Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand saddler Blind, First Light,
Speaker 1: Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon, and this week on the show, I'm joined
Speaker 1: by wildlife biologist and author Douglas Chadwick to explore the
Speaker 1: current state of wildlife across the world today in a
Speaker 1: new way of thinking that might just save those preachers
Speaker 1: and us. All right, welcome back to the Wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light. It's me
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. I am back in the saddle. Here. The
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift concerts, the Yoyo competitions, the rock collecting, exploits
Speaker 1: with Spencer, whatever it is, those crazy things that's been
Speaker 1: filling your head with, They're all done. I'm out here,
Speaker 1: back in the saddle, back here on the podcast. Hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed Tony's guest hosting over the last month, exploring
Speaker 1: all sorts of different offseason projects that I think will
Speaker 1: help all of us as we lead into this next season.
Speaker 1: But here I am, and we are kicking off a
Speaker 1: new series. This is a series we've done for the
Speaker 1: past couple of years. It's one of my favorites that
Speaker 1: we do every year, and that's Conservation Month. We are
Speaker 1: going to take a step back from you know, deep
Speaker 1: hunting conversations and tactical hunting conversations and instead have some
Speaker 1: have some conversation around the thing, the resource, the creatures
Speaker 1: that allow us to enjoy this hunting lifestyle. There wouldn't
Speaker 1: be any deer chase, there wouldn't be any wild places
Speaker 1: to chase them on, there wouldn't be any beautiful Mountain
Speaker 1: Vista's Crystal career streams of these things that we enjoy
Speaker 1: so much as hunters and anglers if there weren't people
Speaker 1: thinking about and working for the conservation of wild animals
Speaker 1: and places. And that's what this month is all about,
Speaker 1: is stepping into that world and exploring, you know, what
Speaker 1: kind of impact we might be able to have there,
Speaker 1: what's going on in the wilder world. What should we
Speaker 1: be excited about, what should we be concerned about, and
Speaker 1: what's our role to play? And you know, I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you, just on a personal note, that this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff can be fun. This kind of work, these
Speaker 1: kinds of conversations. It does not have to be dreary,
Speaker 1: it does not have to be a drag. This kind
Speaker 1: of stuff is fun. And I have a personal, real
Speaker 1: world example of this just from last week, because as
Speaker 1: some of you might know, give my little updates here.
Speaker 1: The Working for Wildlife tour kicked off at the end
Speaker 1: of March. We had our first event outside of Boston, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and me in dozens and dozens and dozens of many
Speaker 1: of you and others came out to a wildlife management
Speaker 1: area like I mentioned in Massachusetts. We got together on
Speaker 1: a Sunday and we picked up a whole load of trash,
Speaker 1: like literally entire dump truck load. More than one thousand
Speaker 1: pounds of trash were picked up by folks out there
Speaker 1: that day. We put up I think six different wood
Speaker 1: duck boxes. We pulled out of there, all sorts of
Speaker 1: shotgun shells, tires, beer cans, you name it. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of crap that was out there,
Speaker 1: you know, fouling up this beautiful piece of public land
Speaker 1: that is no longer there. It was good work. It
Speaker 1: was just rewarding to do something like that and to
Speaker 1: immediately see and in some small way things get a
Speaker 1: little bit better by way of our of our handiwork
Speaker 1: and our time. But what stood out the most, maybe,
Speaker 1: and I guess I should have known this coming in,
Speaker 1: but when I was really reminded of coming out of it,
Speaker 1: was just how much fun it is to do that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, To get out there with other people
Speaker 1: that care about wildlife, that like to hunt or like
Speaker 1: to fish, and who also like to keep these things around,
Speaker 1: who also want to give back. Just being around other
Speaker 1: people that cared about those same things and all kind
Speaker 1: of joining in to do something good and worthwhile was
Speaker 1: really fun and re energizing and uplifting. So I came
Speaker 1: out of that just you know, more charged up than
Speaker 1: ever to just do more of those kinds of things,
Speaker 1: to you know, to step away from the words of things,
Speaker 1: you know, worrying about what you read on the news,
Speaker 1: or you know, even being on a podcast like this
Speaker 1: talking about ideas of what to do, and actually getting
Speaker 1: into the world of action, actually doing something that is good,
Speaker 1: that felt great, and that that's got me more excited
Speaker 1: than ever to do this series this month exploring different
Speaker 1: ways we can all take action to make sure that
Speaker 1: you know, our kids and grandkids do still have public
Speaker 1: land to explore, do have wild, quiet, clean places to
Speaker 1: explore that do have great hunting opportunities or wildlife viewing
Speaker 1: opportunities or phishing opportunities, that there's still some wild creatures
Speaker 1: run around out there that we all enjoy and making
Speaker 1: sure if things are better for the future. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that I'm excited about talking about this week.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna kind of go all over the place
Speaker 1: with this series. We're gonna have, you know, some episodes
Speaker 1: that are very high level looking at the worldwide state
Speaker 1: of nature, what's going on, that's that's gonna be today.
Speaker 1: Really we're gonna look at different ideas about how to
Speaker 1: think about ourselves and relationship to nature. But we're also
Speaker 1: going to zoom really tightly into things like you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have some episodes of very specifically focused on
Speaker 1: white tail deer and others that are focused on all
Speaker 1: sorts of things. We're gonna have some episodes that go,
Speaker 1: you know, right into the nitty you're witty, for example,
Speaker 1: of one specific piece of conservation legislation that will have
Speaker 1: huge impacts on whitetailed deer and private land conservation and
Speaker 1: hunter access and habitat protection, all kinds of stuff like that.
Speaker 1: We've got a conversation next week on that topic. We're
Speaker 1: going to reach out to a couple of folks and
Speaker 1: get into all sorts of different ideas for you know
Speaker 1: how we and as hunters and anglers, can be more
Speaker 1: effective advocates for these things that we care about. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna be all over the place, and today, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, we're starting out at this high level thirty
Speaker 1: thousand foot overview of nature and wildlife and where things
Speaker 1: stand today, and not just when it comes to deer
Speaker 1: or wild game here in America, but across the world.
Speaker 1: And our guests today is going to help us explore
Speaker 1: that and also consider, you know how, how we might
Speaker 1: be thinking about our relationship or obligation to these wild things.
Speaker 1: So our guest today, as I mentioned at the top,
Speaker 1: is Douglas Chadwick. He is a wildlife biologist. He's a
Speaker 1: widely published writer, frequently seen in the pages of magazines
Speaker 1: like the National Geographic and the author of I believe
Speaker 1: more than fourteen books, including The Wolverine Way, Tracking Gobie Grizzlies,
Speaker 1: and most recently four Fifths a Grizzly, a new perspective
Speaker 1: on nature that just might save us all. And Doug
Speaker 1: has he has lived an incredible life. It seems he
Speaker 1: has seen some amazing things. He's traveled the wild world,
Speaker 1: gotten up close and personal with grizzlies, whales, mountain goats,
Speaker 1: and just so many other fascinating wild creatures. And over
Speaker 1: the course of those years and expeditions, Doug has seen
Speaker 1: a diminishing world. He has had this firsthand experience seeing
Speaker 1: wild places wink out and wild creatures pushed to the brink.
Speaker 1: And all of this has seemed to have led Doug
Speaker 1: to a realization that maybe it's time we rethink our
Speaker 1: place alongside these animals, or at least rethink how we
Speaker 1: think about her place with these animals. Doug, it seems
Speaker 1: began to think that we might have more in common
Speaker 1: with these animals than we once thought. And if that's true,
Speaker 1: if we do have more in common with these animals,
Speaker 1: what does that mean for how we live with or
Speaker 1: conserve wild places and animals. These are the thoughts and
Speaker 1: ideas that eventually led to this recent book by Doug,
Speaker 1: Four Fifths of Grizzly, which, within its pages explores the
Speaker 1: real and widespread threats currently facing wildlife all across the
Speaker 1: world today, what we might be able to do to
Speaker 1: address it, in some great examples of successes that we
Speaker 1: are seeing today in that pursuit. That is that's what
Speaker 1: made this book so interesting to me, and that is
Speaker 1: why I was so excited that Doug was willing to
Speaker 1: come on here and talk to us about a new
Speaker 1: way of seeing ourselves as a part of nature, not
Speaker 1: apart from nature, but a part of nature. This fundamental
Speaker 1: shift in how we think about ourselves that I think
Speaker 1: can help us become better hunters. I think it can
Speaker 1: help us become happier humans, and I definitely think it
Speaker 1: can help us become more effective stewards of these wild things.
Speaker 1: And so if we can, if we can process some
Speaker 1: of this and think about this and maybe reconsider where
Speaker 1: we stand in relation to the deer that we hunt,
Speaker 1: the turkeys we chase, the fish we catch, the bears
Speaker 1: we watch when we drive through Yellowstone, whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: maybe all of that can help us take these next
Speaker 1: couple of month s worts of conversations and put it
Speaker 1: into action, leading to better things for us in our
Speaker 1: outdoor pursuits leading to better opportunities for our kids and
Speaker 1: so so much more so. That is the game plan today.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being here, Thanks for tuning in. Let's get
Speaker 1: to my chat now with Douglas Chadwick. All right now
Speaker 1: with me on the line. I'm really excited to have
Speaker 1: mister Douglas Chadwick. Doug, thank you so much for being here. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be here, of course. And you're in Bozeman,
Speaker 1: aren't you. So the company Meetator is based in Bozeman,
Speaker 1: but I actually split my time between Michigan and Idaho,
Speaker 1: so I'm kind of all over the place. Well, I
Speaker 1: was gonna I was gonna try to console you because
Speaker 1: I think they got almost two feet in so snow
Speaker 1: em Bozeman yesterday. Yes, because spring of going rapidly backwards
Speaker 1: in some parts of the Rockies look good today on
Speaker 1: the west side. Yeah, A lot of my friends and
Speaker 1: Bozeman have been sharing pictures of that dreaded two foot
Speaker 1: snowfall when they're hoping to see some kind of green
Speaker 1: growth again. I think at my place in Idaho there's
Speaker 1: something like four feet still. So I'm gonna be digging
Speaker 1: my way into the driveway here in a few weeks
Speaker 1: when I get out there. But I'm sure you've had
Speaker 1: a lot of that snowfall up in your neck of
Speaker 1: the Wits two. Huh, we have. It's been good. I
Speaker 1: do a lot of cross country stand and just animal
Speaker 1: tracking getting out and of course all of us in
Speaker 1: Montana well and a lot of the country. You know,
Speaker 1: we're praying for more and moist here and save us
Speaker 1: from once again having a wildfire season start a month early.
Speaker 1: You know, the bigger picture of things here is there's
Speaker 1: a lot of transition going on. I'm looking at the
Speaker 1: Continental Divide from my home in white Fish, and I've
Speaker 1: hiked out all my life, and I'm watching glaciers literally
Speaker 1: shrink in front of my eyes and trees marching up
Speaker 1: the slopes into the tundra. And you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a real phenomenon, that UM effects. I used to study
Speaker 1: mountain goats and in the park as well as in
Speaker 1: the San rang Von, Canada, and and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the use high altitude critters have got a whole new
Speaker 1: um center rules to survive by. So um anyway, lots
Speaker 1: of snow is good. Let the glaciers grow bigger. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: we need we need the snow, the moisture, the coal.
Speaker 1: That's going to be good for some critters out there,
Speaker 1: will be good for the fish and the rivers. Uh,
Speaker 1: it'll be good for exactly like you said, hopefully not
Speaker 1: as bad of a wildfire season. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I'm sure all my buddies in Bozeman, uh can handle
Speaker 1: a little extra snow in their hopes for spring because
Speaker 1: of the greater good. Um yep, So you mentioned the
Speaker 1: work you used to do with mountain goats, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, I've I've become relatively steeped in your history
Speaker 1: preparing for this and reading your works over the years. Uh,
Speaker 1: You've you've lived, and I guess I'm speaking for you,
Speaker 1: so correct me if you think I'm wrong here. But
Speaker 1: it seems like you've lived a fascinating life. That you've
Speaker 1: been able to go to some wild places, you've got
Speaker 1: to study such charismatic animals, You've you've been able to
Speaker 1: travel the world and just see and experience unbelievable things. Um.
Speaker 1: And and I'm sure it's it's obvious to me about
Speaker 1: you know, why you would want to do these things
Speaker 1: and why you why this I'm sure self fulfilling for you.
Speaker 1: But what my question is, to a degree, is is
Speaker 1: when did those things? When did those travels in your
Speaker 1: work as a biologist and a writer, When did all
Speaker 1: that shift for you from just adventure seeking or curiosity satiating.
Speaker 1: When did it shift from that to advocacy? When did
Speaker 1: you shift from me a consumer of these wild experiences
Speaker 1: to then wanting to protect them or advocate for them.
Speaker 1: When did that happen for you? How did that happen
Speaker 1: for you? Well, boy, us along and complex question. I'll
Speaker 1: try to keep it short. It actually started pretty early, mark,
Speaker 1: because I did my graduate work and wildlife biology studying
Speaker 1: mountain goats, and I studied them in an area that
Speaker 1: was back in the day. I'm getting kind of antique,
Speaker 1: And this was back in the seventies when mountain goats
Speaker 1: were being hunted unlimited. They didn't know anything about them
Speaker 1: and didn't recognize them as a whole different kind of
Speaker 1: critter than say, deer and elk, their closest relative in
Speaker 1: North America, as the Muscos and other relatives are all
Speaker 1: found on the east coast of Asia, and they have
Speaker 1: a whole different social system and slow reproduction and all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. So Anyway, I was up studying mountain goats,
Speaker 1: and I was watching new roads going to the back country,
Speaker 1: and grizzly bears were essentially being on being hundred unlimited
Speaker 1: in those days too, and there were very few regulations
Speaker 1: on logging and road building. So I kind of got
Speaker 1: activated early on because I was watching goats disappear and
Speaker 1: that was happening throughout the large choke of the goat range,
Speaker 1: and I was also watching grizzly bears disappear. They were
Speaker 1: listed as threatened while I was still on the job
Speaker 1: of being a goat boy, and so I struck me, well, wait,
Speaker 1: use their public resources. And they're both committially inspiring in
Speaker 1: their own way. I mean, we all know about grizzlies
Speaker 1: and the emotions they evoke, but mountain goats kind of
Speaker 1: sentinels of the high country and live in one of
Speaker 1: the highest steepest niches ever invented for a warm blooded mammal.
Speaker 1: And anyway, I just thought, this is silly to be
Speaker 1: having the youth vanish at this rate. What can I do?
Speaker 1: And so I did start writing for you know, popular
Speaker 1: magazines looking to do how to affect public policy. I
Speaker 1: don't clam to be any good at that. I just
Speaker 1: got activated, So that took place early. And then I
Speaker 1: did get lucky and latch onto a kind of a
Speaker 1: career with National Geographic as an independent writer. But I
Speaker 1: worked for him for many, many stories and books, and
Speaker 1: that's got me sent out around the world. And it
Speaker 1: turned out that everywhere I went us started looking better
Speaker 1: and better. And I'm watching animals disappear around the globe,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about up to and including the giants
Speaker 1: I work with, elephants, I work with great whales, and
Speaker 1: or I should say I volunteered as a researcher when
Speaker 1: I could, but a lot of time I was just
Speaker 1: tagging along after the experts in the area where I
Speaker 1: was trying to figure out what would work and what
Speaker 1: wouldn't for conservation. So a lot of good, I'd say,
Speaker 1: blind luck plus passion to be in wild places among
Speaker 1: inspiring wildlife. Yeah, going to all those places dug in
Speaker 1: and being with so many people working towards either researching
Speaker 1: these wild animals or you know, actually working to protect
Speaker 1: them in one way or another. You've seen all these
Speaker 1: things firsthand, You've been with people working on these problems
Speaker 1: and issues. Do you feel having that set of experiences
Speaker 1: and being exposed to all of that all over the world,
Speaker 1: both here at home and elsewhere. Has that made you
Speaker 1: more worried about the situation at hand and disheartened? Or
Speaker 1: or has that given you hope and confidence because you
Speaker 1: see the good things being done? Where have you landed
Speaker 1: after being exposed to the reality on the ground in
Speaker 1: so many places? Okay? Can I tell one quick story? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: please do. I was working with people who were studying
Speaker 1: the vocabulary, basically the songs, the vocal messages of humpback whales,
Speaker 1: and we were allowed to swim with them by special
Speaker 1: permission because there are protected species. But you know how
Speaker 1: we all go out to have wildlife adventures, and the bigger,
Speaker 1: the better the critter. And I remember a whale that
Speaker 1: came over to me and I was, you know, really
Speaker 1: steaming along, you know, full speed, headed straight for me.
Speaker 1: This is a humpback and it and then it put
Speaker 1: out these big fins it has called pectoral fins and
Speaker 1: just acts as instant breaks and stopped about two feet
Speaker 1: from my nose, and you know, I felt like, now,
Speaker 1: this critter has a brain about three times my size,
Speaker 1: and it lives as long or longer than team minutes,
Speaker 1: and it sings the longest song in the world, and
Speaker 1: it came over to see me. I felt like a
Speaker 1: little bug that someone bent down to look at, you know,
Speaker 1: And you can just imagine the presence of a thirty
Speaker 1: five foot forty foot long animal being nose and nose
Speaker 1: with an underwater and I mean, back up onto the boat.
Speaker 1: My first thought was, damn, what now? What? How can
Speaker 1: I ever get any better than this? You know, I'm
Speaker 1: far venturing, but I guess I'm trying to lead into say,
Speaker 1: working with elephants. I was. My first introduction to them
Speaker 1: was during the late nineteen seventies early eighties, and they
Speaker 1: were all being slaughtered void, just at a mass level
Speaker 1: for their ivory, which at the time was worth more
Speaker 1: than the third tusks had been made of solid silver.
Speaker 1: So you can't stop a market like that in countries
Speaker 1: with very little law enforcement and corrupt governments. And I'm
Speaker 1: just walking from dead elephant to dead elephants. So I
Speaker 1: guess I'm working my way towards saying that the activism
Speaker 1: part the passion to God, Chadwick gets smarter, do something,
Speaker 1: figure out something to help here, and if you're talking
Speaker 1: about authors, you're talking about whole landscapes it takes to
Speaker 1: support them, and also the welfare of the people that
Speaker 1: live there, and the economics of tourism and all kinds
Speaker 1: of things that some countries rely on. So if I'm
Speaker 1: looking at let's say tropical for us, and I'm watching them,
Speaker 1: I've been in the Amazon on the Congo and watch
Speaker 1: the forest, you know, being transformed into palm oil plantations
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. I don't go there looking
Speaker 1: for problems. I don't go there all fired up and
Speaker 1: I'm going to go out and be an environmental activist
Speaker 1: frame of mind. I just go to learn about the
Speaker 1: animals and what I see keeps do keep me what
Speaker 1: motivated to to figure this out? What groups? Okay, so
Speaker 1: that's the bad part. I mean, there are eight billion
Speaker 1: people in the world. It's not real apparent when you
Speaker 1: live in the mountains of Montana, but that's almost three
Speaker 1: times as many as we're around on this planet. When
Speaker 1: I was learning how to do biology and conservation and cool. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a whole new ball game, and I don't think
Speaker 1: most people are at the speed on it unless they
Speaker 1: travel a lot. In parts of Asia, and Africa where
Speaker 1: the animals are simply running out of room, especially big animals.
Speaker 1: And I guess I could put it this way. If
Speaker 1: you take the living weight of all the land dwelling
Speaker 1: mammals on the planet, about oh twenty two three percent
Speaker 1: of that is humans all but a little slice of
Speaker 1: the remaining percentage is our livestock. It's like seventy six
Speaker 1: percent and or seventy three percent, I don't know, somewhere
Speaker 1: in there. And there's a little little slice of the
Speaker 1: pie left that is four percent. And that's all the
Speaker 1: wild animals that remain on Earth today. Okay, all the while,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, well I'm talking about mammals, but what you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta get my terms right. But that's all. That's it.
Speaker 1: And so you know, people try to compromise, and the
Speaker 1: compromise is lung has been made in my experience. And
Speaker 1: so even as I get more motivated to try to
Speaker 1: do something, and you know, I have been yeah, near
Speaker 1: to despair, outright despair in some places, just people everywhere
Speaker 1: doing everything and the animals losing and losing and losing.
Speaker 1: But the other motivation is to go out and find
Speaker 1: projects and programs that are working and I'm especially intrigued
Speaker 1: by ones that. Again, I'm a biologist. I love working
Speaker 1: with animals. I didn't plan to work with people. But
Speaker 1: now it's really key to go out and find communities
Speaker 1: that are working together to keep the health of the
Speaker 1: land and the wildlife communities that they all share, and
Speaker 1: that means protecting their water and the quality of their
Speaker 1: land and for grazing or whatever it is, what's working,
Speaker 1: that's what peop I want to know. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: environmentalists and pretty good at alarming people and coming up
Speaker 1: with some pretty hard you know, you go to a
Speaker 1: party and pig and hold people and say, here's another
Speaker 1: terrible thing you might not know about. Sound fun, here's
Speaker 1: another awful statistic. But I want to be able to say, look,
Speaker 1: here's a program where the people are doing better. They're
Speaker 1: getting you know, more stable environment for their other activities.
Speaker 1: They're getting water that's healthier for their children to drink,
Speaker 1: Disease is going down. They've got more money from some
Speaker 1: tourism for health of children and women and the community
Speaker 1: as a whole. And they're doing this for their own reasons,
Speaker 1: not because people are coming from the outside from some
Speaker 1: rich country and saying here's we're here to help, right.
Speaker 1: So I'm actually on the foundation. It's an international foundation
Speaker 1: that supports community based conservation all around the world. From
Speaker 1: I was just reviewing plans in Laos in Argentina, you
Speaker 1: get the idea and these are these are programs that
Speaker 1: are working. And so you combine more scientific information about animals,
Speaker 1: and boy has that changed in those that period I
Speaker 1: mentioned since I was in school. We know cons more
Speaker 1: about their behavior, their genetics, and their physiological needs. And
Speaker 1: we also know a whole lot more about the need
Speaker 1: to work with the people that live on the land
Speaker 1: and not and get away from that old idea more
Speaker 1: than a century old now of we protect animals by
Speaker 1: declaring an exclusive reserve and sensing everybody out and or
Speaker 1: limiting an access and and then one of the people
Speaker 1: who have relied on that part of Asia and that
Speaker 1: part of Africa, or that part of the US for
Speaker 1: that matter, where are they supposed to do? So communities
Speaker 1: working together, that's that's a big part of the agenda
Speaker 1: for me now is to explain that to people's working
Speaker 1: on a larger and more connected scale. And we're used
Speaker 1: to working on with the old model of conservation. But
Speaker 1: I think a good point to several projects that do
Speaker 1: work like that, and I did put some in a
Speaker 1: reacent book. Um, I'll leave it at that. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty long answer already. Know you touched on some you
Speaker 1: touched on some great things there. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think one of the one of the things that you
Speaker 1: do really well in that book you just mentioned is
Speaker 1: you help reframe how we look at these others, these
Speaker 1: other species, these other parts of the um natural world.
Speaker 1: And and you titled the book around this idea. You
Speaker 1: lad the book with this idea, and I think it's
Speaker 1: I get why you see it as being foundational to
Speaker 1: helping us think about how we, you know, live alongside
Speaker 1: of these other animals. And this this idea of being
Speaker 1: that that the old narrative of us being apart from nature,
Speaker 1: or that nature and us are two separate things. You
Speaker 1: seem to want to turn that on its head and say, no,
Speaker 1: not so much. We're all in this together. We are
Speaker 1: actually four fifths so grizzly. Um, can you can you
Speaker 1: can you give us a quick cliff notes into what
Speaker 1: you mean by that and why you think that kind
Speaker 1: of reshifting our perspective on a relationship with a natural
Speaker 1: world matters so much. Sure, well, you know I was
Speaker 1: raved pretty normal childhood, I guess, And I think we
Speaker 1: all kind of come away into our older years or
Speaker 1: the years we start questioning things. We don't really question
Speaker 1: the idea that we are kind of a supreme species
Speaker 1: and we're either independent of nature or somehow liberated from it,
Speaker 1: separate from it in quality. We have the biggest brain
Speaker 1: for body weight, and you know a lot of rationales
Speaker 1: for doing what we've always done with resources, which has
Speaker 1: claim as much as we want, wherever we want, for
Speaker 1: as long as we want, and then paid off pretty well. Right,
Speaker 1: Like I said, there are eight billion of us now,
Speaker 1: the only other species that have a growth curve like
Speaker 1: the human population or bacteria. But again, now we're in
Speaker 1: a situation very well no other mammal has been in
Speaker 1: and you know we're changing those the atmosphere, those you know,
Speaker 1: the water, the land structure, the patterns of habitat, at everything,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I think a new view of conservations
Speaker 1: in order, and that's going to start with I don't
Speaker 1: think we'll put it this way. I don't think we're
Speaker 1: going to save nature as long as we don't see
Speaker 1: clearly our relationship with nature, and the reason we're at
Speaker 1: least four fifths of grizzly is that we there are
Speaker 1: about six thousand and four hundred species of mammals on
Speaker 1: planet us, and you know, never mind, there are four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand species of beetles identified and they're probably a
Speaker 1: million out there, but we focus on the big charismatic critters.
Speaker 1: That's natural. And we share eighty to ninety percent of
Speaker 1: our genes with every mammal out there, and it goes
Speaker 1: up to ninety eight percent with the great with chimpanzee's
Speaker 1: and behind nineties with other great eggs. So you know,
Speaker 1: we are built from the same genes and they, and
Speaker 1: what we're discovering is a lot about how much we
Speaker 1: share in terms of behavior, of emotions, of other qualities
Speaker 1: built by those genes. And one of the most common
Speaker 1: phrases I see as I look through research papers on
Speaker 1: animal behavior is the comment a trait formerly thought to
Speaker 1: be exclusive to human? Why was it formerly thought to
Speaker 1: be exclusive to humans? Because it sort of suited our
Speaker 1: the story we tell ourselves. And the other thing about
Speaker 1: being part of nature is that and this, you know,
Speaker 1: this gets into the geeky part. But you know, we
Speaker 1: have up three thirty trillion human cells in our bodies,
Speaker 1: and we have more single celled creatures living within and
Speaker 1: hon us than that, and they are doing our digesting
Speaker 1: for us, just like they would in the room and
Speaker 1: of a white tailed deer can't live without it. They
Speaker 1: produced satty acids and vitamins we can't make ourselves. They
Speaker 1: keep us going, and they're fighting off other possible infections,
Speaker 1: other single celled triggers and their effect. They're producing hormones
Speaker 1: that are very much like dopamine and serotonin and other
Speaker 1: things that influence our mood and our thoughts and our actions.
Speaker 1: So we're actually a compound creature, you know, we're like
Speaker 1: resemble a liking, which is, you know, an algae plus
Speaker 1: a couple of different kinds of fungus plus a bunch
Speaker 1: of bacteria. We call it a plant. And I would
Speaker 1: challenge anyone listening to go find an animal larger than
Speaker 1: bacteria or a similar group called their KaiA that is
Speaker 1: actually an independent creature. There doesn't seem to be any
Speaker 1: such thing. So we're combinations, partnerships, collaborations where we joint ventures.
Speaker 1: That's what we are. And you know, you can't be
Speaker 1: apart from nature, And no matter how badly you want
Speaker 1: it to be so, um, that doesn't oblige you to
Speaker 1: go out and start dragging subarus and holding up signs
Speaker 1: of protests. That means, here, we're not who we think
Speaker 1: we are. Our nature doesn't work why we like to
Speaker 1: think it works. And and genetically we've got ken all
Speaker 1: over the world. Um, And the last thing I'll add is,
Speaker 1: I'm look, we're also fifty to sixty percent genetically identical
Speaker 1: to fish, and we share thirty to forty percent even
Speaker 1: with some insects and uh with a wine grape. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe a little more in that some nights, you
Speaker 1: know the company, right, yeah, um, so yeah, I wonder
Speaker 1: that's why I wrote four fifths of Grizzly was too.
Speaker 1: I've been working with single species that represented whole ecosystems.
Speaker 1: Grizzly bears. You're taking care of their needs for home,
Speaker 1: range and habitat and quality of food. You're probably encompassing
Speaker 1: everything from trout to trumpeter slans to lengths of wolverines
Speaker 1: and help and deer, but um, you know whales. I
Speaker 1: worked on grizzly bears in the Gobi Desert anyway, just
Speaker 1: anyway I could come come at it, But it was
Speaker 1: always single species. But if you're protecting them, you're protecting
Speaker 1: a lot of biological diversity. You're protecting a lot of
Speaker 1: nature of an ecosystem. And then I thought, well, I
Speaker 1: haven't written a book like that. I'm still focused on
Speaker 1: the individual species or special places that need more attention.
Speaker 1: You know, as a writer, you're sort of an arm
Speaker 1: waiver or a cheerleader for things people haven't been paying
Speaker 1: attention to, and you're trying to trying to get their attention.
Speaker 1: But I thought, no, we need to rethink a lot
Speaker 1: of things again with the idea of that what your
Speaker 1: saving nature mean? And first we have to, I think,
Speaker 1: have a long and useful discussion about what is nature
Speaker 1: and what's the nature in us and where do we
Speaker 1: stand in relationship to it. I heard you mentioned on
Speaker 1: another show at some point you said that people might say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not that into nature, but nature's into you.
Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty that's pretty funny. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of those in your audience we're all mediators,
Speaker 1: and you know, I've never turned down a fresh medicine
Speaker 1: of my life but while we're still kind of touching
Speaker 1: on global situation, there's and I don't throw off statistics
Speaker 1: again to be an alarmist or for rhetoric or slay
Speaker 1: soone's opinion. It's just the facts based on a tremendous
Speaker 1: number of studies. And that's that about sixty percent of
Speaker 1: all the herbivores or the hooft mammals mostly greater than
Speaker 1: two hundred pounds are imperiled species these days, and about
Speaker 1: sixty per of all carnivores that's all non human meat eaters, right,
Speaker 1: greater than about thirty three pounds are also on the
Speaker 1: rare threatened or endangered species lists. So it is it's
Speaker 1: a different world out there than the bubble I live
Speaker 1: in in Montana, where we've still got a pretty hack
Speaker 1: wildlife communities in pretty good shape. Yeah, So that that
Speaker 1: that ties in really well to a story I wanted
Speaker 1: to tell you, Doug. I posted a photo on my
Speaker 1: Instagram page a couple weeks ago of an excert of
Speaker 1: your book. On page forty six. There's a like a
Speaker 1: like an enlarged piece of text where you were talking
Speaker 1: about kind of this very issue of the biodiversity crisis
Speaker 1: in the in the quote here that I took a
Speaker 1: photo of and that I shared was this as the
Speaker 1: number of people was roughly doubling in the forty two
Speaker 1: years between nineteen seventy in twenty twelve, the total population
Speaker 1: count of the planet's wild animals fell by more than
Speaker 1: half yea. So I posted that picture and I didn't
Speaker 1: really add any context. I just said, for your consideration,
Speaker 1: was my caption and put it out there, and it
Speaker 1: generated all sorts of questions. There was outrage at like disbelief,
Speaker 1: like there's no way this could be possible, there's no
Speaker 1: way anyone could have that kind of data, or that
Speaker 1: there's no way anyone could actually measure this. There were
Speaker 1: some people just very despairing of that. There were some
Speaker 1: folks who had genuine questions about how do we how
Speaker 1: do we know this, how do we come to these
Speaker 1: kinds of conclusions, what can we do about it? There
Speaker 1: were some folks who said, you know, there are folks
Speaker 1: who start to point fingers. It's because of this, it's
Speaker 1: because of this, because of this. It generated a really
Speaker 1: interesting beginning of a conversation that sent me then down
Speaker 1: a wormhole to try to answer or at least provide
Speaker 1: a little more context. So I ended up recording and
Speaker 1: sharing a fifteen minute video explaining I dove deep into
Speaker 1: where that number came from. I did research on trying
Speaker 1: to understand the Living Planet Report from the World Wildlife Fund,
Speaker 1: and I read up on how the Living Planet Index
Speaker 1: is compiled and shared all that and discuss some different
Speaker 1: things around what we're seeing as far as the larger wildlife,
Speaker 1: these larger wildlife trends. So it was a great kind
Speaker 1: of exercise for me to have to think about think
Speaker 1: about what these statistics, like these kind of negative, depressing
Speaker 1: I guess metrics in the world right now, what those
Speaker 1: things mean, How we can do something with that data.
Speaker 1: Because it's one thing to just say it, like you said,
Speaker 1: like you can say this depressing, sad number that does
Speaker 1: point to a fact and point to reality, But how
Speaker 1: do we understand what that actually looks like? How do
Speaker 1: we get to these numbers and what do we do
Speaker 1: about it? So this is a long winded way, Doug,
Speaker 1: of asking you to tell me this that quote that
Speaker 1: I just shared with you, this idea of this biodiversity crisis,
Speaker 1: this idea that folks are saying that we are moving
Speaker 1: towards a sixth mass extinction event. As someone who's been
Speaker 1: out there on the ground talking to the folks researching
Speaker 1: these things, studying these things, and you've seen some of
Speaker 1: a much of it of yourself. Does this ring true
Speaker 1: or is it hyperbolic and it's alarmist? It's true? Um. Again,
Speaker 1: if I'm if I'm in Missouri, or I'm in California,
Speaker 1: if I'm in Montana, especially if I'm in Montana, I'm Alaska,
Speaker 1: and I'd read that statistic and I go, what what
Speaker 1: What in the world are they talk about? This is
Speaker 1: more rhetoric, you know, propaganda from the Greenies. Um. But
Speaker 1: when I'm in Asia and walking through a jungle and
Speaker 1: there's a snare, you know, every hundred feet and the
Speaker 1: jungle is lush and intact, but it's empty of big critters, um.
Speaker 1: If all too clear. And when I'm in situations where
Speaker 1: I'm carrying a gun in Africa because of the threat
Speaker 1: of poachers, because I'm with park rangers and we're coming
Speaker 1: upon you know, freshly killed carcasses all over the place,
Speaker 1: It's it's very real. And I I I did read
Speaker 1: the same report you did carefully, and I would say
Speaker 1: it was a Worldwhilife Fund planetary evaluation. I think the
Speaker 1: Solological Society of London and they it isn't like they
Speaker 1: just went out and did their own surveys in a
Speaker 1: few places. They wrote to everybody around the world and
Speaker 1: got all the census stata they could and it's always imperfect,
Speaker 1: but thousands of studies and put it together and actually
Speaker 1: it came out a couple of years ago. I recently
Speaker 1: saw the figure raised from almost fifty percent to you know,
Speaker 1: sixty percent plus, and some have The hard part is,
Speaker 1: you know who's who's out there counting salm every salamander
Speaker 1: or wizard and that sort of thing. But you can
Speaker 1: certainly take large sample areas and get those figures. And again,
Speaker 1: depending on where you are, it makes sense to you
Speaker 1: or it just sounds catastrophic. But worldwide, that's the situation.
Speaker 1: The human footprint now lies across eighty three percent of
Speaker 1: the land surface of the Earth. Those kind of how
Speaker 1: long agen throwing out gloomy gloomy stats here. The prediction
Speaker 1: is that the plastic in the seas, including all the
Speaker 1: decayed plastic that becomes microplastics, gets into every living thing.
Speaker 1: It will outweigh all the fish in the world's oceans
Speaker 1: by two thousand and fifty. So it's really hard for
Speaker 1: a single person living, you know, with in a you know,
Speaker 1: a familiar home with comfortable routines and enjoys getting the outdoors.
Speaker 1: And Um looks around and says, I don't see anything
Speaker 1: much differ from day to day. But where are you
Speaker 1: if you I'm not sure we're even built you see,
Speaker 1: you know that far or on that scale, But whenever
Speaker 1: you put it together globally, with eight billion plus people
Speaker 1: on the planet in need of resources and with a
Speaker 1: whole lot more technology to get those resources and change
Speaker 1: environments to do it, I'm sorry. It's it's what's happening.
Speaker 1: And that's why there was a recent meeting to take
Speaker 1: on to try to get all nations to make a
Speaker 1: commitment for reserving a certain percentage of biodiversity that they
Speaker 1: have on their lands and in their waters, much as
Speaker 1: was done with you know, the international meeting to take
Speaker 1: on the climate crisis. So I know a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a feeling like you're almost inclined to
Speaker 1: reject all this because it's just too much. You're used
Speaker 1: to people overstating crises and you know, they'll be warnings
Speaker 1: about some particular chemical and we're all going to die
Speaker 1: and get deformed. And then you know, two months later
Speaker 1: they say, oh no, we we we did some more experiments.
Speaker 1: Turns out it's not a big deal. So it's easy
Speaker 1: to put these things in that category. But the loss
Speaker 1: of our fellow creakers is enormous, as unprecedented has been
Speaker 1: seen since asteroid whack into the planet at the end
Speaker 1: of the Age of dinosaurs. But it's slow mow enough
Speaker 1: by our standards that we don't go running out into
Speaker 1: the streets. And I wish it weren't true. Yeah, Yet
Speaker 1: it is hard to face that. It's hard to accept that,
Speaker 1: both because it seems it seems beyond possible, and it's
Speaker 1: as you said, in many cases, it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: see the actual shift happening right in front of your eyes,
Speaker 1: especially if we're somewhere like in America, where we are
Speaker 1: relatively at least compared to many other places in the world,
Speaker 1: we still have, you know, relatively wild places. We still
Speaker 1: have full suite of wildlife in some parts of the country.
Speaker 1: We still have you know, well regulated wildlife management principles
Speaker 1: in play too. To give us the resources and the
Speaker 1: opportunities we have to see wild critters out there. But
Speaker 1: that's not the case in a lot of places. But
Speaker 1: I think, I think even in each of our own
Speaker 1: individual lives, on a really micro scale, we can see
Speaker 1: examples of this. I mean I can. I was just
Speaker 1: telling my son. I've got a five year old son
Speaker 1: who is at this phase in his life where he
Speaker 1: is fascinated by any of dad's stories. He just wants
Speaker 1: to hear stories about when I was on some hiking trip,
Speaker 1: or the day I caught my biggest walleye, or that
Speaker 1: time that Grandpa pretended to be a black bear and
Speaker 1: scared my dad, or the time I caught my first snap,
Speaker 1: like all those things. He just whenever we're driving, he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: will you tell me a story. We tell me this
Speaker 1: story of that thing, that thing. And the other day
Speaker 1: he was asking me to tell him stories about catching
Speaker 1: snapping turtles when I was a kid, and so I
Speaker 1: told him about you know, every day during summer break,
Speaker 1: I'd go out behind the house and there was this
Speaker 1: swamp and this pine this pond right next door, and
Speaker 1: every day in the summer, me and my next door
Speaker 1: neighbor would go there, and we'd catch frogs all day,
Speaker 1: and we would catch snapping turtles when they would actually
Speaker 1: overnight be crawling across the road to get to another pond.
Speaker 1: And we'd wake up in the morning and get out
Speaker 1: and see these turtles crossing the road and we'd go
Speaker 1: pick them up and take them back or take them across.
Speaker 1: And that was how we would catch these huge snapping turtles.
Speaker 1: They would always be crossing. And he said, Dad, let's
Speaker 1: go there. Can you please take me to go see
Speaker 1: this swamp and this pond and the snapping turtles. Can
Speaker 1: we catch those snapping turtles? And I had to say, Buddy,
Speaker 1: it's gone, that pond, that wood lot, it's it's houses now.
Speaker 1: And I don't I don't think there's anyone listening today
Speaker 1: who can't point to some example like that in their
Speaker 1: life of some favorite fishing hole or a favorite wood lot,
Speaker 1: or a field where they used to chase butterflies or
Speaker 1: hunt for rabbits, or hike or bird watch or something. Well.
Speaker 1: I live in mike Fish, growing rapidly if Ski town
Speaker 1: and close to Glacier Park and a lot of tourism,
Speaker 1: and during COVID, it seemed like everybody east of the
Speaker 1: Mississippi decided to move here as well as California. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I could tell you about and you know, my kids
Speaker 1: know about canoeing the river that runs through town and
Speaker 1: watching moose and and you know, we still have deer
Speaker 1: in our yard, but a lot of yards i've also
Speaker 1: seen him and around me are now hopes and the
Speaker 1: moose are gone, and the wild turkeys are obvious frequents.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's just a lot of people coming
Speaker 1: in and they don't have you know, they don't have
Speaker 1: bad intentions. They simply want to live in a nice place.
Speaker 1: They actually love the outdoors. That's one reason they come.
Speaker 1: But you know, they don't always come with a commitment
Speaker 1: to try to find some way to make room for
Speaker 1: these other creatures as well as for ourselves. It can
Speaker 1: be done. I mean, there are plans and there are
Speaker 1: models for for limiting the pace of habitat change. I
Speaker 1: know you guys focus often on white tails, right, And um,
Speaker 1: you're lucky because you're working with a speciesis doing very
Speaker 1: well yea, and rapidly reproduces, and most of all, it
Speaker 1: seems well adapted to disturbed habitats. So originally that help
Speaker 1: fires and floods and and you know other other changes
Speaker 1: from natural forces, but they do equally well or suburban areas.
Speaker 1: I'm just telling your your audience things they know very well,
Speaker 1: and so that's always heartening. I mean, I when I'm
Speaker 1: out picking apples in my in my field, um, I've
Speaker 1: usually got white tailed deer standing below the tree whining
Speaker 1: for me. I was on kind of butterfingers and I
Speaker 1: drop a few, and you know, I'll be up on
Speaker 1: a ladder and I'll feel a ladder shake and say,
Speaker 1: oh it's a deer, so um waiting. So you know,
Speaker 1: it does give you a different view. But if you
Speaker 1: are looking at other creatures and you're looking at you know,
Speaker 1: there's been a catastrophic loss of insects in the order
Speaker 1: of you know, two thirds to three quarters. And all
Speaker 1: you have to do is occasionally checked the number of
Speaker 1: bugs on your windshield this summer. It's not like I
Speaker 1: used to be less place as well. You know, there
Speaker 1: goes pollination, there go to wildflowers that m all. You know,
Speaker 1: so much of our wildlife community eeks and who knows
Speaker 1: what else. But it just it's well worth paying attention
Speaker 1: to all the little things that run the world. If
Speaker 1: you're taught to an insect person or a worm person,
Speaker 1: or got to help you a microbe person. I mean
Speaker 1: they say, look mammals or a side show in terms
Speaker 1: of weight, in terms of numbers, and to begin with there,
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of I don't know, um, a little
Speaker 1: feeling somewhere in the food web, but um, they don't
Speaker 1: the energy and the nutrients and the things that cycle
Speaker 1: through an ecosystem to keep it healthy and to help
Speaker 1: all the animals large and small survive over time and
Speaker 1: the change of time brings um, most of them are
Speaker 1: invisible or require some serious looking. Yeah, it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: kind of speaking of some of those things. And pollinators
Speaker 1: are another great example of this. There's you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's one set of UM, I guess rationale for trying
Speaker 1: to protect wildlife in biodiversity is like just like the
Speaker 1: moral imperative of it or just the fact that we
Speaker 1: as individuals find these animals fascinating and we want to
Speaker 1: see them around or we feel some connection with them.
Speaker 1: So there's that side of things. But then there's also
Speaker 1: like the practical side of things, the practical argument of
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, as you mentioned, with pollinators.
Speaker 1: They provide ecosystem services is this term for what they
Speaker 1: natural wildlife and wild places provide services. They do things,
Speaker 1: they support, things that are foundational to human business, economy's life.
Speaker 1: You said something in your book that I really liked you.
Speaker 1: You proposed a new golden rule. You said, do unto
Speaker 1: ecosystems as you would have them do unto you. And
Speaker 1: right after saying that, you kind of I guess the
Speaker 1: way I would you framed it. I guess I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say, as you framed that, not as like a
Speaker 1: high minded moral rule, but more as a practical survival strategy.
Speaker 1: So do onto ecosystems as you would have them do
Speaker 1: unto you. And that is a golden rule because it
Speaker 1: is a necessary survival strategy. Can you can you expand
Speaker 1: on that that you know what that means and what
Speaker 1: you think about that. I'll start I'll start with the
Speaker 1: full golden rule was do into ecosystems as you would
Speaker 1: have them do unto you. Nurture, sustain, help, allow to flourish.
Speaker 1: So our health is long term, is indistinguishable from the
Speaker 1: health of the land, air, and water we we all
Speaker 1: depend on. Right, And and you mentioned the some of
Speaker 1: the the more obscure species, the ones we don't pay
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to, but they're absolutely vital. And
Speaker 1: I don't I don't you know, it sounds like you're
Speaker 1: it's asking a lot of people. Um, you go out
Speaker 1: and get to know all these varied life forms there are.
Speaker 1: There are so many as too many and unless you
Speaker 1: like a geek out on some of the things I do. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean I say, I've worked with elephants of Wales,
Speaker 1: also with ants and beetles and even talk toure geographic
Speaker 1: in doing stories on them. And because they in Australia,
Speaker 1: I've been in places where the ants control the whole forest,
Speaker 1: cannopy and and any cree, kangaroos or koalas or whatever
Speaker 1: else wants to live there has to deal with it
Speaker 1: part of their their environment. But UM, I guess the
Speaker 1: question we're I feel like we're coming to mark is
Speaker 1: is you know when well, let's just go back in time.
Speaker 1: And I know hunters are proud of the fact that
Speaker 1: you know or see themselves as the original conservationists. And
Speaker 1: granted it came about in an era when the national
Speaker 1: philosophy seemed to be if it moves, shoot it and
Speaker 1: if it doesn't, cut it down. But they were the
Speaker 1: original conservationists and and continue to be so for a while,
Speaker 1: and all credit goes to them and and some other
Speaker 1: four sighted people that maybe looked at some of the
Speaker 1: non hunter species, but it was huge. My question, I
Speaker 1: think to you and some of the folks listening, is
Speaker 1: who are the leading conservationists today or where do hunters
Speaker 1: stand reside on that list? Are they still are they
Speaker 1: still leading? Are they still, you know, by really important
Speaker 1: to the conservation work that remains to be done, and
Speaker 1: what do we do with that? Yeah? Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think the answer is from my perspective that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of hunters and anglers who do care deeply
Speaker 1: about these things and who are leading, but there's so
Speaker 1: much more that needs to be done. There's there's so
Speaker 1: much more, and I think that there's there's so much
Speaker 1: more potential good we could do if the hunters and
Speaker 1: anglers working on these kinds of things are not working
Speaker 1: on these kinds of things in isolation, but are working
Speaker 1: with them hand in hand with the non hunters and
Speaker 1: anglers who care about these things and are leading and
Speaker 1: doing great work for conservation. So I one of my
Speaker 1: big hopes and dreams to the futures seeing these two
Speaker 1: communities working more and more together, because it's a big
Speaker 1: number of folks. It's a it's a serious constituency of
Speaker 1: people and of voters. If you combine those two groups
Speaker 1: of people, if you combine animal lovers and outdoor recreators,
Speaker 1: skiers and hikers and bikers and all those folks with
Speaker 1: all of the tens of millions of hunters and anglers,
Speaker 1: all these people that love nature, all these people who
Speaker 1: appreciate wildlife and fish and open space. And yeah, we
Speaker 1: might engage with it in different ways. We might live
Speaker 1: in the city, or we might live in the mountains
Speaker 1: or in a farm. But I feel like there's so
Speaker 1: much we could do if we could get better at
Speaker 1: looking past those differences and instead kind of compound our
Speaker 1: powers together to tackle stuff like what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: Couldn't agree more. And I know here in Montana the
Speaker 1: hundreds and anglers are tremendous folks for taking better care
Speaker 1: of the environment, for public land protection and access and
Speaker 1: proper access, and and uh, I think it would be
Speaker 1: wonderful if it could, you know, follow up on that,
Speaker 1: because I I think we've spend way too much time,
Speaker 1: you know, discussing, um, how people feel about hunting or
Speaker 1: one way or the other. And look, we can't make
Speaker 1: everybody an ethical hunter overnight. We can't make every conservation
Speaker 1: to stop acting like holier than now uh or or
Speaker 1: you know, being annoying. And I think, I think it
Speaker 1: would be tremendous to bring you know, the different forces
Speaker 1: who care about the different groups that care about the
Speaker 1: future of of well life on the planet, but of
Speaker 1: the wild word the world they go into, and that
Speaker 1: they know a lot about. Yeah, And I have great
Speaker 1: respect for a one of my friends who are both
Speaker 1: avid hunters and very keeen naturalists, and I think one
Speaker 1: comes together. You got to know what you're doing out there, um,
Speaker 1: but not you know, not in all situations, all types
Speaker 1: of hunts. But really the guys out roaming the woods
Speaker 1: tend to do it and and and it means a
Speaker 1: lot when they speak up for protecting the the whole
Speaker 1: community of wildlife. And you know, I when look, when
Speaker 1: I see a deer, um a couple of things. I
Speaker 1: think every creature out there is the right answer to
Speaker 1: the question of how best to live in a certain way.
Speaker 1: A certain place, um or wouldn't be here, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have survived over the millennia. But um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: This is This is a tough one, but I feel
Speaker 1: like we need to somehow look at the deer and
Speaker 1: see what shaped it, you know, the vegetation it eats,
Speaker 1: the animals that competes with for that vegetation, the predators.
Speaker 1: Why does the deer as have the senses it does.
Speaker 1: Why does it have the fleetness, the ability to you know,
Speaker 1: jump over an eight foot fence of this practical stand still.
Speaker 1: You know that was the work of you know, predators
Speaker 1: over thousands of years. And I do know some hunters
Speaker 1: who you know, pretty down on predators because they see
Speaker 1: them as as competing for me. But that respect the
Speaker 1: greater community that made the deer, that may the elk
Speaker 1: as social and communicative as they are m as you know,
Speaker 1: living in groups. Many eyes are better than one, you know,
Speaker 1: one pair. And what made the moose so strong and
Speaker 1: able to punch through deep snow and fend off you know,
Speaker 1: the midsized carnivores. It was just all all these different
Speaker 1: natural forces and you don't get one without the others.
Speaker 1: The way I look at it, and if you just
Speaker 1: focus on one single species, nature doesn't really work that way.
Speaker 1: It's a process that takes place over time that makes
Speaker 1: each animal what it is, and that naturally leads you
Speaker 1: from whatever animal your favorites are. Could be wild jerkys,
Speaker 1: could be deer, could be gosh, I don't know. Help
Speaker 1: here in Montana, certainly, but who else is living there
Speaker 1: with them? And what are they doing that are we
Speaker 1: taking care of them? And obviously works they were all
Speaker 1: here when we invaded this continent, and wildlife management sometimes
Speaker 1: makes it sound like boys, sure good that we got
Speaker 1: here just in time to save all these animals. Well, now,
Speaker 1: what they were doing just great, and they were diverse
Speaker 1: or abundant, and nature was at its healthiest and most
Speaker 1: fertile um. So you know how how much of that
Speaker 1: has been lost is something we can all debate over,
Speaker 1: but it's it's been a lot. And when you asked
Speaker 1: me earlier about the startling decline in numbers worldwide of
Speaker 1: vertebrates or animals with backbones forty percent on up to
Speaker 1: some say sixty percent now and say we don't see
Speaker 1: it in the US, But that's got to remember that's
Speaker 1: partly because we don't see bison in the millions anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't see grizzlies in the tens of thousands.
Speaker 1: We don't see mountain care to move back. And they
Speaker 1: were in the forests of Wyoming right and old grow
Speaker 1: forests of Idaho farther south and anyway. So it's hard,
Speaker 1: you know, to come up with these comparisons. What was
Speaker 1: the natural state, what's here now? How much it's declined.
Speaker 1: But I think rather than get lost in that, I
Speaker 1: would just say, here's what we've got. We've done a
Speaker 1: decent job with the tools we had of conserving it.
Speaker 1: We can do much more, much better. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: been out. I was volunteering on a wolverine study just
Speaker 1: because I realized it's an animal i'd seen but didn't
Speaker 1: really know anything about. And then I realized nobody knows
Speaker 1: much about them, and they were getting overlooked and they
Speaker 1: were declining. We've probably got three hundred and fifty or
Speaker 1: fewer in the lower forty eight states, And you know,
Speaker 1: I just there's a lot of animals and situations like
Speaker 1: that candidates for listing for protection. If enough people are
Speaker 1: working together on management of plans and ways to improve
Speaker 1: things for those critters. They don't have to get listed,
Speaker 1: or if listed, they'd be off the list pretty during quicker.
Speaker 1: If we've made a few right moves, and I that's
Speaker 1: all worth looking at, it's all worth considering. And if
Speaker 1: all every animal deserters, I think the same amount of value.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to say that deer hunters are
Speaker 1: going to turn into you know, avid wolverine fans um.
Speaker 1: But wolverines are. Wow, what a critter. I followed them
Speaker 1: up to the tops of mountains that are ten you know,
Speaker 1: there's ten thousand foot plus and right around here, and
Speaker 1: they're climbing ice and snow that no human can climber,
Speaker 1: could get it up. They go forty four hours a day.
Speaker 1: I mean the custom it's likely they fueled by nuclear
Speaker 1: energy or something. And they can stand grizzly bears over
Speaker 1: a carcass. I mean, wow, that's the attitude. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny. One thing we haven't really touched on,
Speaker 1: which probably a lot of folks are asking, is what's
Speaker 1: causing all this other than the other than the overarching
Speaker 1: umbrella of humans. Uh, you know, there might be people saying,
Speaker 1: all right, I hear what you're saying, we are losing
Speaker 1: a lot of wildlife across the world. There's lots of
Speaker 1: threatened species, there's lots of trends going in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: But what's specifically is making this happen. And as I understand, Doug,
Speaker 1: in my own reading and research and projects related to this,
Speaker 1: I've seen most of the causes lumped into five buckets,
Speaker 1: that being you know, the various forms of habitat destruction,
Speaker 1: the impacts of climate change, pollution in its many different forms,
Speaker 1: invasive species, and then you know overkill or overharvest or
Speaker 1: poaching of fish and wildlife in different situations. I've seen
Speaker 1: those as the five main culprits of this overarching biodiversity
Speaker 1: crisis across the world. Would you say, does that sound
Speaker 1: right to you, Doug? And secondly, is there any one
Speaker 1: of those or several of those that, from your work
Speaker 1: and experience, seems to stand out above the rest? Unfortunately, no,
Speaker 1: but but there are some we can fix more easily.
Speaker 1: And the pollution is that's just heedlessness and it's causing
Speaker 1: as many look, more people die from air pollution every
Speaker 1: year than from eggs, malaria, and I forget what else.
Speaker 1: Certainly COVID combined. It's huge. And if you go to Beijing,
Speaker 1: or you spend time in Delhi or someplace, you you're
Speaker 1: gonna get sick if you breathe that airline enough. And
Speaker 1: millions of people are being affected, and that's just economics.
Speaker 1: And that change has to come from the people being affected.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, man, I rapidly get out of
Speaker 1: my element because I'm say, I'm just I'm just an
Speaker 1: ot go boy, a wildlife biologist, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the the changes that need to occur are social and
Speaker 1: economic and involved. You know, the resources were taking from
Speaker 1: the land, and whether it's it's harvesting animals or illegally
Speaker 1: or in most of the world, illegally or simply because
Speaker 1: there's no law enforcement. Um, that's one thing, But Jeeves
Speaker 1: taking on the economics of resource extraction is that that's
Speaker 1: above my pay grade. UM. I got to be people,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately they're not those in power. But the people
Speaker 1: are being affected often, but they have somehow to get
Speaker 1: support from other other places, but start making those changes themselves,
Speaker 1: just as each of us. You know, sometimes you feel
Speaker 1: silly recycling your pop cans, are doing those little things
Speaker 1: turning off the lights and all that. But of course
Speaker 1: if millions we're doing it, it it would make a huge difference.
Speaker 1: I do it just because it makes me feel a
Speaker 1: little better at trouble. But I think the next stage
Speaker 1: is people taking part of meetings and writing letters all
Speaker 1: their usual things. But we talk about it, but not
Speaker 1: that many people do it. And again, if legislators are
Speaker 1: starting to hear from hunters about a proposed development of
Speaker 1: some kind, and it doesn't have to be oh, we're
Speaker 1: going to go lie down in front of the bulldozer.
Speaker 1: It's just we looked over your plan and you could
Speaker 1: do a better job of making sure contamination is limited,
Speaker 1: or you know something, the facility somewhere else besides the
Speaker 1: side of that mountain, more elk reader, or put that
Speaker 1: new subdivision somewhere else people can learn. You know, we
Speaker 1: can make a big change down at city hall. We
Speaker 1: can make a big change by going to the county commissioners,
Speaker 1: and make a change by going to the states legislature
Speaker 1: and hollred about things. I'm just saying I'm not here
Speaker 1: to fight, really, I'm here to make a change that
Speaker 1: we can all live with. Let's start with that and
Speaker 1: the being a generation after us I can continue doing that.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Yeah, oh yeah, it does. So
Speaker 1: I've got a question about maybe one specific example of
Speaker 1: something like this that hunters have started engaging in and
Speaker 1: maybe could do more. And then I think ties into
Speaker 1: a couple of these larger challenges to wilde being in
Speaker 1: the form of habitat fragmentation and destruction and the impacts
Speaker 1: of climate. Let's say, um, there's something I'd love you
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about, which is the the
Speaker 1: island effect and the importance of migration corridors. And this
Speaker 1: migration corridor push is picking up steam within the conservation
Speaker 1: community for for many, many years, but now in the
Speaker 1: hunting community. There's been a lot of interesting studies over
Speaker 1: the last five ten years about pronghorn migrations, mule deer
Speaker 1: migrations that are kind of opening the eyes for people
Speaker 1: and realizing how far these critters go. And so that's
Speaker 1: that's I think opening a lot of hunter's eyes to
Speaker 1: the necessity for connective tissue between different wild places because
Speaker 1: they're now seeing a species they pay attention to a
Speaker 1: lot needs these connections and corridors. But there's a there's
Speaker 1: a much wider impact to these wider to having these
Speaker 1: quarters of vailable because we're seeing, you know, whether it
Speaker 1: be grizzly bears or pronghorn or any number of different species,
Speaker 1: they need to be able to move, not only because
Speaker 1: of natural migrations, but also because the temperatures and the
Speaker 1: climate zones they need to survive are shifting and they're
Speaker 1: going to have to shift north or up to be
Speaker 1: able to continue to have that kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: this is becoming increasingly challenged because of this island effect.
Speaker 1: Can you can you tell folks about the island effect,
Speaker 1: how that impacts wildlife and how we might be able
Speaker 1: to start dealing with that and creating better corridors and
Speaker 1: connections to solve for that. Sure, um, and thank for
Speaker 1: bringing that up, because that's that is key, and because
Speaker 1: we're on the solutions and satans right now. And the
Speaker 1: old bottle of conservation was kind of like the King's
Speaker 1: Hunting Reserve or you know earlier, where you've set aside
Speaker 1: a hunk of land that scenic, has recreational values, has
Speaker 1: wildlife values, and you limit access or put offense around
Speaker 1: it as they do in some of the African reserves
Speaker 1: and say, hey, we save nature well the eighties percent.
Speaker 1: Almost of the extinctions that have taken place since the
Speaker 1: year fifteen hundred have been on oceanic islands, and it's because,
Speaker 1: of course they're isolated. They're subject to whatever comes through
Speaker 1: disease or invasive species, hurricanes, you know, changing climate in
Speaker 1: that particular part. But they can't go anywhere, and they
Speaker 1: can't get replaced from neighboring populations. And the whole time,
Speaker 1: if they're not a very large population, they're going to
Speaker 1: be inbreeding. And the way genetics works is nine times
Speaker 1: out of ten that specigoes extinct. And that's essentially a
Speaker 1: model that applies to the way we've done this on
Speaker 1: land on different continents. We make isolated reserves here and
Speaker 1: there whereas possible where there was still wild land and
Speaker 1: still a rich wildlife community and declared a reserve. And
Speaker 1: now the big push worldwide because of all those factors
Speaker 1: I mentioned and more studies over the past half century.
Speaker 1: All point in this direction is that you have to
Speaker 1: build in that flexibility for animals to adapt and met
Speaker 1: you brought up a changing climate here in the continent,
Speaker 1: they have to move up, maybe north or south, maybe
Speaker 1: to a moister set of conditions. But they've got to
Speaker 1: be able to move and flow and swap jeans and
Speaker 1: meet new girlfriends and party in different places. If I
Speaker 1: put a I go out with a bare biologist who
Speaker 1: flap a radio color on yet another grizzly. It might
Speaker 1: be a glacier park, but the next week it's in Canada.
Speaker 1: It's an Alberta nsover in British Columbia. Then just down
Speaker 1: the National Forest in western Montana, etc. Do you guys
Speaker 1: do move a lot? I once followed a mountain lion
Speaker 1: from the Black Hills in South Dakota. I did it
Speaker 1: indirectly where people had collected scats and done DNA analysis,
Speaker 1: but from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the
Speaker 1: edge of a interstate highway in Connecticut, thirty miles from
Speaker 1: New York City. Wow, where I got hit by car.
Speaker 1: Animals can move, and then they're always probing, and that's
Speaker 1: part of the value. It's like white tailed deer, right.
Speaker 1: They they produce a lot of the young, and those
Speaker 1: young have to disperse to find habitat in the stages
Speaker 1: that they like, the early stages of forest succession with
Speaker 1: a lot of brush and you know, very grasslands and
Speaker 1: well a variety of plants that you don't get in
Speaker 1: a closed forest, as you know, so you know, they're
Speaker 1: dispersing all the time. So if they're contained, or they've
Speaker 1: got potentially a fence in the form of new housing,
Speaker 1: new agricultural lands or whatever that they're not allowed on,
Speaker 1: how do they do that? And so if you're in
Speaker 1: Africa and you're looking at the elephants in Manyara, they've
Speaker 1: got to get to Ruaha. They have to get from
Speaker 1: Ruaha to the Serengetti. They have to you know, there's
Speaker 1: a string of wonderful wildlife parks there, but they are
Speaker 1: all islands. And so what they're doing now is going
Speaker 1: in between those reserves, working with communities and who have
Speaker 1: problems with wildlife coming through. Sometimes the elephants are eating crops,
Speaker 1: or the lions are considered dangerous or taking livestock coming
Speaker 1: up with you know, a whole lot of creative plans
Speaker 1: that end up making that passageway between the existing reserves
Speaker 1: termeable to wildlife. You don't have to go and create
Speaker 1: another park. You don't have to make a superpark over
Speaker 1: the whole area. You have to make corridors or wild
Speaker 1: waves or habitat bridges or whatever you want to call
Speaker 1: them that allow animals to move and adapt and reproduce,
Speaker 1: and that is being undertaken in parts of Africa, in
Speaker 1: parts of Asia. Thailand have some reserves bordering Myanmar, the
Speaker 1: old Burma, I guess. And here in the US we've
Speaker 1: got some landscape level plans taking shape in a number
Speaker 1: of areas, but actually in reasonable shape in the what
Speaker 1: it's called the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, which is
Speaker 1: two thousand miles from south of Yellowstone up to well
Speaker 1: north into the Yukon, and that they say it is
Speaker 1: the size and scale of of land nature needs to
Speaker 1: and wildlife populations need to stain themselves over time. Oh
Speaker 1: and one thing I'll add, if can I ramble on
Speaker 1: and y okay Um. Part of this is because we've
Speaker 1: got a lot of America is graced with a whole
Speaker 1: lot of public land that alone distinguishes us from so
Speaker 1: many countries. And as part of the reason you and
Speaker 1: I have been pointing out that things are are looking
Speaker 1: pretty good here compared to much of the world. Um.
Speaker 1: But what we're finding now as things get busier, highways
Speaker 1: get busier, communities grow there's more logging and mining, and
Speaker 1: you know, road access into the former back country um
Speaker 1: our parks in the Rockies are turning into um let's
Speaker 1: call them near islands. But there's a lot of land
Speaker 1: in between public land that can be managed UM more
Speaker 1: in favor of wildlife, less in favor of of just
Speaker 1: cut and run extraction or big and run UM. And
Speaker 1: then there's a final key element, and that is private
Speaker 1: land UM in the areas between wildlife strongholds. If a
Speaker 1: bear was to get from Yellowstone Park to Glacier Park
Speaker 1: and the Yellowstone population is isolated, or the elk migrate,
Speaker 1: or the as you say, the pronghorns, you need to
Speaker 1: get down into wyoming UM from from the Red Debt, sorry,
Speaker 1: from from say Teton National Park into the Red Desert
Speaker 1: one hundred miles UM. You you're going through private lands
Speaker 1: and fences, so you can change the fencing rangements. You
Speaker 1: can put overpasses their underpasses where they have to cross
Speaker 1: a freeway and occasionally get slaughtered. They many died during
Speaker 1: storms and they come up against fences they can cross.
Speaker 1: And then there's still just the land itself. And if
Speaker 1: a landowner is operating in certain ways of no use
Speaker 1: to those animals. If the landowner is willing to keep
Speaker 1: some of the habitat intact and some of the cover
Speaker 1: that dear and help need, for example, in just again
Speaker 1: a corridor a right of way for the four legged critters,
Speaker 1: that makes all the difference in the world long term.
Speaker 1: And so the factor I'm trying to put it out
Speaker 1: is land trusts, by which groups go out and arrange
Speaker 1: conservation easness with private landowners. And these are willing landowners.
Speaker 1: Nobody's regulating anything, nobody's forcing anything. It's a win win
Speaker 1: deal where they get paid to maintain their land in
Speaker 1: a wildlife friendly manner. And maybe you've discussed this on
Speaker 1: previous podcasts and probably have. Um, this has proven to
Speaker 1: be a key in Montana's a leader in in this.
Speaker 1: Uh you know this, this what strategy for keeping wildlife
Speaker 1: able to move and adapt and being done with Joe
Speaker 1: Blow next door. You know, the neighbors, the people in
Speaker 1: the community who what I see that wildlife and have
Speaker 1: it in your lives and um, it adds up to
Speaker 1: a lot of acreage in the right places. And because
Speaker 1: they're you know all this has been pretty well mapped
Speaker 1: out over time by biologists and ecologists where you can
Speaker 1: look at a map of a region and say, okay,
Speaker 1: if I were an elk or a white kill deer
Speaker 1: or a links, where would I go? Where would I
Speaker 1: need to go? And if you're looking at public land management,
Speaker 1: some pressure from the public to maybe manage it more
Speaker 1: in favor of wildlife, and then you're looking at private
Speaker 1: landloders who willingly will take part in this movement pattern.
Speaker 1: Making a movement pattern available, we can make great strides
Speaker 1: and we can conserve big nature and that's what a
Speaker 1: full wildlife community needs. Yeah. So if IF IF advocating
Speaker 1: for these kinds of things, such as migration corridors, wildlife
Speaker 1: passages across highways, helping fund different easement programs, you know
Speaker 1: on the migration quarteror thing. We have had some good
Speaker 1: news on that recently. I think there was something like
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty million dollars for migration corridor related
Speaker 1: work in the recent ira UM Flas Reduction Act. And
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of dollars in the infrastructure bill
Speaker 1: from two years ago. So I think there's there's some
Speaker 1: steam building there. Yeah, So that's that's exciting. UM. But
Speaker 1: I guess Doug if if you were too, if you
Speaker 1: were to have one of my audience members sitting in
Speaker 1: front of you and the two of you were drinking
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee right now, and they've just heard
Speaker 1: everything you had to say. And I think anyone listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast is already someone who you know has
Speaker 1: some kind of connection with nature. They're a hunter and
Speaker 1: an angler. They appreciate these things. But maybe they haven't
Speaker 1: zoomed out quite as much as we have today and
Speaker 1: looked at the larger picture, or looked outside of their
Speaker 1: favorite species. And maybe they're hearing this and recognizing, Man,
Speaker 1: I do need to try to do something more than
Speaker 1: I'm already doing. And you were sitting there across from them,
Speaker 1: what would be two things that you would tell them
Speaker 1: now that that you would encourage them to to do.
Speaker 1: Two actions they could take that you think could make
Speaker 1: a difference in some kind of way. Uh Um, okay,
Speaker 1: I would first, depending on who I'm talking too, but um,
Speaker 1: settling down and say I don't know what I'm doing, um,
Speaker 1: and I'm making it up as I go along. And
Speaker 1: by the way, you don't have to take off your
Speaker 1: camo and start wearing hemp clothing. You know, um or anything.
Speaker 1: You know. Hundreds like to say, there's a there's this
Speaker 1: weird distinction in our culture where people say, I'm a conservationist,
Speaker 1: but I'm no environmentalist because they you know, environmentalism means
Speaker 1: marching on nuclear power plants or uh, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: is going on and or a big fight over a
Speaker 1: polluting plant or something. And and a lot of people
Speaker 1: just don't see themselves in that role. And I don't
Speaker 1: see it in my role. Um, So I would say
Speaker 1: the right now, maybe the most effective thing hunters can
Speaker 1: do is talk to each other and and come up
Speaker 1: with their own solution, rather than listen to this guy
Speaker 1: you're talking to right now and just say, well, look,
Speaker 1: I know, I know we love hunting together, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, we've spent a lot of time outdoors together.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I've noticed you're kind of a
Speaker 1: U you like to track the other carnivores out there,
Speaker 1: m or you like you like to spend time, I
Speaker 1: don't know, just just seeing what else is there. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's part of the joy of being out, you know,
Speaker 1: a day in the woods and and there is a
Speaker 1: problem going, you know, and and what can we do
Speaker 1: just to make life a little easier for the critters
Speaker 1: here and make sure are still around for the next generation.
Speaker 1: And um, gosh, I don't know what do you think.
Speaker 1: I mean? I'm not I don't see myself as a
Speaker 1: letter writer, but I might be able to get down
Speaker 1: to that city hall meeting about the development going in
Speaker 1: UM in that area we like to hunt here or
Speaker 1: that maybe that area we like to hunt in UM
Speaker 1: and put it in our two cents worth and you know,
Speaker 1: learn a bit more about it and go in and say, well,
Speaker 1: here's what the deer need, here's what the you know,
Speaker 1: the whatever your favorite critter is and our plant um
Speaker 1: and start at that level rather than me throw out
Speaker 1: you know, you should join this group or that group. UM.
Speaker 1: I would recommend looking into land trusts. They always mean,
Speaker 1: you know, a few extra bucks and maybe some time
Speaker 1: from people. And I know, I'm sure some of your
Speaker 1: listeners are are already active volunteers and going out and
Speaker 1: restoring some landscapes, restoring, rehabbing trout streams or you know,
Speaker 1: their favorite fishing spot. I don't know how many would
Speaker 1: be looking at the the endangered muscles probably live in
Speaker 1: that water and filter it and help make it clear
Speaker 1: and keep pulling this down. But as he's worth getting
Speaker 1: to know more about UM. I'd start small, and I'd
Speaker 1: start with like minded people and try to figure out
Speaker 1: together what difference one person can make. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's a big global problem. We've got a head start
Speaker 1: on some of the solutions here in the US. How
Speaker 1: can we make them happen sooner and better? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think that's pretty va I'm sorry if that, but but
Speaker 1: great advice, but great advice. I think that there's there's
Speaker 1: I think it was it was Teddy Roosevelt who said
Speaker 1: something like he appreciates the man that takes the first
Speaker 1: step more than he appreciates the man that strategizes about
Speaker 1: the two hundred steps to come. You know, there's something
Speaker 1: there's something to be said about just doing what you
Speaker 1: can right now, like taking doing that one little thing,
Speaker 1: starting small, but doing something. And it's so easy to
Speaker 1: want to just sit around and think, well, jeez, this
Speaker 1: is so much bigger than me. I don't know what
Speaker 1: to do, or I could you could do this, you
Speaker 1: could do this, you could do this, and then never
Speaker 1: actually take any action. I was just yesterday, you know,
Speaker 1: this morning I emailed you and told you I was
Speaker 1: running late because my flight got delayed. I was in
Speaker 1: Massachusetts yesterday at a volunteer habitat day on a wildlife
Speaker 1: management area just outside of Boston, and we had almost
Speaker 1: one hundred folks come out to clean up, pick up trash,
Speaker 1: pick up shotgun shells, take all sorts of stuff out
Speaker 1: of there, put up wood, duck boxes, put up bluebird boxes.
Speaker 1: It was it was nothing fancy. We weren't doing anything profound, profound,
Speaker 1: We weren't solving all the world's problems. But there was
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of people out there together in a community,
Speaker 1: hunters and anglers, people who care about wildlife and wild places.
Speaker 1: And they were making a difference that day in a
Speaker 1: small way, but in a tangible way. And I felt
Speaker 1: this like energy when we were talking, you know, with
Speaker 1: in different small groups, people could feel the you know,
Speaker 1: the positive impact of in one small way today putting
Speaker 1: a dent in this thing. And I think that there's
Speaker 1: and I'm curious if you think there's truth this or
Speaker 1: not dug but I think there's there's power in momentum
Speaker 1: and if you can take that little step today and
Speaker 1: and I think it helps form an identity if you
Speaker 1: act in some ways. So so yesterday I picked up
Speaker 1: trash all day with a bunch of folks who care
Speaker 1: about wildlife, and that steeps into my pores. And now
Speaker 1: tomorrow I feel more and more like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: someone who who works for wildlife, who cares about these things.
Speaker 1: And so when I get that email from some conservation
Speaker 1: organizations saying, hey, you know what, we need people to
Speaker 1: call their senators because there's this thing coming down the pipeline, well,
Speaker 1: now you know, hey, I just did this thing last weekend.
Speaker 1: I can do this thing now tomorrow, and then after
Speaker 1: that the next thing comes up, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: two months from now, I'm planning trees or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: I think these things can snowball, and there's momentum that
Speaker 1: builds with every tiny little step, and eventually all of
Speaker 1: that adds up. And I think if more and more
Speaker 1: people start taking these little push the snowball down the
Speaker 1: hill kind of actions, all of a sudden, we've got
Speaker 1: an avalanche and we can tackle this thing. Is that crazy? Yes? No, No,
Speaker 1: of course that's look you are. You're doing a lot
Speaker 1: yourself and at a lot of levels, and I certainly
Speaker 1: thank you for that and on behalf of a lot
Speaker 1: of overlook critters. But um, and you can tell I'm
Speaker 1: really reluctant to offer advice and um, and yet that's
Speaker 1: what people need. And I think you put it. You
Speaker 1: put it splendidly, and you know, I just feel really
Speaker 1: good about that sort of thing. And it was not
Speaker 1: because I feel righteous or or oh boy, am I
Speaker 1: a good citizen here. It's just planting trees is a
Speaker 1: joy in itself, and pulling out weeds is the same way.
Speaker 1: It's weird, but it works for some of us. And
Speaker 1: and if that leads to, you know, meeting other people
Speaker 1: and sharing ideas and seeing what you have in common
Speaker 1: and then taking some next steps, that's just about perfect.
Speaker 1: I mean I when you ask the recommendations, and you
Speaker 1: talked about Teddy Roosevelt, and I'd say, well, I did
Speaker 1: forget to recommend that somebody out there just needs to
Speaker 1: run for president and turn into the next Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of your listeners, Come on, guys, Gallos, Yes, got
Speaker 1: to step up. We need we do need that. Well, Doug,
Speaker 1: this is uh, this has been just the conversation I've
Speaker 1: been needing and been wanting to have so so thank
Speaker 1: you for for chatting with me about all of this. Um,
Speaker 1: I would recommend anyone listening to pick up your book
Speaker 1: four Fifths at Grizzly. It's it's great. It takes everything
Speaker 1: we talked about here today and expands on it in
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways, and it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful book, amazing photos. You know. I couldn't recommend it enough.
Speaker 1: But what I would like you to do, if you
Speaker 1: don't mind, is is there any other one of your
Speaker 1: books if you had to recommend one other of your
Speaker 1: many many publications and things out there that you think
Speaker 1: our audience might be interested in, or that you're particularly
Speaker 1: proud of. That maybe is Collecting Dust in the Archives
Speaker 1: that you published long ago since you've been you've been
Speaker 1: at this a while. Is there any other piece of
Speaker 1: work that you'd like to send folks to check out
Speaker 1: other than this one that I will shout from the
Speaker 1: mountaintops for you. Well, yeah, yeah, I'm strictly unbiased here. No,
Speaker 1: I would recommend The Wolverine Way, which was published by
Speaker 1: Patagonia before Four Fifths, so Grizzly. And the reason I'm
Speaker 1: bringing that out is I just in the course of
Speaker 1: learning about wolverines and again starting almost in a scrack.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew much about them at all, and the work
Speaker 1: we did and I did just as a volunhappy volunteer
Speaker 1: stand for weeks at a time out and remote outposts
Speaker 1: and catching wolverines and get radios on. They move like
Speaker 1: nobody else stays, social systems all different. It was just
Speaker 1: a every day brought new discoveries and that is a
Speaker 1: reward unto itself, and and it also brings up the
Speaker 1: fact that, look, I love to hunt. I love to
Speaker 1: you know, stock animals, get close enough to watch them,
Speaker 1: and you know, I just I'm not so much into
Speaker 1: taking something home with me. Um. But man, when I'm
Speaker 1: doing that, all my senses are firing. I'm I'm the
Speaker 1: human of the day. But I'm also the human that arose,
Speaker 1: you know, from our ancestors, with all my nerves and
Speaker 1: hormones and senses going, and you know, like they're like
Speaker 1: they're built to be. And I know that's a good
Speaker 1: White guys like hunting and I like hunting too, just
Speaker 1: to you know, I come out in a different way.
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to say I totally get it,
Speaker 1: but I certainly get that, and I got it with
Speaker 1: tracking wolverines and already about them. And you know, on
Speaker 1: a typical day, I'd be following their tracks past big
Speaker 1: horned sheep and mountain goats and moose and crossing lion tracks,
Speaker 1: wolf tracks, kyoats that follow the wolverines to scavenge for carcasses.
Speaker 1: They leave snowshoe hairs at the kyo veered off on
Speaker 1: to go hunt. You know, it's just brought the whole
Speaker 1: community fully to life, and and I think it gets
Speaker 1: at the dedication of some of the researchers out there,
Speaker 1: but mostly at the joy of learning about new species
Speaker 1: and how they live. And it's a good adventure story too,
Speaker 1: a lot of mountaineering and pretty tough animal to work
Speaker 1: with and pretty pretty fierce, but not nothing like it
Speaker 1: for reputation for you know, being a danger to people
Speaker 1: in the woods. But but wow, um uh. Anyway, that
Speaker 1: would be the one um perfect because it's the closest
Speaker 1: closest I've written to a hunting book that does that
Speaker 1: does sound like a good read. That's that's when I
Speaker 1: haven't read yet, so it's it'll be on my list.
Speaker 1: The only thing I have against wolverines is that I
Speaker 1: went to Michigan State University and our arch rivals are
Speaker 1: the University of Michigan Wolverines. So I will try not
Speaker 1: to hold that against your book, and uh, and I'll
Speaker 1: give it a read. I appreciate that, and um, well,
Speaker 1: but the other thing I wanted This isn't um shooting
Speaker 1: my own horn here. I just it's just that that's
Speaker 1: why I do what I do. I didn't plan at first.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to go out and learn about wolverines
Speaker 1: or I like hanging out with the guys. They're all
Speaker 1: good woodsmen and you know, skiers and and uh, comfortable
Speaker 1: out in the remote areas. But part way through I realized, God,
Speaker 1: we don't. We just need to know so much more
Speaker 1: about them. We need to manage them differently. And and
Speaker 1: it's made a difference the age. The wildlife management agencies
Speaker 1: are paying much more attention now the wolverine than they
Speaker 1: did in the past, and the wolverines seem to be
Speaker 1: doing a bit better, and they're expanding their range over
Speaker 1: in Washington State down into Oregon all looks like. So
Speaker 1: that is really rewarding. That comes back to, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's picking up trash or if you're a writer
Speaker 1: like me. You you point and wave and try to
Speaker 1: spur smarter people or more capable of people to take
Speaker 1: the next step. So anyway, thanks for asking that, and
Speaker 1: thanks for gosh, thanks for all the time. This has
Speaker 1: been great. I really enjoyed it me too, Doug. I hope,
Speaker 1: I hope we can chat again soon, and I know
Speaker 1: that our listeners will be looking forward to the next
Speaker 1: book from you whenever that comes down line too, so
Speaker 1: we'll be waiting on pins and needles. Get to work, Doug,
Speaker 1: thanks much, Thanks for another job. Okay, I'll get on it.
Speaker 1: Thanks again, and that is a rap. Thank you for
Speaker 1: tuning in. I can't recommend Doug's book enough. Pick up
Speaker 1: four Fifths a Grizzly. I highly highly recommend it, and
Speaker 1: it sounds like the Wolverine Way is is certainly worth
Speaker 1: our time too. And all that said, tune back in
Speaker 1: next week. We're diving in deep to a specific piece
Speaker 1: of conservation legislation that can make a big difference this
Speaker 1: year and next year and in the future, and we
Speaker 1: can help make that come to fruition. So until then,
Speaker 1: thanks for being here. Keep on doing good work out
Speaker 1: there for wild places and wildlife and until next time,
Speaker 1: stay wired to hunt.