Speaker 1: Where the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains, the Colorado Plateau,
Speaker 1: and the southwestern deserts converged to create New Mexico. There
Speaker 1: is more ecological variety than in any interior Western state.
Speaker 2: I'm Dan Flores, and this is the American.
Speaker 1: West, understanding nature in a southwestern state. In the first
Speaker 1: fifteen years of the two thousands, I spent part of
Speaker 1: my time in Montana, part in New Mexico. That experience
Speaker 1: drove home a fact of modern Western life I'd never considered, namely,
Speaker 1: how little inhabitants of any part of the West often
Speaker 1: know about the rest of their region. And a West
Speaker 1: settled relatively recently by Americans who came here from other places.
Speaker 1: I know this has something to do with the Western
Speaker 1: settlement patterns geographers have long studied. One of their insights
Speaker 1: is that as the West was settled in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: and twentieth centuries, settlers almost always moved west along the
Speaker 1: same latitude lines where they had started. Texas and the
Speaker 1: Southwest were largely settled by people moving westward from the South.
Speaker 1: Colorado and Utah got peopled by Midwesterners from Missouri and Illinois,
Speaker 1: and the northern West. The Dakotas across Montana on to
Speaker 1: Oregon and Washington by people who started out in New
Speaker 1: England or around the Great Lakes. When the dust Bowl
Speaker 1: of the nineteen thirties launched millions of Oklahomas and Kansas
Speaker 1: on their migration west, their primary destination, naturally enough, southern California.
Speaker 1: Understanding the wider West obviously involves travel. It's a big place,
Speaker 1: but even tourists travel often follows those same latitude lines. Today,
Speaker 1: when Minnesota's travel west, they commonly go to Glacier National Park,
Speaker 1: are onto Washington State. Chicagoans travel to Yellowstone. Texans go
Speaker 1: to Santa Fe or Grand Canyon National Park, or they
Speaker 1: golf in Arizona. Obviously, the snowbird phenomenon has changed at
Speaker 1: migration patterns, some bringing Midwesterners south to states like Arizona
Speaker 1: for the winters. But I think those classic latitudinal patterns
Speaker 1: explain at least some of the strange lack of familiarity
Speaker 1: with other parts of the West. I found among both
Speaker 1: Southwesterners and residents of the Northern Rockies during my time
Speaker 1: in those two places.
Speaker 2: Told that I live.
Speaker 1: Part of the year outside Missoula, Montana. For example, West
Speaker 1: Texans and even New Mexicans were incredulous. How do you
Speaker 1: stand living all winter at forty below zero? For Montanas?
Speaker 1: That worked in perfect reverse. You go to Santa Fe
Speaker 1: for the summers, how can you stand that one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five degree heat. I never developed a good
Speaker 1: comeback about Montana, except to observe lamely that other Montanas
Speaker 1: often called Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley the Banana Belt.
Speaker 1: Over time, I did work out a fair one about
Speaker 1: Santa Fe. Though, so Denver is the mile high city
Speaker 1: and it snows there, right Santa Fe sits even closer
Speaker 1: to the rocky mountains than Denver does, and it's a
Speaker 1: half mile higher up.
Speaker 2: You figure it out.
Speaker 1: The looks I got were still and comprehending, though like
Speaker 1: I was arguing that the Sahara wasn't a desert. The
Speaker 1: Southwest struck me then and still does as the part
Speaker 1: of the West that seems most alien to Americans from elsewhere,
Speaker 1: even other Westerners with reputations for their green forested mountains
Speaker 1: and ski weather winter snows. Interior West states like Colorado
Speaker 1: and Utah, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho seem easy places to
Speaker 1: picture in the mine for most Americans living outside the West,
Speaker 1: but the Southwest, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada presents a different
Speaker 1: world to the national consciousness. The irresistible proclivity for national
Speaker 1: sports announcers to label any sporting event taking place in
Speaker 1: Arizona as being played down in the desert conveys to
Speaker 1: me at least a continuing national cinema that the imagined
Speaker 1: Southwest still falls outside the American norm. So let me
Speaker 1: take a stab at familiarizing the American West's audience with
Speaker 1: the part of the Southwest I know best the state
Speaker 1: of New Mexico and the story I've studied there, which
Speaker 1: is the discovery of the state's wildlife ecology.
Speaker 2: If you struggle to exactly place.
Speaker 1: It, New Mexico is that slice of the West situated
Speaker 1: directly below mountainous Colorado. It's the western state sandwich between
Speaker 1: the flatlands of Texas and the arid Colorado Plateau and
Speaker 1: Suaro deserts of Arizona. The Rocky Mountains extend down into
Speaker 1: New Mexico, and so do the slick rock canyons of
Speaker 1: the Colorado Plateau.
Speaker 2: The whole eastern.
Speaker 1: Third of New Mexico, though lies in the Great plains,
Speaker 1: and the entire southwestern quadrant of it is true desert,
Speaker 1: although a different desert the Chihuahuan than the ones found
Speaker 1: in either Arizona or Nevada, and New Mexico happens to
Speaker 1: be the part of the West with the oldest continuous
Speaker 1: human history In Santa Fe, founded in sixteen ten, it
Speaker 1: has the oldest European town anywhere in the West. Turns out,
Speaker 1: it's an easy thing to pick out the human beginnings
Speaker 1: of understanding nature in New Mexico. A great many millennia
Speaker 1: before today's White Sands National Monument down in the southern
Speaker 1: part of the state ever existed, a young woman who
Speaker 1: sometimes carried a child on her hip, walked barefoot along
Speaker 1: a muddy lake shore among the white sand dunes, and
Speaker 1: encountered a giant ground sloth, which reared back in alarm.
Speaker 1: We know this because the footprints from that ancient close encounter,
Speaker 1: excavated by a park service employee in twenty nineteen, had
Speaker 1: crushed grass seeds below them that radiocarbon dated to twenty
Speaker 1: three thousand years ago. That date is prior to the
Speaker 1: glacial maximum of the Wisconsin Ice Age, and it's the
Speaker 1: oldest evidence for humans anywhere in North America. The human
Speaker 1: and sloth prints weren't the extent of it either. Mammoths
Speaker 1: and dire wolves also crossed the tracks this young woman left.
Speaker 1: Ten thousand years after that, the hunting culture we've named
Speaker 1: Clovis left their spear points in the remains of multiple
Speaker 1: now to us vanished mammoths near what would become one
Speaker 1: day New Mexico's High Plains town carrying the Clovis name.
Speaker 1: There's believable evidence that the Clovis people had a significant
Speaker 1: effect on the Africa like wildlife that covered the West
Speaker 1: down to about ten thousand years ago, much of which
Speaker 1: went extinct by that time. In contrast to these Paleolithic hunters, however,
Speaker 1: subsequent native peoples in New Mexico affected a wildlife management
Speaker 1: of the area that preserved its biological divers for ten
Speaker 1: millennia down to the arrival of Old worlders. When Spaniards
Speaker 1: and Americans did arrive, travelers like Francisco Coronado, Albert Pike,
Speaker 1: George Ruxton, and Josiah Gregg, and especially William Emery of
Speaker 1: the Mexican Boundary Survey left us accounts of New Mexico
Speaker 1: when its mountains brimmed with flocks of big horned sheep
Speaker 1: and beaver down pools, and its planes were a kind
Speaker 1: of American version of the Serengetti or Massai Mara, with grizzlies,
Speaker 1: wolf packs, spotted jaguars, and jackal like coyotes trailing vast
Speaker 1: herds of bison, elk, and pronghorns. During New Mexico's brief
Speaker 1: time as part of the Republic of Mexico, New Mexicans
Speaker 1: even tried to halt the eradication of its beavers by
Speaker 1: American fur traders. The first real chance for the scientific
Speaker 1: study of the mammals, birds, and reptiles in New Mexico
Speaker 1: and the Southwest came after the Mexican War, when the
Speaker 1: far Southwest became part of the United States. There were
Speaker 1: several expeditions led by explorers called the Army Corps of
Speaker 1: Topographical Engineers, and there were also parties surveying routes for
Speaker 1: a railroad line.
Speaker 2: To the Pacific Coast.
Speaker 1: Some of the topographical engineers like John Charles Fremont, for example,
Speaker 1: who became such a celebrity that in eighteen fifty six
Speaker 1: he got the New Republican Party's nomination to be its
Speaker 1: first presidential candidate became cultural stars in America from these expeditions,
Speaker 1: but as is the fate of most scientists, history has
Speaker 1: forgotten most of the naturalists who wrote about America's animals
Speaker 1: when they were novel to discovery. The most notable of
Speaker 1: these many expeditions was the Mexican Boundary Survey, which laid
Speaker 1: out a new un boundary. After the treaty ending the
Speaker 1: war forced Mexico to seede its northern territories.
Speaker 2: To the United States.
Speaker 1: Exploring that line fell to William Emery, one of the
Speaker 1: founders of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
Speaker 1: with a young New Yorker named Spencer Baird as his assistant.
Speaker 1: Soon to be a nationalist of legendary proportion, Baird, as
Speaker 1: a teen had wanted to go west with Autubon, but
Speaker 1: his parents had demurred because of the dangers. Emory was
Speaker 1: himself an excellent field nationalist to send to the Southwest
Speaker 1: during the war. He accompanied the American Armies push from
Speaker 1: New Mexico to California, and had already added several species
Speaker 1: of desert cacti to science, including giant souaros, along with
Speaker 1: visiting ruins like Shacko, whose antiquity he suspected went back
Speaker 1: into America's deep past.
Speaker 2: But this was the eighteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Red Whiskered Emory was also a Maryland slaveholder whose closest
Speaker 1: boyhood friend was Jefferson Davis, soon to be President of
Speaker 1: the Confederacy. So when he got west this time, his
Speaker 1: time and background led him to an odd lack of
Speaker 1: appreciation about how Spanish settlers and local Indians had interacted
Speaker 1: with Western wildlife. That wild animals were still abundant around
Speaker 1: towns in the Southwest appeared certain proof to Emory of
Speaker 1: Hispanic what he called indolence and incapacity evidently has said
Speaker 1: something laudatory that back home Americans would never suffer animals
Speaker 1: within reach to survive like that. A half century after
Speaker 1: Jefferson had aimed his second major expiration at the Southwest,
Speaker 1: Emory's survey from Texas to California at last got to
Speaker 1: illuminate the animals and birds of the western deserts. This
Speaker 1: was an exotic part of North America, with a mix
Speaker 1: of familiar creatures in combination with several Central American species
Speaker 1: at the northern limits of their ranges. White tailed deer
Speaker 1: inhabited the southwest in vast numbers, and the mule deer
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark had found also ranged widely across this region.
Speaker 1: Beavers yet dammed up the streams and shy and comparatively
Speaker 1: rare desert. Big horn sheet looked down from the canyon rims.
Speaker 1: Prairie dogs and pronghorns populated the flats, and coyotes Emory
Speaker 1: had already borrowed the Southwestern name for them, became camp followers,
Speaker 1: stealing food and snatching gear. Grizzlies were present, but Emory
Speaker 1: couldn't decide if those in the interior were the same
Speaker 1: as the bears on the coast, which were much larger.
Speaker 2: There were two.
Speaker 1: Different wolves, the red Texan wolf eastward and farther west,
Speaker 1: a gray wolf. This this was a new animal, the
Speaker 1: Mexican wolf, but scientists wouldn't recognize that for another fifty years.
Speaker 1: The unfamiliar creatures were especially intriguing. Particularly impressive and numerous
Speaker 1: were the big cats. As Bear described it. A vast
Speaker 1: number of pumas and jaguars were preying on wildlife and
Speaker 1: on the immense herds of wild horses and wild cattle,
Speaker 1: known to Spanish settlers as l tigre and to most
Speaker 1: Americans as.
Speaker 2: Tigers or leopards.
Speaker 1: Jaguars hunted the jungles of the Americas as far south
Speaker 1: as Argentina, but their northern range clearly extended into open
Speaker 1: country in North America. Francisco Carnado's early fifteen forties expiration
Speaker 1: into the Southwest had mentioned leopards, and mountain man Rufus
Speaker 1: Sage claimed to have seen such an animal on the
Speaker 1: headwaters of the North Platte in today's Colorado, Jaguars apparently
Speaker 1: were common predators of deer and wild horses, and comanches
Speaker 1: and other tribes even used jaguar hides decoratively. In Emory's report,
Speaker 1: jaguars were on the outskirts of Santa Fe at some point.
Speaker 2: As he worked on his.
Speaker 1: Survey, he discovered a literary source describing a frightening morning
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty five in what he assumed was New
Speaker 1: Mexico's capital. A massive flood in the nearby Rio Bravo,
Speaker 1: the name for the real Grand for many people had
Speaker 1: driven out wildlife, and on opening the church, a lay
Speaker 1: brother found himself face to face with a jaguar of
Speaker 1: very extraordinary size. The big cat killed four clerics before
Speaker 1: survivors drilled a hole through a church door large enough
Speaker 1: for a rifle barrel. Jaguars would turn up in the
Speaker 1: Southern Rockies for decades to come, no question, so their
Speaker 1: presence in the area was not a miss, but the
Speaker 1: story Emory included actually referred to an incident in Santa Fe, Argentina,
Speaker 1: on the Rio Parana Bravo. Other creatures reflected a different
Speaker 1: West than Montana or even California. Emery's people saw swine
Speaker 1: like collared peckreas the southwestern Desert's native Halinas, another creature
Speaker 1: of the southern latitudes. At the northern limits of its range,
Speaker 1: they collected a bizarrely armored South American immigrant called the armadillo,
Speaker 1: exclusive to the Americas and distantly related to anteaters and
Speaker 1: ground slaws. They reported a remarkable variety of reptiles, particularly
Speaker 1: snakes and lizards, of which the most impressive were chuck Wallace.
Speaker 2: They acquired the first.
Speaker 1: Specimen and included an illustration in the report of the
Speaker 1: remarkable Heela monster, although taxonomists in Washington misidentified it and
Speaker 1: didn't realize it had a venomous bite.
Speaker 2: The bird life was.
Speaker 1: Prodigious among the more intriguing were what they called chaparral cox,
Speaker 1: the big cuckoos known as road runners. The fierce fleet
Speaker 1: road runner was a great enemy of the rattlesnake, they said,
Speaker 1: taking them in pitched battles, it usually won. And they
Speaker 1: found the so called Mexican eagle, the outsized falcon known
Speaker 1: as the carocera, extremely numerous, from the Rio Grande to
Speaker 1: the Sierra Madre. By the time all the identifications were
Speaker 1: in the Mexican Boundary Survey added a total of three
Speaker 1: hundred eleven new mammals, birds, and reptiles to America's list
Speaker 1: of native animal life. Another relatable time for early New
Speaker 1: Mexico's wildlife story is probably a century ago, when Vernon
Speaker 1: Bailey and his wife Laurence Miriam Bailey began to analyze
Speaker 1: New Mexico's biological riches and ecologies. They were followed to
Speaker 1: New Mexico a few years later by another scientist, Aldo Leopold,
Speaker 1: who rearranged the furniture in all our heads with respect
Speaker 1: to wildlife. Joining those three was the popular wildlife arthur
Speaker 1: Ernest Thompson, seton writing from Santa Fe setan penned heartbrending
Speaker 1: stories of New Mexico animals such as Tito, the female coyote,
Speaker 1: who allegorically taught coyotes how to avoid extermination, and the
Speaker 1: ratone area wolf Lobo, king of Corumpau, who possessed one
Speaker 1: fatal flaw his fidelity to his mate.
Speaker 2: It got him killed.
Speaker 1: Setan's literary theme, we and the Beasts are kin no
Speaker 1: doubt resonated with the native people of New Mexico. What
Speaker 1: Vernon and Florence Bailey, Aldo Leopold and Ernest Thompson Setan
Speaker 1: provided all of us living in the West since was
Speaker 1: simple but crucial in effect, how to understand a state
Speaker 1: like New Mexico and its wildlife story by virtue of
Speaker 1: its location on the continent. New Mexico is a Western
Speaker 1: state that possesses a riot of diverse ecologies, with more
Speaker 1: native mammal species one hundred and fifty one than any
Speaker 1: other state except California. But a century ago, it's diversity
Speaker 1: struck many observers as almost chaotic. The Baileys were essential
Speaker 1: in changing that perception. Vernon was a slight out eyed,
Speaker 1: chinless farm boy from Minnesota with seven years of education
Speaker 1: and churchy enough that until his twenties he had never even
Speaker 1: heard of Charles Darwin. He was a teetotaler his entire life,
Speaker 1: and a man as other scientists Marvel who never let
Speaker 1: fly even a mild curse. But he was such a
Speaker 1: whiz at catching animals and preserving them as specimens that
Speaker 1: he became the right hand man to Clinton H. Merriam, who,
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties was established the new federal agency
Speaker 1: called the Biological Survey, which became the US Fish.
Speaker 2: And Wildlife Service.
Speaker 1: Miriam's younger sister, Florence, seemed the unlikeliest imaginable partner for Bailey.
Speaker 1: She was a graduate of Smith College who'd originally planned
Speaker 1: a thesis on Darwinian evolution. But one of the environmental
Speaker 1: crises of a century ago was the destruction of birds
Speaker 1: for hats and fashion, and that diverted Florence towards writing
Speaker 1: about birds their steep decline and preservation. By the start
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, she had also discovered Arizona and
Speaker 1: New Mexico, where as she said, the climate is wonderful.
Speaker 1: Their pairing raised eyebrows, but Florence and Vernon Bailey married
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety nine and in nineteen hundred struck out
Speaker 1: on a camping trip across Texas and New Mexico for
Speaker 1: their honeymoon. It was a part of America that left
Speaker 1: an altogether different impression than the East. We felt everywhere
Speaker 1: in New Mexico that, while to us the country was new,
Speaker 1: in fact this land of Poco t Info is an old,
Speaker 1: old land. She wrote, very perceptive of Florence. What Vernon
Speaker 1: was working on for New Mexico was a brand new
Speaker 1: idea designed to make sense of wildlife distribution. Why were
Speaker 1: animals found in some locations but not others? Bailey and
Speaker 1: his boss Seehart Miriam believed they knew, and they pioneered
Speaker 1: a model called life zones. While Bailey is often remembered
Speaker 1: today for the role he played in designing and defending
Speaker 1: wolf eradication in the West, he left New Mexico a
Speaker 1: remarkable baseline record for wildlife in a territory where elevation
Speaker 1: ranged from twenty eight hundred feet to more than thirteen
Speaker 1: thousand feet atop its highest point, Wheeler Peak, near Taos,
Speaker 1: Bailey mapped out six life zones for plants and animals.
Speaker 1: He named them the Lower Sonoran, the Upper Sonoran, the Transition,
Speaker 1: the Canadian, the Hudsonian and the Arctic Alpine. In a
Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen monograph published in North American Fauna, he described
Speaker 1: the existing species compositions of all six of those zones
Speaker 1: in the brand new state of New Mexico and made
Speaker 1: its wildlife distribution newly intelligible. Taxonomists also credit him with
Speaker 1: realizing that our now endangered Mexican gray wolf was different
Speaker 1: from other wolves, which is why its Latin binomial carries
Speaker 1: Bailey's name. Florence Bailey's contribution was to fashion a similar
Speaker 1: baseline for New Mexico's birds. Her Birds of New Mexico
Speaker 1: was the first close study of the birds of an
Speaker 1: interior American state. Along with writing the first ever field
Speaker 1: guide for western birds in general, she added a whopping
Speaker 1: ninety four new species of birds to the ornithological list
Speaker 1: for New Mexico and the Southwest. Seton and the Baileys
Speaker 1: were experiencing New Mexico at a time when market hunting
Speaker 1: excesses were destroying numerous species that had anciently evolved in America.
Speaker 1: An industrial hunt for high leather eradicated bison on the
Speaker 1: southern plains in the eighteen seventies, sacrificing billions of animals
Speaker 1: native peoples in New Mexico had depended on for ten
Speaker 1: thousand years. Hispanic New Mexicans, called Sibal arrows, had long
Speaker 1: made pilgrimages themselves to the planes from Santa Fe and towns,
Speaker 1: and as expert horsemen had hunted bison with lances, hauling
Speaker 1: the meat and pelts back to their real grand towns
Speaker 1: and creaking two wheeled wooden carts. But by eighteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: a decade before they disappeared from Montana, bison were extinguished
Speaker 1: in plains New Mexico. Their destruction had barely taken ten years,
Speaker 1: and that was just the beginning. Exploring the Pecos river
Speaker 1: headwaters in the southern Rockies of New Mexico in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty two and eighty three, naturalists Lewis Disch found no
Speaker 1: big horn sheep left, no elk in the country except
Speaker 1: a rare and occasional straggler, he wrote, and he neither
Speaker 1: saw wolves nor heard one. Howel he did see what
Speaker 1: he called a herd of eleven grizzly bears traversing Hamilton
Speaker 1: Mesa in the high rockies above Santa Fe, New Mexico,
Speaker 1: made an effort to save some of these animals, but
Speaker 1: following inherited fo traditions from the Old World, the state
Speaker 1: concerned itself largely with the ones called game birds and
Speaker 1: mammals people wanted to hunt. There was little appreciation for
Speaker 1: non game or even for native species that had evolved
Speaker 1: in the southwest. New Mexico Territory created its first bounty
Speaker 1: system for predators in eighteen ninety three. That list of
Speaker 1: money for scalps included wolves, coyotes, bears, lions, and bobcats.
Speaker 1: State sponsored exotic species introductions of animals like ibex Oryx
Speaker 1: and our dads particularly became a specialty of the New
Speaker 1: Mexico Game Agency. At least the new National Forests and
Speaker 1: other public lands the US federal government was setting aside
Speaker 1: in New Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century
Speaker 1: did continue to preserve wildlife habitat for future animal recoveries.
Speaker 1: When America's giant step lions and saber toothed cats had
Speaker 1: died out in the Pleistocene extinctions, jaguars had assumed the
Speaker 1: mantle of North America's most imposing big cat, with a
Speaker 1: range that stretched through most of South America. Jaguars were
Speaker 1: at the northernmost limits of their range in the southern US.
Speaker 1: Leopard like in appearance, but heavier and more muscular. Male
Speaker 1: jaguars can weigh more than three hundred pounds. In the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, the great cats still had established territories
Speaker 1: and were breeding in New Mexico and Arizona, so this
Speaker 1: northern range was not merely a place the occasional male
Speaker 1: jaguar roamed into. Among more than sixty historical records of
Speaker 1: jaguars in the Southwest from eighteen eighty to nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: females and kittens are well represented. North American jaguars den
Speaker 1: and hunted in deserts, oak foothills, pinions, juniper and Ponderosa
Speaker 1: pine forests countries, strikingly unlike their jungle habitats to the south.
Speaker 1: Such open train made them vulnerable to human eyes, though
Speaker 1: especially the eyes of stock raisers and the bounty and
Speaker 1: government hunters employed to protect cows.
Speaker 2: In the early twentieth.
Speaker 1: Century, Aware that jaguars were declining, Vernon Bailey collected as
Speaker 1: many accounts of jaguars as he could find.
Speaker 2: From them, he concluded that the Black.
Speaker 1: Range in the center of New Mexico had long been
Speaker 1: jaguar territory. A bounty hunter had killed jaguars in that
Speaker 1: range of choppy vertical ridges in nineteen hundred and again
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh two, and Bailey collected several other accounts
Speaker 1: from there. Other New Mexico ranges, the Sambre de Cristo's
Speaker 1: the Southern Rockies, in other words, the Sacramentos and the
Speaker 1: San Andres also held jaguars, and into the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: ranchers were still shooting them. There were accounts of jaguars
Speaker 1: nearly to Colorado, as well as out on the Great Plans. Arizona,
Speaker 1: where settlers reported jaguars from Saint Gray's Muggy owned Rim
Speaker 1: Country to the Grand Canyon, had a similar jaguar record.
Speaker 1: The Biological Survey's first recorded jaguar kill was there a
Speaker 1: Federal hunter shot at jaguar in Arizona's Santa Rita Mountains
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighteen. The Bureau's operatives in Arizona had few
Speaker 1: doubts about the sources of the jaguar threat, as they
Speaker 1: called it. Its position was this, and I'm quoting, all
Speaker 1: lobo wolves and jaguars will be taken as fast as
Speaker 1: they enter this state from Mexico and New Mexico, as
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of them live on livestock and game.
Speaker 1: The Bureau recorded five such renegades crossing into a supposedly
Speaker 1: jaguar free Arizona from nineteen twenty four tonight ten twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Two of those were females, all ended up killed. Jaguars
Speaker 1: were still dying at human hands even on the Gulf
Speaker 1: coast of Texas as late as the nineteen forties. In
Speaker 1: the first half of the twentieth century, another legendary figure,
Speaker 1: ecologist Aldo Leopold, spent enough time in New Mexico to
Speaker 1: shape future wildlife policy, both there and more broadly. Stationed
Speaker 1: in the territory first to manage one of its new
Speaker 1: national forests, Leopold met his future wife, Estella Bergier in
Speaker 1: Santa Fe.
Speaker 2: He went on to study.
Speaker 1: A new phenomenon called game eruptions, the unchecked growth then
Speaker 1: spectacular crash of populations of mule, deer, elk, and other
Speaker 1: ungulates that followed Americas and New Mexico's eradication of predators
Speaker 1: on behalf of the livestock industry. Leopold found almost no
Speaker 1: record of eruptions before nineteen hundred but he tracked a
Speaker 1: whopping forty two of them between nineteen hundred and nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five. His work and the growing significance of ecological
Speaker 1: science slowly began to produce an appreciation for non game,
Speaker 1: even for wolves, lions, and New Mexico's unofficial state animal,
Speaker 1: the coyote. The nineteen seventy six listing of the Mexican
Speaker 1: gray wolf and its later recovery plan under the New
Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act was an extension of Leopold's work in
Speaker 1: New Mexico. Ending coyote hunting contest on state lands in
Speaker 1: New Mexico was another, while Vernon Bailey's century old life
Speaker 1: zones model continues to have some relevance in understanding New
Speaker 1: Mexico wildlife. The science of a cology, with its emphasis
Speaker 1: today on interactive communities known as ecosystems, and subsequent work
Speaker 1: in mapping ecoregions, has advanced our understanding of whyde diverse
Speaker 1: New Mexico once seemed chaotic. In a state split by
Speaker 1: the continental divide, and where the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains,
Speaker 1: the Colorado Plateau, and the Southwestern deserts all converge, ecological
Speaker 1: diversity is enormous. At a fine grain level of mapping,
Speaker 1: the state features eight principal ecoregions, such as the southwestern tablelands,
Speaker 1: for example, divided into an absolutely astonishing fifty five ecological
Speaker 1: subsets like the Pinon juniper woodlands. Add in, the deep
Speaker 1: time historical dimension and the special qualities of a place
Speaker 1: like New Mexico stand evident. Twenty thousand years ago, Wisconsin
Speaker 1: ice age brought northern species like sheep and marmots far south.
Speaker 1: Then massive heat events like the Alta thermal of eight
Speaker 1: thousand to five thousand years ago expanded southern and desert
Speaker 1: species northward. When Vernon Bailey was in New Mexico seeking
Speaker 1: out remnant bighorn sheep, he discovered that in New Mexico,
Speaker 1: jaguars at the extreme northern end of a range that
Speaker 1: stretched down through the Americas, were hunting rocky Mountain bighorn
Speaker 1: sheep at the southern end of an alpine habitat extending
Speaker 1: far northward up the mountain chain to Alaska. Not many
Speaker 1: places on the continent can make a claim like that.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: Mexican wolves, which we reduce to such tiny numbers that
Speaker 1: they now struggle with suffici. This genetic diversity to survive.
Speaker 1: Are the southwest most famous endangered animals, but a state
Speaker 1: is varied, as New Mexico has many more, sixty four
Speaker 1: of them in all. If New Mexico hopes to preserve
Speaker 1: the full suite of the animals that were originally here,
Speaker 1: it will have to save Mexican spotted owls, northern applemato falcons,
Speaker 1: Southwestern willow flycatchers, kila trout, blackfooted ferrets, meadow jumping mice,
Speaker 1: and ridge nosed rattlesnakes, among many others. The state today
Speaker 1: is working on all that. New Mexico's State Wildlife Action
Speaker 1: Plan is designing strategies now to conserve what it calls
Speaker 1: species of greatest conservation need, along with their habitats to
Speaker 1: confront human cause climate change that threatens to make an
Speaker 1: already arid state a drier and hotter version of itself.
Speaker 1: Anticipating and protecting connectivity quarters so that species able to
Speaker 1: relocate can to new habitats is part of that plan,
Speaker 1: so is preserving as much genetic diversity as we can.
Speaker 1: The state's fixed polestar is and it ought to be
Speaker 1: a future where we return as many of those original
Speaker 1: New Mexico species to the state as possible, and that
Speaker 1: includes jaguars not officially listed as a US endangered species
Speaker 1: until nineteen ninety seven. Jaguars only acquired a recovery plan
Speaker 1: in the United States in twenty eighteen. As with gray wolves,
Speaker 1: jaguar recovery depends on the nations bordering the US having
Speaker 1: preserved the big animals better than we have. The truth
Speaker 1: is that the Fish and Wildlife's twenty eighteen plan offers
Speaker 1: pretty faint hope for the return of lt gray encourage
Speaker 1: that seven male jaguars have ventured into the US since
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six. The architects of the recovery plan didn't
Speaker 1: end vision a hard release of captive jaguars, as we have.
Speaker 2: Done with gray wolves.
Speaker 1: Their hope instead was that the cats will reoccupy their
Speaker 1: former range via two different quarridors that could connect populations
Speaker 1: in Mexico to Arizona and New Mexico. The problem is
Speaker 1: that those jaguar migration corridors reached the US exactly where
Speaker 1: our country has been erecting its border wall against human migrants.
Speaker 1: The twenty eighteen jaguar recovery proposal is a forty year
Speaker 1: proposition with delisting happening only in the event that our
Speaker 1: breeding population of female.
Speaker 2: Cats arrives here.
Speaker 1: But if we really want to restore jaguars, we're going
Speaker 1: to have to revisit that plan, and two prominent environmental
Speaker 1: groups have already done so. The Center for Biological Diversity
Speaker 1: and Defenders of Wildlife have counterproposed a three hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty nine square mile recovery area in New Mexico and
Speaker 1: Arizona that significantly overlaps the Mexican Wolf recovery zone. What
Speaker 1: they call for is a hard release of a dozen jaguars,
Speaker 1: as we've done with gray wolves and Yellowstone New Mexico
Speaker 1: and Arizona and now Colorado, to began recovery in an
Speaker 1: area that could eventually support one hundred to one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty of the southwest original big felines. As for me,
Speaker 1: I'll admit I want to see muscular jaguars once again
Speaker 1: pursuing big horn sheep in the New Mexico Rockies, and
Speaker 1: if I don't get to see it, I at least
Speaker 1: want to look up at the snowcap peaks out my
Speaker 1: front door and imagine that such a spectacle will play
Speaker 1: out in the future. Arizona accepted. No other Western state
Speaker 1: than New Mexico is likely to see that kind of
Speaker 1: natural marble.
Speaker 3: All right, Dan, In this episode, I think that you
Speaker 3: begin at some point by talking about how most Americans
Speaker 3: imaginations sort of failed to fully comprehend the diversity of
Speaker 3: landscape and culture that is New Mexico. Yeah, and I'm
Speaker 3: wondering if that's a branding problem. We didn't go with
Speaker 3: southern Colorado or eastern California. You know, people just for
Speaker 3: whatever reason, people New Mexico. It just brings to mind
Speaker 3: a certain image and that's it. This is obviously not
Speaker 3: a serious question, but.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think there are parts of the West
Speaker 1: that are readily accessible to people. I mean, Yellowstone comes
Speaker 1: to mind, Yosemite National Park in California, you know, Glacier.
Speaker 1: There are places that large numbers of people have been
Speaker 1: appear in calendar photographs, that appear in documentaries that you
Speaker 1: see on television, and so you know about those. I
Speaker 1: think that there are very definitely places like you mentioned
Speaker 1: eastern California. You know, hardly anybody knows much about that
Speaker 1: part of the world unless you travel through it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would say eastern Washington and eastern Oregon, almost fall
Speaker 1: into that same category, because what everybody knows about when
Speaker 1: they imagine Oregon or Washington State, they always imagine the
Speaker 1: coastal parks.
Speaker 2: They imagine Seattle and Portland.
Speaker 1: And Eugene and all the wetter, greener part that's closer
Speaker 1: to the Pacific. I think New Mexico, and I sort
Speaker 1: of feel this about the whole Southwest. It plays a
Speaker 1: kind of an exotic role in American life because that
Speaker 1: part of the country is so unlike much of the rest,
Speaker 1: even of the West.
Speaker 2: I think we can people who grew.
Speaker 1: Up in New England or in the Great Lakes Country,
Speaker 1: you know, you can imagine Yellowstone, the Montana Rockies, the
Speaker 1: Grand Tetons, you can imagine all that, because it's not
Speaker 1: hugely dissimilar from the green and better watered world that
Speaker 1: you're familiar with. But that really arid, desert like country
Speaker 1: in the Southwest, I think it is, you know, and
Speaker 1: I'm one of the things I've laughed about a lot
Speaker 1: and watching sports is the inevitable use of the term Okay,
Speaker 1: this game is going to be played down in the desert,
Speaker 1: and it's nobody ever says that we're going to be playing,
Speaker 1: you know, up in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies.
Speaker 1: We're not We're not going to do that with the
Speaker 1: Denver Broncos because that's a more familiar place. But anything
Speaker 1: that happens down in the Southwest is always prefaced by
Speaker 1: this is going to take place down in the desert.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think one of the big takeaways from this piece
Speaker 3: is just how layered New Mexico's history and culture and
Speaker 3: landscape are.
Speaker 2: That's good And.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I think became apparent to
Speaker 3: me just thinking about the script is these are they're
Speaker 3: all interrelated, and you think about how long people have
Speaker 3: been on the ground in New Mexico. Some of our
Speaker 3: oldest evidence of human occupation in the Americas is in
Speaker 3: New Mexico, and it's a place where these different types
Speaker 3: of landscapes come together. And for me, I was thinking
Speaker 3: about sort of transitional habitats and how these places where
Speaker 3: two different types of landscapes or biomes, they where they intersect.
Speaker 3: That's a good place for animals to.
Speaker 2: Be, right, Yeah, it is ecotones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I think about the thought was occurring
Speaker 3: to me as I was reading this of just like
Speaker 3: how interrelated its history and its landscape are and the
Speaker 3: interplay between those two things.
Speaker 1: I think it's that combination of all those are so
Speaker 1: many of the big ecological zones of the West in
Speaker 1: New Mexico. I mean, as I said in the script,
Speaker 1: it's the place where the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains,
Speaker 1: the Colorado Plateau, Canyon Country, and the true deserts of
Speaker 1: the Southwest all converge in that one spot.
Speaker 2: And I have a sneaking feeling that one of the reasons.
Speaker 1: We have so many early human sights from the North
Speaker 1: American story in New Mexico. I mean it's not just
Speaker 1: the Clovist site that's there and the Folesome site that's there,
Speaker 1: the original of both of those are in New Mexico,
Speaker 1: but also this recent discovery in twenty nineteen of twenty
Speaker 1: three thousand year old footprints down in the southern part
Speaker 1: of the state. Is that that combination of settings plains,
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountains, Colorado Platzau canyons, and southwestern deserts I think
Speaker 1: must have drawn people. I mean, the climate is amenable
Speaker 1: for one thing, you get off the end of the
Speaker 1: southern Rockies, and the climate is not one you have
Speaker 1: to suffer through really to get through, especially say fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand years or so ago, when it was colder than
Speaker 1: it is now, and so that country probably attracted people
Speaker 1: for that reason, but I think it was that diversity
Speaker 1: of landscapes that also did it, and that's the reason
Speaker 1: we have so many of these early sites for humans
Speaker 1: in North America that occur in that particular part of
Speaker 1: the west.
Speaker 3: And you speaking of sort of this bleed over of
Speaker 3: different regions, you talk in this article a lot.
Speaker 2: About the jaguar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's sort of the embodiment of ecological connections
Speaker 3: between North America, Central America, South America, and it comes
Speaker 3: up into New Mexico. And there's something I don't know,
Speaker 3: there's something about that. Not only are jaguars interesting to
Speaker 3: me just as an animal, but sort of the what
Speaker 3: that represents as far as the connection across continents is interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no kidding, because I mean the jaguar we think of,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it's found all the way down
Speaker 1: to Argentina and so up and down the South American
Speaker 1: continent through Central America, and we think of jaguars as
Speaker 1: being kind of jungle animals, sort of like tigers are.
Speaker 1: And yet its northern range was in the American Southwest
Speaker 1: and was now New Mexico and Arizona. And to me,
Speaker 1: one of the exciting things when I was working on
Speaker 1: this particular story in the beginning, was encountering this idea,
Speaker 1: and it's an idea that I think that really still
Speaker 1: resonates in my mind that as a result of the
Speaker 1: climate history, you know, pulling these species up from South
Speaker 1: America and Central America into what is now the United States,
Speaker 1: like jaguars, like collared peckeras have Alina's, like armadillos, and
Speaker 1: then from a different set of influences extending along the
Speaker 1: crest of the Rocky Mountains from Alaska, these species that
Speaker 1: like bighorn sheep that you think of as being very
Speaker 1: northerly kind of animals all the way down into what
Speaker 1: is now New Mexico, and having those two jaguars be
Speaker 1: hunting big horn sheep. I mean, that's just to me
Speaker 1: kind of a remarkable convergence of things that I still
Speaker 1: like to play with in my mind. And what I'm
Speaker 1: hoping for if we managed to recover jaguars, is having
Speaker 1: something like that happen again, because that seems to be
Speaker 1: a pretty magical kind of convergence of species across the
Speaker 1: continents in the Americas, and.
Speaker 3: Sort of along those same lines in terms of convergence,
Speaker 3: we New Mexico is such a unique place for how
Speaker 3: visible the Spanish and indigenous and not only I mean
Speaker 3: to say indigenous is to oversimplify it, you know, very
Speaker 3: different across the long span of time, Indigenous cultures, then
Speaker 3: the Spanish, then sort of the Anglo influence from the
Speaker 3: United States. I think of all the states in the West,
Speaker 3: New Mexico probably maybe where's that most proudly I.
Speaker 1: Think it does, and I I think you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: and I quoted Florence Miriam Bailey in this particular script too,
Speaker 1: when she was in New Mexico said, you know, unlike
Speaker 1: anywhere else I've been, I mean to us, to her
Speaker 1: and her husband Vernon Bailey on their honeymoon. This was
Speaker 1: a brand new place, but it was clear that it
Speaker 1: was a very old place. And that's one of the
Speaker 1: things you can't miss in a place like New Mexico
Speaker 1: that you often can in other parts of the West,
Speaker 1: and that is the lingering presence on the landscape of
Speaker 1: prior occupations, prior inhabitations. Chaco CanYa National Park for example,
Speaker 1: which was going enterprise in the Southwest a thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: has left ruins that. I mean, it's now National Park,
Speaker 1: of course, and a visitor designation or destination for people from.
Speaker 2: All the world.
Speaker 1: But it kind of leaves you with the sense of, Wow,
Speaker 1: we are late comers to this part of the world.
Speaker 1: This thing has been playing out, this human story has
Speaker 1: been playing out in this part of the world for
Speaker 1: a long time. And those kind of physical that physical
Speaker 1: evidence of occupation going way back into the past is
Speaker 1: more present in the Southwest, in Arizona and New Mexico
Speaker 1: than it is anywhere else in the West. So it
Speaker 1: kind of drives home to you, Wow, this is we
Speaker 1: didn't We're not starting something brand new here.
Speaker 2: This is a very old place. Yet.
Speaker 3: The phrase that kept popping into my mind as I
Speaker 3: was thinking about this more and more was one that
Speaker 3: I remember from elementary school history, which.
Speaker 2: Is cradle of civilization.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is a term that's referred to used to
Speaker 3: refer to certain parts of the globe that have that
Speaker 3: sort of ancient gravitas.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I wonder if you think of New Mexico and
Speaker 3: those in those terms.
Speaker 1: I particularly think of the Chaco area in northwestern New
Speaker 1: Mexico as a kind of an American version of the
Speaker 1: Tigris euphrase river valleys in the Middle East, which when
Speaker 1: people talk about the cradle civilization, that's often what they're
Speaker 1: referring to. And yeah, I think northwestern New Mexico really
Speaker 1: gives you that sense. And if you're in Chaco Canyon
Speaker 1: National Historic Park, all you have to do is walk
Speaker 1: among those ruins and you get a powerful sense of
Speaker 1: this is kind of where North America began, you know.
Speaker 1: And there are certainly older places. I mean, we have
Speaker 1: evidence of the Clovis and the fulsome people in New
Speaker 1: Mexico as well, but boy, Chaco is really it really
Speaker 1: raises the hair on the back of your neck when
Speaker 1: you're there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I need to make it down at some point. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you do, all right? Thanks Dan, you bet Randall.
Speaker 1: Thanks U