Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This
Speaker 1: is Cow's Week in Review with Ryan cow Calian. Here's cal.
Speaker 1: We all know that deer tend to do silly things
Speaker 1: when they're in front of a car's headlights. Well, a
Speaker 1: white tail deer in New Jersey reacted especially poorly to
Speaker 1: oncoming traffic on the evening of Tuesday, June nine, when
Speaker 1: it leapt from a Garden State Parkway overpass and landed
Speaker 1: right smack on top of a twenty twenty five Tucson
Speaker 1: traveling on the road below. The diving deer dealt some
Speaker 1: serious damage to the vehicle and even caused the doorframe
Speaker 1: to be damaged, trapping the forty four year old driver inside,
Speaker 1: But authorities quickly responded to the scene and safely removed
Speaker 1: the woman from the totaled car. Thankfully, her injuries were
Speaker 1: not life threatening and she's expected to make a full recovery.
Speaker 1: The same can't be said for the deer, which, unser
Speaker 1: surprisingly didn't make it. Sadly, this incident is far from
Speaker 1: the first time a deer has jumped from great heights
Speaker 1: to meet its demise. One famous incident took place in
Speaker 1: Cedar Rapids Iowa back in twenty seventeen, when a group
Speaker 1: of white tails, including a nice typical buck, startled by traffic,
Speaker 1: jumped from the eightieth Street bridge and died upon impact
Speaker 1: in a ditch below. While we may poke fun at
Speaker 1: these incidents, the need for wildlife crossings is no laughing matter,
Speaker 1: especially in places where infrastructure, including roads, obstruct the historical
Speaker 1: migration routes of critters such as mule, deer, elk, and pronghorn.
Speaker 1: In fact, earlier this spring, the US House of Representatives
Speaker 1: Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure renewed the Wildlife Crossings Pilot Program,
Speaker 1: which is a three hundred and fifty million dollar competitive
Speaker 1: grant program that helps states, tribes, and other entities reduce
Speaker 1: vehicle collisions while improving habitat connectivity for terrestrial and aquatic species.
Speaker 1: It's a win win for everyone, and especially the folks
Speaker 1: who might otherwise be blindsided by a deer jumping from
Speaker 1: an overpass and into your car. Which seems too far
Speaker 1: fetch to be true, but it's not. This week. We've
Speaker 1: got lions, screwworms, and data centers, plus so much more.
Speaker 1: But first I'm gonna tell you about my week and
Speaker 1: my week has been amazing. We welcomed a beautiful, so
Speaker 1: tiny yellow lab puppy into the household. Her name is carp. Yes,
Speaker 1: the dog got my number one pick for a human
Speaker 1: child name. But mom and Dad's ability for complex thought
Speaker 1: is pretty low, and it felt great to check something
Speaker 1: off the list. Josh and Whitney Miller over at Riverstone
Speaker 1: Kennels have this mix of chill, trainable and intense drive
Speaker 1: that make it hard to look elsewhere. The intensity with Snort,
Speaker 1: who after human baby and now dog baby have entered
Speaker 1: the house, is a little much. She's questioning her place.
Speaker 1: I suppose she also has transformed from our little yellow
Speaker 1: lab to a big, muscly six year old dog overnight.
Speaker 1: It's wild how the perspective changes with the context. Top
Speaker 1: of the order for in the moment updates, it's the America.
Speaker 1: The Beautiful Act is looking promising. It passed out of
Speaker 1: the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and there's many
Speaker 1: signals that this thing may get a vote. Got big
Speaker 1: help from public lance champion in the Senate, Martin Heinrich,
Speaker 1: and quite surprisingly, Mike Lee's willingness to allow some bipartisanship
Speaker 1: for an outgoing Senator Steve Danes, who is the sponsor
Speaker 1: of America the Beautiful. He and Angus King introduced that
Speaker 1: act this week. If you remember, Steve Danes and the
Speaker 1: rest of the Republicans on the Senate e and I
Speaker 1: voted to support Lee's amendment on the Wildfire Prevention Act
Speaker 1: to fully rescind the two thousand and one roadless Rule
Speaker 1: and by so doing, completely circumventing the public process now
Speaker 1: here in the home state of Montana. Many many people
Speaker 1: would like to see roadless reform, but not a lot
Speaker 1: of people want to see roadless recision. You're throwing a
Speaker 1: lot of good stuff out with some things that need
Speaker 1: some work. Now are these votes related? You may ask,
Speaker 1: did Steve Danes, Montana senator who says he's in support
Speaker 1: of public lands many many times vote in favor of
Speaker 1: Mike Lee's amendment in order to get Mike Lee's support
Speaker 1: for America the Beautiful. Don't fight me on this. I
Speaker 1: won't fight you on that. Well, you be the judge.
Speaker 1: Don't make it right, but here we are regardless. Now,
Speaker 1: America the Beautiful has a bunch of great stuff in it.
Speaker 1: I want to see it past backhuntry hunters and Anglers
Speaker 1: is in support of this one. You'll see some action
Speaker 1: alerts in this Act. The big ticket item is reauthorization
Speaker 1: of the Legacy Restoration Fund, which is another bipartisan thing
Speaker 1: that was kind of like on a trial that put
Speaker 1: a bunch of cash in place for addressing the maintenance
Speaker 1: backlog on public lands and national parks. It was originally
Speaker 1: just national parks, and we got public lands slid in
Speaker 1: there in the eleventh hour. So this is a good thing.
Speaker 1: We need it. It's already working. This just authorizes it
Speaker 1: for the future. So look out for those action alerts
Speaker 1: and be ready to ask your Senator to vote in
Speaker 1: favor of the America the Beautiful Act now tied in
Speaker 1: with this Roadless Conversation and Legacy Restoration Fund. I'm still
Speaker 1: getting lots of reports of illegal cross country or off
Speaker 1: trail off road use, as well as motorized use on
Speaker 1: non motorized trails and vandalism of signage and destruction of gates,
Speaker 1: most likely related to an executive order that came out
Speaker 1: of the White House Trump executive Order. We're sinding some
Speaker 1: previous executive orders on OHB use off highway vehicle. We
Speaker 1: covered this before. We'll cover it again very briefly, that
Speaker 1: executive order said, hey, we're open to changing this. These
Speaker 1: old executive orders are antiquated. In the future, when this
Speaker 1: change happens to travel management plans, we are going to
Speaker 1: be looking for more inclusion for the motor communities. However,
Speaker 1: existing travel management plans, which are the rule of the
Speaker 1: land on US Forest Service, those are still the law.
Speaker 1: So you still need to get a motor vehicle, use
Speaker 1: map and go where designated destruction and poor representation now
Speaker 1: may in fact lead to less motorized access when the
Speaker 1: time comes for new management plans. So make sure your
Speaker 1: friends in the gas and electric powered communities know that
Speaker 1: the travel management plans are still in place. We only
Speaker 1: have all of this stuff because of our ability and
Speaker 1: willingness to self regulate. Only reason we got hunting and
Speaker 1: fishing in America. Only reason that we're still out there
Speaker 1: cutting timber for ourselves on public lands. Only reason that
Speaker 1: we get a pick from this quiver of access messas,
Speaker 1: both motorized and non out there on our public lands.
Speaker 1: So spread the word. Moving on to the legislative desk,
Speaker 1: Montana policymakers are retracting some controverty regulations when it comes
Speaker 1: to Mount lions. On Friday, June twelve, the governor appointed
Speaker 1: Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission voted unanimously to change the
Speaker 1: way the state sets hunting quotas for lions. Essentially, the
Speaker 1: Commission is moving away from a percentage based approach to
Speaker 1: mount lion harvest and likely to revert to the use
Speaker 1: of forming advisory committees to help develop harvest goals along
Speaker 1: with input from Montana Fish, Parks and wildlife biologists. The
Speaker 1: same commission had implemented the percentage based approach back in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three at the behest of big game outfitters,
Speaker 1: who hoped knocking back the mount lion population by thirty
Speaker 1: to thirty five percent would help elk and mule deer populations.
Speaker 1: But hound hunters, the folks who actually target Mount lions,
Speaker 1: worried the regulation change was too aggressive and would negatively
Speaker 1: impact their ability to pursue lions sustainably. They also called
Speaker 1: the percentage based goals arbitrary, considering it super difficult to
Speaker 1: get accurate population counts of the elusive species. I think
Speaker 1: it was a mistake, Commissioner Susan Brooks said of the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three action. I voted for it. I was wrong,
Speaker 1: So this is my attempt to go back to where
Speaker 1: we were. Montana Fishing Wildlife Commission also made another change
Speaker 1: that both houndsmen and big game outfitters lauded. They unanimously
Speaker 1: approved a two month hound hunting season for mountain lions
Speaker 1: in the Charles m Brussel and Ulban National Wildlife Refuges,
Speaker 1: which are historically great public hunting grounds. Previously, lion hunting
Speaker 1: was open at those refuges, but chasing them with the
Speaker 1: aid of hounds was not. If you have thoughts on
Speaker 1: the mount lion hunting situation here in the Treasure State,
Speaker 1: send us a message askcl at the meeater dot com.
Speaker 1: Jumping over to the world of you know not outside
Speaker 1: data centers. These facilities house massive networks of computers and servers.
Speaker 1: They've been around for a long time, but in the
Speaker 1: past year or so there's been a serious surge in
Speaker 1: the construction of these because of the proliferation of AI
Speaker 1: or artificial technology. They do use a lot of water
Speaker 1: in electricity, which means we need to be thoughtful about
Speaker 1: how and where we developed them, and that doesn't always
Speaker 1: seem to be the case in some instances. I'm tracking
Speaker 1: two data center stories. In particular in the home state.
Speaker 1: Some folks are proposing putting one right on the banks
Speaker 1: of the famed Blackfoot River that's at the Bonner Milltown area.
Speaker 1: The data center would draw groundwater and surface water and
Speaker 1: use up to eight hundred megawatts of electricity, necessitating the
Speaker 1: need for the development of further infrastructure for the energy
Speaker 1: grid to be able to handle all that. These challenges
Speaker 1: would all come as the Blackfoot River is facing low
Speaker 1: flows and drought conditions, as well as proposed gold mine
Speaker 1: near its headwaters that could also wreak havoc on the
Speaker 1: cold water fishery. Last week, over fifty concerned citizens gathered
Speaker 1: at a meeting in Missoula to speak out against the
Speaker 1: proposed data center. Meanwhile, down in Utah, a proposed forty
Speaker 1: thousand acre data center on undeveloped land north of the
Speaker 1: Great Salt Lake could be the final arrow for Locomotive
Speaker 1: Springs waterfowl management area. That public waterfowl refuge has already
Speaker 1: been seriously struggling for a lack of water, largely due
Speaker 1: to over allocation and drought. Now, developers of the the
Speaker 1: data center are working to secure their own water rights
Speaker 1: in the already drier than normal landscape. This is sure
Speaker 1: to hurt the public waterfowl hunters in that area. Our
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Hicks, board member with the Utah Waterfowl Association, said
Speaker 1: that even if the state was somehow able to secure
Speaker 1: separate water rights for locomotive springs, the forty thousand acre
Speaker 1: data center would likely ruin the hunting. Quote. We're talking
Speaker 1: about enormous buildings, generators, and a gas plant to supply
Speaker 1: the generators. With all the heat and noise and disturbance
Speaker 1: that's going to create. What bird would want to come here,
Speaker 1: even if there was a lot of water. While data
Speaker 1: centers are a relatively new issue when it comes to
Speaker 1: fish and wildlife and recreation, it's also new in the
Speaker 1: world of regulation, so there's not a lot of facts
Speaker 1: out there for the general public to consume. And these
Speaker 1: things have big footprints. In addition to the consumption of
Speaker 1: water and energy, they're going to make a mark. We
Speaker 1: don't know how big that mark is, and we don't
Speaker 1: have enough data to make an informed decision. Head on
Speaker 1: over to our friends at Field and Stream. Old Travis
Speaker 1: Hall has got a good scoop on the locomotive spring situation.
Speaker 1: It's worth a read. Jumping down to Texas. Last week,
Speaker 1: Agriculture Secretary Brick Rawlins announced the first case of the
Speaker 1: New World screwworm and cattle the state is seen since
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six. New World screw worm. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things you want to be real careful about googling.
Speaker 1: Some of the images will ruin your day if you
Speaker 1: think I'm kidding. Considered the Latin name of the species,
Speaker 1: see Hominivorax, which literally means man eater. It earned that
Speaker 1: name after a gruesome outbreak in a prison colony off
Speaker 1: the coast of French Guiana in the eighteen hundreds. Unlike
Speaker 1: regular flies, who lay their eggs in dead organic matter,
Speaker 1: screw worms lay their eggs and wounds in living tissue,
Speaker 1: wounds that can be as small as a tick bite.
Speaker 1: Female flies lay hundreds of eggs at a time. When
Speaker 1: those eggs hatch, the maggots start feeding on the flesh
Speaker 1: of the animal, often devouring holes down into the body cavity. Severit,
Speaker 1: tissue damage and death are common if left untreated. Screwworm
Speaker 1: is particularly detrimental to animal breeding, as flies often lay
Speaker 1: eggs in the healing belly buttons of newborn animals. Screwworm
Speaker 1: had a major problem in the US in eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: resulting in losses to cattle producers through the middle of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Screwworm can afflict wildlife as well, and
Speaker 1: for a long time it held deer numbers down in
Speaker 1: the southern part of the US. Fortunately, humans figured out
Speaker 1: how to control screwworm. You breed huge numbers of the flies,
Speaker 1: expose the males to radiation to sterilize them, and then
Speaker 1: air drop those males into existing screworm populations with enough
Speaker 1: volume to introduced males out compete their wild brethren and
Speaker 1: no new maggots hatch. The USDA pursued this program for decades,
Speaker 1: extirpating the past from the southern US, then all the
Speaker 1: way down through Mexico and Central America, finally creating a
Speaker 1: firewall in Panama. Well into the twenty twenties, the USDA
Speaker 1: air dropped over fourteen million sterilized flies per week into
Speaker 1: Panama to keep things quiet. Unfortunately, a new spread north
Speaker 1: began several years ago, getting past the bottleneck in Panama
Speaker 1: and prompting even more air drops and here's where the
Speaker 1: policy problem begins. Just as screwworm was moving northward in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, DOGE was in the middle of slashing
Speaker 1: government programs, including the US Agency for International Development, which
Speaker 1: is best known for distributing foreign aid, but USAID was
Speaker 1: also the center for animal disease monitoring, and the screwworm
Speaker 1: detection program was cut in February twenty twenty five. DOJE
Speaker 1: also turned to the USDA at the same time, which
Speaker 1: is the agency that coordinates the breeding and distribution operations
Speaker 1: of sterilized screwworms. According to an article from last year
Speaker 1: from the North Dakota's Ranch Radio eight ten am quote.
Speaker 1: In March twenty twenty five, under the Trump administration, funding
Speaker 1: was cut by the USDA for animal disease control and prevention,
Speaker 1: including highly pathogenic avian influenza, New World screwworm, and African
Speaker 1: swine fever. Specifically, funding was targeted to monitoring and responding
Speaker 1: to New World screwworm unquote. Cuts to the USDA also
Speaker 1: eliminated thirteen hundred employees of the agency's Animal and Plant
Speaker 1: Health Inspection Service, which is the main authority for preventing
Speaker 1: problems like screwworm outbreaks. In response to the recent news,
Speaker 1: the USDA has now added more staff to the problem
Speaker 1: and they are ramping up sterilized fly breeding and distribution.
Speaker 1: But bringing the operations back up to scale is going
Speaker 1: to take precious time and money. An ounce of prevention
Speaker 1: is worth pound a cure, as they say. Since news
Speaker 1: broke of the first case, there have now been twelve
Speaker 1: reported cases of screwworm infestation in Texas, which will no
Speaker 1: doubt be outdated by the time you hear this. This
Speaker 1: could be a major problem for ranchers, hunters, and pet owners,
Speaker 1: so if you see an animal with maggots and living tissue,
Speaker 1: reported to local authorities immediately to have major impacts on
Speaker 1: our southern deer populations, as well as a bunch of
Speaker 1: other stuff we enjoy. If you want to hear more
Speaker 1: on this, we did a good job at covering this
Speaker 1: on one of our interview episodes. You have to look
Speaker 1: up screwworm and the old Cows we can review index
Speaker 1: jumping over to the public land, which has started to
Speaker 1: feel like reporting from a battlefield. In addition to OHV orders,
Speaker 1: roadless rule recision, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge leases, Ambler road,
Speaker 1: and on and on. We've got another issue incoming. According
Speaker 1: to the New York Times, the US Department of Agriculture
Speaker 1: is set to issue a memo recommending that all quote
Speaker 1: unquote recommended wilderness nationwide be managed for multiple uses, with
Speaker 1: the imply use of motorized Understanding what that means requires
Speaker 1: a bit of review of different kinds of public land.
Speaker 1: On certain pieces of public land managed by the BLM,
Speaker 1: for example, you can hike and hunt, and a timber
Speaker 1: company or mining company can get a permit for resource extraction,
Speaker 1: and there's broader use of wheeled vehicles the whole spectrum motorized.
Speaker 1: In a national park, on the other hand, you can't
Speaker 1: mind for cobalt or cut down spruce, but you can
Speaker 1: build roads and sometimes a hotel. Then there are capital
Speaker 1: w wilderness areas created by Congress defining the Wilderness Act
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty four as quote undeveloped federal land retaining
Speaker 1: its primeval character and influence without permanent improvements or human
Speaker 1: habitation unquote. This is the highest level of protection for
Speaker 1: federally managed public lands. You can't have any business activity.
Speaker 1: Commercial activity is limited to guiding outfitting for all kinds
Speaker 1: of things bird watching, botany, big game fishing, sight seeing,
Speaker 1: but no wheels, no motors, primitive you're on foot or horseback,
Speaker 1: or you're floating non motorized. Now, places like this, as
Speaker 1: you can imagine that meet this definition of undeveloped and
Speaker 1: retaining its primeval character and influence without permanent improvements or
Speaker 1: human habitation, are scarce and getting more scarce. And there's
Speaker 1: a few that still meet that definition, some of which
Speaker 1: that are already labeled potential wilderness kind of don't. It's
Speaker 1: a scarce resource and getting scarcer every day. Now, Good
Speaker 1: folks over at the Wilderness Society explain this a little
Speaker 1: bit more. Recommended wilderness areas have been assessed by Forest
Speaker 1: Service staff as exceptionally intact, untouched by development, and critical
Speaker 1: to wildlife and the broader ecosystem. They are deemed worthy
Speaker 1: of legislative protection as a wilderness area and provisionally managed
Speaker 1: that way. In the meantime. There are in fact five
Speaker 1: point one eight million acres in the US that have
Speaker 1: been identified as having what it takes to become wilderness,
Speaker 1: pending a vote from Congress, which, in case you haven't noticed,
Speaker 1: is pretty hard to come by. That's the way we
Speaker 1: make wilderness through congressional acts, which in part is why
Speaker 1: we have so little wilderness. Five percent of the entire
Speaker 1: US is a designated wilderness, which is one hundred and
Speaker 1: eleven million acres spread all across the country. Our biggest,
Speaker 1: like contiguous wilderness areas are right there at like two
Speaker 1: million acres, which really is not that much, especially on
Speaker 1: these western landscapes where you know, we just don't have
Speaker 1: the forage and water density that a lot of folks
Speaker 1: on the eastern side of the States think of as normal.
Speaker 1: That'd be abnormal out here. Now. Once these areas have
Speaker 1: resource extraction happening, or have established vehicular access, or otherwise
Speaker 1: show the marks of human beings interfering with them, they
Speaker 1: lose that primeval character and the chances of the capital
Speaker 1: w happening are very very slim now the official memos
Speaker 1: not out right now, but as a commodity, that five
Speaker 1: million acres is at an all time high of value,
Speaker 1: and it's dwindling and getting more valuable every single day. Now.
Speaker 1: Some similar is happening over the Department of the Interior,
Speaker 1: which recently announced a process to review whether policies on
Speaker 1: so called Wilderness study areas and lands with wilderness characteristics
Speaker 1: should be quote, updated, clarified, or revised. Essentially, Wilderness study
Speaker 1: areas are like recommended wilderness land that happened to be
Speaker 1: managed by the BLM instead of the Forest Service, different
Speaker 1: terminology and government agency, same plot to remove protections from
Speaker 1: wild land. And there's WSAs on USFS two, there's about
Speaker 1: eleven point one million acres under Wilderness Study Area designation.
Speaker 1: DOI recently opened a sixty day comment period for this process,
Speaker 1: and we'll put a link to that in the cal
Speaker 1: To action site. Wild Places are scarce Gang. If we
Speaker 1: want these things to exist, we've got to stand up
Speaker 1: for him right now. Moving over to the invasive desk,
Speaker 1: all of these assaults on public land can feel like
Speaker 1: vulture circling. So here's a couple of feel good pieces
Speaker 1: to end the day. First, the Congressional Review Act, which
Speaker 1: we've covered many many times here, which is like the
Speaker 1: break glass in case of emergency tool that saw extremely
Speaker 1: limited use up until recently, had been pitched for a
Speaker 1: recision of Grand Staircase Escalone National Monument to use the
Speaker 1: CRA as it was used for Boundary Waters Canoe Area
Speaker 1: and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one to rescind a mining moratorium,
Speaker 1: and one to rescind a moratorium on oil and gas
Speaker 1: lease sales. The deadline for that CRA came and went,
Speaker 1: which is a good thing because there was many folks,
Speaker 1: and especially many Utah folks who have their own good reasons,
Speaker 1: wanted to see some more vehicular access in certain areas.
Speaker 1: But that can be done without the use of the CRA.
Speaker 1: The dangerous part of the CRA is when it is used,
Speaker 1: it reverts back to the previous management plan and whatever
Speaker 1: budgetary constraints that management plan was on or under, and
Speaker 1: the wording that it used the best available science and
Speaker 1: public input of the management plan it was throwing out
Speaker 1: could not be used again, which is kind of like
Speaker 1: that cove in there of like, hey, if you're going
Speaker 1: to use this, beware it's got its downfalls too. And
Speaker 1: as we've said many times, like the CIA just like
Speaker 1: cuts around a giant public process. So if you're one
Speaker 1: of those folks who want to see changes within ground
Speaker 1: staircase Escalaune, you got the power of the public process.
Speaker 1: Scientists the University of Florida have published the first documented
Speaker 1: evidence of the scavenging birds preying on Burmese python eggs.
Speaker 1: The team had been conducting a radio telemetry trial and
Speaker 1: EVERYLAS to track the location of the invasive snakes, and
Speaker 1: after locating a nest in the Francis S. Taylor Wildlife
Speaker 1: Management Area, they approached it to destroy the eggs, but
Speaker 1: when scientists arrived, they discovered that vultures had beaten them
Speaker 1: to it. Four vultures were in fact still circling the nest,
Speaker 1: seemingly in the middle of their meal. Of the seventeen
Speaker 1: total eggs in the clutch, three had been totally consumed
Speaker 1: and the rest had holes poked in them. But thankfully,
Speaker 1: even though the vultures were disturbed during lunch, they didn't
Speaker 1: leave the python nest. A one star yellp review. When
Speaker 1: people talk about invasive species, they often say that populations
Speaker 1: get out of control because they have no natural predators. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe the native predators of the Sunshine State are learning
Speaker 1: to find those delicious snake eggs. After all, bobcats, alligators,
Speaker 1: and black bears have also been documented eating python eggs,
Speaker 1: and I bet humans could help there too. I've probably
Speaker 1: eaten weirder. That's all I got for you this week.
Speaker 1: Thank you. So much for listening. Remember to write into
Speaker 1: ask c Al that's Ascal at the meat eater dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks again, we'll talk to you next week.