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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to

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Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven

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Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand saddler Blind, First Light,

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Speaker 1: Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon, and this week on the show, I'm joined

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Speaker 1: by wildlife biologist and author Douglas Chadwick to explore the

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Speaker 1: current state of wildlife across the world today in a

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Speaker 1: new way of thinking that might just save those preachers

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Speaker 1: and us. All right, welcome back to the Wire to

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Speaker 1: Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light. It's me

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Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. I am back in the saddle. Here. The

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Speaker 1: Taylor Swift concerts, the Yoyo competitions, the rock collecting, exploits

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Speaker 1: with Spencer, whatever it is, those crazy things that's been

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Speaker 1: filling your head with, They're all done. I'm out here,

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Speaker 1: back in the saddle, back here on the podcast. Hope

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Speaker 1: you enjoyed Tony's guest hosting over the last month, exploring

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Speaker 1: all sorts of different offseason projects that I think will

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Speaker 1: help all of us as we lead into this next season.

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Speaker 1: But here I am, and we are kicking off a

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Speaker 1: new series. This is a series we've done for the

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Speaker 1: past couple of years. It's one of my favorites that

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Speaker 1: we do every year, and that's Conservation Month. We are

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Speaker 1: going to take a step back from you know, deep

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Speaker 1: hunting conversations and tactical hunting conversations and instead have some

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Speaker 1: have some conversation around the thing, the resource, the creatures

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Speaker 1: that allow us to enjoy this hunting lifestyle. There wouldn't

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Speaker 1: be any deer chase, there wouldn't be any wild places

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Speaker 1: to chase them on, there wouldn't be any beautiful Mountain

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Speaker 1: Vista's Crystal career streams of these things that we enjoy

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Speaker 1: so much as hunters and anglers if there weren't people

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Speaker 1: thinking about and working for the conservation of wild animals

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Speaker 1: and places. And that's what this month is all about,

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Speaker 1: is stepping into that world and exploring, you know, what

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Speaker 1: kind of impact we might be able to have there,

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Speaker 1: what's going on in the wilder world. What should we

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Speaker 1: be excited about, what should we be concerned about, and

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Speaker 1: what's our role to play? And you know, I gotta

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Speaker 1: tell you, just on a personal note, that this kind

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Speaker 1: of stuff can be fun. This kind of work, these

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Speaker 1: kinds of conversations. It does not have to be dreary,

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Speaker 1: it does not have to be a drag. This kind

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Speaker 1: of stuff is fun. And I have a personal, real

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Speaker 1: world example of this just from last week, because as

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Speaker 1: some of you might know, give my little updates here.

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Speaker 1: The Working for Wildlife tour kicked off at the end

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Speaker 1: of March. We had our first event outside of Boston, Massachusetts,

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Speaker 1: and me in dozens and dozens and dozens of many

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Speaker 1: of you and others came out to a wildlife management

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Speaker 1: area like I mentioned in Massachusetts. We got together on

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Speaker 1: a Sunday and we picked up a whole load of trash,

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Speaker 1: like literally entire dump truck load. More than one thousand

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Speaker 1: pounds of trash were picked up by folks out there

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Speaker 1: that day. We put up I think six different wood

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Speaker 1: duck boxes. We pulled out of there, all sorts of

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Speaker 1: shotgun shells, tires, beer cans, you name it. I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of crap that was out there,

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Speaker 1: you know, fouling up this beautiful piece of public land

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Speaker 1: that is no longer there. It was good work. It

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Speaker 1: was just rewarding to do something like that and to

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Speaker 1: immediately see and in some small way things get a

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Speaker 1: little bit better by way of our of our handiwork

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Speaker 1: and our time. But what stood out the most, maybe,

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Speaker 1: and I guess I should have known this coming in,

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Speaker 1: but when I was really reminded of coming out of it,

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Speaker 1: was just how much fun it is to do that

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Speaker 1: kind of stuff, To get out there with other people

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Speaker 1: that care about wildlife, that like to hunt or like

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Speaker 1: to fish, and who also like to keep these things around,

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Speaker 1: who also want to give back. Just being around other

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Speaker 1: people that cared about those same things and all kind

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Speaker 1: of joining in to do something good and worthwhile was

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Speaker 1: really fun and re energizing and uplifting. So I came

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Speaker 1: out of that just you know, more charged up than

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Speaker 1: ever to just do more of those kinds of things,

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Speaker 1: to you know, to step away from the words of things,

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Speaker 1: you know, worrying about what you read on the news,

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Speaker 1: or you know, even being on a podcast like this

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Speaker 1: talking about ideas of what to do, and actually getting

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Speaker 1: into the world of action, actually doing something that is good,

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Speaker 1: that felt great, and that that's got me more excited

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Speaker 1: than ever to do this series this month exploring different

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Speaker 1: ways we can all take action to make sure that

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Speaker 1: you know, our kids and grandkids do still have public

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Speaker 1: land to explore, do have wild, quiet, clean places to

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Speaker 1: explore that do have great hunting opportunities or wildlife viewing

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Speaker 1: opportunities or phishing opportunities, that there's still some wild creatures

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Speaker 1: run around out there that we all enjoy and making

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Speaker 1: sure if things are better for the future. That's the

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Speaker 1: kind of stuff that I'm excited about talking about this week.

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Speaker 1: And we're gonna kind of go all over the place

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Speaker 1: with this series. We're gonna have, you know, some episodes

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Speaker 1: that are very high level looking at the worldwide state

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Speaker 1: of nature, what's going on, that's that's gonna be today.

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Speaker 1: Really we're gonna look at different ideas about how to

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Speaker 1: think about ourselves and relationship to nature. But we're also

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Speaker 1: going to zoom really tightly into things like you know,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna have some episodes of very specifically focused on

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Speaker 1: white tail deer and others that are focused on all

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Speaker 1: sorts of things. We're gonna have some episodes that go,

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Speaker 1: you know, right into the nitty you're witty, for example,

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Speaker 1: of one specific piece of conservation legislation that will have

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Speaker 1: huge impacts on whitetailed deer and private land conservation and

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Speaker 1: hunter access and habitat protection, all kinds of stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: We've got a conversation next week on that topic. We're

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Speaker 1: going to reach out to a couple of folks and

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Speaker 1: get into all sorts of different ideas for you know

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Speaker 1: how we and as hunters and anglers, can be more

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Speaker 1: effective advocates for these things that we care about. So

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be all over the place, and today, as

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Speaker 1: I mentioned, we're starting out at this high level thirty

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Speaker 1: thousand foot overview of nature and wildlife and where things

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Speaker 1: stand today, and not just when it comes to deer

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Speaker 1: or wild game here in America, but across the world.

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Speaker 1: And our guests today is going to help us explore

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Speaker 1: that and also consider, you know how, how we might

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Speaker 1: be thinking about our relationship or obligation to these wild things.

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Speaker 1: So our guest today, as I mentioned at the top,

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Speaker 1: is Douglas Chadwick. He is a wildlife biologist. He's a

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Speaker 1: widely published writer, frequently seen in the pages of magazines

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Speaker 1: like the National Geographic and the author of I believe

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Speaker 1: more than fourteen books, including The Wolverine Way, Tracking Gobie Grizzlies,

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Speaker 1: and most recently four Fifths a Grizzly, a new perspective

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Speaker 1: on nature that just might save us all. And Doug

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Speaker 1: has he has lived an incredible life. It seems he

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Speaker 1: has seen some amazing things. He's traveled the wild world,

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Speaker 1: gotten up close and personal with grizzlies, whales, mountain goats,

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Speaker 1: and just so many other fascinating wild creatures. And over

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Speaker 1: the course of those years and expeditions, Doug has seen

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Speaker 1: a diminishing world. He has had this firsthand experience seeing

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Speaker 1: wild places wink out and wild creatures pushed to the brink.

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Speaker 1: And all of this has seemed to have led Doug

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Speaker 1: to a realization that maybe it's time we rethink our

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Speaker 1: place alongside these animals, or at least rethink how we

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Speaker 1: think about her place with these animals. Doug, it seems

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Speaker 1: began to think that we might have more in common

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Speaker 1: with these animals than we once thought. And if that's true,

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Speaker 1: if we do have more in common with these animals,

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Speaker 1: what does that mean for how we live with or

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Speaker 1: conserve wild places and animals. These are the thoughts and

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Speaker 1: ideas that eventually led to this recent book by Doug,

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Speaker 1: Four Fifths of Grizzly, which, within its pages explores the

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Speaker 1: real and widespread threats currently facing wildlife all across the

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Speaker 1: world today, what we might be able to do to

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Speaker 1: address it, in some great examples of successes that we

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Speaker 1: are seeing today in that pursuit. That is that's what

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Speaker 1: made this book so interesting to me, and that is

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Speaker 1: why I was so excited that Doug was willing to

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Speaker 1: come on here and talk to us about a new

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Speaker 1: way of seeing ourselves as a part of nature, not

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Speaker 1: apart from nature, but a part of nature. This fundamental

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Speaker 1: shift in how we think about ourselves that I think

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Speaker 1: can help us become better hunters. I think it can

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Speaker 1: help us become happier humans, and I definitely think it

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Speaker 1: can help us become more effective stewards of these wild things.

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Speaker 1: And so if we can, if we can process some

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Speaker 1: of this and think about this and maybe reconsider where

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Speaker 1: we stand in relation to the deer that we hunt,

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Speaker 1: the turkeys we chase, the fish we catch, the bears

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Speaker 1: we watch when we drive through Yellowstone, whatever it might be,

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Speaker 1: maybe all of that can help us take these next

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Speaker 1: couple of month s worts of conversations and put it

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Speaker 1: into action, leading to better things for us in our

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Speaker 1: outdoor pursuits leading to better opportunities for our kids and

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Speaker 1: so so much more so. That is the game plan today.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for being here, Thanks for tuning in. Let's get

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Speaker 1: to my chat now with Douglas Chadwick. All right now

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Speaker 1: with me on the line. I'm really excited to have

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Speaker 1: mister Douglas Chadwick. Doug, thank you so much for being here. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I'm happy to be here, of course. And you're in Bozeman,

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Speaker 1: aren't you. So the company Meetator is based in Bozeman,

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Speaker 1: but I actually split my time between Michigan and Idaho,

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Speaker 1: so I'm kind of all over the place. Well, I

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Speaker 1: was gonna I was gonna try to console you because

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Speaker 1: I think they got almost two feet in so snow

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Speaker 1: em Bozeman yesterday. Yes, because spring of going rapidly backwards

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Speaker 1: in some parts of the Rockies look good today on

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Speaker 1: the west side. Yeah, A lot of my friends and

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Speaker 1: Bozeman have been sharing pictures of that dreaded two foot

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Speaker 1: snowfall when they're hoping to see some kind of green

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Speaker 1: growth again. I think at my place in Idaho there's

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Speaker 1: something like four feet still. So I'm gonna be digging

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Speaker 1: my way into the driveway here in a few weeks

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Speaker 1: when I get out there. But I'm sure you've had

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Speaker 1: a lot of that snowfall up in your neck of

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Speaker 1: the Wits two. Huh, we have. It's been good. I

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Speaker 1: do a lot of cross country stand and just animal

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Speaker 1: tracking getting out and of course all of us in

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Speaker 1: Montana well and a lot of the country. You know,

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Speaker 1: we're praying for more and moist here and save us

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Speaker 1: from once again having a wildfire season start a month early.

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Speaker 1: You know, the bigger picture of things here is there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of transition going on. I'm looking at the

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Speaker 1: Continental Divide from my home in white Fish, and I've

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Speaker 1: hiked out all my life, and I'm watching glaciers literally

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Speaker 1: shrink in front of my eyes and trees marching up

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Speaker 1: the slopes into the tundra. And you know, it's it's

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Speaker 1: a real phenomenon, that UM effects. I used to study

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Speaker 1: mountain goats and in the park as well as in

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Speaker 1: the San rang Von, Canada, and and uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: the use high altitude critters have got a whole new

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Speaker 1: um center rules to survive by. So um anyway, lots

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Speaker 1: of snow is good. Let the glaciers grow bigger. Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we need we need the snow, the moisture, the coal.

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Speaker 1: That's going to be good for some critters out there,

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Speaker 1: will be good for the fish and the rivers. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it'll be good for exactly like you said, hopefully not

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Speaker 1: as bad of a wildfire season. So yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: I'm sure all my buddies in Bozeman, uh can handle

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Speaker 1: a little extra snow in their hopes for spring because

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Speaker 1: of the greater good. Um yep, So you mentioned the

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Speaker 1: work you used to do with mountain goats, and um,

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Speaker 1: you know, I've I've become relatively steeped in your history

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Speaker 1: preparing for this and reading your works over the years. Uh,

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Speaker 1: You've you've lived, and I guess I'm speaking for you,

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Speaker 1: so correct me if you think I'm wrong here. But

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Speaker 1: it seems like you've lived a fascinating life. That you've

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Speaker 1: been able to go to some wild places, you've got

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Speaker 1: to study such charismatic animals, You've you've been able to

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Speaker 1: travel the world and just see and experience unbelievable things. Um.

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Speaker 1: And and I'm sure it's it's obvious to me about

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Speaker 1: you know, why you would want to do these things

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Speaker 1: and why you why this I'm sure self fulfilling for you.

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Speaker 1: But what my question is, to a degree, is is

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Speaker 1: when did those things? When did those travels in your

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Speaker 1: work as a biologist and a writer, When did all

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Speaker 1: that shift for you from just adventure seeking or curiosity satiating.

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Speaker 1: When did it shift from that to advocacy? When did

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Speaker 1: you shift from me a consumer of these wild experiences

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Speaker 1: to then wanting to protect them or advocate for them.

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Speaker 1: When did that happen for you? How did that happen

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Speaker 1: for you? Well, boy, us along and complex question. I'll

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Speaker 1: try to keep it short. It actually started pretty early, mark,

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Speaker 1: because I did my graduate work and wildlife biology studying

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Speaker 1: mountain goats, and I studied them in an area that

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Speaker 1: was back in the day. I'm getting kind of antique,

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Speaker 1: And this was back in the seventies when mountain goats

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Speaker 1: were being hunted unlimited. They didn't know anything about them

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Speaker 1: and didn't recognize them as a whole different kind of

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Speaker 1: critter than say, deer and elk, their closest relative in

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Speaker 1: North America, as the Muscos and other relatives are all

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Speaker 1: found on the east coast of Asia, and they have

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Speaker 1: a whole different social system and slow reproduction and all

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Speaker 1: kinds of things. So Anyway, I was up studying mountain goats,

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Speaker 1: and I was watching new roads going to the back country,

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Speaker 1: and grizzly bears were essentially being on being hundred unlimited

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Speaker 1: in those days too, and there were very few regulations

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Speaker 1: on logging and road building. So I kind of got

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Speaker 1: activated early on because I was watching goats disappear and

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Speaker 1: that was happening throughout the large choke of the goat range,

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Speaker 1: and I was also watching grizzly bears disappear. They were

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Speaker 1: listed as threatened while I was still on the job

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Speaker 1: of being a goat boy, and so I struck me, well, wait,

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Speaker 1: use their public resources. And they're both committially inspiring in

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Speaker 1: their own way. I mean, we all know about grizzlies

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Speaker 1: and the emotions they evoke, but mountain goats kind of

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Speaker 1: sentinels of the high country and live in one of

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Speaker 1: the highest steepest niches ever invented for a warm blooded mammal.

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Speaker 1: And anyway, I just thought, this is silly to be

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Speaker 1: having the youth vanish at this rate. What can I do?

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Speaker 1: And so I did start writing for you know, popular

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Speaker 1: magazines looking to do how to affect public policy. I

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Speaker 1: don't clam to be any good at that. I just

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Speaker 1: got activated, So that took place early. And then I

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Speaker 1: did get lucky and latch onto a kind of a

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Speaker 1: career with National Geographic as an independent writer. But I

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Speaker 1: worked for him for many, many stories and books, and

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Speaker 1: that's got me sent out around the world. And it

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Speaker 1: turned out that everywhere I went us started looking better

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Speaker 1: and better. And I'm watching animals disappear around the globe,

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Speaker 1: and I'm talking about up to and including the giants

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Speaker 1: I work with, elephants, I work with great whales, and

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Speaker 1: or I should say I volunteered as a researcher when

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Speaker 1: I could, but a lot of time I was just

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Speaker 1: tagging along after the experts in the area where I

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Speaker 1: was trying to figure out what would work and what

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Speaker 1: wouldn't for conservation. So a lot of good, I'd say,

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Speaker 1: blind luck plus passion to be in wild places among

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Speaker 1: inspiring wildlife. Yeah, going to all those places dug in

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Speaker 1: and being with so many people working towards either researching

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Speaker 1: these wild animals or you know, actually working to protect

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Speaker 1: them in one way or another. You've seen all these

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Speaker 1: things firsthand, You've been with people working on these problems

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Speaker 1: and issues. Do you feel having that set of experiences

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Speaker 1: and being exposed to all of that all over the world,

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Speaker 1: both here at home and elsewhere. Has that made you

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Speaker 1: more worried about the situation at hand and disheartened? Or

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Speaker 1: or has that given you hope and confidence because you

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Speaker 1: see the good things being done? Where have you landed

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Speaker 1: after being exposed to the reality on the ground in

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Speaker 1: so many places? Okay? Can I tell one quick story? Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: please do. I was working with people who were studying

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Speaker 1: the vocabulary, basically the songs, the vocal messages of humpback whales,

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Speaker 1: and we were allowed to swim with them by special

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Speaker 1: permission because there are protected species. But you know how

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Speaker 1: we all go out to have wildlife adventures, and the bigger,

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Speaker 1: the better the critter. And I remember a whale that

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Speaker 1: came over to me and I was, you know, really

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Speaker 1: steaming along, you know, full speed, headed straight for me.

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Speaker 1: This is a humpback and it and then it put

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Speaker 1: out these big fins it has called pectoral fins and

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Speaker 1: just acts as instant breaks and stopped about two feet

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Speaker 1: from my nose, and you know, I felt like, now,

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Speaker 1: this critter has a brain about three times my size,

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Speaker 1: and it lives as long or longer than team minutes,

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Speaker 1: and it sings the longest song in the world, and

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Speaker 1: it came over to see me. I felt like a

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Speaker 1: little bug that someone bent down to look at, you know,

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Speaker 1: And you can just imagine the presence of a thirty

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Speaker 1: five foot forty foot long animal being nose and nose

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Speaker 1: with an underwater and I mean, back up onto the boat.

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Speaker 1: My first thought was, damn, what now? What? How can

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Speaker 1: I ever get any better than this? You know, I'm

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Speaker 1: far venturing, but I guess I'm trying to lead into say,

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Speaker 1: working with elephants. I was. My first introduction to them

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Speaker 1: was during the late nineteen seventies early eighties, and they

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Speaker 1: were all being slaughtered void, just at a mass level

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Speaker 1: for their ivory, which at the time was worth more

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Speaker 1: than the third tusks had been made of solid silver.

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Speaker 1: So you can't stop a market like that in countries

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Speaker 1: with very little law enforcement and corrupt governments. And I'm

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Speaker 1: just walking from dead elephant to dead elephants. So I

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Speaker 1: guess I'm working my way towards saying that the activism

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Speaker 1: part the passion to God, Chadwick gets smarter, do something,

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Speaker 1: figure out something to help here, and if you're talking

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Speaker 1: about authors, you're talking about whole landscapes it takes to

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Speaker 1: support them, and also the welfare of the people that

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Speaker 1: live there, and the economics of tourism and all kinds

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Speaker 1: of things that some countries rely on. So if I'm

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Speaker 1: looking at let's say tropical for us, and I'm watching them,

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Speaker 1: I've been in the Amazon on the Congo and watch

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Speaker 1: the forest, you know, being transformed into palm oil plantations

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Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. I don't go there looking

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Speaker 1: for problems. I don't go there all fired up and

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Speaker 1: I'm going to go out and be an environmental activist

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Speaker 1: frame of mind. I just go to learn about the

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Speaker 1: animals and what I see keeps do keep me what

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Speaker 1: motivated to to figure this out? What groups? Okay, so

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Speaker 1: that's the bad part. I mean, there are eight billion

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Speaker 1: people in the world. It's not real apparent when you

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Speaker 1: live in the mountains of Montana, but that's almost three

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Speaker 1: times as many as we're around on this planet. When

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Speaker 1: I was learning how to do biology and conservation and cool. Right,

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Speaker 1: it's a whole new ball game, and I don't think

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Speaker 1: most people are at the speed on it unless they

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Speaker 1: travel a lot. In parts of Asia, and Africa where

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Speaker 1: the animals are simply running out of room, especially big animals.

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Speaker 1: And I guess I could put it this way. If

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Speaker 1: you take the living weight of all the land dwelling

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Speaker 1: mammals on the planet, about oh twenty two three percent

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Speaker 1: of that is humans all but a little slice of

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Speaker 1: the remaining percentage is our livestock. It's like seventy six

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Speaker 1: percent and or seventy three percent, I don't know, somewhere

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Speaker 1: in there. And there's a little little slice of the

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Speaker 1: pie left that is four percent. And that's all the

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Speaker 1: wild animals that remain on Earth today. Okay, all the while,

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, well I'm talking about mammals, but what you know,

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Speaker 1: I gotta get my terms right. But that's all. That's it.

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Speaker 1: And so you know, people try to compromise, and the

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Speaker 1: compromise is lung has been made in my experience. And

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Speaker 1: so even as I get more motivated to try to

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Speaker 1: do something, and you know, I have been yeah, near

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Speaker 1: to despair, outright despair in some places, just people everywhere

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Speaker 1: doing everything and the animals losing and losing and losing.

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Speaker 1: But the other motivation is to go out and find

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Speaker 1: projects and programs that are working and I'm especially intrigued

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Speaker 1: by ones that. Again, I'm a biologist. I love working

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Speaker 1: with animals. I didn't plan to work with people. But

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Speaker 1: now it's really key to go out and find communities

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Speaker 1: that are working together to keep the health of the

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Speaker 1: land and the wildlife communities that they all share, and

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Speaker 1: that means protecting their water and the quality of their

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Speaker 1: land and for grazing or whatever it is, what's working,

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Speaker 1: that's what peop I want to know. It's I mean,

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Speaker 1: environmentalists and pretty good at alarming people and coming up

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Speaker 1: with some pretty hard you know, you go to a

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Speaker 1: party and pig and hold people and say, here's another

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Speaker 1: terrible thing you might not know about. Sound fun, here's

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Speaker 1: another awful statistic. But I want to be able to say, look,

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Speaker 1: here's a program where the people are doing better. They're

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Speaker 1: getting you know, more stable environment for their other activities.

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Speaker 1: They're getting water that's healthier for their children to drink,

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Speaker 1: Disease is going down. They've got more money from some

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Speaker 1: tourism for health of children and women and the community

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Speaker 1: as a whole. And they're doing this for their own reasons,

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Speaker 1: not because people are coming from the outside from some

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Speaker 1: rich country and saying here's we're here to help, right.

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Speaker 1: So I'm actually on the foundation. It's an international foundation

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Speaker 1: that supports community based conservation all around the world. From

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Speaker 1: I was just reviewing plans in Laos in Argentina, you

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Speaker 1: get the idea and these are these are programs that

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Speaker 1: are working. And so you combine more scientific information about animals,

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Speaker 1: and boy has that changed in those that period I

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Speaker 1: mentioned since I was in school. We know cons more

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Speaker 1: about their behavior, their genetics, and their physiological needs. And

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Speaker 1: we also know a whole lot more about the need

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Speaker 1: to work with the people that live on the land

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Speaker 1: and not and get away from that old idea more

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Speaker 1: than a century old now of we protect animals by

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Speaker 1: declaring an exclusive reserve and sensing everybody out and or

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00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:04,119
Speaker 1: limiting an access and and then one of the people

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Speaker 1: who have relied on that part of Asia and that

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Speaker 1: part of Africa, or that part of the US for

404
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:13,720
Speaker 1: that matter, where are they supposed to do? So communities

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00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:19,400
Speaker 1: working together, that's that's a big part of the agenda

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Speaker 1: for me now is to explain that to people's working

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Speaker 1: on a larger and more connected scale. And we're used

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Speaker 1: to working on with the old model of conservation. But

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Speaker 1: I think a good point to several projects that do

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Speaker 1: work like that, and I did put some in a

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Speaker 1: reacent book. Um, I'll leave it at that. That's a

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Speaker 1: pretty long answer already. Know you touched on some you

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Speaker 1: touched on some great things there. And you know, I

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Speaker 1: think one of the one of the things that you

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Speaker 1: do really well in that book you just mentioned is

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Speaker 1: you help reframe how we look at these others, these

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Speaker 1: other species, these other parts of the um natural world.

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Speaker 1: And and you titled the book around this idea. You

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Speaker 1: lad the book with this idea, and I think it's

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Speaker 1: I get why you see it as being foundational to

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Speaker 1: helping us think about how we, you know, live alongside

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Speaker 1: of these other animals. And this this idea of being

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Speaker 1: that that the old narrative of us being apart from nature,

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Speaker 1: or that nature and us are two separate things. You

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00:28:36,680 --> 00:28:39,640
Speaker 1: seem to want to turn that on its head and say, no,

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00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:43,640
Speaker 1: not so much. We're all in this together. We are

427
00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 1: actually four fifths so grizzly. Um, can you can you

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Speaker 1: can you give us a quick cliff notes into what

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00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:54,280
Speaker 1: you mean by that and why you think that kind

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Speaker 1: of reshifting our perspective on a relationship with a natural

431
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 1: world matters so much. Sure, well, you know I was

432
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:10,040
Speaker 1: raved pretty normal childhood, I guess, And I think we

433
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:17,280
Speaker 1: all kind of come away into our older years or

434
00:29:17,520 --> 00:29:21,280
Speaker 1: the years we start questioning things. We don't really question

435
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:25,840
Speaker 1: the idea that we are kind of a supreme species

436
00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: and we're either independent of nature or somehow liberated from it,

437
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:39,959
Speaker 1: separate from it in quality. We have the biggest brain

438
00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:46,200
Speaker 1: for body weight, and you know a lot of rationales

439
00:29:46,320 --> 00:29:50,240
Speaker 1: for doing what we've always done with resources, which has

440
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 1: claim as much as we want, wherever we want, for

441
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:57,760
Speaker 1: as long as we want, and then paid off pretty well. Right,

442
00:29:57,920 --> 00:29:59,840
Speaker 1: Like I said, there are eight billion of us now,

443
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:03,600
Speaker 1: the only other species that have a growth curve like

444
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:10,240
Speaker 1: the human population or bacteria. But again, now we're in

445
00:30:10,240 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 1: a situation very well no other mammal has been in

446
00:30:16,120 --> 00:30:21,680
Speaker 1: and you know we're changing those the atmosphere, those you know,

447
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 1: the water, the land structure, the patterns of habitat, at everything,

448
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:35,480
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I think a new view of conservations

449
00:30:35,520 --> 00:30:39,240
Speaker 1: in order, and that's going to start with I don't

450
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:40,960
Speaker 1: think we'll put it this way. I don't think we're

451
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 1: going to save nature as long as we don't see

452
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:48,680
Speaker 1: clearly our relationship with nature, and the reason we're at

453
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 1: least four fifths of grizzly is that we there are

454
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:55,320
Speaker 1: about six thousand and four hundred species of mammals on

455
00:30:55,480 --> 00:31:00,520
Speaker 1: planet us, and you know, never mind, there are four

456
00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:06,400
Speaker 1: hundred thousand species of beetles identified and they're probably a

457
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 1: million out there, but we focus on the big charismatic critters.

458
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:16,520
Speaker 1: That's natural. And we share eighty to ninety percent of

459
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 1: our genes with every mammal out there, and it goes

460
00:31:20,520 --> 00:31:24,400
Speaker 1: up to ninety eight percent with the great with chimpanzee's

461
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 1: and behind nineties with other great eggs. So you know,

462
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:34,200
Speaker 1: we are built from the same genes and they, and

463
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:37,440
Speaker 1: what we're discovering is a lot about how much we

464
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:43,480
Speaker 1: share in terms of behavior, of emotions, of other qualities

465
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 1: built by those genes. And one of the most common

466
00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:51,719
Speaker 1: phrases I see as I look through research papers on

467
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:58,240
Speaker 1: animal behavior is the comment a trait formerly thought to

468
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 1: be exclusive to human? Why was it formerly thought to

469
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:07,200
Speaker 1: be exclusive to humans? Because it sort of suited our

470
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:13,800
Speaker 1: the story we tell ourselves. And the other thing about

471
00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 1: being part of nature is that and this, you know,

472
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 1: this gets into the geeky part. But you know, we

473
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:28,160
Speaker 1: have up three thirty trillion human cells in our bodies,

474
00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:34,720
Speaker 1: and we have more single celled creatures living within and

475
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:38,960
Speaker 1: hon us than that, and they are doing our digesting

476
00:32:39,120 --> 00:32:42,160
Speaker 1: for us, just like they would in the room and

477
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:45,960
Speaker 1: of a white tailed deer can't live without it. They

478
00:32:46,040 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 1: produced satty acids and vitamins we can't make ourselves. They

479
00:32:49,960 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: keep us going, and they're fighting off other possible infections,

480
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:04,959
Speaker 1: other single celled triggers and their effect. They're producing hormones

481
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:08,840
Speaker 1: that are very much like dopamine and serotonin and other

482
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:12,960
Speaker 1: things that influence our mood and our thoughts and our actions.

483
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:18,520
Speaker 1: So we're actually a compound creature, you know, we're like

484
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:22,280
Speaker 1: resemble a liking, which is, you know, an algae plus

485
00:33:22,360 --> 00:33:24,720
Speaker 1: a couple of different kinds of fungus plus a bunch

486
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 1: of bacteria. We call it a plant. And I would

487
00:33:29,840 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 1: challenge anyone listening to go find an animal larger than

488
00:33:33,880 --> 00:33:38,640
Speaker 1: bacteria or a similar group called their KaiA that is

489
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 1: actually an independent creature. There doesn't seem to be any

490
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:53,080
Speaker 1: such thing. So we're combinations, partnerships, collaborations where we joint ventures.

491
00:33:53,720 --> 00:33:56,960
Speaker 1: That's what we are. And you know, you can't be

492
00:33:57,040 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 1: apart from nature, And no matter how badly you want

493
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:03,400
Speaker 1: it to be so, um, that doesn't oblige you to

494
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:06,400
Speaker 1: go out and start dragging subarus and holding up signs

495
00:34:06,400 --> 00:34:11,040
Speaker 1: of protests. That means, here, we're not who we think

496
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:13,839
Speaker 1: we are. Our nature doesn't work why we like to

497
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:18,920
Speaker 1: think it works. And and genetically we've got ken all

498
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:22,880
Speaker 1: over the world. Um, And the last thing I'll add is,

499
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:28,640
Speaker 1: I'm look, we're also fifty to sixty percent genetically identical

500
00:34:28,760 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 1: to fish, and we share thirty to forty percent even

501
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:40,160
Speaker 1: with some insects and uh with a wine grape. Um,

502
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:43,319
Speaker 1: maybe maybe a little more in that some nights, you

503
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:49,840
Speaker 1: know the company, right, yeah, um, so yeah, I wonder

504
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:53,200
Speaker 1: that's why I wrote four fifths of Grizzly was too.

505
00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 1: I've been working with single species that represented whole ecosystems.

506
00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:05,239
Speaker 1: Grizzly bears. You're taking care of their needs for home,

507
00:35:05,360 --> 00:35:09,279
Speaker 1: range and habitat and quality of food. You're probably encompassing

508
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:12,799
Speaker 1: everything from trout to trumpeter slans to lengths of wolverines

509
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:19,279
Speaker 1: and help and deer, but um, you know whales. I

510
00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:23,480
Speaker 1: worked on grizzly bears in the Gobi Desert anyway, just

511
00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:25,759
Speaker 1: anyway I could come come at it, But it was

512
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:30,320
Speaker 1: always single species. But if you're protecting them, you're protecting

513
00:35:32,120 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 1: a lot of biological diversity. You're protecting a lot of

514
00:35:35,360 --> 00:35:41,880
Speaker 1: nature of an ecosystem. And then I thought, well, I

515
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:44,319
Speaker 1: haven't written a book like that. I'm still focused on

516
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:48,759
Speaker 1: the individual species or special places that need more attention.

517
00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:51,480
Speaker 1: You know, as a writer, you're sort of an arm

518
00:35:51,560 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 1: waiver or a cheerleader for things people haven't been paying

519
00:35:55,719 --> 00:35:59,320
Speaker 1: attention to, and you're trying to trying to get their attention.

520
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:02,319
Speaker 1: But I thought, no, we need to rethink a lot

521
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 1: of things again with the idea of that what your

522
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:10,759
Speaker 1: saving nature mean? And first we have to, I think,

523
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:16,760
Speaker 1: have a long and useful discussion about what is nature

524
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:19,040
Speaker 1: and what's the nature in us and where do we

525
00:36:19,160 --> 00:36:37,840
Speaker 1: stand in relationship to it. I heard you mentioned on

526
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 1: another show at some point you said that people might say, oh,

527
00:36:41,080 --> 00:36:43,719
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not that into nature, but nature's into you.

528
00:36:44,719 --> 00:36:48,000
Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty that's pretty funny. I know

529
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:54,680
Speaker 1: a lot of those in your audience we're all mediators,

530
00:36:54,840 --> 00:36:59,000
Speaker 1: and you know, I've never turned down a fresh medicine

531
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:05,280
Speaker 1: of my life but while we're still kind of touching

532
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 1: on global situation, there's and I don't throw off statistics

533
00:37:10,040 --> 00:37:13,879
Speaker 1: again to be an alarmist or for rhetoric or slay

534
00:37:13,920 --> 00:37:17,560
Speaker 1: soone's opinion. It's just the facts based on a tremendous

535
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:22,439
Speaker 1: number of studies. And that's that about sixty percent of

536
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 1: all the herbivores or the hooft mammals mostly greater than

537
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:34,840
Speaker 1: two hundred pounds are imperiled species these days, and about

538
00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 1: sixty per of all carnivores that's all non human meat eaters, right,

539
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:46,080
Speaker 1: greater than about thirty three pounds are also on the

540
00:37:46,200 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 1: rare threatened or endangered species lists. So it is it's

541
00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:56,200
Speaker 1: a different world out there than the bubble I live

542
00:37:56,239 --> 00:38:00,200
Speaker 1: in in Montana, where we've still got a pretty hack

543
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:05,959
Speaker 1: wildlife communities in pretty good shape. Yeah, So that that

544
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:09,160
Speaker 1: that ties in really well to a story I wanted

545
00:38:09,160 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 1: to tell you, Doug. I posted a photo on my

546
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:20,120
Speaker 1: Instagram page a couple weeks ago of an excert of

547
00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:24,200
Speaker 1: your book. On page forty six. There's a like a

548
00:38:24,320 --> 00:38:27,600
Speaker 1: like an enlarged piece of text where you were talking

549
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:31,240
Speaker 1: about kind of this very issue of the biodiversity crisis

550
00:38:31,239 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 1: in the in the quote here that I took a

551
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:36,080
Speaker 1: photo of and that I shared was this as the

552
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:38,920
Speaker 1: number of people was roughly doubling in the forty two

553
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:43,280
Speaker 1: years between nineteen seventy in twenty twelve, the total population

554
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: count of the planet's wild animals fell by more than

555
00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:51,880
Speaker 1: half yea. So I posted that picture and I didn't

556
00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:54,359
Speaker 1: really add any context. I just said, for your consideration,

557
00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:57,600
Speaker 1: was my caption and put it out there, and it

558
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:01,960
Speaker 1: generated all sorts of questions. There was outrage at like disbelief,

559
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:04,239
Speaker 1: like there's no way this could be possible, there's no

560
00:39:04,239 --> 00:39:07,040
Speaker 1: way anyone could have that kind of data, or that

561
00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:10,680
Speaker 1: there's no way anyone could actually measure this. There were

562
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:16,279
Speaker 1: some people just very despairing of that. There were some

563
00:39:16,360 --> 00:39:19,319
Speaker 1: folks who had genuine questions about how do we how

564
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:20,719
Speaker 1: do we know this, how do we come to these

565
00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:23,919
Speaker 1: kinds of conclusions, what can we do about it? There

566
00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 1: were some folks who said, you know, there are folks

567
00:39:27,560 --> 00:39:29,279
Speaker 1: who start to point fingers. It's because of this, it's

568
00:39:29,320 --> 00:39:31,959
Speaker 1: because of this, because of this. It generated a really

569
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:35,440
Speaker 1: interesting beginning of a conversation that sent me then down

570
00:39:35,520 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: a wormhole to try to answer or at least provide

571
00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:43,360
Speaker 1: a little more context. So I ended up recording and

572
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:47,439
Speaker 1: sharing a fifteen minute video explaining I dove deep into

573
00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:49,640
Speaker 1: where that number came from. I did research on trying

574
00:39:49,680 --> 00:39:52,799
Speaker 1: to understand the Living Planet Report from the World Wildlife Fund,

575
00:39:52,800 --> 00:39:55,480
Speaker 1: and I read up on how the Living Planet Index

576
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:59,959
Speaker 1: is compiled and shared all that and discuss some different

577
00:40:00,120 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 1: things around what we're seeing as far as the larger wildlife,

578
00:40:04,239 --> 00:40:07,759
Speaker 1: these larger wildlife trends. So it was a great kind

579
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:13,239
Speaker 1: of exercise for me to have to think about think

580
00:40:13,239 --> 00:40:20,840
Speaker 1: about what these statistics, like these kind of negative, depressing

581
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:25,080
Speaker 1: I guess metrics in the world right now, what those

582
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:27,520
Speaker 1: things mean, How we can do something with that data.

583
00:40:27,560 --> 00:40:29,319
Speaker 1: Because it's one thing to just say it, like you said,

584
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:33,399
Speaker 1: like you can say this depressing, sad number that does

585
00:40:33,560 --> 00:40:36,399
Speaker 1: point to a fact and point to reality, But how

586
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:38,239
Speaker 1: do we understand what that actually looks like? How do

587
00:40:38,280 --> 00:40:39,680
Speaker 1: we get to these numbers and what do we do

588
00:40:39,719 --> 00:40:41,920
Speaker 1: about it? So this is a long winded way, Doug,

589
00:40:41,960 --> 00:40:47,520
Speaker 1: of asking you to tell me this that quote that

590
00:40:47,560 --> 00:40:51,879
Speaker 1: I just shared with you, this idea of this biodiversity crisis,

591
00:40:51,600 --> 00:40:54,760
Speaker 1: this idea that folks are saying that we are moving

592
00:40:54,760 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 1: towards a sixth mass extinction event. As someone who's been

593
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 1: out there on the ground talking to the folks researching

594
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:04,319
Speaker 1: these things, studying these things, and you've seen some of

595
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:08,440
Speaker 1: a much of it of yourself. Does this ring true

596
00:41:09,120 --> 00:41:19,600
Speaker 1: or is it hyperbolic and it's alarmist? It's true? Um. Again,

597
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:26,920
Speaker 1: if I'm if I'm in Missouri, or I'm in California,

598
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:31,880
Speaker 1: if I'm in Montana, especially if I'm in Montana, I'm Alaska,

599
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:35,560
Speaker 1: and I'd read that statistic and I go, what what

600
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:37,680
Speaker 1: What in the world are they talk about? This is

601
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:44,439
Speaker 1: more rhetoric, you know, propaganda from the Greenies. Um. But

602
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:47,960
Speaker 1: when I'm in Asia and walking through a jungle and

603
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:53,360
Speaker 1: there's a snare, you know, every hundred feet and the

604
00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:59,120
Speaker 1: jungle is lush and intact, but it's empty of big critters, um.

605
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:04,640
Speaker 1: If all too clear. And when I'm in situations where

606
00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:07,880
Speaker 1: I'm carrying a gun in Africa because of the threat

607
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:15,280
Speaker 1: of poachers, because I'm with park rangers and we're coming

608
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:18,600
Speaker 1: upon you know, freshly killed carcasses all over the place,

609
00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 1: It's it's very real. And I I I did read

610
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:30,160
Speaker 1: the same report you did carefully, and I would say

611
00:42:30,200 --> 00:42:36,799
Speaker 1: it was a Worldwhilife Fund planetary evaluation. I think the

612
00:42:36,880 --> 00:42:41,000
Speaker 1: Solological Society of London and they it isn't like they

613
00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:44,799
Speaker 1: just went out and did their own surveys in a

614
00:42:44,840 --> 00:42:49,680
Speaker 1: few places. They wrote to everybody around the world and

615
00:42:49,800 --> 00:42:55,160
Speaker 1: got all the census stata they could and it's always imperfect,

616
00:42:55,200 --> 00:43:02,440
Speaker 1: but thousands of studies and put it together and actually

617
00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 1: it came out a couple of years ago. I recently

618
00:43:06,560 --> 00:43:12,560
Speaker 1: saw the figure raised from almost fifty percent to you know,

619
00:43:12,680 --> 00:43:18,840
Speaker 1: sixty percent plus, and some have The hard part is,

620
00:43:19,760 --> 00:43:23,520
Speaker 1: you know who's who's out there counting salm every salamander

621
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:27,399
Speaker 1: or wizard and that sort of thing. But you can

622
00:43:27,440 --> 00:43:33,200
Speaker 1: certainly take large sample areas and get those figures. And again,

623
00:43:33,239 --> 00:43:35,400
Speaker 1: depending on where you are, it makes sense to you

624
00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:40,279
Speaker 1: or it just sounds catastrophic. But worldwide, that's the situation.

625
00:43:40,360 --> 00:43:44,480
Speaker 1: The human footprint now lies across eighty three percent of

626
00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:49,359
Speaker 1: the land surface of the Earth. Those kind of how

627
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:55,920
Speaker 1: long agen throwing out gloomy gloomy stats here. The prediction

628
00:43:56,120 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 1: is that the plastic in the seas, including all the

629
00:44:02,200 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 1: decayed plastic that becomes microplastics, gets into every living thing.

630
00:44:07,200 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 1: It will outweigh all the fish in the world's oceans

631
00:44:10,239 --> 00:44:15,400
Speaker 1: by two thousand and fifty. So it's really hard for

632
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:20,640
Speaker 1: a single person living, you know, with in a you know,

633
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 1: a familiar home with comfortable routines and enjoys getting the outdoors.

634
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:29,920
Speaker 1: And Um looks around and says, I don't see anything

635
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:33,359
Speaker 1: much differ from day to day. But where are you

636
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:38,320
Speaker 1: if you I'm not sure we're even built you see,

637
00:44:38,640 --> 00:44:45,400
Speaker 1: you know that far or on that scale, But whenever

638
00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:50,320
Speaker 1: you put it together globally, with eight billion plus people

639
00:44:50,320 --> 00:44:53,360
Speaker 1: on the planet in need of resources and with a

640
00:44:53,400 --> 00:44:56,800
Speaker 1: whole lot more technology to get those resources and change

641
00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:03,640
Speaker 1: environments to do it, I'm sorry. It's it's what's happening.

642
00:45:03,719 --> 00:45:07,160
Speaker 1: And that's why there was a recent meeting to take

643
00:45:07,239 --> 00:45:10,480
Speaker 1: on to try to get all nations to make a

644
00:45:10,520 --> 00:45:14,439
Speaker 1: commitment for reserving a certain percentage of biodiversity that they

645
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:18,919
Speaker 1: have on their lands and in their waters, much as

646
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: was done with you know, the international meeting to take

647
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:28,960
Speaker 1: on the climate crisis. So I know a lot of people,

648
00:45:31,200 --> 00:45:35,160
Speaker 1: you know, there's a feeling like you're almost inclined to

649
00:45:35,280 --> 00:45:39,359
Speaker 1: reject all this because it's just too much. You're used

650
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:45,080
Speaker 1: to people overstating crises and you know, they'll be warnings

651
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:48,279
Speaker 1: about some particular chemical and we're all going to die

652
00:45:49,120 --> 00:45:51,919
Speaker 1: and get deformed. And then you know, two months later

653
00:45:52,160 --> 00:45:56,360
Speaker 1: they say, oh no, we we we did some more experiments.

654
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:59,320
Speaker 1: Turns out it's not a big deal. So it's easy

655
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:03,360
Speaker 1: to put these things in that category. But the loss

656
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:07,759
Speaker 1: of our fellow creakers is enormous, as unprecedented has been

657
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:11,440
Speaker 1: seen since asteroid whack into the planet at the end

658
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:15,279
Speaker 1: of the Age of dinosaurs. But it's slow mow enough

659
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:18,919
Speaker 1: by our standards that we don't go running out into

660
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:24,799
Speaker 1: the streets. And I wish it weren't true. Yeah, Yet

661
00:46:24,960 --> 00:46:28,319
Speaker 1: it is hard to face that. It's hard to accept that,

662
00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:35,040
Speaker 1: both because it seems it seems beyond possible, and it's

663
00:46:35,200 --> 00:46:38,240
Speaker 1: as you said, in many cases, it's it's hard to

664
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:41,080
Speaker 1: see the actual shift happening right in front of your eyes,

665
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:44,960
Speaker 1: especially if we're somewhere like in America, where we are

666
00:46:45,040 --> 00:46:48,720
Speaker 1: relatively at least compared to many other places in the world,

667
00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:53,360
Speaker 1: we still have, you know, relatively wild places. We still

668
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:56,960
Speaker 1: have full suite of wildlife in some parts of the country.

669
00:46:57,000 --> 00:47:01,400
Speaker 1: We still have you know, well regulated wildlife management principles

670
00:47:01,480 --> 00:47:05,040
Speaker 1: in play too. To give us the resources and the

671
00:47:05,080 --> 00:47:07,040
Speaker 1: opportunities we have to see wild critters out there. But

672
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:09,560
Speaker 1: that's not the case in a lot of places. But

673
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 1: I think, I think even in each of our own

674
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:16,439
Speaker 1: individual lives, on a really micro scale, we can see

675
00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:18,400
Speaker 1: examples of this. I mean I can. I was just

676
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:20,680
Speaker 1: telling my son. I've got a five year old son

677
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:23,440
Speaker 1: who is at this phase in his life where he

678
00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:27,640
Speaker 1: is fascinated by any of dad's stories. He just wants

679
00:47:27,640 --> 00:47:31,720
Speaker 1: to hear stories about when I was on some hiking trip,

680
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:34,120
Speaker 1: or the day I caught my biggest walleye, or that

681
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:36,640
Speaker 1: time that Grandpa pretended to be a black bear and

682
00:47:36,719 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: scared my dad, or the time I caught my first snap,

683
00:47:39,760 --> 00:47:42,480
Speaker 1: like all those things. He just whenever we're driving, he's like, hey,

684
00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:44,000
Speaker 1: will you tell me a story. We tell me this

685
00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:47,399
Speaker 1: story of that thing, that thing. And the other day

686
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 1: he was asking me to tell him stories about catching

687
00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:53,200
Speaker 1: snapping turtles when I was a kid, and so I

688
00:47:53,239 --> 00:47:55,560
Speaker 1: told him about you know, every day during summer break,

689
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:57,239
Speaker 1: I'd go out behind the house and there was this

690
00:47:57,320 --> 00:47:59,840
Speaker 1: swamp and this pine this pond right next door, and

691
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:01,759
Speaker 1: every day in the summer, me and my next door

692
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:03,919
Speaker 1: neighbor would go there, and we'd catch frogs all day,

693
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:06,360
Speaker 1: and we would catch snapping turtles when they would actually

694
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:09,799
Speaker 1: overnight be crawling across the road to get to another pond.

695
00:48:09,840 --> 00:48:11,879
Speaker 1: And we'd wake up in the morning and get out

696
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:13,840
Speaker 1: and see these turtles crossing the road and we'd go

697
00:48:13,880 --> 00:48:16,120
Speaker 1: pick them up and take them back or take them across.

698
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:18,560
Speaker 1: And that was how we would catch these huge snapping turtles.

699
00:48:18,560 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 1: They would always be crossing. And he said, Dad, let's

700
00:48:21,600 --> 00:48:23,560
Speaker 1: go there. Can you please take me to go see

701
00:48:23,600 --> 00:48:25,880
Speaker 1: this swamp and this pond and the snapping turtles. Can

702
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:28,760
Speaker 1: we catch those snapping turtles? And I had to say, Buddy,

703
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:34,520
Speaker 1: it's gone, that pond, that wood lot, it's it's houses now.

704
00:48:35,160 --> 00:48:38,439
Speaker 1: And I don't I don't think there's anyone listening today

705
00:48:38,640 --> 00:48:41,080
Speaker 1: who can't point to some example like that in their

706
00:48:41,120 --> 00:48:44,359
Speaker 1: life of some favorite fishing hole or a favorite wood lot,

707
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 1: or a field where they used to chase butterflies or

708
00:48:47,520 --> 00:48:52,040
Speaker 1: hunt for rabbits, or hike or bird watch or something. Well.

709
00:48:52,360 --> 00:48:58,040
Speaker 1: I live in mike Fish, growing rapidly if Ski town

710
00:48:58,239 --> 00:49:01,279
Speaker 1: and close to Glacier Park and a lot of tourism,

711
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:04,759
Speaker 1: and during COVID, it seemed like everybody east of the

712
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:09,680
Speaker 1: Mississippi decided to move here as well as California. But yeah,

713
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:13,480
Speaker 1: I could tell you about and you know, my kids

714
00:49:13,560 --> 00:49:18,000
Speaker 1: know about canoeing the river that runs through town and

715
00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:22,600
Speaker 1: watching moose and and you know, we still have deer

716
00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:28,400
Speaker 1: in our yard, but a lot of yards i've also

717
00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:32,840
Speaker 1: seen him and around me are now hopes and the

718
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 1: moose are gone, and the wild turkeys are obvious frequents.

719
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:39,479
Speaker 1: And you know, there's just a lot of people coming

720
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:43,759
Speaker 1: in and they don't have you know, they don't have

721
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:46,800
Speaker 1: bad intentions. They simply want to live in a nice place.

722
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:50,120
Speaker 1: They actually love the outdoors. That's one reason they come.

723
00:49:51,040 --> 00:49:54,279
Speaker 1: But you know, they don't always come with a commitment

724
00:49:54,360 --> 00:50:00,160
Speaker 1: to try to find some way to make room for

725
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:03,000
Speaker 1: these other creatures as well as for ourselves. It can

726
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:05,200
Speaker 1: be done. I mean, there are plans and there are

727
00:50:05,320 --> 00:50:11,400
Speaker 1: models for for limiting the pace of habitat change. I

728
00:50:11,560 --> 00:50:17,319
Speaker 1: know you guys focus often on white tails, right, And um,

729
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:22,000
Speaker 1: you're lucky because you're working with a speciesis doing very

730
00:50:22,040 --> 00:50:28,400
Speaker 1: well yea, and rapidly reproduces, and most of all, it

731
00:50:28,400 --> 00:50:32,960
Speaker 1: seems well adapted to disturbed habitats. So originally that help

732
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:39,480
Speaker 1: fires and floods and and you know other other changes

733
00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:44,480
Speaker 1: from natural forces, but they do equally well or suburban areas.

734
00:50:44,719 --> 00:50:48,280
Speaker 1: I'm just telling your your audience things they know very well,

735
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:52,439
Speaker 1: and so that's always heartening. I mean, I when I'm

736
00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:56,520
Speaker 1: out picking apples in my in my field, um, I've

737
00:50:56,600 --> 00:50:59,400
Speaker 1: usually got white tailed deer standing below the tree whining

738
00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:01,640
Speaker 1: for me. I was on kind of butterfingers and I

739
00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:05,880
Speaker 1: drop a few, and you know, I'll be up on

740
00:51:05,880 --> 00:51:07,960
Speaker 1: a ladder and I'll feel a ladder shake and say,

741
00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:15,000
Speaker 1: oh it's a deer, so um waiting. So you know,

742
00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:19,360
Speaker 1: it does give you a different view. But if you

743
00:51:19,480 --> 00:51:22,920
Speaker 1: are looking at other creatures and you're looking at you know,

744
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:27,920
Speaker 1: there's been a catastrophic loss of insects in the order

745
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:32,479
Speaker 1: of you know, two thirds to three quarters. And all

746
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:35,520
Speaker 1: you have to do is occasionally checked the number of

747
00:51:35,520 --> 00:51:37,759
Speaker 1: bugs on your windshield this summer. It's not like I

748
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:40,640
Speaker 1: used to be less place as well. You know, there

749
00:51:40,640 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 1: goes pollination, there go to wildflowers that m all. You know,

750
00:51:45,239 --> 00:51:49,560
Speaker 1: so much of our wildlife community eeks and who knows

751
00:51:49,640 --> 00:51:54,520
Speaker 1: what else. But it just it's well worth paying attention

752
00:51:54,640 --> 00:52:00,680
Speaker 1: to all the little things that run the world. If

753
00:52:00,719 --> 00:52:04,360
Speaker 1: you're taught to an insect person or a worm person,

754
00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:08,239
Speaker 1: or got to help you a microbe person. I mean

755
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 1: they say, look mammals or a side show in terms

756
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:16,560
Speaker 1: of weight, in terms of numbers, and to begin with there,

757
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:22,080
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of I don't know, um, a little

758
00:52:22,080 --> 00:52:27,120
Speaker 1: feeling somewhere in the food web, but um, they don't

759
00:52:27,320 --> 00:52:30,360
Speaker 1: the energy and the nutrients and the things that cycle

760
00:52:30,440 --> 00:52:33,919
Speaker 1: through an ecosystem to keep it healthy and to help

761
00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:37,360
Speaker 1: all the animals large and small survive over time and

762
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:41,239
Speaker 1: the change of time brings um, most of them are

763
00:52:41,280 --> 00:52:47,600
Speaker 1: invisible or require some serious looking. Yeah, it's it's interesting

764
00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:50,600
Speaker 1: kind of speaking of some of those things. And pollinators

765
00:52:50,640 --> 00:52:53,680
Speaker 1: are another great example of this. There's you know, there's

766
00:52:54,000 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 1: there's one set of UM, I guess rationale for trying

767
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:04,719
Speaker 1: to protect wildlife in biodiversity is like just like the

768
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:07,440
Speaker 1: moral imperative of it or just the fact that we

769
00:53:08,160 --> 00:53:11,680
Speaker 1: as individuals find these animals fascinating and we want to

770
00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:14,359
Speaker 1: see them around or we feel some connection with them.

771
00:53:14,560 --> 00:53:16,440
Speaker 1: So there's that side of things. But then there's also

772
00:53:16,480 --> 00:53:20,359
Speaker 1: like the practical side of things, the practical argument of

773
00:53:20,440 --> 00:53:23,239
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, as you mentioned, with pollinators.

774
00:53:23,239 --> 00:53:27,240
Speaker 1: They provide ecosystem services is this term for what they

775
00:53:27,719 --> 00:53:33,840
Speaker 1: natural wildlife and wild places provide services. They do things,

776
00:53:34,080 --> 00:53:40,400
Speaker 1: they support, things that are foundational to human business, economy's life.

777
00:53:41,719 --> 00:53:45,120
Speaker 1: You said something in your book that I really liked you.

778
00:53:45,120 --> 00:53:49,400
Speaker 1: You proposed a new golden rule. You said, do unto

779
00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:53,360
Speaker 1: ecosystems as you would have them do unto you. And

780
00:53:54,360 --> 00:54:00,360
Speaker 1: right after saying that, you kind of I guess the

781
00:54:00,360 --> 00:54:02,719
Speaker 1: way I would you framed it. I guess I'm trying

782
00:54:02,719 --> 00:54:04,239
Speaker 1: to say, as you framed that, not as like a

783
00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:09,560
Speaker 1: high minded moral rule, but more as a practical survival strategy.

784
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:12,480
Speaker 1: So do onto ecosystems as you would have them do

785
00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:15,600
Speaker 1: unto you. And that is a golden rule because it

786
00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:19,560
Speaker 1: is a necessary survival strategy. Can you can you expand

787
00:54:19,600 --> 00:54:22,799
Speaker 1: on that that you know what that means and what

788
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:26,319
Speaker 1: you think about that. I'll start I'll start with the

789
00:54:26,400 --> 00:54:30,120
Speaker 1: full golden rule was do into ecosystems as you would

790
00:54:30,160 --> 00:54:37,400
Speaker 1: have them do unto you. Nurture, sustain, help, allow to flourish.

791
00:54:37,520 --> 00:54:42,160
Speaker 1: So our health is long term, is indistinguishable from the

792
00:54:42,200 --> 00:54:45,880
Speaker 1: health of the land, air, and water we we all

793
00:54:45,920 --> 00:54:51,799
Speaker 1: depend on. Right, And and you mentioned the some of

794
00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:55,960
Speaker 1: the the more obscure species, the ones we don't pay

795
00:54:56,000 --> 00:55:00,040
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to, but they're absolutely vital. And

796
00:55:01,239 --> 00:55:04,319
Speaker 1: I don't I don't you know, it sounds like you're

797
00:55:04,440 --> 00:55:07,200
Speaker 1: it's asking a lot of people. Um, you go out

798
00:55:07,239 --> 00:55:09,960
Speaker 1: and get to know all these varied life forms there are.

799
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:13,600
Speaker 1: There are so many as too many and unless you

800
00:55:14,120 --> 00:55:18,359
Speaker 1: like a geek out on some of the things I do. Um,

801
00:55:18,480 --> 00:55:20,520
Speaker 1: I mean I say, I've worked with elephants of Wales,

802
00:55:20,680 --> 00:55:26,480
Speaker 1: also with ants and beetles and even talk toure geographic

803
00:55:26,560 --> 00:55:31,440
Speaker 1: in doing stories on them. And because they in Australia,

804
00:55:31,480 --> 00:55:34,080
Speaker 1: I've been in places where the ants control the whole forest,

805
00:55:34,160 --> 00:55:39,960
Speaker 1: cannopy and and any cree, kangaroos or koalas or whatever

806
00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:42,200
Speaker 1: else wants to live there has to deal with it

807
00:55:42,400 --> 00:55:46,960
Speaker 1: part of their their environment. But UM, I guess the

808
00:55:47,080 --> 00:55:51,640
Speaker 1: question we're I feel like we're coming to mark is

809
00:55:52,040 --> 00:55:59,240
Speaker 1: is you know when well, let's just go back in time.

810
00:55:59,320 --> 00:56:02,520
Speaker 1: And I know hunters are proud of the fact that

811
00:56:03,040 --> 00:56:07,640
Speaker 1: you know or see themselves as the original conservationists. And

812
00:56:10,000 --> 00:56:12,880
Speaker 1: granted it came about in an era when the national

813
00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:15,160
Speaker 1: philosophy seemed to be if it moves, shoot it and

814
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:18,400
Speaker 1: if it doesn't, cut it down. But they were the

815
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:24,880
Speaker 1: original conservationists and and continue to be so for a while,

816
00:56:25,080 --> 00:56:30,399
Speaker 1: and all credit goes to them and and some other

817
00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 1: four sighted people that maybe looked at some of the

818
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:40,640
Speaker 1: non hunter species, but it was huge. My question, I

819
00:56:40,680 --> 00:56:44,200
Speaker 1: think to you and some of the folks listening, is

820
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:50,040
Speaker 1: who are the leading conservationists today or where do hunters

821
00:56:51,200 --> 00:56:56,560
Speaker 1: stand reside on that list? Are they still are they

822
00:56:56,600 --> 00:57:00,880
Speaker 1: still leading? Are they still, you know, by really important

823
00:57:00,920 --> 00:57:07,280
Speaker 1: to the conservation work that remains to be done, and

824
00:57:09,160 --> 00:57:12,880
Speaker 1: what do we do with that? Yeah? Yeah, And I

825
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:17,840
Speaker 1: think the answer is from my perspective that there are

826
00:57:17,880 --> 00:57:21,000
Speaker 1: a lot of hunters and anglers who do care deeply

827
00:57:21,040 --> 00:57:23,240
Speaker 1: about these things and who are leading, but there's so

828
00:57:23,360 --> 00:57:26,240
Speaker 1: much more that needs to be done. There's there's so

829
00:57:26,320 --> 00:57:29,960
Speaker 1: much more, and I think that there's there's so much

830
00:57:30,120 --> 00:57:37,000
Speaker 1: more potential good we could do if the hunters and

831
00:57:37,040 --> 00:57:39,600
Speaker 1: anglers working on these kinds of things are not working

832
00:57:39,600 --> 00:57:42,600
Speaker 1: on these kinds of things in isolation, but are working

833
00:57:42,600 --> 00:57:45,600
Speaker 1: with them hand in hand with the non hunters and

834
00:57:45,640 --> 00:57:47,840
Speaker 1: anglers who care about these things and are leading and

835
00:57:47,920 --> 00:57:53,080
Speaker 1: doing great work for conservation. So I one of my

836
00:57:54,200 --> 00:57:57,280
Speaker 1: big hopes and dreams to the futures seeing these two

837
00:57:57,320 --> 00:58:01,520
Speaker 1: communities working more and more together, because it's a big

838
00:58:01,640 --> 00:58:04,480
Speaker 1: number of folks. It's a it's a serious constituency of

839
00:58:04,520 --> 00:58:07,920
Speaker 1: people and of voters. If you combine those two groups

840
00:58:07,920 --> 00:58:11,400
Speaker 1: of people, if you combine animal lovers and outdoor recreators,

841
00:58:11,480 --> 00:58:14,600
Speaker 1: skiers and hikers and bikers and all those folks with

842
00:58:14,920 --> 00:58:17,160
Speaker 1: all of the tens of millions of hunters and anglers,

843
00:58:17,160 --> 00:58:19,800
Speaker 1: all these people that love nature, all these people who

844
00:58:19,800 --> 00:58:24,480
Speaker 1: appreciate wildlife and fish and open space. And yeah, we

845
00:58:24,560 --> 00:58:26,360
Speaker 1: might engage with it in different ways. We might live

846
00:58:26,360 --> 00:58:28,000
Speaker 1: in the city, or we might live in the mountains

847
00:58:28,240 --> 00:58:31,480
Speaker 1: or in a farm. But I feel like there's so

848
00:58:31,560 --> 00:58:34,560
Speaker 1: much we could do if we could get better at

849
00:58:34,600 --> 00:58:39,400
Speaker 1: looking past those differences and instead kind of compound our

850
00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:43,080
Speaker 1: powers together to tackle stuff like what we're talking about today.

851
00:58:43,960 --> 00:58:46,600
Speaker 1: Couldn't agree more. And I know here in Montana the

852
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:54,680
Speaker 1: hundreds and anglers are tremendous folks for taking better care

853
00:58:54,720 --> 00:59:01,400
Speaker 1: of the environment, for public land protection and access and

854
00:59:01,880 --> 00:59:05,960
Speaker 1: proper access, and and uh, I think it would be

855
00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:09,400
Speaker 1: wonderful if it could, you know, follow up on that,

856
00:59:09,480 --> 00:59:13,000
Speaker 1: because I I think we've spend way too much time,

857
00:59:14,200 --> 00:59:18,640
Speaker 1: you know, discussing, um, how people feel about hunting or

858
00:59:19,680 --> 00:59:23,439
Speaker 1: one way or the other. And look, we can't make

859
00:59:23,480 --> 00:59:29,040
Speaker 1: everybody an ethical hunter overnight. We can't make every conservation

860
00:59:29,120 --> 00:59:35,520
Speaker 1: to stop acting like holier than now uh or or

861
00:59:35,560 --> 00:59:39,640
Speaker 1: you know, being annoying. And I think, I think it

862
00:59:39,680 --> 00:59:44,320
Speaker 1: would be tremendous to bring you know, the different forces

863
00:59:44,320 --> 00:59:48,920
Speaker 1: who care about the different groups that care about the

864
00:59:48,960 --> 00:59:51,600
Speaker 1: future of of well life on the planet, but of

865
00:59:51,760 --> 00:59:54,440
Speaker 1: the wild word the world they go into, and that

866
00:59:54,560 --> 00:59:58,600
Speaker 1: they know a lot about. Yeah, And I have great

867
00:59:58,640 --> 01:00:01,959
Speaker 1: respect for a one of my friends who are both

868
01:00:02,000 --> 01:00:05,640
Speaker 1: avid hunters and very keeen naturalists, and I think one

869
01:00:05,720 --> 01:00:09,400
Speaker 1: comes together. You got to know what you're doing out there, um,

870
01:00:09,440 --> 01:00:13,280
Speaker 1: but not you know, not in all situations, all types

871
01:00:13,320 --> 01:00:15,800
Speaker 1: of hunts. But really the guys out roaming the woods

872
01:00:15,840 --> 01:00:19,760
Speaker 1: tend to do it and and and it means a

873
01:00:19,800 --> 01:00:25,520
Speaker 1: lot when they speak up for protecting the the whole

874
01:00:25,560 --> 01:00:29,800
Speaker 1: community of wildlife. And you know, I when look, when

875
01:00:29,840 --> 01:00:35,840
Speaker 1: I see a deer, um a couple of things. I

876
01:00:35,880 --> 01:00:38,880
Speaker 1: think every creature out there is the right answer to

877
01:00:38,920 --> 01:00:42,400
Speaker 1: the question of how best to live in a certain way.

878
01:00:43,080 --> 01:00:46,880
Speaker 1: A certain place, um or wouldn't be here, I wouldn't

879
01:00:46,920 --> 01:00:54,000
Speaker 1: have survived over the millennia. But um, I don't know.

880
01:00:55,000 --> 01:00:58,440
Speaker 1: This is This is a tough one, but I feel

881
01:00:58,440 --> 01:01:05,120
Speaker 1: like we need to somehow look at the deer and

882
01:01:05,280 --> 01:01:10,280
Speaker 1: see what shaped it, you know, the vegetation it eats,

883
01:01:10,440 --> 01:01:15,240
Speaker 1: the animals that competes with for that vegetation, the predators.

884
01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:19,080
Speaker 1: Why does the deer as have the senses it does.

885
01:01:19,200 --> 01:01:22,640
Speaker 1: Why does it have the fleetness, the ability to you know,

886
01:01:22,720 --> 01:01:26,280
Speaker 1: jump over an eight foot fence of this practical stand still.

887
01:01:26,840 --> 01:01:32,080
Speaker 1: You know that was the work of you know, predators

888
01:01:32,080 --> 01:01:36,120
Speaker 1: over thousands of years. And I do know some hunters

889
01:01:36,120 --> 01:01:39,080
Speaker 1: who you know, pretty down on predators because they see

890
01:01:39,120 --> 01:01:46,040
Speaker 1: them as as competing for me. But that respect the

891
01:01:46,240 --> 01:01:49,160
Speaker 1: greater community that made the deer, that may the elk

892
01:01:49,600 --> 01:01:54,480
Speaker 1: as social and communicative as they are m as you know,

893
01:01:55,120 --> 01:01:58,080
Speaker 1: living in groups. Many eyes are better than one, you know,

894
01:01:58,160 --> 01:02:02,880
Speaker 1: one pair. And what made the moose so strong and

895
01:02:03,040 --> 01:02:07,480
Speaker 1: able to punch through deep snow and fend off you know,

896
01:02:07,520 --> 01:02:12,280
Speaker 1: the midsized carnivores. It was just all all these different

897
01:02:12,520 --> 01:02:16,000
Speaker 1: natural forces and you don't get one without the others.

898
01:02:16,040 --> 01:02:18,480
Speaker 1: The way I look at it, and if you just

899
01:02:18,560 --> 01:02:24,160
Speaker 1: focus on one single species, nature doesn't really work that way.

900
01:02:24,720 --> 01:02:28,360
Speaker 1: It's a process that takes place over time that makes

901
01:02:28,400 --> 01:02:33,120
Speaker 1: each animal what it is, and that naturally leads you

902
01:02:33,240 --> 01:02:37,160
Speaker 1: from whatever animal your favorites are. Could be wild jerkys,

903
01:02:37,240 --> 01:02:41,160
Speaker 1: could be deer, could be gosh, I don't know. Help

904
01:02:41,600 --> 01:02:45,880
Speaker 1: here in Montana, certainly, but who else is living there

905
01:02:45,960 --> 01:02:48,080
Speaker 1: with them? And what are they doing that are we

906
01:02:48,200 --> 01:02:51,560
Speaker 1: taking care of them? And obviously works they were all

907
01:02:51,640 --> 01:02:59,120
Speaker 1: here when we invaded this continent, and wildlife management sometimes

908
01:02:59,160 --> 01:03:01,919
Speaker 1: makes it sound like boys, sure good that we got

909
01:03:01,960 --> 01:03:07,320
Speaker 1: here just in time to save all these animals. Well, now,

910
01:03:07,400 --> 01:03:09,800
Speaker 1: what they were doing just great, and they were diverse

911
01:03:10,360 --> 01:03:14,160
Speaker 1: or abundant, and nature was at its healthiest and most

912
01:03:14,160 --> 01:03:20,080
Speaker 1: fertile um. So you know how how much of that

913
01:03:20,280 --> 01:03:22,680
Speaker 1: has been lost is something we can all debate over,

914
01:03:22,800 --> 01:03:26,240
Speaker 1: but it's it's been a lot. And when you asked

915
01:03:26,240 --> 01:03:32,800
Speaker 1: me earlier about the startling decline in numbers worldwide of

916
01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:39,720
Speaker 1: vertebrates or animals with backbones forty percent on up to

917
01:03:39,880 --> 01:03:44,880
Speaker 1: some say sixty percent now and say we don't see

918
01:03:44,880 --> 01:03:47,360
Speaker 1: it in the US, But that's got to remember that's

919
01:03:47,440 --> 01:03:53,200
Speaker 1: partly because we don't see bison in the millions anymore.

920
01:03:54,360 --> 01:03:57,240
Speaker 1: You know, we don't see grizzlies in the tens of thousands.

921
01:03:57,280 --> 01:04:01,280
Speaker 1: We don't see mountain care to move back. And they

922
01:04:01,320 --> 01:04:04,240
Speaker 1: were in the forests of Wyoming right and old grow

923
01:04:04,400 --> 01:04:12,160
Speaker 1: forests of Idaho farther south and anyway. So it's hard,

924
01:04:12,640 --> 01:04:15,760
Speaker 1: you know, to come up with these comparisons. What was

925
01:04:15,800 --> 01:04:19,240
Speaker 1: the natural state, what's here now? How much it's declined.

926
01:04:19,280 --> 01:04:22,040
Speaker 1: But I think rather than get lost in that, I

927
01:04:22,040 --> 01:04:24,320
Speaker 1: would just say, here's what we've got. We've done a

928
01:04:24,360 --> 01:04:28,560
Speaker 1: decent job with the tools we had of conserving it.

929
01:04:29,320 --> 01:04:33,120
Speaker 1: We can do much more, much better. I mean, I've

930
01:04:33,120 --> 01:04:36,920
Speaker 1: been out. I was volunteering on a wolverine study just

931
01:04:36,960 --> 01:04:39,960
Speaker 1: because I realized it's an animal i'd seen but didn't

932
01:04:40,000 --> 01:04:43,240
Speaker 1: really know anything about. And then I realized nobody knows

933
01:04:43,280 --> 01:04:46,680
Speaker 1: much about them, and they were getting overlooked and they

934
01:04:46,680 --> 01:04:49,760
Speaker 1: were declining. We've probably got three hundred and fifty or

935
01:04:49,840 --> 01:04:54,680
Speaker 1: fewer in the lower forty eight states, And you know,

936
01:04:54,760 --> 01:04:59,120
Speaker 1: I just there's a lot of animals and situations like

937
01:04:59,280 --> 01:05:05,920
Speaker 1: that candidates for listing for protection. If enough people are

938
01:05:05,920 --> 01:05:12,680
Speaker 1: working together on management of plans and ways to improve

939
01:05:12,760 --> 01:05:15,840
Speaker 1: things for those critters. They don't have to get listed,

940
01:05:18,240 --> 01:05:21,000
Speaker 1: or if listed, they'd be off the list pretty during quicker.

941
01:05:21,000 --> 01:05:23,919
Speaker 1: If we've made a few right moves, and I that's

942
01:05:23,960 --> 01:05:27,200
Speaker 1: all worth looking at, it's all worth considering. And if

943
01:05:27,280 --> 01:05:33,600
Speaker 1: all every animal deserters, I think the same amount of value.

944
01:05:34,600 --> 01:05:38,000
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to say that deer hunters are

945
01:05:38,080 --> 01:05:42,640
Speaker 1: going to turn into you know, avid wolverine fans um.

946
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:48,520
Speaker 1: But wolverines are. Wow, what a critter. I followed them

947
01:05:48,600 --> 01:05:50,880
Speaker 1: up to the tops of mountains that are ten you know,

948
01:05:50,960 --> 01:05:56,280
Speaker 1: there's ten thousand foot plus and right around here, and

949
01:05:56,280 --> 01:05:59,560
Speaker 1: they're climbing ice and snow that no human can climber,

950
01:05:59,600 --> 01:06:02,480
Speaker 1: could get it up. They go forty four hours a day.

951
01:06:02,520 --> 01:06:06,960
Speaker 1: I mean the custom it's likely they fueled by nuclear

952
01:06:07,120 --> 01:06:10,640
Speaker 1: energy or something. And they can stand grizzly bears over

953
01:06:10,640 --> 01:06:28,919
Speaker 1: a carcass. I mean, wow, that's the attitude. Yeah. So,

954
01:06:29,960 --> 01:06:33,840
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny. One thing we haven't really touched on,

955
01:06:34,040 --> 01:06:38,400
Speaker 1: which probably a lot of folks are asking, is what's

956
01:06:38,640 --> 01:06:41,480
Speaker 1: causing all this other than the other than the overarching

957
01:06:41,560 --> 01:06:45,680
Speaker 1: umbrella of humans. Uh, you know, there might be people saying,

958
01:06:46,520 --> 01:06:49,520
Speaker 1: all right, I hear what you're saying, we are losing

959
01:06:49,560 --> 01:06:52,440
Speaker 1: a lot of wildlife across the world. There's lots of

960
01:06:52,480 --> 01:06:55,160
Speaker 1: threatened species, there's lots of trends going in the wrong direction.

961
01:06:55,560 --> 01:07:00,360
Speaker 1: But what's specifically is making this happen. And as I understand, Doug,

962
01:07:00,360 --> 01:07:04,360
Speaker 1: in my own reading and research and projects related to this,

963
01:07:04,440 --> 01:07:08,760
Speaker 1: I've seen most of the causes lumped into five buckets,

964
01:07:08,800 --> 01:07:12,320
Speaker 1: that being you know, the various forms of habitat destruction,

965
01:07:13,400 --> 01:07:18,160
Speaker 1: the impacts of climate change, pollution in its many different forms,

966
01:07:18,880 --> 01:07:24,360
Speaker 1: invasive species, and then you know overkill or overharvest or

967
01:07:24,400 --> 01:07:28,160
Speaker 1: poaching of fish and wildlife in different situations. I've seen

968
01:07:28,200 --> 01:07:32,720
Speaker 1: those as the five main culprits of this overarching biodiversity

969
01:07:33,080 --> 01:07:36,720
Speaker 1: crisis across the world. Would you say, does that sound

970
01:07:36,800 --> 01:07:39,720
Speaker 1: right to you, Doug? And secondly, is there any one

971
01:07:39,760 --> 01:07:44,080
Speaker 1: of those or several of those that, from your work

972
01:07:44,120 --> 01:07:53,280
Speaker 1: and experience, seems to stand out above the rest? Unfortunately, no,

973
01:07:53,680 --> 01:07:57,560
Speaker 1: but but there are some we can fix more easily.

974
01:07:58,560 --> 01:08:07,320
Speaker 1: And the pollution is that's just heedlessness and it's causing

975
01:08:07,360 --> 01:08:12,040
Speaker 1: as many look, more people die from air pollution every

976
01:08:12,120 --> 01:08:17,160
Speaker 1: year than from eggs, malaria, and I forget what else.

977
01:08:17,520 --> 01:08:25,360
Speaker 1: Certainly COVID combined. It's huge. And if you go to Beijing,

978
01:08:25,680 --> 01:08:30,760
Speaker 1: or you spend time in Delhi or someplace, you you're

979
01:08:30,800 --> 01:08:35,479
Speaker 1: gonna get sick if you breathe that airline enough. And

980
01:08:36,080 --> 01:08:41,960
Speaker 1: millions of people are being affected, and that's just economics.

981
01:08:42,320 --> 01:08:47,520
Speaker 1: And that change has to come from the people being affected.

982
01:08:47,600 --> 01:08:51,519
Speaker 1: And I don't know, man, I rapidly get out of

983
01:08:51,560 --> 01:08:54,640
Speaker 1: my element because I'm say, I'm just I'm just an

984
01:08:54,680 --> 01:09:00,000
Speaker 1: ot go boy, a wildlife biologist, and all of a sudden,

985
01:09:00,160 --> 01:09:05,200
Speaker 1: the the changes that need to occur are social and

986
01:09:05,360 --> 01:09:13,920
Speaker 1: economic and involved. You know, the resources were taking from

987
01:09:14,080 --> 01:09:20,960
Speaker 1: the land, and whether it's it's harvesting animals or illegally

988
01:09:21,560 --> 01:09:26,880
Speaker 1: or in most of the world, illegally or simply because

989
01:09:26,880 --> 01:09:32,519
Speaker 1: there's no law enforcement. Um, that's one thing, But Jeeves

990
01:09:33,600 --> 01:09:41,519
Speaker 1: taking on the economics of resource extraction is that that's

991
01:09:41,560 --> 01:09:48,519
Speaker 1: above my pay grade. UM. I got to be people,

992
01:09:49,320 --> 01:09:52,360
Speaker 1: and unfortunately they're not those in power. But the people

993
01:09:52,360 --> 01:09:56,920
Speaker 1: are being affected often, but they have somehow to get

994
01:09:57,000 --> 01:10:02,520
Speaker 1: support from other other places, but start making those changes themselves,

995
01:10:02,560 --> 01:10:06,200
Speaker 1: just as each of us. You know, sometimes you feel

996
01:10:06,240 --> 01:10:10,799
Speaker 1: silly recycling your pop cans, are doing those little things

997
01:10:10,840 --> 01:10:14,240
Speaker 1: turning off the lights and all that. But of course

998
01:10:14,240 --> 01:10:17,240
Speaker 1: if millions we're doing it, it it would make a huge difference.

999
01:10:17,880 --> 01:10:19,760
Speaker 1: I do it just because it makes me feel a

1000
01:10:19,760 --> 01:10:26,799
Speaker 1: little better at trouble. But I think the next stage

1001
01:10:26,920 --> 01:10:29,840
Speaker 1: is people taking part of meetings and writing letters all

1002
01:10:29,880 --> 01:10:33,360
Speaker 1: their usual things. But we talk about it, but not

1003
01:10:33,400 --> 01:10:38,280
Speaker 1: that many people do it. And again, if legislators are

1004
01:10:38,280 --> 01:10:43,360
Speaker 1: starting to hear from hunters about a proposed development of

1005
01:10:43,479 --> 01:10:47,160
Speaker 1: some kind, and it doesn't have to be oh, we're

1006
01:10:47,160 --> 01:10:49,080
Speaker 1: going to go lie down in front of the bulldozer.

1007
01:10:49,200 --> 01:10:51,920
Speaker 1: It's just we looked over your plan and you could

1008
01:10:51,960 --> 01:10:55,879
Speaker 1: do a better job of making sure contamination is limited,

1009
01:10:57,080 --> 01:11:03,080
Speaker 1: or you know something, the facility somewhere else besides the

1010
01:11:03,160 --> 01:11:06,240
Speaker 1: side of that mountain, more elk reader, or put that

1011
01:11:06,560 --> 01:11:11,640
Speaker 1: new subdivision somewhere else people can learn. You know, we

1012
01:11:11,760 --> 01:11:14,200
Speaker 1: can make a big change down at city hall. We

1013
01:11:14,280 --> 01:11:17,680
Speaker 1: can make a big change by going to the county commissioners,

1014
01:11:18,479 --> 01:11:23,480
Speaker 1: and make a change by going to the states legislature

1015
01:11:23,560 --> 01:11:26,439
Speaker 1: and hollred about things. I'm just saying I'm not here

1016
01:11:26,439 --> 01:11:30,280
Speaker 1: to fight, really, I'm here to make a change that

1017
01:11:30,360 --> 01:11:33,840
Speaker 1: we can all live with. Let's start with that and

1018
01:11:34,360 --> 01:11:37,600
Speaker 1: the being a generation after us I can continue doing that.

1019
01:11:38,760 --> 01:11:43,040
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Yeah, oh yeah, it does. So

1020
01:11:43,520 --> 01:11:47,360
Speaker 1: I've got a question about maybe one specific example of

1021
01:11:47,520 --> 01:11:50,880
Speaker 1: something like this that hunters have started engaging in and

1022
01:11:51,040 --> 01:11:55,479
Speaker 1: maybe could do more. And then I think ties into

1023
01:11:55,600 --> 01:12:01,120
Speaker 1: a couple of these larger challenges to wilde being in

1024
01:12:01,160 --> 01:12:05,360
Speaker 1: the form of habitat fragmentation and destruction and the impacts

1025
01:12:05,360 --> 01:12:08,680
Speaker 1: of climate. Let's say, um, there's something I'd love you

1026
01:12:08,720 --> 01:12:11,360
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about, which is the the

1027
01:12:11,360 --> 01:12:16,360
Speaker 1: island effect and the importance of migration corridors. And this

1028
01:12:16,880 --> 01:12:21,560
Speaker 1: migration corridor push is picking up steam within the conservation

1029
01:12:21,600 --> 01:12:23,439
Speaker 1: community for for many, many years, but now in the

1030
01:12:23,520 --> 01:12:26,120
Speaker 1: hunting community. There's been a lot of interesting studies over

1031
01:12:26,120 --> 01:12:30,439
Speaker 1: the last five ten years about pronghorn migrations, mule deer

1032
01:12:30,439 --> 01:12:34,280
Speaker 1: migrations that are kind of opening the eyes for people

1033
01:12:34,520 --> 01:12:38,120
Speaker 1: and realizing how far these critters go. And so that's

1034
01:12:38,240 --> 01:12:41,960
Speaker 1: that's I think opening a lot of hunter's eyes to

1035
01:12:42,640 --> 01:12:47,080
Speaker 1: the necessity for connective tissue between different wild places because

1036
01:12:47,080 --> 01:12:49,439
Speaker 1: they're now seeing a species they pay attention to a

1037
01:12:49,439 --> 01:12:55,439
Speaker 1: lot needs these connections and corridors. But there's a there's

1038
01:12:55,479 --> 01:12:59,800
Speaker 1: a much wider impact to these wider to having these

1039
01:13:00,240 --> 01:13:03,640
Speaker 1: quarters of vailable because we're seeing, you know, whether it

1040
01:13:03,680 --> 01:13:08,480
Speaker 1: be grizzly bears or pronghorn or any number of different species,

1041
01:13:09,280 --> 01:13:12,479
Speaker 1: they need to be able to move, not only because

1042
01:13:12,520 --> 01:13:16,479
Speaker 1: of natural migrations, but also because the temperatures and the

1043
01:13:16,600 --> 01:13:21,320
Speaker 1: climate zones they need to survive are shifting and they're

1044
01:13:21,320 --> 01:13:24,600
Speaker 1: going to have to shift north or up to be

1045
01:13:24,640 --> 01:13:26,960
Speaker 1: able to continue to have that kind of thing. And

1046
01:13:27,840 --> 01:13:31,040
Speaker 1: this is becoming increasingly challenged because of this island effect.

1047
01:13:31,120 --> 01:13:34,439
Speaker 1: Can you can you tell folks about the island effect,

1048
01:13:34,520 --> 01:13:37,320
Speaker 1: how that impacts wildlife and how we might be able

1049
01:13:37,320 --> 01:13:42,000
Speaker 1: to start dealing with that and creating better corridors and

1050
01:13:42,040 --> 01:13:48,880
Speaker 1: connections to solve for that. Sure, um, and thank for

1051
01:13:48,960 --> 01:13:54,400
Speaker 1: bringing that up, because that's that is key, and because

1052
01:13:54,439 --> 01:14:00,559
Speaker 1: we're on the solutions and satans right now. And the

1053
01:14:00,680 --> 01:14:03,679
Speaker 1: old bottle of conservation was kind of like the King's

1054
01:14:03,760 --> 01:14:10,719
Speaker 1: Hunting Reserve or you know earlier, where you've set aside

1055
01:14:10,760 --> 01:14:16,720
Speaker 1: a hunk of land that scenic, has recreational values, has

1056
01:14:16,760 --> 01:14:22,200
Speaker 1: wildlife values, and you limit access or put offense around

1057
01:14:22,200 --> 01:14:24,960
Speaker 1: it as they do in some of the African reserves

1058
01:14:25,040 --> 01:14:31,639
Speaker 1: and say, hey, we save nature well the eighties percent.

1059
01:14:31,880 --> 01:14:34,960
Speaker 1: Almost of the extinctions that have taken place since the

1060
01:14:35,040 --> 01:14:40,839
Speaker 1: year fifteen hundred have been on oceanic islands, and it's because,

1061
01:14:41,160 --> 01:14:46,679
Speaker 1: of course they're isolated. They're subject to whatever comes through

1062
01:14:46,960 --> 01:14:56,400
Speaker 1: disease or invasive species, hurricanes, you know, changing climate in

1063
01:14:57,120 --> 01:15:02,200
Speaker 1: that particular part. But they can't go anywhere, and they

1064
01:15:02,200 --> 01:15:08,240
Speaker 1: can't get replaced from neighboring populations. And the whole time,

1065
01:15:08,320 --> 01:15:10,600
Speaker 1: if they're not a very large population, they're going to

1066
01:15:10,640 --> 01:15:14,800
Speaker 1: be inbreeding. And the way genetics works is nine times

1067
01:15:14,800 --> 01:15:23,840
Speaker 1: out of ten that specigoes extinct. And that's essentially a

1068
01:15:23,920 --> 01:15:27,000
Speaker 1: model that applies to the way we've done this on

1069
01:15:27,200 --> 01:15:32,360
Speaker 1: land on different continents. We make isolated reserves here and

1070
01:15:32,400 --> 01:15:38,320
Speaker 1: there whereas possible where there was still wild land and

1071
01:15:39,439 --> 01:15:44,400
Speaker 1: still a rich wildlife community and declared a reserve. And

1072
01:15:44,560 --> 01:15:48,400
Speaker 1: now the big push worldwide because of all those factors

1073
01:15:48,439 --> 01:15:53,400
Speaker 1: I mentioned and more studies over the past half century.

1074
01:15:53,920 --> 01:15:58,040
Speaker 1: All point in this direction is that you have to

1075
01:15:58,240 --> 01:16:02,880
Speaker 1: build in that flexibility for animals to adapt and met

1076
01:16:02,960 --> 01:16:06,120
Speaker 1: you brought up a changing climate here in the continent,

1077
01:16:07,479 --> 01:16:10,320
Speaker 1: they have to move up, maybe north or south, maybe

1078
01:16:10,360 --> 01:16:15,360
Speaker 1: to a moister set of conditions. But they've got to

1079
01:16:15,400 --> 01:16:19,440
Speaker 1: be able to move and flow and swap jeans and

1080
01:16:19,680 --> 01:16:24,240
Speaker 1: meet new girlfriends and party in different places. If I

1081
01:16:24,320 --> 01:16:27,360
Speaker 1: put a I go out with a bare biologist who

1082
01:16:27,560 --> 01:16:31,120
Speaker 1: flap a radio color on yet another grizzly. It might

1083
01:16:31,160 --> 01:16:35,080
Speaker 1: be a glacier park, but the next week it's in Canada.

1084
01:16:35,320 --> 01:16:38,880
Speaker 1: It's an Alberta nsover in British Columbia. Then just down

1085
01:16:38,920 --> 01:16:45,240
Speaker 1: the National Forest in western Montana, etc. Do you guys

1086
01:16:45,360 --> 01:16:48,800
Speaker 1: do move a lot? I once followed a mountain lion

1087
01:16:48,960 --> 01:16:51,240
Speaker 1: from the Black Hills in South Dakota. I did it

1088
01:16:51,320 --> 01:16:57,040
Speaker 1: indirectly where people had collected scats and done DNA analysis,

1089
01:16:57,120 --> 01:17:02,200
Speaker 1: but from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the

1090
01:17:02,520 --> 01:17:06,840
Speaker 1: edge of a interstate highway in Connecticut, thirty miles from

1091
01:17:06,880 --> 01:17:09,720
Speaker 1: New York City. Wow, where I got hit by car.

1092
01:17:11,880 --> 01:17:17,880
Speaker 1: Animals can move, and then they're always probing, and that's

1093
01:17:17,960 --> 01:17:20,360
Speaker 1: part of the value. It's like white tailed deer, right.

1094
01:17:20,439 --> 01:17:23,240
Speaker 1: They they produce a lot of the young, and those

1095
01:17:23,320 --> 01:17:28,320
Speaker 1: young have to disperse to find habitat in the stages

1096
01:17:28,360 --> 01:17:31,320
Speaker 1: that they like, the early stages of forest succession with

1097
01:17:31,400 --> 01:17:35,640
Speaker 1: a lot of brush and you know, very grasslands and

1098
01:17:35,880 --> 01:17:38,200
Speaker 1: well a variety of plants that you don't get in

1099
01:17:38,240 --> 01:17:41,840
Speaker 1: a closed forest, as you know, so you know, they're

1100
01:17:41,880 --> 01:17:49,160
Speaker 1: dispersing all the time. So if they're contained, or they've

1101
01:17:49,200 --> 01:17:53,320
Speaker 1: got potentially a fence in the form of new housing,

1102
01:17:53,439 --> 01:17:57,840
Speaker 1: new agricultural lands or whatever that they're not allowed on,

1103
01:18:00,280 --> 01:18:03,720
Speaker 1: how do they do that? And so if you're in

1104
01:18:03,760 --> 01:18:09,719
Speaker 1: Africa and you're looking at the elephants in Manyara, they've

1105
01:18:09,760 --> 01:18:12,080
Speaker 1: got to get to Ruaha. They have to get from

1106
01:18:12,120 --> 01:18:15,080
Speaker 1: Ruaha to the Serengetti. They have to you know, there's

1107
01:18:15,120 --> 01:18:19,479
Speaker 1: a string of wonderful wildlife parks there, but they are

1108
01:18:19,560 --> 01:18:23,880
Speaker 1: all islands. And so what they're doing now is going

1109
01:18:24,040 --> 01:18:28,519
Speaker 1: in between those reserves, working with communities and who have

1110
01:18:28,800 --> 01:18:32,479
Speaker 1: problems with wildlife coming through. Sometimes the elephants are eating crops,

1111
01:18:32,720 --> 01:18:40,000
Speaker 1: or the lions are considered dangerous or taking livestock coming

1112
01:18:40,080 --> 01:18:43,599
Speaker 1: up with you know, a whole lot of creative plans

1113
01:18:43,720 --> 01:18:50,520
Speaker 1: that end up making that passageway between the existing reserves

1114
01:18:51,160 --> 01:18:53,800
Speaker 1: termeable to wildlife. You don't have to go and create

1115
01:18:53,840 --> 01:18:57,559
Speaker 1: another park. You don't have to make a superpark over

1116
01:18:57,600 --> 01:19:00,920
Speaker 1: the whole area. You have to make corridors or wild

1117
01:19:00,960 --> 01:19:03,639
Speaker 1: waves or habitat bridges or whatever you want to call

1118
01:19:03,720 --> 01:19:09,920
Speaker 1: them that allow animals to move and adapt and reproduce,

1119
01:19:10,080 --> 01:19:15,280
Speaker 1: and that is being undertaken in parts of Africa, in

1120
01:19:15,360 --> 01:19:23,920
Speaker 1: parts of Asia. Thailand have some reserves bordering Myanmar, the

1121
01:19:23,960 --> 01:19:29,960
Speaker 1: old Burma, I guess. And here in the US we've

1122
01:19:30,000 --> 01:19:34,599
Speaker 1: got some landscape level plans taking shape in a number

1123
01:19:34,600 --> 01:19:38,640
Speaker 1: of areas, but actually in reasonable shape in the what

1124
01:19:38,840 --> 01:19:43,800
Speaker 1: it's called the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, which is

1125
01:19:43,840 --> 01:19:49,559
Speaker 1: two thousand miles from south of Yellowstone up to well

1126
01:19:49,640 --> 01:19:54,680
Speaker 1: north into the Yukon, and that they say it is

1127
01:19:55,240 --> 01:20:01,280
Speaker 1: the size and scale of of land nature needs to

1128
01:20:02,240 --> 01:20:09,520
Speaker 1: and wildlife populations need to stain themselves over time. Oh

1129
01:20:09,600 --> 01:20:12,360
Speaker 1: and one thing I'll add, if can I ramble on

1130
01:20:12,600 --> 01:20:19,760
Speaker 1: and y okay Um. Part of this is because we've

1131
01:20:19,800 --> 01:20:23,200
Speaker 1: got a lot of America is graced with a whole

1132
01:20:23,200 --> 01:20:28,240
Speaker 1: lot of public land that alone distinguishes us from so

1133
01:20:28,280 --> 01:20:30,720
Speaker 1: many countries. And as part of the reason you and

1134
01:20:30,760 --> 01:20:34,559
Speaker 1: I have been pointing out that things are are looking

1135
01:20:34,600 --> 01:20:38,000
Speaker 1: pretty good here compared to much of the world. Um.

1136
01:20:39,360 --> 01:20:44,320
Speaker 1: But what we're finding now as things get busier, highways

1137
01:20:44,360 --> 01:20:49,600
Speaker 1: get busier, communities grow there's more logging and mining, and

1138
01:20:49,960 --> 01:20:53,599
Speaker 1: you know, road access into the former back country um

1139
01:20:54,320 --> 01:20:59,599
Speaker 1: our parks in the Rockies are turning into um let's

1140
01:20:59,600 --> 01:21:03,719
Speaker 1: call them near islands. But there's a lot of land

1141
01:21:03,760 --> 01:21:09,719
Speaker 1: in between public land that can be managed UM more

1142
01:21:09,840 --> 01:21:12,880
Speaker 1: in favor of wildlife, less in favor of of just

1143
01:21:13,720 --> 01:21:18,880
Speaker 1: cut and run extraction or big and run UM. And

1144
01:21:18,920 --> 01:21:22,839
Speaker 1: then there's a final key element, and that is private

1145
01:21:22,920 --> 01:21:28,800
Speaker 1: land UM in the areas between wildlife strongholds. If a

1146
01:21:28,840 --> 01:21:32,559
Speaker 1: bear was to get from Yellowstone Park to Glacier Park

1147
01:21:33,720 --> 01:21:38,200
Speaker 1: and the Yellowstone population is isolated, or the elk migrate,

1148
01:21:38,400 --> 01:21:40,519
Speaker 1: or the as you say, the pronghorns, you need to

1149
01:21:40,520 --> 01:21:47,160
Speaker 1: get down into wyoming UM from from the Red Debt, sorry,

1150
01:21:47,200 --> 01:21:51,759
Speaker 1: from from say Teton National Park into the Red Desert

1151
01:21:52,880 --> 01:21:56,840
Speaker 1: one hundred miles UM. You you're going through private lands

1152
01:21:56,880 --> 01:21:59,760
Speaker 1: and fences, so you can change the fencing rangements. You

1153
01:21:59,760 --> 01:22:04,080
Speaker 1: can put overpasses their underpasses where they have to cross

1154
01:22:04,120 --> 01:22:08,960
Speaker 1: a freeway and occasionally get slaughtered. They many died during

1155
01:22:09,000 --> 01:22:11,519
Speaker 1: storms and they come up against fences they can cross.

1156
01:22:12,160 --> 01:22:15,880
Speaker 1: And then there's still just the land itself. And if

1157
01:22:15,920 --> 01:22:20,320
Speaker 1: a landowner is operating in certain ways of no use

1158
01:22:20,360 --> 01:22:25,280
Speaker 1: to those animals. If the landowner is willing to keep

1159
01:22:25,600 --> 01:22:29,040
Speaker 1: some of the habitat intact and some of the cover

1160
01:22:30,479 --> 01:22:36,200
Speaker 1: that dear and help need, for example, in just again

1161
01:22:36,240 --> 01:22:40,880
Speaker 1: a corridor a right of way for the four legged critters,

1162
01:22:41,600 --> 01:22:43,800
Speaker 1: that makes all the difference in the world long term.

1163
01:22:43,960 --> 01:22:48,160
Speaker 1: And so the factor I'm trying to put it out

1164
01:22:48,360 --> 01:22:54,400
Speaker 1: is land trusts, by which groups go out and arrange

1165
01:22:54,520 --> 01:22:59,920
Speaker 1: conservation easness with private landowners. And these are willing landowners.

1166
01:23:00,000 --> 01:23:04,519
Speaker 1: Nobody's regulating anything, nobody's forcing anything. It's a win win

1167
01:23:04,640 --> 01:23:08,640
Speaker 1: deal where they get paid to maintain their land in

1168
01:23:08,680 --> 01:23:13,400
Speaker 1: a wildlife friendly manner. And maybe you've discussed this on

1169
01:23:13,960 --> 01:23:18,680
Speaker 1: previous podcasts and probably have. Um, this has proven to

1170
01:23:18,720 --> 01:23:22,080
Speaker 1: be a key in Montana's a leader in in this.

1171
01:23:22,320 --> 01:23:28,840
Speaker 1: Uh you know this, this what strategy for keeping wildlife

1172
01:23:28,880 --> 01:23:34,080
Speaker 1: able to move and adapt and being done with Joe

1173
01:23:34,120 --> 01:23:38,600
Speaker 1: Blow next door. You know, the neighbors, the people in

1174
01:23:38,680 --> 01:23:41,240
Speaker 1: the community who what I see that wildlife and have

1175
01:23:41,400 --> 01:23:45,800
Speaker 1: it in your lives and um, it adds up to

1176
01:23:45,920 --> 01:23:49,599
Speaker 1: a lot of acreage in the right places. And because

1177
01:23:49,600 --> 01:23:51,880
Speaker 1: they're you know all this has been pretty well mapped

1178
01:23:51,880 --> 01:23:55,760
Speaker 1: out over time by biologists and ecologists where you can

1179
01:23:55,800 --> 01:23:58,360
Speaker 1: look at a map of a region and say, okay,

1180
01:23:58,360 --> 01:24:00,559
Speaker 1: if I were an elk or a white kill deer

1181
01:24:00,720 --> 01:24:04,640
Speaker 1: or a links, where would I go? Where would I

1182
01:24:04,720 --> 01:24:09,400
Speaker 1: need to go? And if you're looking at public land management,

1183
01:24:10,760 --> 01:24:14,160
Speaker 1: some pressure from the public to maybe manage it more

1184
01:24:14,200 --> 01:24:17,000
Speaker 1: in favor of wildlife, and then you're looking at private

1185
01:24:17,080 --> 01:24:22,639
Speaker 1: landloders who willingly will take part in this movement pattern.

1186
01:24:23,640 --> 01:24:27,960
Speaker 1: Making a movement pattern available, we can make great strides

1187
01:24:28,000 --> 01:24:33,200
Speaker 1: and we can conserve big nature and that's what a

1188
01:24:33,200 --> 01:24:39,560
Speaker 1: full wildlife community needs. Yeah. So if IF IF advocating

1189
01:24:39,600 --> 01:24:44,720
Speaker 1: for these kinds of things, such as migration corridors, wildlife

1190
01:24:44,120 --> 01:24:49,439
Speaker 1: passages across highways, helping fund different easement programs, you know

1191
01:24:49,439 --> 01:24:51,559
Speaker 1: on the migration quarteror thing. We have had some good

1192
01:24:51,560 --> 01:24:53,920
Speaker 1: news on that recently. I think there was something like

1193
01:24:53,960 --> 01:24:57,960
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty million dollars for migration corridor related

1194
01:24:57,960 --> 01:25:01,760
Speaker 1: work in the recent ira UM Flas Reduction Act. And

1195
01:25:01,800 --> 01:25:04,280
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of dollars in the infrastructure bill

1196
01:25:04,320 --> 01:25:06,920
Speaker 1: from two years ago. So I think there's there's some

1197
01:25:06,960 --> 01:25:12,160
Speaker 1: steam building there. Yeah, So that's that's exciting. UM. But

1198
01:25:13,320 --> 01:25:17,720
Speaker 1: I guess Doug if if you were too, if you

1199
01:25:17,720 --> 01:25:19,680
Speaker 1: were to have one of my audience members sitting in

1200
01:25:19,680 --> 01:25:22,000
Speaker 1: front of you and the two of you were drinking

1201
01:25:22,000 --> 01:25:23,880
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee right now, and they've just heard

1202
01:25:23,920 --> 01:25:26,559
Speaker 1: everything you had to say. And I think anyone listening

1203
01:25:26,600 --> 01:25:29,240
Speaker 1: to this podcast is already someone who you know has

1204
01:25:29,280 --> 01:25:31,960
Speaker 1: some kind of connection with nature. They're a hunter and

1205
01:25:32,000 --> 01:25:35,200
Speaker 1: an angler. They appreciate these things. But maybe they haven't

1206
01:25:35,280 --> 01:25:37,280
Speaker 1: zoomed out quite as much as we have today and

1207
01:25:37,360 --> 01:25:40,200
Speaker 1: looked at the larger picture, or looked outside of their

1208
01:25:40,240 --> 01:25:44,720
Speaker 1: favorite species. And maybe they're hearing this and recognizing, Man,

1209
01:25:44,800 --> 01:25:47,080
Speaker 1: I do need to try to do something more than

1210
01:25:47,080 --> 01:25:50,519
Speaker 1: I'm already doing. And you were sitting there across from them,

1211
01:25:50,560 --> 01:25:54,200
Speaker 1: what would be two things that you would tell them

1212
01:25:54,240 --> 01:25:57,599
Speaker 1: now that that you would encourage them to to do.

1213
01:25:57,920 --> 01:26:01,559
Speaker 1: Two actions they could take that you think could make

1214
01:26:01,600 --> 01:26:10,759
Speaker 1: a difference in some kind of way. Uh Um, okay,

1215
01:26:12,120 --> 01:26:19,040
Speaker 1: I would first, depending on who I'm talking too, but um,

1216
01:26:19,040 --> 01:26:22,080
Speaker 1: settling down and say I don't know what I'm doing, um,

1217
01:26:22,360 --> 01:26:25,639
Speaker 1: and I'm making it up as I go along. And

1218
01:26:25,720 --> 01:26:27,680
Speaker 1: by the way, you don't have to take off your

1219
01:26:27,760 --> 01:26:32,240
Speaker 1: camo and start wearing hemp clothing. You know, um or anything.

1220
01:26:33,920 --> 01:26:36,640
Speaker 1: You know. Hundreds like to say, there's a there's this

1221
01:26:36,840 --> 01:26:40,880
Speaker 1: weird distinction in our culture where people say, I'm a conservationist,

1222
01:26:40,920 --> 01:26:46,120
Speaker 1: but I'm no environmentalist because they you know, environmentalism means

1223
01:26:46,120 --> 01:26:50,240
Speaker 1: marching on nuclear power plants or uh, you know, whatever

1224
01:26:50,920 --> 01:26:54,240
Speaker 1: is going on and or a big fight over a

1225
01:26:54,280 --> 01:26:57,320
Speaker 1: polluting plant or something. And and a lot of people

1226
01:26:57,439 --> 01:27:00,599
Speaker 1: just don't see themselves in that role. And I don't

1227
01:27:00,600 --> 01:27:04,559
Speaker 1: see it in my role. Um, So I would say

1228
01:27:05,760 --> 01:27:09,920
Speaker 1: the right now, maybe the most effective thing hunters can

1229
01:27:09,960 --> 01:27:13,479
Speaker 1: do is talk to each other and and come up

1230
01:27:13,520 --> 01:27:16,360
Speaker 1: with their own solution, rather than listen to this guy

1231
01:27:16,439 --> 01:27:21,120
Speaker 1: you're talking to right now and just say, well, look,

1232
01:27:21,160 --> 01:27:25,840
Speaker 1: I know, I know we love hunting together, and um,

1233
01:27:27,439 --> 01:27:29,679
Speaker 1: you know, we've spent a lot of time outdoors together.

1234
01:27:29,840 --> 01:27:32,080
Speaker 1: And by the way, I've noticed you're kind of a

1235
01:27:33,080 --> 01:27:36,400
Speaker 1: U you like to track the other carnivores out there,

1236
01:27:37,479 --> 01:27:41,519
Speaker 1: m or you like you like to spend time, I

1237
01:27:41,560 --> 01:27:44,559
Speaker 1: don't know, just just seeing what else is there. I mean,

1238
01:27:44,560 --> 01:27:48,000
Speaker 1: that's part of the joy of being out, you know,

1239
01:27:48,040 --> 01:27:52,720
Speaker 1: a day in the woods and and there is a

1240
01:27:52,800 --> 01:27:55,400
Speaker 1: problem going, you know, and and what can we do

1241
01:27:55,479 --> 01:27:57,880
Speaker 1: just to make life a little easier for the critters

1242
01:27:57,960 --> 01:28:01,920
Speaker 1: here and make sure are still around for the next generation.

1243
01:28:02,040 --> 01:28:06,639
Speaker 1: And um, gosh, I don't know what do you think.

1244
01:28:06,680 --> 01:28:09,040
Speaker 1: I mean? I'm not I don't see myself as a

1245
01:28:09,120 --> 01:28:11,880
Speaker 1: letter writer, but I might be able to get down

1246
01:28:11,920 --> 01:28:16,920
Speaker 1: to that city hall meeting about the development going in

1247
01:28:15,800 --> 01:28:19,599
Speaker 1: UM in that area we like to hunt here or

1248
01:28:19,640 --> 01:28:22,840
Speaker 1: that maybe that area we like to hunt in UM

1249
01:28:23,840 --> 01:28:27,080
Speaker 1: and put it in our two cents worth and you know,

1250
01:28:27,200 --> 01:28:29,479
Speaker 1: learn a bit more about it and go in and say, well,

1251
01:28:29,520 --> 01:28:32,200
Speaker 1: here's what the deer need, here's what the you know,

1252
01:28:32,280 --> 01:28:37,320
Speaker 1: the whatever your favorite critter is and our plant um

1253
01:28:38,400 --> 01:28:41,839
Speaker 1: and start at that level rather than me throw out

1254
01:28:41,920 --> 01:28:46,200
Speaker 1: you know, you should join this group or that group. UM.

1255
01:28:46,680 --> 01:28:49,599
Speaker 1: I would recommend looking into land trusts. They always mean,

1256
01:28:50,400 --> 01:28:53,880
Speaker 1: you know, a few extra bucks and maybe some time

1257
01:28:54,000 --> 01:28:59,120
Speaker 1: from people. And I know, I'm sure some of your

1258
01:28:59,160 --> 01:29:03,120
Speaker 1: listeners are are already active volunteers and going out and

1259
01:29:03,160 --> 01:29:09,080
Speaker 1: restoring some landscapes, restoring, rehabbing trout streams or you know,

1260
01:29:09,280 --> 01:29:12,559
Speaker 1: their favorite fishing spot. I don't know how many would

1261
01:29:12,560 --> 01:29:17,360
Speaker 1: be looking at the the endangered muscles probably live in

1262
01:29:17,400 --> 01:29:19,759
Speaker 1: that water and filter it and help make it clear

1263
01:29:19,840 --> 01:29:23,040
Speaker 1: and keep pulling this down. But as he's worth getting

1264
01:29:23,040 --> 01:29:27,400
Speaker 1: to know more about UM. I'd start small, and I'd

1265
01:29:27,439 --> 01:29:31,519
Speaker 1: start with like minded people and try to figure out

1266
01:29:31,600 --> 01:29:35,920
Speaker 1: together what difference one person can make. And you know,

1267
01:29:35,920 --> 01:29:39,320
Speaker 1: it's a big global problem. We've got a head start

1268
01:29:39,400 --> 01:29:42,120
Speaker 1: on some of the solutions here in the US. How

1269
01:29:42,160 --> 01:29:47,240
Speaker 1: can we make them happen sooner and better? Yeah? I

1270
01:29:47,280 --> 01:29:51,960
Speaker 1: think that's pretty va I'm sorry if that, but but

1271
01:29:52,080 --> 01:29:56,599
Speaker 1: great advice, but great advice. I think that there's there's

1272
01:29:56,920 --> 01:29:59,920
Speaker 1: I think it was it was Teddy Roosevelt who said

1273
01:30:00,120 --> 01:30:03,800
Speaker 1: something like he appreciates the man that takes the first

1274
01:30:03,840 --> 01:30:07,679
Speaker 1: step more than he appreciates the man that strategizes about

1275
01:30:07,680 --> 01:30:10,479
Speaker 1: the two hundred steps to come. You know, there's something

1276
01:30:11,080 --> 01:30:13,280
Speaker 1: there's something to be said about just doing what you

1277
01:30:13,280 --> 01:30:16,000
Speaker 1: can right now, like taking doing that one little thing,

1278
01:30:16,240 --> 01:30:20,160
Speaker 1: starting small, but doing something. And it's so easy to

1279
01:30:20,240 --> 01:30:22,160
Speaker 1: want to just sit around and think, well, jeez, this

1280
01:30:22,240 --> 01:30:24,160
Speaker 1: is so much bigger than me. I don't know what

1281
01:30:24,200 --> 01:30:26,120
Speaker 1: to do, or I could you could do this, you

1282
01:30:26,120 --> 01:30:28,479
Speaker 1: could do this, you could do this, and then never

1283
01:30:28,520 --> 01:30:33,519
Speaker 1: actually take any action. I was just yesterday, you know,

1284
01:30:33,560 --> 01:30:35,519
Speaker 1: this morning I emailed you and told you I was

1285
01:30:35,600 --> 01:30:38,800
Speaker 1: running late because my flight got delayed. I was in

1286
01:30:38,920 --> 01:30:43,759
Speaker 1: Massachusetts yesterday at a volunteer habitat day on a wildlife

1287
01:30:43,800 --> 01:30:48,759
Speaker 1: management area just outside of Boston, and we had almost

1288
01:30:48,760 --> 01:30:52,800
Speaker 1: one hundred folks come out to clean up, pick up trash,

1289
01:30:52,920 --> 01:30:56,320
Speaker 1: pick up shotgun shells, take all sorts of stuff out

1290
01:30:56,320 --> 01:30:59,400
Speaker 1: of there, put up wood, duck boxes, put up bluebird boxes.

1291
01:31:00,479 --> 01:31:05,800
Speaker 1: It was it was nothing fancy. We weren't doing anything profound, profound,

1292
01:31:05,920 --> 01:31:10,360
Speaker 1: We weren't solving all the world's problems. But there was

1293
01:31:11,080 --> 01:31:15,680
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of people out there together in a community,

1294
01:31:16,320 --> 01:31:20,160
Speaker 1: hunters and anglers, people who care about wildlife and wild places.

1295
01:31:20,680 --> 01:31:23,840
Speaker 1: And they were making a difference that day in a

1296
01:31:23,920 --> 01:31:28,000
Speaker 1: small way, but in a tangible way. And I felt

1297
01:31:28,000 --> 01:31:30,559
Speaker 1: this like energy when we were talking, you know, with

1298
01:31:30,800 --> 01:31:36,320
Speaker 1: in different small groups, people could feel the you know,

1299
01:31:36,360 --> 01:31:40,120
Speaker 1: the positive impact of in one small way today putting

1300
01:31:40,160 --> 01:31:43,280
Speaker 1: a dent in this thing. And I think that there's

1301
01:31:43,479 --> 01:31:45,320
Speaker 1: and I'm curious if you think there's truth this or

1302
01:31:45,360 --> 01:31:49,240
Speaker 1: not dug but I think there's there's power in momentum

1303
01:31:49,800 --> 01:31:53,120
Speaker 1: and if you can take that little step today and

1304
01:31:53,120 --> 01:31:57,599
Speaker 1: and I think it helps form an identity if you

1305
01:31:57,720 --> 01:32:00,360
Speaker 1: act in some ways. So so yesterday I picked up

1306
01:32:00,360 --> 01:32:02,439
Speaker 1: trash all day with a bunch of folks who care

1307
01:32:02,439 --> 01:32:06,240
Speaker 1: about wildlife, and that steeps into my pores. And now

1308
01:32:06,280 --> 01:32:08,960
Speaker 1: tomorrow I feel more and more like, you know, I'm

1309
01:32:09,040 --> 01:32:12,439
Speaker 1: someone who who works for wildlife, who cares about these things.

1310
01:32:12,439 --> 01:32:16,400
Speaker 1: And so when I get that email from some conservation

1311
01:32:16,479 --> 01:32:18,960
Speaker 1: organizations saying, hey, you know what, we need people to

1312
01:32:19,000 --> 01:32:22,880
Speaker 1: call their senators because there's this thing coming down the pipeline, well,

1313
01:32:22,960 --> 01:32:25,599
Speaker 1: now you know, hey, I just did this thing last weekend.

1314
01:32:25,720 --> 01:32:28,000
Speaker 1: I can do this thing now tomorrow, and then after

1315
01:32:28,040 --> 01:32:29,880
Speaker 1: that the next thing comes up, and all of a sudden,

1316
01:32:29,920 --> 01:32:34,640
Speaker 1: two months from now, I'm planning trees or whatever it is.

1317
01:32:34,760 --> 01:32:37,760
Speaker 1: I think these things can snowball, and there's momentum that

1318
01:32:37,880 --> 01:32:42,680
Speaker 1: builds with every tiny little step, and eventually all of

1319
01:32:42,680 --> 01:32:45,280
Speaker 1: that adds up. And I think if more and more

1320
01:32:45,320 --> 01:32:48,760
Speaker 1: people start taking these little push the snowball down the

1321
01:32:48,800 --> 01:32:50,720
Speaker 1: hill kind of actions, all of a sudden, we've got

1322
01:32:50,760 --> 01:32:56,160
Speaker 1: an avalanche and we can tackle this thing. Is that crazy? Yes? No, No,

1323
01:32:56,320 --> 01:32:59,400
Speaker 1: of course that's look you are. You're doing a lot

1324
01:32:59,479 --> 01:33:02,919
Speaker 1: yourself and at a lot of levels, and I certainly

1325
01:33:03,000 --> 01:33:06,519
Speaker 1: thank you for that and on behalf of a lot

1326
01:33:06,520 --> 01:33:12,400
Speaker 1: of overlook critters. But um, and you can tell I'm

1327
01:33:12,400 --> 01:33:17,760
Speaker 1: really reluctant to offer advice and um, and yet that's

1328
01:33:17,800 --> 01:33:19,760
Speaker 1: what people need. And I think you put it. You

1329
01:33:19,920 --> 01:33:24,360
Speaker 1: put it splendidly, and you know, I just feel really

1330
01:33:24,360 --> 01:33:26,240
Speaker 1: good about that sort of thing. And it was not

1331
01:33:26,320 --> 01:33:31,040
Speaker 1: because I feel righteous or or oh boy, am I

1332
01:33:31,200 --> 01:33:34,760
Speaker 1: a good citizen here. It's just planting trees is a

1333
01:33:34,880 --> 01:33:38,840
Speaker 1: joy in itself, and pulling out weeds is the same way.

1334
01:33:38,920 --> 01:33:42,240
Speaker 1: It's weird, but it works for some of us. And

1335
01:33:42,240 --> 01:33:45,960
Speaker 1: and if that leads to, you know, meeting other people

1336
01:33:46,280 --> 01:33:50,360
Speaker 1: and sharing ideas and seeing what you have in common

1337
01:33:50,400 --> 01:33:54,360
Speaker 1: and then taking some next steps, that's just about perfect.

1338
01:33:54,520 --> 01:33:58,040
Speaker 1: I mean I when you ask the recommendations, and you

1339
01:33:58,120 --> 01:34:00,880
Speaker 1: talked about Teddy Roosevelt, and I'd say, well, I did

1340
01:34:00,920 --> 01:34:04,880
Speaker 1: forget to recommend that somebody out there just needs to

1341
01:34:04,960 --> 01:34:09,640
Speaker 1: run for president and turn into the next Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah,

1342
01:34:10,080 --> 01:34:13,479
Speaker 1: one of your listeners, Come on, guys, Gallos, Yes, got

1343
01:34:13,560 --> 01:34:18,280
Speaker 1: to step up. We need we do need that. Well, Doug,

1344
01:34:18,920 --> 01:34:21,920
Speaker 1: this is uh, this has been just the conversation I've

1345
01:34:21,960 --> 01:34:24,960
Speaker 1: been needing and been wanting to have so so thank

1346
01:34:25,000 --> 01:34:28,760
Speaker 1: you for for chatting with me about all of this. Um,

1347
01:34:29,880 --> 01:34:34,479
Speaker 1: I would recommend anyone listening to pick up your book

1348
01:34:34,520 --> 01:34:37,479
Speaker 1: four Fifths at Grizzly. It's it's great. It takes everything

1349
01:34:37,479 --> 01:34:39,880
Speaker 1: we talked about here today and expands on it in

1350
01:34:39,880 --> 01:34:41,720
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways, and it's it's it's a

1351
01:34:41,720 --> 01:34:46,840
Speaker 1: beautiful book, amazing photos. You know. I couldn't recommend it enough.

1352
01:34:46,880 --> 01:34:48,400
Speaker 1: But what I would like you to do, if you

1353
01:34:48,400 --> 01:34:52,920
Speaker 1: don't mind, is is there any other one of your

1354
01:34:52,920 --> 01:34:56,160
Speaker 1: books if you had to recommend one other of your

1355
01:34:56,200 --> 01:34:59,360
Speaker 1: many many publications and things out there that you think

1356
01:35:00,000 --> 01:35:02,640
Speaker 1: our audience might be interested in, or that you're particularly

1357
01:35:02,640 --> 01:35:06,160
Speaker 1: proud of. That maybe is Collecting Dust in the Archives

1358
01:35:06,160 --> 01:35:08,280
Speaker 1: that you published long ago since you've been you've been

1359
01:35:08,320 --> 01:35:10,680
Speaker 1: at this a while. Is there any other piece of

1360
01:35:10,720 --> 01:35:12,559
Speaker 1: work that you'd like to send folks to check out

1361
01:35:12,560 --> 01:35:14,320
Speaker 1: other than this one that I will shout from the

1362
01:35:14,320 --> 01:35:23,920
Speaker 1: mountaintops for you. Well, yeah, yeah, I'm strictly unbiased here. No,

1363
01:35:24,120 --> 01:35:28,160
Speaker 1: I would recommend The Wolverine Way, which was published by

1364
01:35:28,439 --> 01:35:34,559
Speaker 1: Patagonia before Four Fifths, so Grizzly. And the reason I'm

1365
01:35:34,600 --> 01:35:39,080
Speaker 1: bringing that out is I just in the course of

1366
01:35:39,560 --> 01:35:42,639
Speaker 1: learning about wolverines and again starting almost in a scrack.

1367
01:35:42,760 --> 01:35:45,439
Speaker 1: Nobody knew much about them at all, and the work

1368
01:35:45,479 --> 01:35:49,680
Speaker 1: we did and I did just as a volunhappy volunteer

1369
01:35:50,960 --> 01:35:53,680
Speaker 1: stand for weeks at a time out and remote outposts

1370
01:35:53,720 --> 01:35:57,479
Speaker 1: and catching wolverines and get radios on. They move like

1371
01:35:57,600 --> 01:36:00,840
Speaker 1: nobody else stays, social systems all different. It was just

1372
01:36:00,880 --> 01:36:04,080
Speaker 1: a every day brought new discoveries and that is a

1373
01:36:04,200 --> 01:36:09,840
Speaker 1: reward unto itself, and and it also brings up the

1374
01:36:09,880 --> 01:36:13,519
Speaker 1: fact that, look, I love to hunt. I love to

1375
01:36:14,000 --> 01:36:17,679
Speaker 1: you know, stock animals, get close enough to watch them,

1376
01:36:18,479 --> 01:36:21,840
Speaker 1: and you know, I just I'm not so much into

1377
01:36:22,160 --> 01:36:26,320
Speaker 1: taking something home with me. Um. But man, when I'm

1378
01:36:26,360 --> 01:36:31,479
Speaker 1: doing that, all my senses are firing. I'm I'm the

1379
01:36:31,600 --> 01:36:35,200
Speaker 1: human of the day. But I'm also the human that arose,

1380
01:36:35,479 --> 01:36:40,400
Speaker 1: you know, from our ancestors, with all my nerves and

1381
01:36:40,600 --> 01:36:45,280
Speaker 1: hormones and senses going, and you know, like they're like

1382
01:36:45,360 --> 01:36:47,919
Speaker 1: they're built to be. And I know that's a good

1383
01:36:47,920 --> 01:36:51,800
Speaker 1: White guys like hunting and I like hunting too, just

1384
01:36:51,960 --> 01:36:54,719
Speaker 1: to you know, I come out in a different way.

1385
01:36:54,760 --> 01:36:57,720
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to say I totally get it,

1386
01:36:57,760 --> 01:37:01,639
Speaker 1: but I certainly get that, and I got it with

1387
01:37:02,320 --> 01:37:06,600
Speaker 1: tracking wolverines and already about them. And you know, on

1388
01:37:06,640 --> 01:37:10,360
Speaker 1: a typical day, I'd be following their tracks past big

1389
01:37:10,400 --> 01:37:14,559
Speaker 1: horned sheep and mountain goats and moose and crossing lion tracks,

1390
01:37:17,360 --> 01:37:21,800
Speaker 1: wolf tracks, kyoats that follow the wolverines to scavenge for carcasses.

1391
01:37:21,880 --> 01:37:26,800
Speaker 1: They leave snowshoe hairs at the kyo veered off on

1392
01:37:26,960 --> 01:37:29,040
Speaker 1: to go hunt. You know, it's just brought the whole

1393
01:37:29,800 --> 01:37:34,479
Speaker 1: community fully to life, and and I think it gets

1394
01:37:34,520 --> 01:37:37,320
Speaker 1: at the dedication of some of the researchers out there,

1395
01:37:38,080 --> 01:37:41,360
Speaker 1: but mostly at the joy of learning about new species

1396
01:37:41,600 --> 01:37:46,360
Speaker 1: and how they live. And it's a good adventure story too,

1397
01:37:46,439 --> 01:37:51,200
Speaker 1: a lot of mountaineering and pretty tough animal to work

1398
01:37:51,240 --> 01:37:55,439
Speaker 1: with and pretty pretty fierce, but not nothing like it

1399
01:37:55,520 --> 01:37:58,920
Speaker 1: for reputation for you know, being a danger to people

1400
01:37:58,920 --> 01:38:04,880
Speaker 1: in the woods. But but wow, um uh. Anyway, that

1401
01:38:04,920 --> 01:38:09,320
Speaker 1: would be the one um perfect because it's the closest

1402
01:38:10,040 --> 01:38:14,000
Speaker 1: closest I've written to a hunting book that does that

1403
01:38:14,120 --> 01:38:16,040
Speaker 1: does sound like a good read. That's that's when I

1404
01:38:16,040 --> 01:38:18,280
Speaker 1: haven't read yet, so it's it'll be on my list.

1405
01:38:18,600 --> 01:38:20,519
Speaker 1: The only thing I have against wolverines is that I

1406
01:38:20,560 --> 01:38:24,160
Speaker 1: went to Michigan State University and our arch rivals are

1407
01:38:24,200 --> 01:38:26,680
Speaker 1: the University of Michigan Wolverines. So I will try not

1408
01:38:26,720 --> 01:38:29,240
Speaker 1: to hold that against your book, and uh, and I'll

1409
01:38:29,240 --> 01:38:35,920
Speaker 1: give it a read. I appreciate that, and um, well,

1410
01:38:35,960 --> 01:38:41,400
Speaker 1: but the other thing I wanted This isn't um shooting

1411
01:38:41,439 --> 01:38:44,200
Speaker 1: my own horn here. I just it's just that that's

1412
01:38:44,240 --> 01:38:47,160
Speaker 1: why I do what I do. I didn't plan at first.

1413
01:38:47,200 --> 01:38:49,000
Speaker 1: I just wanted to go out and learn about wolverines

1414
01:38:49,040 --> 01:38:50,960
Speaker 1: or I like hanging out with the guys. They're all

1415
01:38:50,960 --> 01:38:55,920
Speaker 1: good woodsmen and you know, skiers and and uh, comfortable

1416
01:38:55,920 --> 01:39:00,280
Speaker 1: out in the remote areas. But part way through I realized, God,

1417
01:39:00,320 --> 01:39:02,840
Speaker 1: we don't. We just need to know so much more

1418
01:39:02,880 --> 01:39:07,200
Speaker 1: about them. We need to manage them differently. And and

1419
01:39:07,360 --> 01:39:12,120
Speaker 1: it's made a difference the age. The wildlife management agencies

1420
01:39:12,120 --> 01:39:14,599
Speaker 1: are paying much more attention now the wolverine than they

1421
01:39:14,600 --> 01:39:17,400
Speaker 1: did in the past, and the wolverines seem to be

1422
01:39:17,439 --> 01:39:20,960
Speaker 1: doing a bit better, and they're expanding their range over

1423
01:39:21,040 --> 01:39:24,679
Speaker 1: in Washington State down into Oregon all looks like. So

1424
01:39:25,560 --> 01:39:28,840
Speaker 1: that is really rewarding. That comes back to, you know,

1425
01:39:28,880 --> 01:39:31,960
Speaker 1: whether it's picking up trash or if you're a writer

1426
01:39:32,120 --> 01:39:36,400
Speaker 1: like me. You you point and wave and try to

1427
01:39:36,439 --> 01:39:40,080
Speaker 1: spur smarter people or more capable of people to take

1428
01:39:40,120 --> 01:39:45,759
Speaker 1: the next step. So anyway, thanks for asking that, and

1429
01:39:45,800 --> 01:39:48,479
Speaker 1: thanks for gosh, thanks for all the time. This has

1430
01:39:48,520 --> 01:39:51,800
Speaker 1: been great. I really enjoyed it me too, Doug. I hope,

1431
01:39:52,040 --> 01:39:55,120
Speaker 1: I hope we can chat again soon, and I know

1432
01:39:55,200 --> 01:39:57,920
Speaker 1: that our listeners will be looking forward to the next

1433
01:39:57,920 --> 01:40:00,880
Speaker 1: book from you whenever that comes down line too, so

1434
01:40:00,920 --> 01:40:03,400
Speaker 1: we'll be waiting on pins and needles. Get to work, Doug,

1435
01:40:05,240 --> 01:40:09,720
Speaker 1: thanks much, Thanks for another job. Okay, I'll get on it.

1436
01:40:10,040 --> 01:40:35,400
Speaker 1: Thanks again, and that is a rap. Thank you for

1437
01:40:35,439 --> 01:40:39,840
Speaker 1: tuning in. I can't recommend Doug's book enough. Pick up

1438
01:40:39,960 --> 01:40:43,760
Speaker 1: four Fifths a Grizzly. I highly highly recommend it, and

1439
01:40:44,080 --> 01:40:46,479
Speaker 1: it sounds like the Wolverine Way is is certainly worth

1440
01:40:46,479 --> 01:40:49,800
Speaker 1: our time too. And all that said, tune back in

1441
01:40:49,920 --> 01:40:52,960
Speaker 1: next week. We're diving in deep to a specific piece

1442
01:40:53,000 --> 01:40:56,400
Speaker 1: of conservation legislation that can make a big difference this

1443
01:40:56,479 --> 01:40:59,160
Speaker 1: year and next year and in the future, and we

1444
01:40:59,240 --> 01:41:02,800
Speaker 1: can help make that come to fruition. So until then,

1445
01:41:03,200 --> 01:41:06,080
Speaker 1: thanks for being here. Keep on doing good work out

1446
01:41:06,080 --> 01:41:08,800
Speaker 1: there for wild places and wildlife and until next time,

1447
01:41:09,320 --> 01:41:11,840
Speaker 1: stay wired to hunt.