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Speaker 1: From Mediator's World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is

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Speaker 1: Kel's we can review with Ryan kel Kell and now

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Speaker 1: Here's kel. Homo erectus left a hand axe carved from

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Speaker 1: a hippo bone in a one point four million year

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Speaker 1: old layer of mud. This was recently excavated in Ethiopia

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Speaker 1: by Tohoku University. A hand axe is a common tool

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Speaker 1: that required minimal shaping but aided in a variety of

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Speaker 1: tasks associated with what we would call dressing and butchering game.

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Speaker 1: Most hand axes are about the size of your hand,

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Speaker 1: no surprise there. One edge is for cutting and one

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Speaker 1: edge is for holdinger holding against the back of your palm.

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Speaker 1: The cutting edge has alternating flakes taken out of it

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Speaker 1: that leave a sharp edge, and they're made from stone.

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Speaker 1: So this one made from bone is a special find.

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Speaker 1: In fact, this is only the second bone hand axe

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Speaker 1: ever found. Of course, this find leads archaeologists to the

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Speaker 1: fun question of why why make a tool out of

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Speaker 1: a hippo bone when a more durable stone alternative was

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Speaker 1: so widely available One point four million years ago, a

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Speaker 1: hand axe maker decided to produce an alternative to that

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Speaker 1: common household item, the stone hand axe. This particular Homo

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Speaker 1: erectus could have been an innovator, could have thought bone

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Speaker 1: was more pretty, could have been the first ron Pope

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Speaker 1: Peel for all we know, tired of dull stone hand axes,

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Speaker 1: the hippo bone, nomadic slices through scavenged or freshly killed

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Speaker 1: meats as easily as you know, I mean, you get it, guarantee.

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Speaker 1: For just I bring the us up because if you

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Speaker 1: look at the wide, wide, wide world and variety of

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Speaker 1: butchering tools and implements in the world today, the shape, sizes,

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Speaker 1: variations and material options, you know, it's just fun to

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Speaker 1: think that people commonheads have been thinking of different ways

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Speaker 1: of doing this or that, maybe for a better product,

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Speaker 1: or maybe just to be different for over one point

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Speaker 1: four million years. Sometimes necessity is the mother of invention,

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Speaker 1: and sometimes folks just want to be different. This week

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Speaker 1: we've got rabbits, condors, fish, ethics, elk, and so much more.

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Speaker 1: But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. I

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Speaker 1: am recording this episode from Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, where we

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Speaker 1: are currently working on a brand new season of doss

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Speaker 1: Boat or in this case, dose Boat. If you've not

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Speaker 1: seen the original season. It is our YouTube based fishing

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Speaker 1: sea areas, so check it out. The main thread is

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Speaker 1: taking an old boat and dressing it up as we

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Speaker 1: moved from fishery to fishery, making modifications and learning about

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Speaker 1: new species, tactics, techniques and issues. Here in Detroit Lakes

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Speaker 1: we stopped at Lakeside True Value to get geared up.

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Speaker 1: The folks at Lakeside helped us out with a bunch

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Speaker 1: of odds and ends, including letting us rip the top

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Speaker 1: off an old cabinet, taking an old Lakeside a rug

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Speaker 1: that Miles Noulty and I used to turn into a

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Speaker 1: casting deck on the new boat. This customer service and

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Speaker 1: general hospitality is to be expected as Lakeside True Value

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Speaker 1: is an official dealer of steel power equipment. I even

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Speaker 1: noticed that they have an m s A one forty

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Speaker 1: battery powered saw on their rental fleet in case you

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Speaker 1: want to try out a powerful, clean, lightweight, battery powered saw.

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Speaker 1: The topic we're checking out are fishing for is the

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Speaker 1: big mouth buffalo, which, if you recall from a much

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Speaker 1: earlier episode, is an indigenous and large sucker. The big

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Speaker 1: mouth buffalo is often confused with the common carp or

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Speaker 1: another waterways invasive carp and is thus lee targeted by

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Speaker 1: bow fishers, shot and thrown away. However, we recently learned,

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Speaker 1: and you may have heard this here on the Weekend Review,

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Speaker 1: that the big mouth buffalo has a lot more going

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Speaker 1: for it than many, including myself, had initially thought. This

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Speaker 1: fish is not only the largest member of the sucker

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Speaker 1: family that can weigh in routinely beyond sixty pounds, It

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Speaker 1: tastes great, It is incredibly picky, but SIPs flies off

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Speaker 1: the surface, and puts up an incredible fight on fly

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Speaker 1: or conventional tackle. It is our oldest known fish. These

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Speaker 1: big mouth buffalo are capable of living well. I mean

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Speaker 1: to be honest, We don't know how old these fish

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Speaker 1: can get, but we do know there are many many

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Speaker 1: fish that are swimming around right now. At over one

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Speaker 1: hundred and twelve years of age. These fish could hold

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Speaker 1: the secret to aging with grace, as I recently, as

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Speaker 1: in just a couple of hours ago, learned that even

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Speaker 1: though they age, they don't show signs of muscle deterioration

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Speaker 1: like other animals including us do. Currently, there is no

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Speaker 1: limit in the amount of these centurion fish you can kill,

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Speaker 1: and the folks that are studying them and consequently love

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Speaker 1: the dang things. Only ask that if you are out

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Speaker 1: shooting cart, know what you're shooting at. Identify your target

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Speaker 1: before you let that arrow go. Make sure it's a

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Speaker 1: cart and not a big mouth buffalo. There's lots more

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Speaker 1: on this topic to tell you, but I'll save it

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Speaker 1: for another episode. You know, I don't think it's too

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Speaker 1: much to ask, just as an aside that you identify

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Speaker 1: your target. The state's not helping you out here. Both fishers,

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Speaker 1: they're bare minimum in the regulations, suggests the state doesn't

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Speaker 1: even care about these things. All this uff I've learned

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Speaker 1: about them. They're incredibly cool, but you, as a arrow

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Speaker 1: flinging hunter of sorts, identifying your target should be ingrained

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Speaker 1: in you. And a fish sitting there is nowhere near

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Speaker 1: as hard as let's say, uh, flock of mallards flying by,

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Speaker 1: or you know, surf scoters or golden eye flying in

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Speaker 1: it like fifty So picking one from the other isn't

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Speaker 1: that big of a deal. Again, you aren't required to

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Speaker 1: keep these things, but they taste great. So if you

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Speaker 1: do screw up and shoot one of these things taking

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Speaker 1: home and eat it, jumping over to the small game desk.

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Speaker 1: That's a pun, as this one is about rabbits and or,

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Speaker 1: more specifically, a highly contagious virus that's killing a bunch

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Speaker 1: of rabbits small game hunters. Take note, we've covered this

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Speaker 1: one briefly before, so i'll prime you up before where

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Speaker 1: we get going. The name of the illness is rabbit

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Speaker 1: hemorrhagic disease virus type two or r h D V two,

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Speaker 1: and it's so deadly that folks are calling it rabbit ebola,

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Speaker 1: though it actually has nothing to do with ebola. It's

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Speaker 1: just really bad. Here's what we know. The virus is

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Speaker 1: a new souped up version of rabbit hemorrhagic disease, or

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Speaker 1: r h D. That virus was first identified in China.

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Speaker 1: What's interesting and unnerving about our h D is that

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Speaker 1: rabbits might exhibit absolutely no symptoms. They just keel over

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Speaker 1: and die. The virus spreads from rabbit to rabbit and

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Speaker 1: through passive transfer. Passive transfer it would be like when

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Speaker 1: a rabbit encounters the virus just in nature living on

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Speaker 1: something else. Once in a rabbit, the virus causes a

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Speaker 1: general infection of the organs. A rabbit will typically bleed

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Speaker 1: from the nose and mouth immediately after death. Other than this,

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Speaker 1: tell to el sign a rabbit carcass looks perfectly unharmed.

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Speaker 1: The US had an r h D outbreak back in

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Speaker 1: two thousand, but it was a minor issue compared to

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Speaker 1: the impact r h D had on Asian rabbit populations.

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Speaker 1: In China alone, the virus is believed to have killed

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Speaker 1: in the ballpark of a hundred and forty million rabbits.

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Speaker 1: R h D is a super disease of sorts. A

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Speaker 1: recent New York Times article notes that the virus can

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Speaker 1: live on dry cloth with no living host of any

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Speaker 1: sort for over three months. That scary stuff. The virus

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Speaker 1: can live in a dead rabbit for even longer than that.

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Speaker 1: Imagine if covid survived for three months on surfaces. No,

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Speaker 1: I don't like that, there'd be no mitigating it. The

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Speaker 1: r h d's long life helps explain why it's so

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Speaker 1: contagious among rabbits. The virus is also impervious to freezing,

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Speaker 1: so it doesn't go away in winter. As a result,

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Speaker 1: the mortality rate can be as high as one Now,

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Speaker 1: the new version of r h D seems even worse

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Speaker 1: than the original. As I mentioned, it's r h d

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Speaker 1: V two, as inversion two. According to the U s

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Speaker 1: d A. The new virus first appeared in New York

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Speaker 1: City sometime in February, so just a few months ago.

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Speaker 1: Scientists are pretty darned concerned, and for good reason. What

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Speaker 1: happened is that back in February, about eleven domestic rabbits

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Speaker 1: at a Manhattan animal hospital suddenly expired. No one really

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Speaker 1: knew why, which was weird, But the following months got,

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Speaker 1: you know, a little weirder. In March, r h d

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Speaker 1: V two somehow managed to do something crazy. It jumped

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Speaker 1: to wild rabbits. Here in the US, wild rabbits and

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Speaker 1: hares in New Mexico started dying first. Not long after,

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Speaker 1: a group of thirty dead rabbits was reportedly found near

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Speaker 1: Fort Bliss, Texas. Then the same thing happened in other

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Speaker 1: states Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Washington. By early this month, the

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Speaker 1: virus had reached California, where it still seems to be spreading.

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Speaker 1: I'll pump the brakes real quick. You need to understand something,

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Speaker 1: so stick with me. Most domesticated pet rabbits are European rabbits.

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Speaker 1: That's the common name for the species or rick talagusquniculus.

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Speaker 1: When you buy your kid a little bunny at the

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Speaker 1: feed store, that's most likely what you're getting a European rabbit.

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Speaker 1: Wild cotton tails and jack rabbits like the sort you

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Speaker 1: hunt are totally different species than these domestic rabbits. Jack

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Speaker 1: rabbits are actually hairs, which are not at all like rabbits.

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Speaker 1: Hairs change their fur color depending on the season. Rabbits don't. Hairs,

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Speaker 1: are solitary and live above ground, whereas most rabbits hang

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Speaker 1: out in groups and live in burrows. Anyway, the important

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Speaker 1: thing to know is that wild rabbits and hairs are

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Speaker 1: not the same thing as domestic rabbits, and because of that,

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Speaker 1: wild rabbits and hairs were unaffected by the original r

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Speaker 1: HD rabbit virus. It's a really big deal that the

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Speaker 1: new virus r h d V two jump species, and

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Speaker 1: at this point it's still hard to know what the

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Speaker 1: implications might be. R h d V two actually has

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Speaker 1: a lower mortality rate than our h D but that's

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Speaker 1: not a good thing because it means more live rabbits

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Speaker 1: are hopping around with it, infecting other rabbits, and more

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Speaker 1: rabbits in total may die. Here's another wrinkle. There's a

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Speaker 1: vaccine for r h D and for our h D

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Speaker 1: V two, but neither are available in the United States,

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Speaker 1: you know, for a bunch of bureaucratic reasons, and also,

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Speaker 1: how are you going to distribute a vaccine to a

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Speaker 1: bunch of wild rabbits. Thousands of rabbits and hairs have

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Speaker 1: died so far right now, it looks as though all

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Speaker 1: we can do is hope that the US doesn't see

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Speaker 1: the same sort of death numbers that China did with

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Speaker 1: the original r h D outbreak, millions of dead rabbits.

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Speaker 1: If you're a big game hunter, the freezer is full

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Speaker 1: of red meat, and those little white cotton tail loins

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Speaker 1: get to be pretty darn special. If you happen across

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Speaker 1: any dead abbots that are suspiciously good looking, maybe with

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Speaker 1: a little blood on their mouths or noses, it would

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Speaker 1: be a great idea to contact your state's Fishing Game

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Speaker 1: or Department of Natural Resources. Here in the Western States,

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Speaker 1: we've got elk all over the place. The same used

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Speaker 1: to be true in the Appalachian States, especially in the

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Speaker 1: eastern part of Kentucky. As you may or may not

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Speaker 1: recall from your high school history class. Daniel Boone was

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Speaker 1: one of the first settlers to blaze a trail through

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Speaker 1: the Cumberland Gap and settle Kentucky. That was back in

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Speaker 1: the seventeen sixties. Well. On his famous expedition, he saw

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Speaker 1: scores of elk just grazing and hanging out in blue

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Speaker 1: grass meadows, along with buffalo and bear by the way.

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Speaker 1: Once more settlers moved in market hunting habitat, destruction and

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Speaker 1: non existent management practices quickly threatened the elk. A similar

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Speaker 1: situation played out throughout much of the country with a

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Speaker 1: bunch of different species, as least buffalo mountain lions. By

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Speaker 1: the time John James Audubon, you know, the animal painter,

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Speaker 1: founder of the Ottubon Society, visited Kentucky in eighteen ten,

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Speaker 1: elk had been largely wiped out. Within thirty years they

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Speaker 1: would be totally gone. Of course, this all happened back

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Speaker 1: in the days before Congress passed all our great conservation

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Speaker 1: laws like the Lacy Act of nineteen hundred and the

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Speaker 1: Migratory Bird Treaty Act of eighteen and long before the

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Speaker 1: North American model of wildlife conservation was established. Anyway, there's

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Speaker 1: good news today elk are on the rise once again

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Speaker 1: in Kentucky. The New York Times recently published an article

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Speaker 1: about how elk have not only rebounded, but are also

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Speaker 1: helping bring economic life to Kentucky, and sportsmen have played

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Speaker 1: a huge part in the whole thing. Another great conservations

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Speaker 1: success story from conservation failure. Here's the gist. In the

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Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation or r m e F offered

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Speaker 1: to fund a multimillion dollar plan to airlift fift hundred

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Speaker 1: elk and begin to restore Kentucky's native heard. The catch

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Speaker 1: was that farmers in western Kentucky weren't exactly into the

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Speaker 1: whole idea. Why would you not want elk back? Well,

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Speaker 1: try and making a living off of feeding animals and uh,

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Speaker 1: all of a sudden having to feed a bunch of

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Speaker 1: animals that you didn't exactly right into the family business plan. Well,

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Speaker 1: there was farmer opposition, so they had to find a

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Speaker 1: safe place for the elk back. Before this time, in

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Speaker 1: the heyday of cola, Kentucky, coal companies would just blast

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Speaker 1: the top off of mountains. They would then take all

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Speaker 1: the rebel and debris from blowing these mountains up and

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Speaker 1: just fill up the nearby valley. This created a patchwork,

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Speaker 1: a kind of flatten hilly land. In the ninet nineties,

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Speaker 1: the Kentucky coal industry basically nosedived and a bunch of

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Speaker 1: mining areas were abandoned. Now, hilltop removal or mountaintop removal

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Speaker 1: is not a good idea, but in this case it

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Speaker 1: did turn Kentucky into a perfectly good place to release

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Speaker 1: a bunch of elk. That's because elk really liked That

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Speaker 1: makes a mountainous terrain and plateaus, whether they're artificial or not. Plus,

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Speaker 1: most Kentucky's abandoned coal mines were in the eastern part

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Speaker 1: of the state and away from the aforementioned miners, so

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Speaker 1: that's where the elk went. This is an interesting aside.

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Speaker 1: If you ever find yourself speaking publicly about the effects

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Speaker 1: of open pit mines or in this case, hilltop mining

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Speaker 1: techniques and their effects on wildlife, these coal country elk

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Speaker 1: examples always come up. Is this, like, boy, if mining

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Speaker 1: is bad, And to be clear, not all mining's bad.

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Speaker 1: It can be done responsibly. It's just you know, expensive.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, the arguments like boy, if mining is bad,

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Speaker 1: you gotta tell all these elk on these Kentucky mines

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Speaker 1: to get out, and the argument just like conveniently leaves

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Speaker 1: out the fact that in order to have this conservation success,

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Speaker 1: these areas of the country had to be completely elk less,

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Speaker 1: as in zero for more than two hundred years. Imagine

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Speaker 1: drown that elk tag and having to wait two hundred years. Nevertheless,

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Speaker 1: this plan succeeded fast forward twenty three years from the

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Speaker 1: original fift hundred elk release in Kentucky is now home

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Speaker 1: to thirteen thousand elk. That's eleven thousand, five hundred more

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Speaker 1: elk than two decades ago. The animals are so abundant

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Speaker 1: that this season, Kentucky will have six hundred elk hunting

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Speaker 1: tags up for grabs. Earlier, I mentioned economic life in Kentucky.

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Speaker 1: By the state's estimate, elk site seeing tours and elk

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Speaker 1: hunting guides now add five million to the local economy.

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Speaker 1: The New Time story I mentioned spotlight at a nonprofit

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Speaker 1: called Boone's Readge. It's a nature reserve. The reserve is

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Speaker 1: being built on reclaimed mind land, and its owners are

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Speaker 1: hoping to attract one million annual visitors and generate a

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million per year. The biggest selling point

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Speaker 1: is a chance to spot in milk. If there were

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Speaker 1: that type of money in guiding elk when I was

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Speaker 1: doing it, I wouldn't be here right now. Moving on

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Speaker 1: to the raptor desk. Earlier this month, officials confirmed that

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Speaker 1: the California condors had returned to Sequoia National Park for

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Speaker 1: the first time in fifty years, which is huge news,

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Speaker 1: and not just because this bird has an almost ten

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Speaker 1: foot wingspan, you know, which is huge. The California condor

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Speaker 1: is a big vulture. It ranks among the world's largest

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Speaker 1: flying birds, and it is the largest in North America.

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Speaker 1: Adults way about twenty four pounds, and again can have

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Speaker 1: a ten foot wingspan. A big old eagle in comparison,

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Speaker 1: has a seven and a half foot wing span in

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Speaker 1: ways about fourteen pounds, So we're talking about a really

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Speaker 1: massive bird here. The only living bird species that has

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Speaker 1: a whider wing span than the California condor is the

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Speaker 1: wandering albatross, which hangs out near Australia. The wandering albatross

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Speaker 1: travels almost seventy five thousand miles a year. Adult wingspan

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Speaker 1: can be as large as twelve feet tip to tip,

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Speaker 1: and that bird weighs twenty four pounds as an adult.

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Speaker 1: You may find it interesting that a difference of about

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Speaker 1: two feet in wingspan, which is a lot, still supports

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Speaker 1: roughly the same amount of weight. Now, if you're trying

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Speaker 1: to picture what the condor looks like, imagine a huge

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Speaker 1: black vulture with a bright orange head. They also have

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Speaker 1: big patches of white, almost like raw shack ink blots

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Speaker 1: under their wings. The California condor, as the name implies,

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Speaker 1: is native to California, as well as to Arizona, Nevada,

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Speaker 1: and New Mexico. The Lewis and Clark expedition even killed

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Speaker 1: one of the birds near the mouth of the Columbia

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Speaker 1: River in what is now Washington State. The expedition even

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Speaker 1: accurately guessed that the bird was the largest flying species

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Speaker 1: in North America. Here's why news about Takoya National Park

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Speaker 1: is relevant. The condor suffered a major die off in

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Speaker 1: the twentieth century, owning to poaching, habitat destruction, poisoning of

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Speaker 1: several different types, including lead poisoning. Scientists believe that lead

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Speaker 1: ammal specifically was to blame, not so much from folks

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Speaker 1: shooting them, although that did occur, but the birds are

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Speaker 1: scavengers and they gut piles. Gut piles from hunter kills

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Speaker 1: contained lead. We've covered this many, many, many times. The

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Speaker 1: reason we can eat lead to some degree and have

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Speaker 1: it passed through our body is because the pH level,

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Speaker 1: the amount of acid we have in our guts is

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Speaker 1: nowhere near as strong as the bird guts, and the

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Speaker 1: bird guts can break that lead own and absorb it

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Speaker 1: into the blood in a really short amount of time.

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Speaker 1: If you recall about this time, bald eagles experienced a

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Speaker 1: similar die off by eating D D T laced fish.

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Speaker 1: Some of the original bills to ban or restrict led

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Speaker 1: AMMO for hunting purposes were because of the California condor,

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Speaker 1: which was somewhat controversial at the time and I'm sure

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Speaker 1: still is to some of you at home. At any rate,

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Speaker 1: there were only nine wild condoors left in the world,

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Speaker 1: and about eighteen in captivity. In other words, they were

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Speaker 1: functionally extinct. Over the next two years, the remaining wild

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Speaker 1: condoors were captured and taken to zoos. The US Fish

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Speaker 1: and Wildlife Service then launched an extensive captive breeding program,

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Speaker 1: spending some twenty five million dollars to save the giant vulture.

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Speaker 1: Within nine years, the captive condoors had produced more than

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Speaker 1: one hundred eggs, which you know shouldn't be that surprising

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Speaker 1: considering you don't fly owned all day looking for dead stuff.

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Speaker 1: You don't have a whole lot of options how you're

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Speaker 1: going to spend your time. In January, to California condors

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Speaker 1: were released into the wild, kick starting a massive reintroduction effort.

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Speaker 1: As of two thousand nineteen, California had about two hundred

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Speaker 1: wild California condors. They are now believed to be about

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Speaker 1: three hundred and thirty seven birds in the wild back

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Speaker 1: to Sequoia National Park. The fact that four California condors

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Speaker 1: showed up in Sequoia this spring further testifies three introduction success.

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Speaker 1: And it's just kind of a excuse the expression, another

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Speaker 1: feather in our conservation cap. I'm excited to see condors

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Speaker 1: continue to expand back in their historic range. That's all

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Speaker 1: I've got for you this week. Thanks for listening as

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Speaker 1: per usual. If I'm missing anything, or you just want

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Speaker 1: to let me know what's happening in your neck of

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Speaker 1: the woods, please get a hold of me at ask

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Speaker 1: Cal at the Meat Eater dot com. That's a s

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Speaker 1: K C. A L. At the meat eater dot com.

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Speaker 1: If you're loving the weekend review, thank you and please

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Speaker 1: tell a friend. Also this week, I'd like to say

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Speaker 1: a special thanks to j R. Sullivan for helping me

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Speaker 1: with a little bit of research. Thanks for listening, and

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Speaker 1: have a great week