Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. Like co host Joe, is
Speaker 1: still out on parental leave, so today I'd like to
Speaker 1: present a brand new interview episode. Today's guest is Dr
Speaker 1: Joel Berger. He's a senior scientist for the Wildlife Conservation
Speaker 1: Society as well as a professor at Colorado State University.
Speaker 1: He has decades of experience exploring biological diversity around the
Speaker 1: world and his author of several books, including Extreme Conservation,
Speaker 1: Life at the Edges of the World from Most recently,
Speaker 1: he was an author on the paper Species Conflict at
Speaker 1: Earth's Edges Contests, Climate and Coveted Resources, published last month
Speaker 1: in the journal Frontiers and Ecology and Evolution. So we'll
Speaker 1: be discussing that's study its findings, as well as some
Speaker 1: broader issues in bio diversity and conservation. So without further ado,
Speaker 1: let's jump right in. Hi, Joel, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Rob great to be here, Thanks for inviting me in.
Speaker 1: You bet so. For listeners who are not familiar with
Speaker 1: you or your work, how did you initially become interested
Speaker 1: in conservation biology and where has your work taken you
Speaker 1: over the decades. So I grew up in l A.
Speaker 1: And that would not be Louisiana, was the l A
Speaker 1: on the west coast, and a lot of people, a
Speaker 1: lot of chaos, and I found some respite out in
Speaker 1: the deserts, in the mountains hundred miles two hundred miles out.
Speaker 1: So gradually, growing up, I spent more time away from people, um,
Speaker 1: and that always felt somewhat invigorating. UM. And since then
Speaker 1: I've spent um what I like to call different edges
Speaker 1: of the planet. And so that would be the highest
Speaker 1: latitudes where and hit sea up in the Arctic, the
Speaker 1: lowest of latitudes, which is down in the Patagonia ice
Speaker 1: fields where we drop almost to the well basically to Antarctic.
Speaker 1: But I'm on land in South America. And then what's
Speaker 1: called the third pole south north south. And then what's
Speaker 1: referred to as the third pole would be the mountains
Speaker 1: of Central Asia which rise to twenty nine thousand some feet.
Speaker 1: So why are extreme environment so crucial to these studies,
Speaker 1: especially so far as the impact of climate change is concerned.
Speaker 1: So we know that Earth's atmosphere is warming, and certainly
Speaker 1: at the edges of the planet is warming anywhere from
Speaker 1: two to five times faster than it is at the
Speaker 1: mid section. And so when we think across the realm
Speaker 1: of environments, if we want to gain some insights into
Speaker 1: what's going on most rapidly, it is these extreme edge environments.
Speaker 1: And I tend to focus on the unsunk species mostly
Speaker 1: that occur in these places. Not species like elephants or rhinos,
Speaker 1: or lions or tigers or even whales, but species that
Speaker 1: don't have much advocacy for them. Now, I know that
Speaker 1: the list of organisms that you've you've studied over the
Speaker 1: years is pretty pretty long. What are some examples of
Speaker 1: some of these these creatures? So some of the ones
Speaker 1: that might be slightly better known, So I go from
Speaker 1: slightly better known to those that are lesser known. Um
Speaker 1: So muskoks would be one, and they're um up in
Speaker 1: the Arctic, and they're they used to roam with wooly mammoth.
Speaker 1: Wooly mammoths didn't survive. Muskoks have long hair that drape
Speaker 1: to essentially to their feet and helps to sustain them
Speaker 1: throughout these long winters. So muskoks would be one from
Speaker 1: the very north um over in the Himalayan realm. You
Speaker 1: have a species called talking which are Bhutan's national mammal.
Speaker 1: They go up to seventeen thousand feet. They have the
Speaker 1: the remarkable distinction of being preyed on by tigers at
Speaker 1: low elevation at three or four thousand feet, and then
Speaker 1: up high snow leopards can take some of their young
Speaker 1: and attacks, so they have the duality of a challenge
Speaker 1: tigers and snow leopards. Um If we drop down into
Speaker 1: the edges of the far southern tips of Chile and Argentina,
Speaker 1: the Chilean national mammal are called why mole, and it's
Speaker 1: the most endangered large mammal in the Western hemisphere. Large
Speaker 1: and they're a type of a deer, but they have
Speaker 1: a mountain goat nits and so they live in the
Speaker 1: shadows of glaciers, usually cliffs and very rugged terrain. So
Speaker 1: those are some examples. I've also worked with black rhinos
Speaker 1: and the Nama Desert. I've worked with cariboo a little
Speaker 1: bit in the Arctic. I've worked one of my students
Speaker 1: is working with what are called large antler munchacks, which
Speaker 1: is one of the most recently discovered large mammals in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties and the Animal Mountains of Vietnam, and
Speaker 1: so a number of these species don't have much of
Speaker 1: a vocal backing. Another one are called saiga, which occur
Speaker 1: in Mongolia, Kazakhstan and their populations um. The ones in
Speaker 1: Mongolia are listed is an endangered species. I've also worked
Speaker 1: with wild yaks up on the Tibetan Plateau at sixteen
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand feet. So lots of these things are either
Speaker 1: threatened or endangered, but many of them are not known
Speaker 1: to the general public, whether we're talking about the public
Speaker 1: and their host countries or certainly and the North American
Speaker 1: or US public. The saiga is that is that the
Speaker 1: one that has a very unique nose or snout. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's great robbed Yeah. Yeah. Psychos look like part camel,
Speaker 1: part moose, and part antelope. And they're quite fast and speedy,
Speaker 1: and yeah, they've got these amazing probosis um that just
Speaker 1: hang down on wobble. I want to come to the
Speaker 1: study here that I think we're mostly going to be
Speaker 1: talking about here, species conflict that Earth's edges, contest, climate,
Speaker 1: and coveted resources. This was published last month in the
Speaker 1: journal Frontiers and ecology and evolution. Can you introduce this
Speaker 1: to the extreme environment that where this takes place and
Speaker 1: the species observed in the field work. So amongst the
Speaker 1: iconic and not so frequently seen large mammals again in
Speaker 1: western North America are mountain goats, which are not even
Speaker 1: a goat. They're really goat antelope, which are more related
Speaker 1: to the real antelope that we have over in Africa.
Speaker 1: But so those are mountain goats, but they live on
Speaker 1: cliffs and very steep terrain. They have white, long fur
Speaker 1: and are cold adaptive species. Also, the additional or the
Speaker 1: other species in which we were witnessing direct interact since
Speaker 1: between the two were called big horn sheep. Big horn
Speaker 1: sheep are like sheep, big round, thick horns, and the
Speaker 1: males smaller, little pointy horns, and the females. And the
Speaker 1: places where we were working on these stem from Colorado.
Speaker 1: The Colorado Rockies up to about fourteen thousand feet along
Speaker 1: about a fifteen hundred mile gradient that puts us into
Speaker 1: Central Alberta in Canada, areas to the north of bamp
Speaker 1: and Jasper, and those are a little bit lower elevation,
Speaker 1: only at about we'll just say, at a lower elevation
Speaker 1: across the realm of where we were working on these species.
Speaker 1: We focused mostly on the population in Glacier National Park,
Speaker 1: but we also worked at in Alberta, also in Colorado
Speaker 1: areas above tree line is where we were doing our observations,
Speaker 1: and this came about. I was working with another biologist
Speaker 1: named Forest Hayes and another one named Mark Beale. Forest
Speaker 1: is at Colorado State University, giving credit where credit is due.
Speaker 1: Mark Beale's a biologist where the National Park Service in
Speaker 1: Glacier and we were looking for grizzly bears and using
Speaker 1: a spotting scope and looking above tree lined because you
Speaker 1: don't have trees and so it's easier spot animals. And
Speaker 1: we kept seeing these white dots, and we were doing
Speaker 1: our observations from about a mile mile and a half
Speaker 1: away looking at white dots and those were mountain coats.
Speaker 1: And at about the same time in two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: we also saw gray dots and these were big horn
Speaker 1: sheet and one was moving across the mountains from the
Speaker 1: left to the right and the other one moving from
Speaker 1: the right to the left, and it looks like a
Speaker 1: collision path. And then they got to these brown wet
Speaker 1: soil areas, and that was when we thought this is
Speaker 1: going to get interesting. I wonder what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: Both these goats, the mountain goats and the big horn
Speaker 1: sheep are approximately similar in size, so we didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going to happen. And so as these animals
Speaker 1: were moving towards these wet grayst spots, we noted that
Speaker 1: the goats were eating soil and the big horn sheep
Speaker 1: would approach, but if a goat got aggressive, the sheep
Speaker 1: would move off, and so we thought, oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: We did that a little bit that day. Forest Haze
Speaker 1: and I, who were working together, molded over and we
Speaker 1: decided the next day we were going to go back
Speaker 1: up to these high alpine zones and again look and
Speaker 1: we saw more sheet, more goats. And this went on
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks across a couple of different years,
Speaker 1: actually across three different years, and in Glacier National Park.
Speaker 1: It was becoming clear to us, in part because we're
Speaker 1: both scientists and were familiar with the literature and some
Speaker 1: climate change underpinnings, and we knew that these areas had
Speaker 1: been under snow when ice and glaciated not that long ago.
Speaker 1: In fact, Glacier National Park in the last hundred years
Speaker 1: has lost about eight of its glaciers. So this area
Speaker 1: where we were watching sheep and goats, we were speculating
Speaker 1: that these animals were using areas that had been well
Speaker 1: They had to have been under ice and snow because
Speaker 1: glaciers were there and precipitating out were minerals and these
Speaker 1: would be salts, these would be sodium, it would be potassium.
Speaker 1: And the goats and sheep were interacting over priority of access.
Speaker 1: And this was These weren't bloody encounters nature too thread
Speaker 1: and claws tennis And had said over a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. But they were displacements, and they were
Speaker 1: either passive meaning an animal walks toward another and they leave,
Speaker 1: where they were aggressive active in which an animal was
Speaker 1: swinging its head, lowering its horns, or maybe doing some
Speaker 1: rush charges at the other species. And at the end
Speaker 1: of the day we had more than about a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty interactions, about only seven or eight I think
Speaker 1: it was seven in Colorado where we saw them actively
Speaker 1: at the same site at the same time, about a
Speaker 1: hundred or so up in Glacier, and then another almost
Speaker 1: twenty in the Canadian site, and what struck us was
Speaker 1: the consistency. And what I mean by consistency is this
Speaker 1: goats won something like of the interactions, the sheep just
Speaker 1: moved off. They didn't want to deal with it. Goats
Speaker 1: have small, pointy horns. But it may be that the
Speaker 1: goats just don't give good signals. They just escalate real fast,
Speaker 1: and the sheep wanted no part of it. Because the
Speaker 1: big horn sheep. If if my childhood memories of watching
Speaker 1: um nature documentaries are correct, I mean they're they're pretty
Speaker 1: fierce looking when you see them engaging with each other
Speaker 1: in combat. So I imagine it would be easy for
Speaker 1: at least those of us who are not experts in this,
Speaker 1: to assume that they could more than hold their own
Speaker 1: against a mountain goat. The sheep rear up. They have
Speaker 1: these club like horns, I mean almost like big thick hammers,
Speaker 1: you know, the size of one's chest, maybe half the
Speaker 1: size of one's cheffed. Don't want to be exaggerating here,
Speaker 1: but they rear up and then they charged, sometimes reaching
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty miles an hour, and they slam into
Speaker 1: each other's horns, and then they reverberate and so we
Speaker 1: were expecting, you know, given that they're about the same size, well,
Speaker 1: if everything else is equal, about half the interactions, we
Speaker 1: expect the sheep to win, half the goats to win.
Speaker 1: People who know something about domestic goats, they just laughed
Speaker 1: at us and said, what's wrong with you? Guys? We
Speaker 1: knew that. And I'm thinking to myself and actually saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I've spent three decades looking at these animals
Speaker 1: and these extreme environments, including sheep and goats, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know it. And maybe scientists are not always the
Speaker 1: prescient ones in this, but our data were very very
Speaker 1: clear because lots of times there's nuanced, lots of times
Speaker 1: there's some counterintuitive results, and we didn't expect this to
Speaker 1: happen so consistently, and it did across the three sites. Now,
Speaker 1: first of all, are are both the big horn sheep
Speaker 1: in the mountain goats in these scenarios and these encounters?
Speaker 1: Are they both native to the regions or or or
Speaker 1: is there an invasive layer to this? Yeah? Real good question,
Speaker 1: rob Um. So big horns are native from essentially parts
Speaker 1: of north central Canada or central British Columbia all the
Speaker 1: way down into the deserts of Mexico. So they have
Speaker 1: a very catholic range, meaning that a wide range of
Speaker 1: tolerance that they can occur in deserts, they can occur
Speaker 1: in mountains, they can occur in alpine zones. Mountain coats,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, are elusively a cold adapted species,
Speaker 1: and so when Lewis and Clark first arrived here, we'll
Speaker 1: put it this way, their native ranges would have been
Speaker 1: from central Idaho, Montana, Washington all the way up into
Speaker 1: Alaska and the Yukon in a small part of the
Speaker 1: Northwest territories. So cold adapted they occur in some of
Speaker 1: the coastal ranges of Washington UM and certainly in Alaska UM.
Speaker 1: But since different Fish and Game agency states in the
Speaker 1: US have introduced goats into places like Oregon, where it
Speaker 1: maybe it's a little controversial because there's some arguments that
Speaker 1: they were once native there, But we know that they've
Speaker 1: been introduced into Utah, introduced into Nevada, introduced into South Dakota,
Speaker 1: and introduced into Colorado and Wyoming. And that's where some
Speaker 1: of this gets interesting, because different parks manage exotic species differently.
Speaker 1: The Tetons, for instance, Institute of the program where they
Speaker 1: would remove the shape of the goats which are introduced
Speaker 1: or an exotic species in the Tetons, and so they
Speaker 1: were removed by harvest by shooting in the Yellowstone area.
Speaker 1: Goats are not abundant in Yellowstone Park, but they're more
Speaker 1: abundant in the Yellowstone ecosystem, and the Park Service Yellowstone
Speaker 1: in particular has a different strategy than the Tetons, and
Speaker 1: it's more lazy, fair, just letting things go until they
Speaker 1: perhaps know more about it. Olympic National Park over in
Speaker 1: western Washington, goats were introduced there in the twenties and
Speaker 1: they've been removed mostly by helicopter removal, so not lethal means,
Speaker 1: but non lethal means. Now, what are the what were
Speaker 1: the reasons for introducing the mountain goats to these areas.
Speaker 1: Goats were introduced by fish and Game departments for harvest,
Speaker 1: so like in South with Dakota in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: they were introduced into the Black Hills. I don't remember
Speaker 1: the years at which they were introduced into Nevada. They
Speaker 1: were introduced into Colorado in the late forties. UM today
Speaker 1: with a focus also on bio diversity in addition to
Speaker 1: big game, there would probably be more studies done about
Speaker 1: potential impacts of introducing these large mammals. For instance, moose
Speaker 1: have been introduced into Colorado in the early in mid seventies,
Speaker 1: it may have been the late seventies. And moose, of
Speaker 1: course are riperian dependent species, and so they affect willows,
Speaker 1: they affect cotton woods, and they affect neotropical migrant birds.
Speaker 1: But when these initial introductions occurred, both for mountain goats,
Speaker 1: for moose and some other species, there was far less
Speaker 1: attention on biological diversity and more is providing a resource
Speaker 1: for people, either for a trophy, animal management, for bringing
Speaker 1: some trophies home, or for meat meat on the table.
Speaker 1: So in this scenario again we have we have mountain goats,
Speaker 1: big horn sheep and the mountain goats are essentially out
Speaker 1: competing for the same resource. And you mentioned that the
Speaker 1: goat farmers and people familiar with with with goats lived
Speaker 1: with goats were not surprised that the goats were winning
Speaker 1: out here, and and a certain certainly brings to mind
Speaker 1: examples of invasive or fairal domestic goats taking over various
Speaker 1: areas and thinking specifically of like the Galapagos islands. Is it?
Speaker 1: What is it do you think about? Or what is
Speaker 1: known about like the the sort of nature of the goat,
Speaker 1: Like what is it about the goats? Um Either it's
Speaker 1: morphology or it's like tenacity, like what why does it?
Speaker 1: Why does it win out? Why does it seem to
Speaker 1: win out in these instances? Provocative question um so. One
Speaker 1: idea goes as following um so, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: focus on again big horn sheep and mountain coats. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about native species and not stepping aside because maybe
Speaker 1: we'll return to feral species or so. Big horn sheep
Speaker 1: have an array of ways at which they communicate, and
Speaker 1: they're very visual, so they have a very diverse behavioral
Speaker 1: repertoire as to how they interact. Um. Goats are part
Speaker 1: of a more primitive lineage and their ancestral origins are
Speaker 1: over into Central Asia as our sheep origins, and then
Speaker 1: further over into the Mediterranean amidiest But the goat lineage
Speaker 1: and the mountain goat lineage in particular, the species that
Speaker 1: are ancestral, they don't have a lot of behavioral diversity.
Speaker 1: They don't have a lot of signals um and so
Speaker 1: they escalate very fast, and the escalations are with their
Speaker 1: horns either a thrust headlow rush, and I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: and people haven't looked at this, and so this is
Speaker 1: either wild hypothesis telling to fit with stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind, or it's um maybe some speculate, well, it
Speaker 1: is some speculations on my part, but without the potential
Speaker 1: for signaling and recognizing other signals. What we see is
Speaker 1: that the goats escalate fast, the sheep want no part
Speaker 1: of it. And I want to point out that these
Speaker 1: are for what we refer to as a biotic resources,
Speaker 1: those not of a biological nature. So when we talk
Speaker 1: about the competition and the behavioral or social interactions between
Speaker 1: bighorn sheep and between with mountain goats, what we see
Speaker 1: is that the species are clumped around those dirt patches
Speaker 1: that I talked about the moist soil, and this is
Speaker 1: again referred to as a mineral lick, and these are
Speaker 1: very patchy and distributions, sometimes they may be ten or
Speaker 1: more miles apart. So the animals go to great length
Speaker 1: to access these, and the goats just having a more
Speaker 1: aggressive nature, they don't mess around, and the sheep have
Speaker 1: somehow figured that out and they back off. So I
Speaker 1: know this. This probably brings to mind salt licks and
Speaker 1: and so forth with some of our our listeners, but
Speaker 1: for many others we might might be a surprise to
Speaker 1: hear about this conflict over things that are are not food,
Speaker 1: that are not a biological resource. So, how how rare
Speaker 1: is this in general a biotic resources being feuded over
Speaker 1: by organisms? However rare is it in human observation? And
Speaker 1: how rare do we think this sort of thing is
Speaker 1: in the wild? So um our paper which you did
Speaker 1: refer to, and thanks for referring to that, we focused
Speaker 1: on for a biotic resources, which will describe in a moment.
Speaker 1: Actually i'll describe them now. We focused on shade because
Speaker 1: if one's ever watched a dog or a cat, or
Speaker 1: a horse or a cow or a domestic goat, it's
Speaker 1: getting warm, the earth is warming up. Shades an important
Speaker 1: way to try to adjust one's thermal abilities to regulate
Speaker 1: um So shade was one snow patches, which are disappearing
Speaker 1: at a more rapid rate at high elevation. Is the
Speaker 1: second one mineral licks or a third one. And at
Speaker 1: the outset when I had mentioned we were working at
Speaker 1: the extreme edges of the planet you think about deserts.
Speaker 1: So the fourth a biotic resource our water holes springs
Speaker 1: in the desert, which of course are important because many
Speaker 1: species need water, not all. So are four a biotic resources.
Speaker 1: We selected because they're discreet and we could measure them.
Speaker 1: When is shade available? Are there no shade trees? If
Speaker 1: there are shade trees, can we observe interactions between different
Speaker 1: species for access in shade? Do larger species when same
Speaker 1: for water in the deserts? You know, we have I
Speaker 1: mentioned and you mentioned rob domestic goats getting loose, becoming feral,
Speaker 1: and we have certainly in the American West thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of feral horses and ferreal burrows, and there are
Speaker 1: feral pigs, and so our interest was trying to understand
Speaker 1: the nature of interactions for these very limited resources, what
Speaker 1: we're calling coveted resources, so mineral licks at high elevation,
Speaker 1: UH water and deserts shade. We were able to observe
Speaker 1: a few interactions, and those were mostly over the Kalahari
Speaker 1: Desert in the Nama Desert where rhinos displaced some antelopes.
Speaker 1: But we only saw that those interactions very few times.
Speaker 1: You had asked earlier, how rare is this doing these
Speaker 1: kind of observations. I think we got lucky and at
Speaker 1: the outside I said, we were looking for grizzly bears,
Speaker 1: and so there was a lot of serendipity to what
Speaker 1: we are doing. But science has a let of serendipity,
Speaker 1: just like all of us as humans. It's like which
Speaker 1: is the path we pick their serendipity. Going back though,
Speaker 1: to minerals at high elevation and the conflicts that we
Speaker 1: were watching between sheep and goats at some level, as
Speaker 1: the climate is changing and warming, we see parts of
Speaker 1: the Arctic where surface the surface structures are being exposed
Speaker 1: now because we no longer have ice and perma frost,
Speaker 1: and so the same kind of patterns that we're watching
Speaker 1: for sheep and goats are not that different perhaps than
Speaker 1: what we're seeing with the eight countries that have access
Speaker 1: to the Arctic Ocean and Arctic resources. And we know
Speaker 1: Russia has over the last ten years either reconstituted or
Speaker 1: built new military basis in places where that they didn't
Speaker 1: exist in the past, or fortified those. China now has
Speaker 1: a cruiser ice breaker that they use in the Arctic,
Speaker 1: even though they're not an arctic country, and so thinking
Speaker 1: about mineral resources and access and conflict. UM, maybe there
Speaker 1: are some lessons that can be learned from sheep and goats. However,
Speaker 1: the good thing about the sheep and goats is that
Speaker 1: they're not killing each other over the stuff. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I want to think forward ahead of the next
Speaker 1: fifty years what we might be doing with those resources
Speaker 1: as humans. So do you think that this, uh, this
Speaker 1: this scenario, this conflict over the resources, like we can
Speaker 1: sort of we can hold it up kind of a
Speaker 1: mirror to human activities and and how we fit into
Speaker 1: the into the natural world and it's resources as well.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to answer at two levels. I'm going
Speaker 1: to point out first and foremost that our observations were
Speaker 1: over different species competing for a limited resource, and so
Speaker 1: that is referred to as inter specific or differences between
Speaker 1: species competing for the um drawing in the analogy for humans,
Speaker 1: we have certainly different geographies as humans. We live all
Speaker 1: over the world, we have different cultures, we have different
Speaker 1: belief systems, but we all have the same fundamental needs.
Speaker 1: It's usually security, it's food, it's mates, it's shelter, and
Speaker 1: so as we continue moving beyond the eight billion that
Speaker 1: we're at now, it's inevitable that we're going to end
Speaker 1: up competing at some level for some of the same resources.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, even though I'm looking now within species
Speaker 1: and not between the same patterns, the same competitive interactions
Speaker 1: at one level, whether it be combat, whether it be bluff,
Speaker 1: whether it be escalation or de escalation, we see the
Speaker 1: same things within species of other non humans, or we
Speaker 1: also see this between species. Fascinating. Yeah, I know that
Speaker 1: some of the I saw some of the coverage that
Speaker 1: came out about this study was even referencing mad Max,
Speaker 1: saying that this is like it's um, it's sheep and goats,
Speaker 1: but but mad Max. Uh, there's some pretty cool analogies
Speaker 1: in this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. People have had some fun
Speaker 1: with it, and um, I mean, we have enough challenges
Speaker 1: in the world having some fun, even though I believe
Speaker 1: I'm a serious scientist, actually I know I'm a serious scientists.
Speaker 1: But being able to laugh at oneself, being able to
Speaker 1: you know, try to appreciate the humor or the similarities
Speaker 1: or the differences, I think it's a good way to go.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, and if it draws somebody into to look
Speaker 1: at a study that someone who might not otherwise you know,
Speaker 1: be interested in it, than all the better. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: thinking about shade. If I can go a little bit further, so,
Speaker 1: there have been studies done in Africa of of both primates,
Speaker 1: some chimpanzee, certainly elephants using shades um to either access
Speaker 1: minerals or sometimes for cooling. And as are as I know,
Speaker 1: and I could be wrong, I'm wrong all the time,
Speaker 1: but as far as I know, UM, we don't know
Speaker 1: if in fact shade use in these caves results in
Speaker 1: one species being displaced by another. Um, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: setting up some camera traps and people are now starting
Speaker 1: to do that, we may have some better, better insights
Speaker 1: into those kind of interactions, but for the time being,
Speaker 1: you know, for my colleagues Mark and Forest Hayes and
Speaker 1: I uh, it's been observational, even though we use camera
Speaker 1: traps and other things that we do. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: this is this is so fascinating and the whole all
Speaker 1: the details to about like communication between the sheep, communication
Speaker 1: between the goats, and then this kind of communication breakdown
Speaker 1: and there and then escalation and by the goats because
Speaker 1: they are these are not species that are going to
Speaker 1: normally be in any kind of robust communication with each other. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of think about it in the
Speaker 1: way that UM maybe some of your listeners will be
Speaker 1: able to think about how cats and dogs respond to
Speaker 1: each other. And sometimes, you know, dogs will have a
Speaker 1: different I mean, even within breeds of dogs, there are
Speaker 1: different kinds of communication systems, and so maybe a cat's
Speaker 1: not going to be reading a dog and the dog
Speaker 1: has a certain intent or vice versa. Sometimes the signals
Speaker 1: are pretty clear. Sometimes they're not for us with the
Speaker 1: sheep and the goats, maybe not as clear than now.
Speaker 1: In your long career documenting different organisms and different environments
Speaker 1: around the world, and we we we listed some of
Speaker 1: them earlier. What sort of perspective on the threats facing
Speaker 1: the natural world have you been afforded? Like? What? You know? What? What? What?
Speaker 1: What kind of vantage point has it given you? So
Speaker 1: I've worked both in UM places that are very remote
Speaker 1: and then places that are less remote. And in the
Speaker 1: less remote places, the challenges are mostly how we don't
Speaker 1: destroy habitats or how we maintain habitats, trying to understand
Speaker 1: the extent to which restoring species if they've been lost
Speaker 1: can be a good idea, but the word conservation means people,
Speaker 1: and it means attitudes, and so there's a lot that
Speaker 1: has to go on involving people and our ability to
Speaker 1: be tolerant or to think that we're not the only
Speaker 1: species on the planet that may be deserving opportunities to live.
Speaker 1: And then in the remote areas, the challenges are very
Speaker 1: different their climate challenges. As we watch the edges of
Speaker 1: the planet come come under a lot of greater variants
Speaker 1: with storms, well, just like we see in Florida or
Speaker 1: the East Coast or the West coast, we're certainly seeing
Speaker 1: that at the edges of the raw edges at the
Speaker 1: planet as well. We have gas, we have mining, we
Speaker 1: have mineral exploitation. A lot of that makes some sense, um,
Speaker 1: but the question really comes down to what do we
Speaker 1: want the future to look like? What do we want
Speaker 1: ten years from now? Can we project out twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty years? And if we can, how do we make
Speaker 1: that happen? Who has to get on board? So, thinking
Speaker 1: also about some of the challenges and remote areas and
Speaker 1: certainly areas beyond the US, one of the remarkable problems
Speaker 1: that people don't see very much is that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of feral animals out there, and I think
Speaker 1: about across the globe, we have something like seven hundred
Speaker 1: million dogs. And I think about dogs free roaming in
Speaker 1: places like the Tibetan Plateau. I think about dogs free
Speaker 1: roaming in the Gobi Desert and impacts on endangered species.
Speaker 1: I had mentioned waymole, which is the most endangered large
Speaker 1: mammal in the western Atmisphere down at the tips of
Speaker 1: Argentina and Chile in the Andes. Free Roman dogs, feral dogs,
Speaker 1: not native causing lots and lots of issues and problems.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of cultural differences based on
Speaker 1: what societies were in and how we view things. And
Speaker 1: so some countries choose a lassa fair approach and won't
Speaker 1: touch it, and other countries will be pretty aggressive and say,
Speaker 1: let's give some of these native species a chance because
Speaker 1: they didn't evolve with dogs of coursing predator, uh of
Speaker 1: coursing feral predator. So so, lots of issues out there
Speaker 1: in terms of other kinds of challenges that are biological
Speaker 1: challenges that still fall back in the conservation realm. But
Speaker 1: would you say that we have we have better tools
Speaker 1: at our disposal now to aid in these conservation efforts.
Speaker 1: Is it more about public will or or governmental will?
Speaker 1: I think when we consider, like the three major challenges
Speaker 1: in the realm of natural resource, at least I look
Speaker 1: at three. Climate change, of course is a huge one.
Speaker 1: A second one I will call biodiversity crisis, because that
Speaker 1: goes to land degradation, it goes to removing chunks of
Speaker 1: the planet, it goes to our plastic issues. But so
Speaker 1: I look at climate change is one, I look at
Speaker 1: bio diversity, and then I look at will say, one health,
Speaker 1: one world, one health with disease. We think about COVID,
Speaker 1: we think about ebola, We think about these other challenges
Speaker 1: that emanate from wild species or could from wild species.
Speaker 1: But it's how we're treating the planet. And so your
Speaker 1: question is do we have new tools? We certainly have
Speaker 1: much greater recognition of of the issues. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: as we all know as citizens of the planet, the
Speaker 1: challenges are how are we going to solve these? And
Speaker 1: you know, where are we making progress? And we are
Speaker 1: making progress and in certain places, so where we're making
Speaker 1: some progress is stunning. And I wouldn't have thought of
Speaker 1: this about twenty years ago. But we're rewild. In Europe.
Speaker 1: We've got brown bears coming back into places. We've got
Speaker 1: links that are colonizing and being put back into places.
Speaker 1: We've got wolves that are into Germany. We've got an
Speaker 1: area the size of California that maybe has a couple
Speaker 1: of packs of wolves. I'm not sure Italy has over
Speaker 1: thirty five hundred wolves with its sixty million people. UM,
Speaker 1: so we can look into Europe. In this country, blackfooted
Speaker 1: ferrets were extinct in the wild. We've now got blackfooted
Speaker 1: ferrets in a number of Western states and as well
Speaker 1: as in Canada, as well as in Mexico. Contours were
Speaker 1: extinct in the wild. We've now got condoors in northern
Speaker 1: California and southern California. We've got condoors in Mexico, contours
Speaker 1: in Utah, condors in Arizona. UM, we've got although wolves
Speaker 1: are certainly polarized. If you go back to the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the only wolves that we had were in the northern
Speaker 1: Northern Woods. Now we've got wolves in many of the
Speaker 1: Western states. Grizzly bears are expanding in Wyoming, expanding in Montana,
Speaker 1: expanding in Idaho, in Washington, and so you know, we
Speaker 1: can we can go with birds, we can, you know,
Speaker 1: pick a wide array of different species, and we're looking
Speaker 1: at lots of successes and that's because the people demand it.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the nice things that we see.
Speaker 1: And for much of this it's not even a partisan issue.
Speaker 1: We've seen successes because irrespective of political standing, people want
Speaker 1: bio diversity, they want healthy ecosystems, they want wildlife. Now
Speaker 1: you're a There are several books that have come out
Speaker 1: over the years, the most recent of which is Extreme Conservation,
Speaker 1: Life at the Edges of the World. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about this book? Sure? Um, So
Speaker 1: Extreme Conservation hits extreme environments and the species that lived there,
Speaker 1: which must subsist and so they have to have special adaptations.
Speaker 1: So this book works through thirty three different expeditions that
Speaker 1: I did to different parts of the world, and so
Speaker 1: not just one or two, but also working with local people,
Speaker 1: learning from local people, listening to local people. And so,
Speaker 1: for instance, we once worked with this convicted felon who
Speaker 1: is a rhino poacher and his sentence was three years
Speaker 1: on a conservation project, and so we learned from him
Speaker 1: and subsequently we brought him to the US to learn
Speaker 1: from US, and he exported and he's now back in
Speaker 1: Namibia and he's leading an NGO non government organization. We
Speaker 1: worked with a fellow named Freddie Goodhope Jr. He had
Speaker 1: a lot of fun with me. He would say, Joel,
Speaker 1: my ancestors and I have been here for ten thousand years.
Speaker 1: You're a newcomer, but we'll keep you warm and make
Speaker 1: sure or you're safe up here in the Arctic. And
Speaker 1: so I weave through dealing with the UH the people
Speaker 1: who I've learned from and how they have perceived in
Speaker 1: their injustices that have come their way and their successes,
Speaker 1: but then also the challenges that we've faced as conservation
Speaker 1: biologists in the magnificent work that's being done in other places.
Speaker 1: I spent some time on a Russian island called Wrangel Island,
Speaker 1: where I was arrested by Russian security forces. But the
Speaker 1: Russian scientists I worked with didn't want me arrested. They
Speaker 1: wanted to work with me in the field. We had
Speaker 1: US government and Russian money to look at science, to
Speaker 1: look at climate change and how to do conservation. And
Speaker 1: so just like in this country and elsewhere, people are
Speaker 1: people in my book tries to deal through the eyes
Speaker 1: of animals, but then through some of the learning that
Speaker 1: I've done and the challenges of what it takes to
Speaker 1: have cold feet on the ground working in some of
Speaker 1: these places that can be quite brew at all excellent.
Speaker 1: So Joe, for our our listeners out there, if they
Speaker 1: want to follow you, if they want to learn more
Speaker 1: about you and your work, where can they go online?
Speaker 1: They could go to my website And so it's just
Speaker 1: all the same, um lowercase Joel Burger Conservation dot com.
Speaker 1: No spaces Joel Burger Conservation dot com. No spaces and
Speaker 1: actually no spaces just means no spaces. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: I greatly appreciate you taking time out of your day
Speaker 1: to chat with me here today. This is this is
Speaker 1: all fascinating, uh and I know our listeners will greatly
Speaker 1: enjoy this. Rob Thanks and stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: What a great show you have. Thank you. Thanks again
Speaker 1: to Dr Joel Burger for taking time out of his
Speaker 1: day to chat with us again. The study is Species
Speaker 1: Conflict at Earth's Edges, Contests, climate and coveted resources. The
Speaker 1: book is Extreme Conservation, Life at the Edges of the World.
Speaker 1: And you and check out his website at Joel Burger
Speaker 1: Conservation dot com. That's j O E L B E
Speaker 1: R G E R Conservation dot com. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Just a
Speaker 1: reminder that our core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 1: On Monday's we do listener Mail, on Wednesday's we do
Speaker 1: a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and on
Speaker 1: Friday's we do Weird How Cinema. That's our time to
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird film. Obviously, we'd love to hear from everyone out
Speaker 1: there about this episode, past episodes, or future episodes. Uh
Speaker 1: so feel free to get in touch with us. Thanks
Speaker 1: as always to Seth Nicholas Johnson for producing the show,
Speaker 1: and if you do want to reach out, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact and Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio
Speaker 1: because at the heart Rate, U app, Apple podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows