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Speaker 1: From mediators World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is

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Speaker 1: Kel's we can review with Ryan kel Kell and now

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Speaker 1: Here's Kel. The California legislature has passed two different pieces

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Speaker 1: of legislation to further curb and regulate hunting. We covered

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Speaker 1: the first one, a B two seven three, which will

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Speaker 1: abolish all fur trapping just in the state of California,

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Speaker 1: in an article on the mediator dot com. But there's

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Speaker 1: a second one I feel inclined to discuss here, a

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Speaker 1: B one two five, which will place a moratorium on

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Speaker 1: all bobcat hunting until five years down the road. The

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Speaker 1: California Department of Fish and Wildlife could potentially reopen the

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Speaker 1: season after completing a new management plan. Opponents of the

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Speaker 1: bill alleged that this is really just a hunting band

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Speaker 1: cloaked in fox sheep skin. Creating a new management plan

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Speaker 1: will cost roughly two and a half million money, They

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Speaker 1: say the legislature won't allocate when the time comes, in

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Speaker 1: which case bobcat hunting would remain permanently closed. Advocates for

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Speaker 1: the bill claim that the bobcat hunting in the state

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Speaker 1: is unnecessary and purely about killing trophy animals. For sport.

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Speaker 1: Bobcat hunting bands have been popping up all over the

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Speaker 1: country in recent years. A proposed ban in Colorado failed

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Speaker 1: to pass this spring, but we're likely to see that

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Speaker 1: one come up again. The issue with these bands isn't

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Speaker 1: so much about the importance or popularity of hunting bobcats,

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Speaker 1: but rather the lack of understanding of our model of

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Speaker 1: conservation that's baked into this kind of rulemaking. Like it

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Speaker 1: or not, North American conservation is intimately tied to hunting, fishing,

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Speaker 1: and trapping. On a practical level, these activities provide the

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Speaker 1: lion's share of money for land and habitat management and

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Speaker 1: acquisition those tags and license as we buy, they fund

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Speaker 1: the agencies that oversee all our wildlife. Sportsmen and women

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Speaker 1: generously support nonprofit organizations that do great things for our

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Speaker 1: wildlife and the place as they live. Beyond that, the

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Speaker 1: people really working and advocating for wildlife species are the

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Speaker 1: people with the most direct and intimate relationships to those

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Speaker 1: animals that would be us, the hunters, anglers, and trappers.

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Speaker 1: Regardless of your personal opinion on hunting, it's difficult to

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Speaker 1: argue the effectiveness of American game management practices as those

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Speaker 1: are deeply tied to hunting and hunters. Let's take bobcats

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Speaker 1: as a case study. For much of this country's history,

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Speaker 1: bobcats were treated as a nuisance species and nearly when extinct.

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Speaker 1: Since the nineteen seventies, as a direct result of our

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Speaker 1: model of conservation, their numbers have recovered. They are now

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Speaker 1: believed to be over three million bobcats in the US.

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Speaker 1: The population is doing well. Banning the limited bobcat hunting

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Speaker 1: that we currently have won't help increase that population. Even

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Speaker 1: the advocates of this band admit that fact hunters aren't

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Speaker 1: killing so many cats that were impacting the species. Often

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Speaker 1: when we see legislation like this, it's because people promote

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Speaker 1: folk sing on an individual, not a species. That's not

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Speaker 1: how wildlife management works. What it will do, however, is

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Speaker 1: take away one more revenue opportunity to fund wildlife management

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Speaker 1: and alienate one more group of folks who want to

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Speaker 1: spend time in the woods. If California really want to

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Speaker 1: do something great for bobcats, they dramatically increase the price

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Speaker 1: of tags, which are currently way too low at less

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Speaker 1: than four bucks, and use that money to protect critical habitat.

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Speaker 1: It's a hard argument to wrap our heads around. But

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Speaker 1: hunters shooting individual animals aren't hurting bobcats as a population.

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Speaker 1: Land development kills a lot more animals than hunters, especially

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Speaker 1: in California. I encourage everyone to read up and better

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Speaker 1: understand the North American model of conservation so we can

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Speaker 1: address these arguments as they continue to pop up, which

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Speaker 1: they will. Also, let's get that damn wildlife overpass over

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Speaker 1: the one on one. For the record, I'm not bashing

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Speaker 1: California as a state. You all have lots of beautiful

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Speaker 1: land and people. In fact, my one issue is that

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Speaker 1: the people there are just a little too attractive, little

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Speaker 1: too put together, if you will. I'm more of a

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Speaker 1: road hard, put away, wet kind of guy. I'm a

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Speaker 1: fan of things with scars and stories. Things you know.

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Speaker 1: I've taken some beatings but still keep getting after it.

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Speaker 1: Good time to remind you that Cal's Week and Review

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Speaker 1: is powered by steel power equipment. My battery powered steel

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Speaker 1: chainsaw looks like you might have tumbled down the side

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Speaker 1: of a mountain, but it still works just as well

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Speaker 1: as the day I got it, which is more than

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Speaker 1: I can say for some other things I know have

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Speaker 1: actually fallen off the side of a mountain, but I'll

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Speaker 1: get to that later this week. We're covering the recovery

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Speaker 1: of New York City's whales, vikings hunting, walrus is, michiganders,

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Speaker 1: and moose and so much more. But first, let me

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Speaker 1: tell you about my week. As I told you last

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Speaker 1: week in episode twenty one, I stumbled into an amazing

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Speaker 1: opportunity to hunt elk in New Mexico, the state I love.

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Speaker 1: I'm actually sitting in a real, live New Mexicans living

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Speaker 1: room recording this in Dattle, New Mexico. You know Dattle.

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Speaker 1: It's right next to Pie Town. New Mexico is the

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Speaker 1: only state I've heard of that opted to name a

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Speaker 1: town through a TV show contest. You've probably heard of

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Speaker 1: Truth or Consequences. New Mexico. Well, it used to be

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Speaker 1: called Hot Springs. Then along came Bob Barker, and uh,

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Speaker 1: I'm just not going to get into that because I've

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Speaker 1: got a time to tell you about from this adventure.

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Speaker 1: The high highs and low lows of elk hunting while

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Speaker 1: surrounded by the state of Enchantment, which is the New

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Speaker 1: Mexico state motto, which is amazing. Quick example of a

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Speaker 1: high is calling in an incredibly large bowl, watching him

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Speaker 1: drop off one mountain across a creek bed, climb the

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Speaker 1: mountain on a direct line to me. Then a larger,

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Speaker 1: unseen bowl comes out of the timber, cutting him off.

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Speaker 1: The two bowls square off, smash antlers. The interloper from

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Speaker 1: the opposite hillside spins the larger bowl in an incredibly

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Speaker 1: athletic football esque move, maybe all of Naji Harris if

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Speaker 1: you're an Obama fan. The bowl continues up the mountain

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Speaker 1: at full speed, only to slow to a quiet cat

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Speaker 1: like pace as he hunts out the source of the

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Speaker 1: cow call in the high, sparse New Mexican timber, eventually

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Speaker 1: stopping perfectly broadside, slightly out of breath at twenty yards.

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Speaker 1: The only thing between himself and myself a few tangled,

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Speaker 1: weather whipped branches, just enough to prevent any ethical shop

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Speaker 1: no path from my arrow. At this point you can

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Speaker 1: breathe again and actually study the amazing, beautiful, powerful animal

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Speaker 1: in front of you. Watch him decipher his own set

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Speaker 1: of clues. See the wheels turn as he figures out

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Speaker 1: that he's been duped, maybe or mistaken. Maybe he comes

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Speaker 1: to the conclusion that there were no cows looking for

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Speaker 1: love on that mountain side. Lows come with the highs

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Speaker 1: and I'll get him the real details. In an upcoming

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Speaker 1: article on the meat Eator dot com, an arrow released

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Speaker 1: nail Time Torrential Monsoon. I'm in afternoon nap on a

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Speaker 1: spider nest, a bloodless blood trail, feeling the gears of

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Speaker 1: my own head spin as I decipher the clues in

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Speaker 1: front of me. I love el cunning. I also love

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Speaker 1: what I describe as by catch, the things I find

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Speaker 1: outside of my primary quarry. One find in New Mexico

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Speaker 1: I always look forward to is the horned toad. There

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Speaker 1: are fourteen species of horned lizards, all belonging to the

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Speaker 1: family Iguana, day seven of which can be found in

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Speaker 1: the American Southwest, but the horned lizards can be found

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Speaker 1: from British Columbia to Guatemala. Aside from their spines, which

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Speaker 1: can be soft or hard enough to actually rupture the

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Speaker 1: throat of a snake, the horned toad is known for

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Speaker 1: its ability to change colors to match its surroundings and

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Speaker 1: their ability to shoot blood from their eyes as a

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Speaker 1: defense mechanism, which they don't actually do unless they are

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Speaker 1: incredibly stressed out, so you know it's a bad thing.

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Speaker 1: If you can watch one, they'll shuffle themselves into the

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Speaker 1: sand or lose dirt until only their heads and maybe

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Speaker 1: a spine or two from their backs are exposed. They

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Speaker 1: eat almost exclusively ants, typically seventy to a hundred per day.

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Speaker 1: As you can imagine, ants are incredibly hard to digest,

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Speaker 1: so they're Stumma actually takes up of their entire body

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Speaker 1: a lot of undigestible matter there, so don't try and

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Speaker 1: take them home, no matter how many ants you think

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Speaker 1: you have on hand. This species is a character as

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Speaker 1: they try like hell to get away, but once caught,

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Speaker 1: seemed resigned to sit in your hand like fate will

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Speaker 1: take care of them. And yes, the horn toad is

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Speaker 1: actually a horned lizard, not a toad. New Mexico is

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Speaker 1: home to the Texas horned lizard, the Mountain short horn

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Speaker 1: and the round tailed horned lizard. The Texas horned lizard

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Speaker 1: does not carry a side arm at all times, but

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Speaker 1: it does have the ability to catch rain water with

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Speaker 1: its back and shoot blood from its eyes as far

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Speaker 1: as four ft. Both the Texas horned lizard and the

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Speaker 1: round tailed horned lizard lay eggs while interestingly enough, the

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Speaker 1: Mountain short horned lizard gives birth to live young. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: it's really cool stuff and just another example of things

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Speaker 1: you find with a great Elk tag in your pocket

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Speaker 1: as an excuse, one more fun fact for you before

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Speaker 1: we get into the serious stuff. I did a lot

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Speaker 1: of hunting while overlooking the v l A. The v

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Speaker 1: l A is an acronym that stands for very large Giree,

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Speaker 1: which is a series of twenty seven independent radio telescope antennas,

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Speaker 1: each of which has a dish diameter of eighty two

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Speaker 1: ft in ways two thirty tons. The antennas are shaped

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Speaker 1: in a y configuration, each arm being thirteen miles long.

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Speaker 1: As you can imagine, this setup brings in a lot

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Speaker 1: of information which I'm told is primarily used by astronomers

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Speaker 1: to study the stars and told by some to probably

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Speaker 1: track down those aliens that end up in the area

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Speaker 1: fifty one. Better get your running shoes on anyway, Moving

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Speaker 1: on and backing up. Last week we touched on how

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Speaker 1: the Clean Water Act is about to be stripped down,

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Speaker 1: allowing for more pollution and habitat destruction across America. If

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Speaker 1: you need any further convincing that this is a bad idea,

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Speaker 1: then let me tell you about a whale of a

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Speaker 1: story out of New York City. Literally. In recent years,

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Speaker 1: scientists and tourists alike have been pleasantly surprised by the

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Speaker 1: growing number of whale pods in the New York Harbor.

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Speaker 1: Twenty years ago, a humpback within eyesight of the city

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Speaker 1: was an unimaginable seen, even though the area is part

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Speaker 1: of their native range. Who would blame the whales for

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Speaker 1: abandoning the Big Apple? Though, as National Geographic put it

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Speaker 1: in a recent article, quote the waters around New York

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Speaker 1: City where some of the most polluted in the world,

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Speaker 1: a toxic stew of chemicals and garbage. Thanks to a

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Speaker 1: successful environmental policy such as the Endangered Species Act, Marine

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Speaker 1: Mammal Protection Act, and Clean Water Act, the whales have returned.

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Speaker 1: When pollution levels started to fall, zooplankton started to rise.

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Speaker 1: As zooplankton populations took off, so did men haden, an

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Speaker 1: oily schooling fish that whales gorge on. In less than

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Speaker 1: a decade, the whale population has increased by get ready

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Speaker 1: seven thousand, five hundred and from five whales in two

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Speaker 1: thousand eleven to three hundred and seventy seven whales in

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Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen. It's a positive trend, but these whales

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Speaker 1: need all the help they can get. Ship strikes and

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Speaker 1: fishing gear entanglement in the New York Harbor are enormous

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Speaker 1: threat to these enormous creatures, and any repeals to Clean

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Speaker 1: Water Act threatens to negate their amazing progress. This is

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Speaker 1: your regular reminder to call a congressman or woman today

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Speaker 1: and tell them to get their heads straight on the

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Speaker 1: Clean Water Act. Moving on, but sticking with big marine critters.

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Speaker 1: Researchers have known for years that walrus has once called

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Speaker 1: Iceland home. The large tusk creatures disappeared from the island

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Speaker 1: about seven hundred years ago, and until recently it was

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Speaker 1: assumed that the walrus has fled the area shortly after

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Speaker 1: humans showed up, a behavior typical of marine life in

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Speaker 1: the North Atlantic. In this hypothesis, the cows and calves

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Speaker 1: would have been the first to leave, finding refuge with

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Speaker 1: fellow walruses that lived on Greenland. The bulls would have

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Speaker 1: followed soon thereafter, with the Icelandic group contributing to the

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Speaker 1: large genetic community that exists among modern day walruses. However,

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Speaker 1: fresh research suggests that Walruss didn't migrate off the island,

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Speaker 1: but instead we're extrapated by vikings. That's a fancy word

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Speaker 1: for killed by vikings. The smoking gun that supports this

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Speaker 1: theory is carbon dated walrus bones and new genetic data.

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Speaker 1: The carbon dated bones show that the walrus has disappeared

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Speaker 1: shortly after Vikings arrived, and the new genetic data doesn't

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Speaker 1: match that of walrus has found anywhere else in the world.

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Speaker 1: Why did the Vikings wage war on these giant, slow

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Speaker 1: creatures for their ivory? Of course, medieval hunting accounts note

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Speaker 1: that walrus ivory was a valuable commodity at the time,

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Speaker 1: and that ivory trade was a popular practice by Vikings.

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Speaker 1: This is one of the earliest examples of commercially driven

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Speaker 1: over exploitation and is a good reminder of how delicate

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Speaker 1: our marine resources are. Vikings were able to eradicate an

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Speaker 1: entire species off of a forty thousand square mile island,

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Speaker 1: and did so without the help of guns, motorized ships, GPS,

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Speaker 1: big fishing nets, or any other modern day convenience. I

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Speaker 1: want you to think of that the next time somebody

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Speaker 1: tells you that folks are trying to eradicate a species,

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Speaker 1: typically right now, with all the tech oology at hand,

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Speaker 1: would be pretty darn easy if we put our minds

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Speaker 1: to it. On the subject of humans wiping out species,

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Speaker 1: let me tell you about the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska,

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Speaker 1: which is home to millions of birds and tens of

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Speaker 1: thousands of caribou. For clarity, the National Petroleum Reserve has

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Speaker 1: absolutely nothing to do with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which

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Speaker 1: is the big store of oil that our government has

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Speaker 1: stockpiled in case of emergency. Despite its confusing, and I

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Speaker 1: might argue poorly chosen name, the National Petroleum Reserve, or

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Speaker 1: NPR for short, is actually the largest chunk of public

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Speaker 1: ground in the United States twenty two million acres. It's

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Speaker 1: on Alaska's North Slope, just to the west of another

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Speaker 1: huge block of public land, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

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Speaker 1: or anwar Handwar gets a lot of press, but it's

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Speaker 1: larger neighbor goes mostly unmentioned. President Harding established the NPR

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Speaker 1: back in ninety three after Native tribes showed Yankee sailors

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Speaker 1: rock crude bubbling up from the ground, kind of like

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Speaker 1: a far north version of the Jed Clamp. A story

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Speaker 1: Black Goal, Texas Tea. That's a Beverly Hillbillies reference in

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Speaker 1: case you missed it anyway back in the early twenties,

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Speaker 1: or naval fleet was just switching from coal to oil power.

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Speaker 1: The NPR was originally named Naval Petroleum Reserve Number four,

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Speaker 1: as it was one of four sites around the country

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Speaker 1: that held contingency fuel reserves for the Navy. The NPR

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Speaker 1: got renamed in ninety six when Congress passed the Naval

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Speaker 1: Reserves Petroleum Act and ownership of the land transferred from

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Speaker 1: the Navy to the Bureau of Land Management. The following year,

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Speaker 1: the BLM set aside three sections of the reserve as

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Speaker 1: critical habitat for wildlife, specifically migratory birds and caribou. One

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Speaker 1: of those sections, near boy I'm going to screw this

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Speaker 1: up to check Puck Lake, is now slated for potential development.

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Speaker 1: We're talking about a huge expanse of wetlands that makes

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Speaker 1: for prime breeding habitat for shorebirds, waterfowl, owls, and other

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Speaker 1: ground nesting birds. Think of it like Fort Lauderdale spring

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Speaker 1: Break for birds. More than six million shore birds to

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Speaker 1: sund on Alaska's North slope from all over the globe

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Speaker 1: every summer just a party. Birds like the bar tailed

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Speaker 1: godwit that make a seven thousand mild NonStop migration from

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Speaker 1: New Zealand, the longest in the world, And like those

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Speaker 1: hormone fueled college kids, there's a reason these birds go

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Speaker 1: through all the trouble to travel so far from home

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Speaker 1: to get away from prying eyes, so to speak. Only

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Speaker 1: in the case of the birds, they're not trying to

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Speaker 1: avoid parents, campus cops, or academic deans. They're trying to

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Speaker 1: avoid predators, particularly foxes that have a keen taste for

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Speaker 1: bird eggs. The current administration is trying to change the

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Speaker 1: rules for development in this area and open up more

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Speaker 1: of it to oil drilling and transportation in the form

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Speaker 1: of roads and pipelines. Oil development in this area will

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Speaker 1: disturb this massive avian orgy, and the same roads that

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Speaker 1: carry in trucks and equipment will also give predators away

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Speaker 1: in allowing them to plow through all the easy protein

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Speaker 1: sitting in those ground nests. This matters because short bird

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Speaker 1: populations aren't doing so well in general. Nearly sixt of

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Speaker 1: North Americans issues and fifty percent worldwide are in long

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Speaker 1: term decline. Much of the issues that these birds are

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Speaker 1: facing are on the other end of their long migration routes,

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Speaker 1: but up here they still have a safe place to

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Speaker 1: get busy and raise their young. If we take away

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Speaker 1: this last safe haven, we won't be doing them any favors.

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Speaker 1: Then there's the fifty eight thousand caribou in the Techeck

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Speaker 1: Puck herd that live in this area year round and

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Speaker 1: are a stable of subsistence hunters. Caribou tend to avoid

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Speaker 1: development and humans in general, since you know, those hunters

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Speaker 1: harvest around four thousand of them per year, So no

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Speaker 1: one's really sure how development might impact this herd. In fact,

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Speaker 1: no one's totally sure how proposed development might impact the

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Speaker 1: birds either, And that's really the main point. I get

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Speaker 1: the need for oil independence that this particular place seems

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Speaker 1: to have a lot of it, But we've had rules

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Speaker 1: and restrictions for development of this incredible untouched landscape for

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Speaker 1: several generations now, and they've worked out pretty well. Earlier

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Speaker 1: this year, a coalition of five conservation groups and the

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Speaker 1: local native village of I'm gonna call it nux Set.

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Speaker 1: We'll have to print this one online, and U i

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Speaker 1: Q s U T took the BLM to court, claiming

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Speaker 1: that all the exploratory development they've been doing around the NPR,

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Speaker 1: drilling test wells and building ice roads was done without

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Speaker 1: the proper and necessary environmental studies. If that's any indication

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Speaker 1: of how the broader project is going to happen, it

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Speaker 1: seems like cause for concern. Before we go messing up

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Speaker 1: something that's working pretty darn well, we should take the

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Speaker 1: time to figure out what those impacts will be. To

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Speaker 1: borrow a different land. Use analogy. You don't start a

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Speaker 1: controlled burn without first being damn sure about the control part.

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Speaker 1: Otherwise you're just setting stuff on fire. And finally, speaking

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Speaker 1: of caribou, they are part of one of North America's

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Speaker 1: largest science experiments, Ile Royale, which is a two seven

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Speaker 1: square mile island in Lake Superior, something you may remember

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Speaker 1: from way back on episode two of Cal's Weekend Review.

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Speaker 1: It's owned by the state of Michigan, even though it's

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Speaker 1: closer to Minnesota and Canada. You may recall mediators coverage

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Speaker 1: of the island an episode one seventy two of the

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Speaker 1: podcast or Steve, Jana, Spencer, new Heart and Pat Durkin

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Speaker 1: discussed the island shrieking wolf population on Ile Royale. Native

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Speaker 1: caribou were extirpated in the nineteen twenties. To replace the

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Speaker 1: big deer, humans brought in an even bigger deer moose.

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Speaker 1: The island's moose population is the highest it's been in

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Speaker 1: twenty years, which is likely because the island's wolf population

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Speaker 1: is the lowest it's been in one hundred years. To

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Speaker 1: see how the increasing number of moose will affect i

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Speaker 1: Rolls vegetation, researchers conducted a feces analysis of the moose

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Speaker 1: for a closer look at their diet. What they learned

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Speaker 1: is that moose are damn picky eaters. When conditions are

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Speaker 1: favorable in predation and snow are in a factor, moose

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Speaker 1: will eat the rarest of rare plants available. This means

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Speaker 1: that if balsam fur is rare in their home range,

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Speaker 1: they'll selectively eat it, but if it's the most common

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Speaker 1: plan around, they'll opt for something else. Biologists aren't sure

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Speaker 1: if the ile royl moose are just fancy eaters or

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Speaker 1: if they biologically favor a balanced diet. The studies yes

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Speaker 1: that it's the latter, and I can agree with that.

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Speaker 1: I too try to have a balanced diet, you know,

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Speaker 1: like a little elk with my walleye and a side

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Speaker 1: of turkey with my white tail. All right, that's all

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Speaker 1: I've got for you this week. Tell some friends. If

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Speaker 1: you want more Cow's Week and review, leave me a

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Speaker 1: review by hitting that furthest right hand star and subscribe.

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Speaker 1: Let me know how I'm doing at ask cal at

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Speaker 1: the meat eater dot com. That's a s k C

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Speaker 1: a L at the meat Eater dot com. I'll talk

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Speaker 1: to you next week.