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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 Kelly. Now Here's Kel.

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Speaker 1: A flock of ravens is called an unkindness in Greek

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Speaker 1: and Norse mythology. Ravens or corvus corax are spies and

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Speaker 1: messengers for both Apollo and Odin. That could explain why

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Speaker 1: some folks think ravens are potents or omens, usually bad ones.

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Speaker 1: Interesting stuff, but mythology isn't exactly science. What we know

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Speaker 1: for sure is that ravens and their crow cousins are smart.

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Speaker 1: You can distinguish between the two by body size and

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Speaker 1: tail feathers. The tail feathers of a raven are uneven,

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Speaker 1: with central feathers that are longer than the outside feathers,

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Speaker 1: creating the appearance of a wedge in flight. Crow tail feathers,

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, are even, resulting in a uniform fan.

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Speaker 1: I can also tell you that, contrary to popular belief,

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Speaker 1: crows are pretty darn tasty. You can read all about

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Speaker 1: that in the article I Ate Crow at the meat

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Speaker 1: eater dot com. For those of you who adhere to Scripture,

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Speaker 1: the Law of Moses found in Leviticus states that ravens

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Speaker 1: are forbidden as food, so you had better watch those

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Speaker 1: tail feathers and your local hunting regulations. Anyhow, ravens have

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Speaker 1: wild researchers with their problem solving abilities and capacity for

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Speaker 1: complex thinking. For example, ravens generally hunt or scavenge by themselves,

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Speaker 1: but if one gets into an ownership dispute over a

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Speaker 1: carcass with other scavengers like crows, magpies, or vultures, that

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Speaker 1: solo raven will enlist a larger group of ravens to

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Speaker 1: help secure that claim. If a raven comes across a

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Speaker 1: carcass that's too tough to get into, ravens have been

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Speaker 1: known to call in scavengers like wolves or coyotes to

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Speaker 1: assist wolves or coyotes being able to tear through a

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Speaker 1: tough hide more efficiently than a raven. One time, while

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Speaker 1: hunting elk in the sweet Grass Hills not too far

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Speaker 1: north at Great Falls, Montana, we noted that ravens would

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Speaker 1: circle high above the elk herd and call emphatically as

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Speaker 1: soon as the elk left the timber. The birds made

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Speaker 1: a very consistent reference to the location of alcohol week,

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Speaker 1: so consistent that you just knew this wasn't coincidence. My

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Speaker 1: conclusion at that time and now to this observed elk

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Speaker 1: raven relationship behavior was that the ravens were using US

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Speaker 1: human hunters to leave behind a big, tasty gut pile,

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Speaker 1: exactly as the ravens have been using wolves and coyotes

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Speaker 1: to provide an easy meal. This inner species quid pro

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Speaker 1: quel in the elk woods is something that is stuck

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Speaker 1: with me. Over the years, ravens have been observed pulling

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Speaker 1: up ice fisherman's lines to eat the bait off of hooks,

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Speaker 1: flying into open cars to pull lunches from the shopping

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Speaker 1: bags inside, and even employing tools. Ravens have been documented

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Speaker 1: using sticks to fish out bugs from holes or French

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Speaker 1: fries from cracks too deep for beaks. In one famous study,

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Speaker 1: ravens demonstrated an ability to plan for the future, an

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Speaker 1: ability we had selfishly reserved for only US humans and

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Speaker 1: a few great apes. Over the course of some training,

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Speaker 1: ravens were given a choice of a small bit of

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Speaker 1: food or a tool. If they ignored the food and

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Speaker 1: shows the tool, the ravens could utilize the tool to

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Speaker 1: get better food later on. Over seventy ravens in this

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Speaker 1: study selected the tool and waited for the better food.

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Speaker 1: Pretty neat, especially when you consider that human children and

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Speaker 1: great apes tended to demonstrate a much lower rate of

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Speaker 1: long term planning in this same experiment. I bring all

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Speaker 1: this super cool stuff up to tell you that ravens

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Speaker 1: are proving damned hard to kill, to the point of

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Speaker 1: having to bring out drones. Let's pray silicone over eggs

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Speaker 1: in the ravens nest to suffocate them. This sounds cruel,

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Speaker 1: and honestly it is. But ravens are expanding in numbers,

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Speaker 1: moving into new ranges, and picking on the desert tortoise,

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Speaker 1: a threatened species. In one case, researchers found a collection

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Speaker 1: of over two hundred and fifty desert tortoise shells under

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Speaker 1: one nest in a period of four years. Sounds like

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Speaker 1: a lot, it is. Population studies found a decline of

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Speaker 1: study found two hundred tortoises per square mile. Current studies

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Speaker 1: have found one or two. I have high hopes for

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Speaker 1: the tortoise, but that Edgar allan Pope poem where the

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Speaker 1: ravens call nevermore, Nevermore, keeps coming to me. I wish

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Speaker 1: I could remember the name of that poem. Well, it'll

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Speaker 1: come to me this week Ravens Red Tide, follow up

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Speaker 1: on the Year of the cap Plastics, and a bunch

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Speaker 1: of really cool plant info. But first I'm gonna tell

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Speaker 1: you about my week. Flew down to southwest Florida, just

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Speaker 1: in time to beat the last snow of summer in Bozeman,

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Speaker 1: or at least what we're all hoping will be the

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Speaker 1: last snow of summer. Florida sounds great and it is,

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Speaker 1: but when it's snowing at home the Florida heat, it

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Speaker 1: hits you like a hot, wet brick to the head.

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Speaker 1: I came down to get a bit of fishing in

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Speaker 1: and meet up with some friends that run Captains for

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Speaker 1: Clean Water. Captains for Clean Water is a young nonprofit

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Speaker 1: that advocates and raises money for a number of things

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Speaker 1: that will lead to improved long term water quality, healthy habitat,

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Speaker 1: and wildlife. If you dig that sort of thing, I

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Speaker 1: would check them out. I also got to meet up

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Speaker 1: with my friend Ed Anderson, who is currently doing the

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Speaker 1: Artist in Residency gig at the j and Ding Darling

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Speaker 1: Wildlife Refuge. Ed is a great guy and one hell

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Speaker 1: of a painter. He puts a lot of joy and

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Speaker 1: appreciation into the fish, landscapes and wildlife he paints. That

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Speaker 1: stuff wants to jump off the canvas. The local refuge

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Speaker 1: crowd likes to compare Ed to Ding Darling himself, though

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Speaker 1: Ed likes to quickly point out that Ding has a

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Speaker 1: couple of Pulitzer Prizes, which is pretty good for a cartoonist.

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Speaker 1: I need to stop here and say that if you

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Speaker 1: want to call yourself a conservationist, you should damn well

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Speaker 1: know who Jay Norwood Darling is. This is the man

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Speaker 1: who was called the best friend of duck ever had,

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Speaker 1: which also makes him the best friend a duck hunter

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Speaker 1: ever had. Jay and Darling or Ding, the name he

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Speaker 1: signed his cartoons by, was the original artist for the

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Speaker 1: duck stamp and the man who gets the lion's share

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Speaker 1: of the credit for the duck stamped Act of four.

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Speaker 1: The duck stamp is a mandatory purchase if you want

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Speaker 1: to hunt migratory birds in the US, and I highly

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Speaker 1: encourage voluntary purchases even if you don't hunt ducks. The

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Speaker 1: funds from your duck stamp go directly to wildlife work.

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Speaker 1: For every dollar you spend on federal duck stamps, cents

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Speaker 1: goes directly to purchase habitat, conservation, ease, mints, or towards

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Speaker 1: the National Wildlife Refuge system. Since nineteen thirty four, six

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Speaker 1: million and acres have been acquired using federal duck stamp revenues.

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Speaker 1: More than three hundred National Wildlife refuges were created or

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Speaker 1: expanded using federal duck stamp dollars. That's a good and

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Speaker 1: efficient use of funds. If you like wildlife, habitat and

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Speaker 1: clean water. By a duck stamp does a hell of

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Speaker 1: a lot more for wildlife than wasting your money on Peter.

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Speaker 1: And who knows, maybe one of these days you'll be

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Speaker 1: able to get a duck stamp that was painted by

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Speaker 1: my friend Ed. Spent a good bit of time chasing

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Speaker 1: Tarpin and the ding Darling Refuge with Ed and some

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Speaker 1: of the fishing guys here at meat Eater Sam Longren

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Speaker 1: and Miles Nulty. We even managed to hook a few.

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Speaker 1: This is a spot that gets a million visitors a year.

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Speaker 1: By the way, while fishing is permitted on the refuge,

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Speaker 1: hunting is not, which seems kind of ironic considering the

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Speaker 1: legacy of the man the place is named after. Though

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Speaker 1: hunting is not a recreational opportunity at the Ding Darling Refuge.

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Speaker 1: That's not the case for every refuge. In fact, the

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Speaker 1: Trump administration just proposed a plan that could been up

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Speaker 1: additional wildlife refuge and fish hatchery acres to hunting and fishing.

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Speaker 1: The proposal will be up for public comment shortly. Please

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Speaker 1: look out for it and comment in the positive. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you're thinking hunting and fishing and a refuge is

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Speaker 1: crazy for whatever reason, I'll point out that hunting is

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Speaker 1: currently allowed on three hundred and seventy seven wildlife refuges.

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Speaker 1: With the passing of this proposal, that number would increase

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Speaker 1: to three two. Fishing opportunity already exists on three twelve refuges.

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Speaker 1: This proposal would make it three Eighteen. Fish hatchery ground

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Speaker 1: has not been open to hunting and fishing before, and

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Speaker 1: the public would get access to some part of fifteen

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Speaker 1: of those federal hatcheries. This is exactly what hunting and

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Speaker 1: fishing needs. There is typically a refuge within an hour

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Speaker 1: of most metropolitan areas, and this proposal would increase access

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Speaker 1: to the outdoors across one point four million acres of

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Speaker 1: land that's already public. Again, for you, skeptics. Just like

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Speaker 1: the refuges that currently allow hunting and fishing, or any

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Speaker 1: public ground for that matter, the new refuges and hatcheries

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Speaker 1: in this proposal would only allow hunting and fishing where

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Speaker 1: it makes sense to do so. Don't go thinking you'll

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Speaker 1: have a duck hunter hiding behind an interpretive sign on

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Speaker 1: the birdwatchers boardwalk, or a fisherman dangling worms through the

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Speaker 1: netting of the fish hatchery runs. We need areas that

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Speaker 1: give complete refuge to our wildlife places where folks don't

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Speaker 1: go venture. This proposal isn't getting rid of those sanctuary

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Speaker 1: type places, so let's get it past again. I love

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Speaker 1: this refuge and hatchery proposal. Once we get it through,

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Speaker 1: maybe Secretary of the Interior Burnhart will get another proposal

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Speaker 1: together in regards to all the other land we own

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Speaker 1: but can't access. Over three million acres of public land

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Speaker 1: in Wyoming, one point five four million acres in Montana,

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Speaker 1: five and fifty four thousand acres in New Mexico, and

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Speaker 1: the list goes on. We citizens pay for a little

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Speaker 1: over nine and a half million acres of public land

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Speaker 1: the general public can't touch. But I'll tell you the

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Speaker 1: story of landlocked ground. Another time over to the paleontology desk.

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Speaker 1: Perma frost is a layer of subsurface ground that remains

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Speaker 1: frozen throughout the year. Some of this soil or even

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Speaker 1: rock has been frozen continuously for many thousands of years,

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Speaker 1: kind of like your freezer at home. If you were

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Speaker 1: to put something in the perma frost and leave it,

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Speaker 1: it would be preserved, but it would also slowly slowly

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Speaker 1: decay as the environment changes and perma frost melts. In

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Speaker 1: places like Siberia. All sorts of interesting things have started

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Speaker 1: to emerge from this long term cold storage. Scores of

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Speaker 1: mammoths have been unearthed. Forty two thousand year old full

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Speaker 1: from an ancient horse was found with liquid blood in

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Speaker 1: its veins and urine and it's bladder, and just recently,

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Speaker 1: intact adult wolfhead complete with fur, flesh, brain, and teeth

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Speaker 1: was uncovered. The wolf roamed in the time of the

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Speaker 1: Pleistocene and was likely two to four years old. This

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Speaker 1: is the first time a wolf head has been found

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Speaker 1: with this level of preservation. The head will be analyzed

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Speaker 1: and compared to modern wolves to study changes within the species.

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Speaker 1: This discovery is amazing and as an old fossil and

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Speaker 1: shed antler Hunter. I have to say I'm jealous of

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Speaker 1: such an amazing fine. It also brings up a lot

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Speaker 1: of questions, like where's the body? Back to the Florida Desk.

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Speaker 1: South Florida, before the age of putting dams on every

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Speaker 1: waterway possible, used to basically be one big, wide river.

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Speaker 1: The headwaters started around Orlando, and the water flowed down

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Speaker 1: to kiss Me River, into Lake Ochechobee, then through the

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Speaker 1: famous river of grass called the Everglades, finally terminating into

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Speaker 1: Florida Bay, all the way down by the Florida Keys.

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Speaker 1: Beginning in the nineteen twenties and working through to the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, the Army Corps of Engineers straightened to kiss

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Speaker 1: Me River and built series of dikes around Lake Ochechobee

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Speaker 1: to minimize flooding and provide consistent irrigation for the giant

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Speaker 1: sugarcane plantations nearby. Interesting historical note here the first dike,

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Speaker 1: a five foot earthen barrier, not the current thirty foot

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Speaker 1: concrete barrier, failed Back in the Lake Ochechobee hurricane hit

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Speaker 1: so hard the dike blew with enough forest to wash

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Speaker 1: away an entire town floodwaters exceeded twenty feet in some areas.

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Speaker 1: One firsthand account recalled climbing to the second story of

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Speaker 1: a home to get out of the rising water, only

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Speaker 1: to chop a hole through the roof with an axe

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Speaker 1: to escape drowning. The Lake Ochechobee hurricane ultimately killed an

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Speaker 1: estimated three thousand people. That's our third deadliest natural disaster,

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Speaker 1: behind the Great San Francisco Earthquake and the Galveston, Texas

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Speaker 1: Hurricane in US history, and the start of the Army

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Speaker 1: Corps of Engineers taking Florida flood control to another level,

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Speaker 1: literally back to the much more recent past. Lake Okeechobee

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Speaker 1: has been held at a high water level for decades

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Speaker 1: to provide water for the sugar cane fields in case

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Speaker 1: of drought. Then in the early two thousands, a series

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Speaker 1: of mega rainstorms dumped a bunch of water upstream, threatening

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Speaker 1: to overrun the dikes, just like in ninety. So the

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Speaker 1: Army Corps started releasing hundreds of billions of gallons of

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Speaker 1: excess water through canals east and west of the lake

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Speaker 1: into the St. Lucy and Kaloosa Hatchee rivers, dumping that

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Speaker 1: much fresh water into salt water at This unnatural rate

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Speaker 1: is probably is problematic to plants and wildlife that depends

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Speaker 1: on a balanced level of salinity. But when you factor

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Speaker 1: in fertilizers and other nutrients the fresh water is carrying

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Speaker 1: from development and agricultural runoff, the issues get more severe

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Speaker 1: severe like blue green algae or cyanobacteria. When the algae

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Speaker 1: is flushed out of Lake Ochechobee along with the fresh

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Speaker 1: water out in the salt water, it starts to decay.

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Speaker 1: During decomposition, neurotoxins are released that can be poisonous for

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Speaker 1: humans to even smell. In July and August of two

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Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, Florida's southwest coast was the epicenter of a

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Speaker 1: massive red tide bloom. Red tide is a toxic algae

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Speaker 1: that depletes the water of oxygen, among other things. This

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Speaker 1: particular algae bloom killed metric tons of marine life, including

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Speaker 1: tarp and snook, redfish, sea trout, goliath groupers, sea turtles, dolphins,

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Speaker 1: more than a hundred manatees. Even a twenty five ft

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Speaker 1: long whale shark was found dead on Santa Bell during

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Speaker 1: the red tide. Even the damned sandworms were dying. You

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Speaker 1: might have heard about it on the news. Red tide

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Speaker 1: is caused by naturally occurring micro organism called Carennia brevas.

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Speaker 1: It happens all the time all over the world. In fact,

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Speaker 1: in Alabama they call a red tide at jubilee for

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Speaker 1: must go down and collect the freshly incapacitated fish on

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Speaker 1: the shorelines. I've heard a kind of beach party atmosphere

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Speaker 1: can break out under the right conditions, folks taking gasping

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Speaker 1: fish from the shoreline directly to the cooler or the friar.

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Speaker 1: Not so sure about that type of party, but it

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Speaker 1: certainly sounds efficient, and enough lime and alcohol will at

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Speaker 1: least leave you thinking that it was the booze, not

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Speaker 1: the fish that hurt you. The folks in this part

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Speaker 1: of Florida, however, we're not having a party or a jubilee,

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Speaker 1: as nobody wants to come spend money in a tourist

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Speaker 1: town that stinks like dead manatees and fish. On top

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Speaker 1: of that, these kind folks that work and monitor and

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Speaker 1: educate here at the j enn Ding Darling Refuge have

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Speaker 1: found that over fifty of the pollutants found here at

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Speaker 1: the refuge come from a creek called fish Eating Creek,

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Speaker 1: which happens to be the only gap in the dike

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Speaker 1: at Lake Okachobee. Lots of information here, some fingers being pointed,

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Speaker 1: lots of questions being asked. The most important thing is

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Speaker 1: that folks are recognizing that this area is special, and

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Speaker 1: like most special things, you have to work to find

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Speaker 1: solutions to keep it so. If you've ever enjoyed this

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Speaker 1: gorgeous area or dreamed of hooking a snook or a tarpan,

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Speaker 1: call your representatives in Congress, or donate to the groups

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Speaker 1: and the trenches of this issue, like captains for clean Water.

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Speaker 1: Moving on. Biologists and Canada recently found the first evidence

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Speaker 1: of vertebrate eating plants in North America. Picture plants in

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Speaker 1: Ontario's Algonquin Park have long been known to consume insects

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Speaker 1: and spiders, but scientists recently discovered that they also trap

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Speaker 1: juvenile salamanders. The plants bell shaped leaves, collect rainwater spiked

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Speaker 1: with digestive enzymes. The young amphibians may be attracted to

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Speaker 1: the bugs collected in these deadly pools, or they may

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Speaker 1: dive into them and they found a good hiding place

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Speaker 1: from larger predators. Once they fall in, they can't get

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Speaker 1: out and soon realized they made a poor life choice,

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Speaker 1: as they're slowly consumed by weak acid. On the subject

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Speaker 1: of carnivorous adaptation, let's talk about dragonfish. They're creepy predators

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Speaker 1: that look a lot like the interior mouth that snaps

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Speaker 1: at the camera and the movie Aliens. They lure their

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Speaker 1: prey in with a glowing protuberance that juts out from

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Speaker 1: under their chins and wags enticon ly in the pure

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Speaker 1: dark of the deep ocean. May look at that and

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Speaker 1: get the sudden realization of where humans figured out how

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Speaker 1: to fish themselves. Marine biologists recently noticed that their teeth

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Speaker 1: are completely translucent, so when bait fish and crustaceans start

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Speaker 1: going toward the light, they don't notice the giant fangs

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Speaker 1: glinting just behind something else that might be glinting in

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Speaker 1: the light of dragonfish lures. At the bottom of the

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Speaker 1: deepest seas is a whole lot of micro plastic. Until recently,

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Speaker 1: most folks assume that microplastics in the ocean were concentrated

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Speaker 1: in upper water column like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,

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Speaker 1: an island of floating trash somewhere between the size of

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Speaker 1: Texas and the size of Russia. But a new study

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Speaker 1: shows that the highest concentration of plastic collects well below

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Speaker 1: the surface, between two hundred and six hundreds down the

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Speaker 1: tiny bits of plastic are routinely consumed by small crustaceans,

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Speaker 1: which are then eaten by larger fish and so on

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Speaker 1: up the food chain, which is why a different study

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Speaker 1: this week found that the average American consumes between seventy

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Speaker 1: four thousand and a hundred and twenty one thousand plastic

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Speaker 1: particles every year, which translates to somewhere around a credit

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Speaker 1: card a week. No one knows the long term health

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Speaker 1: impacts of ingesting plastic, since plastic itself is a pretty

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Speaker 1: new substance here on planet Earth. Health officials are concerned, however,

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Speaker 1: that they could release toxins or cause cans or kind

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Speaker 1: of makes you think differently about those bowls of fake

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Speaker 1: fruit some people put out on their tables. Since we're

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Speaker 1: on the subject of consuming things you probably shouldn't, I'd

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Speaker 1: like to follow up on a story from a few

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Speaker 1: weeks back. Remember the guy in Colorado who rescued a

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Speaker 1: baby lion from a snow bank, took it home to

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Speaker 1: thought out, then nearly killed it by feeding at a

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Speaker 1: broad wurst. Well. After three months of rehab, that little

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Speaker 1: guy was sent back to where he belongs, the great

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Speaker 1: Wide Open. You might want to avoid cooking German sausage

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Speaker 1: in the back country at southern Colorado for a while,

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Speaker 1: just in case that cap developed a taste for it.

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Speaker 1: Further south than San Diego, meteorologists detected a massive cloud

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Speaker 1: on radar, despite the fact that skies were clear with

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Speaker 1: no expected incoming weather. Turns out it wasn't a rain

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Speaker 1: cloud at all, but an eighty mile wide swarm of ladybugs.

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Speaker 1: The National Weather Service tweeted the large echo showing up

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Speaker 1: on so Cal radar this evening is not precipitation, but

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Speaker 1: actually a cloud of ladybugs. Ladybugs are important for farmers

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Speaker 1: because they eat aphids, thrips, scales, and other soft bodied

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Speaker 1: insects that attack crops. Unfortunately, this swarm was headed south

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Speaker 1: to feast on pess eating Mexican crops. Maybe we'll make

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Speaker 1: a wall tall enough to keep them back here at home.

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Speaker 1: To stay on the topic of desirable species, leaving California,

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Speaker 1: three South Korean men were charged with stealing more than

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Speaker 1: six hundred thousand worth of wild plants from public lands

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Speaker 1: and North cal dad Leia is a genus of succulent

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Speaker 1: perennial that have become extremely popular as house plants. The suspects,

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Speaker 1: who are thought to be part of an international black

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Speaker 1: market plants smuggling ring, were caught with more than thirty

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Speaker 1: seven hundred specimens, each of which can be worth more

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Speaker 1: than fifty dollars. The squat plants with spiky blue green

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Speaker 1: leaves have become a status symbol in Korea, China and Japan,

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Speaker 1: but they play a much more important role in their

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Speaker 1: native habitat. Dad Leia varieties claim to the wind swept

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Speaker 1: cliffs of northern California, where they help prevent soil erosion.

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Speaker 1: Two of the three suspects have subsequently fled the country,

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Speaker 1: leaving their acquaintance to face a potential ten year stint

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Speaker 1: in the prison system by himself. Maybe they'll have a garden.

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Speaker 1: All right, That's all I got for you this week.

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to Cal's wee can

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Speaker 1: review as per usual. If you have any questions, comments, concerns,

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Speaker 1: please send them to me at ask Cal. That's a

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Speaker 1: s k c A l. At the Meat Eater dot com,

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Speaker 1: go to wherever podcasts or downloaded, streamed, viewed. Hit subscribe

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Speaker 1: and leave me a review by hitting that furthest right

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Speaker 1: hand start. We'll talk to you next week. Do we

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Speaker 1: not dat