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Speaker 1: The return of gray wolves, Mexican wolves, and red wolves

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Speaker 1: to the West is an unfolding history yet to play out,

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Speaker 1: but it's a watershed in the Western story. I'm dan Flores,

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Speaker 1: and this is the American West. The wolf returns to

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Speaker 1: the West. Stepping ashore in the early sixteen hundreds, we

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Speaker 1: old worlders were bitter to discover wolves were abundant in America.

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Speaker 1: That's truly curious if you know human history, since thousands

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Speaker 1: of generations of us had watched and learned from wolves

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Speaker 1: for half a million years or more. Domesticated wolves were

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Speaker 1: our first companion animals, our oldest animal helpmates, our templates

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Speaker 1: for domestication, because as hunters, both humans and wolves saw

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Speaker 1: so much of themselves in the other. But there were

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Speaker 1: handed down memories that were more recent in Eurasia. Wild

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Speaker 1: wolves ceased to be our blood brothers when seven to

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Speaker 1: eight thousand years ago we started taming and herding undulates.

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Speaker 1: Native people in America never took that step with bison

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Speaker 1: or bighorn sheep or prong horns, and consequently they lived

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Speaker 1: among wolves without animals, continuing to admire and learn from them,

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Speaker 1: seeking them as totems. But Europeans landed in America with

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Speaker 1: all their past centuries of wolf hatred at full boil,

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Speaker 1: plus a recent memory of success at eradicating wolves in

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Speaker 1: places like the British Isles. There was also that shepherd's

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Speaker 1: religion we brought with us, which calls something else into play.

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Speaker 1: Inferences from the Bible were that wolves were a part

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Speaker 1: of the fallen earth Adam and his progeny inherited when

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Speaker 1: he was expelled from the garden. Looking deeply into a

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Speaker 1: wolf's eyes could also be a disconcerting reminder of something

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Speaker 1: good Judaeo Christians tried their best to avoid thinking about.

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Speaker 1: To paraphrase the British ecologist Melanie Challenger, the earth was

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Speaker 1: now dominated by an animal who was doing his best

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Speaker 1: to convince himself and everyone else that he was not

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Speaker 1: actually an animal. That animal origin we share with wolves

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Speaker 1: is one reason they make us so anxious. In his

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenties novel Steppenwolf, the German writer Hermann Hesse put

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Speaker 1: the matter this way. He calls himself part wolf park man.

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Speaker 1: With the man he packs in everything spiritual and sublimated,

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Speaker 1: are even cultivated to be found in himself, and with

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Speaker 1: the wolf, all that is instinctive, savage, chaotic. As a

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Speaker 1: good European, Hesse didn't understand enough about wolves to reference

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Speaker 1: their real emotional lives, their loyalty and tenderness to packs

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Speaker 1: and mates in offspring. But he knew that wolves remind

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Speaker 1: us of the animal nature we humans deny or believe

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Speaker 1: we've escaped. That was a problem for us, but much

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Speaker 1: more of a problem for wolves, except in Alaska. By

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Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century, we Americans had endangered all our

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Speaker 1: wolves everywhere. Federal wolf killers Stanley Young and Ea Goldman's

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Speaker 1: famous book The Wolves of North America proudly proclaimed victory

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Speaker 1: by the nineteen forties. By then, wolves were entirely gone

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Speaker 1: on in the East, from New England to Virginia. The

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Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain states, with all their public lands, barely held

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Speaker 1: one hundred wolves. California's last wolves were down to fewer

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Speaker 1: than fifty. There were only sixty Mexican wolves left. In

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Speaker 1: the Southwest. The only places in the lower forty eighth

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Speaker 1: that still had sizable wolf populations were the Upper Great

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Speaker 1: Lakes Country and the mid South. By the mid twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: the Upper Midwest still had fourteen hundred gray wolves, and

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Speaker 1: the Mid South four hundred and fifty red wolves, but

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Speaker 1: those numbers were all quickly falling. For Americans born after

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Speaker 1: World War II, living in a country without wolves now

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Speaker 1: became normal. That was certainly the case for me from

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Speaker 1: a generation born in in America. With no wild buffalo

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Speaker 1: on the prairies, no passenger pigeon in the skies, no

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Speaker 1: wolves in the forest. The wolf warriors were finally succeeding

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Speaker 1: in making America over in the image of England or France.

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Speaker 1: Centuries of unquestioned wolf hatred had worked, so called civilization

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Speaker 1: was now at hand. There was one exception to this

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Speaker 1: sad tale of wolf disappearance in the lower forty eight.

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Speaker 1: Back in nineteen fifty nine, inspired by Adolph Mury's The

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Speaker 1: Wolves of Mount McKinley, a young graduate student from working

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Speaker 1: class roots named David Meck conducted the first of three

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Speaker 1: winners of field trips to a two hundred ten square

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Speaker 1: mile island in Lake Superior. Ile Royal had become a

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Speaker 1: National park in nineteen forty and Mech's project was to

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Speaker 1: study an ongoing natural history experiment there. In the early

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Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, moose had swum from lake shorelines out to

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Speaker 1: the island. Lacking predators, their numbers predictably underwent two massive

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Speaker 1: eruptions and then die offs. Then in nineteen forty nine,

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Speaker 1: gray wolves somehow got to Isle Royl from the mainland,

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Speaker 1: probably by crossing the winter frozen lake. Like Adolph Murray,

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Speaker 1: Meck did the kind of wolf study others dreamed of

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Speaker 1: getting to see firsthand an evolving ecological interaction. At the time,

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Speaker 1: a few hundred wolves remained in the Upper Midwest, most

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Speaker 1: of them in Minnesota. The Fish and Wildlife Service would

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Speaker 1: declare this Midwestern wolf population officially threatened by nineteen seventy eight.

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Speaker 1: When mechs The Wolves of Isle Royal appeared as a

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Speaker 1: National Park's publication in nineteen sixty six, his insights spread

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Speaker 1: through the scientific community. Adolf Murror had been right. Wolves

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Speaker 1: mostly killed the young, the injured, and the very old

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Speaker 1: of their prey, but there was more. Meck was the

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Speaker 1: first naturalist to report how difficult the life of a

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Speaker 1: wolf really was. Although Ile Royals wolves killed in ate beavers,

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Speaker 1: almost their entire focus was on big ungulates. Wolves did

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Speaker 1: not survive on rabbits or mice, yet, of the moose

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Speaker 1: they pursued. Even big wolf packs succeeded in making kills

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Speaker 1: only eight percent of the time. For many readers, Mech's

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Speaker 1: Insides induced a new found understanding and compassion for the

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Speaker 1: life of a wolf. For ecology, Mech's ile Royal study

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Speaker 1: was one more piece of hard evidence buttressing the scientific

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Speaker 1: view that wolves were critical to healthy ecologies. So by

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Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, our best natural scientists were telling us

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Speaker 1: we'd been wrong to impose a myopic Old World wolf

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Speaker 1: war in America. The science of ecology was showing that

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Speaker 1: the continent's ancient top predators had shaped everything about America's

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Speaker 1: natural history, from the way other predators like cougars or

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Speaker 1: coyotes or foxes functioned, to what kinds of prey animals

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Speaker 1: there were and how many, down to the numbers of

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Speaker 1: beavers in the streams, the songbirds in the valleys, the

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Speaker 1: kinds of trees and grass that grew. If America's valued

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Speaker 1: and wanted modern, healthy versions of old time America's ecologies,

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Speaker 1: we were going to have to take a number of measures,

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Speaker 1: from creating a wilderness preservation system to bringing wolves back.

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Speaker 1: Ecologist Aldo Leopold's land ethic almost came down to a single,

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Speaker 1: delimited insight. Imagining a biologically healthy America meant we had

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Speaker 1: to start thinking like wild mountains that had wolves in

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Speaker 1: them Again. In nineteen sixty seven, with the Endangered Species

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Speaker 1: Act of nineteen sixty six on the books, both the

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Speaker 1: Eastern timberwolf and the red wolf, ancient native animals whose

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Speaker 1: genetics and cultural knowledge we were in danger of losing,

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Speaker 1: were listed as endangered species. The Western gray wolf was

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Speaker 1: also listed in nineteen sixty seven, then relisted in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy three when Congress passed and Richard Nixon signed into

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Speaker 1: law the Grand Endangered Species Act of that year. US

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Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife also relisted both eastern and red wolves.

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Speaker 1: Within a week of the nineteen seventy three Act taking effect,

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Speaker 1: the south western subspecies of gray wolf, the by then

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Speaker 1: perilously scarce Mexican wolf, acquired its listing as a US

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Speaker 1: Endangered species in nineteen seventy six. Listing was the prelude

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Speaker 1: to recovery. In the nineteen eighties, the Fish and Wildlife

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Speaker 1: Service began to finalize plans for restoring wolves to the

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Speaker 1: lower forty eighth Western public lands under the umbrella of

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Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Acts. Recovery mandate by then, a majority

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Speaker 1: of Americans was beginning to internalize a changing attitude towards wolves. Wealthier,

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Speaker 1: better educated, and younger Americans, Westerners and Alaskans among them,

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Speaker 1: were becoming wolf advocates, and the wake of Canadian writer

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Speaker 1: Farley Moat's book Never Cry Wolf and the charming movie

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Speaker 1: Disney made of it, many became downright enchanted with wolves,

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Speaker 1: even if biologists snickered that no wolves actually lived the

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Speaker 1: way Never cry Wolf's animals did. Ranchers, older Americans, people

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Speaker 1: without college degrees, folks who lived rurally, and many hunters

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Speaker 1: who for decades had grown used to artificial, incomplete ecologies

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Speaker 1: that left them as the only predators. Thought the idea

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Speaker 1: of recovering wolves was batshit crazy. The animal's knew human

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Speaker 1: allies must be little more than wolf loving hippies. They

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Speaker 1: thought this was a divide that predicted a politicized future

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Speaker 1: in a West that was fast sifting itself out as

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Speaker 1: an Old West and a New West, each with very

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Speaker 1: different values. America's wolf recovery moment everywhere fail, these complications

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Speaker 1: both practical and bizarre. For starters. There were those who

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Speaker 1: didn't believe either red wolves or Mexican gray wolves. Actually existed.

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Speaker 1: The red wolf, an animal whose range began in the

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Speaker 1: western parts of Texas and Oklahoma and extended eastward and

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Speaker 1: northward to Florida and New England, looked suspiciously like a

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Speaker 1: long legged coyote. Was it merely a gray wolf coyote hybrid.

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Speaker 1: As for the Mexican wolf, it seemed barely distinguishable among

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Speaker 1: the bewildering two dozen wolf subspecies. Twentieth century canid zoology

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Speaker 1: had offered up but early in the twenty first century,

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Speaker 1: the genetic revolution changed what we thought we knew about wolves,

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Speaker 1: and biologists drastically pruned the caned tree. In twenty twelve,

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Speaker 1: US Fish and Wildlife issued a peer reviewed monograph offering

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Speaker 1: an entire rethinking of speciation among America's wolves. An account

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Speaker 1: of the taxonomy of North American wolves claimed that the

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Speaker 1: red wolves and timber wolves of Eastern America were not

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Speaker 1: gray wolves, but ancient continental wolves out of an indigenous

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Speaker 1: line that had also produced coyotes. Coyotes. Canus rufus and

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Speaker 1: Canus like chaon are modern representatives of a major and

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Speaker 1: diverse clade that evolved within North America. The monograph read.

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Speaker 1: The new study concluded that modern gray wolves returned to

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Speaker 1: their evolutionary home in America from Eurasia some twenty thousand

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Speaker 1: years ago, arriving here in three different waves, the last

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Speaker 1: wave of which had brought Mexican wolves to the Southwest.

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Speaker 1: This taxonomy finally explained a phenomenon biologists had first confronted

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. In the West, gray wolf coyote

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Speaker 1: hybridization was rare, if it occurred at all. The animals

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Speaker 1: seemed to detest one another. But as the West Predator

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Speaker 1: War drove coyotes to colonize across the country, canid stand

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Speaker 1: offishness in the West turned into hook up willingness in

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Speaker 1: the East. In Louisiana and Texas and along the Canadian border,

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Speaker 1: coyotes interbreeding with remnant wolves produced a new quite successful

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Speaker 1: Eastern canid many would call Koi wolves. Maybe the appearance

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Speaker 1: of animals like this in the East really was, as

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Speaker 1: one New Yorker put it, the end of civilization. But

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Speaker 1: coyote wolf hybridization was making a version of wolf recovery

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Speaker 1: possible in an East that had lacked wolves since the

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. Coyote hybridization with red wolves in places like

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Speaker 1: Texas however, threatened to become an eesa crisis. What if

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Speaker 1: the red wolf wasn't actually a species, but just a

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Speaker 1: coyote with gray wolf genes. In my early teens, I

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Speaker 1: was lucky enough to witness what were unmistakably coyotes arriving

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Speaker 1: in the Red River Valley of Louisiana. But on two

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Speaker 1: occasions I came face to face with leggy, golden eyed

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Speaker 1: animals that looked awfully wolfy to a fifteen year old,

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Speaker 1: If coyotes and red wolf coyote hybrids were swamping red

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Speaker 1: wolf genetics, much as we humans had once done with Neanderthals,

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Speaker 1: that mixture sure made for beautiful animals, But by nineteen seventy,

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Speaker 1: Ron Nowak, another Louisiana in who eventually became Fish and

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Speaker 1: Wildlife's Endangered Species Guru, figured that from Texas eastward there

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Speaker 1: were at most only three hundred red wolves left. After

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Speaker 1: blessedly rejecting a dog fence hundreds of miles long, reminiscent

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Speaker 1: of the dingo fence across Australia for keeping migrating hybrids

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Speaker 1: and coyotes away from red wolves. In nineteen seventy three,

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Speaker 1: biologist Curtis Carly the field coordinator for the Red Wolf

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Speaker 1: Recovery Team, tried another approach to save red wolves. Carly

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Speaker 1: came up with a template using skeletal morphology and recorded

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Speaker 1: howls to try to identify actual red wolves for placement

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Speaker 1: and a captive breeding program. His method for identifying a

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Speaker 1: true red wolf wasn't exactly rocket science, but in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy four, the recovery team set up facilities at Point

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Speaker 1: Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, Washington to breed the wolves kids

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Speaker 1: selected to save the red wolf from extinction. Carly's team

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Speaker 1: had examined animals believed to be red wolves in fifty

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Speaker 1: different zoos and had identified but a single animal they

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Speaker 1: thought was a pure red wolf. They then shocked zoo

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Speaker 1: personnel by insisting that every animal they had catalog as

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Speaker 1: a coyote red wolf hybrid ought to be destroyed. Carly's

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Speaker 1: trappers caught another four hundred canaans in the wild, but

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Speaker 1: of those only ten percent made the cut. Ultimately, they

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00:17:35,119 --> 00:17:39,800
Speaker 1: concluded they had found just fourteen animals out of four

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00:17:39,880 --> 00:17:44,760
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty to begin red wolf recovery. All those

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Speaker 1: others betrayed by the sin of miscegenation and coyote blood

220
00:17:49,920 --> 00:17:54,600
Speaker 1: were destroyed, but red wolf recovery was now underway in

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00:17:54,680 --> 00:17:59,200
Speaker 1: places far from coyotes, and in nineteen eighty seven, red

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00:17:59,240 --> 00:18:03,399
Speaker 1: wolves were in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and on

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Speaker 1: the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina. Routinely

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00:18:09,040 --> 00:18:13,679
Speaker 1: shot and hit by cars, red wolves were soon removed

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00:18:13,840 --> 00:18:17,520
Speaker 1: from Great Smoky Mountains Park, while they're still present on

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00:18:17,760 --> 00:18:22,160
Speaker 1: the Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina, the wild population today

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00:18:22,400 --> 00:18:27,880
Speaker 1: has dropped to a mere twenty five animals, making America's

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Speaker 1: red wolves the most endangered wolf species on earth. Returning

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Speaker 1: them to their original range in the West now seems remote. Recently, though,

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Speaker 1: researchers have discovered wild canids on the Louisiana Texas border

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Speaker 1: that still carry as much as ten percent red wolf

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Speaker 1: ancestry and infrequently as much as seventy five percent. These

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Speaker 1: so called ghost wolves include red wolf genetics not found

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Speaker 1: in the fourteen animals that founded the Carolina lines. It

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Speaker 1: gives me a secret thrill, I'll confess to know that

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Speaker 1: those long legged, yellow eyed hybrids I saw as a

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00:19:10,480 --> 00:19:13,480
Speaker 1: teenager are still out there. With luck, we may be

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Speaker 1: able to add in their genes to create healthier red wolves.

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Speaker 1: As for Mexican wolves, their recovery commenced in the late

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventies with issues that seemed similarly unsurmountable. The problem

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00:19:34,119 --> 00:19:37,520
Speaker 1: was that we'd been too effective in wiping them out.

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00:19:38,440 --> 00:19:43,000
Speaker 1: There were almost no Mexican wolves left, certainly no packs

243
00:19:43,040 --> 00:19:47,199
Speaker 1: that might be captured and transplanted. The best guess was

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Speaker 1: that maybe five wild Mexican wolves remained alive on either

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00:19:51,880 --> 00:19:55,800
Speaker 1: side of the border in the nineteen seventies, But between

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight and nineteen eighty a federal predator hunter

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Speaker 1: named Roy McBride working in Mexico managed to capture three males, and,

248
00:20:06,200 --> 00:20:09,440
Speaker 1: in a wild stroke of luck, a ten year old

249
00:20:09,680 --> 00:20:15,800
Speaker 1: pregnant female he named Nina. Eventually, the breeding program acquired

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00:20:15,880 --> 00:20:20,880
Speaker 1: two more wolflines from captive animals, the Ghost Ranch and

251
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Speaker 1: Aragon lineages, but Mexican wolf recovery faced the hurdle of

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Speaker 1: a genetic bottleneck of only three lines of animals, so

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00:20:31,320 --> 00:20:36,040
Speaker 1: trappers scoured nearby Mexico for a few more animals to

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Speaker 1: try to diversify this small gene pool. When Fish and

255
00:20:44,600 --> 00:20:48,080
Speaker 1: Wildlife released its recovery plan in nineteen eighty two, a

256
00:20:48,200 --> 00:20:52,959
Speaker 1: new problem surfaced. No one in the Southwest seemed to

257
00:20:53,080 --> 00:20:58,120
Speaker 1: want the animals. The Reagan administration actually told target states

258
00:20:58,280 --> 00:21:01,199
Speaker 1: they could say no, and it at least one state

259
00:21:01,359 --> 00:21:05,919
Speaker 1: did so. Big Band National Park was a prime release site,

260
00:21:06,200 --> 00:21:10,200
Speaker 1: but Texas leaped at a chance to make wolves forever

261
00:21:10,440 --> 00:21:14,480
Speaker 1: unwelcome in the lone Star state. The best New Mexico

262
00:21:14,520 --> 00:21:18,040
Speaker 1: could do was to offer up the military bombing range

263
00:21:18,359 --> 00:21:22,159
Speaker 1: north of White Sands National Monument, or at least it

264
00:21:22,280 --> 00:21:26,360
Speaker 1: did so until stock interests persuaded the state to withdraw

265
00:21:26,480 --> 00:21:33,679
Speaker 1: even that possibility. But after first equivocating, Arizona eventually proffered

266
00:21:33,720 --> 00:21:38,600
Speaker 1: the Blue Range, a large national forest primitive area east

267
00:21:38,680 --> 00:21:42,919
Speaker 1: of Phoenix that merged into the famous Heilo Wilderness in

268
00:21:43,000 --> 00:21:49,160
Speaker 1: New Mexico, a wild locale that satisfied both Southwestern states.

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Speaker 1: A key move in releasing Mexican wolves into the wild

270
00:21:54,320 --> 00:22:00,840
Speaker 1: was labeling the population experimental and non essential, meaning the

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00:22:00,960 --> 00:22:07,440
Speaker 1: wolves would not have full endangered species protections. Another key

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00:22:07,480 --> 00:22:12,480
Speaker 1: move came when Hank Fisher of Defenders of Wildlife told

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00:22:12,560 --> 00:22:18,440
Speaker 1: Southwestern stockman that his group would pay market compensation for

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00:22:18,640 --> 00:22:23,800
Speaker 1: any livestock wolves killed, so the nearly unbelievable moment came

275
00:22:23,840 --> 00:22:27,280
Speaker 1: in March of nineteen ninety eight, when released pandors High

276
00:22:27,280 --> 00:22:31,560
Speaker 1: in the Blue Mountains opened and eleven Mexican wolves loped

277
00:22:31,640 --> 00:22:36,280
Speaker 1: off to be wild wolves once more. Amidst all the

278
00:22:36,320 --> 00:22:40,320
Speaker 1: sound and fury, at least wolves were finally back in

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00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:46,040
Speaker 1: the evolutionary homeland of Earth's canids. In twenty eighteen, a

280
00:22:46,160 --> 00:22:49,600
Speaker 1: genetic tour to Fours by the National Academy of Sciences

281
00:22:50,000 --> 00:22:55,280
Speaker 1: finally gave both Mexican and red wolves full legitimacy, the

282
00:22:55,320 --> 00:23:00,399
Speaker 1: Mexican wolf as a viable subspecies distinct from other gray wolves,

283
00:23:00,800 --> 00:23:04,840
Speaker 1: and the red wolf as a true ancient species and

284
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:16,159
Speaker 1: not merely a coyote gray wolf hybrid. While Mexican wolf

285
00:23:16,240 --> 00:23:20,720
Speaker 1: recovery struggle for years and their genetic diversity is still

286
00:23:20,760 --> 00:23:24,720
Speaker 1: not high, in twenty twenty six, there are nearly three

287
00:23:24,840 --> 00:23:29,440
Speaker 1: hundred wild Mexican wolves roaming the Southwest. In twenty fifteen,

288
00:23:29,600 --> 00:23:34,280
Speaker 1: a new ESA rule enlarged their recovery zone to extend

289
00:23:34,560 --> 00:23:39,320
Speaker 1: to the boundaries of Texas and California on east and west.

290
00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:45,440
Speaker 1: Then strangely chose Interstate forty, which tracks across the southwest

291
00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:51,520
Speaker 1: from Amarillo to Kingman, Arizona, as the northern perimeter. A

292
00:23:51,560 --> 00:23:55,800
Speaker 1: new recovery plan in twenty seventeen confirmed those boundaries and

293
00:23:55,960 --> 00:24:00,440
Speaker 1: set the maximum Mexican wolf population at three one hundred

294
00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:03,919
Speaker 1: and twenty five animals. A couple of years ago, I

295
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:09,200
Speaker 1: asked Dave Parsons, Mexican wolf recovery coordinator from nineteen ninety

296
00:24:09,240 --> 00:24:12,800
Speaker 1: to nineteen ninety nine, for his thoughts on the future

297
00:24:12,840 --> 00:24:17,399
Speaker 1: of Mexican wolves. Dave essentially agreed with the Center for

298
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:22,640
Speaker 1: Biological Diversity Mexican wolves ought to be allowed to expand

299
00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:26,400
Speaker 1: their range to the Grand Canyon and into the southern

300
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:30,879
Speaker 1: Rockies for a healthy Mexican wolf population of seven hundred

301
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:35,199
Speaker 1: and fifty animals across the Southwest, But as he put it,

302
00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:46,480
Speaker 1: I don't expect to see that in my lifetime. The

303
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:51,560
Speaker 1: wolf recovery that thrilled people across the world unspooled to

304
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:56,800
Speaker 1: international headlines in the northern Rocky Mountains. I was living

305
00:24:56,840 --> 00:24:59,720
Speaker 1: in Montana at the time it happened, with a girlfriend

306
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:03,159
Speaker 1: who worked for Hank Fisher and Defenders of Wildlife, so

307
00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:06,199
Speaker 1: I had a front row seat for what seemed the

308
00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:10,600
Speaker 1: game of the century. Prior to this moment, the last

309
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:13,800
Speaker 1: time anyone had seen a wolf even in our one

310
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 1: wildlife park, Yellowstone was nineteen twenty six, but soon after

311
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:24,840
Speaker 1: endangered species legislation passed in the nineteen sixties, biologists in

312
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:30,000
Speaker 1: various agencies and universities began conferring about how to get

313
00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:34,920
Speaker 1: wolves back. The nineteen seventy five Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf

314
00:25:34,960 --> 00:25:39,840
Speaker 1: Recovery Plan identified Yellowstone and Glacier Parks, along with the

315
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:44,399
Speaker 1: biggest wilderness area in the lower forty eight Montana's Bitterroot

316
00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:49,720
Speaker 1: Mountains west Endo, Idaho, as the logical recovery zones. The

317
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:54,959
Speaker 1: plan released fifteen wolves a year for five years until

318
00:25:55,040 --> 00:26:00,119
Speaker 1: there were at least ten breeding pairs in each zone.

319
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:05,399
Speaker 1: Before human assisted wolf recovery in the Rocky Mountains preceded, though,

320
00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:09,800
Speaker 1: something happened that has now become a general principle of

321
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:15,560
Speaker 1: Western wolf recovery. On their own, wolves began recolonizing the West.

322
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:20,919
Speaker 1: The Canadian War on Wolves had not pursued every wolf

323
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:25,679
Speaker 1: in its vast wildlands, and in nineteen seventy nine, a

324
00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: Canadian female wolf researchers named Kishinina established a territory on

325
00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 1: the northwest edge of Glacier Park. The next year, a

326
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 1: big male called the bearpaw wolf created consternation on Montana's

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00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain front, and a Montana hunter quickly killed that

328
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:51,439
Speaker 1: wolf dead. But in nineteen eighty six, Glaciers wolves, the

329
00:26:51,520 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 1: American press named the Magic Pack, whelped the first litter

330
00:26:56,160 --> 00:27:00,200
Speaker 1: of wolf pups born in a western US National park

331
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:05,320
Speaker 1: since the nineteen twenties. In the early nineteen nineties, wolves

332
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:10,280
Speaker 1: denned farther south in the Nine Mile Valley near Missoula, Montana.

333
00:27:10,720 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 1: Someone promptly shot the radio collared female. The surviving male

334
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:18,919
Speaker 1: managed to get their pups to almost six months old

335
00:27:19,280 --> 00:27:23,080
Speaker 1: before he was hit by a car on the nearby interstate.

336
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:32,800
Speaker 1: These colonizing wolves complicated recovery plans as much as rancher

337
00:27:32,920 --> 00:27:37,639
Speaker 1: outrage did, since wolves recovering naturally in the US would

338
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 1: be endangered species with full protection under the ESA. The

339
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:46,960
Speaker 1: same livestock industry that had moved heaven and earth to

340
00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:50,520
Speaker 1: have wolves wiped out in the first place, and used

341
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:52,560
Speaker 1: to having his way in the West for more than

342
00:27:52,600 --> 00:27:57,320
Speaker 1: a century, was now in an uproar. Few Western ranchers

343
00:27:57,359 --> 00:28:01,360
Speaker 1: were willing to try coexistence with wolves. Some acted as

344
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 1: if recovering wolves repudiated their entire history, so the nineteen

345
00:28:07,119 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 1: ninety three compromise for Northern Rockies wolf recovery designated human

346
00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:18,119
Speaker 1: released wolves as experimental non essential animals, which meant that

347
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:22,520
Speaker 1: ranchers or Federal Wildlife Services hunters could kill wolves that

348
00:28:22,600 --> 00:28:27,959
Speaker 1: attacked life side. Regional and national hearings over Western wolf

349
00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:33,560
Speaker 1: recovery produced the most public comment ever logged on any

350
00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 1: American environmental proposal, and they showed a changed America. Eighty

351
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 1: percent of those comments were in favor of wolf recovery.

352
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:57,360
Speaker 1: During the second week of a cold nineteen ninety five

353
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 1: Montana January, the first e e gray wolves captured in

354
00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 1: the Alberta Rockies came through Missoula bound for acclimization pins

355
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:11,960
Speaker 1: in Yellowstones Lamar Valley. Three days later, four of the

356
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 1: first wolves headed for Idaho were blessed by the Nez

357
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:20,600
Speaker 1: Perce on the tarmac of the Missoula Airport, then trucked

358
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:24,720
Speaker 1: to Salmon, Idaho for hard release in the frank Church

359
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:30,960
Speaker 1: River of No Return wilderness. Meanwhile, in Yellowstone, two packs

360
00:29:31,040 --> 00:29:35,520
Speaker 1: bred in their pins that February, so pups were on

361
00:29:35,560 --> 00:29:39,960
Speaker 1: the way on the spring equinox March twenty first of

362
00:29:40,080 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, Yellowstones New wolves sniffed at the open

363
00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:49,080
Speaker 1: doors on their enclosure, then bounded one after the other

364
00:29:49,520 --> 00:29:54,120
Speaker 1: into the nearby trees. In nineteen ninety five and nineteen

365
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:58,720
Speaker 1: ninety six, Yellowstone released forty one wolves into the park,

366
00:29:59,160 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 1: and another thirty five wolves were released in Idaho. Word

367
00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:08,120
Speaker 1: was that the twenty five thousand elk on Yellowstones Northern

368
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 1: Range animals that had survived a recent eruption and then

369
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:16,479
Speaker 1: a die off, were suddenly nervous as hell, and with

370
00:30:16,560 --> 00:30:23,120
Speaker 1: good reason. Four years after that first pack, appropriately named

371
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:27,720
Speaker 1: the Leopold Pack formed in Yellowstone, a dinning pair of

372
00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:31,120
Speaker 1: wolves bore pups in the Bitterroot Valley where I lived.

373
00:30:32,040 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 1: Not long after that, a three mile pack emerged in

374
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:40,400
Speaker 1: the Sapphire Mountains just above my place. As the twenty

375
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:44,600
Speaker 1: first century dawned for the first time in my life,

376
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:49,040
Speaker 1: I was hearing wolf howls in the evening dusks, spotting

377
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:52,640
Speaker 1: wolf tracks in the mud of the local creek, and

378
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:59,360
Speaker 1: in silvery winter moonlight, occasionally seeing shadowy caned forms loping

379
00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:03,440
Speaker 1: across the hills as I drove home at night. It

380
00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:07,120
Speaker 1: was an exciting time to be alive. We Europeans had

381
00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 1: been killing wolves for eight thousand years in the Old World.

382
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 1: For the past four hundred years, our ancestors had erased

383
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:18,640
Speaker 1: wolves in America from coast to coast. Now, the science

384
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:22,160
Speaker 1: of ecology and the national will had brought us to

385
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:25,640
Speaker 1: a new place of respect for the deep time history

386
00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 1: of America, for our continence, uniqueness, and a recognition of

387
00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 1: the wrong headedness of trying to make America into a

388
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:44,160
Speaker 1: carbon copy of the Old World. Of course, all this

389
00:31:44,240 --> 00:31:48,000
Speaker 1: is far from over. The wolf story that's loomed over

390
00:31:48,080 --> 00:31:52,480
Speaker 1: America's relationship to nature for the past four centuries continues,

391
00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 1: if anything, even more politicized now and even more complex.

392
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: Gray wolves in the Northern Rockies are especially noteworthy as

393
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:08,840
Speaker 1: pawns and victims of America's cultural and political battles. Under

394
00:32:08,960 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 1: federal direction, the gray wolves in the vast wildlands of

395
00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:18,000
Speaker 1: the Northern Rockies became a worldwide example of charismatic wildlife recovery.

396
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:21,520
Speaker 1: By twenty twenty one, there were more than two thousand

397
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: gray wolves in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. From the perspective

398
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 1: of ecologists and most of the international public, a wildlife

399
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:33,280
Speaker 1: story on a par with saving bald eagles under the

400
00:32:33,360 --> 00:32:38,920
Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act. Even with private, then state compensation programs

401
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: to pay for stock losses, plus the ability to remove

402
00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:48,440
Speaker 1: problem wolves. Ranchers in several states nonetheless persuaded rural communities

403
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:53,880
Speaker 1: around them to proclaim local emergencies over wolves. Many in

404
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:58,719
Speaker 1: the hunting community, that bulwark of saving wildlife a century before,

405
00:32:59,080 --> 00:33:02,000
Speaker 1: grew resentful that they were having to share elk and

406
00:33:02,080 --> 00:33:06,560
Speaker 1: deer with the West's original predators. In twenty twenty five,

407
00:33:06,680 --> 00:33:10,240
Speaker 1: the president of Montana Trappers claimed that the presence of

408
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:14,160
Speaker 1: wolves had created what he called the greatest loss of

409
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 1: hunting opportunity in the world history, as in the market

410
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 1: slaughter of wild animals in the same nineteenth century West,

411
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 1: obviously was in his strong suit. The intent of endangered

412
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:34,600
Speaker 1: species recovery has always been to return management of recovered

413
00:33:34,640 --> 00:33:38,800
Speaker 1: species to the states of their residents, and by act

414
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:42,800
Speaker 1: of the Republican Congress in twenty ten, management of wolves

415
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:46,960
Speaker 1: in the Northern Rockies returned to the states there. Conservative

416
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 1: legislatures in the Mountain States moved quickly to establish wolf

417
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:57,160
Speaker 1: hunts with seasons and bag limits, increasingly becoming so laughingly

418
00:33:57,360 --> 00:34:01,800
Speaker 1: liberal that they barely qualified as man management. Across most

419
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 1: of the state of Wyoming, not even a hunting season applies.

420
00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:10,319
Speaker 1: Wyoming has made most of its wolves varmints subject to

421
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:13,279
Speaker 1: being shot on site at any time of the year,

422
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:18,920
Speaker 1: except in its northwest corner. Just as decisively, the Mountain

423
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:22,120
Speaker 1: States took wolf management out of the hands of its

424
00:34:22,239 --> 00:34:27,640
Speaker 1: university scientists and even its wildlife agencies. In fact, state

425
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:32,640
Speaker 1: wolf management in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming increasingly looks like

426
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:36,480
Speaker 1: a reprise of the philosophy of the eighteen eighties, with

427
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:41,399
Speaker 1: professional hunters bounties luring wolves with bait, hunting them after

428
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:45,920
Speaker 1: dark with night vision equipment, shooting them from planes and helicopters,

429
00:34:46,239 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: running them down with ATVs and snowmobiles, even to the

430
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:54,479
Speaker 1: use of wire strangle snares that tighten at every move

431
00:34:54,600 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 1: a panic wolf makes to escape, even as a recent

432
00:34:58,840 --> 00:35:03,640
Speaker 1: outbreak of canine distemper is devastating the survival rate of

433
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:08,520
Speaker 1: regional wolf pups. Montana's goal for twenty twenty six is

434
00:35:08,600 --> 00:35:12,360
Speaker 1: to kill and astonishing five hundred and fifty eight wolves

435
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 1: in the state. Idaho hopes to reduce its wolf population

436
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:21,720
Speaker 1: by ninety percent by twenty twenty eight. Rather than working

437
00:35:21,800 --> 00:35:25,600
Speaker 1: to recover ancient American ecologies, the intent in the northern

438
00:35:25,600 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 1: West seems to be reducing wolf populations to just above

439
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:34,920
Speaker 1: the obligatory minimum number of animals that would trigger federal

440
00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:39,839
Speaker 1: judges to return wolf management to fish and wildlife under

441
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Act. Not surprisingly, the Northern Rockies example

442
00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 1: is becoming exhibit A in arguments against current Republican bills

443
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 1: to delist all of America's wolves and turn their fates

444
00:35:56,640 --> 00:36:06,160
Speaker 1: everywhere over to the States. Because Yellowstone is owned by

445
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:09,719
Speaker 1: the public and managed by a federal agency, wolf recovery

446
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:11,799
Speaker 1: in the park has been shielded from some of the

447
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:16,520
Speaker 1: viciousness outside the park. Indeed, Yellowstone has become the premiere

448
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:21,279
Speaker 1: wolf viewing locale on Earth, drawing visitors from all over

449
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:25,239
Speaker 1: the world to come see wolves in the wild, producing

450
00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:30,319
Speaker 1: eighty two million dollars annually for the park's surrounding communities.

451
00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:37,200
Speaker 1: With multiple prey animals and several competing predators, Yellowstone has

452
00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 1: also generated wolf research that's tremendously magnified what we know

453
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:46,919
Speaker 1: about wolves and indeed about ancient American ecologies. The way

454
00:36:47,040 --> 00:36:51,040
Speaker 1: wolves produce ecosystem wide effects that flow in all directions

455
00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 1: has been one of the park's more compelling lessons when

456
00:36:55,080 --> 00:36:58,719
Speaker 1: they were released wolves pushed coyotes out of a primary

457
00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:03,640
Speaker 1: cada niche. The coyote numbers drop by half before stabilizing,

458
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:09,920
Speaker 1: but magpies, ravens, eagles, grizzly bears, and even cougars have

459
00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:13,879
Speaker 1: all seen their numbers grow in the park. At one

460
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:18,200
Speaker 1: wolf kill, a biologist counted three hundred and forty seven

461
00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: ravens and forty nine bald eagles partaking of the large s,

462
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:27,960
Speaker 1: with numbers once as high as twenty five thousand. An

463
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:32,160
Speaker 1: elk decline that started prior to wolves reached a low

464
00:37:32,440 --> 00:37:36,759
Speaker 1: of five thousand and twenty twelve, but since then elk

465
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 1: numbers have risen towards ten thousand, a level biologists believe

466
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:47,160
Speaker 1: may be a natural wolf elk equilibrium with el At

467
00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:51,839
Speaker 1: that level, the population of Lamar Valley bison numbers has

468
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:57,319
Speaker 1: increased now four times over Bison, in fact, today make

469
00:37:57,440 --> 00:38:00,800
Speaker 1: up twenty five percent of the wolf diet in the

470
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 1: Lamar Valley. Meanwhile, wolf recovery elsewhere in the West is

471
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:11,840
Speaker 1: happening before our eyes, sometimes because of human assisted releases,

472
00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:15,960
Speaker 1: more often because wolves are seeking to reinhabit the landscapes

473
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:19,560
Speaker 1: they evolve to. While states like Utah and Texas remained

474
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:24,400
Speaker 1: loud and vociferous opponents of wolf recovery. In twenty twenty

475
00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:29,840
Speaker 1: of voter led initiative in Colorado empowered its wildlife officials

476
00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:35,160
Speaker 1: to begin releasing an experimental, non essential population of gray

477
00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:40,360
Speaker 1: wolves into Colorado starting in twenty twenty three. An initial

478
00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:44,279
Speaker 1: ten wolves were hard released into Colorado west of the

479
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:48,560
Speaker 1: Continental Divide that year. The official count as of May

480
00:38:48,680 --> 00:38:52,839
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty six indicates thirty two gray wolves are

481
00:38:52,960 --> 00:39:03,400
Speaker 1: now present in the wilds of modern Colorado. The western

482
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:08,720
Speaker 1: state whose wolf recovery story stands probably in starkas distinction

483
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 1: to that of Utah's and Texas's unyielding opposition are Montana

484
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:20,800
Speaker 1: or Idaho's rural hostility. Naturally enough, is California. Yet wolf

485
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:26,080
Speaker 1: recovery in California has not been human assisted. Instead, in

486
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:30,040
Speaker 1: a state where wolves were wiped out by the nineteen twenties,

487
00:39:30,680 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 1: just as they were elsewhere in the West, wolves have

488
00:39:33,760 --> 00:39:38,680
Speaker 1: been colonizing into northern California and founding packs in the

489
00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 1: state since twenty eleven. In that year, a male wolf

490
00:39:44,120 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 1: California school children named Journey arrived in Siskiyu County from

491
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:54,719
Speaker 1: packs that had started naturally colonizing Oregon in the late

492
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:59,960
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. Journeys trek southward was followed in twenty seve

493
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:05,200
Speaker 1: sixteen by a female wolf arriving in California who apparently

494
00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 1: was a dispersure from a gray wolf pack as far

495
00:40:08,560 --> 00:40:12,440
Speaker 1: away as Wyoming. And here is where wolf recovery in

496
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:16,040
Speaker 1: California stands separate from that of the rest of the West,

497
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:20,279
Speaker 1: at least so far. In twenty fourteen, California moved to

498
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:25,239
Speaker 1: declare gray wolves protected as in dangered species under the

499
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:29,759
Speaker 1: state's own in Endangered Species Act. In twenty twenty six

500
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:34,719
Speaker 1: there are now roughly ninety fully protected gray wolves in California,

501
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:39,120
Speaker 1: with at least twelve packs. Most are in the northern counties,

502
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: in the same country where the last wolves were exterminated

503
00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 1: in the period before the nineteen forties. Today, wolves still

504
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:51,319
Speaker 1: meet with a good deal of resentment and hostility from

505
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 1: locals there, some of whom have argued that their wolves

506
00:40:55,200 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 1: must have been planted by environmentalists and are not the

507
00:40:59,719 --> 00:41:04,799
Speaker 1: same wolf species once found in California anyway. As if

508
00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:09,520
Speaker 1: to dispute those claims, coastal gray wolves continue to disperse

509
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:14,560
Speaker 1: across California. As you hear these words. Most recently, a

510
00:41:14,600 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 1: collared female travel some three hundred and seventy miles southward

511
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 1: from her natal pack in Plumus County, reaching Los Angeles

512
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:27,719
Speaker 1: County in late winter of twenty twenty six and ultimately

513
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: Inyo County, where this past April she became the first

514
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:36,799
Speaker 1: gray wolf in the state's Sequoia National Park in more

515
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:40,760
Speaker 1: than a century. And that kind of long distance journey,

516
00:41:41,040 --> 00:41:45,479
Speaker 1: this California wolf is not alone. Where I live near

517
00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:49,520
Speaker 1: Santa Fe, New Mexico, a female Mexican wolf and admiring

518
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:54,080
Speaker 1: public has named Asha, has repeatedly crossed the no go

519
00:41:54,360 --> 00:41:59,040
Speaker 1: line of Interstate forty and has twice now been captured

520
00:41:59,080 --> 00:42:03,720
Speaker 1: near Taos and the Colorado border before being returned hundreds

521
00:42:03,719 --> 00:42:08,439
Speaker 1: of miles to the south. There's a conclusion to draw here.

522
00:42:08,680 --> 00:42:13,680
Speaker 1: I think, having evolved in America and lived here for

523
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:18,520
Speaker 1: most of five million years, the West wolves are determined

524
00:42:18,600 --> 00:42:23,319
Speaker 1: to make these last four hundred years of wolf persecution

525
00:42:24,120 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 1: and anomaly no more than a tiny blip on the

526
00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:35,040
Speaker 1: screen in their bigger biography as ancient natives, as animals

527
00:42:35,080 --> 00:42:38,960
Speaker 1: from America who made the West their home back when

528
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:42,720
Speaker 1: we primates on the other side of Earth were only

529
00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:46,360
Speaker 1: just starting to blink into consciousness.

530
00:42:57,600 --> 00:43:03,160
Speaker 2: So, Dan, this is the Wolf episode, and I wanted

531
00:43:03,200 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 2: to start off by use a framework in this episode

532
00:43:11,560 --> 00:43:14,080
Speaker 2: that's very familiar to me. And it occurred to me

533
00:43:14,080 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 2: that I don't know that we've really dug into it

534
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:20,239
Speaker 2: in the context of this podcast, but anyone who took

535
00:43:20,239 --> 00:43:24,000
Speaker 2: a class from you was well exposed to the idea

536
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:25,640
Speaker 2: of a new West and an old West.

537
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:27,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a.

538
00:43:27,320 --> 00:43:32,239
Speaker 2: Useful for framework for thinking about historical change in this

539
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:34,400
Speaker 2: part of the country. But I wonder if you can

540
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:38,920
Speaker 2: unpack that for listeners. What do you mean when you

541
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 2: talk about the old West versus the New West? And

542
00:43:41,719 --> 00:43:45,319
Speaker 2: how have scholars sort of used that to help understand

543
00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:47,760
Speaker 2: the story of this place.

544
00:43:48,080 --> 00:43:51,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's something that historians have been talking about

545
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 1: now for you know, twenty or twenty five years, I guess.

546
00:43:56,600 --> 00:44:02,239
Speaker 1: And what it refers to as two different kind of

547
00:44:03,640 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 1: value systems about what the West means, and one the

548
00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:14,160
Speaker 1: old West. One is kind of the west of settlement

549
00:44:14,960 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 1: of farms and ranches and a kind of lingering conservative

550
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:28,879
Speaker 1: where a colony of the East where way out here

551
00:44:28,960 --> 00:44:31,239
Speaker 1: in a part of the country where we don't really

552
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 1: have to follow the lead of what's going on in

553
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:40,040
Speaker 1: New York or in Los Angeles. We're in a world

554
00:44:40,080 --> 00:44:43,719
Speaker 1: of our own, and it's a timeless world. It's a

555
00:44:43,760 --> 00:44:47,879
Speaker 1: world that in I think the sensibility of the Old

556
00:44:47,880 --> 00:44:51,240
Speaker 1: West that really begins for a lot of people sometime

557
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:54,879
Speaker 1: in the eighteen seventies, when a lot of their ancestors

558
00:44:54,920 --> 00:44:58,440
Speaker 1: come out and settle and create farms and ranches and

559
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:02,000
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, particularly in the northern West. In

560
00:45:02,040 --> 00:45:07,600
Speaker 1: the Southwest, it's obviously an older kind of stretching back

561
00:45:07,640 --> 00:45:15,279
Speaker 1: into time experience, but it begins to conflict with a

562
00:45:15,400 --> 00:45:19,320
Speaker 1: new version of the West that really I think takes

563
00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:24,399
Speaker 1: its route probably certainly after World War Two, but more

564
00:45:24,440 --> 00:45:27,160
Speaker 1: than likely, you would say you first start getting a

565
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:30,759
Speaker 1: glimmering of the New West in the late sixties and

566
00:45:30,840 --> 00:45:34,600
Speaker 1: early seventies, when the West becomes a destination for a

567
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:37,360
Speaker 1: lot of people moving from other parts of the country.

568
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: And what they're interested in is not necessarily setting up

569
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:46,719
Speaker 1: farms and ranches. They're interested in the adventure possibilities of

570
00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:51,040
Speaker 1: the West. They're interested in things like fly fishing and

571
00:45:51,160 --> 00:45:55,840
Speaker 1: in hunting, and in mountain climbing and backpacking and running

572
00:45:56,000 --> 00:46:00,960
Speaker 1: rivers and all of the recreational opportunityities that kind of

573
00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:06,960
Speaker 1: define a sort of a contemporary possibility of life in

574
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:10,839
Speaker 1: the West. Very much like the last episode when we

575
00:46:10,920 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 1: talked about going down the Grand Canyon. I mean, that's

576
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:18,200
Speaker 1: very much a new Western experience that hardly any Old

577
00:46:18,200 --> 00:46:22,800
Speaker 1: Westerners ever did. And so it becomes a kind of

578
00:46:22,840 --> 00:46:25,319
Speaker 1: a way of looking at the West that develops two

579
00:46:25,400 --> 00:46:29,520
Speaker 1: different value systems. The value system of the New West

580
00:46:29,640 --> 00:46:37,480
Speaker 1: is one where we appreciate preserving diverse cultures, having native

581
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:40,959
Speaker 1: people do well and be on the landscape, and being

582
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:45,479
Speaker 1: available in terms of their culture and their insights about

583
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 1: the world. We appreciate public lands and wilderness and wild

584
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:54,319
Speaker 1: and scenic rivers and things like returning wild animals that

585
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:57,840
Speaker 1: had been obliterated in this earlier phase back to the

586
00:46:57,880 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: Western story, and that obviously is in conflict with a

587
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:06,399
Speaker 1: group of people who believe that what they did by

588
00:47:06,440 --> 00:47:11,879
Speaker 1: eliminating all those things sort of established the baseline civilization

589
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:14,520
Speaker 1: that they all wanted to hang on to. So the

590
00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 1: kind of confrontation between the Old West and the New

591
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:20,640
Speaker 1: West and the modern era is one of the great

592
00:47:20,640 --> 00:47:24,080
Speaker 1: stories about this part of the world. Yeah, I think.

593
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:29,440
Speaker 2: It's obviously playing playing out right in front of us

594
00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:34,160
Speaker 2: here in Bozeman where it's extremely visible, but it's it's

595
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:36,799
Speaker 2: it's really those who come to this part of the

596
00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:38,279
Speaker 2: world orho came to this part of the world for

597
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:41,920
Speaker 2: resource h versus those who came to this part of

598
00:47:41,920 --> 00:47:45,000
Speaker 2: the world for amenities. Yeah, that's a good way to

599
00:47:45,040 --> 00:47:52,319
Speaker 2: put it. There's I guess the natural transition there might

600
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:58,480
Speaker 2: be to when you talk about wolves and Yellowstone, you

601
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:07,359
Speaker 2: highlight the economic impact of wolf based tourism, and I

602
00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:13,280
Speaker 2: think it's an interesting point, but there's some tension there

603
00:48:13,360 --> 00:48:16,960
Speaker 2: in the idea that if the world lost interest in

604
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:21,600
Speaker 2: those wolves. I imagine that you would still want them

605
00:48:21,640 --> 00:48:24,520
Speaker 2: there if they didn't generate a dollar for the gas

606
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:30,280
Speaker 2: station and gardener. Right, It's kind of an interesting argument,

607
00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:35,839
Speaker 2: I guess, like it's the wolf ree introduction is inspired

608
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:39,680
Speaker 2: by sort of a deep principle that's rooted in science,

609
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:45,359
Speaker 2: and yet it you often see the economic argument that is,

610
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:49,920
Speaker 2: you know, usually sort of ranchers are the ones pointing

611
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:53,239
Speaker 2: to economic costs. So I wonder if you can sort

612
00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:55,759
Speaker 2: of speak to that the tension that goes on and

613
00:48:56,120 --> 00:48:58,320
Speaker 2: sort of how this debate is framed.

614
00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 1: Well, I think the economic argument is clearly a way

615
00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:09,759
Speaker 1: to admit that we live in a capitalist country and

616
00:49:09,840 --> 00:49:13,799
Speaker 1: almost any act you take has to be justified in

617
00:49:13,920 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 1: terms of the sort of money that it's likely to provide.

618
00:49:18,200 --> 00:49:20,200
Speaker 1: And it is a funny thing because I mean, I've

619
00:49:20,239 --> 00:49:24,959
Speaker 1: had the experience of staying in places like Gardener and

620
00:49:25,480 --> 00:49:29,759
Speaker 1: having a hotel manager welcome all these people who are

621
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:33,120
Speaker 1: coming to the mar Valley basically to watch wolves, and

622
00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:36,200
Speaker 1: then in his private time, I once saw the same

623
00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:38,919
Speaker 1: guy wearing a T shirt that said smoke a pack

624
00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:41,480
Speaker 1: of Day, and he wasn't talking about smoking a pack

625
00:49:41,520 --> 00:49:47,799
Speaker 1: of cigarettes. So it's this kind of tension that the

626
00:49:47,920 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: whole wolf story has given us between the Old West

627
00:49:53,000 --> 00:49:57,400
Speaker 1: and the New West, and what I've tried to make clear.

628
00:49:57,680 --> 00:50:01,799
Speaker 1: And so in this podcast, I've done three wolf episodes.

629
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 1: I did Western Wolves in the nineteenth century, the Wolf West,

630
00:50:06,120 --> 00:50:09,120
Speaker 1: I call it, and then I did a second episode

631
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:13,680
Speaker 1: that was essentially I called it Golden Eyed Lightning Rod,

632
00:50:13,719 --> 00:50:16,200
Speaker 1: and it was about the story of wolves in the

633
00:50:16,200 --> 00:50:20,240
Speaker 1: West when we were wiping them out from nineteen hundred

634
00:50:20,320 --> 00:50:23,839
Speaker 1: to nineteen fifty or so. And what I said in

635
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:26,560
Speaker 1: that particular episode, and I tried to bring it up

636
00:50:26,560 --> 00:50:30,160
Speaker 1: again in this one, is that what has given us

637
00:50:30,640 --> 00:50:33,799
Speaker 1: this sense that wolves need to be back on the

638
00:50:33,840 --> 00:50:39,200
Speaker 1: Western landscape is the discoveries through the science of ecology

639
00:50:39,960 --> 00:50:46,879
Speaker 1: and of paleontology that wolves have been here for millions

640
00:50:46,880 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 1: of years. They have been part of the landscape here,

641
00:50:50,239 --> 00:50:55,000
Speaker 1: part of the ecological processes here for some five million

642
00:50:55,120 --> 00:50:59,919
Speaker 1: years in North America, and the Old World idea having

643
00:51:00,120 --> 00:51:03,799
Speaker 1: successfully because they were herders and successfully got rid of

644
00:51:03,840 --> 00:51:08,560
Speaker 1: their wolves coming here five hundred years ago and immediately,

645
00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:13,360
Speaker 1: I mean the very first act that Europeans enacted in

646
00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:16,280
Speaker 1: terms of the environment was to place a bounty on wolves.

647
00:51:17,320 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 1: I mean that kind of hubris where we're going to

648
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:22,560
Speaker 1: go to a whole new continent and we're going to

649
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:25,719
Speaker 1: replicate what we just did in the place where we've

650
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:30,359
Speaker 1: been living without making any effort to understand the role

651
00:51:30,440 --> 00:51:33,600
Speaker 1: that wolves actually played in the history of the place

652
00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:35,879
Speaker 1: or in the ecology of the place. I mean, it's

653
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:40,279
Speaker 1: one of those kind of classic, you know, old European

654
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:42,480
Speaker 1: We're going around the world and we know what the

655
00:51:42,520 --> 00:51:44,920
Speaker 1: hell is going on everywhere, and we're going to tell

656
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:47,880
Speaker 1: everybody what to do. And it turned out to be

657
00:51:48,000 --> 00:51:51,480
Speaker 1: a mistake. And so what I've tried to convey in

658
00:51:51,560 --> 00:51:56,000
Speaker 1: these Wolf episodes is this history of how it all

659
00:51:56,040 --> 00:51:58,680
Speaker 1: played out, and this one, of course, is about how

660
00:51:58,800 --> 00:52:03,640
Speaker 1: wolves have been recovered and the political battles over it.

661
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:10,160
Speaker 1: I think were in no way unexpected. Everybody knew what

662
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 1: was going to happen when we brought wolves back, and

663
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:15,319
Speaker 1: in fact, when wolves were first released in yellow Sale,

664
00:52:15,320 --> 00:52:18,800
Speaker 1: and there were people who were involved in opening the

665
00:52:19,480 --> 00:52:22,879
Speaker 1: doors and releasing wolves who who I've talked to, I said,

666
00:52:23,160 --> 00:52:27,120
Speaker 1: they couldn't believe it, couldn't believe that it was actually

667
00:52:27,719 --> 00:52:30,359
Speaker 1: a possible thing to do. But we managed to make

668
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:35,080
Speaker 1: it happen, and it's changing the West once again. Yeah. Yeah,

669
00:52:35,120 --> 00:52:35,839
Speaker 1: I wonder.

670
00:52:37,080 --> 00:52:46,360
Speaker 2: When we talk about the political fallout from reintroduction. You

671
00:52:47,560 --> 00:52:50,719
Speaker 2: traced this out in the episode that there are sort

672
00:52:50,719 --> 00:52:55,000
Speaker 2: of two parallel stories. One is active reintroduction and the

673
00:52:55,040 --> 00:52:58,680
Speaker 2: other is recolonization. And you point out, you know, right

674
00:52:58,719 --> 00:53:02,880
Speaker 2: around the time they're discussed the Yellowstone reintroduction, there's wolves

675
00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:06,719
Speaker 2: coming into Glacier from Canada, and we sort of see this.

676
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:10,960
Speaker 2: It happened again recently in Colorado with the wolf reintroduction.

677
00:53:12,120 --> 00:53:15,600
Speaker 2: I feel like I saw a lot of subject matter

678
00:53:15,680 --> 00:53:18,440
Speaker 2: experts say, well, truthfully, they were going to get there

679
00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:22,200
Speaker 2: at some point, and so they're really only getting ahead

680
00:53:22,239 --> 00:53:25,240
Speaker 2: of what would naturally happen as wolves move south.

681
00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:28,200
Speaker 1: And so I wonder if you can speak to.

682
00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:34,880
Speaker 2: Sort of the stakes of active reintroduction versus recolonization, because

683
00:53:35,040 --> 00:53:44,000
Speaker 2: I think the recolonization story also is one that's like

684
00:53:44,040 --> 00:53:46,680
Speaker 2: it's something that should be celebrated that they can occupy

685
00:53:46,719 --> 00:53:48,840
Speaker 2: these habitats and move across the landscape.

686
00:53:49,120 --> 00:53:54,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. And you know, you could

687
00:53:55,160 --> 00:53:59,000
Speaker 1: say you could argue that had we not done any

688
00:53:59,040 --> 00:54:02,920
Speaker 1: hard releases, had Colorado not done their hard release in

689
00:54:02,960 --> 00:54:07,160
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, wolves would have gotten there eventually. I

690
00:54:07,160 --> 00:54:10,719
Speaker 1: mean it might be twenty or thirty years down the timeline.

691
00:54:11,920 --> 00:54:15,080
Speaker 1: Maybe a straggler or two would have arrived earlier than that,

692
00:54:15,239 --> 00:54:20,279
Speaker 1: but having actual breeding packs and a substantial population of

693
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:23,680
Speaker 1: wolves would have probably taken considerably longer. And so that's

694
00:54:23,719 --> 00:54:26,880
Speaker 1: the reason for the hard releases is to go ahead

695
00:54:27,040 --> 00:54:30,080
Speaker 1: and let's make this happen, because if we simply allow

696
00:54:30,640 --> 00:54:37,239
Speaker 1: natural reinhabitation from places like Alberta to take place, it's

697
00:54:37,280 --> 00:54:42,200
Speaker 1: going to be a fifty year period probably to reacquire wolves,

698
00:54:42,239 --> 00:54:45,400
Speaker 1: but it is one of the features of what's happening now.

699
00:54:45,440 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: And because we've got significant wolf populations in the northern

700
00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:56,360
Speaker 1: Rockies and in the Southwest both, it's happening now on

701
00:54:56,480 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 1: a scale that has not been a parent before. I

702
00:54:59,120 --> 00:55:03,440
Speaker 1: mean the California story that I told in this particular script,

703
00:55:03,640 --> 00:55:08,200
Speaker 1: I mean it is it has all been reinhabitation by

704
00:55:08,520 --> 00:55:12,880
Speaker 1: wolves moving down primarily from Washington and Oregon. And so

705
00:55:12,960 --> 00:55:15,960
Speaker 1: there has not been a hard release of wolves in California.

706
00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:21,000
Speaker 1: But there are more than fifty wolves in California right now.

707
00:55:21,120 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 1: Twelve packs, I think was the latest figure I heard.

708
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:26,960
Speaker 1: I think the figure is actually ninety wolves and twelve packs,

709
00:55:27,200 --> 00:55:30,840
Speaker 1: and that's all been from natural recolonization.

710
00:55:31,360 --> 00:55:34,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it just strikes me that that is sort

711
00:55:34,920 --> 00:55:39,680
Speaker 2: of less politically fractious, I think it is. That's the

712
00:55:39,760 --> 00:55:43,400
Speaker 2: right word, yeah, than reintroduction. You know, it's sort of

713
00:55:43,400 --> 00:55:47,600
Speaker 2: an interesting counterfactual to think about. Had had there not

714
00:55:47,760 --> 00:55:51,160
Speaker 2: been a hard release, what would the what would the

715
00:55:51,160 --> 00:55:52,360
Speaker 2: discourse look like today?

716
00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:54,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it would have. It would have been

717
00:55:55,719 --> 00:55:58,560
Speaker 1: less of you know, a fight it out in the

718
00:55:58,600 --> 00:56:02,319
Speaker 1: streets kind of issue. I will note and I tried

719
00:56:02,360 --> 00:56:05,000
Speaker 1: to tell this story because I sort of was anticipating

720
00:56:05,040 --> 00:56:07,399
Speaker 1: that you and I might talk about that very thing

721
00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:10,400
Speaker 1: I didn't want to talk about. When wolves were beginning

722
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:16,000
Speaker 1: to colonize in Montana in the nineteen eighties, in particular

723
00:56:16,040 --> 00:56:19,279
Speaker 1: in the early nineties, most of those early wolves ended

724
00:56:19,320 --> 00:56:21,759
Speaker 1: up getting killed. Yeah, I mean, you know, so the

725
00:56:21,800 --> 00:56:24,359
Speaker 1: bear Paul wolf shows up on the Rocky Mountain Front,

726
00:56:24,360 --> 00:56:27,960
Speaker 1: he doesn't last a year before somebody shoots him. And

727
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:31,080
Speaker 1: then those wolves that colonized in the Nine Mile Valley

728
00:56:31,080 --> 00:56:36,080
Speaker 1: outside Missoula, you know, within two or three months, the

729
00:56:36,120 --> 00:56:39,680
Speaker 1: female with a radio collar on her neck was shot

730
00:56:39,719 --> 00:56:42,760
Speaker 1: and killed, and the male managed to get the pups

731
00:56:42,800 --> 00:56:45,040
Speaker 1: that she had had up to about six months old,

732
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:46,520
Speaker 1: and then he got run over on in a state

733
00:56:46,640 --> 00:56:49,960
Speaker 1: ninety got hit by a car. And so when the

734
00:56:50,080 --> 00:56:55,200
Speaker 1: numbers are so small in that early colonization stage, the

735
00:56:55,239 --> 00:56:59,520
Speaker 1: attrition rate is pretty high. And that became one of

736
00:56:59,520 --> 00:57:03,120
Speaker 1: the argus for hard release is that, Okay, we've got

737
00:57:03,160 --> 00:57:08,200
Speaker 1: some colonizing, but man, they seem to be disappearing almost

738
00:57:08,280 --> 00:57:11,719
Speaker 1: as fast as they as they show up. But I

739
00:57:11,760 --> 00:57:15,080
Speaker 1: do agree, and I think it's one of the reasons

740
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:17,840
Speaker 1: why it's a little easier in California, plus the more

741
00:57:17,920 --> 00:57:23,959
Speaker 1: liberal politics there is that wolves in California have naturally colonized.

742
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:26,240
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that the people in the northern counties

743
00:57:26,760 --> 00:57:30,320
Speaker 1: are happy about it. You know, they're still screaming bloody

744
00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:34,720
Speaker 1: murder about the wolves there. But nonetheless, I think that

745
00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:39,560
Speaker 1: natural colonization does have this effect of making people think, well,

746
00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:44,320
Speaker 1: this is not something that we're doing. This is happening

747
00:57:44,360 --> 00:57:48,840
Speaker 1: in spite of some sort of positive or negative human action.

748
00:57:50,040 --> 00:57:54,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one sort of final thought here, I guess

749
00:57:55,040 --> 00:58:01,280
Speaker 2: it always strikes me as if you if you arrived

750
00:58:01,320 --> 00:58:05,840
Speaker 2: in the West with no context, I think it would

751
00:58:05,840 --> 00:58:10,080
Speaker 2: be very striking to realize that one of the big

752
00:58:10,160 --> 00:58:17,040
Speaker 2: cultural points of division is an animal. Right, And I

753
00:58:17,120 --> 00:58:21,960
Speaker 2: wonder about other places on Earth where there's an analog

754
00:58:22,120 --> 00:58:26,680
Speaker 2: to this, where it's there's an animal that's the focus

755
00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:32,000
Speaker 2: of so much political strife, and it's there's fingers pointing

756
00:58:32,040 --> 00:58:34,800
Speaker 2: at the end. You know, you're you're responsible for this animal.

757
00:58:34,920 --> 00:58:38,440
Speaker 2: You want to kill all these and it's like it's

758
00:58:38,520 --> 00:58:41,880
Speaker 2: just a very unique story to the West. I'm sure

759
00:58:41,920 --> 00:58:44,640
Speaker 2: there's I'm sure there's other examples around the world, but

760
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:50,520
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's a very strange part of our politics.

761
00:58:50,680 --> 00:58:52,840
Speaker 2: Well it is, there's no question about it. And what

762
00:58:52,960 --> 00:58:56,480
Speaker 2: I will say is that, you know, I've stressed several

763
00:58:56,520 --> 00:58:59,640
Speaker 2: times in this podcast and these scripts that one of

764
00:58:59,680 --> 00:59:02,200
Speaker 2: the things things we did as a country, the United

765
00:59:02,200 --> 00:59:06,880
Speaker 2: States did is we attempted to emulate the countries of

766
00:59:06,880 --> 00:59:09,800
Speaker 2: Western Europe instead of I mean, we had an opportunity

767
00:59:09,840 --> 00:59:12,440
Speaker 2: to create something wholly new, and in the West, I

768
00:59:12,440 --> 00:59:14,840
Speaker 2: think with the public Lands we did do that, we

769
00:59:14,920 --> 00:59:17,800
Speaker 2: created something holly new. But America I had the chance

770
00:59:17,840 --> 00:59:20,880
Speaker 2: to create something wholly new. And what we kept wanting

771
00:59:20,920 --> 00:59:23,840
Speaker 2: to do was we're going to make ourselves like England

772
00:59:23,880 --> 00:59:26,760
Speaker 2: or France. We're just going to clone these countries of

773
00:59:26,760 --> 00:59:30,920
Speaker 2: Western Europe. What's interesting to me in a question like

774
00:59:31,000 --> 00:59:36,120
Speaker 2: this is that today, because the West has begun to

775
00:59:36,320 --> 00:59:41,480
Speaker 2: rewild in this form and reintroduce animals like gray wolves,

776
00:59:42,240 --> 00:59:48,840
Speaker 2: the Europeans suddenly have decided that we're setting the model.

777
00:59:49,240 --> 00:59:52,360
Speaker 2: And so one of the things that's happening in Western

778
00:59:52,400 --> 00:59:57,240
Speaker 2: Europe right now is that country after country is releasing

779
00:59:57,520 --> 01:00:00,720
Speaker 2: reintroducing wolves into western stern Europe.

780
01:00:00,760 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 1: That's a mind blowing thing to think. But there are

781
01:00:03,920 --> 01:00:08,400
Speaker 1: more wolves in Western Europe today than there are in

782
01:00:08,440 --> 01:00:11,400
Speaker 1: the United States, and that's kind of a shocking thing

783
01:00:11,480 --> 01:00:15,479
Speaker 1: to consider. But who they learned this from is us,

784
01:00:16,080 --> 01:00:19,400
Speaker 1: So we have admirers elsewhere in the world for what

785
01:00:19,480 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 1: we're doing, despite all the battles that we're having about

786
01:00:22,640 --> 01:00:24,440
Speaker 1: it here on our home turf.

787
01:00:24,880 --> 01:00:28,000
Speaker 2: Very interesting, well, Dan, as always, it's been good

788
01:00:28,080 --> 01:00:29,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, radll great man.