 1:45:43.160 --> 1:45:46.000 Takes six or seven years to make a trophy buck, 1:45:46.520 --> 1:45:49.280 I mean sometimes less, but like right, yeah, I mean 1:45:49.280 --> 1:45:51.040 you have a trophy bucket four years. But it takes 1:45:51.120 --> 1:45:54.280 a long time to make a trophy buck. When the 1:45:54.320 --> 1:45:58.800 disease becomes so prevalent that a deer's not going to 1:45:58.880 --> 1:46:01.519 get to two years of AI without getting it right, 1:46:01.560 --> 1:46:05.320 because prevalency rates are like you know, prevalency rates among 1:46:05.360 --> 1:46:08.679 two year olds, get this, like sixty percent, seventy percent. 1:46:08.800 --> 1:46:13.080 It's always fatal. It's fatal within a couple of years. 1:46:13.800 --> 1:46:17.320 The idea that you might be that if that ideal 1:46:17.439 --> 1:46:19.879 big bucket is five years old, six years. 1:46:19.680 --> 1:46:22.000 Old, whatever, yeah, you're not going to get there. 1:46:23.280 --> 1:46:26.639 That you get to be where they're You're still seeing 1:46:26.680 --> 1:46:28.639 tons of deer on the ground because there's a carrying 1:46:28.640 --> 1:46:32.360 capacity to the landscape right right, you might still be 1:46:32.400 --> 1:46:34.200 seeing there's like, yeah, you go out and see deer 1:46:34.200 --> 1:46:37.000 all the time, but you just start to be that man, 1:46:37.080 --> 1:46:39.000 I don't know what's going on. But they are not 1:46:39.080 --> 1:46:41.800 getting to five years old. Nope, they're not getting to 1:46:41.840 --> 1:46:45.760 six years old because they're getting sick at one or two, 1:46:46.800 --> 1:46:50.160 and they're succumbing to the illness at three or four. 1:46:50.400 --> 1:46:50.639 Yep. 1:46:51.960 --> 1:46:54.679 And they just aren't making it through because so few 1:46:54.720 --> 1:46:58.200 make it through anyway, right, remember time early about additive mortality. 1:46:58.280 --> 1:46:58.559 Yep. 1:46:58.840 --> 1:47:02.200 So few make it through anyway that they don't get 1:47:02.200 --> 1:47:05.120 shot by someone, they don't get hit by a car. 1:47:05.760 --> 1:47:07.680 They don't get killed by a kyle, They don't get 1:47:07.720 --> 1:47:10.920 hung up on a fence, all the shit that kills deer. Yeah, 1:47:11.160 --> 1:47:13.120 that all of a sudden, there's this other little thing 1:47:13.200 --> 1:47:16.880 that just kind of helps guarantee they never get that old. 1:47:18.000 --> 1:47:24.280 That will make people. Yeah, And it's like that's perhaps 1:47:24.720 --> 1:47:27.000 we're already seeing that. And one of the things that 1:47:27.200 --> 1:47:33.240 I think about when I think about CWD is if 1:47:34.920 --> 1:47:37.799 I wish that all areas had a lot more tracking 1:47:37.880 --> 1:47:40.200 of not just Boone and Crocket, but like a lot 1:47:40.240 --> 1:47:43.519 more scoring trafficking. It'd be very interesting if you could 1:47:43.520 --> 1:47:48.599 have gone back and looked at counties, how many Boone 1:47:48.640 --> 1:47:51.920 and Crocket entries were counties getting And do you see 1:47:52.000 --> 1:47:53.760 boone and Crocket entry. 1:47:54.280 --> 1:47:55.120 As much anymore? 1:47:55.200 --> 1:47:55.639 Lowering? 1:47:55.920 --> 1:47:59.040 Yeah, in areas that have had long term infection. Because 1:47:59.080 --> 1:48:04.000 if what it seems to be true is true, I 1:48:04.040 --> 1:48:06.599 think that you're gonna have yet another thing. 1:48:07.479 --> 1:48:10.480 We'll steal that idea for box Master's. 1:48:10.120 --> 1:48:11.960 Projects back to college. 1:48:12.080 --> 1:48:16.080 Yeah, that prevents another thing, making bucks not be five 1:48:16.160 --> 1:48:17.880 years old or six years old or whatever. To help 1:48:18.040 --> 1:48:23.519 right trophy bucks. That man, I got friends that will 1:48:23.520 --> 1:48:27.760 go out and spend days hinge, cutting trees and plantness 1:48:27.760 --> 1:48:31.160 and that, right mm hm. And if you told them, like, man, 1:48:31.200 --> 1:48:33.280 you know what your biggest problem is about making big 1:48:33.320 --> 1:48:35.080 bucks and getting big bucks is they're not gonna live 1:48:35.120 --> 1:48:37.480 that long anyway, dude, because of a disease. 1:48:39.000 --> 1:48:41.040 That that would change their tune. 1:48:41.680 --> 1:48:44.040 Yeah, me, it's the it's the eat. 1:48:44.400 --> 1:48:47.120 I know well that. I mean people, You're called meat 1:48:47.120 --> 1:48:49.799 eater for a reason, right, like people hunt for different reasons. 1:48:49.960 --> 1:48:51.880 Yeah, that's not why I with that, kid, So why 1:48:51.880 --> 1:48:53.080 I came up with that name? You know, I came 1:48:53.160 --> 1:48:55.720 up with that name the show. No. I had a 1:48:55.760 --> 1:48:57.680 little little teeny kid, and we'd read a lot of 1:48:57.680 --> 1:49:01.120 books about animals, and we'd read about books about dinosaurs 1:49:01.400 --> 1:49:04.440 and you get to the t rex chapter, this frocious 1:49:04.479 --> 1:49:08.120 meat eater. That sounds a cool word, very good. I 1:49:08.200 --> 1:49:11.200 like the word sabertooth too. Oh yeah, it could have 1:49:11.280 --> 1:49:12.080 just been that all long. 1:49:12.160 --> 1:49:12.360 Yeah. 1:49:13.240 --> 1:49:15.679 I eat a lot of deer meat. Yeah, me too, 1:49:15.800 --> 1:49:18.400 And I get and that scares me. Man. 1:49:18.760 --> 1:49:21.400 Well, that's the thing. Everybody's going to have a different 1:49:21.520 --> 1:49:23.600 just like the lead, Like, people are going to have 1:49:23.640 --> 1:49:27.360 different reasons for caring about something. So you asked about 1:49:27.360 --> 1:49:30.400 ecology like I try to give people a suite of 1:49:30.479 --> 1:49:33.519 like all the different why they should care about these, 1:49:33.880 --> 1:49:36.920 Like maybe they don't care about deer populations, Maybe they 1:49:36.960 --> 1:49:38.559 just care about what it's going to do to them, 1:49:38.600 --> 1:49:40.880 Maybe they care about big bucks. Like try to give 1:49:40.880 --> 1:49:44.400 them enough information that they can make an informed choice 1:49:44.400 --> 1:49:44.880 about it. 1:49:45.400 --> 1:49:50.840 But you mentioned a thing about eagles and lead, and 1:49:50.880 --> 1:49:53.240 I think it's true of deer diseases. There's another thing 1:49:53.240 --> 1:49:56.560 I think about when I said around worrying about CWD 1:49:56.960 --> 1:50:04.439 is like, uh, there's no doubt that human activities are 1:50:04.840 --> 1:50:09.400 increasing the spread. Yes, it's not really a debatable point. 1:50:09.439 --> 1:50:11.600 I mean, there's other things, and there's other things spreading it, 1:50:11.680 --> 1:50:19.000 but humans are facilitating increasing spread. We are stewards of 1:50:19.040 --> 1:50:26.559 the landscape. Ideally, we're stewards of the landscape. Do you 1:50:27.360 --> 1:50:30.800 if you love deer and you love deer hunting, is 1:50:30.880 --> 1:50:35.160 it in you to be like really okay with the 1:50:35.240 --> 1:50:39.800 disease that kills deer. 1:50:40.360 --> 1:50:45.600 Yeah. That's why I don't understand how people can be like, eh. 1:50:44.240 --> 1:50:48.800 No, no big thing, because there's well, someone's gonna and 1:50:49.240 --> 1:50:51.920 I want to talk about this before we close. Someone 1:50:52.320 --> 1:50:53.840 and I do it too, is going to be what 1:50:53.880 --> 1:50:54.800 about EHD. 1:50:55.120 --> 1:50:56.759 Yeah, we can talk about. 1:50:57.080 --> 1:50:59.880 What about EHD. I mean, here's a disease that not 1:51:00.240 --> 1:51:06.240 some hard it's got to be painful, sure, but they 1:51:06.240 --> 1:51:06.840 give me the butt. 1:51:06.960 --> 1:51:07.280 Okay. 1:51:07.760 --> 1:51:09.559 So I say that we're talking about CWD, and I 1:51:09.600 --> 1:51:11.760 say to you, yeah, well, what about EHD that kills 1:51:11.800 --> 1:51:12.519 all kinds of deer? 1:51:12.640 --> 1:51:17.440 So EHD episodic chemorrhagic disease, and we'll throw in blue tongue, 1:51:17.560 --> 1:51:20.599 which is another haemorrhagic disease, and just call them HD 1:51:20.720 --> 1:51:23.800 for hemorrhagic diseases because they function pretty much the same. 1:51:23.920 --> 1:51:27.080 So I said, okay, what about HD that kills all 1:51:27.120 --> 1:51:27.639 kinds of deer? 1:51:27.720 --> 1:51:32.200 There you go, Yes, it does kill deer, but not 1:51:32.320 --> 1:51:36.640 all deer. It's not fatal like CWD. And in New 1:51:36.720 --> 1:51:41.640 York we've been doing another study on this because we 1:51:41.760 --> 1:51:46.040 had some pretty significant outbreaks in like two thousand, you know, 1:51:46.080 --> 1:51:50.839 which was super inconvenient timing, since you know, the pandemic 1:51:50.920 --> 1:51:53.000 was going on and people were in their houses and 1:51:53.200 --> 1:51:57.439 just kind of trying to deal with a big deer 1:51:57.560 --> 1:52:00.880 die off. So it started in the Hudson Valley and 1:52:01.240 --> 1:52:04.200 we started tracking reports from the public. The biologists were 1:52:04.240 --> 1:52:07.160 going out and collecting deer. It's challenging. 1:52:07.680 --> 1:52:11.240 We can we include the creepy part, sure, which one 1:52:11.360 --> 1:52:15.519 floating in ponds? Yeah so okay, laying next to the creek, 1:52:15.560 --> 1:52:17.759 floating in ponds in a water trough. 1:52:18.400 --> 1:52:23.880 So with hemorrhagic diseases, the deer get a bad viral 1:52:24.240 --> 1:52:28.280 infection and so they get very feverish. So a lot 1:52:28.280 --> 1:52:30.040 of times they'll go to water, which is why you 1:52:30.120 --> 1:52:33.360 find these deer around water. But we have to be 1:52:33.400 --> 1:52:35.639 careful because we mentioned that we had a Raby's positive 1:52:35.640 --> 1:52:38.800 deer a couple weeks ago. Rabies a lot of times 1:52:38.800 --> 1:52:42.240 will find the deer in water too, again another viral disease. 1:52:42.520 --> 1:52:44.280 They tend to go to water when they get feverish. 1:52:44.360 --> 1:52:46.200 We got to do a big digression. I'm sorry, okay, 1:52:46.200 --> 1:52:50.040 because this is the thing I've always wandered about. Why 1:52:50.680 --> 1:52:53.280 how can rabies at one time be that they're drawn 1:52:53.360 --> 1:52:57.800 to water, but then also in humans it induces hydrophobia. 1:52:57.960 --> 1:53:00.240 Yeah, well, I mean you can be thirsty and go 1:53:00.280 --> 1:53:05.200 to water, but then the paralysis of being able to drink. 1:53:05.920 --> 1:53:07.800 So it might not be that you're afraid of water. 1:53:08.000 --> 1:53:11.599 It might be that your body stops functioning to allow 1:53:11.640 --> 1:53:12.240 you to drink. 1:53:13.600 --> 1:53:16.599 But I thought, so, it's not that people get scared 1:53:16.640 --> 1:53:17.160 of water. 1:53:17.400 --> 1:53:21.600 Yeah, I'm not up on the human hydra, I know, 1:53:22.439 --> 1:53:27.640 but yeah, it's more that they're not physiologically able to 1:53:27.720 --> 1:53:31.240 drink anymore. So they're very thirsty, they're feverish, but they 1:53:31.240 --> 1:53:32.120 can't drink. 1:53:32.360 --> 1:53:34.880 John defended my family from a rabid squirrel one time. 1:53:35.040 --> 1:53:36.520 No, but please tell. 1:53:37.560 --> 1:53:39.360 It was in this state. We were at a friend's. 1:53:39.479 --> 1:53:43.200 We were visiting a friend. A squirrel came to that 1:53:43.240 --> 1:53:45.519 My kids were al swimming in the pool. The squirrel 1:53:45.600 --> 1:53:48.480 ran up to the edge of the pool, very agitated, 1:53:49.280 --> 1:53:52.400 started running up and down the pool like if this 1:53:52.439 --> 1:53:55.320 is the pool? My kids are like sprinkled throughout here, 1:53:55.840 --> 1:53:57.599 and the squirrel is going like this back and forth, 1:53:57.640 --> 1:54:00.759 back and forth, back and forth, jumps in the pool, 1:54:01.840 --> 1:54:06.360 starts chasing kids around. I grabbed the squirrel by the 1:54:06.360 --> 1:54:08.080 tail and gave. 1:54:07.920 --> 1:54:09.040 It a no. 1:54:10.479 --> 1:54:11.280 Squirrel flinger. 1:54:12.560 --> 1:54:17.760 Yeah, I had you been rabbit rodents. 1:54:18.120 --> 1:54:20.439 We don't see a lot of rabies and squirrels. Rodents 1:54:20.439 --> 1:54:22.960 don't get it as often. But we just did have 1:54:23.040 --> 1:54:26.040 the beaver that was positive for rabies. 1:54:26.080 --> 1:54:27.840 How else would you explain what that squirrel was doing? 1:54:27.880 --> 1:54:29.720 Squirrels have a lot of issues. I don't know if 1:54:29.720 --> 1:54:30.280 you've noticed this. 1:54:33.320 --> 1:54:33.720 I don't know. 1:54:34.000 --> 1:54:36.240 You guys have had a rabid beaver. Yeah, you've been 1:54:36.360 --> 1:54:39.160 five people. He did make a movie about that. 1:54:39.840 --> 1:54:41.680 There you go, you're the production company. 1:54:41.720 --> 1:54:43.520 Okay, So back to EHD. 1:54:44.000 --> 1:54:44.680 Back to HD. 1:54:45.000 --> 1:54:48.240 So deer could get rabies, yes, and they'll wind up 1:54:48.240 --> 1:54:49.560 in the water sometimes. 1:54:49.680 --> 1:54:52.840 Yeah, But if I hear about deer in water, I 1:54:53.280 --> 1:54:58.200 usually think rabies or hamorrhagic disease. So why should we 1:54:58.280 --> 1:55:03.560 worry more about CWD than and hamorrhagic diseases? Even though 1:55:03.880 --> 1:55:05.920 we had a big die off there were you know, 1:55:06.200 --> 1:55:09.760 over two thousand dead deer reported. We don't know how 1:55:09.840 --> 1:55:13.280 many actually died in the area that. 1:55:13.280 --> 1:55:15.040 Was affected in a short period of time. 1:55:15.320 --> 1:55:18.560 Yeah, one summer wow. And then the next year we 1:55:18.600 --> 1:55:21.960 also had pretty significant die off, but it was more 1:55:22.080 --> 1:55:25.080 sprinkled around the state, so Hudson Valley up towards Lake, 1:55:25.120 --> 1:55:30.000 Ontario and then on Long Island. But what we did 1:55:30.320 --> 1:55:33.680 in those hunting seasons was we collected spleen and we 1:55:33.680 --> 1:55:39.320 collected blood from hunters, and we looked for antibodies to 1:55:39.600 --> 1:55:42.240 the viruses to see if any of the deer survived, 1:55:42.320 --> 1:55:45.320 and we found a pretty good proportion of deer had 1:55:45.360 --> 1:55:49.800 been infected and then survived. So those are very sort 1:55:49.840 --> 1:55:56.400 of short term transitory mortality events. And then last year 1:55:56.680 --> 1:55:59.880 there was like nothing like no big, big mortality. So 1:56:00.120 --> 1:56:02.720 it might hit local areas pretty hard and knock the 1:56:02.720 --> 1:56:08.240 deer down because that virus is transmitted by a biting 1:56:08.320 --> 1:56:13.640 midge puliqoites, and those don't travel very far. So we're 1:56:13.640 --> 1:56:16.600 still trying to figure out the right environmental conditions, whether 1:56:16.720 --> 1:56:20.680 they get dry or they wet for breeding in mudflats, 1:56:21.400 --> 1:56:25.400 and the deer seem to rebound really quickly with those, 1:56:25.520 --> 1:56:28.320 so that is something that they can build up immunity 1:56:28.360 --> 1:56:33.680 to and you know, continue on without a long term 1:56:33.720 --> 1:56:37.120 population impact. It might be short term, but you know, 1:56:37.280 --> 1:56:40.040 over the long term it's not gonna you know, do 1:56:40.120 --> 1:56:41.960 as much damage as chronic wasting disease. 1:56:42.160 --> 1:56:44.000 And I'll point out too that you don't have to 1:56:44.080 --> 1:56:50.600 have that nagging fear right about catching a brain disease. 1:56:50.880 --> 1:56:55.480 That's true. Yeah, we generally recommend people don't eat stuff 1:56:55.520 --> 1:56:59.760 they find dead, so like, yeah, haemorrhagic disease, they kind 1:56:59.760 --> 1:57:02.680 of mushy real fast because it's usually in the heat 1:57:02.680 --> 1:57:03.200 of the summer. 1:57:03.640 --> 1:57:07.200 Got it. Well, I just mean I don't mean that 1:57:07.240 --> 1:57:12.400 about finding dead deer and eating it. Yeah, I just mean, like, yeah, 1:57:12.480 --> 1:57:15.440 why you know, as much as I was pointing, I 1:57:15.480 --> 1:57:17.680 was playing Devil's advocate to point out that, well, why 1:57:17.760 --> 1:57:20.000 not worry about EHD because that kills a bunch of deer, 1:57:20.200 --> 1:57:21.960 And I would just say, added to the fact that 1:57:22.000 --> 1:57:25.960 there's some resiliency that that they bounce back quickly, that 1:57:26.040 --> 1:57:28.160 you can get it passed through a deer herd, and 1:57:28.200 --> 1:57:29.840 then a couple of years later it's not in the 1:57:29.880 --> 1:57:34.200 deer herd, it's different. But then there's also that later 1:57:34.400 --> 1:57:35.720 when you harvest a deer. 1:57:35.560 --> 1:57:40.360 That yeah, you added, you're not at right, Well, we 1:57:40.400 --> 1:57:42.720 don't know if you're at risk, you're not at potential risk. 1:57:43.480 --> 1:57:45.760 There you go, do you. 1:57:48.640 --> 1:57:50.480 I don't know how well you can word this. This 1:57:50.520 --> 1:57:57.080 is my last question about CWD. Do you don't eat it? 1:57:57.760 --> 1:57:59.160 I'm just asking you personally what. 1:57:59.320 --> 1:58:00.840 I hate to see to be positive deer? 1:58:00.920 --> 1:58:01.160 Yeah? 1:58:01.280 --> 1:58:02.160 No, m. 1:58:03.800 --> 1:58:05.360 Why I don't have to. 1:58:08.600 --> 1:58:11.320 I have a choice there, so you know, I'm not starving, 1:58:11.520 --> 1:58:16.640 like I think the risk to humans is very small, 1:58:16.800 --> 1:58:18.520 but why chance it? 1:58:19.120 --> 1:58:19.480 Yeah? 1:58:19.560 --> 1:58:23.200 I mean Honestly, I've with the field work I've done 1:58:23.200 --> 1:58:26.280 and taking CBD samples from live deer, I've been in 1:58:26.320 --> 1:58:29.400 their mouth like I was taking Tounsler biopsies when I 1:58:29.440 --> 1:58:32.760 was doing my research. So like, I've had c TOBD 1:58:32.880 --> 1:58:36.560 positive deer breathing in my face that I know they 1:58:36.600 --> 1:58:40.520 were positive. So yeah, I'm probably going to donate my 1:58:40.520 --> 1:58:43.120 brain to science, like when I kick the bucket, just 1:58:43.160 --> 1:58:44.640 so people can check for preance. 1:58:47.240 --> 1:58:49.000 We've been talking a lot about we're trying to get 1:58:49.040 --> 1:58:53.680 someone from the body farm. Where's that place, Tennessee? I believe, yeah, 1:58:53.880 --> 1:58:55.720 they don't if you want to donate your science. 1:58:55.760 --> 1:58:58.080 We heard that they are, like are they not taking more? 1:58:58.720 --> 1:58:59.960 Everybody wants their body there? 1:59:00.040 --> 1:59:01.720 Oh really it's a popular thing now. 1:59:02.120 --> 1:59:03.120 They can't accept them all. 1:59:03.720 --> 1:59:06.440 Well, maybe you can get on a wait list. 1:59:07.440 --> 1:59:10.960 Did some work there. You know raccoons like, uh, when 1:59:10.960 --> 1:59:14.080 it comes to carcass preference on raccoons, they're like people 1:59:14.080 --> 1:59:15.200 who have diabetes. 1:59:15.800 --> 1:59:19.800 Interesting, I did not know that, I mean just from 1:59:19.800 --> 1:59:23.440 this person who wrote in, Yeah, I would verify that. 1:59:23.520 --> 1:59:26.080 I didn't know raccoons were that picky about there. 1:59:26.680 --> 1:59:28.160 They're like thighs and buttocks. 1:59:28.400 --> 1:59:30.360 Well, don't you. 1:59:30.480 --> 1:59:35.520 Yeah, for sure. Okay, diabetes. 1:59:36.000 --> 1:59:39.000 Interesting. I'm going to have to check this one out. 1:59:39.360 --> 1:59:41.200 We're gonna try to do a site visit down there. 1:59:41.400 --> 1:59:44.360 Okay, that'll be good. Now that you got some more 1:59:44.400 --> 1:59:45.800 dead animals, can I come with. 1:59:45.720 --> 1:59:48.160 You where you hang out and work? You probably have 1:59:48.320 --> 1:59:49.440 zero problem with that. 1:59:50.360 --> 1:59:52.120 I don't know. Humans screws me out a little bit. 1:59:52.160 --> 1:59:55.640 Like animals I'm okay with, but people are kind of gross. 1:59:56.200 --> 1:59:59.800 I was when did our tour today, I was thinking that. 2:00:02.800 --> 2:00:08.560 I was thinking about the resiliency of of your colleagues. 2:00:09.160 --> 2:00:10.720 The ones that have to cut up the dead stuff. 2:00:10.760 --> 2:00:11.520 It's a lot. 2:00:12.760 --> 2:00:14.000 Oh smells, it could be. 2:00:14.160 --> 2:00:19.800 It's a lot. It's it's like just the environment, right, 2:00:20.280 --> 2:00:26.280 that lab environment, and and just the the what's coming 2:00:26.320 --> 2:00:28.480 through the door, right, it's a lot. 2:00:28.960 --> 2:00:32.160 Yeah, I mean I'm sure you used pretty quick, right. 2:00:32.280 --> 2:00:32.480 Yeah. 2:00:32.520 --> 2:00:34.560 It's just what their job is. I mean, you think 2:00:34.560 --> 2:00:37.800 about people working like nurses having to deal with live 2:00:37.880 --> 2:00:41.120 people complaining all the time like at least these are dead. 2:00:41.240 --> 2:00:43.960 So well, it's different though, because I don't get that. 2:00:44.120 --> 2:00:47.920 It's a lot feeling hanging out in a butcher shop 2:00:48.040 --> 2:00:50.160 or in a slaughterhouse that doesn't because you're because it's 2:00:50.160 --> 2:00:54.480 like food production, but the disease element, okay, the sickness element. 2:00:54.560 --> 2:00:58.440 But see they find joy and people that really like 2:00:58.520 --> 2:01:02.840 kid exactly. You know, they get very excited. I mean 2:01:02.880 --> 2:01:07.000 you mentioned nasal bots previously, and when I was doing 2:01:07.520 --> 2:01:10.600 the helicopter capture for my PhD to catch deer, we 2:01:10.600 --> 2:01:14.560 had immortality and so we euthanized it. And one of 2:01:14.600 --> 2:01:18.000 my fellow grad students, who loves dead stuff, you know, 2:01:18.200 --> 2:01:21.520 started doing the knee cropsy and it was chock full 2:01:21.560 --> 2:01:26.160 of nasal bots. And this again, this was in South Dakota, Okay. 2:01:26.960 --> 2:01:29.720 And she was so excited, I mean she pulled. She 2:01:29.760 --> 2:01:31.840 had two handfuls with the nasal bots and came like 2:01:31.880 --> 2:01:34.920 skipping around to show us all and just thought it 2:01:35.000 --> 2:01:36.080 was like the best thing ever. 2:01:36.520 --> 2:01:39.200 We had some guys in Sonora one time tell us 2:01:39.680 --> 2:01:45.640 some cowboys and Sonora tell us that that thing does 2:01:45.680 --> 2:01:49.240 the thinking for the deer. O interesting, It'll take over 2:01:49.840 --> 2:01:52.680 and do it the deer's thinking, and the deer does 2:01:52.720 --> 2:01:53.360 it's bidding. 2:01:54.240 --> 2:01:58.120 All right. You were asking about ticks earlier at the 2:01:58.160 --> 2:02:01.400 c TOB conference in Denver. Recently they found preons and 2:02:01.480 --> 2:02:02.320 nasal bots too. 2:02:02.720 --> 2:02:05.240 Oh yep, sure so. 2:02:06.920 --> 2:02:09.720 And the fact that one day he just goes it's 2:02:09.760 --> 2:02:10.160 the hacks. 2:02:10.640 --> 2:02:13.520 I know, a big old nasal bug out. 2:02:15.400 --> 2:02:16.800 That a good video to capture. 2:02:16.880 --> 2:02:18.920 There, there you go aspirational. 2:02:19.680 --> 2:02:22.680 So how do people what if? What's the best when 2:02:22.720 --> 2:02:24.040 you want to wake up in the morning and find 2:02:24.040 --> 2:02:26.120 out about wildlife diseases? What do you like to read? 2:02:27.000 --> 2:02:28.080 What do I like to read? 2:02:28.360 --> 2:02:31.200 Yeah? Like where if someone wants to track wildlife disease issues. 2:02:31.240 --> 2:02:33.200 Let's say someone's so inspired. 2:02:33.000 --> 2:02:37.240 So inspired? So I a I am line of work 2:02:38.560 --> 2:02:41.200 with the Cornell Wildlife Health Lab, which is part of 2:02:41.240 --> 2:02:45.400 the New York State Wildlife Health Program. Uh, you can 2:02:46.080 --> 2:02:48.320 look up Cornell Wildlife Health Lab. We've got lots of 2:02:48.360 --> 2:02:51.640 fact sheets and information about all the research that we do. 2:02:51.840 --> 2:02:54.640 You can go you know, New York State has a 2:02:54.680 --> 2:02:58.120 great website. There's other states out there that have really 2:02:58.120 --> 2:03:01.040 good information. Depending on you know where they are, it's 2:03:01.080 --> 2:03:07.080 probably more applicable to them. So check out uh your 2:03:07.120 --> 2:03:11.120 state agency website and see what wildlife health information. But 2:03:11.120 --> 2:03:12.840 if you want general stuff, you can always come to 2:03:13.320 --> 2:03:14.560 Cornell Wildlife Health Lab. 2:03:15.360 --> 2:03:17.440 And don't try to bring a dead animal down here. 2:03:17.880 --> 2:03:20.440 Well, you can just call us first, call us first. Yeah, yeah, 2:03:20.840 --> 2:03:26.360 well you can, but it might take a little bit. 2:03:26.400 --> 2:03:26.680 I might. 2:03:26.880 --> 2:03:29.480 I might get a nasty phone call and they're like, who. 2:03:29.360 --> 2:03:33.360 Is this at the right door? The door is so tall, 2:03:34.760 --> 2:03:37.480 the intake door. Yes, it's so tall. 2:03:38.120 --> 2:03:39.400 You can back a semi in that. 2:03:39.480 --> 2:03:45.080 It is known to have accommodated elephants and drafts. Yep, 2:03:45.520 --> 2:03:46.360 look for that door. 2:03:46.560 --> 2:03:47.960 That's the door you want. 2:03:48.200 --> 2:03:50.320 If you say to yourself, that's not going to accommodate 2:03:50.360 --> 2:03:51.560 an elephant, you're at the wrong door. 2:03:52.480 --> 2:03:53.920 You can't put an elephant through there. 2:03:55.560 --> 2:03:57.959 Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. Absolutely, 2:03:58.120 --> 2:04:02.880 it's fascinating work. I love wildlife and I like to 2:04:03.160 --> 2:04:04.920 and it's good to know that there's people out there 2:04:04.960 --> 2:04:09.360 monitoring wildlife diseases and it becomes upsetting to me when 2:04:09.400 --> 2:04:13.520 there's things that humans. There's preventable things we're doing. Yeah, 2:04:14.000 --> 2:04:16.680 they could make it that less wildlife vanishes from the 2:04:16.760 --> 2:04:19.080 landscape because of diseases. So it's good to have a 2:04:19.120 --> 2:04:19.600 heads up. 2:04:19.760 --> 2:04:23.840 Yeah. I think remembering we're part of the ecosystem, and 2:04:24.040 --> 2:04:25.720 you know, if we can be part of the solution 2:04:25.840 --> 2:04:28.520 rather than part of the problem, that's always a good thing. 2:04:28.760 --> 2:04:32.760 We're part of the disease ecollogy. We are well, all right, Well, 2:04:32.800 --> 2:04:36.360 thank you for coming on. I appreciate it. Kristen Schuler, thank. 2:04:36.160 --> 2:04:37.240 You, thank you. 2:04:43.280 --> 2:04:51.560 Right all seal great. 2:04:53.800 --> 2:05:07.160 Like silving the Sun. Ride Ride, Ride on a line, sweetheart. 2:05:08.040 --> 2:05:12.800 We're done beat this damp horse to death, So taking 2:05:12.880 --> 2:05:15.280 a new one and ride away. 2:05:18.240 --> 2:05:23.760 We're done beat this damn horse today, mh. So take 2:05:23.840 --> 2:05:26.080 a new one and ride on.