Speaker 1: This is a me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening to us,
Speaker 1: you can't predict anything presented by First Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear.
Speaker 1: For every hunt, First Light, Go farther, stay longer. All right, everybody,
Speaker 1: we're gonna dig deep on um. We're gonna dig deep
Speaker 1: on wolverines today. We've got a lot of stuff to cover,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna get way into wolverines with Rebecca Waters.
Speaker 1: Is that right, Yes, Director of the Wolverine Foundation. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start things off by fact checking Yanni. Do you
Speaker 1: believe Rebecca? Do you believe that Yanni believes that a
Speaker 1: wolverine hang out with his dad? Oh, and then one day,
Speaker 1: how's it going? One day he kicks his dad's ass.
Speaker 1: They're getting a big getting a big fight, and they're
Speaker 1: basically like, fight, duke it out. He was saying that,
Speaker 1: how it's a lot like people like you're raised by
Speaker 1: your dad, eventually getting a giant fight, duke it out,
Speaker 1: and then you separate ways, never to talk again. Do
Speaker 1: I believe that he believes that? No? No No, no, no no, No,
Speaker 1: do you know do you believe that's true about wolverines?
Speaker 1: Do I believe that it's true? Um? I think so
Speaker 1: that they will actually separate at a certain point, Yeah,
Speaker 1: from their dad, from their from their parents. Yes. Do
Speaker 1: you know if it's precipitated by a large fight. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like a father son thing. Oh
Speaker 1: you know, Um, I don't. I don't know that that
Speaker 1: that we have recorded instances of father son fights like that,
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure, you know, I don't know whether
Speaker 1: I'm believing it or not believing it makes it true.
Speaker 1: It's just I can tell you that we've never actually
Speaker 1: observed that happening. But we have observed young male wolverines
Speaker 1: coming into the territory of an older male wolverine and
Speaker 1: getting into a big fight with them and kicking them out.
Speaker 1: So maybe kicking the old man out, kicking the old
Speaker 1: man out, but maybe not your dad, you know, like,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just some random old man who you don't like. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's like everybody knows the part about Oedipus about what
Speaker 1: he happens with his mom, but they don't know what
Speaker 1: happens with his dad. Do you know, I can't remember, okay,
Speaker 1: Oedipus doesn't Oedipus the edible complex. Oedipus doesn't know that
Speaker 1: he's He doesn't. He doesn't know that he like he's
Speaker 1: not raised by his parents, but he thinks he's raised
Speaker 1: by his parents. He does know he's adopted. And he
Speaker 1: goes to like a witch doctor, and the witch doctor says,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you your future. What are you? What are
Speaker 1: you smirking about? And he goes to a witch doctor?
Speaker 1: What do you think? I love? He went to se
Speaker 1: yes because I love the modernized er. He goes to
Speaker 1: a same same witch doctor. The seer says, here's here's
Speaker 1: your fortune, here's your what's the word. I'm looking for
Speaker 1: your future? Here's your future. You're gonna kill your dad
Speaker 1: and marry your mom. So he says, bet not. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna run away, far away. But he doesn't know
Speaker 1: he's adopted. Where does he wind up in another town?
Speaker 1: What's he do? Kills his dad, marries his mom. I
Speaker 1: don't know why that wolverine story made me think of that.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna get into all We're gonna get into
Speaker 1: um way into wolverines. I've been looking forward to this
Speaker 1: for a long time. We'll sitting crimin ile sitting talk
Speaker 1: about what would be the best animal to have. Someone
Speaker 1: that knows a lot about said animal coming right, and
Speaker 1: we'll we'll we'll reject animals. What do we reject? Recently?
Speaker 1: Wasn't sexy enough for us? Well, we hit Mountain lions
Speaker 1: a bunch. I was like, do you want panther jaguar?
Speaker 1: And you were like a little less, Um, what was
Speaker 1: the one that he's too? Well? I was into. You
Speaker 1: were like that's just not sexy enough. Um, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: wanted to do one like on Marmots or something like that.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I don't think it was Marmots.
Speaker 1: We should just go through the mart No. Maybe, no,
Speaker 1: I think it was Martin. No, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I think it was No. I think you were like
Speaker 1: in shaping now shopping him. We got we're thinking about beavers.
Speaker 1: Beaver a beaver biologist. No, she's a historian. While I
Speaker 1: was in in Nashville at the Turkey convention that there's
Speaker 1: some people pointing their fingers directly at the fisher cat
Speaker 1: in Maine as to why the turkey populations are declining there.
Speaker 1: I'll buy it there's a lot Chamber. Mike Chamber said, no,
Speaker 1: he doesn't think so. Um Man, I'll report right now.
Speaker 1: I was telling you guys, I'm covered in poison ivy,
Speaker 1: which I was telling Brodi I didn't get real serious
Speaker 1: about climate change now because to get poison ivy in
Speaker 1: Michigan in February is unheard of. Yeah, I wish we
Speaker 1: could drow up a visual for people. It's bad. And
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Let me tell you. Yeah, well, zones,
Speaker 1: So it's clearing up on my face. That's getting better here.
Speaker 1: Oh that looks like the should I have my hands
Speaker 1: the other week? Yeah, but it's not. So here's the deal.
Speaker 1: We're hunting squirrels and zuck guy zuck. He for some
Speaker 1: reason he had what he was like admiring the haft
Speaker 1: of a big fox squirrel okay, which he called which
Speaker 1: it annoys the hell out of me. He calls him
Speaker 1: red squirrels, which confuses everybody because that's another word for
Speaker 1: a pine squirrels. No one knows anybody's talking about that.
Speaker 1: They don't have pies. I know they're like, you guys
Speaker 1: call them something else. But down here, these big old
Speaker 1: red squirrels, I'm like yeah, but they're not. They're fox
Speaker 1: squirrels anyways, So he lays one. He had one laid
Speaker 1: like on his arm, you know, and he gets he
Speaker 1: I I have I'm like a twenty four hour delay
Speaker 1: on poison ivy. But he gets it fast and he's like, man,
Speaker 1: that's poison ivvy on my arm. I'm like, that can't
Speaker 1: be poison ivy. He's like, man, I've had poison ivy
Speaker 1: enough times. No, because they got on him and he
Speaker 1: transferred from the squirrel because here's what he was telling me,
Speaker 1: he's seen it that he sees this happen, you know,
Speaker 1: the vines. So they're nesting, they're getting ready to nest
Speaker 1: right now. No, he says, they gather that. Oh, they
Speaker 1: gather that and line their nests with it this time
Speaker 1: of year. So those suckers must be Oh yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're immune. So clean and squirrels, man, well did
Speaker 1: you see it coming? Nothing like this has ever happened. Finally,
Speaker 1: today it was the first day I haven't developed new spots. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My wife thinks I'm like a lapper. I'm like, dude,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work like that, you know. My question is, um, like,
Speaker 1: did you shove one inside your shirt like how because
Speaker 1: you get the oil on you and you just whatever
Speaker 1: you do go to scratch. Like here, my forehead was
Speaker 1: the first thing that got bad, just because rubbing it
Speaker 1: on there. Yea. And that eurissiol can be um basically
Speaker 1: like vaporized, I think, is there. I've gotten it in
Speaker 1: my lungs and burnout. Yeah yeah, but it really sick
Speaker 1: if you get it like on your wrists and ankles
Speaker 1: and then you sweat, just that heat can actually carry
Speaker 1: that uh that oil like up through your pant legs,
Speaker 1: because how and how else do you literally get on
Speaker 1: the inside of your thighs That's where I got it
Speaker 1: anywhere where your skin, anywhere on your body where you
Speaker 1: got real shitty skin, like thin, hasty, shitty skin, like
Speaker 1: between your fingers. It's just my whole body. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel he'd be like right under like underneath your feet. No,
Speaker 1: never there in between your fingers, inside the arch, not
Speaker 1: the it's not the kind of shitty things. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: had running with poison oak one time, and it was
Speaker 1: all inner thighs and like my stomach. It was just thin,
Speaker 1: shitty areas on your hide. And that's not the first
Speaker 1: time you've gotten it via another animal. No, I got it.
Speaker 1: The worst I've ever gotten was from a wild pig
Speaker 1: that landed me in the hospital, and I wound up
Speaker 1: in a Jewish hospital. And the last thing the doctor
Speaker 1: said to me when she's walking out the door, I'm
Speaker 1: not kidding you. I'm not joking. She's walking out the
Speaker 1: door and she turns and says, stay away from pigs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I when I told the story, she's kind of like,
Speaker 1: what the fucking thing's gonna happen? But now you're a
Speaker 1: climate No, this is what you know, like Nimby, like
Speaker 1: not in my backyard. Yeah, this is what This is
Speaker 1: my wake up call? Man, um So, Yanni, real quick
Speaker 1: hit that owl hoot. Yanni was just at an owl
Speaker 1: hoot and explain this now. I was at the National
Speaker 1: Turkey Federation's annual convention down in Nashville, Tennessee, and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the only competent calling competition that I got to go
Speaker 1: and watch was the owl Hoot and the Gobble because
Speaker 1: it was later in the evening. We were recording turkey
Speaker 1: stories from nine to four every day. We got forty
Speaker 1: one serious was Phil? Phil did he go to the
Speaker 1: Tiki Barn? Downer. Oh yeah, I say you had the
Speaker 1: picture of us at the tiki bar. I didn't get that,
Speaker 1: which is very It's not the normal tiki bar. This
Speaker 1: place is like robot themed, and instead of having Jimmy
Speaker 1: Buffett playing, it's got Furgie playing. And the next table
Speaker 1: down to has had some twenty year old gals standing
Speaker 1: up apping Furgie at full capacity. I was quite entertained
Speaker 1: that we ran into a lady with a pet possum
Speaker 1: or something. That's right, it must have been a different place.
Speaker 1: I don't know how we got crowd there. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: got I don't know how we got on the subject
Speaker 1: with her, but she had had a pet possum. AnyWho, Um,
Speaker 1: we got forty one. It was cool. I was telling
Speaker 1: you a story from Mike Chamberlain. It was pretty interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want you to touch on that. I want you
Speaker 1: to touch on that turkey call in your hand. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the the air and friction contests were going on during
Speaker 1: the day, so I didn't get to go and check
Speaker 1: those out, but one evening we went and checked out
Speaker 1: Ala hooting and then gobbling. I was surprised to find
Speaker 1: out out of the thirty six competitors for ali hooting,
Speaker 1: only one uses natural voice. Everybody else is running a hooter, Like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe that you're allowed to use I can't
Speaker 1: believe that you'd be allowed to use a hooter. That's
Speaker 1: That's Yanni's train of thought too. They were, um, and
Speaker 1: I was surprised that they didn't have both, but they said,
Speaker 1: it literally just comes down to participation. They said, we
Speaker 1: could open up a voice calling out hooting, you know section, yeah,
Speaker 1: and just nobody would be in there. He just and
Speaker 1: it's only recent the last ten years, ten to fifteen,
Speaker 1: I think these were developed, and they just sound so
Speaker 1: much more realistic that the voice guys can't compete with
Speaker 1: the with the hooter. But yeah, I felt the same
Speaker 1: way even with the with the gobbling. I thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, because when we were recording stories, we had
Speaker 1: some great storytellers that could gobble, you know, within their story,
Speaker 1: and it just brings so much the story. Yeah, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: maybe a little better. HER's still a little high pitched,
Speaker 1: you know, but uh anyways, um, yeah, I was surprised
Speaker 1: to not hear voice callers. Um, so there's a Phelps
Speaker 1: game calls now has a thing called out the Harrison
Speaker 1: hooter and I didn't even know when I'm watching James
Speaker 1: Harrison on stage that I didn't put two and two together,
Speaker 1: that the hooters that were at my house that I
Speaker 1: was trying to blow on and it didn't even sound
Speaker 1: like a train whistle. And my wife's like, please put
Speaker 1: those away. Stop, you're not making owl sounds. I'm watching him,
Speaker 1: and then later I run into him at the show.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, Phelps t shirt, Oh okay, and I
Speaker 1: put two and two together, and then he ran through
Speaker 1: and gave me the one oh one who who had
Speaker 1: the bear grease hat on? That was another competitor. I
Speaker 1: didn't run into him, but he was using a mouth call, yes,
Speaker 1: like a hooter like this, and he very likely was
Speaker 1: using this one because out of thirty six competitors, ten
Speaker 1: or twelve we're actually running the Harrison Hood, not the crylic.
Speaker 1: You know, some of them um tape it all up
Speaker 1: in black electrical tape so that the other competitors can't
Speaker 1: see what call they're usually. I like it. He said
Speaker 1: that even some of them will add like another four
Speaker 1: or five inches. It doesn't do any not for any
Speaker 1: other room, and just to throw people off to what call.
Speaker 1: There one of the East Coast goose tutors. But yeah,
Speaker 1: i'll be probably by the time this airs, I'll have
Speaker 1: posted a video. James Harrison given me the one on
Speaker 1: one on how to use it, and yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: couple of great tips. The best tip though, he said,
Speaker 1: when you hold it, you make like an okay symbol
Speaker 1: with the one hand that you're gonna hold the call with,
Speaker 1: and then your other hand comes around. You want to
Speaker 1: cut the bottom of the call, as if holding a
Speaker 1: baby chicken. A chick. I'm with you, right, so it's
Speaker 1: head sticking out of your hands. You're controlling it, but
Speaker 1: you're not squishing it, right, so a little bit of
Speaker 1: air can get out. After that, you make the same notes.
Speaker 1: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you? All? Um?
Speaker 1: Rip it. I got a lot to tell you about
Speaker 1: this because we're I've got on order coming. You might
Speaker 1: already have it. The piliated woodpecker call that can that
Speaker 1: can also sound like the screech or the scream of
Speaker 1: a bard owl. Yeah, yeah, that gets them god one
Speaker 1: you think so? Yeah, I mean it's the stuff that
Speaker 1: you like. It's super loud and super high. Their goblin
Speaker 1: because I don't think their goblin because they think it
Speaker 1: sounded exactly like an owl. No, no, no no, but it's
Speaker 1: a sound that just carries. That's what Chamberlain out of
Speaker 1: study his point when I brought up your point that
Speaker 1: you always make, which is what you just said, his point,
Speaker 1: He's like, yes, but if you sound like a real owl,
Speaker 1: you might get other owls going on other ridges that
Speaker 1: are then reaching turkeys that your sound, whatever you decided
Speaker 1: to use, is not reaching. And thus you're sort of
Speaker 1: being able to broadcast farther and possibly hear other turkeys.
Speaker 1: Pretty soon the whole county's got and then everybody else
Speaker 1: is gonna get all the turkeys waking up the woods. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, here it goes. So there's your little chick
Speaker 1: Harrison hooter. This is a Phelps Harrison hooter. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: like that little role in the end, But now do
Speaker 1: it with no call. I have a hard time rolling
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. Again, it does sound better at the call.
Speaker 1: The do a far off out buhicle for everybody is
Speaker 1: the out way off. I want to do this often.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be one. So far you're not even
Speaker 1: gonna go over there. That's too cool. I'd go after that,
Speaker 1: they'll just turn the volume down. Um, okay, go ahead.
Speaker 1: That well, I could keep blowing on that thing, but
Speaker 1: real quick, the uh chamber, doctor chamber, the unkillable turkey.
Speaker 1: Can you hit that real quick for us? I will,
Speaker 1: and I'll go to say too that it was cool.
Speaker 1: Out of forty one stories, it was great to start
Speaker 1: recognizing the different themes that flowed through these stories, and
Speaker 1: not just because it's a theme of stories that people
Speaker 1: like to tell, but what people think is important or
Speaker 1: important to them to come and tell you about. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of first timers, a lot of first time
Speaker 1: turkey stories, a lot of mentorship stories, a lot of
Speaker 1: family type stories. You know, I was out with my
Speaker 1: kids or my kid whatever, I took my dad first first,
Speaker 1: and the one that got away or the unkillable turkey,
Speaker 1: or one fella called this bird the boss, which we've
Speaker 1: heard before. But anyways, Yeah, Mike had a story and
Speaker 1: I'll summarize it quickly, but basically, this turkey he thinks
Speaker 1: cannot be killed because he's developed a tactic whereas he
Speaker 1: comes closer, as he realizes that he's being fooled with,
Speaker 1: he'll actually fly up into trees out of shotgun range.
Speaker 1: And then hot from tree to tree, or sit on
Speaker 1: one limb, walking back and forth and looking for the
Speaker 1: hand that is supposed to be there. And then once
Speaker 1: he says, once he clears it out and there's no
Speaker 1: hen just pitches and flies off the other direction. I
Speaker 1: don't know, and you're a shout of turkey. Alabat tree. Yes,
Speaker 1: fall in Nebraska. I don't even know if it was legal,
Speaker 1: but I did blood lust. I haven't missed one, so
Speaker 1: I tried. Um, there's a couple of hard things I'm
Speaker 1: gonna talk about. No, we talking about that. Oh, here's
Speaker 1: an interesting deal. We have covered none stop since since
Speaker 1: the beginning, the why the famous now Wyoming corner crossing case,
Speaker 1: and as we pointed out, a whole bunch. I don't
Speaker 1: want to recap. I don't want to recap the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Don't recap. Everybody knows what's going on, right, Okay, here's
Speaker 1: the deal. How many millions did the landowners say his
Speaker 1: property value went down because these guys corner crossed down?
Speaker 1: Three or seven million? Yeah, I think it was six
Speaker 1: or seven. He's saying, because you corner crossed on my land,
Speaker 1: you cost me. Let's look it up. Let me look
Speaker 1: it up six or seven million bucks m because he
Speaker 1: felt that he felt that he had the exclusive access
Speaker 1: and now he doesn't. And then everybody was like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't understand how could that, Like, why would someone
Speaker 1: corner crossing um cost you millions of dollars right and damages?
Speaker 1: It just didn't make sense. Well, there's an interesting development
Speaker 1: in this case, now, Judge scav Doll ska v d
Speaker 1: A H. L. Scave Doll, I don't know cloes it off.
Speaker 1: Can I interject for a second. Yeah, I'm seeing ranges
Speaker 1: from three point one million to seven point seven five million. Another. Uh,
Speaker 1: seems like a real estate agent was saying on behalf
Speaker 1: of Elk Mountain Ranch that it would be devalued about
Speaker 1: nine point three nine million, so a lot, I think.
Speaker 1: In our article on the mediator dot com says the
Speaker 1: um the ram Schoner was claiming as much as seven
Speaker 1: point seven five millions. Yeah, if you're unfamiliar with this
Speaker 1: whole read that and that's my synopsis. Well, here's the deal.
Speaker 1: You know who this guy really should the landowner, who
Speaker 1: his complaint is. He should be contacting the real estate
Speaker 1: broker like it's not the he should be calling the
Speaker 1: listing agent saying because we saw the listing when he
Speaker 1: bought it, saying, you're real estate listing UM says that
Speaker 1: it's exclusive access to all this public land. So or
Speaker 1: his attorney, who's supposed to vet and due diligence, that's
Speaker 1: who's that's who cost him money. That's who led him
Speaker 1: down the path of thinking that all this public land
Speaker 1: was his and his alone. That's true. Like he's suing
Speaker 1: the wrong person either way. The judge, the whelming judge
Speaker 1: ruled okay, Judge scabbed all. Sorry judge from dicking your
Speaker 1: name up. Judge scave Doll ruled the evidence of diminution
Speaker 1: of value of private property if corner crossing is legal,
Speaker 1: is irrelevant, meaning the court will focus solely on the
Speaker 1: issue of whether corner crossing is legal, not whether legalized
Speaker 1: corner crossing will affect the value of private property. I
Speaker 1: mean that makes total sense. It's two different things. You know,
Speaker 1: he's like, he's getting way ahead of himself to be
Speaker 1: like and I'm out seven million dollars. Yeah, but because
Speaker 1: he like, because the criminal case just said we didn't
Speaker 1: break a law, So you're saying I owe you money
Speaker 1: and I need to break a law. Usually when I
Speaker 1: summed this up, I usually use the story about the
Speaker 1: juice when he um got acquitted for killing his wife
Speaker 1: and that waiter, but then in civil trial got found guilty.
Speaker 1: But I'm not cad becas we're not gonna sum it up.
Speaker 1: Um we had a law. So this this letter begins.
Speaker 1: We get a letter from a listener, ohmigos. We're having
Speaker 1: tough We're a conversation about why refried like what makes
Speaker 1: refried beans refried beans? But it wasn't. Also, it was
Speaker 1: like stemming off the fact that we had people write
Speaker 1: in about like when you put the prefix in front
Speaker 1: of like dry curing something and people are like, no,
Speaker 1: you're just putting rub on it. He he does like
Speaker 1: all those food terms. And then we got talking about
Speaker 1: with refried beans, Like my understanding is they're not refried,
Speaker 1: they're fried. They're fried. Yeah, this guy has a lot
Speaker 1: to say about it. My name is Adrian Martin and
Speaker 1: I'm a second generation Mexican American. Both my parents were
Speaker 1: born in Mexico and immigrated over to what is now
Speaker 1: the People's Republic of Washington. Abakan first generation Halma. Both
Speaker 1: his parents are born in Mexico first generation. Sorry, buddy,
Speaker 1: that makes his material. That makes his information more relevant.
Speaker 1: It does not what less relevant. He says, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have a bean eater myself. I believe that with my background,
Speaker 1: I can provide some insight to the recent refried bean dilemma.
Speaker 1: Here's my take on it. Refried beans come about from
Speaker 1: first boiling beans until soft. He prefers pinto beans. He says,
Speaker 1: as a parenthetical aside, back to the quote, you take
Speaker 1: those beans and fry them for the first time in
Speaker 1: some kind of oil and smashing them until you get
Speaker 1: desired consistency. Another parenthetical aside, I prefer using olive oil
Speaker 1: that has had a halopeno cooking in it for five
Speaker 1: to ten minutes prior to adding to the beans doesn't large.
Speaker 1: But then he breaks from his parenthetical aside to say
Speaker 1: leave the halopeno in there with the beans, which I
Speaker 1: feel it should be part of the parent going on.
Speaker 1: You can eat these quote fried beans at this point,
Speaker 1: and most of the Mexicans I know referred to the
Speaker 1: beans at this point as refried beans. However, you could
Speaker 1: also let those beans sit in the fridge overnight and
Speaker 1: proceed to fry the fried beans with a little bit
Speaker 1: of oil and eat them that way as well. Technically speaking,
Speaker 1: only then would they become refried beans. You could repeat
Speaker 1: the refrying process a couple more times, but usually I
Speaker 1: eat them all by the second fried. You could create
Speaker 1: an evolutionary chart of beans becoming refried beans. The stages
Speaker 1: would go something like hard beans to boiled beans, to
Speaker 1: fried beans, to refried beans to refried refried beans. Truth
Speaker 1: be told, I've had beans refried up to three times
Speaker 1: a four and air pretty good, but I prefer a
Speaker 1: true refried bean. Audios That clears that up. Do we
Speaker 1: need a new T shirt? The evolution of the ban?
Speaker 1: It would be good? Okay. A little clarification on scorpions.
Speaker 1: Someone says, I was listening to episode four when three
Speaker 1: in a question came up about whether or not smaller
Speaker 1: scorpions are really more dangerous. Steve didn't seem to believe it,
Speaker 1: but in general it is true. Here's where I screwed up.
Speaker 1: I got there's a couple of these. I screwed up
Speaker 1: this and another thing. What I meant was this, I
Speaker 1: was mixing up two things. They're talking what is it?
Speaker 1: When is it? What is it? When they're talking about
Speaker 1: across different species intra uka within a species. Okay. When
Speaker 1: I said that about bigger littler, I was talking about
Speaker 1: this idea that let's say you take the same rattlesnake. Okay,
Speaker 1: you take a prairie rattler or green mojave or whatever,
Speaker 1: any kind of rattlesnake, and there's a myth, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a local legend that that within the species. Okay,
Speaker 1: So a prairie rattler, that a smaller prairie rattler is
Speaker 1: more venomous than a big prairie rattler. And they say
Speaker 1: because it somehow can't control the venom output. And herpetologists
Speaker 1: have repeatedly written in to say that's not true. Toxicity
Speaker 1: would have to do with when did it last strike something? Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: So when this came up, like a big scorpion versus
Speaker 1: a little scorpion, I pointed that out, and I was
Speaker 1: erroneously meaning like within a species. So say you're taking
Speaker 1: the northern scorpion. I was saying, I don't know that
Speaker 1: I believe that a small northern scorpion is more venomous
Speaker 1: than a fully mature, larger specimen of a northern scorpion.
Speaker 1: But this person wrote in to say, well, in general,
Speaker 1: first off, there are twelve hundred scorpion species. In general,
Speaker 1: you got some big honkers. The Emperor scorpion okay, relatively hard.
Speaker 1: That's a giant scorpion, relatively harmless. While the much smaller
Speaker 1: death stalker scorpion that's a hell of a name. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would call him the death deal. Yeah, he stalks.
Speaker 1: He's so bad. He stalks death the death stalkers. He says,
Speaker 1: I've owned two Emperor scorpions. You can handle them without
Speaker 1: a glove, but I'd never try that with a fat
Speaker 1: tail or a death stalker. Um. So generally, big old honkers, um,
Speaker 1: big old honkers are less venomous than some smaller varieties
Speaker 1: scorpions sting more than a million people a year and
Speaker 1: kill three thousand, not phelps. Do we know what kind
Speaker 1: of scorpion he got stung by because you guys like
Speaker 1: kept it as a pet. How's that scorpion doing? Okay?
Speaker 1: The guy goes on to say, in Indiana Jones and
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I gave up on
Speaker 1: Indiana just long before. When was that? I only was
Speaker 1: the fourth one that it's yeah, it's bad. I think
Speaker 1: they had lost a lot of audience by then, he says.
Speaker 1: Indy says, when it comes to scorpion, the bigger the better.
Speaker 1: Indy has a scientific evidence to back him up. Uh,
Speaker 1: anything else interesting? Here? Last highlight about the evolutionary trade off.
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting. Oh, but I think we got into
Speaker 1: this when we had the guy. Remember that research we
Speaker 1: had on about animal weapons Doug Emlyn. Oh, good memory. Gosh, yeah,
Speaker 1: is it dogma? The findings point to an evolutionary trade off.
Speaker 1: They're talking about a researcher name Fry, some guy or
Speaker 1: a woman. I don't know Fry. When scorpions first appeared,
Speaker 1: scorpions relied on big crab like clause to attack prey,
Speaker 1: he speculates, But once they evolved a deadly sting, they
Speaker 1: didn't need to grow big clause. Yeah, we're we're a
Speaker 1: little inn over at waiters now on that one. We
Speaker 1: have to get the thing. Here's my big correction. I
Speaker 1: have a bunch of times of misuses. To someone point
Speaker 1: this out, I need to offer up a correction on
Speaker 1: the use of the on the on the usage of
Speaker 1: the founder effect. Steve Is multiple times on the podcast
Speaker 1: referred to this effect as new animals doing well in
Speaker 1: a new environment. I was mixing something up. I can't
Speaker 1: think of what I was actually talk let me finish
Speaker 1: the crack. While it's possible that this could be happening
Speaker 1: concurrently with the Founder effect, isn't the same thing. The
Speaker 1: Founder effect is basically basically a statistical misrepresentation of a
Speaker 1: population by taking only a few members of that species
Speaker 1: to found a new population. For example, let's say there's
Speaker 1: a population of black bears and the continental US that
Speaker 1: is ninety five percent black with five percent blind. He goes,
Speaker 1: I don't know the real numbers, but just making this up. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's just say, right then, three bears swim to
Speaker 1: a new island and start a new population of black bears,
Speaker 1: and two of them happen to be blond. So like
Speaker 1: a freak statistical freak occurrence. Right now, you've got this
Speaker 1: whole population that starts off of an atypical representation, and
Speaker 1: then the founder effect the new population winds up being.
Speaker 1: In this instance, he points out, possibly the new population
Speaker 1: becomes largely blonde due to the attributes of the founders.
Speaker 1: I was using it for something that Vlarious Geiss used
Speaker 1: to talk about which is like like I should look
Speaker 1: up what it is when when animals are colonizing new habitat,
Speaker 1: like when the when the glaciers were receding and animals
Speaker 1: are colonizing new habitat, you have um you know, or
Speaker 1: like when you introduce a predator to like, let say
Speaker 1: you introduce a predator an island has never had predators,
Speaker 1: and the praise not used to it, right, they kick
Speaker 1: ass is bringing it like when wolves came into Yellowstone
Speaker 1: in the late nineties. They kicks or it's founding, do
Speaker 1: you know. I don't know the technical word for it,
Speaker 1: but there is a you know, a kind of like
Speaker 1: a colonization or recalonization effect. Wherefore a while, if you
Speaker 1: introduce a new species to a place, they will like
Speaker 1: their population will go like this and then eventually plateau
Speaker 1: very quickly and then plateau like this place is great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the animals don't run. There's a lot of them, uh,
Speaker 1: he says, for example, the Afrikaner population of just that's
Speaker 1: just an aside that I just did a little bit
Speaker 1: of googling, So that wasn't him that this is like
Speaker 1: from UC Berkeley's Department of evolution rim talking. The African
Speaker 1: or population of Dutch settlers in South Africa is descended
Speaker 1: mainly from a few colonists. Today, the Afrikaner population has
Speaker 1: an unusually high frequency of the gene that causes Huntington's
Speaker 1: disease because those original Dutch colonists just happened to carry
Speaker 1: that gene with unusually high frequency. This effect is easy
Speaker 1: to recognize in genetic diseases, but of course the frequencies
Speaker 1: of all sorts of genes are affected by founder events.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. This is why our wolves here are so
Speaker 1: big and bad because when they trapped a remember they
Speaker 1: trapped fifty and chose the biggest, meanest ones to bring
Speaker 1: the Yellowstone. We even heard from a guy they'd go
Speaker 1: in and he was telling us they'd poke them with
Speaker 1: a stick, pick the mean victim, meanest mask, not mean enough,
Speaker 1: Let that one go. Don't send him that one. It's
Speaker 1: not mean enough. When he smiled at me when we
Speaker 1: poke them with a stick, he wasn't mean enough. Okay.
Speaker 1: The Wolverine Foundation, yes, tell me what the Wolverine Foundation
Speaker 1: is for starters. So back in nineteen ninety six, all
Speaker 1: of the wolverine biologists in the entire world, which was
Speaker 1: like probably five people you know, got together and they
Speaker 1: were really looking for a way to raise the profile
Speaker 1: of this veryly poorly understood, poorly studied species, and you know,
Speaker 1: in order to raise money and in order to raise awareness,
Speaker 1: they started the Wolverine Foundation. And they've run it as
Speaker 1: an organization that does education and outreach and also gets
Speaker 1: pretty small grants in the in the world of like
Speaker 1: you know, grant making up to like maybe twenty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars at the most to help facilitate wolverine research projects.
Speaker 1: UM I took over in twenty fifteen, and um it's
Speaker 1: still a very small organization and continue to run it.
Speaker 1: Run it primarily as a small grant making organization and
Speaker 1: then again like outreach and education, So coming onto podcasts,
Speaker 1: traveling to universities to give lectures and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just generally raising awareness about this amazing species. You come
Speaker 1: on a lot of podcasts. I've been on two, and
Speaker 1: I've never had one that officially has like a recording
Speaker 1: studio before. So this is a new and fascinating experience.
Speaker 1: Let's get jealous. UM are you affiliated with a university?
Speaker 1: Though no, neither as an individual nor as a Wolverine Foundation,
Speaker 1: we are we are an independent of five one C
Speaker 1: three nonprofit, but you work within you probably work with
Speaker 1: university people. Yes, So it works is if you the
Speaker 1: interested public happens to have a wolverine project, and that
Speaker 1: can be a graduate project, some kind of academic project,
Speaker 1: an agency project, or a project that's run through a nonprofit,
Speaker 1: you can write a grant application to us and then
Speaker 1: we will review it and potentially grant funds. So yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of the people who we grant funds too,
Speaker 1: are actually affiliated with universities or with agencies like the
Speaker 1: Forest Service or you know, nonprofit organizations. But we ourselves
Speaker 1: once we give the money. We can still serve in
Speaker 1: an advisory capacity if the people running the project want that,
Speaker 1: but we don't. We're not like actually involved in the
Speaker 1: field work once we make the grants. Yeah, yeah, explain.
Speaker 1: I know that Mongolia played a big role in your
Speaker 1: resume and your sort of genesis as a Wolverine person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's my personal story and it's a little bit
Speaker 1: aside from the Wolverine Foundation, But I was a Peace
Speaker 1: Corp volunteer in Mongolia from two thousand to two thous
Speaker 1: In two and Peace Corps. Peace Corp is a great program.
Speaker 1: It's what you make of it. But in like the
Speaker 1: infinite wisdom of like bureaucracy. I had an undergraduate degree
Speaker 1: in anthropology and I had been like sort of involved
Speaker 1: with the environmental organization on campus, and they were like, great,
Speaker 1: we're going to make you into an ecology teacher. I'd
Speaker 1: never take an ecology class in my life. So they
Speaker 1: sent me out to this town in central Mongolia. The
Speaker 1: Peace Corps wanted you to be an ecology teacher. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean I thought you guys mostly like delivered vaccinations
Speaker 1: and water stuff and no, no, I think that in
Speaker 1: probably at the closer to the founding of the Peace Corps,
Speaker 1: it was more of that like humanitarian aid type of organization.
Speaker 1: But by the time I went, they, you know, Mongolia
Speaker 1: was coming out of seventy years of socialism and they
Speaker 1: were trying to bring their educational system up to speed,
Speaker 1: and they had all of these national parks that they
Speaker 1: had just founded. A lot of environmental organizations had gone there,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to work with the Mongolian government
Speaker 1: to set aside a land to be protected in a
Speaker 1: sort of in the system of landscape protection and conservation
Speaker 1: that we're more familiar with as opposed to sort of
Speaker 1: the Soviet model that they had been working under. And
Speaker 1: so they wanted to reorganize their ecology and biology education
Speaker 1: program within the schools, and so they decided Peace Corps
Speaker 1: matched me up with a town that had requested a
Speaker 1: school in a town that had requested somebody to help
Speaker 1: work on both English teaching and also on refining their
Speaker 1: biology curriculum and retraining their biology teachers to incorporate ecology
Speaker 1: into the curriculum. So I went over there. I was
Speaker 1: there for two years, and in my spare time in
Speaker 1: the summers when school wasn't in session, I started kind
Speaker 1: of volunteering with snow uppord research programs. So I would
Speaker 1: go out and help do snowuppord surveys for the animals
Speaker 1: themselves and also for prey species ibex in our Golly,
Speaker 1: did you ever lay eyes on a snow leppard? I did,
Speaker 1: but not um, not, not while I was a Peace
Speaker 1: Corps volunteer. It was, yeah, it was in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: I was on a UM assisting with a snow leopard
Speaker 1: collaring operation in the Altaie and we uh trapped two
Speaker 1: snow leopards and collared them. So it trapped them out
Speaker 1: with legs snares. Um really and you got to see them?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I got to like how, how like what
Speaker 1: what do they what do they use for a set?
Speaker 1: It's a it's like a it's a wire snare ye
Speaker 1: and then um you uh, I think you it's on
Speaker 1: a spring lock, right, it's I don't. I didn't actually
Speaker 1: set the snares, so I can't. I'm trying to remember how.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't my project either, so I wasn't reminding
Speaker 1: you as in charge of doing it. I was actually
Speaker 1: there to try to set up cameras for camera trapping
Speaker 1: wolverines and then went along with these these two snow
Speaker 1: Leppard captures. Um. So it's a leg snare. You bury
Speaker 1: it in the um in the kind of talis and
Speaker 1: then you spray. For whatever reason, snow Leppards are like
Speaker 1: really attracted to high quality perfume. Oh yeah, remember we're
Speaker 1: talking about this before they found some. I can't remember.
Speaker 1: There's some. There's some clone or perfume that's like kill
Speaker 1: around cats. The Chanel number five. Yeah, we had a
Speaker 1: news article about that. We covered one obsession for men
Speaker 1: Calvin Klein. So like when I'm when I figured that out,
Speaker 1: I think they did it was snow leppers in the zoo. Um.
Speaker 1: But like, yeah, when I'm when I'm doing camera trapping
Speaker 1: for snow leppards, which I have done, you know, you're
Speaker 1: in the back country of Mongolia, you haven't showered for
Speaker 1: like two weeks, and you reek of like very very
Speaker 1: high quality perfume crawling around like putting up your your
Speaker 1: camera traps and then like spraying rocks with like eighty
Speaker 1: dollars worth of you know. So that's what like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so when you're setting a camera trap for uh, for
Speaker 1: a snow Leppard, you're not hanging like a road kill carcass.
Speaker 1: You can just use just perfume. Yeah, get into their
Speaker 1: camp and bring it into the camera. Yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: then um, I don't know how like effective this was,
Speaker 1: but you know snow leopards also scrape, so if you
Speaker 1: you know they do that little paw yeah to I
Speaker 1: do with their hind legs. My other role on that
Speaker 1: snow Leppard coloring expedition was to be the scraping snow leopard,
Speaker 1: so they would they would make me do all the
Speaker 1: scrapes um by the snares to get to get the
Speaker 1: snow leppard to like come in and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: is there another snow leopard here that's marking territory and
Speaker 1: then um put their paw in Nasso's little um. Like
Speaker 1: mountain lions do it like that little remember I usually
Speaker 1: they do with their front foot. But I think it
Speaker 1: is I think some Floyd Green, I think sent Us
Speaker 1: trailcam stuff where the cat does it with his back foot.
Speaker 1: It's not like after dogs go to the bathroom and
Speaker 1: they kind of like wipe off their feet. It's different
Speaker 1: than that. It seems to be some kind of it's
Speaker 1: like a territorial kind of marker. You can tell what
Speaker 1: wait he was. I don't know if this is true,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if you do. You guys still
Speaker 1: like in the in the in the Mountain lion world,
Speaker 1: do you still believing tell Us line to travel? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that it does it, it leaves, It does it as leaves,
Speaker 1: so it kicks his dirt bag it's back. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like a little wall of debris behind it, and he
Speaker 1: was going the other stuff. Yeah, so they do that.
Speaker 1: The other day when I was it was the last spring.
Speaker 1: I was with my buddy Jeff Flood, and he pointed
Speaker 1: one out and I was like, oh, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: all about that, and I said, yeah, it's going that way,
Speaker 1: or he asked, I said yeah, it's going that way,
Speaker 1: and we literally went ten yards and there's another one
Speaker 1: going the other drag and I'm like, well, no, we
Speaker 1: don't know. Changed his mind. Yeah, so, um gosh, what
Speaker 1: was it? So they had they had him to foot
Speaker 1: snare and then they tranquilized and you got the hold one.
Speaker 1: We yeah, we tranquilize them. And then not only did
Speaker 1: I get to hold it, but I had to like
Speaker 1: shove my hand down its throat to attach like the
Speaker 1: oxygen monitor to its tongue. So you know, there's that
Speaker 1: like that that moment where you're like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I have my hands on a snow Leppard. This is
Speaker 1: like the mystical moment of achievement for a wildlife biologist.
Speaker 1: And then the person in chargees like grab its tongue
Speaker 1: and you're like, what, like actually put my hand down
Speaker 1: its throat and like yeah, and so you're like avoiding
Speaker 1: the teeth and trying to like pull the tongue out,
Speaker 1: and it's actually a lot harder to get the little
Speaker 1: monitor attached to unconscious cat's tongue than you would suspect.
Speaker 1: And that's just why you're working it up. You got
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, yeah, you just want to make
Speaker 1: sure that you're not going to harm the animal. Oh um,
Speaker 1: oh you had to ask me about an I mean
Speaker 1: it was like inaccessible hundred pounds or it was about
Speaker 1: one hundred pounds. Um. The other thing is that we yeah,
Speaker 1: we had to use my duffel bag because they had
Speaker 1: forgotten the um, you know, the little thing that they
Speaker 1: usually used to weigh it. So my my duffel bag
Speaker 1: has been retired as like a shrine to the snow
Speaker 1: leppard because it's still covered with snow leopard fur. So
Speaker 1: I just have this duffel bag at home that conscious
Speaker 1: snow leopard fur in it. And um, yeah, so I
Speaker 1: think it was somewhere around one hundred pounds. And it
Speaker 1: was a male, a young male that we caught. At first,
Speaker 1: he might have weighed a little bit less, and then
Speaker 1: the next animal that we caught was his mother, and
Speaker 1: she weighed a little bit more. So she was traveling
Speaker 1: with two um cubs and that we caught one we
Speaker 1: didn't catch the other. So yeah, I was talking these guys.
Speaker 1: I think I've told this story before. I'm gonna telegrams.
Speaker 1: I like it. I saw it in these guys that
Speaker 1: they were uh, some green Brays that served in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: and they were doing a thing in a mountain pass
Speaker 1: one time and they caught a guy. They caught some
Speaker 1: guys coming up through this pass and shot one of
Speaker 1: them and he dropped the big recoiless rifle and then
Speaker 1: his buddies carried him back down off the pass. But
Speaker 1: that recoilless rifle was set up there, and his kid
Speaker 1: was telling me how he sat there all night watching
Speaker 1: thinking that someone was going to come back for that
Speaker 1: RECOILSS rifle and he saw a snow leopard come through
Speaker 1: that pass and smell the blood where he shot that guy. Wow. Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is u sa he saw. He saw it through
Speaker 1: his night vision again, just like incredible man seeing a
Speaker 1: snow lepard in the wild. Actually, I mean I actually
Speaker 1: haven't seen a snow leopard in the wild because we
Speaker 1: trapped him, so it doesn't it doesn't count to the
Speaker 1: same degree that it would if it were just like casually,
Speaker 1: you know, crossing a mountain pass while you happen to
Speaker 1: be looking at a gun intently, um, waiting for some
Speaker 1: human to come back. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, very
Speaker 1: emotional things. Yeah, I mean it's the war situation is
Speaker 1: quite horrible. But um, seeing the snow leopard, that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Where did Peter Mathison write the snow Leopard about?
Speaker 1: That was in Nepal? Okay, I think out where you were? No, no, um,
Speaker 1: and yeah that's a different I don't know as much
Speaker 1: about what the conservation status of or what field research
Speaker 1: is like in those environments because it is, I think
Speaker 1: fairly different. Um. But yeah that was Nepal and do
Speaker 1: and when I know, we're still getting into your time Mongoli,
Speaker 1: but wolverines overlap with snow leopards and Mongolia. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: to pick up the Mongolia wolverine connection piece again, Um,
Speaker 1: I was doing work with these snow leopard uh, you
Speaker 1: know programs, and I really wanted to do snow leopards stuff,
Speaker 1: but I didn't. First of all, I grew up in
Speaker 1: New England. My parents are both historians, so until I
Speaker 1: went to Mongolia, I did not realize that there was
Speaker 1: such a thing as like making a living running around
Speaker 1: in the mountains looking at wildlife. I think if I
Speaker 1: had known that when I was younger, I would have
Speaker 1: like keyed into that and followed that trajectory a lot earlier.
Speaker 1: But it was really revelatory to me that like you
Speaker 1: could actually make a living doing that, and that was
Speaker 1: a thing. And so I really was like, hmm, I
Speaker 1: think I want to do this, and I think I
Speaker 1: want to study snow leopards. But I didn't have any
Speaker 1: idea how to go about getting into the field and
Speaker 1: snow leopards, you know, scientists, researchers of like charismatic megafauna
Speaker 1: are sort of notoriously territorial. There's that saying, of course,
Speaker 1: that you start to resemble the animal you're studying, And
Speaker 1: so it just seemed like a very limited field. And
Speaker 1: I was thinking about like other species that might be
Speaker 1: in the same kind of environment, because the cold northern
Speaker 1: mountains was huge part of it. Like, there's no way
Speaker 1: I wanted to study things in some hot like jungle
Speaker 1: environment or anything like that. Yeah. Too much poison, too
Speaker 1: much poison, ivy leeches in the trees. Um. I have
Speaker 1: actually worked in those environments too, It's not my thing. Um,
Speaker 1: and so wolverines. I didn't really know anything about wolverines
Speaker 1: when I was in Mongolia, but when I was leaving,
Speaker 1: somebody gave me a wolverine pelt as a parting gift,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what is this. It's just like
Speaker 1: this weird brown pelt, Like I don't I don't even
Speaker 1: know what this is, um, And so I looked it up,
Speaker 1: and because it's a sight e species, I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't really take this out of the country.
Speaker 1: And I ended up leaving the wolverine pelt there, and
Speaker 1: then I was in graduate school. I ended up going
Speaker 1: to grad school for wildlife ecology, and I was doing
Speaker 1: my master's research on wolves and the wolf ree introduction,
Speaker 1: and I was working with during this you know all
Speaker 1: about picking the big nasty ones, and I do. And
Speaker 1: I would actually rather not get into too many of
Speaker 1: the too many of my thoughts about that, but um, yes,
Speaker 1: and indeed I heard many of those stories. I was
Speaker 1: interviewing ranchers in the Upper Green and I was interviewing
Speaker 1: Shahoni and Arapaho tribal members about their thoughts about the
Speaker 1: wolf reintroduction ten years after it had happened, and the
Speaker 1: organization that was hosting my summer research. The director of
Speaker 1: that organization was also the field coordinator for the Absorber
Speaker 1: Beartooth Wolverine Project, and he invited me to go out
Speaker 1: on a wolverine expedition because the guy who was supposed
Speaker 1: to go with him couldn't go. And over the course
Speaker 1: of talking to him about wolverine stuff, he said, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's this unstudied population in Mongolia that nobody knows anything about,
Speaker 1: but we'd really like to learn more about them. And
Speaker 1: he made some kind of comment about like, but who
Speaker 1: knows anything about Mongolia or like who knows anybody who
Speaker 1: knows anything about Mongolia? And I was like, oh, well, actually,
Speaker 1: I'm fluent in Mongolian and I have worked on wildlife
Speaker 1: issues there in the past, and so it's kind of
Speaker 1: your fluent Mongolian. Yes, yeah, actually today and today is
Speaker 1: actually the first year of the Mongolian New Year, so
Speaker 1: I should also say, which is like best wishes um
Speaker 1: for the year of the water rabbit um. So it's
Speaker 1: very auspicious day. Say when oh, Kevin Murphy, he's been
Speaker 1: fired up about that water rabbits rabbits? Can you say that? Say? Um,
Speaker 1: say something like uh, Yanni is probably not correct. In Mongolian,
Speaker 1: Yanni's probably not correct if we don't have anything to
Speaker 1: back us up on how the mom, the father and
Speaker 1: son fight it out. Some just want to hear some
Speaker 1: Mongolian du Oh my gosh. I hate questions like this
Speaker 1: because it's always so like on the spot. Uh in
Speaker 1: ni sat qui hiwe you yah? Uh? Oh my god?
Speaker 1: What is the word for two animals fighting? Uh out? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is actually not not a word uh that I
Speaker 1: actually know off the top of my head. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah, that's beautiful. I didn't actually, I didn't
Speaker 1: actually get to the verbs. So anybody who speaks Mongolian
Speaker 1: out there is going to recognize that that is not
Speaker 1: actually complete sentence. But I apologize about that. Um. That's
Speaker 1: pretty good, though. How the hell do you learned that
Speaker 1: the Peace Corps training in that? So? Peace Corp does
Speaker 1: this thing, or they did when I was a volunteer,
Speaker 1: where they send you to like three months of it's
Speaker 1: basically like the worst adult summer camp you've ever been to,
Speaker 1: where you're like there with fifty other volunteers in a
Speaker 1: small Mongolian town. Um, and you they give you like
Speaker 1: three months of language training and cultural training. You're living
Speaker 1: with a Mongolian family. That part was great. Um, and
Speaker 1: uh yeah that's how I mean. I learned the basics
Speaker 1: through their language training, and then I was put into
Speaker 1: a town where nobody else spoke English, so I either
Speaker 1: had to figure out how to speak Mongolian or I
Speaker 1: was not going to talk to anybody for two years. Yeah, yeah, seriously,
Speaker 1: And I still can't spell anything. It's really funny because,
Speaker 1: like you know, when you learn a language primarily through
Speaker 1: talking to people, like I, people try to I try
Speaker 1: to write things to people, and I have to go
Speaker 1: back to the dictionary all the time because I'm like,
Speaker 1: how do you spell that word? How do you spell
Speaker 1: that word? Um? So it's a very different kind of experience,
Speaker 1: I think than if you're in a classroom learning a language.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, but it's like highly functional though, right
Speaker 1: it is. It's very functional. And um yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: told my accent is really good, so I'll buy on it, Okay, great? Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I had this conversation with this guy who was
Speaker 1: absolved involved in the Absorba Beartooth Wolverine project and then
Speaker 1: ended up um starting my own project in Mongolia, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know that was not a callering project. That would
Speaker 1: be and way too difficult to run just because of
Speaker 1: the way you call our wolverines that you have to
Speaker 1: kind of have a vet on hand, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of like backcountry access issues and that's
Speaker 1: hard enough here where we have like snowmobiles and helicopters
Speaker 1: and fixed wing aircraft, it's still really really hard to
Speaker 1: man the traps and monitor the traps and get people
Speaker 1: in once you have a wolverine in the trap, to
Speaker 1: get people in there on time, to make sure that
Speaker 1: the animal isn't hurt. And so instead of sort of
Speaker 1: trying to do something like that, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: how much more all of my Mongolian colleagues know about
Speaker 1: wildlife than I do. You know. They're just they're people
Speaker 1: who a third of the population is still like on
Speaker 1: the landscape as herders every day. And when I showed
Speaker 1: up as an environmental volunteer with my ecology book that
Speaker 1: I was going to teach the Mongolians, you know, about
Speaker 1: how to do ecology or whatever, I had a one
Speaker 1: of my fellow teachers put me in my place really fast.
Speaker 1: She was like, know what Chingis Khan passed the world's
Speaker 1: first environmental laws over a thousand years ago. Like, what
Speaker 1: the heck have you guys done that's comparable to that.
Speaker 1: We know how to manage our wildlife and we know
Speaker 1: how to manage our environment. And I was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you're twenty two years old and you're like
Speaker 1: a cocky American going into a foreign country, let me
Speaker 1: tell you people about environmentalism. I am so grateful to
Speaker 1: her for doing that because I see so many people
Speaker 1: who work internationally with this kind of attitude of like
Speaker 1: it's almost like a missionary like superiority complex kind of
Speaker 1: thing where you're like, guys, you got to humble yourselves
Speaker 1: a little bit and see this as an exchange, not
Speaker 1: as just you showing up in this place to tell
Speaker 1: people how to live their lives and how to do
Speaker 1: their thing. Um, you know, can I like talking about
Speaker 1: the Peace Corps what you're talking about right now? Have
Speaker 1: you read the Ugly American? I have not. Yeah, everybody
Speaker 1: thinks like the ugly American was the good guy. Like
Speaker 1: people say like, oh, you know when when Americans go
Speaker 1: overseas and they're out of touch, people like, oh, this
Speaker 1: classic ugly American, but like the ugly American and the
Speaker 1: ugly American in this fictitious country of Sarcan is ugly
Speaker 1: and humble and shuts up, and he's very effective. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think I haven't read the book, but
Speaker 1: I think that that is. Like, the most effective people
Speaker 1: I have seen working internationally are the people who are
Speaker 1: who listen. Yeah, they show up in a place and
Speaker 1: they sit there for six months. They learn the language
Speaker 1: to the best of their ability, and they listen to
Speaker 1: what people are telling them, and then they have a
Speaker 1: basis for doing better work because they have the relationships
Speaker 1: that they need and they have the understanding that they need.
Speaker 1: And you know, they're not going in with a preconceived
Speaker 1: notion of what's best. They're like actually co creating something
Speaker 1: that's much stronger. So anyway, sorry, that's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a soap box spield, but um yeah, So I
Speaker 1: was fortunate to have this woman put me in my place,
Speaker 1: and I think what I was trying to do was create,
Speaker 1: um a wildlife monitoring project and a conservation project that
Speaker 1: was really built from Mongolian values and perspectives and that
Speaker 1: prioritize Mongolian knowledge and understanding of the species. And so
Speaker 1: I just traveled around Mongolia and asked a lot of
Speaker 1: questions and interviewed people about what they knew about wolverines,
Speaker 1: and UM we went. I went to places that we're
Speaker 1: wolverine habitat, and I went to places that were not
Speaker 1: modeled wolverine habitat as kind of a control to understand
Speaker 1: like what people in wolverine habitat were saying versus what
Speaker 1: people outside of wolverine habitat we're saying about this species UM.
Speaker 1: And the background, there's like a side note background to
Speaker 1: this is that there are pretty tight models of wolverine
Speaker 1: distribution worldwide UM that have to do with environmental factors.
Speaker 1: I think we're going to talk about this a little
Speaker 1: bit more hit it because it's like like like there's
Speaker 1: a when when I was reading in the and Cren's notes, Huh,
Speaker 1: there's like some really a somewhat simple parameter. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: there's a there's a paper that was published in twenty
Speaker 1: ten about the bioclimatic envelope of the wolverine, and bio
Speaker 1: climatic envelopes are UM. You know, species distribution models that
Speaker 1: are defined by UM basically climatic and biological factors, and
Speaker 1: so for wolverines, it seems like you can model their
Speaker 1: distribution worldwide UM based on places that have maximum August
Speaker 1: temperatures of less than seventy degrees fahrenheit. And that's not averages, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's the maximum August temperature, right, So, UM, does
Speaker 1: that correspond generally with a certain latitude or is there
Speaker 1: some it's latitude and elevation and so yeah, because like
Speaker 1: because like the alpine zone, like super High Country in
Speaker 1: Colorado would have wolverines exactly right, Yeah, which had to
Speaker 1: be like little teeny islands of shit. Right, you guys
Speaker 1: are hitting all of them. This is great. I love
Speaker 1: talking to you guys because you're hitting all of these
Speaker 1: important ideas about like where wolverines are and why they
Speaker 1: are there, and you understand how that distribution is working.
Speaker 1: So at maximum augus temperatures of seventy degrees fahrenheit was
Speaker 1: one of the parameters, and the other was late spring snowpack,
Speaker 1: so snow that remains on the ground through in that
Speaker 1: twenty ten model through May fifteenth. So if and then
Speaker 1: and then there is a latitude breakoff, so UM north
Speaker 1: of sixty degrees north latitude, that relationship breaks down. Um.
Speaker 1: But south of sixty degrees north, it's it's very, very
Speaker 1: very strict, except in Mongolia where you have a lot
Speaker 1: of reports or you had a lot of reports of wolverines.
Speaker 1: Well outside of this this uh um, at least outside
Speaker 1: of the snow model, they still tend to be inside
Speaker 1: the temperature model. UM. So the point of like traveling
Speaker 1: all over Mongolia and talking to people inside the snow model,
Speaker 1: inside the temperature model, and then outside of both of
Speaker 1: those models, because there are places in the Gobi Desert
Speaker 1: where it's really outside of the both of those models,
Speaker 1: was to understand from using local ecological knowledge and bringing
Speaker 1: that into the center of the work to understand like
Speaker 1: where wolverines were, how they were behaving, how much people
Speaker 1: knew about them, what they were saying about them, what
Speaker 1: they were eating, and using that as a as a
Speaker 1: main source of information what is generally I got two
Speaker 1: Mongolia questions. I'm just gonna hit you both right now.
Speaker 1: There's gotta be some wild ass country in Mongolia. Yes,
Speaker 1: So put it to me, like if you walk that distance,
Speaker 1: if you walk that direction for blank distance, you're not
Speaker 1: going to run into a road. Oh hit me with
Speaker 1: some of that. And also, um, what is their general
Speaker 1: like in MONGOLDI what do they regard the wolverine as?
Speaker 1: Do they regard it as a furbearing animal? Do they
Speaker 1: regard it as like a don't touch like? What's like generally?
Speaker 1: What is what is the view of it? Um? So
Speaker 1: the question about roads, when I went to Mongolia in
Speaker 1: two thousand, I think there were there were only nine
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers of roads in the country or something like
Speaker 1: that when I first went there, So you could go
Speaker 1: forever without running into a road. Um, It's there is
Speaker 1: a lot of very very wild country there and like
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles and not running anything. Yeah, I mean you.
Speaker 1: So there's a there's a little bit of a paradox
Speaker 1: though the land. I've heard it described as the land
Speaker 1: is like very lightly inhabited on the surface in terms
Speaker 1: of like the density of people, in the density of infrastructure,
Speaker 1: But the relationship that people have with that land over
Speaker 1: every square kilometer is so deep. Um. And so I
Speaker 1: don't I don't I get really hesitant to describe it
Speaker 1: as wilderness because people do have these these relationships with
Speaker 1: with all of it. You know, there's always somebody who
Speaker 1: has some kind of relationship with with whatever piece of
Speaker 1: land you are on. But in terms of the things
Speaker 1: that we consider markers of human habitation, like infrastructure, it's
Speaker 1: very sparsely spread. But but herd ors whoever, like people
Speaker 1: are people. If you stay in some spot, people are
Speaker 1: at some point in the year for some purpose utilizing
Speaker 1: the area, Yes, and they wouldn't regard it as uninhabited,
Speaker 1: or they would definitely not regard it as uninhabited. And
Speaker 1: the other thing that's important to mention about Mongolia when
Speaker 1: I first went there was there was no private property
Speaker 1: in the country. So you know, there was no private
Speaker 1: landownership in the country when I arrived. So you know
Speaker 1: that that idea of inhabiting a place or you know,
Speaker 1: having a sense of like ownership or connection to the
Speaker 1: place wasn't vested in the same things that we would
Speaker 1: consider markers of that So nobody had the right to
Speaker 1: like say, oh, this is my property, you can't cut
Speaker 1: across it to go hunting. You know, that's like that
Speaker 1: would be a very would have been a very foreign
Speaker 1: concept at that time. In two thousand and one, they
Speaker 1: did start into introducing a limited system of private ownership
Speaker 1: for people who had been occupying their houses in towns,
Speaker 1: they were able to receive title to it. But my
Speaker 1: friends came to me at that time and they were like, Oh,
Speaker 1: the Cadastral Service is doing this whole thing where we're
Speaker 1: supposed to have title to our land and we don't
Speaker 1: understand what that means. Can you explain to us? And
Speaker 1: that was another one of those moments where I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this place is just a really different and interesting place.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, there's been a lot of change in
Speaker 1: those twenty years, and now there is a fairly significant
Speaker 1: amount of private land, but all pasture constitutionally, in the
Speaker 1: Mongolian constitution, the bulk of Mongolia's landscape must remain public.
Speaker 1: That's in their constitution. There have been also a lot
Speaker 1: of roads built since I was first there, so now
Speaker 1: you can probably go much shorter distance before you run
Speaker 1: into a road. As for how Mongolians relate to wolverines,
Speaker 1: they the majority of people I've spoken to do not
Speaker 1: consider it a significant animal um because they're so rare
Speaker 1: on the landscape, people don't run into them that much.
Speaker 1: They still know way more than an average American would like.
Speaker 1: If you go up to somebody on the street in
Speaker 1: the US because I've done this, and you say, tell
Speaker 1: me what you know about wolverines, they're like will like
Speaker 1: the X Men, you know, or something like that, you know,
Speaker 1: where they just don't really even understand that it's an
Speaker 1: actual animal. In Mongolia, you can ask people about wolverines
Speaker 1: and they will generally know the basic outlines of what
Speaker 1: it is, and you know that it's that it's a
Speaker 1: species that wanders around a lot, and that you that
Speaker 1: it eats meat and it scavenges. But they don't. They don't.
Speaker 1: They're not present strongly enough to be like very culturally significant.
Speaker 1: Wolves are hugely culturally significant in Mongolia. Um, And I
Speaker 1: was thinking when I first started talking to people about wolverines, Oh,
Speaker 1: maybe there's going to be some of this kind of
Speaker 1: like wolf similar to the wolf stuff, where you know
Speaker 1: there's some kind of spiritual connotation or something like that.
Speaker 1: They're really wasn't on the same order, but they are
Speaker 1: associated with er La Khan, who's the king of the underworld,
Speaker 1: So there's that sort of spooky like, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: wolverines are a little dubious. They kind of seem to
Speaker 1: be somewhat associated with some chaotic powers kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they have like a lot of Northern and North America,
Speaker 1: a lot of northern indigenous groups have a sort of
Speaker 1: like it's like a devil yes type creature because of
Speaker 1: their ability to like ruin your ship. Yeah, it's um, yes,
Speaker 1: there they're getting your food cash, they'll rob your trap lines,
Speaker 1: they'll like, you know, they're they're not always welcome. They
Speaker 1: are unapologetically about their own uh you know, um well being.
Speaker 1: I think it's a good way to put it. And
Speaker 1: there are there are also many of those stories. Like
Speaker 1: one of the populations I work with in Mongolia are
Speaker 1: reindeer herders, and they so they're up in the tiger
Speaker 1: in the mountains with their reindeer and they are still
Speaker 1: largely hunting people. They use their reindeer for transportation. They
Speaker 1: milk their reindeer, but they don't usually eat them. So
Speaker 1: most of their protein comes from hunting. And they go
Speaker 1: out on these winter expeditions, um, where they will hunt
Speaker 1: and then they build these like little log shelters and
Speaker 1: they put the meat in there and then they'll leave
Speaker 1: it elevated around the ground. Um, they're on the they're
Speaker 1: built the ones I've seen are built. They're just like
Speaker 1: little log boxes. They're not like they're not that elevated.
Speaker 1: Um and the but they but they they have a
Speaker 1: platform inside. They do have a platform inside. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: And then they'll go and they'll continue their hunting rounds
Speaker 1: and they'll like come back and retrieve the meat because
Speaker 1: it stays frozen. And one of those guys was telling
Speaker 1: me a story about how he came. He came back
Speaker 1: to a place where he had cashed a moose and
Speaker 1: there was a hole that had been chewed through and
Speaker 1: that the wolverine, he said, must have been in there
Speaker 1: for like weeks, just eating the entire moose and that um,
Speaker 1: and the wolverine could have been going and coming back.
Speaker 1: But he said, oh, you know, actually, wolverines I think
Speaker 1: are a very tidy animal because you know, there was
Speaker 1: a place where it was doing its business inside them,
Speaker 1: inside the box, and then there was a place where
Speaker 1: it was clearly sleeping and these were all like and
Speaker 1: then there was a place where it was eating, and
Speaker 1: so it was keeping its household in order. Layout yeah
Speaker 1: so um, but yeah, they do have this reputation of course,
Speaker 1: like one of the colloquial terms in English is devil bear. Um.
Speaker 1: They they have a reputation for being tricksters. They are
Speaker 1: kind of known as like buffoons sometimes but also with
Speaker 1: that dark edge of like you know, potential potential chaos
Speaker 1: and problematic association if you if you do the wrong
Speaker 1: thing or if you cross them. If you look at
Speaker 1: a Mongolian wolverine, um, are there distinctive like in terms
Speaker 1: of size, coloration, the bars. Would you ever be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a Eurasian wolverine and that's a North American wolverine. No?
Speaker 1: I think visually they appear quite similar genetically, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: at least in terms of the half types, which is
Speaker 1: what we look at for evolution. Um. You know, there
Speaker 1: are there are different haplotypes in North America and in Eurasia,
Speaker 1: but they are also overlapping haplotypes. U. So it's basically
Speaker 1: the same animal as far as we can tell behaviorally
Speaker 1: and in terms of like what they look like. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: how many have you seen without how you see in
Speaker 1: the wild without like not trying to lure him in one? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah to what you've seen too, right, Anny, Yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear about Yeah, oh you did drag that
Speaker 1: moose leg? Well? We were all in the same hunt
Speaker 1: with my dad. But you but then you saw one
Speaker 1: robin caribou carcass, Yeah, and you saw on robin moose car. Yes.
Speaker 1: And on that trip I saw in a way off,
Speaker 1: on a way off distant mountain, I saw another wolverine.
Speaker 1: It was miles from where we saw the one that
Speaker 1: was stashing the cariboo parts. More than likely probably the
Speaker 1: same one, but could have in my third one. Wow,
Speaker 1: where did you see the one you saw Mongolia? No,
Speaker 1: actually it was in It was in Wyoming. So that
Speaker 1: very I was mentioning the guy who I worked with,
Speaker 1: who was the field director for the Absorka Beartooth Wolverine project,
Speaker 1: and so it was that expedition. In fact, here they
Speaker 1: had had callers out on a bunch of their wolverines,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to go in and look at a
Speaker 1: cluster of locations from that collar to see if we
Speaker 1: could figure out what the wolverine had been doing in
Speaker 1: that location. And it was up on the you know,
Speaker 1: the Absorka Beartooth Plateau. We went on and off of
Speaker 1: Toga Te Pass and it was like a hike. It
Speaker 1: was like forty two miles in two days. I was
Speaker 1: not in shape to do something like that, but he
Speaker 1: really needed somebody to go with him because the four
Speaker 1: Service protocols said that he couldn't do it by himself.
Speaker 1: So he's like, it'll be fine, it'll be fine, it's
Speaker 1: totally fine. Once we get up there, it'll be entirely flat.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, you know, I'm up for whatever.
Speaker 1: I'll go. And so we went, and he kept saying like,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a little bit hard, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a long hike, but it'll be fine. It'll be
Speaker 1: flat when we get up there. But we're not going
Speaker 1: to see the wolverine, because you never see the wolverine,
Speaker 1: so don't get your hopes up. And so he had
Speaker 1: his dog with him. And the first night that we
Speaker 1: were out, it was dusk and we were I was
Speaker 1: washing the dishes after we had eaten, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden I heard him just screaming his dog's name
Speaker 1: and he's like, come back, no, come back. And I
Speaker 1: was like, WHOA, what is going on? And he's like,
Speaker 1: it's the wolverine. It's the wolverine. And so I looked
Speaker 1: down over the little ridge and the dog and the
Speaker 1: wolverine were like running at each other. Yeah, and I dropped.
Speaker 1: I remember dropping my dishes and just like sprinting for
Speaker 1: my binoculars. And then luckily his dog was obedient and
Speaker 1: came back, because I don't think that would have ended
Speaker 1: well for her if she hadn't done. And so she
Speaker 1: came back and we out there with our binoculars as
Speaker 1: the sun went down and it got dark, and that
Speaker 1: wolverine circled our camp for probably like seventeen minutes, and
Speaker 1: it really Yeah, it came up and it kept like
Speaker 1: it kept like looking at us from one rock and
Speaker 1: then it would like hop off of that rock and
Speaker 1: it would go to another rock and get up on
Speaker 1: the rock and look at us again. And you know,
Speaker 1: we were staring at it, and it was staring at us,
Speaker 1: and it was just this moment of mutual curiosity. And
Speaker 1: that was when I was hooked. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is really cool, and now I definitely want to
Speaker 1: do this project in Mongolia and go learn more about
Speaker 1: this this species. So yeah, that's the only wolverine I've
Speaker 1: ever seen in the wild. I've handled two in traps,
Speaker 1: and I've seen a lot on camera traps, but that
Speaker 1: remains my only wild wolverine sighting. Were you doing the
Speaker 1: camera traps in Mongolia? Yes? Yes, And how are you
Speaker 1: getting to what were you doing to lure men? Nothing?
Speaker 1: You know they So this is one of the really
Speaker 1: interesting things about the Mongolian wolverine work. Um. With wolverines
Speaker 1: in the US, it seems like if you set even
Speaker 1: camera traps, um, you need to put a lure out
Speaker 1: to get them to come to that location. And usually
Speaker 1: what you do as you hang a bundle of bones
Speaker 1: from a wire up in the trees and you put
Speaker 1: scent on it so it broadcasts the scent. Yeah, exactly
Speaker 1: and um, and eventually you'll get a wolverine coming in
Speaker 1: and they will return. Once they know that there's a
Speaker 1: source of food someplace, they will return again and again
Speaker 1: and again to that place even after the food source
Speaker 1: has gone like, they they'll check it out. Um. In Mongolia,
Speaker 1: we had we set up a grid of fifty cameras
Speaker 1: in these national parks where I was working in northern Mongolia.
Speaker 1: And I do know that my ranger colleagues were like
Speaker 1: they were peeing much in the same way that I
Speaker 1: use the um, you know, perfume to learn the snow efforts.
Speaker 1: They would like pee on a spot um near the
Speaker 1: where the camera was aimed. Um. But that was the
Speaker 1: only lure that that we used, and in some cases
Speaker 1: they weren't even doing that, And so you would just
Speaker 1: get these these wolverines that were like traveling. You're setting
Speaker 1: it up on trails or not even on trails. Well,
Speaker 1: trails is like a I mean there are like travel
Speaker 1: routes that are used by both wildlife and by human
Speaker 1: herders in those national parks. Yeah, and I think you
Speaker 1: know a lot of it really depended on the rangers
Speaker 1: knowledge of where they had seen tracks in the past,
Speaker 1: and so they would set these these cameras up so
Speaker 1: they'd know a likely cross and spot or whatever from
Speaker 1: pass that they're using. Yeah, because they've been out on
Speaker 1: this landscape their whole life. Every single one of those
Speaker 1: rangers had been Some of them were former hunters U
Speaker 1: And of course hunting is now illegal in those national parks,
Speaker 1: which is a whole other discussion, but you know, some
Speaker 1: of them had been brought into the national parks by
Speaker 1: giving them a salary to not kill the wildlife anymore,
Speaker 1: but rather to to protect it U. So yeah, again
Speaker 1: it just for me, it foregrounds the importance of having
Speaker 1: a population working on wildlife research and conservation that is
Speaker 1: really tied to that that wildlife population and knows the
Speaker 1: landscape really really well. What else are you picking off
Speaker 1: on those cameras? Snow leppards one snow leopard. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we know that she's a female. It's the first snow
Speaker 1: lepperd that was found in that park in fifty years
Speaker 1: I think. And I had also done the Long Range
Speaker 1: ski expedition in twenty thirteen in those parks and we
Speaker 1: had seen snow leppard tracks, so we knew that there
Speaker 1: was one up there. But we did get her on camera.
Speaker 1: We get a lot of links bore elk moose. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Tigers and Mongolia not anymore, Nope. But you know if
Speaker 1: the Russians, I mean, say what you want about the Russians,
Speaker 1: they do have some cool tiger conservation stuff going on,
Speaker 1: and maybe if they keep it up, there might be
Speaker 1: sun back in eastern Mongolia at some point. Huh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Russians are good about tigers. Yeah, I mean a
Speaker 1: man you can hold there should be like like, let's
Speaker 1: just talk about tigers and Russias. They got some tiger
Speaker 1: conservation they do. Yeah, tigers, and it doesn't mean they
Speaker 1: should have invaded Ukraine. No, I know, I completely agree
Speaker 1: with you. But there's there's like we used to we
Speaker 1: used to kind of have this like affectionate, like scornful
Speaker 1: thing about Vladimir Putin and tigers, because he had these
Speaker 1: photos of himself like shirtless, like arting darting tigers and
Speaker 1: riding horses around on tiger content. There's a shirtless photo
Speaker 1: of him with a huge yellow perch, which I don't
Speaker 1: know the head. It's a different species. They're not they're
Speaker 1: European perch. I call the boys did some research on
Speaker 1: this because they've seen those pictures of those like four
Speaker 1: pounders in Europe. There. I wouldn't if I called that perch,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have had any clothes on make apistern. Now
Speaker 1: he bought a big perch. Yeah, So part of Vladimir
Speaker 1: Putin's like I don't know he was trying to do
Speaker 1: like twelve months of Vladimir Putin shirtless calendar with all
Speaker 1: the wildest species or whatever, but he yeah, he had
Speaker 1: a shirtless tiger photo at some point and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that's Putin and the tiger thing. That's what's
Speaker 1: not not banged. They're ammer tigers. Yeah, ammer tigers. So
Speaker 1: the emmer river. What's another one, like Siberian tigers? No?
Speaker 1: No, no no, Like, what's the you know, the um dear
Speaker 1: sue Uzala. What's that tiger species that would have been
Speaker 1: also the ammer tiger. Oh? Yeah, Siberian tigers. Siberian tigers
Speaker 1: the same thing or not? Yeah? I mean well, you
Speaker 1: know there are lumpers and splitters and they are all
Speaker 1: of these taxonomic debates all the time. But Siberian tigers.
Speaker 1: The only extant population of Siberian tigers are ammer tigers
Speaker 1: at this point, so those are the same thing. Heads up,
Speaker 1: people at home. Uh, who's the famous Japanese director that
Speaker 1: made all the samurai movies. He made a movie dar
Speaker 1: suit Uzala the Hunter, nothing to do with samurai stuff,
Speaker 1: and it's like Russians. It's like the Russian army working
Speaker 1: in Siberian they hire a hunter as a guide and
Speaker 1: he's like, has this crazy relationship with Siberian tigers. There's
Speaker 1: that book too that was popular whatever ten years ago
Speaker 1: about the guy who's trying to kill a tiger who
Speaker 1: was killing last talk about having him on the show Man.
Speaker 1: It's a good book, but he does a lot of
Speaker 1: like I was like text messages buddies. He does a
Speaker 1: lot of like don't say anything, bag, we were text buddies. No,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like speculation about how the tiger
Speaker 1: thinks and things like that in the you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Um that same author though, wrote The Golden Spruce. That's right.
Speaker 1: You want a book that will curl your hair anyhow
Speaker 1: cool bug links, Yes, moose Elk Boer place sounds like
Speaker 1: the Promised Land. I love it. Yeah, it's my second home.
Speaker 1: So you just hail Mary out of trail camera on
Speaker 1: a trail. Some guys like I saw track you once.
Speaker 1: I mean you got to have like a lot of cameras,
Speaker 1: a lot of days, and a lot of ship besides wolverines.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, I mean it's there's so much wildlife in
Speaker 1: these in these protected areas, and I think it's a
Speaker 1: People say that Mongolia is kind of this like last
Speaker 1: refuge for Eurasian wildlife because of this very deep um
Speaker 1: rappor and sense of relationship that that Mongolians have with wildlife,
Speaker 1: like it is cosmologically important to them. In a general sense,
Speaker 1: like maybe not wolverines specifically, but but wildlife and relationships
Speaker 1: with wildlife are important, and they didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of infrastructure, so you know, it was it was a
Speaker 1: place where there was still full connective on the landscape.
Speaker 1: And although respecting wildlife and having this rapport with wildlife
Speaker 1: does not mean that you don't hunt them, or you
Speaker 1: might be less inclined to think they should kill every
Speaker 1: last one of those things precisely. Yeah, Like when I
Speaker 1: talked to a lot of my hurt her friends about
Speaker 1: how we wiped we European settlers wiped wolves out of
Speaker 1: the lower forty eight and you know, this is a
Speaker 1: hurting culture. They are constantly dealing with wolves coming in
Speaker 1: and attacking their livestock, and they were so I mean
Speaker 1: categorically everybody has just been like, what is wrong with
Speaker 1: you people? That is completely stupid? Why did you do that?
Speaker 1: M Yeah, So they deal they they deal with it.
Speaker 1: Like wolves are adversarial in some respects, So that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you'd want them, yes, to cease existing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because wolves carry this this power called humor, and they're
Speaker 1: they're like humor comes from the from the sky and
Speaker 1: it conduits through wolves. And so there's a saying in
Speaker 1: Mongolia that it's lucky to see a wolf's luckier to
Speaker 1: kill a wolf. So if you see the wolf, you
Speaker 1: get you get hum or. If you kill the wolf,
Speaker 1: you get even more humor. But if all the wolves
Speaker 1: are gone, it's gone, right, And so I write this now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so basically it's really important for men too, because uh,
Speaker 1: you know, women can get humor in a number of ways,
Speaker 1: but for men it's like a lot more precarious. So
Speaker 1: basically what they're saying is like when they when they're
Speaker 1: astonished that we wiped out wolves, they're astonished precisely because
Speaker 1: you're like, well, you know, how are men men? There
Speaker 1: are no men if there are no wolves. So well
Speaker 1: from wolves as well, but um, mostly from seeing them,
Speaker 1: not killing them. Women can, I've been told, get renew
Speaker 1: their humor, Like if your humor is down, your life
Speaker 1: starts to go badly. So, um, you know women can
Speaker 1: do it by just like doing embroidery. Um, yeah of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like just taking care of their kids, like
Speaker 1: lighting the fire. Women have a specific relationship with the
Speaker 1: hearth and fire to which helps keep them more more
Speaker 1: in order in that regard cosmologically, um, that that men
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have. So anyway, I like, I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: just describing things that have been told to me. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be like saying that I'm necessarily advocating
Speaker 1: for women doing more embroidery or well, yes, this is
Speaker 1: what I have been told. I want to move. Um,
Speaker 1: I can talk about my mongol Ya all day. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about America a little bit. Okay, why
Speaker 1: um their day? Who's I talking to? Not you? I
Speaker 1: was talking about how you were coming on the show,
Speaker 1: and I was in Michigan and that's where I was
Speaker 1: brought up, okay, and I was like, why do they
Speaker 1: call Michigan, Like why is it the Wolverine State? So
Speaker 1: I looked up current and historical range maps, and a
Speaker 1: number of them showed historical range and I don't know
Speaker 1: how far back they're going, Like I don't want to
Speaker 1: look at historical range maps from like twenty thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: like ice sheets and shit. But I was trying to like,
Speaker 1: like at the time of European contact, let's say, right, Um,
Speaker 1: So if I was looking at that, it was saying
Speaker 1: like like all of Michigan, which I don't buy. I
Speaker 1: don't know all of Michigan, northern Wisconsin, northern Minnesota. Like,
Speaker 1: what's the best understanding of in in UH in the
Speaker 1: in historic times, Okay, wherever you can use as a
Speaker 1: jump off point, like European contact, historic times, whatever, where
Speaker 1: were they it's a it's this is it is a
Speaker 1: matter of some discussion and debate, but we think that
Speaker 1: you know, wolverine habitat requirements still within the historic past
Speaker 1: from European contact and before you know, they still had
Speaker 1: the biological requirements of needing a cold, snowy niche to occupy.
Speaker 1: So um, what is generally accept now is that they
Speaker 1: were through the rocky mountains of the US down to
Speaker 1: New Mexico. They were in the Sierra Nevada in California.
Speaker 1: They may have been in the very northern part of
Speaker 1: New England, and they may have been in some of
Speaker 1: those northern parts of UM, you know, Michigan and Minnesota
Speaker 1: in the Midwest. I think Lewis and Clark record a
Speaker 1: wolverine sighting in like Nebraska in their journals or something
Speaker 1: like that, but I'm not totally convinced that that was
Speaker 1: actually a wolverine, you know, dirt Miss Dad saw one
Speaker 1: in Miles City. There was one in downtown Lewistown last winter, Yes,
Speaker 1: like in the cemetery or something. It was a badger.
Speaker 1: And he's like, listen, this one thing. My old man knows.
Speaker 1: It's a badger, not a badger. So we can talk
Speaker 1: about why that those are. I don't ever dismiss completely
Speaker 1: out of hand people who report out of range wolverine
Speaker 1: sightings to me, because you're saying, did some some guys
Speaker 1: treed one, like scared one into a tree in Michigan? Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: the Michigan thing is interesting. I think what is what
Speaker 1: people speculate about why Michigan is known as the wolverine State.
Speaker 1: And I hope I'm not disillusioning you as somebody who
Speaker 1: was raised there, but that the fur trade was the
Speaker 1: first encounter that a lot of Europeans had with wolverine pelts,
Speaker 1: Like that was the first time they ever ran into
Speaker 1: wolverines because most of these people were coming from England
Speaker 1: and France and there were no longer any wolverines spaces,
Speaker 1: and so they were like, oh, here's this weird animal
Speaker 1: that's coming through these fur trading posts. In Michigan. So
Speaker 1: Michigan was the point of first encounter, but it might
Speaker 1: not have been the place of Canada down into Detroit exactly.
Speaker 1: And you're like, oh, I wanted to Detroit to the Fort,
Speaker 1: and yeah, some guys that came from four hundred miles
Speaker 1: north had a bunch of wolverine pelts exactly. Wolverine state, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and so that's probably a conduit to the north. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: those Yeah, the trade routes that were converging in Michigan
Speaker 1: were kind of the source of that. And then it's
Speaker 1: a great theory. I'm gonna starting to tell people that
Speaker 1: that's what it is. Yeah, you should. I mean, as
Speaker 1: far as we understand that is, that is the case.
Speaker 1: There was a wolverine that was treed in Michigan, and
Speaker 1: I think it was two thousand, like two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and some guys were out coyote hunting and they had
Speaker 1: dogs with them and they they ran this this animal
Speaker 1: into a tree and fortunately they realized that it was
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously they knew it was not a coyote
Speaker 1: because it was up a tree. But fortunately they didn't
Speaker 1: shoot it. Speaking of shooting things out of trees, they
Speaker 1: did not do that. They called the game in fish department.
Speaker 1: They were like, I think this is a wolverine, And
Speaker 1: sure enough it was. And there was a math and
Speaker 1: science teacher from the local area who set up some
Speaker 1: camera traps and decided to track this this wolverine. He
Speaker 1: was baiting his traps with chicken and um, so obviously
Speaker 1: that was a big incentive for this this wolverine. UM.
Speaker 1: And she would show up on the camera with a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of raccoons. Apparently she had some raccoon buddies
Speaker 1: she was just like hanging out with or they were
Speaker 1: all drawn to the chicken. I don't know. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but they seemed to be very tolerant of each other,
Speaker 1: and they he continued to monitor her. The teacher continued
Speaker 1: to monitor her until in twenty and ten or early
Speaker 1: twenty eleven she died of congestive heart failure. So they
Speaker 1: were able to find her body and neck cropsy it,
Speaker 1: and that's how they knew that she was a female.
Speaker 1: And you know, they know how she died. They ran
Speaker 1: her genetics and she did group with if you exclude
Speaker 1: Alaskan wolverines. This is my understanding of this. I haven't
Speaker 1: actually seen this report. But my understanding is that if
Speaker 1: if you exclude Alaskan wolverines from that genetic analysis, she
Speaker 1: groups with Ontario wolverines, So there is a possibility that
Speaker 1: she came into Michigan naturally. Um. The theory is that
Speaker 1: she might have been on like a garbage disposal ship
Speaker 1: that came down from from Ontario and just jumped off
Speaker 1: in Michigan. If you include a Alaskan wolverines in that
Speaker 1: genetic analysis, she I think she groups with Alaskan wolverines,
Speaker 1: and that would suggest that she might actually have been
Speaker 1: an escape captive animal because that's where that's the genetic
Speaker 1: grouping for most I know, but they always go that route.
Speaker 1: That's how they dismissed people that would see mountain lions
Speaker 1: in crazy places. For decades, Yeah, skate pets like help
Speaker 1: a lot of escape, you know what I mean, And
Speaker 1: after a while it kind of fell apart. But it's
Speaker 1: like it's like the first thing that but look at
Speaker 1: crazy places they go, Yeah, I mean, it's not that
Speaker 1: it's not that unreasonable, it's not that unreasonable. You know
Speaker 1: why people dismiss those sightings. I mean, those game and
Speaker 1: fish agencies, they're like Oh my god. The last thing
Speaker 1: they want to do is have to manage a population
Speaker 1: of mountain lions or manage a population of wolverines. Like,
Speaker 1: people are going to freak out. So it's better if
Speaker 1: we can just have some other explanation for another biologist.
Speaker 1: And then you got to have like a plan you
Speaker 1: have like people who are like freaking out about their
Speaker 1: kids getting eaten at the bus stop or what. You know.
Speaker 1: You just just a whole host of things. You just
Speaker 1: then to get one. It's like, well, here's a female
Speaker 1: that was never d claude, it has babies, it's reproduced
Speaker 1: multiple times. Yeah, well it's got like porcupine quills embedded
Speaker 1: in it from like years ago. There wasn't tell me.
Speaker 1: It's another pet mountain lion from like north or South
Speaker 1: Dakota that was killed on a highway in Connecticut, you know,
Speaker 1: and that clearly was a natural dispersal. So wolverines are
Speaker 1: capable of those kinds of movements. UM. We have a
Speaker 1: record of a wolverine who was collared off of Toga
Speaker 1: Tea Pass in the winter of two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: UM he was collared by the Wildlife Conservation Society. His UM,
Speaker 1: his identifier was M fifty six and he my sister
Speaker 1: and I tracked him off of Toga Tea Pass in
Speaker 1: January of two thousand and nine. We heard him, We
Speaker 1: didn't see him and heard him. Yeah, we had he
Speaker 1: had a caller, so we went out with the telemetry
Speaker 1: equipment and we could we could hear that. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: just him. Um, it was no, these are they are
Speaker 1: gp S callers before at that point, like satellite upload
Speaker 1: collars were still really really expensive, so most of the
Speaker 1: callers they were putting out had internal GIS trackers UM
Speaker 1: and then they would also have the UM shoot telemetry
Speaker 1: just yeah, the little antenna UM and just and you
Speaker 1: have to be within range of it, like the animal
Speaker 1: has to be kind of like within us almost like
Speaker 1: a site line for you to actually hear that, Like
Speaker 1: you have to be in proximity to the animal, as
Speaker 1: opposed to GPSGIS which will upload now they'll upload to
Speaker 1: a satellite and like download to your phone. So when
Speaker 1: you heard it, when you payned, it was it just
Speaker 1: like thick shit. You couldn't tell what was going on
Speaker 1: or when we were up in some stuff that Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of um, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of forest and there was a lot of topography, so
Speaker 1: I think it might have been he might have been
Speaker 1: like a couple of ridges over or something like that.
Speaker 1: Um so we heard him. That was January of two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, and then they were flying um flights
Speaker 1: like once so every couple weeks or something to it
Speaker 1: or where he was. And this happens a lot, especially
Speaker 1: with young male wolverines, like you'll put a collar on
Speaker 1: him and you'll fly and then you'll never hear from
Speaker 1: them again. They'll just disappear one day and you have
Speaker 1: no idea where they went. In this case, the guy
Speaker 1: who had the plane flew down the wind River Range
Speaker 1: and picked up this M fifty six at the southern
Speaker 1: end of the of the wind River Range, and the
Speaker 1: wolverine community was kind of all a buzz because like,
Speaker 1: at that point we didn't have any definite evidence that
Speaker 1: there were wolverines in the wind River Range, so we
Speaker 1: were like, great, he's like colonizing a new range. And
Speaker 1: then they flew again a few weeks later and he
Speaker 1: wasn't there anymore, and they were like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: did his collar malfunction? Like where did he go? What happened?
Speaker 1: So we gave him up as like another wolverine that
Speaker 1: we were never gonna know anything about. A few weeks later,
Speaker 1: there was a rancher in central Wyoming who went out
Speaker 1: to look at a cow carcass and there was a
Speaker 1: wolverine on the cow carcass. This is way outside of
Speaker 1: what is modeled verine habitat. And again luckily, this guy
Speaker 1: was like, oh that's weird and called Wyoming Game and Fish.
Speaker 1: They called the pilot, They went down and flew sure enough,
Speaker 1: it was M fifty six, And at that point, the
Speaker 1: whole environment or whole wolverine research Commune's like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this animal is going to go to Colorado. And there
Speaker 1: had been no definite recorded resident wolverines in Colorado for
Speaker 1: about one hundred years. So for a few months all
Speaker 1: of us were just like, where's M fifty six? Where
Speaker 1: is he now? Where is he now? How is he
Speaker 1: going to get across the interstate? Shoot he might get hit?
Speaker 1: And it was I think it was Memorial Day. He
Speaker 1: went across the interstate and sure enough went into Colorado,
Speaker 1: and his transmitter remained online until two twelve. People would
Speaker 1: see him periodically in Colorado, so we knew where he
Speaker 1: was he went all over Colorado through Rocky Mountain National Park.
Speaker 1: He did, yeah, and people would photograph him there. You know,
Speaker 1: he just was enjoying his time as a mountaineer. In
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, his transmitter died and we were like, well,
Speaker 1: who knows where he is, uh, but maybe people will
Speaker 1: continue to see him. In twenty sixteen, somebody picked up
Speaker 1: a photo or saw wolverine and took a photo of
Speaker 1: a wolverine running across a field in um Northern Montana
Speaker 1: and in Northern Montana. I do not know for sure
Speaker 1: that is M fifty six, but I do know that
Speaker 1: a straight line trajectory from from that sighting. A couple
Speaker 1: of weeks later, I think it was in April of
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. UM, there was a ranch hand in North
Speaker 1: Dakota who came out into his pasture and saw an
Speaker 1: animal in with the cows and unfortunately shot it um
Speaker 1: and put it. He apparently didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1: He put it on Facebook. He's like, you know, I
Speaker 1: shot this critter in my in with my cows this morning.
Speaker 1: And people on Facebook were like, dude, that's a wolverine,
Speaker 1: like call game and fish, and so they came in
Speaker 1: they netcropsied the animal. And we also um implant transmitters
Speaker 1: when we call wolverines, because you know, they're built like
Speaker 1: football players. They can shrug those collars, shrug those collars
Speaker 1: off like relatively easily. And so when they opened up
Speaker 1: his abdomen, they found the transmitter in there, and that
Speaker 1: was m fifty six. Yeah. So from okay, yeah, just
Speaker 1: do a quick run through. Yeah, from where he was
Speaker 1: collared on Tokte Pass to Colorado is a straight line
Speaker 1: distance of like five hundred miles. He certainly was not
Speaker 1: traveling in a straight line during that time. From his
Speaker 1: last known sighting location in Colorado to the place where
Speaker 1: he was shot in North Dakota is seven hundred straight
Speaker 1: line now, and did he ever did that wolverine ever
Speaker 1: run into a wolverine? Who knows? I mean, there's two
Speaker 1: there's two ways that you can speculate about this. Of course,
Speaker 1: a male wolverine when he's dispersing, is probably primarily interested
Speaker 1: in finding a place with a female wolverine, preferably not
Speaker 1: his mother, to avoid that Oedipus thing that we were
Speaker 1: talking about at the outside of the program. So he
Speaker 1: wants to go as far as he can from his
Speaker 1: natal area to find another area that has female wolverines
Speaker 1: in it. The fact that he didn't stick anywhere either
Speaker 1: suggests that there were no female wolverines in those areas,
Speaker 1: or it suggests that there was another male wolverine in
Speaker 1: that area that you know, booted him out all the
Speaker 1: highways he crossed without getting ahead, And I hate, I
Speaker 1: hate to think that he ended the way that he
Speaker 1: did because he's truly like he's one of those wolverines
Speaker 1: whose story we actually know, which is really rare. Most
Speaker 1: of the time wolverines are out doing this stuff, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure they've done even more amazing stuff and we
Speaker 1: just don't know about it. But this happens to be
Speaker 1: a wolverine who's who's famous? You know. I get letters
Speaker 1: from school kids who are like, where's him fifty six?
Speaker 1: What happened to him? And then I have to write
Speaker 1: to a classroom of fourth graders like, oh, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not like things that going to kill a cow anyway.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm definitely not. That's another thing from from
Speaker 1: the Mongolia work. Like I talked to a lot of
Speaker 1: people about livestock conflict with wolverines, and there they laugh
Speaker 1: about that. They're like, this is the only way a
Speaker 1: wolverine could kill of like healthy livestock animal, as if
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually healthy, you know, so, Um, it was
Speaker 1: definitely not a threat to wild he went that fart.
Speaker 1: That's the thing about all this. Oh sorry, well, no, no,
Speaker 1: go ahead. But I was just gonna say, we should
Speaker 1: talk about their viciousness, right because that's what everybody likes
Speaker 1: to talk about. And everybody has a story and I
Speaker 1: think it was even in our notes that there's a
Speaker 1: moose that was taken down by a wolverine, and everybody
Speaker 1: there's some story where a grizzly bear has a keel
Speaker 1: and the wolverine runs the grizzly bear off because they're
Speaker 1: so And then we should also talk about their territoriality,
Speaker 1: mating behavior, all the other great things in our notes
Speaker 1: on I just want to observe though, Um, there's not
Speaker 1: that many, Like, we don't have that many critters run
Speaker 1: around with collars on them. So you go and put
Speaker 1: a collar on something, and how many I mean, how
Speaker 1: many wolverines in America are run around the collar on
Speaker 1: them right now? Oh? Very very few. How you hav
Speaker 1: what about the one you don't know about exactly. I mean, statistically,
Speaker 1: what about the one that like isn't wearing a collar
Speaker 1: that how many are in the lower forty eight like
Speaker 1: right now? Oh gosh. Um, So this is a really
Speaker 1: tricky question to answer because there have not been the
Speaker 1: kind of long term, consistent studies over a wide enough
Speaker 1: area to really give us a good idea of how
Speaker 1: many there are. Do this for me? I know you
Speaker 1: guys whole every time you deal with the biologist, they
Speaker 1: do they played this game. Okay, pretensity is holding a gun,
Speaker 1: and tell tell Brody fill this sentence out. I would
Speaker 1: be surprised to hear there are more than blank, and
Speaker 1: I would be surprised to hear there are less than blank. Okay,
Speaker 1: I would be surprised to hear that there are more
Speaker 1: than three hundred and maybe twenty five in the lower
Speaker 1: forty eight close, good number. I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: a really precise number in a moment, so I will
Speaker 1: not do the biologist game all the way through this
Speaker 1: this little spiel. Um, I would be extremely surprised if
Speaker 1: there were more than like three hundred and fifty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm we typically have said three hundred animals that's
Speaker 1: the number that we use. I've upped it a little
Speaker 1: bit because we know that there's a reproducing population now
Speaker 1: in the Cascades which was not there at the time
Speaker 1: that we initially were estimating how many were in the
Speaker 1: lower forty eight. There's also there was one wolverine in
Speaker 1: the Sierra Nevada in California, which brings me back to
Speaker 1: it as something I should have talked about before when
Speaker 1: we were talking about the original range and you know
Speaker 1: range contraction. So why why was it that M fifty
Speaker 1: six was the first wolverine in Colorado in a century
Speaker 1: and the first wolverine in North Dakota in a century.
Speaker 1: That's because when there were predator control programs primarily against
Speaker 1: wolves in the ear the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: part of that was poison carcasses. Right, you can put
Speaker 1: out a lot of poison carcasses to try to get
Speaker 1: rid of the wolves. And wolverines are a naturally rare,
Speaker 1: sparsely distributed animal on the landscape, and they are really
Speaker 1: really good at sniffing out dead animals. And Alaska's wolf
Speaker 1: man when he's checking his wolf poison, yeah, yeah, real common. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's like five wolves and two wolverines. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that just wiped wolverines out of the Lower forty eight
Speaker 1: all the way back up to the Canadian border. And
Speaker 1: what you've seen since the middle of the twentieth century
Speaker 1: is recolonization. So you have that effect that you were
Speaker 1: talking about where wolverines are coming back into unoccupied habitat
Speaker 1: and so there's a pretty sharp population increase because they
Speaker 1: are this is like a wonderland for wolverine actually filling in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that's the that's what happened there. Now there's
Speaker 1: also an effective population, which is the number of adults
Speaker 1: that are actually contributing genes to the population. And there
Speaker 1: this we can actually get a fairly precise number on
Speaker 1: because we can use genetics to do it. And so
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine, there was a study that
Speaker 1: was done out of the Rocky Mountain Research Station which
Speaker 1: took all of the genetic samples from wolverines in the
Speaker 1: Lower forty eight or in the US Rockies actually and
Speaker 1: analyze the number of contributing reproductive adults and that number
Speaker 1: was somewhere between like thirty nine and fifty two. So
Speaker 1: the adults are females adults. So these are territorial adults
Speaker 1: who are actually contributing to the population through reproduction. So
Speaker 1: you can have three hundred animals on the landscape, but
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty of them are extraneous. They're not
Speaker 1: actually occupying a territory. They're not successful enough to reproduce.
Speaker 1: Which makes managing the species in this situation where they
Speaker 1: are living in islands of habitat that are widely separated
Speaker 1: because most of where they are is on the mountaintops, right,
Speaker 1: it makes managing the population a lot more complicated than
Speaker 1: it does in a place like Alaska, where basically everything
Speaker 1: is wolverine habitat. Right, You're managing populations and you have
Speaker 1: to maintain dispersal corridors. You have to make sure that
Speaker 1: reproductive adults are occupying these mountain ranges at a pretty
Speaker 1: consistent rate to continue to produce offspring, to disperse to
Speaker 1: new areas and so on and so forth. So is
Speaker 1: the carrying capacity there in the lower forty eight for
Speaker 1: there to be a lot more of them or is
Speaker 1: it like there's only a limited number that could ever
Speaker 1: live down here now? Yeah, precisely, Krent and I were
Speaker 1: talking about this. But for people who live here in Bozeman.
Speaker 1: I like to point to the Bridgers and say that
Speaker 1: that mountain range could hold maybe one wolverine. They have
Speaker 1: really huge territories when they're territorial adults. Males can have
Speaker 1: territories that are up to five hundred square miles. Females
Speaker 1: can have territories that are up to three hundred square miles.
Speaker 1: So like, even a range the size of the Bridgers
Speaker 1: couldn't really serve as an effective population node within the
Speaker 1: larger meta population because you know, you have you have
Speaker 1: to buy happenstance. You have to have a female arrived there,
Speaker 1: decide to stay. You have to have a male arrived
Speaker 1: there decide to stay. She has to like the male
Speaker 1: enough to reproduce with him, and then you know they're reproducing,
Speaker 1: and then they'll send out kits who may or may
Speaker 1: not make it. You know, those kids have to disperse
Speaker 1: to some other mountain range, maybe the Crazies, maybe they
Speaker 1: go down into yellow Stone, maybe they go to the Abzorkers.
Speaker 1: Who knows. But all of this is like it's really
Speaker 1: really a delicate balance. And then inherently, because they only
Speaker 1: occupy these areas that have snow on the ground until
Speaker 1: May fifteenth. You have a very limited amount of habitat
Speaker 1: within this area for them to occupy. So there is
Speaker 1: a natural carrying capacity that they are going to reach,
Speaker 1: and it is based on habitat. And that also brings
Speaker 1: us to the kind of the crux of the conservation issue,
Speaker 1: which is that there are climate models that suggests that
Speaker 1: Late Springs snowpack is going to decline substantially within the
Speaker 1: coming century, and so you're really dealing with an expanding
Speaker 1: population and a contracting amount of habitat for them, which
Speaker 1: is a really that also makes a management very complicated
Speaker 1: because it's easy to point to the population between nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty and now and say like, oh, look, the population
Speaker 1: is on this great upward trajectory. So wolverines, it looks
Speaker 1: like they're doing great. But at the same time you
Speaker 1: have this oncoming, you know, locomotive just like bearing down
Speaker 1: on them of climate change that's going to contract the habitat.
Speaker 1: So people who say, oh, the population is increasing and
Speaker 1: wolverines are doing fine are sort of posed against people
Speaker 1: who are like, but climate change is coming, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a guy. We're going to get into that
Speaker 1: issue around polar bears where it's where it's you can
Speaker 1: get like you can get reprimanded by the scientific community
Speaker 1: for pointing to the fact that polar bear numbers are
Speaker 1: really strong right now. Yeah, because they like climate activists
Speaker 1: don't want people to know that polar bear numbers are
Speaker 1: really strong right now because they feel that then people
Speaker 1: will become apathetic about climate Yeah, they want to be like,
Speaker 1: sure they're strong, but trust me, it's going to get bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't even tell anybody that they're doing well right now
Speaker 1: because it's counterproductive, as though people can't like be intelligent
Speaker 1: enough to to like sort this out in their head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they want to conceal the information. I think it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a really that is when we talk about climate change.
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting that people have decided that
Speaker 1: charismatic wildlife need to be the root through which human
Speaker 1: beings should care about climate change. Like you're covered in
Speaker 1: poison ivy and you've said that you were going to
Speaker 1: be a committed anti climate change activists now because you
Speaker 1: don't like to itch right, Like, maybe it's better, Maybe
Speaker 1: it's better to talk to people about you're going to
Speaker 1: be getting mosquito bites more poison ivy, you have more pandemics,
Speaker 1: you're going to have more wildfires, You're gonna have less water,
Speaker 1: like I don't. I don't know that. I think that
Speaker 1: it's great to talk about the impending effects of climate
Speaker 1: change on wildlife, but I don't think it's necessarily the
Speaker 1: best thing to do to try to organize our entire
Speaker 1: reason for caring about climate change around narratives about wildlife,
Speaker 1: like you should care because it's coming for your kids
Speaker 1: and grandkids, and it's going to make their lives worse
Speaker 1: and more unhappy in small ways like poison ivy, and
Speaker 1: in very large ways like conflict over water. And you
Speaker 1: don't want the wolverine app to carry all that bird not,
Speaker 1: bet don't. I just want people to think that wolverines
Speaker 1: are cool and they deserve to persist. Because they're cool,
Speaker 1: and they deserve to persist. They're an awesome animal, and
Speaker 1: they have a right to be here and to continue
Speaker 1: to live in the world. You know what, I think,
Speaker 1: you guys mess up in your world. Um, have you
Speaker 1: ever read Osborne Russell's Journal of a Trapper? I have not? Okay,
Speaker 1: A very meticulous note taker, okay, okay, and he combed
Speaker 1: out what would have been in eighteen twenties. They worked everything,
Speaker 1: like all the stuff, like all the stuff the app
Speaker 1: Sorca's Yellowstone, okay, and he took he takes meticulous notes
Speaker 1: about where they're at, what they saw. He it's interesting
Speaker 1: he calls wolverine's common. Oh, and he's he's you know,
Speaker 1: like like his journal is sort of one of the
Speaker 1: main you know, it's one of the main thing. It's
Speaker 1: one of the main historical tacts about that era because
Speaker 1: he was just a fastidious note taker about location, distance counting.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a little dry at times, but anyways,
Speaker 1: he describes wolverines as common. Now you know that there's
Speaker 1: a big debate here about how many grizzlies are here, right,
Speaker 1: And we even had the guy that we had a
Speaker 1: guy from the USGS, Frank can Member his name, he
Speaker 1: was in charge of like yeah, he ran the count
Speaker 1: yeah on grizzlies, okay, And he was saying the model
Speaker 1: he feels I'm paraphrasing here, so apologies, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: mess this up too bad. The models outdated. Their understanding
Speaker 1: of how big of a territory or breeding age female
Speaker 1: needed was based on that in the absence of bears. Okay,
Speaker 1: in the absence of grizzlies, female grizzlies, we're using a
Speaker 1: much bigger area. So when you take all the suitable
Speaker 1: habitat and chunk it up into like, well, we know
Speaker 1: a female needs a chunk of ground this big whatever
Speaker 1: square mile, hundred square miles, whatever it is. Every breeding
Speaker 1: age female needs that. So how many of these hexagons
Speaker 1: fit in the landmass? Okay, So like, here's the area
Speaker 1: we know that each let's say each wolverine wants three
Speaker 1: hundred square miles, and so we take and you make
Speaker 1: like a shape, and you go like, how many of
Speaker 1: these shapes fit in this place? But it might be
Speaker 1: that you're basing an assumption that is bait, Like your
Speaker 1: assumption about what they need is based on low density
Speaker 1: and what they can use if they have it. Let
Speaker 1: me put it to you another way. I pulled you
Speaker 1: know how a wild raspberry girls around here in the
Speaker 1: high country. Yeah, okay, he's grown in the rocks right
Speaker 1: in a scree slide, and he's got like he's got
Speaker 1: like four inches of vine and a berry. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1: I took one of those my kids and buried at
Speaker 1: my yard. Yeah, and my raspberry patch, I started to
Speaker 1: fertilize it. I guess I'll make that s bitches now
Speaker 1: your entire Okay, So, meaning like, if there's no wolverines
Speaker 1: around because we poison them all off one hundred fifty
Speaker 1: years ago, and you look and be like, this female
Speaker 1: uses three hundred square miles, Well maybe in fifty years
Speaker 1: she's gonna be like it was sweet. I used to
Speaker 1: have the whole mountain range to myself, but I now
Speaker 1: am like a little more boxed in. And the model's
Speaker 1: wrong because this guy was even saying like he doesn't
Speaker 1: believe his own model, but he doesn't have the autonomy
Speaker 1: to update the model. So you'll say, like, oh, how
Speaker 1: many grizzies are in the Greater Yellostone ecosystem? Seven hundred
Speaker 1: probably more? Yeah, well how many more than that? But
Speaker 1: I won't tell you how many? Yeah, because I can't
Speaker 1: independently update the model even though we realize our model
Speaker 1: was wrong. Yeah. So meaning why did Osborne Russell think
Speaker 1: they were common? So I have two I have well,
Speaker 1: I have a couple things to say about that. I
Speaker 1: definitely think I'm so glad that you guys were talking
Speaker 1: at the beginning about that colonization effect because and this
Speaker 1: is where I'm going to tie it back to Mongolia.
Speaker 1: I remember I was saying that in Mongolia you have
Speaker 1: wolverines outside of the habitat model, and that this was
Speaker 1: really puzzling to a lot of people when we talk
Speaker 1: about wolverine territories, that's the need that that's the amount
Speaker 1: of a space that a territorial adult needs. But within
Speaker 1: the territorial adults territory, her kits are also going to
Speaker 1: be living for up to a year and a half,
Speaker 1: So we haven't really talked about how the reproductive biology works.
Speaker 1: And um, you know, coming back to the whole thing
Speaker 1: about whether they're attacking their dads or just killing some
Speaker 1: old man that they meet. Um, wolverines have their kits
Speaker 1: and then they have this like interesting model of like
Speaker 1: long term parental care, which is pretty uncommon in in
Speaker 1: large mammals. So they they actually let their kids hang
Speaker 1: out in their territory for up to eighteen months after
Speaker 1: the kids are born, typically two. They can have up
Speaker 1: to four. So if you have a female wolverine who
Speaker 1: has four kids, if she's or if her territory is
Speaker 1: really rich and she has the body fat and the
Speaker 1: condition to have four kids. She will become pregnant with
Speaker 1: four kids, and then she will have those four kids,
Speaker 1: and then they will be running around in her territory
Speaker 1: and her partner's territory for you know, quite quite some time.
Speaker 1: So now there's six wolverines, but it's one females home,
Speaker 1: one female's territory, two breeding adults, and four of those
Speaker 1: extraneous animals. So I we see this in Mongolia too,
Speaker 1: where again, like you set up a camera and you
Speaker 1: just get wolverines on the camera, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: unheard of here in the US Rockies at this point.
Speaker 1: I think that part of the reason is because we
Speaker 1: are still in a recolonization phase where the landscape is
Speaker 1: not fully saturated with wolverines. And once you get a
Speaker 1: really interconnected metapopulation where all of the territories are occupied
Speaker 1: it with reproductive adults and they're all sending out kits,
Speaker 1: you do get a lot of wolverines that are running
Speaker 1: through habitat that is not wolverine habitat. Because those are young,
Speaker 1: they're dispersers. They're like the equivalent of us when we're
Speaker 1: in college. They're just kind of like gooping off and
Speaker 1: trying to figure things out out going here, and they're
Speaker 1: trying to find a place to be. And then this
Speaker 1: may also pertain to why you see wolverines in the
Speaker 1: historical record in places like Maine potentially, or in Michigan,
Speaker 1: if you did have live wolverines, they're part of the
Speaker 1: reason is because they were coming down from those much
Speaker 1: more robust, reproductive populations that are centered further to the north.
Speaker 1: So it's a classic sort of source sink. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there are areas of really good habitat, and there
Speaker 1: are areas of marginal habitat, and wolverines can reproduce outside
Speaker 1: of optimal habitat. So that may fifteenth spring snowpack habitat.
Speaker 1: Female wolverines give birth in the snow in mid February.
Speaker 1: So we say, for anybody who hates Valentine's Day and
Speaker 1: or for anybody who wants another reason to celebrate it
Speaker 1: even more, we say that Valentine's Day is wolverine birthday.
Speaker 1: That is the the internationally officially recognized wolverine birthday all day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and are they altricial or precocial? Like do they have
Speaker 1: little hairless babies? They're like they're they're they're they're not hairless,
Speaker 1: but they're pretty I mean you they can just toss
Speaker 1: a newborn wolverine out into the world and have it survive.
Speaker 1: Are they as helpless as like a bear's Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: probably not as helpless as a bear. Um. But they
Speaker 1: are in the den, in that snowden with their mother
Speaker 1: until Mother's Day, so Valentine's Day to Mother's Day, and
Speaker 1: at that point, after those three months of staying in
Speaker 1: the snowden, they are pretty much capable of like going
Speaker 1: out and surviving um, although they still apparently have a
Speaker 1: lot to learn, which is why they continue to hang
Speaker 1: out with their parents, sometimes with their moms, sometimes with
Speaker 1: their dads, sometimes with their sibling, just like kind of
Speaker 1: exploring the landscape, figuring out how to use resources, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it is that wolverines do UM in the course
Speaker 1: of becoming adult dispersers UM. And so the so to
Speaker 1: go back to the question about like our biologists underestimating
Speaker 1: the number of animals on a landscape, I think it
Speaker 1: does depend on the animal that you're talking about and
Speaker 1: the model that you're using. There is no doubt that
Speaker 1: models should be continually updated depending on population density. UM.
Speaker 1: But in the case of wolverines, I think that a
Speaker 1: lot of the kind of the perception that they are
Speaker 1: common comes from the fact that if he was if
Speaker 1: he was in an area where there were reproductive adults,
Speaker 1: he was probably seeing a lot of wolverines and a
Speaker 1: lot of wolverines sign just because they were there with
Speaker 1: their with their young. Um, and he's dealing with a
Speaker 1: lot of carcasses he's dealing with If he's dealing with carcasses,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, of course you're going to be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they like live off the land in the high country. Ye.
Speaker 1: So you're exactly right. You're you're creating, and you're probably
Speaker 1: that you're probably creating in the animals some idea of
Speaker 1: how to find shit. Oh yeah, I mean association. Right,
Speaker 1: You can certainly have wolverines who who I mean. They're
Speaker 1: very smart animals, I think, and they know what's up.
Speaker 1: Like when you were talking about the wolverines in the
Speaker 1: Cariboo hunting area, um coming in and like you know,
Speaker 1: taking pieces of cariboo and stashing the places. That is
Speaker 1: that those wolverines are smart. They figured out like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a food source here, We're gonna come in and
Speaker 1: we're gonna you know, optimize our interaction with this food source.
Speaker 1: What's the biggest thing they'll kill without needing to find
Speaker 1: it already dead? Um. I think there is a report,
Speaker 1: and this is anecdotal. I have not seen the primary
Speaker 1: source on this, but it's a widespread report that I've
Speaker 1: heard from multiple wolverine biologists as I was first coming
Speaker 1: into the field that there was a thirty pound female
Speaker 1: wolverine in Alaska who killed a full grown moose. Man
Speaker 1: I heard, I've heard a report. It's in a book
Speaker 1: I read, and it was the book was a biologist
Speaker 1: in Fairbanks of one killing a doll sheet, or it
Speaker 1: was like someone watched it happened or something. I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I might be mixing it up. I have a friend
Speaker 1: who was a fellow Peace Corp volunteer in Mongolia who
Speaker 1: watched two who watched the wolverine charge to our gallium,
Speaker 1: which are you know, like two hundred pound big horned
Speaker 1: sheet basically and try to run them off a cliff. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's like there's no doubt that like they are
Speaker 1: capable of doing that either through and I think what
Speaker 1: usually happens with large prey, large ungulate prey is that
Speaker 1: they're stranded in the snow. Wolverines, of course walk plantigrade.
Speaker 1: They have these big snowshoe feet. They can float up
Speaker 1: on top of the snow a lot better than um,
Speaker 1: you know, ungulates and even uh digigrade animals like cats
Speaker 1: or dogs, which punch through. Um. And so they find
Speaker 1: these animals that are bogged down in the snow and
Speaker 1: they plantigrade versus digigrade. Like you're saying, it just doesn't
Speaker 1: the foot doesn't flex forward and push through or what
Speaker 1: is it? Sorry? Yeah, So humans and bears and wolverines,
Speaker 1: we all walk plantigrade. That means we walk with our
Speaker 1: heels down. Um digigrade animals have evolved to kind of
Speaker 1: walk up on their toes. So if you look at
Speaker 1: a cat or a dog, right, they have that little
Speaker 1: like their legs are kind of shape like this. They
Speaker 1: kind of have that L shape, and that little that
Speaker 1: the corner of the l is where the heel actually
Speaker 1: would be if they were walking plantigrade. So, um, when
Speaker 1: you walk heel down, you've got you know, obviously more
Speaker 1: surface area. And a wolverine is relatively small. I know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of reports that there are like sixty
Speaker 1: pound wolverines out there, but in this ecosystem, a very
Speaker 1: large wolverine would be about thirty pounds. That's very large.
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty substantial. Yeah. Further north, of course they
Speaker 1: get a little bit bigger, up to like maybe forty pounds,
Speaker 1: but um, you know, they don't they don't get much
Speaker 1: bigger than that. They look bigger because they've got all
Speaker 1: that fur, but um, yeah, so they will attack animals
Speaker 1: that are bogged down in the snow. And there's a
Speaker 1: video if if listeners want to see this, you can
Speaker 1: google m like Norwegian wolverine attacking reindeer. It'll probably come up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like in a snowstorm. The reindeer is kind of
Speaker 1: blinded and confused by the snow. There was a guy
Speaker 1: who hap to be like recording this whole thing, and
Speaker 1: the wolverine just keeps like jumping on the reindeer's back
Speaker 1: and attacking it and weakening it, and then eventually it dies.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a messy experience. When we're talking about
Speaker 1: wolverines being vicious. Um, I don't like to promote that
Speaker 1: image of them because I think, you know, people don't
Speaker 1: like to try to conserve vicious animals. But I also
Speaker 1: don't like to skirt around the fact that this is
Speaker 1: an animal that is carnivorous and it is killing other
Speaker 1: animals in ways that are pretty pretty gruesome. So, um,
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of a lot of it
Speaker 1: seems to be that they just wear these animals down
Speaker 1: by bleeding them out and attacking them and you know,
Speaker 1: um yeah, and then they have a food source that
Speaker 1: they can eat for like a month or so, especially
Speaker 1: if it stays cold. It's you know, that carcass stays preserved.
Speaker 1: They know where it is. If it's buried in the snow,
Speaker 1: so much the better because then other things can't get
Speaker 1: to it. Did you hear about that collaring project in
Speaker 1: southeast Alaska where they had they had a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff collared in areas they're looking at their eyes, that
Speaker 1: building a road as the Haynes Highway or whatever. Hell,
Speaker 1: And they had a collared moose fall into a crevasse,
Speaker 1: a collared a part of a grizzly bear that was
Speaker 1: part of the collaring project climbed in there, Scott stuck died,
Speaker 1: and then a wolverine that was collared as part of
Speaker 1: the project got in there. And scavenged the carcasses. I
Speaker 1: did not hear that. Okay, that is yeah. That wolverine
Speaker 1: was like, oh my gosh, my year is made. And
Speaker 1: another one out of that same project, another one got
Speaker 1: caught two hundred and fifty miles more they collared it.
Speaker 1: That got caught by a trapper in British Columbia. That
Speaker 1: does not surprise me at all. Like that is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing when and that's why when people say,
Speaker 1: oh I saw a wolverine running through my field, and Ohio,
Speaker 1: I'm like, highly skeptical. But tell me more. You know,
Speaker 1: I I know something about Krim a long time ago.
Speaker 1: I said that she ought to get whoever ran that
Speaker 1: whole collaring project on the podcast. Still doesn't happen. Wait
Speaker 1: which coloring project where they were where they did that
Speaker 1: crazy collaring project around that road construction project in southeast
Speaker 1: Alaska and they had the collared moose, bear, and wolverine
Speaker 1: all come together. Oh I totally forgot about that. That's
Speaker 1: not the knock on today's guess, but that a hell
Speaker 1: of a guest who did that? Okay, whole work assignment
Speaker 1: for me dead no old age, because I just forgot
Speaker 1: about it. For four years. I feel like I was you,
Speaker 1: I was telling about that. I feel like this might
Speaker 1: be the first that I've heard of. Maybe I just
Speaker 1: thought it. Maybe I thought I need to tell Crane
Speaker 1: about this. What's the what's the most impressive thing about
Speaker 1: wolverines that people you think people should know about that
Speaker 1: they don't know about? Who wrote it's like that, like
Speaker 1: something you've seen it? Like what blooded killers? Um? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I talked about the thing that is most
Speaker 1: impressive to me, just the endurance that they have, the
Speaker 1: way that they can travel, you know, pretty much endlessly,
Speaker 1: and you know they also this is there was a
Speaker 1: big study in Glacier National Park, and this is probably
Speaker 1: relatively well known because there was an author named Doug
Speaker 1: Chadwick who wrote called The Wolverine Way, where he talks
Speaker 1: about the wolverine that you know, started to like go
Speaker 1: around Mount Cleveland and then just decided, you know, the
Speaker 1: hell with it, it's going to be easier to go
Speaker 1: over the top and went up five thousand vertical feet
Speaker 1: or something like that in about forty five minutes and
Speaker 1: down the other side, and there was a carcass on
Speaker 1: the other side that it was trying to get to
Speaker 1: and it you could see in the caller data like
Speaker 1: it started to go around and then it was like, Nope,
Speaker 1: I'm just hungry and I want to get to my
Speaker 1: meal immediately, and up it went and over and to
Speaker 1: that carcass. And so that to me, the fact that
Speaker 1: they are such incredible mountaineers and sort of endurance athletes,
Speaker 1: I think is something that a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: know about them. And then on the softer side, I
Speaker 1: would say too that they are actually really good parents,
Speaker 1: which is not something that most people know, but like
Speaker 1: they invest a lot in their young, they take care
Speaker 1: of them, they have these ongoing relationships with them for
Speaker 1: quite a while after they are sort of technically independent.
Speaker 1: Both sexes take part in the parenting. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that was one of the most interesting things to come
Speaker 1: out of that Glacier research um. For a long time,
Speaker 1: there was a sort of this like myth around wolverines
Speaker 1: that the male wolverines would go and kill the kits,
Speaker 1: which doesn't make any sense evolutionarily, like if if those
Speaker 1: are your kits, like you, the last thing you want
Speaker 1: to do is actually kill that. Yeah, but that is
Speaker 1: a thing though, I mean, like on Kodiac, like a
Speaker 1: primary food source of of male brown bears as baby
Speaker 1: brown bears. That is, there's a chance. There is a chance,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of people because wolverines look
Speaker 1: like bears. They've got five toes like bears. They you know,
Speaker 1: one of their bear, they're like, oh, it's just a
Speaker 1: little bear. They act the same way. But what they
Speaker 1: actually saw in the call the data was that these
Speaker 1: male wolverines were visiting the dens. We don't know what
Speaker 1: they were doing there, but we do know that they
Speaker 1: would regularly visit the dens um. Maybe they were bringing food,
Speaker 1: and that after the kids came out of the den um,
Speaker 1: they would travel periodically with their mom and periodically with
Speaker 1: their dad. Yeah, that's taking a trip with their dad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just that's when they had that big fight. Yet,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe they do get into these big disagrees.
Speaker 1: He was coming to the dens like you ready yet,
Speaker 1: ready for that fight yet? Oh you guys are just
Speaker 1: now disrupting my whole tranquil vision of wolverine family life.
Speaker 1: But that is wild, though. Man, he'll come and check.
Speaker 1: He'll come around and check. Yeah. Yeah, and my kids
Speaker 1: there are talking about some animal and they're like wonder
Speaker 1: where his daddy is. You know, I'm like that, dear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll have no interaction knowledge of it just isn't. It'll
Speaker 1: stay glued to its mom. But it's like it's not
Speaker 1: well if it's a buck though, it might sparse dad
Speaker 1: one day, Yeah someday, Yeah my spar was dad. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just like like he he doesn't know or care.
Speaker 1: Yeah that dear knows his mom like inside no, but
Speaker 1: has no idea of dad. Yeah. Um no, that's it's
Speaker 1: different for wolverines, and I would love to know more
Speaker 1: about why. Um, But they Yeah, they do have these
Speaker 1: these sort of family relationships that persist for quite a while.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if like if a
Speaker 1: young wolverine left and came back, whether his dad would
Speaker 1: still be as like tolerant of him. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, they do interact with each
Speaker 1: other amiably. They also have you guys, not had any
Speaker 1: chance to go to a den and just set up
Speaker 1: like good cameras and just observe like what's going on
Speaker 1: at the den? Or is that just too hard to
Speaker 1: pull off? I have never done that. They do, Um,
Speaker 1: So they do call her kits um. I have never
Speaker 1: personally done this. You go in right at that cusp
Speaker 1: where you know it's they're almost ready to be out
Speaker 1: of the den, so like mid may dig him out,
Speaker 1: stick a color on him, and then they're they're out. Um.
Speaker 1: But there have been a few projects in Canada that
Speaker 1: have set up cameras next to the den, and what
Speaker 1: they've seen in I think every instance is they go in,
Speaker 1: they put this camera up on the den, and the
Speaker 1: female moves the kits within like forty So even though
Speaker 1: they are like relatively tolerant of certain levels and kinds
Speaker 1: of human activity, if you stick an object that they
Speaker 1: can smell and see, like right at the place where
Speaker 1: where she has her kits, she is not going to
Speaker 1: like that. So um, we tend to I've had a
Speaker 1: lot of film projects contact me and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: can you like give us a den location so we
Speaker 1: can put a camera on it. And I don't think
Speaker 1: I don't think it's ethical to do that, and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to assist with things like that. Yeah, do
Speaker 1: they like does the male let's say he's just out
Speaker 1: cruising about like old sixty five was it fifty six? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does he have a den location. No, So this
Speaker 1: is another thing. I get a lot, I guess so
Speaker 1: many reports of wolverine sightings, and I dearly love interacting
Speaker 1: with the people who send them. But one of the
Speaker 1: red flags from me whenever anybody's like, oh I got
Speaker 1: a wolverine in a den in my backyard, I'm like,
Speaker 1: that is not a wolverine. Um like, like, that's this
Speaker 1: little spot where goals asleep at night. They definitely I
Speaker 1: have seen, you know, males and females alike will dig
Speaker 1: holes in the ground and cash meat in there. They
Speaker 1: will go under talas to rest, especially if it's hot out,
Speaker 1: like that's probably one of the ways that they throw
Speaker 1: them or regulate when it's hot. But they don't have
Speaker 1: a den that they are faithful to the only time
Speaker 1: that wolverines are in a den is when the female
Speaker 1: is in there with the kids. My body in the
Speaker 1: bare Tooths saw one digging through an avalanche debris field. Huh.
Speaker 1: And then my brother Danny watched to dig through an
Speaker 1: avalanche debris field in Alaska. Okay. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: really another interesting thing that they do. You see, like
Speaker 1: in the collar data, wolverines will cruise the bottoms of
Speaker 1: avalanche shoots and they are looking for carcasses should got
Speaker 1: swept up in cheap and goats that have gotten um
Speaker 1: swept off and you know what I mean, like what
Speaker 1: kind of crazy junk gets scraped up by an avalanche. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the other thing they do in talas fields
Speaker 1: and probably avalanche debris fields as well, if there are
Speaker 1: pikers in there, they'll go and they'll they'll hunt pikers
Speaker 1: like they're actually hunting, not living, not scavenge, but living pikes.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um. And then also marmots and Mongolia, they
Speaker 1: will dig hibernating marth a terrible thing for the marmot,
Speaker 1: but they'll dig hibernating marmots out of out of the
Speaker 1: ground and just like you know, it's a little fat
Speaker 1: bomb for them. Coincident's your favorite food. Oh so, yes,
Speaker 1: there's a background. There's more detail than that. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we could just leave it there. People want to wonder,
Speaker 1: but no, um, so marmot is a delicacy in Mongolia.
Speaker 1: And I like, if you find the wolverines not just
Speaker 1: for wolverines. Yeah no, this is an overlap between wolverine
Speaker 1: and human um culinary arts, I guess, but um, wolverines
Speaker 1: eat them, and humans also eat them. Uh. You shoot
Speaker 1: the marmot and you cut it open, got it? Um,
Speaker 1: stuff it full of wild onions and hot rocks and
Speaker 1: cook it up and it is so good. You told
Speaker 1: me when I was younger that like I would one
Speaker 1: day be really excited about eating a fat road and
Speaker 1: I would have just been like not believing about that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's really really good. Um. Of course,
Speaker 1: then like a little bit of spicy risk to that
Speaker 1: is that marmots are also the reservoir species for bubonic plague,
Speaker 1: which is still We had a story we covered some
Speaker 1: time ago of a couple I don't know how I'd
Speaker 1: even want up being reported, but a couple that died
Speaker 1: from Yeah was that in Mongolia? Yeah, that happens every year,
Speaker 1: and so there are It was weird. It's like one
Speaker 1: of those things that you're like, like it got picked
Speaker 1: up in international news, you know, and you're like, how
Speaker 1: did like how did this come to be picked up
Speaker 1: international news? And like, I bet it happens. It's just
Speaker 1: weird that it and then it got all over the place.
Speaker 1: I'm sure because the Black death has like such a
Speaker 1: like a resonance in like the Western imagination because of
Speaker 1: how catastrophic that was for European history that people are like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, the bubonic plague at that sold people
Speaker 1: on the story probably, I mean, I feel like it
Speaker 1: pops up like every year or every couple of years
Speaker 1: in the international press somebody's died of bubonic plague in Mongolia.
Speaker 1: But the Mongols, the Mongolians and the Mongol Empire as well,
Speaker 1: have been managing that disease for you know, hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of years, and so they know how to, like
Speaker 1: if somebody comes down with it, they quarantine the whole
Speaker 1: town basically. And during marmot hunting season, at least when
Speaker 1: I was a Peace Corp volunteer, there were checkpoints outside
Speaker 1: of Ulmboder, and everybody wants to eat marmots, so like
Speaker 1: people would try to bring them into the city, but
Speaker 1: they would like stop and search the car and your
Speaker 1: luggage to make sure that nobody was bringing a marmot
Speaker 1: into the city. Because it's manageable. When the population density
Speaker 1: human population density is very low, you can quarantine the town.
Speaker 1: But if something like that ever got loose in Ullumboder,
Speaker 1: where half the population of the country lives, then you
Speaker 1: would really be in trouble. That's how this became a
Speaker 1: news story. Okay, you reminded me. Okay, it was a
Speaker 1: news story because the journalist was stuck in town. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, that's what it was.
Speaker 1: That's how that's how what became reported. Yeah, becase they
Speaker 1: got quarantined okay because of a of a bubonic plague
Speaker 1: death from eating marmot. Okay, so then it yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and there So this goes to hunting too, and like
Speaker 1: traditional knowledge in hunting, because I have been told I
Speaker 1: have not seen anybody hunt this way, but historically there
Speaker 1: was like a specific thing that you were supposed to
Speaker 1: do when you were hunting marmots um where you would
Speaker 1: set up like a little stand for your rifle and
Speaker 1: you would put the rifle on it, and then you
Speaker 1: would have a feather and you would like move the
Speaker 1: feather and if the marmot could like track the feather
Speaker 1: and was aware of the feather, then it was like
Speaker 1: healthy enough. You knew it didn't have the plague, so
Speaker 1: you could shoot it. Really, people don't bother to do
Speaker 1: that anymore, so well no one I know either, but um,
Speaker 1: so like, yeah, then there's a greater risk of of
Speaker 1: getting an animal that actually is carrying the plate So
Speaker 1: you're they're eating that. No one, they're playing with fire
Speaker 1: by messing with those things. Yeah, I mean usually what
Speaker 1: you do is after you hunt it, you also blow
Speaker 1: torch it to kill because it's it's the fleas that
Speaker 1: actually carry it. So you blow torch the pelt and
Speaker 1: then you and then you cook it. But if it's
Speaker 1: already infected, then if you eat anything that has like
Speaker 1: that limph tissue in it, then you you also still
Speaker 1: run the risk of getting it. Man, we're hunting cottontail
Speaker 1: rabbits yesterday my kids got soul full of those little
Speaker 1: fleas all over those rabbits. Oh really, God, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: fram or something. Their clothes are hanging outside right now. Well,
Speaker 1: at least the rabbits don't have bubonic plate um. They're like,
Speaker 1: I see them, we're clean rabbits, and I see they're
Speaker 1: all like itch in their ears a lot, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: go take a shower, take thirty clothes outside and take
Speaker 1: a shower. Can you get them a blowtorch? Oh? I
Speaker 1: guess you hunt rabbits for the pelts, though, don't you No, no,
Speaker 1: we just eat them. Okay. Well, um man, so how
Speaker 1: do people find you and follow your work? M I interrupt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And before we do that, I think we have maybe
Speaker 1: like a public service announcement that you mentioned. Do you
Speaker 1: want it to talk about before like the public like
Speaker 1: kind of enlisting the public? Stop stoe, No, they're looking
Speaker 1: at your cow? No something else? Well? Yeah, please if
Speaker 1: you if you do see a wolverine looking at your cow,
Speaker 1: please don't shoot it. Please just call me. Um. You
Speaker 1: can find me at the Wolverine Foundation dot org and
Speaker 1: submit a report immediately if you see a wolverine looking
Speaker 1: at your cow. And I don't want anyone that sees
Speaker 1: a wolverine let you know. Yeah, I do. I think
Speaker 1: it's important to let us know because we do collect
Speaker 1: siting reports. And then also it's really important to let
Speaker 1: the local state Game and Fish department know because they're
Speaker 1: the ones who are going to be capable of being
Speaker 1: on the ground there to assess the report and to
Speaker 1: take any action that might be necessary to monitor the animal. Um.
Speaker 1: We do get a lot of I do get a
Speaker 1: lot of reports of wolverines that are not wolverines. I've
Speaker 1: gotten a few reports of werewolves. We do not study werewolves.
Speaker 1: Please do not report them to me. That's a different species.
Speaker 1: Somebody else deals with that. What is it normally? Um,
Speaker 1: the most the most common thing I think actually are
Speaker 1: porcupines and wood chucks. Yeah. People, nobody knows what a
Speaker 1: porcupine looks like. I mean, you guys, wolverine, you guys
Speaker 1: know what a porcupine looks like. But like the general
Speaker 1: American public does see you know how they have that
Speaker 1: they have a tail. Yep. Wolverine's got that big kind
Speaker 1: of tail. Yeah, yeah, they're roughly the same size. And
Speaker 1: wolverine's got that kind of weird almost like coloration, yes,
Speaker 1: circles the bodied tail ratio in the in the way
Speaker 1: the tail rides, yep, And they have that. You know.
Speaker 1: Porcupines also have that kind of humped profile, so like
Speaker 1: they look like they're sort of like round on the top.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people think of wolverines as looking
Speaker 1: that way. And if you see a wolve porcupine from
Speaker 1: a distance, you don't see the quills. It just looks
Speaker 1: like it's kind of fuzzy right now. And they have
Speaker 1: a guy a light colored halo yes to them that
Speaker 1: I think wolverine has too. Yeah, so yeah, thank you,
Speaker 1: and they walk, you know. Porcupines also have kind of
Speaker 1: flat feet too, although they're a lot smaller than wolverine feet,
Speaker 1: they do have that kind of like gait that could
Speaker 1: be sort of wolverine from from a distance. Wolverines like
Speaker 1: eating porcupines. No, you know, this is something I have
Speaker 1: never heard of. Fishers are special Fishers are like fishers
Speaker 1: are porcupine specialists? Yeah, they open it up on the
Speaker 1: belly and yeah, no, I we've never We've seen duck remains,
Speaker 1: bird remains, Um, we've seen, you know, all kinds of
Speaker 1: things that wolverines will eat, but I have never heard
Speaker 1: of a wolverine eating a porcupine. Um. So if you
Speaker 1: do see a wolverine or you see wolverine sign which
Speaker 1: are tracks, um, please take photographs if possible. If you're
Speaker 1: taking photo if you're taking photos of the tracks, make
Speaker 1: sure you put something in there for scale, because wolverine
Speaker 1: tracks and Martin tracks and even like least weasel tracks
Speaker 1: are the same darned tracks. If I don't have something
Speaker 1: in there for scale, I can't tell what it is
Speaker 1: and then send it to me. There's a submission forum
Speaker 1: on Wolverine Foundation dot org and let your local wildlife
Speaker 1: management agency know as well, and we will put it
Speaker 1: into a database. This is important too. I know that
Speaker 1: the listeners of your podcasts are in general, really really
Speaker 1: skilled outdoors people, and I have total faith and trust
Speaker 1: in people's wildlife knowledge. But because of the way science works,
Speaker 1: I always have to be a little bit skeptical and
Speaker 1: I have to ask more questions about the report. So
Speaker 1: if you send a report to me, do not think
Speaker 1: that it is a commentary on your own assessment of
Speaker 1: your wildlife skills. If I come back to you with questions,
Speaker 1: it is just because I have to do everything I
Speaker 1: can to verify and make sure that it is not
Speaker 1: something else had. Some people get very very angry with me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some guy who was like riding a four wheeler
Speaker 1: around a dump in like Alabama or something and reported
Speaker 1: a wolverine and I was like, um, could you describe
Speaker 1: what the facial mask looked like? And he got so
Speaker 1: angry at me. He was like, you need to take
Speaker 1: some yoga classes and learn to chill out. So I
Speaker 1: took a class the other day. My wife, did it
Speaker 1: help you? Like, no, be awful. Um, so yeah, and
Speaker 1: then um, if everybody knows how to identify wolverine wolverine tracks, um,
Speaker 1: that's great. But for those who don't, they have five toes,
Speaker 1: they have a little crescent pad in the middle. It
Speaker 1: kind of looks like a it's like arcs, like a
Speaker 1: like a crescent moon. And then sometimes there's a heel
Speaker 1: pad that registers, and sometimes there is not a heel
Speaker 1: pad that registers. But if the heel pad is there,
Speaker 1: from the tip of the toes to that heel pad,
Speaker 1: it's probably like six or seven inches. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a big it's a big track, and they have a
Speaker 1: very distinctive three buy track. Give me the dimension again,
Speaker 1: it's the whole track heel pad shows. If the heel
Speaker 1: pad shows, it's like six to seven inches, it's like
Speaker 1: the size of I mean, it's like a wolf track,
Speaker 1: which and people don't I mean, people are surprised by that.
Speaker 1: But it's a pretty big track and it could be
Speaker 1: like almost as big as your hand. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's how I yeah, that's why I'm holding up my hand.
Speaker 1: It's about talking this guy. This guy looks for tracks
Speaker 1: all win or you'll find one Okay, well, if I
Speaker 1: will talk to you about wolverine tracks, rides a snowmobile,
Speaker 1: just doing that. Snowmobile, snowmobilers and backcountry skiers, I feel
Speaker 1: like are an undertapped resource for wolverine citizen science, and
Speaker 1: I would love to have more people who are out
Speaker 1: in snowy conditions just being on the lookout and being
Speaker 1: aware and taking those photos and sending them to us,
Speaker 1: because it's really important to track where there are actually
Speaker 1: verified locations for the species. So thanks to anybody who's
Speaker 1: willing to do that. Is that the public service announcement?
Speaker 1: Yea yea, thank you kin? All right, man, that was good.
Speaker 1: We could we could do like a whole other one,
Speaker 1: like keep talking about wolverines. I will have a talk
Speaker 1: about wolverines for hours. So thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 1: Tell again how to go find you guys stuff. It's
Speaker 1: Wolverine Foundation dot org and we have a Facebook page
Speaker 1: and we have a Twitter account. I am pretty the
Speaker 1: Wolverine Foundation. I basically am the only person running it.
Speaker 1: And it's not a salaried position either, so I'm pretty
Speaker 1: bad about the social media or spotty about the social media.
Speaker 1: But you can find us there. And I do periodically
Speaker 1: post things. Do you guys accept donations. We do accept donations, yes,
Speaker 1: and those donations go to support the wolverine research projects
Speaker 1: in the field, so you can talk If you have
Speaker 1: a specific wolverine project that you want to support, you
Speaker 1: can talk to me about that and I can put
Speaker 1: that money aside in a fund for that specific wolverine project.
Speaker 1: General contributions go towards the general pot of money that
Speaker 1: we then periodically open up for proposals from wolverine researchers.
Speaker 1: You know we didn't talk about was the idea that
Speaker 1: the a Row that like the Northern peoples, would use
Speaker 1: the wolverine fur on the rough of a parka because
Speaker 1: it's a hollow and it doesn't carry frost. Yes, But
Speaker 1: then I heard that that's actually not very accurate or
Speaker 1: is that accurate. I don't know if it's because it's hollow,
Speaker 1: but it does shed. It does shed with sheds from Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why that's why you trim your park so when
Speaker 1: you're ex hailing. Yes, it doesn't build up on the
Speaker 1: park or rough exactly. Yeah, or you can shake it
Speaker 1: off or whatever, right, and it doesn't just stick on
Speaker 1: there like if you had a kyote rough, it just
Speaker 1: gets caked in ice. Yeah, so, and I think wolf
Speaker 1: fur also does the same thing. I know, ungulate furs hollow,
Speaker 1: and so that's why it's so insulating that I don't
Speaker 1: know whether wolverine fur is actually hollow. I don't think
Speaker 1: it is um, but it does have that property of
Speaker 1: shedding frost. And there have been like stories of people
Speaker 1: who have found wolverine carcasses um where you know, it's
Speaker 1: in the spring and the snow all around the carcass
Speaker 1: has melted, and then you like pick up the wolverine
Speaker 1: and there's still like a patch of snow under there.
Speaker 1: Because the insulating properties of the fur are so good,
Speaker 1: they're thermoneutral I think down to like minus forty degrees.
Speaker 1: So yeah, wolverine is a preferred in some northern places
Speaker 1: for that reason. In Mongolia, I have been told you
Speaker 1: should never put wolverine fur on your head because it
Speaker 1: is associated it's an animal that's associated with the underworld.
Speaker 1: You just don't want to be doing that. But that said, also,
Speaker 1: there are people in Mongolia who wear wolverine fur hats.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, the next time you're in Mongolia and
Speaker 1: someone gives you a wolverine, hide sew it into your
Speaker 1: hood and just go home like mine, in your own business,
Speaker 1: and don't just be don't be showing everybody what you got.
Speaker 1: He's quiet about it, Pretend I don't know about the sides. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: you say you want everybody to send in their wolverine signings,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing not if you're an Alaskan. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: always interested in hearing about people's wolverine stories, so like,
Speaker 1: you can totally send me your wolverine stories from Alaska.
Speaker 1: But as far as what I'm interested in monitoring scientifically,
Speaker 1: it's much more about the wolverines here in the lower
Speaker 1: forty eight. So if Brody's dicking around on there in Colorado,
Speaker 1: on he finds what you want to hear about it,
Speaker 1: I do because as far as we know, since m
Speaker 1: fifty six left, there is still no population in Colorado,
Speaker 1: and you were mentioning before the fact that there's habitat there.
Speaker 1: So one of the things they're talking about is potentially
Speaker 1: reintroducing wolverines to Colorado. So they like doing that stuff
Speaker 1: in Colorado. I'm all for it, man, I'm all for it.
Speaker 1: Why not, there's no negative, No, I'm not saying they
Speaker 1: did it with links, right. Yeah, I'd be like, I
Speaker 1: would love to hear the anti wolverine argument she's got. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there would be no no, no, hit it real quick.
Speaker 1: Did you have a good one? Well, I know, it's
Speaker 1: not that I'm opposed to it. It's just that wolverines
Speaker 1: are really good dispersers, right, And I think that the
Speaker 1: best way to handle this personally is just to ensure
Speaker 1: that the population further to the north is robust enough
Speaker 1: to keep sending out dispersers to get there naturally, because
Speaker 1: you Rob and Peter to pay Paul right precisely, Like
Speaker 1: if you start punching holes in the wolverine population further
Speaker 1: to the north, because it's so precarious, Like if you
Speaker 1: start taking reproductive adults out of Montana to put them
Speaker 1: in Colorado, you create a hole in this metapopulation that
Speaker 1: potentially has repercussions later on. So that makes good sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I generally like the natural I generally like the
Speaker 1: natural disbursement thing socially too. Yeah, it's socially better, so
Speaker 1: much better, because then you don't have the you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have people getting together arguments about how these
Speaker 1: like nasty, big northern carnivores are so much more ferocious
Speaker 1: than the ones that should have been here or um,
Speaker 1: you know those kind of that kind of resistance doesn't
Speaker 1: come up. So yeah, Diane Boyd, Yes, you know, she
Speaker 1: very much said that she wished they never fans planted
Speaker 1: them here into Yellowstone, remember that. Yeah, she said, you
Speaker 1: would have went, you would have wound up in the
Speaker 1: same place with a lot less friction. All right. Wolverine Foundation, Yes,
Speaker 1: Wolverine Foundation dot org. All right, everybody, next time you
Speaker 1: see a badge or gimm call the old for I mean,
Speaker 1: empty pounds keeps my life interesting. Thanks for Bregan