1 00:00:01,480 --> 00:00:04,720 Speaker 1: In the first half of the twentieth century, America came 2 00:00:04,960 --> 00:00:08,440 Speaker 1: very close to destroying its wolves, which were saved by 3 00:00:08,480 --> 00:00:11,920 Speaker 1: the insights of a new science that changed the country's 4 00:00:12,039 --> 00:00:16,159 Speaker 1: understanding of predators. I'm Dan Flores and this is the 5 00:00:16,200 --> 00:00:21,160 Speaker 1: American West, brought to you by Velvet Buck Wine, where 6 00:00:21,160 --> 00:00:21,919 Speaker 1: the hunt. 7 00:00:21,720 --> 00:00:22,600 Speaker 2: Meets the harvest. 8 00:00:23,160 --> 00:00:26,680 Speaker 1: A portion of each bottle goes to support backcountry hunters 9 00:00:26,680 --> 00:00:32,360 Speaker 1: and anglers. Limited supply available at Velvetbuck Vineyards dot com. 10 00:00:32,520 --> 00:00:57,480 Speaker 1: Enjoy responsible golden eyed lightning rod. In the nineteen twenties, 11 00:00:57,720 --> 00:01:01,920 Speaker 1: as flappers and jazz and hollywod would captivate American cities, 12 00:01:02,240 --> 00:01:05,560 Speaker 1: a man named Bill Kaywood is engaged in a different 13 00:01:05,680 --> 00:01:10,320 Speaker 1: cultural project at fifty Kwood is a stocky stump of 14 00:01:10,360 --> 00:01:13,440 Speaker 1: a man with a face like a granite cliff. He's 15 00:01:13,480 --> 00:01:17,600 Speaker 1: a professional assassin of wolves, but says he loves the 16 00:01:17,720 --> 00:01:22,399 Speaker 1: animals he watches die. He's a real fellow. The big 17 00:01:22,480 --> 00:01:26,360 Speaker 1: Gray is lots of brains. I feel sorry every time 18 00:01:26,440 --> 00:01:29,319 Speaker 1: I see one of those big fellows thrashing around in 19 00:01:29,360 --> 00:01:34,000 Speaker 1: a trap, bellowing bloody murder. Kywood is the sort of 20 00:01:34,040 --> 00:01:38,200 Speaker 1: American that writer D. H. Lawrence getting his first extended 21 00:01:38,240 --> 00:01:42,959 Speaker 1: exposure to this country will describe as stoic a killer, 22 00:01:43,520 --> 00:01:46,840 Speaker 1: and what he is doing is mop up work. Where 23 00:01:46,840 --> 00:01:50,200 Speaker 1: the continent only three centuries before had easily held one 24 00:01:50,280 --> 00:01:53,600 Speaker 1: hundred thousand wolf packs. By the nineteen twenties, few packs 25 00:01:53,600 --> 00:01:57,240 Speaker 1: remain anywhere in the US outside Alaska, the Great Lakes 26 00:01:57,280 --> 00:02:02,080 Speaker 1: Country and the Lower South Is After the last survivors. 27 00:02:02,080 --> 00:02:05,440 Speaker 1: In the West, few enough animals that ranchers and government 28 00:02:05,520 --> 00:02:09,080 Speaker 1: hunters hired on their behalf have started giving the animals 29 00:02:09,240 --> 00:02:14,560 Speaker 1: individual names they called Two of these last gray wolves, Kywood, 30 00:02:14,600 --> 00:02:20,240 Speaker 1: is tracking down Rags and Greenhorn, animals that had once 31 00:02:20,320 --> 00:02:24,000 Speaker 1: lived in packs, once had mates and pups. Rags and 32 00:02:24,040 --> 00:02:29,200 Speaker 1: Greenhorn are enduring lives of lonely desperation. Like a significant 33 00:02:29,200 --> 00:02:32,440 Speaker 1: percentage of gray wolves who turn to livestock, they're too 34 00:02:32,560 --> 00:02:36,080 Speaker 1: old and frail to bring down elk without. 35 00:02:35,800 --> 00:02:36,720 Speaker 2: A pack's help. 36 00:02:37,360 --> 00:02:41,079 Speaker 1: Younger wolves who ended up stock killers often had suffered 37 00:02:41,160 --> 00:02:45,840 Speaker 1: crippling injuries, frequently by losing multiple toes. Are an entire 38 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:49,960 Speaker 1: foot escaping the serrated jaws of the new house four 39 00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:53,520 Speaker 1: and a half steel trap. Rags had seen two of 40 00:02:53,560 --> 00:02:56,960 Speaker 1: the mates he had had during his lifetime panicked and 41 00:02:57,080 --> 00:03:00,640 Speaker 1: helpless in a trap. He learned from that and is 42 00:03:00,760 --> 00:03:06,760 Speaker 1: himself unmaimed. Rags is an old wolf, the rachers say seventeen, 43 00:03:06,840 --> 00:03:10,200 Speaker 1: but he's probably closer to ten or eleven, and now 44 00:03:10,280 --> 00:03:13,639 Speaker 1: either travels alone or with two younger wolves who are 45 00:03:13,680 --> 00:03:18,520 Speaker 1: far less crafty as for Greenhorn. This female wolf, named 46 00:03:18,560 --> 00:03:22,040 Speaker 1: for a local mountain near Kywood's front range home, has 47 00:03:22,160 --> 00:03:26,280 Speaker 1: teeth so worn she's been reduced to strangling her prey. 48 00:03:26,680 --> 00:03:29,800 Speaker 1: In her past, she's escaped traps and spit out a 49 00:03:29,840 --> 00:03:33,440 Speaker 1: strychnind bait before it could kill her. When Kwood goes 50 00:03:33,480 --> 00:03:37,040 Speaker 1: after her in nineteen twenty three, the ranchers claim she's 51 00:03:37,200 --> 00:03:41,760 Speaker 1: eighteen years old. Whatever her real age, she is slowly 52 00:03:42,000 --> 00:03:46,760 Speaker 1: starving to death. These are wolves the federal agency Kwood 53 00:03:46,800 --> 00:03:51,440 Speaker 1: works for should leave to die natural deaths, but Rags 54 00:03:51,440 --> 00:03:54,320 Speaker 1: and Greenhorn live in a nation that cannot brook a 55 00:03:54,400 --> 00:04:00,920 Speaker 1: single wolf remaining alive anywhere. It's Rags's turned first. Across 56 00:04:00,960 --> 00:04:04,840 Speaker 1: weeks of time, Kwood sets his traps and Rags digs 57 00:04:04,840 --> 00:04:08,440 Speaker 1: them up with a wolf that's smart. The former bounty 58 00:04:08,520 --> 00:04:11,800 Speaker 1: hunter rigs a trap set designed to snare a wolf 59 00:04:12,080 --> 00:04:15,520 Speaker 1: by a back leg as it digs up other traps 60 00:04:15,560 --> 00:04:16,560 Speaker 1: with its front paws. 61 00:04:17,160 --> 00:04:19,040 Speaker 2: It works with a. 62 00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:22,440 Speaker 1: Trap biting into a rear leg, and a second trap 63 00:04:22,560 --> 00:04:26,320 Speaker 1: sprung on the dragline of the first, bouncing after him 64 00:04:26,360 --> 00:04:29,640 Speaker 1: on a three foot chain. The old wolf spends a 65 00:04:29,680 --> 00:04:34,919 Speaker 1: final day in tortured flight. In the end, hemmed into 66 00:04:34,920 --> 00:04:38,320 Speaker 1: a box canyon, he confronts a fate he's escaped for 67 00:04:38,360 --> 00:04:44,560 Speaker 1: a decade. Purposefully, he limps straight towards Kwood, yellow eyes 68 00:04:44,600 --> 00:04:47,880 Speaker 1: fixed and staring, as the metal clanks over. 69 00:04:47,720 --> 00:04:49,160 Speaker 2: The rocks behind him. 70 00:04:49,640 --> 00:04:54,599 Speaker 1: Kwood stoically shoots the equivalent of an octogenarian wolf in 71 00:04:54,640 --> 00:05:01,320 Speaker 1: the head next Greenhorn. It's December, cold and snowing on 72 00:05:01,360 --> 00:05:04,680 Speaker 1: the front range, and with her teeth mostly gone, the 73 00:05:04,760 --> 00:05:06,560 Speaker 1: elderly wolf can't down a. 74 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:10,240 Speaker 2: Deer, let alone a cow. She's desperately hungry. 75 00:05:10,839 --> 00:05:14,440 Speaker 1: She knows the sin of strychnine, but Kaywood has attracted 76 00:05:14,480 --> 00:05:18,080 Speaker 1: her with a horse's head wired to a juniper, around 77 00:05:18,160 --> 00:05:21,760 Speaker 1: which he's placed chunks of fat suet soaked in poisoned 78 00:05:22,480 --> 00:05:27,120 Speaker 1: Greenhorn shies away from the smell again and again. She knows, 79 00:05:27,160 --> 00:05:30,479 Speaker 1: from her own experience and from wolf culture, that this 80 00:05:30,800 --> 00:05:36,120 Speaker 1: scent means tragic danger. She's witnessed the thrashing, vomiting endgame 81 00:05:36,240 --> 00:05:40,880 Speaker 1: more than once, but she's starving to death. She circles back, 82 00:05:41,320 --> 00:05:45,239 Speaker 1: picks up a chunk of suet, swallows it, then another, 83 00:05:45,640 --> 00:05:50,599 Speaker 1: and one more. It's the Day after Christmas nineteen twenty three. 84 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:55,599 Speaker 1: Kaywood believes she's the last wild wolf born in the 85 00:05:55,640 --> 00:06:02,960 Speaker 1: state of Colorado. By the early twentieth century, a new 86 00:06:03,160 --> 00:06:07,560 Speaker 1: institutional player emerged to confront wolves and other predators in 87 00:06:07,600 --> 00:06:11,159 Speaker 1: the United States. Before nineteen oh five, it seemed that 88 00:06:11,240 --> 00:06:15,640 Speaker 1: Seehart Miriam's new Bureau of Biological Survey, created to map 89 00:06:15,680 --> 00:06:19,120 Speaker 1: the wildlife that was left in post frontier America, was 90 00:06:19,120 --> 00:06:20,599 Speaker 1: sitting pretty teddy. 91 00:06:20,680 --> 00:06:22,120 Speaker 2: Roosevelt was president, and. 92 00:06:22,040 --> 00:06:25,359 Speaker 1: The Bureau was dear to his heart, but Congress was 93 00:06:25,400 --> 00:06:29,919 Speaker 1: growing testing about funding an agency interested in pure science. 94 00:06:30,720 --> 00:06:35,320 Speaker 1: At Livestock Association meetings, Western ranchers were arguing that the 95 00:06:35,440 --> 00:06:39,440 Speaker 1: vast western public lands Roosevelt had set aside from homesteading, 96 00:06:39,720 --> 00:06:44,039 Speaker 1: were refuges for predators that attacked their stock. Since the 97 00:06:44,120 --> 00:06:48,240 Speaker 1: FED had created this situation, the ranchers believed the FED 98 00:06:48,360 --> 00:06:52,320 Speaker 1: ought to fix it, so in an act of self preservation, 99 00:06:52,720 --> 00:06:57,400 Speaker 1: the Bureau of Biological Survey remade itself into the solution 100 00:06:57,640 --> 00:07:01,640 Speaker 1: to the country so called predator problem. The claiming that 101 00:07:01,720 --> 00:07:06,200 Speaker 1: America suffered from these are the Bureau's words, wolf infested 102 00:07:06,320 --> 00:07:11,120 Speaker 1: National forests and the federal public domain. The Biological Survey 103 00:07:11,560 --> 00:07:16,160 Speaker 1: engineered its own public support. Between nineteen oh seven and 104 00:07:16,240 --> 00:07:19,720 Speaker 1: nineteen oh nine, it issued four reports on the so 105 00:07:19,800 --> 00:07:23,880 Speaker 1: called predator big game livestock relationship in and around the 106 00:07:23,960 --> 00:07:30,760 Speaker 1: new National Forests. A young, slightly educated Minnesotan named Vernon Bailey, 107 00:07:30,920 --> 00:07:34,480 Speaker 1: who was a whiz at trapping animals, authored most of them. 108 00:07:35,160 --> 00:07:39,160 Speaker 1: An agency like the Bureau, his reports claimed, could bring 109 00:07:39,400 --> 00:07:43,720 Speaker 1: orderly and scientific control to wolf destruction by hiring train 110 00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:49,280 Speaker 1: hunters and trappers men like Bill Kywood. Bailey held seminars 111 00:07:49,280 --> 00:07:52,640 Speaker 1: for National Forest managers, teaching them how to find wolf 112 00:07:52,720 --> 00:07:56,640 Speaker 1: dens and the best strategies for destroying pups and packs. 113 00:07:57,280 --> 00:08:01,400 Speaker 1: Forest Service rangers proceeded to kill eighteen hundred wolves and 114 00:08:01,560 --> 00:08:06,119 Speaker 1: twenty three thousand coyotes in the National Forest within a year. 115 00:08:06,920 --> 00:08:12,120 Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt would hereafter refer to Bailey by a favorite nickname, 116 00:08:12,600 --> 00:08:18,080 Speaker 1: Wolf Bailey. In twentieth century America, there was literally no 117 00:08:18,320 --> 00:08:24,440 Speaker 1: opposition to this campaign of annihilation America's beloved nature writer 118 00:08:24,720 --> 00:08:29,880 Speaker 1: John Burrows opined that predators certainly needed killing, since the. 119 00:08:29,960 --> 00:08:32,360 Speaker 2: Fewer of these there are, the better for. 120 00:08:32,360 --> 00:08:36,840 Speaker 1: The useful and beautiful game. As he wrote. Wildlife activist 121 00:08:37,040 --> 00:08:42,240 Speaker 1: William Hornday insisted that firearms, dogs, traps, and Strycht nine 122 00:08:42,559 --> 00:08:47,599 Speaker 1: are thoroughly legitimate weapons of destruction. No halfway measures suffice. 123 00:08:48,480 --> 00:08:52,120 Speaker 1: Not even John Muir spoke out. Although Muir did worry 124 00:08:52,160 --> 00:08:56,160 Speaker 1: that slaughtering wolves might induce what he called a penalty 125 00:08:56,240 --> 00:09:01,079 Speaker 1: for interfering with the balance of nature, there was another 126 00:09:01,280 --> 00:09:06,160 Speaker 1: constituency for the war on predators, too. Destroying wolves would 127 00:09:06,240 --> 00:09:10,240 Speaker 1: produce all the deer and elk America's new sport hunters 128 00:09:10,280 --> 00:09:14,240 Speaker 1: could ever want. No one asked whether sport hunters would 129 00:09:14,240 --> 00:09:17,000 Speaker 1: focus on the same animals in an elk herd that 130 00:09:17,160 --> 00:09:20,600 Speaker 1: wolves did, because no one knew anything about wolf prey 131 00:09:20,679 --> 00:09:26,599 Speaker 1: relationships then. But advocating replacing predators with human hunters was 132 00:09:26,640 --> 00:09:30,800 Speaker 1: a stroke of genius, bringing all manner of sportsmen's groups, 133 00:09:31,080 --> 00:09:35,240 Speaker 1: firearms manufacturers, and state game and fish agencies to the 134 00:09:35,280 --> 00:09:40,240 Speaker 1: cause of wiping out every wolf on the continent. So 135 00:09:40,320 --> 00:09:45,000 Speaker 1: without conducting a single research project on the wolf's role, 136 00:09:45,160 --> 00:09:50,960 Speaker 1: in nature. The Biological Survey engineered massive public support for 137 00:09:51,080 --> 00:09:55,679 Speaker 1: wolf extermination, and in nineteen fourteen, Congress approved and appropriation 138 00:09:56,160 --> 00:09:58,480 Speaker 1: of one hundred and twenty five thousand. 139 00:09:58,120 --> 00:10:00,520 Speaker 2: Dollars for the Bureau to launch the war. 140 00:10:01,240 --> 00:10:05,800 Speaker 1: Within two years, the Bureau had three hundred federal hunters 141 00:10:05,840 --> 00:10:10,640 Speaker 1: in the field. Under Miriam's leadership, the Biological Survey was 142 00:10:10,760 --> 00:10:15,199 Speaker 1: now a critical federal agency on behalf of a civilized 143 00:10:15,200 --> 00:10:19,280 Speaker 1: America made in the image of European countries that had 144 00:10:19,400 --> 00:10:24,080 Speaker 1: long ago destroyed their own predators. The one field of 145 00:10:24,200 --> 00:10:29,199 Speaker 1: twentieth century wildlife science in which Americans became acknowledged global 146 00:10:29,320 --> 00:10:34,920 Speaker 1: leaders was in fact the destruction of so called undesirable species. 147 00:10:37,440 --> 00:10:41,000 Speaker 1: If your assignment was to mass kill wolves, the way 148 00:10:41,040 --> 00:10:45,680 Speaker 1: to go was poisoning entire populations, and you did that 149 00:10:45,800 --> 00:10:50,960 Speaker 1: by strewing poisoned baits by the thousands across the American landscape. 150 00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:54,800 Speaker 1: As for the target animal, the campaign brooked no mercy 151 00:10:55,000 --> 00:10:59,320 Speaker 1: or compassion. At one point, Vernon Bailey inquired of his 152 00:10:59,520 --> 00:11:03,120 Speaker 1: boss about the proper dose of Strycht nine, so a 153 00:11:03,160 --> 00:11:08,400 Speaker 1: poisoned wolf might die within a humane three minutes, knowing 154 00:11:08,480 --> 00:11:11,840 Speaker 1: full well that any expression of mercy towards wolves was 155 00:11:11,880 --> 00:11:16,760 Speaker 1: a political liability, Miriam shot back, You had better go 156 00:11:16,880 --> 00:11:20,720 Speaker 1: at once to the hospital in Albuquerque. Inasmuch as no 157 00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:24,959 Speaker 1: sane man could possibly make such an absurd and utterly 158 00:11:25,040 --> 00:11:28,880 Speaker 1: preposterous statement as this, You are obviously in need of 159 00:11:28,960 --> 00:11:34,480 Speaker 1: mental treatment, Miriam went on, We want the cattleman behind us. 160 00:11:34,880 --> 00:11:35,280 Speaker 2: SABE. 161 00:11:37,040 --> 00:11:40,680 Speaker 1: With its new funding, the Bureau was building a plant 162 00:11:40,720 --> 00:11:46,479 Speaker 1: in Albuquerque to produce strict nine baits in volume. Chillingly, 163 00:11:46,640 --> 00:11:52,320 Speaker 1: they called it the Eradication Methods Lab. By nineteen twenty one, 164 00:11:52,679 --> 00:11:56,280 Speaker 1: this federal killing facility had moved to Denver, in which 165 00:11:56,320 --> 00:12:01,200 Speaker 1: location it eventually perfected an amazing witches bred of ever 166 00:12:01,440 --> 00:12:06,080 Speaker 1: deadlier pretocides. But for the next two decades, federal poisoners 167 00:12:06,080 --> 00:12:11,440 Speaker 1: relied on strychnine. It was potent twisting wolves into a 168 00:12:11,600 --> 00:12:16,439 Speaker 1: stryct nine signature. Their bodies wrenched and their tails shot 169 00:12:16,600 --> 00:12:19,079 Speaker 1: straight out, as if they'd been struck by a bolt 170 00:12:19,080 --> 00:12:25,040 Speaker 1: of lightning. Federal hunters quickly grasped the wolf's fatal flaw. 171 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:30,959 Speaker 1: The smaller American canids coyotes, had evolved an adaptation called 172 00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:35,240 Speaker 1: fish and fusion, living in social groups when possible. Fusion 173 00:12:35,760 --> 00:12:40,679 Speaker 1: but capable of scattering when ecological pressures called for it fishing, 174 00:12:41,640 --> 00:12:45,560 Speaker 1: but wolves are so strongly family based that wolf killers 175 00:12:45,600 --> 00:12:48,880 Speaker 1: realize that killing one animal and using it sent on 176 00:12:48,920 --> 00:12:51,960 Speaker 1: your baits meant, as one bureau hunter put it, you 177 00:12:52,040 --> 00:12:56,280 Speaker 1: could quickly kill all the members of whole families of wolves, 178 00:12:56,440 --> 00:13:00,280 Speaker 1: with unmistakable evidence that the remaining members of the wolf 179 00:13:00,400 --> 00:13:06,360 Speaker 1: family have been seeking the lost member. Neuroscience studies at 180 00:13:06,360 --> 00:13:10,760 Speaker 1: this very moment are verifying the brain chemistry grief that 181 00:13:10,960 --> 00:13:15,920 Speaker 1: while canids suffer from the loss of their mates, at 182 00:13:15,960 --> 00:13:20,000 Speaker 1: this fikun moment, two new developments were about to alter 183 00:13:20,160 --> 00:13:25,000 Speaker 1: the art of the country's wolf story though. In nineteen fifteen, 184 00:13:25,200 --> 00:13:30,719 Speaker 1: scientific naturalists founded the Ecological Society of America, and at 185 00:13:30,720 --> 00:13:35,640 Speaker 1: their first meeting in Philadelphia, the founding members, Frederick Clements 186 00:13:35,679 --> 00:13:40,400 Speaker 1: and Edith Clements, Charles c Adams, and Victor Shelford, agreed 187 00:13:40,520 --> 00:13:44,319 Speaker 1: on a focus for their new discipline. There was adaptation 188 00:13:44,480 --> 00:13:48,360 Speaker 1: and natural selection, of course, along with investigating the flow 189 00:13:48,400 --> 00:13:52,360 Speaker 1: of energy through nature and an analysis of serial stages 190 00:13:52,400 --> 00:13:57,439 Speaker 1: and climax conditions. Shelford, who had just published his landmark 191 00:13:57,760 --> 00:14:01,920 Speaker 1: Animal Communities in Temperate America, pushed his colleagues to work 192 00:14:01,960 --> 00:14:07,119 Speaker 1: on biotic communities as well. In nineteen fifteen, the society 193 00:14:07,240 --> 00:14:11,400 Speaker 1: counted three hundred and seven members. But it was an 194 00:14:11,480 --> 00:14:15,400 Speaker 1: old fashioned topic, an idea Western culture had known since 195 00:14:15,440 --> 00:14:19,200 Speaker 1: the time of Herodotus and Plato as the balance of 196 00:14:19,400 --> 00:14:24,160 Speaker 1: nature that pushed ecology towards rethinking the role of predators. 197 00:14:25,120 --> 00:14:30,280 Speaker 1: The biological surveys policies had assumed the European folk position 198 00:14:31,080 --> 00:14:36,480 Speaker 1: predators were evil and disposable. Their eradication made for a 199 00:14:36,520 --> 00:14:42,400 Speaker 1: civilized nation. The ecologists believed there might instead be dynamic 200 00:14:42,560 --> 00:14:46,880 Speaker 1: equilibria at work in the natural world. That assumption would 201 00:14:46,920 --> 00:14:50,320 Speaker 1: become the crux of a raging battle in American and 202 00:14:50,400 --> 00:14:54,880 Speaker 1: Western science for the next half century. The other development 203 00:14:54,920 --> 00:14:58,240 Speaker 1: of the moment was America's creation of a National Park 204 00:14:58,360 --> 00:15:03,480 Speaker 1: Service in nineteen sixteen. Initially, Yellowstone, the world's first national park, 205 00:15:03,760 --> 00:15:06,480 Speaker 1: had emerged as a symbol of just how far the 206 00:15:06,520 --> 00:15:11,160 Speaker 1: wolf warriors intended to go. In nineteen fourteen, Yellowstone had 207 00:15:11,200 --> 00:15:14,720 Speaker 1: invited Vernon Bailey to come and show its personnel the 208 00:15:14,760 --> 00:15:19,800 Speaker 1: best techniques to exterminate wolves. Yellowstone's tally till the death 209 00:15:19,800 --> 00:15:22,320 Speaker 1: of the last gray wolf in the park that happened 210 00:15:22,360 --> 00:15:25,080 Speaker 1: in the year nineteen twenty six was one hundred and 211 00:15:25,080 --> 00:15:30,160 Speaker 1: thirty six wolves, eighty of which were puppies. Between nineteen 212 00:15:30,320 --> 00:15:34,560 Speaker 1: eighteen and nineteen thirty five, the world's first Great Wildlife 213 00:15:34,560 --> 00:15:38,440 Speaker 1: part issued a death sentence to two thousand, nine hundred 214 00:15:38,480 --> 00:15:43,160 Speaker 1: and sixty eight coyotes. All the while the Eradication Methods 215 00:15:43,240 --> 00:15:47,000 Speaker 1: Lab was cranking out the strychnine until by the mid 216 00:15:47,120 --> 00:15:52,680 Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, Bureau hunters had distributed an astounding three million, 217 00:15:52,960 --> 00:15:59,160 Speaker 1: five hundred sixty seven thousand poison baits across the country. Yet, 218 00:15:59,200 --> 00:16:04,560 Speaker 1: amid the endgame in America, evidence of Darwinian natural selection 219 00:16:04,880 --> 00:16:10,520 Speaker 1: and an emergent wolf culture of survivability was emerging. Stanley Young, 220 00:16:10,760 --> 00:16:13,040 Speaker 1: a hunter who had rise through the ranks at the Bureau, 221 00:16:13,480 --> 00:16:17,040 Speaker 1: believed that these last animals that it is probable that 222 00:16:17,200 --> 00:16:22,000 Speaker 1: never did more intelligent wolves exist. Like eighteenth century sperm 223 00:16:22,040 --> 00:16:25,720 Speaker 1: whales that famously figured out how to avoid whaling boats 224 00:16:25,720 --> 00:16:29,760 Speaker 1: and harpooners, wolves like Rags and Greenhorn, drew on the 225 00:16:29,840 --> 00:16:34,400 Speaker 1: accumulated cultural learning of scores of wolf generations and taught 226 00:16:34,440 --> 00:16:39,000 Speaker 1: their pups about rifles, traps, and poisons. No wonder the 227 00:16:39,160 --> 00:16:51,600 Speaker 1: last ones were so smart. Ratchers and federal hunters named 228 00:16:51,800 --> 00:16:54,840 Speaker 1: many of the last wolves in the West. Along with 229 00:16:55,120 --> 00:16:59,520 Speaker 1: Rags and Greenhorn in Colorado, there was also Old Lefty, 230 00:16:59,760 --> 00:17:05,400 Speaker 1: Old Old Whitey, Bigfoot, Phantom Wolf, and Oodahweep. In Oregon, 231 00:17:05,440 --> 00:17:09,440 Speaker 1: there was a last wolf called Sycan, a King Lobo 232 00:17:09,640 --> 00:17:14,680 Speaker 1: in New Mexico Snowdrift, and the prior Creek Wolf in Montana, 233 00:17:15,119 --> 00:17:19,359 Speaker 1: Aguila in Arizona, and the Custer Wolf in South Dakotas. 234 00:17:20,320 --> 00:17:25,200 Speaker 1: Three toes or clubfoot were common wolf names, referencing all 235 00:17:25,280 --> 00:17:30,480 Speaker 1: the animals crippled by traps. There were red wolf renegades too, 236 00:17:30,600 --> 00:17:36,280 Speaker 1: including Traveler in Arkansas, Black Devil in Oklahoma, and Crip 237 00:17:36,480 --> 00:17:41,560 Speaker 1: in Texas, another maimed animal. Given the accounts federal hunters 238 00:17:41,640 --> 00:17:45,000 Speaker 1: left of their protracted efforts to kill these wolves, there's 239 00:17:45,040 --> 00:17:50,280 Speaker 1: little doubt these were indeed remarkably intelligent animals, and why not, 240 00:17:51,040 --> 00:17:54,800 Speaker 1: as they were experiencing on all sides. Humans were engaged 241 00:17:54,840 --> 00:17:59,560 Speaker 1: in a crusade to wipe out their kind entirely. But 242 00:17:59,680 --> 00:18:03,239 Speaker 1: as the in nineteen twenties dawned, what seemed initially to 243 00:18:03,280 --> 00:18:07,480 Speaker 1: be a natural ally mounted the first real challenge to 244 00:18:07,520 --> 00:18:12,320 Speaker 1: the Bureau's scorched earth Wolf War. The American Society of 245 00:18:12,480 --> 00:18:16,399 Speaker 1: Mammalogists met for the first time at the Smithsonian in 246 00:18:16,520 --> 00:18:22,200 Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen. Bureau founder Seehart Miriam became its first president 247 00:18:22,520 --> 00:18:26,160 Speaker 1: with Vernon Bailey, and Bureau made E. A. Goldman as 248 00:18:26,320 --> 00:18:31,320 Speaker 1: charter members. Like Bailey, Goldman had field experience, but he 249 00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:36,360 Speaker 1: lacked a college degree. Nonetheless, the Bureau tasked these two 250 00:18:36,480 --> 00:18:41,600 Speaker 1: men to explain and defend the wolf War against university 251 00:18:41,680 --> 00:18:46,320 Speaker 1: trained ecologists. Among that group was a young forester interested 252 00:18:46,359 --> 00:18:51,520 Speaker 1: in wildlife, Aldo Leopold. There was also Joseph Grinnell, a 253 00:18:51,640 --> 00:18:56,840 Speaker 1: cousin of the legendary conservation hero George Bird Grennell. Grennell 254 00:18:57,040 --> 00:19:01,680 Speaker 1: was an original thinker whose ideas quick challenged the very 255 00:19:01,800 --> 00:19:06,560 Speaker 1: premises on which the Bureau based its predator War. The 256 00:19:06,600 --> 00:19:10,399 Speaker 1: first blow up happened at the mammalogists nineteen twenty four meeting. 257 00:19:11,160 --> 00:19:16,040 Speaker 1: Grennell had just published a foundational piece on ecological niches, 258 00:19:16,400 --> 00:19:20,000 Speaker 1: a fundamental insight into nature critical to appreciating what might 259 00:19:20,080 --> 00:19:21,920 Speaker 1: happen if America. 260 00:19:21,480 --> 00:19:23,320 Speaker 2: Destroyed its wolf population. 261 00:19:24,200 --> 00:19:28,840 Speaker 1: Grennell and his graduate student E. Raymond Hall insisted from 262 00:19:28,960 --> 00:19:32,720 Speaker 1: this work on niches that the Bureau was wiping out 263 00:19:32,920 --> 00:19:36,720 Speaker 1: animals that were playing an essential role in the continence 264 00:19:36,960 --> 00:19:41,720 Speaker 1: balance of nature. As it turned out, both the ecologists 265 00:19:41,800 --> 00:19:44,600 Speaker 1: and the bureau men were unaware that the natural world 266 00:19:44,680 --> 00:19:48,159 Speaker 1: in America was about to offer powerful examples of the 267 00:19:48,200 --> 00:19:53,920 Speaker 1: implications of emptying predator niches. But Goldman and Bailey decide 268 00:19:54,000 --> 00:19:56,680 Speaker 1: they had heard about the balance of nature a few 269 00:19:56,720 --> 00:20:00,960 Speaker 1: times too many. If the US actually let predators live, 270 00:20:01,160 --> 00:20:05,000 Speaker 1: they argued, there would soon be nothing but carnivores left. 271 00:20:06,080 --> 00:20:09,560 Speaker 1: In a throwdown essay, The Predatory Mammal Problem and the 272 00:20:09,600 --> 00:20:13,160 Speaker 1: Balance of Nature that he authored for the Journal of Mammalogy, 273 00:20:13,760 --> 00:20:18,080 Speaker 1: Goldman insisted that the coming of civilized man meant that 274 00:20:18,240 --> 00:20:22,879 Speaker 1: the balance of nature has been violently overturned, never to 275 00:20:23,040 --> 00:20:30,240 Speaker 1: be re established. Thus, large predatory mammals, destructive to livestock 276 00:20:30,320 --> 00:20:33,760 Speaker 1: and to game, no longer have a place in our 277 00:20:33,880 --> 00:20:39,440 Speaker 1: advancing civilization. But Joseph Grenell had come up with another idea, 278 00:20:39,680 --> 00:20:43,360 Speaker 1: and this one vexed the Bureau as much as niches 279 00:20:43,560 --> 00:20:46,760 Speaker 1: and the balance of nature. Now there was a National 280 00:20:46,840 --> 00:20:51,399 Speaker 1: Park Service with an Organic Act directive charging it with 281 00:20:51,680 --> 00:20:55,280 Speaker 1: preserving nature for future generations. 282 00:20:55,920 --> 00:20:58,800 Speaker 2: But how to do that and in what form? 283 00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:04,520 Speaker 1: And zoologist Tracy storer had a suggestion they laid out 284 00:21:04,600 --> 00:21:08,720 Speaker 1: in an article for the journal Science. In their opinion, 285 00:21:09,119 --> 00:21:14,359 Speaker 1: preserving nature meant predaceous animals should be left unmolested and 286 00:21:14,480 --> 00:21:17,399 Speaker 1: allowed to retain their primitive relation to the rest of 287 00:21:17,440 --> 00:21:19,919 Speaker 1: the fauna, as tourists. 288 00:21:19,560 --> 00:21:20,720 Speaker 2: Were already showing. 289 00:21:20,880 --> 00:21:25,639 Speaker 1: They wrote, wolves, coyotes, and lions were exceedingly interesting to 290 00:21:25,720 --> 00:21:30,879 Speaker 1: part visitors. Wasn't a complete nature? What preserving nature in 291 00:21:30,960 --> 00:21:38,080 Speaker 1: the parks intended offering predators permanent refuge in America's national parks? 292 00:21:38,520 --> 00:21:45,880 Speaker 1: Dumbfounded Bureau personnel. New Bureau Director Paul Reddington was incredulous 293 00:21:46,720 --> 00:21:51,199 Speaker 1: we faced the opposition. He told his employees of those 294 00:21:51,359 --> 00:21:55,840 Speaker 1: who want to see the mountain lion, the wolf, the coyote, 295 00:21:56,080 --> 00:22:01,560 Speaker 1: and the bobcat actually perpetuated as part of the wildlife 296 00:22:01,600 --> 00:22:09,959 Speaker 1: of the country. One of the scientists keenly interested in 297 00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:14,240 Speaker 1: this debate had published an essay he called the Varmit Question, 298 00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:17,600 Speaker 1: heaping praise on the Bureau when he was just out 299 00:22:17,600 --> 00:22:22,320 Speaker 1: of Yale. So Aldo Leopold was not a vocal critic 300 00:22:22,480 --> 00:22:27,040 Speaker 1: of the Bureau as the wolf debate Royal Science, but 301 00:22:27,160 --> 00:22:32,320 Speaker 1: as conference chairman of the American Game Protection Association's meeting 302 00:22:32,440 --> 00:22:38,520 Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty eight. Leopold's position about predators was obviously evolving. 303 00:22:39,400 --> 00:22:47,040 Speaker 1: No public agencies should ever control predators without substantial scientific research. First, 304 00:22:47,320 --> 00:22:51,600 Speaker 1: he wrote for the association, poisons should only be used 305 00:22:51,640 --> 00:22:57,840 Speaker 1: in emergencies and no predatory species should be exterminated. 306 00:22:57,080 --> 00:22:58,440 Speaker 2: Over large areas. 307 00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:04,960 Speaker 1: Now, as professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin, 308 00:23:05,359 --> 00:23:10,480 Speaker 1: Leopold dropped more deeply into ecology the field worried critics 309 00:23:10,520 --> 00:23:15,360 Speaker 1: were already calling the subversive science. One of the issues 310 00:23:15,560 --> 00:23:20,160 Speaker 1: he particularly studied was the response of nature to predator removal. 311 00:23:21,480 --> 00:23:24,960 Speaker 1: The nineteen twenties witnessed the rise of a new meme 312 00:23:25,240 --> 00:23:30,600 Speaker 1: to describe a new natural phenomenon. The meme word was eruption, 313 00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:35,679 Speaker 1: and it referred to a sudden ungulate population explosion that 314 00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:41,160 Speaker 1: caused herds to eat themselves out of forage and then crash. Spectacularly, 315 00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:47,800 Speaker 1: the cause effect seemed straightforward. The famous Kaibab eruption on 316 00:23:47,880 --> 00:23:51,160 Speaker 1: the north rim of the Grand Canyon was preceded by 317 00:23:51,240 --> 00:23:55,800 Speaker 1: bureau hunters erasing thirty wolves, seven hundred and eighty one 318 00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:59,920 Speaker 1: mountain lions, and five thousand coyotes from the north rim. 319 00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:05,680 Speaker 1: The resident mule deer then exploded from four thousand animals 320 00:24:05,720 --> 00:24:10,160 Speaker 1: to one hundred thousand, leading to a catastrophic die off. 321 00:24:11,040 --> 00:24:17,359 Speaker 1: It made Kaibab a national story. Eruptions became a moral 322 00:24:17,560 --> 00:24:22,399 Speaker 1: that wouldn't go away. With wolves vanishing, deer and ilk 323 00:24:22,600 --> 00:24:27,960 Speaker 1: experienced crazy population oscillations somewhere in the country almost every year. 324 00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:32,439 Speaker 1: Something in nature obviously was a miss. Leopold would go 325 00:24:32,520 --> 00:24:36,119 Speaker 1: on to do a study of eruptions, finding reports of 326 00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:40,200 Speaker 1: only two of them before nineteen hundred, but a whopping 327 00:24:40,480 --> 00:24:44,960 Speaker 1: forty two between nineteen hundred and nineteen forty five, the 328 00:24:45,119 --> 00:24:51,080 Speaker 1: number rising sharply after nineteen twenty. Eruptions seemed to supply 329 00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:57,720 Speaker 1: evidence for the so called Latka Volterra equations, ecological models 330 00:24:57,760 --> 00:25:03,000 Speaker 1: of how prey and their predators follow an oscillating algorithm 331 00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:07,240 Speaker 1: of rising and falling populations in harmony with one another. 332 00:25:08,200 --> 00:25:11,000 Speaker 1: But the inertia of the wolf war was now an 333 00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:16,120 Speaker 1: unstoppable undertow in America. The Bureau's move was to go 334 00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:19,400 Speaker 1: to the American public with a series of canned articles 335 00:25:19,560 --> 00:25:24,200 Speaker 1: attend to those lauding the g men, hunting crime celebrities 336 00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:30,600 Speaker 1: like Al Capone and John Dillinger, US agents stock desperadoes 337 00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:32,199 Speaker 1: of the animal world. 338 00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:34,640 Speaker 2: The headlines of those stories read. 339 00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:41,600 Speaker 1: There still had been no science to study the larger 340 00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:45,800 Speaker 1: role of wolves and predators in American nature, but by 341 00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:49,480 Speaker 1: the nineteen forties that was finally about to change. The 342 00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:53,840 Speaker 1: two Minnesota brothers O Loss and Adolph Murray were soon 343 00:25:53,880 --> 00:25:59,000 Speaker 1: to become legendary figures in American conservation. Having done landmark 344 00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:02,800 Speaker 1: studies on la in Jackson Hole and on the porcupine 345 00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:07,040 Speaker 1: cariboo heard in Alaska, O Loss would conduct a game 346 00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:10,639 Speaker 1: changing study of coyotes and Jackson Hole, which appeared in 347 00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:16,359 Speaker 1: print in nineteen thirty five. Brother Adolph Mury's own ecology 348 00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:21,240 Speaker 1: of the Coyote and the Yellowstone Saw print in nineteen forty. 349 00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:24,439 Speaker 1: Both works concluded that far from being arch predators that 350 00:26:24,520 --> 00:26:28,600 Speaker 1: deserved extermination, coyotes produced actions in the world that were 351 00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:33,960 Speaker 1: virtually all either beneficial to humans or neutral. The Muri 352 00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:39,520 Speaker 1: brothers would become famous as ethical researchers who followed their evidence. 353 00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:43,800 Speaker 1: Unfortunately for the Bureau now renamed the US Fish and 354 00:26:43,800 --> 00:26:47,879 Speaker 1: Wildlife Service, the Muri brothers work did not lead to 355 00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:53,280 Speaker 1: the conclusions it hoped for wolves either. By nineteen forty, 356 00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:57,679 Speaker 1: Mount McKinley in Alaska was the only American park that 357 00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:03,200 Speaker 1: still had wolves. For centuries of unexamined wolf killing, perhaps 358 00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:06,359 Speaker 1: it was time to figure out something about wolf ecology. 359 00:27:07,280 --> 00:27:11,040 Speaker 1: So in nineteen thirty nine Muri went to Alaska and 360 00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:17,080 Speaker 1: spent three years engaged in the unthinkable, actually studying wolves 361 00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:19,399 Speaker 1: interacting among themselves and. 362 00:27:19,280 --> 00:27:20,040 Speaker 2: With their prey. 363 00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:25,480 Speaker 1: It was arduous, Murray said, he walked seventeen hundred miles 364 00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:29,359 Speaker 1: the first year, but everyone who reads his classic The 365 00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:33,040 Speaker 1: Wolves of Mount McKinley can't help but thrill to his 366 00:27:33,119 --> 00:27:38,280 Speaker 1: excitement at studying the mythic animal Americans had reflexively tried 367 00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:43,919 Speaker 1: to exterminate. After three years in Alaska, Muriy understood what 368 00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:48,640 Speaker 1: the Bureau had been too arrogant or myopic to see. 369 00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:56,000 Speaker 1: Wolf prey relationships clearly were ancient, predating Europeans by thousands 370 00:27:56,080 --> 00:28:00,399 Speaker 1: or maybe millions of years. Natural selection had long sorted 371 00:28:00,440 --> 00:28:05,560 Speaker 1: out the details. Yes, wolves and coyotes ate prong horned fawns, 372 00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:09,520 Speaker 1: so prong horns had evolved a solution. They gave birth 373 00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:11,959 Speaker 1: to twins, an air and a spare. 374 00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:13,200 Speaker 2: Yes. 375 00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:17,000 Speaker 1: Wolves preyed on doll sheep and cariboo, but they caught 376 00:28:17,080 --> 00:28:21,240 Speaker 1: the very young and the very old. Wolves held sheep 377 00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:25,040 Speaker 1: numbers in check and kept them from overgrazing their mountains, 378 00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:30,159 Speaker 1: rather than destroying their prey. Wolf predation probably has a 379 00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:35,560 Speaker 1: salutary effect on the sheep as a species. Muir wrote, 380 00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:39,840 Speaker 1: wolves did kill Caribou calves, but as Muir studied the relationship, 381 00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:43,440 Speaker 1: he realized that Cariboo herds are no doubt adjusted to 382 00:28:43,520 --> 00:28:45,400 Speaker 1: the presence and pressure. 383 00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:45,680 Speaker 2: Of the wolf. 384 00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:50,800 Speaker 1: These things were ancient. They predated all humans in America. 385 00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:55,200 Speaker 1: Muriy did one other thing readers of his book never forgot. 386 00:28:55,880 --> 00:29:02,000 Speaker 1: He brought the wolves he studied to life as individuals. Dandy, Robber, Mask, 387 00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:08,760 Speaker 1: and Grandpa had unique personalities. Pact members seemed affectionate and 388 00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:12,520 Speaker 1: caring of one another. These were not the wolves old 389 00:29:12,560 --> 00:29:15,920 Speaker 1: worlders feared from the animals they had brought ashore. They 390 00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:19,760 Speaker 1: weren't the wolves the bureau's public relations articles implied were 391 00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:23,200 Speaker 1: animal gangsters. They were the wolves that had been in 392 00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:29,000 Speaker 1: North America all along. The Wolves of Mount McKinley was 393 00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:34,520 Speaker 1: the country's first entree into a modern sensibility about wolves 394 00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:39,720 Speaker 1: and predators built on science generally, and once the blindfold 395 00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:43,600 Speaker 1: was off, it was hard for the scientifically literate, ever 396 00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:47,360 Speaker 1: to put it on again. At almost the same time 397 00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:52,480 Speaker 1: Yuri's book came out, Old Bureau veterans Stanley Young and E. A. 398 00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:58,080 Speaker 1: Goldman finally published their two volume The Wolves of North America, 399 00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:02,400 Speaker 1: a book that has manned the wolf section of every 400 00:30:02,520 --> 00:30:07,600 Speaker 1: American library for almost a century now. They proudly pointed 401 00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:11,920 Speaker 1: out that by the nineteen forties, from New England to Virginia, 402 00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:16,840 Speaker 1: wolves were now entirely gone. The Rocky Mountain States, with 403 00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:19,200 Speaker 1: all their public lands, barely held. 404 00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:20,000 Speaker 2: One hundred wolves. 405 00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:24,120 Speaker 1: California's last wolves are down to fewer than fifty. There 406 00:30:24,120 --> 00:30:28,120 Speaker 1: were only sixty Mexican wolves left in the Southwest. 407 00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:29,640 Speaker 2: As World War two ended. 408 00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:32,760 Speaker 1: The only places in the lower forty eighth that still 409 00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:37,160 Speaker 1: had sizable populations were the Upper Great Lakes Country with 410 00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:41,600 Speaker 1: fourteen hundred wolves and the mid South with some four 411 00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:47,240 Speaker 1: hundred and fifty red wolves. Young and Goldman were unrepentant 412 00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:50,240 Speaker 1: wolf assassins. They laid out their book like it was 413 00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:54,480 Speaker 1: a military campaign against Germany or Japan, full of accounts 414 00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:59,400 Speaker 1: of wolf depredations, photos of wolfkilt. Stock claims that game 415 00:30:59,520 --> 00:31:04,000 Speaker 1: was disappear because of wolves. They events dismayed that stock 416 00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:08,760 Speaker 1: raising Hispanic settlers in the Southwest in California had never 417 00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:13,120 Speaker 1: attempted predator control, since the authors claimed wolves had slowed 418 00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:17,520 Speaker 1: Anglo American settlement of the continent by decades. The one 419 00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:23,200 Speaker 1: atrocity they couldn't level against America's wolves were attacks on humans. 420 00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:26,120 Speaker 1: Not that they didn't look hard for some example, but 421 00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:31,520 Speaker 1: they simply couldn't find one. In a case of future meat. 422 00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:37,000 Speaker 1: Past Aldo Leopold reviewed The Wolves of North America in 423 00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:41,680 Speaker 1: nineteen forty five. How could it be, he wondered, that 424 00:31:41,800 --> 00:31:47,160 Speaker 1: Young and Goldman didn't acknowledge the deep history of their subject. 425 00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:50,720 Speaker 1: If wolves were as destructive of force as they implied 426 00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:54,160 Speaker 1: in their book, how had the continent's wolves failed to 427 00:31:54,280 --> 00:31:59,120 Speaker 1: wipe out its own mammalian food supply before Europeans ever 428 00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:05,400 Speaker 1: arrived last Leopold had visited Europe and studied its wildlife policies, 429 00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:09,240 Speaker 1: so he knew the bureau men never questioned the Old 430 00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:13,600 Speaker 1: World model. But European countries had nothing comparable to the 431 00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:18,080 Speaker 1: vast wild public lands Americans had set aside, and their 432 00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:23,240 Speaker 1: model was based on folk tradition established long before ecology 433 00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:28,040 Speaker 1: was born that simply was not as Leopold said scientific 434 00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:33,480 Speaker 1: the new Wolf book reflected the naturalists of the past 435 00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:39,440 Speaker 1: rather than the wildlife ecologists of today. Leopold wrote ouch. 436 00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:46,560 Speaker 1: In nineteen forty nine, America's star biologists finally published the 437 00:32:46,600 --> 00:32:49,040 Speaker 1: book of his that would set the country on its 438 00:32:49,120 --> 00:32:50,160 Speaker 1: modern path. 439 00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:52,120 Speaker 2: Of wolf recovery and restoration. 440 00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:58,040 Speaker 1: Leopold's A Sand County Almanac became both a bestseller and 441 00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:03,040 Speaker 1: a philosophical foundation for the ecology movement sweeping America as 442 00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:07,120 Speaker 1: part of the sixties cultural revolution. Where damn lucky he 443 00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:09,800 Speaker 1: got it out. He died of a heart attack battling 444 00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:13,400 Speaker 1: a grass fire that very year. Because A Sand County 445 00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:18,240 Speaker 1: Almanac changed the world In vivid, poetic passages, Leopold's book 446 00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:21,160 Speaker 1: introduced us to the insights of a mind that attract 447 00:33:21,440 --> 00:33:25,840 Speaker 1: every breakthrough in ecology. By then, he had concluded that 448 00:33:25,920 --> 00:33:30,360 Speaker 1: the old balance of nature idea actually lacked the flexibility 449 00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:34,280 Speaker 1: to account for a natural world that was endlessly changing. 450 00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:39,200 Speaker 1: He was now thinking of natural settings as interlink communities 451 00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:40,560 Speaker 1: of species. 452 00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:41,720 Speaker 2: With predators at the top. 453 00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:48,600 Speaker 1: We know those communities today as ecosystems. Leopold's ideas were 454 00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:53,320 Speaker 1: epiphanies for many For one, he laid out an ecological 455 00:33:53,400 --> 00:33:58,280 Speaker 1: philosophy for living he called the land ethic that included 456 00:33:58,400 --> 00:34:03,120 Speaker 1: his Golden rule of ecology. A thing is right when 457 00:34:03,120 --> 00:34:07,719 Speaker 1: it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of 458 00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:12,279 Speaker 1: the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. 459 00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:16,759 Speaker 1: The genius that built the United States had always been 460 00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:21,600 Speaker 1: self interest. Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill had hit 461 00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:26,279 Speaker 1: on a trade fundamental to our evolution, But Leopold did 462 00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:30,960 Speaker 1: not say an act was right when it preserved humanity 463 00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:35,560 Speaker 1: or economics. Instead, he called on readers to think of 464 00:34:35,640 --> 00:34:39,640 Speaker 1: the innate rights, among them the simple right to exist 465 00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:44,600 Speaker 1: of other species in an earthly community that included us. 466 00:34:45,640 --> 00:34:53,240 Speaker 1: Leopold's admirers called his new idea biocentrism. A San County 467 00:34:53,239 --> 00:34:59,080 Speaker 1: Almanac's most unforgettable scene was Leopold's own myth of personal redemption. 468 00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:04,120 Speaker 1: The chapter titled Thinking Like a Mountain was not merely 469 00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:07,280 Speaker 1: a poetic rendering of his view that the United States 470 00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:12,000 Speaker 1: had an opportunity to create a distinctively American policy towards 471 00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:15,920 Speaker 1: nature for readers soon to be immersed in painful soul 472 00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:21,040 Speaker 1: searching about so many unexamined assumptions in American life. Leopold's 473 00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:25,719 Speaker 1: story of shooting a wolf, watching the green fire die 474 00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:29,960 Speaker 1: in its eyes, and realizing what a miscalculation he had 475 00:35:30,040 --> 00:35:35,040 Speaker 1: made about the ancient centrality of predators in the biotic community, 476 00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:38,600 Speaker 1: offered America a whole new trajectory. 477 00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:43,839 Speaker 2: We were wrong, I was wrong, history said, but it's 478 00:35:43,880 --> 00:35:44,479 Speaker 2: not too late. 479 00:35:46,120 --> 00:35:49,400 Speaker 1: Ever since a Sand County Almanac fell into the hands 480 00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:53,160 Speaker 1: of readers, there has been a quiet murmur of disbelief 481 00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:58,200 Speaker 1: from some about whether its most stirring scene really happened. 482 00:35:59,160 --> 00:36:03,680 Speaker 1: Did Leopold actually shoot a wolf and experience an ecological 483 00:36:03,719 --> 00:36:08,320 Speaker 1: epiphany as he watched it die? Some fifteen years ago, 484 00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:14,279 Speaker 1: a group of committed fans that included respected Leopold biographer 485 00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:19,800 Speaker 1: Susan Flater determined that indeed the wolf story was factual. 486 00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:23,839 Speaker 1: In nineteen oh nine, early in his career as a 487 00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:28,120 Speaker 1: forester in the Southwest, Leopold was surveying the boundaries of 488 00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:33,160 Speaker 1: the Apache National Forest along Arizona's Black River today right 489 00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:37,200 Speaker 1: in the heart of the recovery area for endangered Mexican wolves. 490 00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:40,520 Speaker 1: From a casual mention of the incident in a letter 491 00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:43,840 Speaker 1: to his mother, it seems that one morning he and 492 00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:49,600 Speaker 1: a companion shot a pair of animals Leopold called timberwolves. 493 00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:52,920 Speaker 2: So that part of his story at least now stands 494 00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:55,040 Speaker 2: confirmed as historical fact. 495 00:36:56,440 --> 00:37:01,120 Speaker 1: Whether Leopold's troubled reaction to watching a wolf die and 496 00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:05,600 Speaker 1: grasping the implications happened in nineteen oh nine or far 497 00:37:05,719 --> 00:37:08,759 Speaker 1: later in his life is the part that we can't know. 498 00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:11,040 Speaker 2: But maybe it doesn't matter. 499 00:37:11,800 --> 00:37:15,400 Speaker 1: We do know that Aldo Leopold didn't get to see 500 00:37:15,480 --> 00:37:19,080 Speaker 1: his America began to think like a mountain in his. 501 00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:22,080 Speaker 2: Memorable phrase, but he had pointed us. 502 00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:25,920 Speaker 1: Towards a new understanding and a new destination in our history, 503 00:37:26,600 --> 00:37:30,840 Speaker 1: and in that destination the wolf will return to its ancient, 504 00:37:31,080 --> 00:37:31,880 Speaker 1: rightful place. 505 00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:47,320 Speaker 3: On the comment, So, Dan, in this. 506 00:37:45,800 --> 00:37:51,040 Speaker 4: This episode about wolves, you make the point that ecology, 507 00:37:51,200 --> 00:37:55,560 Speaker 4: you can think of it as a subversive science and 508 00:37:55,640 --> 00:37:59,880 Speaker 4: sort of all the broader implications about thinking thing of 509 00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:03,680 Speaker 4: the natural orial in terms of connections and dependency and 510 00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:05,480 Speaker 4: all that stuff. I wonder if you can kind of 511 00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:10,160 Speaker 4: just begin by explaining ecology and what it meant to 512 00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:14,200 Speaker 4: people at the moment that it sort of had this 513 00:38:14,239 --> 00:38:16,320 Speaker 4: almost like ground shaking effect. 514 00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:21,480 Speaker 1: Yeah, The Ecological Society of America dates in nineteen fifteen 515 00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:30,360 Speaker 1: and it. Ecology obviously comes out of the Darwinian Revolution. 516 00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:34,279 Speaker 1: In fact, within about three or four years of the 517 00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:37,960 Speaker 1: publication of On the Origin of Species in eighteen fifty nine, 518 00:38:38,840 --> 00:38:43,799 Speaker 1: a German scientist was calling for a new science that 519 00:38:44,840 --> 00:38:49,960 Speaker 1: applied the insights of Darwin's on the Origin of Species, 520 00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:54,600 Speaker 1: and he called it. He used a Greek term that 521 00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:58,839 Speaker 1: refers in fact to communities, and he called it ecology. 522 00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:02,040 Speaker 1: The United States, as I said, we don't get an 523 00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:07,799 Speaker 1: ecological society of ecologists until nineteen fifteen, although there are 524 00:39:07,880 --> 00:39:10,799 Speaker 1: already in that first Meetia three hundred and seven of them. 525 00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:15,000 Speaker 1: So they are already three hundred practicing ecologists in the 526 00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:19,160 Speaker 1: United States by that time. And the reason this is 527 00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:23,520 Speaker 1: important in this discussion of wolves, and this is the 528 00:39:23,560 --> 00:39:27,520 Speaker 1: story of wolves. I mean, I talked a few episodes 529 00:39:27,920 --> 00:39:31,480 Speaker 1: ago about wolves in the West in the nineteenth century, 530 00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:37,759 Speaker 1: and this is the story essentially of how we came 531 00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:43,719 Speaker 1: to understand the role of wolves in American ecological life. 532 00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:46,520 Speaker 1: And so if you're trying to figure out, for an instance, 533 00:39:46,719 --> 00:39:50,920 Speaker 1: why there is in the modern West this movement to 534 00:39:52,360 --> 00:40:01,120 Speaker 1: restore wolves to Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, now Colorado, obviously, 535 00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:04,680 Speaker 1: and California has wolves now, and so do the Pacific 536 00:40:04,719 --> 00:40:09,640 Speaker 1: Northwest States. The reason this has become a thing in 537 00:40:09,680 --> 00:40:14,880 Speaker 1: our time is because of these developments in science that 538 00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:18,799 Speaker 1: I try to describe in this particular episode. This is 539 00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:22,839 Speaker 1: how and why it happens that in our time we're 540 00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:27,600 Speaker 1: making the attempt to recover wolves. The problem, of course, 541 00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:31,760 Speaker 1: was that during the time when science is discovering the 542 00:40:31,880 --> 00:40:35,960 Speaker 1: ancient and extremely important role wolves have always played in 543 00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:41,400 Speaker 1: North American history, we are still employing the old folk 544 00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:46,200 Speaker 1: tradition out of the old world, which had been telling 545 00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:50,960 Speaker 1: us for hundreds of years, you're supposed to kill every 546 00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:57,000 Speaker 1: predator that exists. Predators are evil, predators may even be satanic. 547 00:40:57,400 --> 00:41:00,640 Speaker 1: This is what Adam and Eve confront when they had 548 00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:03,360 Speaker 1: to leave the Garden of Eden. They had to confront predators. 549 00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:07,319 Speaker 1: So we need to cleanse the world of predators. And 550 00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:11,840 Speaker 1: this kind of thinking was imported to the United States, obviously, 551 00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:16,440 Speaker 1: without any kind of scientific background whatsoever. And so we're 552 00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:21,960 Speaker 1: still as a country and a government agency that I 553 00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:25,279 Speaker 1: talk about here, the Bureau of Biological Survey, is committed 554 00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:29,640 Speaker 1: to it. On behalf of particularly the livestock industry, we're 555 00:41:29,680 --> 00:41:32,800 Speaker 1: still trying to wipe out every wolf that roams across 556 00:41:32,880 --> 00:41:35,840 Speaker 1: North America. And this is happening at the same time 557 00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:40,520 Speaker 1: that the science of ecology, the subversive science, is beginning 558 00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:43,120 Speaker 1: to describe for us the role that these animals have 559 00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:47,200 Speaker 1: been playing in North American history for time immemorial. And 560 00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:54,719 Speaker 1: so that puts at odds these two really powerful forces 561 00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:59,520 Speaker 1: science on the one hand and this old folk tradition 562 00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:03,040 Speaker 1: on the other, and they battle it out for most 563 00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:06,319 Speaker 1: of the first half of the twentieth century about what's 564 00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:08,680 Speaker 1: going to happen to wolves. And I will say that 565 00:42:08,719 --> 00:42:11,880 Speaker 1: for the most part, for the early part of this story, 566 00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:14,560 Speaker 1: it's the old folk tradition of killing every wolf you 567 00:42:14,600 --> 00:42:20,120 Speaker 1: can kill that prevails. But by the end of the 568 00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:24,560 Speaker 1: period that this script goes to, basically by nineteen fifty, 569 00:42:25,120 --> 00:42:28,520 Speaker 1: we have begun to realize that this is probably a mistake. 570 00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:31,600 Speaker 1: We've made a mistake with this because we haven't known 571 00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:33,040 Speaker 1: enough about how the world has worked. 572 00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:37,319 Speaker 4: Yeah, and you tell the story of wolves in the 573 00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:41,080 Speaker 4: twentieth century. One that we just sort of touched on 574 00:42:41,239 --> 00:42:44,760 Speaker 4: is the history of science and changes in scientific thought. 575 00:42:44,840 --> 00:42:49,040 Speaker 4: But then there's another lens that's the history of the 576 00:42:49,080 --> 00:42:56,240 Speaker 4: growing bureaucratic state or administrative state, and thinking about institutions 577 00:42:56,280 --> 00:43:01,840 Speaker 4: and institutional missions and the frogatives for getting funding and 578 00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:04,720 Speaker 4: all these sorts of things like that very much shapes 579 00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:07,080 Speaker 4: the reality on the ground in the West in terms 580 00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:11,319 Speaker 4: of what animals live in places like Montana. And so 581 00:43:12,160 --> 00:43:16,040 Speaker 4: you mentioned earlier in this agency, the Bureau of Biological Survey, 582 00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:18,080 Speaker 4: and I wonder if you can just sort of drill 583 00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:21,120 Speaker 4: down on what it is that the Bureau of Biological 584 00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:23,160 Speaker 4: Survey is up to when it takes on this mission. 585 00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:24,240 Speaker 2: Yeah. 586 00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:28,160 Speaker 1: In my book Well in the World, I spent some 587 00:43:28,200 --> 00:43:31,960 Speaker 1: time talking about the origins of this particular agency and 588 00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:36,279 Speaker 1: what it really is is a government agency founded in 589 00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:40,719 Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties to try to take stock of what 590 00:43:41,520 --> 00:43:47,600 Speaker 1: wildlife is left in America after the destruction of the 591 00:43:47,640 --> 00:43:52,440 Speaker 1: frontier period, and is founded by an ivy leaguer a 592 00:43:52,520 --> 00:44:01,960 Speaker 1: Yale named sa Hart Miriam, and he early on has 593 00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:04,520 Speaker 1: the idea that what he's going to do is to 594 00:44:04,600 --> 00:44:09,680 Speaker 1: send people out his personal appointees, to sort of do 595 00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:12,160 Speaker 1: surveys about what is left. And so it's kind of 596 00:44:12,520 --> 00:44:17,000 Speaker 1: a pure science approach that by the early twentieth century 597 00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:23,480 Speaker 1: is resulting in the biological survey not being able to 598 00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:27,000 Speaker 1: make a good case to Congress for appropriating money for them, 599 00:44:27,040 --> 00:44:30,360 Speaker 1: because Congress is sort of reluctant to appropriate money for 600 00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:32,280 Speaker 1: an agency that's just doing pure science. 601 00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:33,560 Speaker 2: And so what. 602 00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:40,360 Speaker 1: Miriam understands by about nineteen five and he immediately moves 603 00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:43,320 Speaker 1: in the direction of this. Once he gets a good 604 00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:48,440 Speaker 1: grasp of how he's going to have to act to 605 00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:52,360 Speaker 1: make his agency survive, he realizes he's got to find 606 00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:59,400 Speaker 1: a mission that Congress will appropriate money for. And since 607 00:44:59,560 --> 00:45:04,120 Speaker 1: the public lands have left many people in the livestock 608 00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:07,640 Speaker 1: associations in the West convinced that one of the things 609 00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:10,399 Speaker 1: that public lands are doing is to providing a kind 610 00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:14,160 Speaker 1: of breeding They're providing a breeding ground for predators, for 611 00:45:14,280 --> 00:45:19,600 Speaker 1: bears and mountain lions and wolves and coyotes. The livestock associations, 612 00:45:19,600 --> 00:45:22,160 Speaker 1: which have been using bounties for a long time to 613 00:45:22,160 --> 00:45:25,160 Speaker 1: try to control these animals, turn to the government and say, 614 00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:28,120 Speaker 1: you guys should do something about this thing that you've 615 00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:33,880 Speaker 1: screwed up. And Miriam realizes, Okay, this is our new mission. 616 00:45:34,120 --> 00:45:38,200 Speaker 1: We need to make ourselves the solution to the predator problem. 617 00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:41,320 Speaker 1: And that's basically what he does, and at that point 618 00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:46,040 Speaker 1: Congress begins to appropriate an enormous amount of money, I mean, 619 00:45:46,080 --> 00:45:49,000 Speaker 1: to the point where, by the early nineteen thirties they 620 00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:52,719 Speaker 1: give the Biological Survey ten million dollars to try to 621 00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:54,160 Speaker 1: wipe out predators. 622 00:45:54,600 --> 00:45:56,680 Speaker 2: And so this agency. 623 00:45:56,080 --> 00:45:59,400 Speaker 1: That started as a kind of little pure science agency 624 00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:01,520 Speaker 1: to try to figure out what was left at the 625 00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:05,600 Speaker 1: end of the frontier, has now become a major federal 626 00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:10,520 Speaker 1: bureau designed to eliminate as many predators in America as 627 00:46:10,520 --> 00:46:10,959 Speaker 1: they can. 628 00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:16,680 Speaker 4: And once an agency hitches its wagon to an interest 629 00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:19,359 Speaker 4: group like that, with a mission like that, it's very 630 00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:23,320 Speaker 4: hard to reconsider their actions in light of new science. 631 00:46:23,840 --> 00:46:24,800 Speaker 2: It is very hard. 632 00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:29,040 Speaker 1: And so that's where this big conflict emerges, because as 633 00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:34,160 Speaker 1: the ecologists began to discuss this war on predators, that 634 00:46:34,239 --> 00:46:37,360 Speaker 1: the Biological Survey is mounting I mean, and they're carrying 635 00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:42,160 Speaker 1: it out at every level. Vernon Bailey, who is Wolf Bailey, 636 00:46:42,200 --> 00:46:45,719 Speaker 1: as Teddy Roosevelt calls him, who's the expert on how 637 00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:48,040 Speaker 1: to kill wolves, how to find their dans, how to 638 00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:52,239 Speaker 1: kill puppies, I mean, even goes to Yellowstone and Glacier 639 00:46:52,640 --> 00:46:55,799 Speaker 1: and teaches the managers there, here's how you. 640 00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:56,800 Speaker 2: Get rid of your wolves. 641 00:46:56,800 --> 00:47:00,000 Speaker 1: So that that's why in the nineteen twenties we basically 642 00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:03,719 Speaker 1: eradicate all the wolves in Yellowstone National Park, all the 643 00:47:03,719 --> 00:47:07,160 Speaker 1: wolves that are in Glacier, I mean, one place after 644 00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:10,640 Speaker 1: another we are figuring out, and of course the way 645 00:47:10,680 --> 00:47:14,600 Speaker 1: they're doing it primarily is poisoning them with strychnine, because 646 00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:19,439 Speaker 1: these wolf killers have realized that the way to get 647 00:47:19,560 --> 00:47:23,560 Speaker 1: rid of mass numbers of wolves is to poison them, 648 00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:29,719 Speaker 1: because wolves in particular have an Achilles heel, and it's 649 00:47:30,239 --> 00:47:36,640 Speaker 1: their emotional attachment to their families, their pups, and their mates. 650 00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:38,880 Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things I mentioned in this 651 00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:44,520 Speaker 1: particular script is as I did earlier, is that we've 652 00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:48,000 Speaker 1: got right now in the recent nineteen twenty five or 653 00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:53,399 Speaker 1: twenty twenty five neuroscience meeting, studies being done on the 654 00:47:53,640 --> 00:47:59,080 Speaker 1: chemical expressions of grief in wild canids from losing their mates. 655 00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:03,880 Speaker 1: And that's what these hunters realize, just by experience in 656 00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:08,040 Speaker 1: the teens and twenties. If you can kill one animal 657 00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:11,480 Speaker 1: out of a wolf pack and then bait your sets, 658 00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:14,560 Speaker 1: your poison sets with the sin of that animal, you 659 00:48:14,600 --> 00:48:17,600 Speaker 1: can kill every single animal in the pack, one after 660 00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:20,840 Speaker 1: the other. And that's why wolves turn out to be 661 00:48:21,480 --> 00:48:25,840 Speaker 1: relatively easy to get rid of with poison. It's because 662 00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:30,600 Speaker 1: of their particular binding affection to their mates and to 663 00:48:30,719 --> 00:48:34,520 Speaker 1: their pubs. So, I mean, by the middle nineteen twenties, 664 00:48:35,239 --> 00:48:38,480 Speaker 1: the Bureau Biological Survey has put out three and a 665 00:48:38,560 --> 00:48:42,919 Speaker 1: half million poison baits across mostly the West, but other 666 00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:46,320 Speaker 1: parts of the country too, with the goal of wiping 667 00:48:46,320 --> 00:48:47,439 Speaker 1: wolves completely out. 668 00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:55,120 Speaker 4: And when you're describing this conflict, there's sort of one 669 00:48:55,160 --> 00:49:01,279 Speaker 4: individual who embodies it, you know, personally, and that's Aldo Leopold, right, 670 00:49:02,239 --> 00:49:08,240 Speaker 4: who I think is underappreciated as a as a thinker 671 00:49:08,320 --> 00:49:13,040 Speaker 4: about the natural environment, right, And I mean he's really 672 00:49:13,080 --> 00:49:15,960 Speaker 4: sort of an intellect. He has profound intellectual influence on 673 00:49:16,040 --> 00:49:19,520 Speaker 4: how we view the natural world today. But you know, 674 00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:23,360 Speaker 4: he starts out as a guy in public service and 675 00:49:23,400 --> 00:49:27,320 Speaker 4: he's a boots on the ground, you know, public land manager, 676 00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:30,920 Speaker 4: and he's an ecologist, and he undergoes this sort of. 677 00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:35,160 Speaker 2: Conversion. Yeah, as it were. 678 00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:38,759 Speaker 4: That that I think is like it's easy to understand 679 00:49:38,800 --> 00:49:41,000 Speaker 4: the bigger story when you sort of look at it 680 00:49:41,080 --> 00:49:42,120 Speaker 4: through Louipold's eyes. 681 00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:45,640 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's a good way to look at Elder Leopold, 682 00:49:45,640 --> 00:49:52,480 Speaker 1: because Aldo Leopold in his lifetime goes from expressing the 683 00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:57,680 Speaker 1: sort of folk sentiment of the more wolves, the more 684 00:49:57,840 --> 00:50:02,360 Speaker 1: predators you killed, the better it is for game, for 685 00:50:03,200 --> 00:50:10,080 Speaker 1: livestock herders to becoming the person who, by the middle 686 00:50:10,080 --> 00:50:14,840 Speaker 1: of the twentieth century sets up what happens in the 687 00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:19,760 Speaker 1: last half of the century, where after the Endangered Species 688 00:50:19,920 --> 00:50:22,960 Speaker 1: Act has passed, we not only proclaim various species of 689 00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:27,600 Speaker 1: wolves to be endangered, but under the recovery provisions of 690 00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:32,080 Speaker 1: that act, we start recovering them. So as Aldo Leopold, 691 00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:35,560 Speaker 1: that's a good way of thinking of him. He starts, 692 00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:37,399 Speaker 1: I mean, he writes an article when he's a young 693 00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:42,080 Speaker 1: man called the Varmit Question, where he praises the Bureau 694 00:50:41,719 --> 00:50:47,000 Speaker 1: of Biological Survey and their wolf war. But by the 695 00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:52,960 Speaker 1: nineteen teens and twenties you can begin to track the 696 00:50:53,120 --> 00:50:56,960 Speaker 1: changes in his attitudes. He becomes a professor of ecology 697 00:50:57,000 --> 00:51:01,279 Speaker 1: at the University of Wisconsin, a very famous public intellectual. 698 00:51:02,520 --> 00:51:06,319 Speaker 1: Even by the nineteen thirties, but you can see that 699 00:51:06,480 --> 00:51:09,040 Speaker 1: his opinions are changing, and one of the things that 700 00:51:09,480 --> 00:51:12,520 Speaker 1: changes them is that he does this study of these 701 00:51:13,600 --> 00:51:17,840 Speaker 1: ungulate eruptions that are taking place in early twentieth century America. 702 00:51:17,880 --> 00:51:20,120 Speaker 1: And I mean I talked about this in the script, 703 00:51:20,160 --> 00:51:22,799 Speaker 1: so I'll just be brief about it. But what was 704 00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:27,359 Speaker 1: happening was that as predators are being removed across the 705 00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:30,400 Speaker 1: American landscape, we were starting to get and this happened 706 00:51:30,440 --> 00:51:32,600 Speaker 1: all over the country. I mean, it didn't happen just 707 00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:35,880 Speaker 1: in the West. It happened in places like Pennsylvania, South Carolina. 708 00:51:36,239 --> 00:51:40,680 Speaker 1: You were getting these huge eruptions, the huge growth in 709 00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:47,719 Speaker 1: populations of mule, deer, whitetailed deer, elk, moose, and then 710 00:51:47,880 --> 00:51:52,279 Speaker 1: they would outstrip their food supply and there would be 711 00:51:52,360 --> 00:51:57,439 Speaker 1: this tremendous population crash where thousands of animals would die 712 00:51:57,760 --> 00:52:00,960 Speaker 1: in the winters for lack of food. They had browsed 713 00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:03,160 Speaker 1: the brows line too high to be able to reach. 714 00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:06,800 Speaker 1: And Leopold decided he was going to do a historical 715 00:52:06,840 --> 00:52:08,680 Speaker 1: study of this. So you want to know how many 716 00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:11,480 Speaker 1: of these eruptions had happened in the nineteenth century. He 717 00:52:11,520 --> 00:52:15,440 Speaker 1: was able to find two, but he found forty five 718 00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:19,359 Speaker 1: of them that it happened after nineteen hundred, when we 719 00:52:19,680 --> 00:52:23,239 Speaker 1: began to have success in removing predators, and so it 720 00:52:23,320 --> 00:52:27,600 Speaker 1: made him, it gave him an understanding of what the 721 00:52:27,719 --> 00:52:33,759 Speaker 1: relationship was between predators and their prey. And then he 722 00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:37,000 Speaker 1: goes the full distance, of course, and sort of not 723 00:52:37,040 --> 00:52:42,080 Speaker 1: only coming to realize how important wolves are in America, 724 00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:45,879 Speaker 1: to encouraging us to begin to restore them. 725 00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:50,080 Speaker 4: Well, Dan, I'm sure there's more to say about wolves, 726 00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:53,000 Speaker 4: probably more than can be said, but we'll leave it there. 727 00:52:53,760 --> 00:53:05,839 Speaker 1: There'll be more wolves to come, at least one more reapon. Indeed, 728 00:53:05,480 --> 00:53:05,520 Speaker 1: U