1 00:00:01,440 --> 00:00:04,560 Speaker 1: As a poster animal of the West. The coyote has 2 00:00:04,600 --> 00:00:08,480 Speaker 1: a roller coaster biography, seen as a sacred deity in 3 00:00:08,520 --> 00:00:13,000 Speaker 1: one phase and a varmit meriting eradication and another. The 4 00:00:13,240 --> 00:00:17,880 Speaker 1: ultimate outcome is not what anyone would predict. I'm Dan 5 00:00:17,960 --> 00:00:22,439 Speaker 1: Flores and this is the American West, brought to you 6 00:00:22,520 --> 00:00:25,239 Speaker 1: by Velvet Buck Wine, where the hunt. 7 00:00:25,040 --> 00:00:25,960 Speaker 2: Meets the harvest. 8 00:00:26,480 --> 00:00:30,000 Speaker 1: A portion of each bottle goes to support backcountry hunters 9 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:35,680 Speaker 1: and anglers. Limited supply available at Velvetbuck Vineyards dot com. 10 00:00:35,840 --> 00:00:37,480 Speaker 2: Enjoy Responsible. 11 00:00:51,680 --> 00:01:06,000 Speaker 1: Coyote, America's jackal and its roller coaster ride through history. 12 00:01:06,680 --> 00:01:10,840 Speaker 1: In the year nineteen hundred, the Canadian American nature writer 13 00:01:11,400 --> 00:01:15,520 Speaker 1: Ernest Thompson Seton wrote one of the more intriguing stories 14 00:01:15,560 --> 00:01:19,920 Speaker 1: ever penned about coyotes. Since coyotes have been inspiring human 15 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:23,160 Speaker 1: storytellers for more than ten thousand years, that's not faint 16 00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:27,800 Speaker 1: praise among early American writers. Even Lewis and Clark, who 17 00:01:27,840 --> 00:01:31,560 Speaker 1: introduced Americans to the animal and named it Prairie wolf, 18 00:01:31,800 --> 00:01:35,680 Speaker 1: were late to the game. Way back in sixteen fifty one, 19 00:01:36,040 --> 00:01:42,000 Speaker 1: Spanish author Francisco Hernandez had written concerning the coyote or 20 00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:46,880 Speaker 1: Indian fox, a piece that included a curious take about 21 00:01:46,920 --> 00:01:52,840 Speaker 1: an intelligent animal who didn't forget. The coyote is a 22 00:01:52,880 --> 00:01:58,240 Speaker 1: persevering revenger of injuries, the Spaniard wrote. But by the 23 00:01:58,280 --> 00:02:02,320 Speaker 1: same token is God grateful to those who do well 24 00:02:02,360 --> 00:02:07,120 Speaker 1: by it. Closer in time to Setan, there was Mark 25 00:02:07,200 --> 00:02:12,160 Speaker 1: Twain's several pages of coyote description in his best selling 26 00:02:12,200 --> 00:02:17,480 Speaker 1: book Roughing It. The proper pronunciation of the name is coyote, 27 00:02:17,680 --> 00:02:21,640 Speaker 1: Twain told readers, but he didn't stop there. He is 28 00:02:21,919 --> 00:02:26,799 Speaker 1: a long, slim, sick and sorry looking skeleton with a 29 00:02:26,880 --> 00:02:30,720 Speaker 1: gray wolf skin stretched over it. He has a general 30 00:02:30,880 --> 00:02:35,760 Speaker 1: slinking expression all over. The coyote is a living, breathing 31 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:37,799 Speaker 1: allegory of want. 32 00:02:38,400 --> 00:02:40,400 Speaker 2: The bar then was high. 33 00:02:41,240 --> 00:02:45,680 Speaker 1: But Setan's Tito, the story of the Coyote that learned How, 34 00:02:46,400 --> 00:02:50,120 Speaker 1: wasn't just the lead piece in scribners in the nineteen 35 00:02:50,280 --> 00:02:54,880 Speaker 1: hundred August issue. Like many of the Indian coyote stories 36 00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:59,680 Speaker 1: folkloris were just beginning to collect, Tito took a widely 37 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:04,680 Speaker 1: deservable truth and offered an explanation for it. That truth 38 00:03:05,040 --> 00:03:10,600 Speaker 1: was a widespread puzzlement about coyotes. Why weren't these wild 39 00:03:10,639 --> 00:03:14,560 Speaker 1: dogs doing the proper thing and dying off. At the 40 00:03:14,600 --> 00:03:17,400 Speaker 1: turn of the twentieth century, the United States was waist 41 00:03:17,560 --> 00:03:22,160 Speaker 1: deep in the largest destruction and die off of wildlife 42 00:03:22,200 --> 00:03:26,799 Speaker 1: discoverable anywhere in modern world history. Thirty million bison were 43 00:03:26,840 --> 00:03:30,519 Speaker 1: down to fewer than one thousand. Fifteen million prong horns 44 00:03:30,600 --> 00:03:34,880 Speaker 1: were all but gone. We had so devastated elk, bighorn sheep, 45 00:03:34,960 --> 00:03:38,880 Speaker 1: and grizzly bears that they were surviving only as tiny 46 00:03:38,920 --> 00:03:43,480 Speaker 1: remnants hiding in the deepest mountains. Five million wild horses 47 00:03:43,520 --> 00:03:46,400 Speaker 1: were about to end up in pet food cans, and 48 00:03:46,480 --> 00:03:49,560 Speaker 1: by nineteen twenty we would have poisoned to death a 49 00:03:49,720 --> 00:03:54,800 Speaker 1: million gray wolves. When Seatan wrote Tito the most numerous 50 00:03:54,840 --> 00:03:59,720 Speaker 1: bird species on Earth, American passenger pigeons had fourteen years 51 00:03:59,800 --> 00:04:05,160 Speaker 1: of existence left. Yet, as the scribner's article put it, 52 00:04:05,640 --> 00:04:09,000 Speaker 1: despite the fierce war that had for a long time 53 00:04:09,120 --> 00:04:14,000 Speaker 1: been waged against the coyote kind, for some inexplicable reason, 54 00:04:14,560 --> 00:04:19,279 Speaker 1: coyotes were not following suit. Indeed, the more we shot them, 55 00:04:19,320 --> 00:04:22,679 Speaker 1: poisoned them, trapped them random with dogs, blew up their dens, 56 00:04:22,960 --> 00:04:29,320 Speaker 1: the more of them there seemed to be. By way 57 00:04:29,360 --> 00:04:34,160 Speaker 1: of an explanation, Setan invented the Tto of his story. 58 00:04:34,920 --> 00:04:38,160 Speaker 1: She has a little female coyote who is captured as 59 00:04:38,200 --> 00:04:41,920 Speaker 1: a pup and chained in a ranch yard as a curiosity, 60 00:04:42,120 --> 00:04:48,160 Speaker 1: where she shrewdly observes how her human captors use guns, traps, dogs, 61 00:04:48,240 --> 00:04:54,679 Speaker 1: and poisons against her kin. Ultimately, she escapes, finds a mate, 62 00:04:54,920 --> 00:04:58,400 Speaker 1: has pupps of her own, and then proceeds to teach 63 00:04:58,440 --> 00:05:03,000 Speaker 1: her pups and their children's children. As Setan phrased it, 64 00:05:03,640 --> 00:05:10,120 Speaker 1: all the tricks of coyote extermination. Satan's human analog Moses, 65 00:05:10,320 --> 00:05:13,919 Speaker 1: of course, and Israelite, who, by growing up among the 66 00:05:13,920 --> 00:05:17,760 Speaker 1: Egyptians was able to learn their plans, which enabled him 67 00:05:17,800 --> 00:05:23,719 Speaker 1: to save his people from destruction. Tito is a charming 68 00:05:23,760 --> 00:05:27,479 Speaker 1: story belonging to a genre the literati among us would 69 00:05:27,480 --> 00:05:31,880 Speaker 1: call allegory. If you weren't a sheepman or a predator 70 00:05:31,960 --> 00:05:35,680 Speaker 1: hunter paid by one of the livestock associations, No doubt, 71 00:05:35,720 --> 00:05:39,120 Speaker 1: it was fun to imagine it might be true, and 72 00:05:39,160 --> 00:05:41,960 Speaker 1: in any case, it fit well with the kind of 73 00:05:42,160 --> 00:05:47,560 Speaker 1: Darwinian animals are our ken stories. Writers like Setan and 74 00:05:47,760 --> 00:05:52,520 Speaker 1: Jack London were writing then, But in nineteen hundred coyotes 75 00:05:52,640 --> 00:05:56,760 Speaker 1: really were becoming more numerous, and not just that in 76 00:05:56,960 --> 00:06:01,400 Speaker 1: arid Southwestern cities like Los Angeles, the wild song dogs 77 00:06:01,400 --> 00:06:06,279 Speaker 1: were already attracting attention as urban dwellers. They were also 78 00:06:06,440 --> 00:06:09,680 Speaker 1: primed for spreading out of the West, and over the 79 00:06:09,720 --> 00:06:13,600 Speaker 1: next eighty years would start showing up in urban jungles 80 00:06:13,640 --> 00:06:17,760 Speaker 1: as far flung as Denver, Chicago, New York, as well 81 00:06:17,760 --> 00:06:22,720 Speaker 1: as Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. It turned out the 82 00:06:22,800 --> 00:06:27,160 Speaker 1: coyote puzzle Seaton tried to resolve with Tito was going 83 00:06:27,200 --> 00:06:29,760 Speaker 1: to require figuring out a hell of a lot more 84 00:06:29,960 --> 00:06:34,359 Speaker 1: of the coyote biography than we ever knew looking both 85 00:06:34,400 --> 00:06:38,919 Speaker 1: directions in nineteen hundred, What a crazy roller coaster of 86 00:06:38,960 --> 00:06:43,760 Speaker 1: a biography that has turned out to be. When we 87 00:06:43,839 --> 00:06:47,000 Speaker 1: humans got to North America twenty three thousand years ago, 88 00:06:47,320 --> 00:06:48,960 Speaker 1: coyotes greeted us at. 89 00:06:48,800 --> 00:06:51,239 Speaker 2: The front door. The Canada family. 90 00:06:51,480 --> 00:06:56,159 Speaker 1: It produced not just dire wolves, gray wolves, jackals, and coyotes, 91 00:06:56,440 --> 00:06:59,200 Speaker 1: but also your pup at home is a five and 92 00:06:59,240 --> 00:07:04,880 Speaker 1: a half million year old family of American animals. Jackals, 93 00:07:05,040 --> 00:07:08,960 Speaker 1: gray wolves and others did eventually migrate across the land 94 00:07:08,960 --> 00:07:13,200 Speaker 1: bridges into the Old World. Gray wolf ancestors in particular 95 00:07:13,560 --> 00:07:17,800 Speaker 1: colonizing most of the northern Hemisphere before returning to America 96 00:07:17,840 --> 00:07:22,760 Speaker 1: about thirty thousand years ago. Coyotes, though, never left, and 97 00:07:22,880 --> 00:07:26,640 Speaker 1: by eight hundred thousand years ago, were evolving into their 98 00:07:26,680 --> 00:07:31,120 Speaker 1: modern form as a medium sized jackal like wolf. 99 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:33,680 Speaker 2: If you want to know what it's like to be. 100 00:07:33,720 --> 00:07:36,679 Speaker 1: An America, get to know the canid that never left. 101 00:07:37,520 --> 00:07:41,840 Speaker 1: Coyotes have been yipping and howling, the original national anthem 102 00:07:42,040 --> 00:07:46,400 Speaker 1: across the continent for nearly a million years. When humans 103 00:07:46,440 --> 00:07:49,320 Speaker 1: wandering out of Africa and across Asia finally made it 104 00:07:49,360 --> 00:07:53,320 Speaker 1: to North America, they confronted a massive die off, oddly 105 00:07:53,400 --> 00:07:56,600 Speaker 1: similar to the one seatan would one day invoke in 106 00:07:56,680 --> 00:08:03,040 Speaker 1: Scribner's magazine. Mammoths, camels, horses, lions all were disappearing, but 107 00:08:03,120 --> 00:08:06,120 Speaker 1: a particular survivor of that crash caught the attention of 108 00:08:06,160 --> 00:08:09,480 Speaker 1: these first Americans, and soon they started thinking of it 109 00:08:09,720 --> 00:08:13,480 Speaker 1: as an avatar, a stand in for humans in the imagination. 110 00:08:14,640 --> 00:08:18,880 Speaker 1: Coyote with a capital S is not only a native 111 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:23,840 Speaker 1: deity from the Paleolithic, thus the oldest American god of 112 00:08:23,880 --> 00:08:27,880 Speaker 1: which we have a record as old Man America, Coyote 113 00:08:28,000 --> 00:08:32,680 Speaker 1: was also the chief protagonist in this continous oldest literature, 114 00:08:33,280 --> 00:08:37,720 Speaker 1: both hero and fool of stories told around campfires and 115 00:08:37,880 --> 00:08:44,000 Speaker 1: preserved by native people for ten millennia or more. Europeans 116 00:08:44,200 --> 00:08:49,160 Speaker 1: arrived in America with experiences with bears, foxes, and wolves, 117 00:08:49,559 --> 00:08:53,280 Speaker 1: but no prior experiences of any sort with coyotes in 118 00:08:53,320 --> 00:08:56,960 Speaker 1: a set of any knowledge of Indians ancient familiarity with 119 00:08:57,080 --> 00:09:01,240 Speaker 1: the animal, even from accounts in meso America, where the 120 00:09:01,280 --> 00:09:06,760 Speaker 1: Aztecs had long before named the animals coyotal. Americans on 121 00:09:06,800 --> 00:09:10,240 Speaker 1: the eastern Seaboard didn't know of coyotes until Lewis and 122 00:09:10,320 --> 00:09:15,280 Speaker 1: Clark named them prairie wolves. A line in Moby Dick 123 00:09:15,480 --> 00:09:20,320 Speaker 1: testifies that when Melville was writing his masterpiece, we were 124 00:09:20,400 --> 00:09:24,960 Speaker 1: still using that name, but by then Southwestern travelers like 125 00:09:25,040 --> 00:09:30,720 Speaker 1: Thomas Nuttall, Frederick Ruxton, Josiah Gregg, and Mark Twain were 126 00:09:30,760 --> 00:09:37,079 Speaker 1: hearing the hispanis sized three syllable version coyote that Western 127 00:09:37,120 --> 00:09:41,160 Speaker 1: locals used. That led Twain to instruct Americans on how 128 00:09:41,200 --> 00:09:43,800 Speaker 1: to say the name in his book in the early 129 00:09:43,880 --> 00:09:48,359 Speaker 1: eighteen seventies, but not before mountain men and trappers, unwilling 130 00:09:48,400 --> 00:09:51,600 Speaker 1: to decorate a dog like animal that snuck around their 131 00:09:51,640 --> 00:09:56,320 Speaker 1: camps with three whole syllables took coyote back to the 132 00:09:56,360 --> 00:10:01,400 Speaker 1: Midwest and the South. With no Old World mythology to 133 00:10:01,520 --> 00:10:05,840 Speaker 1: call on and scant interest in Indian religions or fables 134 00:10:05,880 --> 00:10:12,319 Speaker 1: about a coyote deity, Americans found coyotes ripe for original interpretation. 135 00:10:13,240 --> 00:10:15,800 Speaker 1: Beginning in the eighteen seventies and for the rest of 136 00:10:15,840 --> 00:10:20,560 Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, a new, unflattering impression formed in the 137 00:10:20,640 --> 00:10:26,160 Speaker 1: American mind. Twain's coyote description in Roughing It was intended 138 00:10:26,200 --> 00:10:29,680 Speaker 1: as comedy, but laid the foundation for an assessment that 139 00:10:29,760 --> 00:10:34,040 Speaker 1: grew worse as time went on. God now was the 140 00:10:34,200 --> 00:10:38,960 Speaker 1: Indian deity who had created the world. God was even 141 00:10:39,040 --> 00:10:43,800 Speaker 1: the perplexing prairie wolf of earlier in the century. Now 142 00:10:44,120 --> 00:10:49,720 Speaker 1: a new, repetitive trope emerged. To New York journalists Horace Greeley, 143 00:10:50,160 --> 00:10:56,560 Speaker 1: the coyote was a sneaking, cowardly little wretch. Ernest Ingasol's 144 00:10:56,720 --> 00:11:00,960 Speaker 1: eighteen eighty seven The Hound of the Plains in Popular 145 00:11:01,000 --> 00:11:06,520 Speaker 1: Science Monthly and Edwin Sabans The Coyote in Overland Monthly 146 00:11:06,679 --> 00:11:13,120 Speaker 1: in nineteen oh eight described coyotes as contemptible and especially perverse. 147 00:11:13,800 --> 00:11:19,520 Speaker 1: Their howls were eerie and blood stilling. Even defiant coyotes 148 00:11:19,720 --> 00:11:24,240 Speaker 1: lacked higher morals and were cowardly to the last degree. 149 00:11:24,480 --> 00:11:29,760 Speaker 1: They wrote exploring ideas for commercial gain from the killing 150 00:11:29,800 --> 00:11:33,440 Speaker 1: of coyotes. By nineteen twenty, an article in no less 151 00:11:33,480 --> 00:11:38,040 Speaker 1: than Scientific American asserted that while coyotes weren't worth the 152 00:11:38,160 --> 00:11:42,160 Speaker 1: price of the ammunition to shoot them, every patriotic American 153 00:11:42,240 --> 00:11:46,080 Speaker 1: ought to kill coyotes on site. Since the coyote, the 154 00:11:46,160 --> 00:11:54,480 Speaker 1: writer averred, was the original Bolshevik, the original Communists. From 155 00:11:54,480 --> 00:11:59,000 Speaker 1: the perspective of western stockman, the impression the coyote gave 156 00:11:59,120 --> 00:12:02,680 Speaker 1: of being a small wolf seemed all they needed to know. 157 00:12:03,679 --> 00:12:07,360 Speaker 1: The first environmental act Old World colonists had implemented in 158 00:12:07,400 --> 00:12:11,360 Speaker 1: America was to launch a war of extermination against wolves 159 00:12:11,800 --> 00:12:16,880 Speaker 1: and the coyotes. Urn had now come. Both stock associations 160 00:12:16,920 --> 00:12:21,000 Speaker 1: and governments lavishly funded bounties, to the point of creating 161 00:12:21,040 --> 00:12:24,439 Speaker 1: a new economic nish in the West. The bounty hunter 162 00:12:25,360 --> 00:12:29,320 Speaker 1: Montana was typical as a territory. It created the first 163 00:12:29,360 --> 00:12:33,960 Speaker 1: bounties on canid predators in eighteen eighty three and proceeded 164 00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:38,359 Speaker 1: then to prostitute itself to the ranching industry's predator hatred. 165 00:12:38,480 --> 00:12:42,680 Speaker 1: Between eighteen eighty three and nineteen twenty eight, Montana paid 166 00:12:42,760 --> 00:12:47,319 Speaker 1: bounties on a staggering one hundred eleven thousand, five hundred 167 00:12:47,320 --> 00:12:51,960 Speaker 1: and forty five wolves and eight hundred eighty six thousand, 168 00:12:52,120 --> 00:12:57,520 Speaker 1: three hundred sixty seven coyotes, a ranching subsidy that grew 169 00:12:57,640 --> 00:13:01,240 Speaker 1: so large during the territorial stage that it devoured two 170 00:13:01,400 --> 00:13:06,480 Speaker 1: thirds of the government's budgets. As a state, Montana outdid 171 00:13:06,640 --> 00:13:10,520 Speaker 1: mere bounties. In nineteen o five, its legislature passed a 172 00:13:10,640 --> 00:13:16,200 Speaker 1: law requiring veterinarians to introduce sarcoptic mange into the wild 173 00:13:16,280 --> 00:13:22,040 Speaker 1: hanted population, an early form of state sanctioned biological warfare. 174 00:13:22,600 --> 00:13:25,760 Speaker 1: A century later, coyotes and wolves in the northern West 175 00:13:26,080 --> 00:13:30,920 Speaker 1: still haven't recovered from that disease. When the forerunner of 176 00:13:30,960 --> 00:13:34,240 Speaker 1: the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Biological Survey, 177 00:13:34,559 --> 00:13:38,520 Speaker 1: began to cast about for more reliable congressional funding in 178 00:13:38,559 --> 00:13:40,840 Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, director C. 179 00:13:41,160 --> 00:13:42,679 Speaker 2: Heart Miriam hit on. 180 00:13:42,679 --> 00:13:46,280 Speaker 1: The idea of making the Bureau the answer to the 181 00:13:46,280 --> 00:13:47,920 Speaker 1: so called predator problem. 182 00:13:48,800 --> 00:13:52,839 Speaker 2: Faithful to a fault. To their packs mates and pops. 183 00:13:52,960 --> 00:13:57,560 Speaker 1: Wolves were relatively easy marks for government hunters armed with 184 00:13:57,720 --> 00:14:02,280 Speaker 1: poisoned bait, as ernestmson Seton wrote and perhaps the most 185 00:14:02,320 --> 00:14:07,160 Speaker 1: famous of his wildlife stories, Lobo King of Corumpaul, With 186 00:14:07,320 --> 00:14:11,040 Speaker 1: the scent of a dispatched pack member, a hunter could 187 00:14:11,080 --> 00:14:15,320 Speaker 1: proceed to lure and kill every additional member of a 188 00:14:15,360 --> 00:14:20,440 Speaker 1: wolf pack. In Montana, twenty three thousand, five hundred and 189 00:14:20,440 --> 00:14:25,080 Speaker 1: seventy five wolves had died in eighteen ninety nine. By 190 00:14:25,200 --> 00:14:31,200 Speaker 1: nineteen twenty the number had fallen to seventeen. So by 191 00:14:31,200 --> 00:14:34,560 Speaker 1: the mid twenties, the Bureau reset its focus on coyotes, 192 00:14:34,960 --> 00:14:39,000 Speaker 1: an animal that Bureau scientist E. A. Goldman now labeled 193 00:14:39,320 --> 00:14:43,920 Speaker 1: the arch predator of our time. Typical of American wildlife 194 00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:47,640 Speaker 1: decisions of the age, the most vicious war of extermination 195 00:14:47,760 --> 00:14:52,000 Speaker 1: we ever attempted against a native animal took place entirely 196 00:14:52,200 --> 00:14:56,920 Speaker 1: absent of any scientific research into how coyotes functioned in 197 00:14:57,040 --> 00:15:02,360 Speaker 1: ecosystems are indeed in human economies. When government finally did 198 00:15:02,400 --> 00:15:06,240 Speaker 1: dispatch ecologists with the charge of proving coyote villainy and 199 00:15:06,520 --> 00:15:10,280 Speaker 1: justifying their eradication, only to have studies by O Loss 200 00:15:10,320 --> 00:15:14,240 Speaker 1: and Adolf Muri determined that in fact, coyotes were ancient 201 00:15:14,360 --> 00:15:19,520 Speaker 1: curators of ecologies whose actions were overwhelmingly beneficial to humans. 202 00:15:19,880 --> 00:15:25,359 Speaker 1: The Bureau doubled down on coyote eradication. Its public relations 203 00:15:25,520 --> 00:15:30,360 Speaker 1: arm even sent canned articles to newspapers that brainwashed whole 204 00:15:30,520 --> 00:15:35,600 Speaker 1: generations about predators, positioning coyotes in the minds of many 205 00:15:35,920 --> 00:15:41,120 Speaker 1: as the most contemptible of American animals. Old world folk 206 00:15:41,160 --> 00:15:46,080 Speaker 1: wisdom had long since said predators had to go so 207 00:15:46,240 --> 00:15:50,240 Speaker 1: with little evidence to send its coyotes to eradication. That's 208 00:15:50,280 --> 00:15:54,800 Speaker 1: what had to happen, first with strychnine, then with newer, 209 00:15:54,960 --> 00:16:00,520 Speaker 1: more effective poisons la like thalium sulfate, sodium fluoro acetate 210 00:16:00,800 --> 00:16:05,400 Speaker 1: better known as ten eighty, and sodium cyanide. Federal hunters 211 00:16:05,480 --> 00:16:11,120 Speaker 1: between nineteen fifteen and nineteen seventy two killed an incredible 212 00:16:11,520 --> 00:16:16,560 Speaker 1: eight and a half million coyotes in the wake of 213 00:16:16,680 --> 00:16:22,280 Speaker 1: Rachel Carson's historic anti poisons book Silent Spring. Though of 214 00:16:22,520 --> 00:16:27,560 Speaker 1: all the unlikely politicians, it was Richard Nixon who finally 215 00:16:27,880 --> 00:16:33,840 Speaker 1: ended blanket coyote genocide. The old notion that the only 216 00:16:34,040 --> 00:16:38,400 Speaker 1: good predator is a dead one is no longer acceptable, 217 00:16:38,680 --> 00:16:43,080 Speaker 1: he told the American public in nineteen seventy two. Nixon 218 00:16:43,160 --> 00:16:47,960 Speaker 1: went on the widespread use of highly toxic poisons to 219 00:16:48,080 --> 00:16:52,400 Speaker 1: kill coyotes and other predatory animals and birds is a 220 00:16:52,480 --> 00:16:56,360 Speaker 1: practice which has been a source of increasing concern to 221 00:16:56,400 --> 00:17:01,080 Speaker 1: the American public. I am today issuing a executive order 222 00:17:01,480 --> 00:17:05,560 Speaker 1: banning the use of poisons for predator control on all 223 00:17:05,760 --> 00:17:11,639 Speaker 1: public lands. Looking back on this history, it seems clear 224 00:17:11,680 --> 00:17:16,560 Speaker 1: that persecuting coyotes without any scientific basis was purely and 225 00:17:16,600 --> 00:17:21,920 Speaker 1: simply an act of myopic ideology. The nations of Western 226 00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:26,399 Speaker 1: Europe had long before destroyed their own wild predators, and 227 00:17:26,520 --> 00:17:29,840 Speaker 1: making America into the image of Europe obviously meant we 228 00:17:29,840 --> 00:17:33,439 Speaker 1: should do the same. That European template was in place 229 00:17:33,560 --> 00:17:37,480 Speaker 1: prior to Darwin, though, and preceded the emergence of the 230 00:17:37,520 --> 00:17:41,800 Speaker 1: new twentieth century science of ecology to issue a corrective 231 00:17:42,640 --> 00:17:47,000 Speaker 1: But starting in the nineteen twenties, ecologist like Joseph Grinnell, 232 00:17:47,400 --> 00:17:52,160 Speaker 1: who with his student E. Raymond Hall, did foundational work 233 00:17:52,320 --> 00:17:58,159 Speaker 1: on ecological niches, and eventually Aldo Leopold, who combined first 234 00:17:58,280 --> 00:18:01,920 Speaker 1: rate science with a litter gift for reaching the public, 235 00:18:02,400 --> 00:18:04,439 Speaker 1: became opponents. 236 00:18:04,000 --> 00:18:06,520 Speaker 2: Of the reflexive war on coyotes. 237 00:18:07,240 --> 00:18:11,800 Speaker 1: So were the Muri Brothers, who did basic foundational science 238 00:18:12,119 --> 00:18:16,360 Speaker 1: on Coyotes and Jackson Hole and Yellowstone in the late 239 00:18:16,480 --> 00:18:21,479 Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. Since Ernest Thompson Seton had written Tito at 240 00:18:21,560 --> 00:18:25,399 Speaker 1: the start of the twentieth century, policymakers had just assumed 241 00:18:25,600 --> 00:18:29,320 Speaker 1: that tripling down on the coyote of war eventually would work. 242 00:18:30,080 --> 00:18:33,359 Speaker 1: According to a story in Sports of Feel, by the 243 00:18:33,440 --> 00:18:38,720 Speaker 1: late nineteen fifties, with thrown five hundred million dollars of 244 00:18:38,920 --> 00:18:43,600 Speaker 1: taxpayer money at coyote killing, no one was prepared for 245 00:18:43,640 --> 00:18:50,520 Speaker 1: the actual entirely unexpected outcome. Millions of individual coyotes died, 246 00:18:50,680 --> 00:18:54,200 Speaker 1: to be sure, But so how Coyotes not only were 247 00:18:54,359 --> 00:18:58,480 Speaker 1: undiminished in the West, the war began to spread them 248 00:18:58,520 --> 00:19:02,440 Speaker 1: out of their original range and interstates in the Midwest, 249 00:19:02,720 --> 00:19:09,080 Speaker 1: South and East, where predator eradication had successfully wiped out wolves, 250 00:19:09,960 --> 00:19:13,920 Speaker 1: and with towns and cities of every size setting up 251 00:19:14,040 --> 00:19:19,040 Speaker 1: dog catchers and pounds to eliminate stray town dogs, now 252 00:19:19,240 --> 00:19:25,000 Speaker 1: new possibilities open for coyotes and cities. Coyotes, after all, 253 00:19:25,040 --> 00:19:29,880 Speaker 1: have lived in our midst forever. Archaeological work at ancient 254 00:19:29,920 --> 00:19:34,880 Speaker 1: American cities like Chaco Canyon indicate as much soda. Suburbs 255 00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:39,440 Speaker 1: named for coyotes in the old Aztec capital of Teenotes. 256 00:19:39,520 --> 00:19:44,399 Speaker 1: Teeth Line naturalist Thomas Nutdall found coyotes running through the 257 00:19:44,440 --> 00:19:48,200 Speaker 1: streets of Carmel Mission on the central coast of California 258 00:19:48,480 --> 00:19:52,399 Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties. Los Angeles has never been without 259 00:19:52,480 --> 00:19:56,920 Speaker 1: coyotes since its founding. So as coyotes spread across America 260 00:19:57,080 --> 00:20:01,439 Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, they eyed rats, mice, geese, and 261 00:20:01,520 --> 00:20:05,000 Speaker 1: fruit trees, in short, all the opportunities where people weren't 262 00:20:05,040 --> 00:20:09,920 Speaker 1: trapping or poisoning them or calling Wildlife Service hunters on them, 263 00:20:10,119 --> 00:20:14,879 Speaker 1: and moved in with us. Coyotes in Denver, Chicago, and 264 00:20:15,040 --> 00:20:19,000 Speaker 1: everywhere else, including my parents' little town of six hundred 265 00:20:19,040 --> 00:20:23,639 Speaker 1: people in Louisiana, have been the result. Yet again, we 266 00:20:23,800 --> 00:20:30,000 Speaker 1: have to learn to coexist because resistance is feudile. How 267 00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:34,280 Speaker 1: if coyotes managed to survive what wolves and scores of 268 00:20:34,280 --> 00:20:39,280 Speaker 1: other species could not. Tito had been an allegorical answer. 269 00:20:39,840 --> 00:20:43,200 Speaker 1: Another came from folk tradition in the Southwest, the only 270 00:20:43,280 --> 00:20:46,760 Speaker 1: thing smarter than a coyote is God. But a pair 271 00:20:46,800 --> 00:20:51,800 Speaker 1: of biologists, Guy Connolly and Fred Knowlton finally came up 272 00:20:51,840 --> 00:20:56,120 Speaker 1: with the answer. As a result of co evolution. Alongside 273 00:20:56,200 --> 00:21:00,760 Speaker 1: larger wolves which had long harassed them, coyote had evolved 274 00:21:00,800 --> 00:21:05,879 Speaker 1: a remarkable set of survival traits. Under assault, they have 275 00:21:06,040 --> 00:21:11,080 Speaker 1: larger litters. If coyote numbers go down, more food sources 276 00:21:11,200 --> 00:21:15,120 Speaker 1: mean they get more pups to adulthood. If the breeding 277 00:21:15,200 --> 00:21:19,199 Speaker 1: alpha female of a pack dies, beta females breed and 278 00:21:19,320 --> 00:21:23,960 Speaker 1: have more pups. Most remarkably, coyotes had evolved a rare 279 00:21:24,119 --> 00:21:29,880 Speaker 1: ability we humans share, called fishing fusion. Like us, they 280 00:21:29,880 --> 00:21:35,320 Speaker 1: are normally a social or fusion species, but also like us, 281 00:21:35,560 --> 00:21:40,080 Speaker 1: when conditions warrant, they can split into floaters and pears 282 00:21:40,600 --> 00:21:46,239 Speaker 1: fishing and scatter and colonize. Connolly and Knowlton showed that 283 00:21:46,359 --> 00:21:50,920 Speaker 1: you could kill seventy percent of a coyote population year 284 00:21:51,080 --> 00:21:56,480 Speaker 1: after year without ultimately reducing its numbers, but you very 285 00:21:56,760 --> 00:22:07,359 Speaker 1: likely did spread them. Let me share a personal story. 286 00:22:07,680 --> 00:22:10,960 Speaker 1: In the twenty first century West, something resembling this is 287 00:22:11,000 --> 00:22:14,040 Speaker 1: so common the experience might not even be mine, although 288 00:22:14,080 --> 00:22:18,240 Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure this particular one is. My wife Sarah 289 00:22:18,280 --> 00:22:21,840 Speaker 1: and I are up early brewing coffee as crimson and 290 00:22:21,880 --> 00:22:25,560 Speaker 1: gold set off the kitchen of our house and technicolors 291 00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:31,200 Speaker 1: southwestern hues an ordinary autumn dawn, beautiful enough to break 292 00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:35,119 Speaker 1: your heart, is unfolding in the Galileo Valley south of 293 00:22:35,200 --> 00:22:40,359 Speaker 1: Santa Fe. Then I see Sarah's eyes widen. She's looking 294 00:22:40,440 --> 00:22:43,160 Speaker 1: past me through the windows, so I track her line 295 00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:43,480 Speaker 1: of sight. 296 00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:46,240 Speaker 2: Five coyotes, three. 297 00:22:46,080 --> 00:22:48,720 Speaker 1: Of them gangly fall pups, looking for all the world 298 00:22:48,840 --> 00:22:52,800 Speaker 1: like a posse of cruising teenagers, are trotting single file 299 00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:56,040 Speaker 1: past our kitchen, back lit by the colors of the 300 00:22:56,160 --> 00:23:01,000 Speaker 1: breaking day. Every hair on their sharp muzzles, ears, and 301 00:23:01,160 --> 00:23:07,320 Speaker 1: floating tails is outlined in chromium yellow light. The alpha pair, 302 00:23:07,720 --> 00:23:11,680 Speaker 1: a robust male and a grassisle female, is bringing up 303 00:23:11,720 --> 00:23:15,520 Speaker 1: the rear, and as they trot that effortless coyote gate 304 00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:19,080 Speaker 1: pass us. I know two more details right off. The 305 00:23:19,200 --> 00:23:20,440 Speaker 1: female is familiar. 306 00:23:20,840 --> 00:23:21,480 Speaker 2: I know her. 307 00:23:22,040 --> 00:23:26,800 Speaker 1: She's an unusual coyote, recognizable because she sports a white 308 00:23:27,119 --> 00:23:30,320 Speaker 1: rather than the more normal black tip at the end 309 00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:33,399 Speaker 1: of her tail. At the same time, I register that 310 00:23:33,440 --> 00:23:37,159 Speaker 1: two of the yearlings carry that same genetic marker, although 311 00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:40,440 Speaker 1: in a less pronounced form, their cream tail. 312 00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:41,760 Speaker 2: Tips speckled with black. 313 00:23:42,560 --> 00:23:46,160 Speaker 1: This distinctive female has raised pups in the canyon below 314 00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:49,280 Speaker 1: the house for at least the past three years, I've 315 00:23:49,359 --> 00:23:54,239 Speaker 1: watched her even longer. Second detail, the male seems to 316 00:23:54,280 --> 00:23:58,000 Speaker 1: be a new consort, has some accident befallen her mate 317 00:23:58,040 --> 00:23:59,520 Speaker 1: with the split ear, and. 318 00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:01,119 Speaker 2: His reaction makes me laugh. 319 00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:05,159 Speaker 1: Gliding past the house as if he's on skates, his 320 00:24:05,359 --> 00:24:09,200 Speaker 1: golden eyes suddenly narrow as he spots our brawny Alaska 321 00:24:09,240 --> 00:24:13,920 Speaker 1: and malame Cody sleepily lounging on the front porch, never 322 00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:17,040 Speaker 1: breaking stride, but with a quick lip curl and grimace. 323 00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:20,159 Speaker 2: No time to hang out. The new male bears a 324 00:24:20,280 --> 00:24:22,040 Speaker 2: row of lovely white teeth. 325 00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:25,399 Speaker 1: Cody has been around coyotes all his life, and seeing 326 00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:27,720 Speaker 1: them in the yard isn't all that novel, so he 327 00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:30,800 Speaker 1: merely sits up and watches as the parade goes by. 328 00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:32,199 Speaker 2: So do we. 329 00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:36,600 Speaker 1: It's a wild canid show to match the dawn, and 330 00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:39,840 Speaker 1: we haven't had to go to Yellowstone or Alaska to 331 00:24:39,920 --> 00:24:43,919 Speaker 1: see it. Our coffee cups steaming the air. We've just 332 00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:48,000 Speaker 1: stood in the kitchen and looked outside, and one of 333 00:24:48,040 --> 00:24:52,080 Speaker 1: the most intriguing wildlife stories of our time, not just Westerners, 334 00:24:52,119 --> 00:24:55,680 Speaker 1: but everyone in America is now getting to see small 335 00:24:55,800 --> 00:24:59,960 Speaker 1: Western wolves out the kitchen windows. The coyote has turned 336 00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:03,960 Speaker 1: out to be the dude, and the dude absolutely abides. 337 00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:05,720 Speaker 2: Difficult as it. 338 00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:08,919 Speaker 1: Is to expel politics from our minds these days, a 339 00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:12,880 Speaker 1: coyote in the yard can manage it. Whether those golden 340 00:25:12,920 --> 00:25:16,280 Speaker 1: eyes that slender snout are the insolent swish of a 341 00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:20,040 Speaker 1: tale charm you or outrage you. The site of a 342 00:25:20,080 --> 00:25:26,080 Speaker 1: coyote is never boring, materializing magically into familiar surroundings we 343 00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:29,959 Speaker 1: long ago assume we're bled of anything wild. A single 344 00:25:30,080 --> 00:25:34,879 Speaker 1: coyote can evaporate all illusions of our successful transplant of 345 00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:38,920 Speaker 1: civilizations of the continent. No world that has a jackal 346 00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:42,639 Speaker 1: like wolf glancing at you as it trounts by, with 347 00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:46,639 Speaker 1: houses and highways in the background can ever be said 348 00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:50,280 Speaker 1: to have banished the wild. I've never had so much 349 00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:52,679 Speaker 1: fun writing a book as I had writing one I 350 00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:56,160 Speaker 1: called Coyote America, and one of the reasons was that 351 00:25:56,240 --> 00:26:01,240 Speaker 1: its narrative arc inverted everything we're used to environmental stories, 352 00:26:01,800 --> 00:26:06,679 Speaker 1: and Coyote America nature wins. Coyotes have taken everything we 353 00:26:06,840 --> 00:26:10,280 Speaker 1: humans can throw at them, then calmly occupied the very 354 00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:14,840 Speaker 1: ground we're standing on, and they've done it repeatedly. Direwolves, 355 00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:17,480 Speaker 1: mammas and saber tooth cats may not have been able 356 00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:22,400 Speaker 1: to survive the pleisosine, but coyotes did. America's scorched Earth 357 00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:26,400 Speaker 1: campaigns against the country's wildlife a century ago drove numerous 358 00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:29,960 Speaker 1: species to extinction or the edge of it. That was 359 00:26:30,040 --> 00:26:33,600 Speaker 1: not the coyotes fate, who thrived as other creatures big 360 00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:39,080 Speaker 1: and small, disappeared on all sides targets of wholesale extermination 361 00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:43,120 Speaker 1: in the twentieth century. Coyotes have responded to that by 362 00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:48,119 Speaker 1: spreading across America, making it to Delaware their forty ninth 363 00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:54,680 Speaker 1: conquests in twenty eleven. Only Hawaii lacks them. No other 364 00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:59,679 Speaker 1: mammal except humans, has ever exhibited such cosmopolitan talents for 365 00:26:59,800 --> 00:27:04,679 Speaker 1: that kind of successful expansion. To do the coyote justice, 366 00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:07,840 Speaker 1: you have to engage not just with the animal itself 367 00:27:08,280 --> 00:27:14,560 Speaker 1: and every feel from evolution biology, ecology to anthropology, history 368 00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:18,600 Speaker 1: and folklore. Even literature, art and film has done so, 369 00:27:19,160 --> 00:27:25,680 Speaker 1: but also with a rich range of us bipedal animals involved. Obviously, 370 00:27:25,840 --> 00:27:29,320 Speaker 1: Ernest Thompson Seton is there, and so is everyone from 371 00:27:29,359 --> 00:27:34,360 Speaker 1: Mark Twain to the Biological Survey Coyote Killers to Richard Nixon, 372 00:27:34,840 --> 00:27:38,760 Speaker 1: and to be honest, the psychologist Carl Jung, the poet 373 00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:42,600 Speaker 1: Gary Snyder, the painter Harry Fonseka, and if you can 374 00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:47,080 Speaker 1: imagine such a person, the genius Paleolithic American who created 375 00:27:47,119 --> 00:27:50,880 Speaker 1: the first coyote avatar story. So far back in time 376 00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:54,560 Speaker 1: we can't fathom either the depths of coyote stories or 377 00:27:54,600 --> 00:28:00,000 Speaker 1: their future. Of course, our resident super genius, Wiley Coyote 378 00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:02,480 Speaker 1: is in the mix, and I can report with some 379 00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:08,480 Speaker 1: delight about Wiley that his New Yorker inspired product liability 380 00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:12,360 Speaker 1: lawsuit against the Acme Corporation is about to have its 381 00:28:12,440 --> 00:28:16,919 Speaker 1: day in court, with the film Coyote v Acme coming 382 00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:21,840 Speaker 1: to movie theaters in late twenty twenty six. What I've 383 00:28:21,920 --> 00:28:25,919 Speaker 1: also learned following coyotes through history is that their story 384 00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:29,560 Speaker 1: is far from over. As one remarkable example of that, 385 00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:33,359 Speaker 1: right now, coyotes are on the cusp of becoming the 386 00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:37,840 Speaker 1: first North American species in three million years to cross 387 00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:42,240 Speaker 1: from this continent into another one, in this case, into 388 00:28:42,280 --> 00:28:46,160 Speaker 1: South America. Expansion across a continent is one thing, but 389 00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:51,000 Speaker 1: into another. While the locus of their evolutionary origin seems 390 00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:54,320 Speaker 1: to have been in the southwest of the president United States, 391 00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:58,520 Speaker 1: coyotes do seem to have been occasionally on the scene 392 00:28:58,800 --> 00:29:03,880 Speaker 1: south of Mexico in Guatemala, Honduras, San Salvador and Nicaragua. 393 00:29:04,200 --> 00:29:09,400 Speaker 1: Even before Spanish colonization, there fond of open country and 394 00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:14,360 Speaker 1: most certainly attracted the sheep and goats. Spanish colonizers introduced. 395 00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:19,080 Speaker 1: Coyotes apparently veered away from the cat filled jungles to 396 00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:24,440 Speaker 1: the south, but as humans steadily cleared the Central American forest, 397 00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:30,760 Speaker 1: dispersing coyotes began colonizing Costa Rica during the nineteen seventies 398 00:29:30,760 --> 00:29:34,040 Speaker 1: and nineteen eighties. Since then they have steadily pushed into 399 00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:39,200 Speaker 1: Panama and the grand Isthmus between the continents. They crossed 400 00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:43,920 Speaker 1: the Panama Canal in twenty ten and are colonizing south 401 00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:46,920 Speaker 1: at a rate of about forty miles a year, which 402 00:29:46,960 --> 00:29:50,720 Speaker 1: means that by twenty eighteen they began to approach Darian 403 00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:56,360 Speaker 1: National Part athwart the Isthmus, beyond which lies Colombia and 404 00:29:56,520 --> 00:30:01,440 Speaker 1: all of South America. The intertwined ring density of Darian 405 00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:06,640 Speaker 1: National Park, a jungle of spider monkeys, tapers, giant and eaters, 406 00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:11,200 Speaker 1: peckeries and birds, reptiles and amphibians almost beyond count would 407 00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,000 Speaker 1: not strike a fan of Wiley coyote roadrunner cartoons as 408 00:30:15,120 --> 00:30:19,920 Speaker 1: classic coyote habitat replete with mountain lions and jaguars that 409 00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:24,320 Speaker 1: would enjoy taking out a migrating canid. Darien Shirley looms 410 00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:29,600 Speaker 1: as a coyote obstacle, but coyotes have confronted unfamiliar settings 411 00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:35,720 Speaker 1: before without blanching. Their numbers, like ours, possess some individuals 412 00:30:35,880 --> 00:30:39,800 Speaker 1: who can take on situations like big cities or jungles 413 00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:44,440 Speaker 1: with a calm conviction of purpose. Adventurous ones may be 414 00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:47,600 Speaker 1: hit by cars or taken out by a jaguar, but 415 00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:51,160 Speaker 1: just as there are coyotes in Chicago and Manhattan, some 416 00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:56,040 Speaker 1: are without question pushing through Darian Park to Columbia as 417 00:30:56,080 --> 00:31:00,000 Speaker 1: I write this. When they succeed, they will almost certainly 418 00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:04,240 Speaker 1: spread across all of South America. For coyotes, this may 419 00:31:04,280 --> 00:31:08,320 Speaker 1: well be their version of a planet b of a Mars. 420 00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:14,880 Speaker 1: Perhaps given their candid version of a human like self confidence, 421 00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:19,120 Speaker 1: coyotes have a certain pensiont for making the news. Colonizing 422 00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:21,640 Speaker 1: another continent is a story that's hard to top, but 423 00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:25,440 Speaker 1: there are other candidates. Not many other animals are participating 424 00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:28,960 Speaker 1: in the rescue of fellow mammal from extinction. But a 425 00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:34,000 Speaker 1: particular coyote population in Texas and Louisiana, which residents and 426 00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:39,120 Speaker 1: biologists have now named ghost wolves, has attracted attention from 427 00:31:39,280 --> 00:31:44,080 Speaker 1: geneticists for doing exactly that. The species they're helping to 428 00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:47,600 Speaker 1: rescue is the red wolf, the most endangered wolf on 429 00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:51,760 Speaker 1: the planet. There's a true irony in this particular story, 430 00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:56,440 Speaker 1: since a half century ago, biologists believe the primary threat 431 00:31:56,480 --> 00:32:01,640 Speaker 1: to red wolf's survival was interbreeding with mygrating coyotes who 432 00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:06,760 Speaker 1: were swamping red wolf genetics. I was a young teenager 433 00:32:06,840 --> 00:32:11,600 Speaker 1: in Louisiana just when these hybridization events were happening among 434 00:32:11,640 --> 00:32:15,200 Speaker 1: the coyotes I was seeing. Back then, I twice came 435 00:32:15,280 --> 00:32:20,800 Speaker 1: face to face with strapping, leggy animals with mesmerizing yellow eyes. 436 00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:23,680 Speaker 2: That sure looked like wolfy coyotes. 437 00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:27,320 Speaker 1: If these were coyote red wolf hybrids, and they almost 438 00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:32,360 Speaker 1: certainly were, that mixture made for gorgeous animals. But for 439 00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:36,640 Speaker 1: the next several decades, the recovery program for saving red 440 00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:41,400 Speaker 1: wolves under the Danger Species Act largely meant destroying hybrid 441 00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:47,479 Speaker 1: animals and sequestering pure red wolves away from coyotes. So 442 00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:52,400 Speaker 1: how delicious is it? Now that unlike gray wolves in 443 00:32:52,480 --> 00:32:57,280 Speaker 1: the West, red wolves, having been particularly difficult to pull 444 00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:01,160 Speaker 1: back from the brink, have a new chains with a 445 00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:07,520 Speaker 1: rescued population in nineteen eighty of a mere fourteen founding animals. 446 00:33:08,040 --> 00:33:11,239 Speaker 1: Red wolves, for half a century have suffered from a 447 00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:15,920 Speaker 1: sharply constrained genetic diversity on the paril of North Carolina 448 00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:19,800 Speaker 1: National Wildlife Refuges where we've tried to save them. The 449 00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:23,480 Speaker 1: wild population of red wolves right now has dropped to 450 00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:30,520 Speaker 1: a mere twenty five Meanwhile, though local residents in Galveston, Texas, 451 00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:33,160 Speaker 1: have for several years been noticing that some of the 452 00:33:33,160 --> 00:33:37,160 Speaker 1: coyotes on their island are at the least unusual looking. 453 00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:42,560 Speaker 1: Starting in twenty eighteen, genetic analysis of coyotes there and 454 00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:46,640 Speaker 1: in nearby Louisiana reveals something that in retrospect shouldn't have 455 00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:50,640 Speaker 1: surprised us. It turns out there are still canids in 456 00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:54,560 Speaker 1: that part of the world carrying red wolf ancestry, often 457 00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:58,160 Speaker 1: ten percent or more. Occasionally, an animal has turned up 458 00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:03,720 Speaker 1: whose red wolf genes approach seventy five percent. Even more startling, 459 00:34:04,120 --> 00:34:09,880 Speaker 1: some of these wild coyotes possess red wolf alels entirely 460 00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:14,680 Speaker 1: distinctive from the makeup of the North Carolina red wolf populations, 461 00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:19,000 Speaker 1: whose complete genome had suffered when we attempted to rebuild 462 00:34:19,040 --> 00:34:22,880 Speaker 1: their numbers from such a small group of founders. So 463 00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:26,839 Speaker 1: not only are these mixed coyote red wolf animals I 464 00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:30,359 Speaker 1: saw as a teenager still out there all along, they 465 00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:35,120 Speaker 1: preserved wolf genetics that, with the assistance of modern science, 466 00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:41,200 Speaker 1: can diversify red wolves and help save them. Colossal biosciences 467 00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:45,520 Speaker 1: the fame the extinction company that in twenty twenty five 468 00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:51,640 Speaker 1: genetically engineered dire wolves, simultaneously announced that it had birthed 469 00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:56,920 Speaker 1: four cloned red wolf puppies from the lost wolf genetics 470 00:34:57,160 --> 00:35:03,920 Speaker 1: preserved by these Deep South hybrid coyotes. Hope are Nika Kaida. 471 00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:09,560 Speaker 1: Her Kakawa name is the sole female of the four. Blaze, 472 00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:14,080 Speaker 1: Concern and Sender are the three males. The odds of 473 00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:17,680 Speaker 1: saving red wolves and a more healthy and complete version 474 00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:23,960 Speaker 1: of them have suddenly gone dramatically. Paying attention to coyotes 475 00:35:24,120 --> 00:35:28,479 Speaker 1: has taught me one final valuable lesson about them and us. 476 00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:34,160 Speaker 1: Since the beginnings of wildlife management, we humans, all committed individualists, 477 00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:38,800 Speaker 1: ourselves have thought of other animals almost entirely in terms 478 00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:44,200 Speaker 1: of species a lumping aggregate of l like creatures. Naturalists 479 00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:46,719 Speaker 1: such a seat and try to redirect that thinking with 480 00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:50,360 Speaker 1: articles like Tito, only to have no less than a 481 00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:55,000 Speaker 1: President of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, castigate him as 482 00:35:55,000 --> 00:36:00,880 Speaker 1: a nature faker. Yet when famed ecologists Adolph Muri studied 483 00:36:00,880 --> 00:36:04,640 Speaker 1: the wolves of Mount McKinley Park forty years later, he 484 00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:09,240 Speaker 1: found the gray wolves there to be very distinct individuals. 485 00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:16,239 Speaker 1: Murray even gave his study animals' names Dandy, Robber, Mask, Grandpa, 486 00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:17,480 Speaker 1: and Wags. 487 00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:19,960 Speaker 2: It strikes me as a. 488 00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:25,480 Speaker 1: Myopic disconnect that we humans have no trouble understanding our 489 00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:30,319 Speaker 1: companion animals as individuals, yet can still insist that Walt 490 00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:36,320 Speaker 1: Disney was anthropomorphizing deer when he gave one a personality 491 00:36:36,760 --> 00:36:41,560 Speaker 1: and called him Bambie. That long standing recourse to a 492 00:36:41,600 --> 00:36:45,239 Speaker 1: species focus and wildlife management is still there, but the 493 00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:50,640 Speaker 1: world of twenty first century human wildlife coexistence is shifting. 494 00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:55,560 Speaker 1: Despite it, the evidence is everywhere. The New York Times 495 00:36:55,600 --> 00:37:00,719 Speaker 1: actually ran an obituary of the female Yellowstone wolf biologists 496 00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:04,719 Speaker 1: had named six when she was killed by a Montana hunter. 497 00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:11,080 Speaker 1: Park naturalist Rick McIntyre is even now publishing biographical books 498 00:37:11,400 --> 00:37:13,240 Speaker 1: about individual wolves. 499 00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:15,200 Speaker 2: In Yellowstone, the. 500 00:37:15,120 --> 00:37:19,319 Speaker 1: Hollywood Hills Griffith Park cougar, known as P twenty two, 501 00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:25,160 Speaker 1: became a celebrity lion in Celebrity Fill Los Angeles on 502 00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:28,640 Speaker 1: the opposite side of the country. For several decades now, 503 00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:34,640 Speaker 1: Manhattanites have recognized Central Parks red tailed hawks, barn owls, 504 00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:40,000 Speaker 1: and yes, coyotes with individual names like Romeo and Juliet, 505 00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:43,759 Speaker 1: the mated pair in Central Park in twenty twenty five. 506 00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:46,560 Speaker 2: Coyotes are not just their. 507 00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:50,919 Speaker 1: Own animals who experience existence differently one from the other 508 00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:55,160 Speaker 1: and love their own unique aliveness. As science at the 509 00:37:55,200 --> 00:37:59,840 Speaker 1: Predator Research Facility in Utah has shown, they are truly 510 00:38:00,440 --> 00:38:07,200 Speaker 1: remarkably singular. To understand the coyotes we're coexisting with in 511 00:38:07,239 --> 00:38:09,759 Speaker 1: a way that's good both for you and for the 512 00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:13,200 Speaker 1: four legged animal looking back at you, sometimes make an 513 00:38:13,239 --> 00:38:18,959 Speaker 1: effort to identify a specific individual coyote to be sure. 514 00:38:19,040 --> 00:38:22,120 Speaker 1: Coyotes tend to look the same to us, and no doubt, 515 00:38:22,160 --> 00:38:27,080 Speaker 1: initially they returned that non discriminating favor, but there are 516 00:38:27,160 --> 00:38:31,080 Speaker 1: often distinctive markers you can pick out. I can tell 517 00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:33,680 Speaker 1: you from my experience with the female with the white 518 00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:36,920 Speaker 1: tipped tail who dens in the canyon below my house 519 00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:41,440 Speaker 1: in New Mexico. Once I identified her as a particular animal, 520 00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:42,680 Speaker 1: she quickly did. 521 00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:46,480 Speaker 2: The same with me. Our mutual curiosity has. 522 00:38:46,360 --> 00:38:51,600 Speaker 1: Led to an interesting, even intriguing relationship. We sometimes don't 523 00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:55,040 Speaker 1: see one another for weeks. Then hiking in the canyon, 524 00:38:55,360 --> 00:38:58,799 Speaker 1: I'll spot her, often with other coyotes, and before she 525 00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:02,400 Speaker 1: moves off, she will sometimes direct me with her nose 526 00:39:02,520 --> 00:39:05,719 Speaker 1: and ears to something of interest to both of us. 527 00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:09,920 Speaker 1: I'll return from an absence and she'll be sitting in 528 00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:13,440 Speaker 1: the front yard like a dog I've absent mindedly forgotten 529 00:39:13,440 --> 00:39:17,040 Speaker 1: to take along, moving off calmly and reluctantly as I 530 00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:21,160 Speaker 1: park my jeep from a respectable distance, She's inspected our 531 00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:25,840 Speaker 1: new malamew kishka, and she is clearly willing to bring 532 00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:31,160 Speaker 1: her family her new pups past the windows. I don't 533 00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:34,000 Speaker 1: know why she does these things, and I'm not about 534 00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:37,360 Speaker 1: to claim I do. She knows she's not in danger, 535 00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:41,200 Speaker 1: of course, but I certainly don't feed her or otherwise 536 00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:42,080 Speaker 1: encourage her. 537 00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:45,840 Speaker 2: But this much I do know. I like it that 538 00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:46,719 Speaker 2: every so. 539 00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:52,120 Speaker 1: Often a while coyote apparently thinks of me. So I'll 540 00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:58,359 Speaker 1: suggest something radical. Try meeting a coyote halfway and see 541 00:39:58,360 --> 00:39:58,920 Speaker 1: how it goes. 542 00:40:02,520 --> 00:40:04,440 Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of ways we could start 543 00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:08,760 Speaker 3: this one, but I think because we can take coyotes anywhere, 544 00:40:09,160 --> 00:40:13,560 Speaker 3: they go everywhere. But as you point out, this is 545 00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:18,239 Speaker 3: one story in which the animals win. Yeah, and so 546 00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:21,279 Speaker 3: if I unpacked that a little bit, because it's a 547 00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:23,600 Speaker 3: fun it's a fun idea to play with. 548 00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:27,600 Speaker 1: Yeah, as I as I said in the in the 549 00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:35,759 Speaker 1: episode Coyote America, what it has been was still is 550 00:40:35,800 --> 00:40:38,640 Speaker 1: because I'm doing a new version of it that's coming out, saying, 551 00:40:40,400 --> 00:40:43,400 Speaker 1: the most fun book to write I've ever written. 552 00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:45,080 Speaker 2: And that's really. 553 00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:51,400 Speaker 1: The reason we're dealing with the coyote, with an animal 554 00:40:51,480 --> 00:40:54,719 Speaker 1: that has a biography that not only does a rollercoaster 555 00:40:55,000 --> 00:41:01,640 Speaker 1: ride up and down and around swerving curves, and it's 556 00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:08,920 Speaker 1: also an animal that, as native people recognize, is very 557 00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:14,239 Speaker 1: much like us. It's an animal that lives by its 558 00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:18,239 Speaker 1: wits and is successful as a result of that. And 559 00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:25,160 Speaker 1: it's also the rare, irrepressible animal. So many of our 560 00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:28,640 Speaker 1: grand species in the past, all the way back to 561 00:41:28,719 --> 00:41:31,959 Speaker 1: the Pleistocene. I mean, we lose our mammos, we lose 562 00:41:31,960 --> 00:41:36,280 Speaker 1: our sabertoothed cats, we lose our lions, and then in 563 00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:40,160 Speaker 1: the more modern historic period, I mean, we lose passenger pigeons, 564 00:41:40,280 --> 00:41:43,960 Speaker 1: the most numerous bird on earth. We lose Carolina parakeets, 565 00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:46,919 Speaker 1: and I rebuild woodpeckers. I mean, just on and on, 566 00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:51,719 Speaker 1: and yet here is this creature that, in fact, we 567 00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:56,680 Speaker 1: do everything we can possibly think of to wipe them out, 568 00:41:57,200 --> 00:42:01,520 Speaker 1: and the result is exactly the opposite of what our 569 00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:07,280 Speaker 1: intentions are. We end up not only do their numbers 570 00:42:07,840 --> 00:42:11,319 Speaker 1: remain viable even in the West, where we're launching such 571 00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:14,280 Speaker 1: a war against them, but in fact our efforts spread 572 00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:17,520 Speaker 1: them out across the rest of the country and so 573 00:42:18,160 --> 00:42:21,719 Speaker 1: and into cities and towns. And it's this kind of 574 00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:24,200 Speaker 1: remarkable story to me. And one of the things I 575 00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:29,040 Speaker 1: wanted to say here, and because I think it is 576 00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:30,440 Speaker 1: a remarkable thing. 577 00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:35,160 Speaker 2: Is that we can't. 578 00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:44,160 Speaker 1: We can't delude ourselves that we have created a completely tamed, 579 00:42:44,840 --> 00:42:49,960 Speaker 1: as it were, emasculated country. When you can look out 580 00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:53,680 Speaker 1: the window of your house in a suburb anywhere in 581 00:42:53,719 --> 00:42:58,640 Speaker 1: America and see a jackal sized wolf trotting down the street, 582 00:42:59,040 --> 00:43:02,480 Speaker 1: glancing at you, with highways and houses behind it as 583 00:43:02,520 --> 00:43:05,239 Speaker 1: it goes By. I mean, that's a kind of a 584 00:43:05,360 --> 00:43:09,680 Speaker 1: rare wildlife victory in America that you don't get to 585 00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:10,640 Speaker 1: enjoy very much. 586 00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:12,440 Speaker 2: Yeah. I think. 587 00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:16,839 Speaker 3: Another point that stood out to me here is when 588 00:43:16,840 --> 00:43:24,520 Speaker 3: you're talking about coyotes moving into South America, and whenever 589 00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:27,640 Speaker 3: you're reading environmental history and you're thinking about these giant, 590 00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:31,759 Speaker 3: large scale movement of animals around the world, you know, 591 00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:36,200 Speaker 3: without human help, right just say, you know. 592 00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:37,319 Speaker 2: Ignoring the. 593 00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:42,840 Speaker 3: Old New World exchanges. When you think about animals moving 594 00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:46,719 Speaker 3: across the Siberian land Bridge or the Bearing Land Bridge, 595 00:43:47,920 --> 00:43:53,280 Speaker 3: or you know, like bison moving east and then moving 596 00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:57,799 Speaker 3: back west, I often find myself thinking like, wow, I 597 00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:01,720 Speaker 3: wonder what that would have looked like. It's almost unimaginable. 598 00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:05,200 Speaker 3: But in fact, as you point out, we're witnessing what 599 00:44:05,239 --> 00:44:07,279 Speaker 3: we would think of as like this ancient sort of 600 00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:10,640 Speaker 3: unimaginable phenomenon right now. And it just looks like, you know, 601 00:44:10,680 --> 00:44:12,719 Speaker 3: a coyote showing up in someone's backyard. 602 00:44:13,120 --> 00:44:14,600 Speaker 2: That's what it looks like, you know. 603 00:44:14,719 --> 00:44:17,279 Speaker 1: And I mean I got to experience it as a 604 00:44:17,360 --> 00:44:20,200 Speaker 1: kid growing up in Louisiana. I got to experience a 605 00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:25,000 Speaker 1: little bit of what this was because when I was younger, 606 00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:28,239 Speaker 1: and you know, being a kid, I grew up in 607 00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:30,760 Speaker 1: a small town with the woods one hundred yards away. 608 00:44:31,160 --> 00:44:32,960 Speaker 1: I mean, from the time I was really little, I 609 00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:35,440 Speaker 1: was going out into the woods and hanging out on 610 00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:38,920 Speaker 1: creeks and looking at the natural world. But from the 611 00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:41,960 Speaker 1: time I was, you know, six or seven years old, 612 00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:46,360 Speaker 1: my parents would let me do that. Up until the 613 00:44:46,400 --> 00:44:50,080 Speaker 1: time I was about thirteen or fourteen, I never saw 614 00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:53,160 Speaker 1: a coyote or what. When they first started showing up 615 00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:55,760 Speaker 1: in Louisiana what people have heard they called them wolves. 616 00:44:56,719 --> 00:44:59,640 Speaker 1: I never saw a single one. Never even occurred to 617 00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:02,239 Speaker 1: me that there might be something like that. And all 618 00:45:02,239 --> 00:45:07,680 Speaker 1: of a sudden, one day, here is this animal that 619 00:45:08,680 --> 00:45:12,080 Speaker 1: to me, it was like rounding a corner in New 620 00:45:12,160 --> 00:45:15,400 Speaker 1: Orleans and having a moose be standing on the street 621 00:45:15,440 --> 00:45:19,000 Speaker 1: on the intersection. Suddenly here was an animal that I 622 00:45:19,280 --> 00:45:23,319 Speaker 1: in no way expected to ever be in Louisiana, and 623 00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:26,560 Speaker 1: here it was. And as I started paying attention, they 624 00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:29,319 Speaker 1: were there more and more and more. And what I 625 00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:32,360 Speaker 1: realized later on I began to in fact engage with 626 00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:36,359 Speaker 1: biologists at Louisiana Parson Wildlife. What's going on. I think 627 00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:41,720 Speaker 1: I'm seeing these and they did the generosity of writing 628 00:45:41,719 --> 00:45:46,160 Speaker 1: me back saying, yes, you have probably seen coyotes, because 629 00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:51,359 Speaker 1: coyotes are beginning to colonize in Louisiana. So I think 630 00:45:51,440 --> 00:45:55,160 Speaker 1: that's why people in Columbia and the first, the most 631 00:45:55,160 --> 00:45:57,560 Speaker 1: and earthly of the South American countries are going to 632 00:45:57,600 --> 00:46:00,920 Speaker 1: experience It's something like I did in Louisian. Here's this 633 00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:01,680 Speaker 1: animal that. 634 00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:04,720 Speaker 2: What in the hell? Yeah? 635 00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:07,439 Speaker 1: And that's kind of the reaction. And you know, maybe 636 00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:10,440 Speaker 1: it's really magnified when you're thirteen, fourteen years old and 637 00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:13,960 Speaker 1: are seeing it, But that's what is about to happen 638 00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:17,600 Speaker 1: in South America, coyotes. And you know, as the biologists 639 00:46:17,600 --> 00:46:20,120 Speaker 1: here are studying this have pointed out, man, once they 640 00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:24,320 Speaker 1: get through Daria National Park and cross into Columbia into 641 00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:30,239 Speaker 1: more open and cleared country, all of South America is 642 00:46:30,440 --> 00:46:32,480 Speaker 1: in front of them, they're probably going to colonize into 643 00:46:32,480 --> 00:46:34,000 Speaker 1: our country Contina. 644 00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:35,520 Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I am. 645 00:46:38,200 --> 00:46:43,439 Speaker 3: Another aspect of this story is the when we think 646 00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:47,680 Speaker 3: of wildlife politics today, we often imagine, you know, rural 647 00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:52,480 Speaker 3: residents and urban dwellers, and it's it's sort of a 648 00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:58,200 Speaker 3: social issue. But you introduce here the role of just 649 00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:04,880 Speaker 3: institute inertia and government agencies and sort of steering the 650 00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:08,080 Speaker 3: course of history, right with the Bureau of Biological Survey 651 00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:12,880 Speaker 3: needing something to hold on to as a sort of 652 00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:19,080 Speaker 3: organizing mission or organizing principle, and it's coyote eradication, predator 653 00:47:19,160 --> 00:47:24,440 Speaker 3: radication more broadly. But the role of the government in 654 00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:29,400 Speaker 3: this story is striking just in terms of government intervening 655 00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:33,000 Speaker 3: in the natural world in a way that's unimaginable to 656 00:47:33,080 --> 00:47:33,600 Speaker 3: us today. 657 00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:39,719 Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a massive intervention, and it happens in 658 00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:43,920 Speaker 1: part in order to keep a bureau alive. Seahart Mariam, 659 00:47:43,960 --> 00:47:47,840 Speaker 1: who's the first director of Biological Survey, is finding it 660 00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:51,040 Speaker 1: difficulty to get funding from Congress in like nineteen four 661 00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:55,759 Speaker 1: nineteen five, and he comes up with the idea, they 662 00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:58,280 Speaker 1: don't want to fund us because we're doing pure science. 663 00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:03,759 Speaker 1: Let's become the resolution for the predator problem. And of 664 00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:08,000 Speaker 1: course he's right. Once he lays out the Bureau as 665 00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:12,560 Speaker 1: that kind of agency, then the funding does follow. And 666 00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:18,719 Speaker 1: so I think, to your point Randall about this is 667 00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:21,400 Speaker 1: a government agency that needs to have something solid to 668 00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:25,920 Speaker 1: rest its feet on going into the future. In the 669 00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:29,520 Speaker 1: twentieth century in America, they come out of so many 670 00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:34,720 Speaker 1: of them come out of this background where they're not ecologists. 671 00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:37,719 Speaker 1: Ecology is a brand new science they're a little suspicious of, 672 00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:43,239 Speaker 1: and so they don't know it well, and they just 673 00:48:43,440 --> 00:48:47,320 Speaker 1: come from this assumption that what we're doing in America 674 00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:51,000 Speaker 1: is we're remaking North America into a kind of a 675 00:48:51,040 --> 00:48:55,319 Speaker 1: Western European country. And what people in Western Europe did, 676 00:48:55,560 --> 00:48:58,080 Speaker 1: which we don't even question, is they got rid of 677 00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:01,560 Speaker 1: all the predators, and so this is something we're going 678 00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:05,239 Speaker 1: to do. And what struck me also when I was 679 00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:08,719 Speaker 1: doing the research on this is the fact that they're 680 00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:13,120 Speaker 1: willing to do this without ever having any scientific research 681 00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:15,760 Speaker 1: to back it up. And then when they send people 682 00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:20,920 Speaker 1: out to come up with the information, the scientific research 683 00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:24,319 Speaker 1: they're convinced is going to, you know, make coyotes the 684 00:49:24,440 --> 00:49:29,040 Speaker 1: arch predator of our time. And the Muri brothers come 685 00:49:29,120 --> 00:49:33,280 Speaker 1: back and say, well, wow, that's not what we're finding, 686 00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:37,320 Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it looks like eighty to ninety 687 00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:39,280 Speaker 1: percent of what coyotes do in the world is actually 688 00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:42,400 Speaker 1: beneficial to humans. And they also are seemed to be 689 00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:47,120 Speaker 1: they seem to have this really long term predatory relationship 690 00:49:47,160 --> 00:49:50,320 Speaker 1: with other creatures out there in the world. And they're 691 00:49:50,360 --> 00:49:54,719 Speaker 1: all these these kind of intertwined relationships that seem to 692 00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:58,520 Speaker 1: balance one another out. That was absolutely not what the 693 00:49:58,560 --> 00:50:00,960 Speaker 1: bureau wanted to hear. And so, I mean, and this 694 00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:03,759 Speaker 1: has happened a lot of times in history. You get 695 00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:06,359 Speaker 1: a report that, Okay, that's not what I want to hear. 696 00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:09,520 Speaker 1: You just throw it out the window and double down. 697 00:50:09,719 --> 00:50:12,920 Speaker 1: And that's what they did. I mean, they just doubled 698 00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:17,080 Speaker 1: down again and again. And of course, no amount of 699 00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:20,719 Speaker 1: doubling down or tripling down inventing a whole host of 700 00:50:20,760 --> 00:50:25,560 Speaker 1: new poisons to kill coyotes, none of it ended up working. 701 00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:30,279 Speaker 1: All it essentially did, as biologists finally figured out, was 702 00:50:30,360 --> 00:50:35,959 Speaker 1: to trigger these adaptive responses that coyotes had long ago 703 00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:41,200 Speaker 1: evolved because they were harassed by wolves, and now as 704 00:50:41,280 --> 00:50:44,759 Speaker 1: humans harassed them, they called on these adaptations to keep 705 00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:49,239 Speaker 1: their populations alive, and it also triggered their expansion. And so, 706 00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:52,600 Speaker 1: as I said, it's this kind of really you know, 707 00:50:53,680 --> 00:50:59,600 Speaker 1: fun story, because it's like you know, like the movie Avatar, 708 00:51:00,160 --> 00:51:03,000 Speaker 1: where you don't expect that the blue people in the 709 00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:06,600 Speaker 1: inn are going to win, but they do. And so 710 00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:11,160 Speaker 1: in this case, it's the coyotes who win, and that's 711 00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:11,840 Speaker 1: pretty fun. 712 00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:17,319 Speaker 3: And one final question, speaking of surprises, I'm usually never 713 00:51:17,440 --> 00:51:22,160 Speaker 3: surprised when I learned something new about Richard Nixon in 714 00:51:22,280 --> 00:51:27,000 Speaker 3: environmental politics, but his statement about the use of poisons 715 00:51:27,040 --> 00:51:30,960 Speaker 3: for coyote control was that was a new one for me. Yeah, 716 00:51:31,080 --> 00:51:33,279 Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like I'm ready for the unexpected 717 00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:37,480 Speaker 3: when it comes to Nixon. But yeah, I mean it's 718 00:51:37,560 --> 00:51:42,120 Speaker 3: an interesting moment in environmental politics at the federal level. 719 00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:43,880 Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. 720 00:51:44,120 --> 00:51:47,600 Speaker 1: And you know, the truth is, if you have a 721 00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:52,680 Speaker 1: bookcase of American presidents and you're looking for the people 722 00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:55,480 Speaker 1: who are most interested in the natural world, you have 723 00:51:55,760 --> 00:51:59,319 Speaker 1: like Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt on one end, and 724 00:51:59,400 --> 00:52:02,680 Speaker 1: on the other end of those least interested, Richard Nixon 725 00:52:02,800 --> 00:52:05,480 Speaker 1: is one of those who is going to appear as 726 00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:09,200 Speaker 1: the other book d But in this particular instance, Nixon, 727 00:52:09,239 --> 00:52:12,279 Speaker 1: of course is a consummate politician, and his idea is 728 00:52:12,719 --> 00:52:15,960 Speaker 1: the ecology movement is in full swing. We've just had 729 00:52:15,960 --> 00:52:22,040 Speaker 1: the first Earth Day. The public after Silent Spring is 730 00:52:22,080 --> 00:52:25,759 Speaker 1: really alarmed at the use of poisons. I'm going to 731 00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:28,560 Speaker 1: get on top of this because it's going to be 732 00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:30,760 Speaker 1: a political surge on my behalf. 733 00:52:30,920 --> 00:52:32,359 Speaker 2: It doesn't work out that way. 734 00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:37,480 Speaker 1: But I mean he's essentially attempting to take advantage of 735 00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:41,440 Speaker 1: a movement that he perceives he might be able to surf. Yeah, 736 00:52:41,760 --> 00:52:46,239 Speaker 1: always calculating, always calculating. Yeah, well Dan, thanks again, oh Rand, 737 00:52:46,360 --> 00:53:00,560 Speaker 1: great fun.