Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 645: You Are Four Fifths A Grizzly and I Am Too with Douglas Chadwick

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Ep. 645: You Are Four Fifths A Grizzly and I Am Too with Douglas Chadwick · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand saddler Blind, First Light,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon, and this week on the show, I'm joined
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: by wildlife biologist and author Douglas Chadwick to explore the
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: current state of wildlife across the world today in a
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: new way of thinking that might just save those preachers
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: and us. All right, welcome back to the Wire to
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light. It's me
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. I am back in the saddle. Here. The
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Taylor Swift concerts, the Yoyo competitions, the rock collecting, exploits
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: with Spencer, whatever it is, those crazy things that's been
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: filling your head with, They're all done. I'm out here,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: back in the saddle, back here on the podcast. Hope
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: you enjoyed Tony's guest hosting over the last month, exploring
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: all sorts of different offseason projects that I think will
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: help all of us as we lead into this next season.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: But here I am, and we are kicking off a
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: new series. This is a series we've done for the
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: past couple of years. It's one of my favorites that
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: we do every year, and that's Conservation Month. We are
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: going to take a step back from you know, deep
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: hunting conversations and tactical hunting conversations and instead have some
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: have some conversation around the thing, the resource, the creatures
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: that allow us to enjoy this hunting lifestyle. There wouldn't
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: be any deer chase, there wouldn't be any wild places
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: to chase them on, there wouldn't be any beautiful Mountain
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Vista's Crystal career streams of these things that we enjoy
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: so much as hunters and anglers if there weren't people
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: thinking about and working for the conservation of wild animals
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: and places. And that's what this month is all about,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: is stepping into that world and exploring, you know, what
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: kind of impact we might be able to have there,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: what's going on in the wilder world. What should we
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: be excited about, what should we be concerned about, and
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: what's our role to play? And you know, I gotta
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: tell you, just on a personal note, that this kind
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: of stuff can be fun. This kind of work, these
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: kinds of conversations. It does not have to be dreary,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: it does not have to be a drag. This kind
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: of stuff is fun. And I have a personal, real
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: world example of this just from last week, because as
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: some of you might know, give my little updates here.
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  Speaker 1: The Working for Wildlife tour kicked off at the end
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of March. We had our first event outside of Boston, Massachusetts,
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  Speaker 1: and me in dozens and dozens and dozens of many
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: of you and others came out to a wildlife management
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: area like I mentioned in Massachusetts. We got together on
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: a Sunday and we picked up a whole load of trash,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: like literally entire dump truck load. More than one thousand
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: pounds of trash were picked up by folks out there
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: that day. We put up I think six different wood
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: duck boxes. We pulled out of there, all sorts of
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: shotgun shells, tires, beer cans, you name it. I mean,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of crap that was out there,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: you know, fouling up this beautiful piece of public land
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: that is no longer there. It was good work. It
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: was just rewarding to do something like that and to
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  Speaker 1: immediately see and in some small way things get a
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: little bit better by way of our of our handiwork
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and our time. But what stood out the most, maybe,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and I guess I should have known this coming in,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: but when I was really reminded of coming out of it,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: was just how much fun it is to do that
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff, To get out there with other people
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  Speaker 1: that care about wildlife, that like to hunt or like
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: to fish, and who also like to keep these things around,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: who also want to give back. Just being around other
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: people that cared about those same things and all kind
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: of joining in to do something good and worthwhile was
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  Speaker 1: really fun and re energizing and uplifting. So I came
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: out of that just you know, more charged up than
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: ever to just do more of those kinds of things,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: to you know, to step away from the words of things,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: you know, worrying about what you read on the news,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: or you know, even being on a podcast like this
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  Speaker 1: talking about ideas of what to do, and actually getting
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  Speaker 1: into the world of action, actually doing something that is good,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: that felt great, and that that's got me more excited
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  Speaker 1: than ever to do this series this month exploring different
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  Speaker 1: ways we can all take action to make sure that
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  Speaker 1: you know, our kids and grandkids do still have public
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  Speaker 1: land to explore, do have wild, quiet, clean places to
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  Speaker 1: explore that do have great hunting opportunities or wildlife viewing
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  Speaker 1: opportunities or phishing opportunities, that there's still some wild creatures
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  Speaker 1: run around out there that we all enjoy and making
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  Speaker 1: sure if things are better for the future. That's the
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff that I'm excited about talking about this week.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: And we're gonna kind of go all over the place
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: with this series. We're gonna have, you know, some episodes
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: that are very high level looking at the worldwide state
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: of nature, what's going on, that's that's gonna be today.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Really we're gonna look at different ideas about how to
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: think about ourselves and relationship to nature. But we're also
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: going to zoom really tightly into things like you know,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have some episodes of very specifically focused on
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: white tail deer and others that are focused on all
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: sorts of things. We're gonna have some episodes that go,
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  Speaker 1: you know, right into the nitty you're witty, for example,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of one specific piece of conservation legislation that will have
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: huge impacts on whitetailed deer and private land conservation and
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: hunter access and habitat protection, all kinds of stuff like that.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: We've got a conversation next week on that topic. We're
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: going to reach out to a couple of folks and
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  Speaker 1: get into all sorts of different ideas for you know
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  Speaker 1: how we and as hunters and anglers, can be more
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: effective advocates for these things that we care about. So
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be all over the place, and today, as
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I mentioned, we're starting out at this high level thirty
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: thousand foot overview of nature and wildlife and where things
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  Speaker 1: stand today, and not just when it comes to deer
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: or wild game here in America, but across the world.
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  Speaker 1: And our guests today is going to help us explore
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  Speaker 1: that and also consider, you know how, how we might
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: be thinking about our relationship or obligation to these wild things.
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  Speaker 1: So our guest today, as I mentioned at the top,
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  Speaker 1: is Douglas Chadwick. He is a wildlife biologist. He's a
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  Speaker 1: widely published writer, frequently seen in the pages of magazines
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: like the National Geographic and the author of I believe
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  Speaker 1: more than fourteen books, including The Wolverine Way, Tracking Gobie Grizzlies,
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  Speaker 1: and most recently four Fifths a Grizzly, a new perspective
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  Speaker 1: on nature that just might save us all. And Doug
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  Speaker 1: has he has lived an incredible life. It seems he
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: has seen some amazing things. He's traveled the wild world,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: gotten up close and personal with grizzlies, whales, mountain goats,
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  Speaker 1: and just so many other fascinating wild creatures. And over
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the course of those years and expeditions, Doug has seen
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  Speaker 1: a diminishing world. He has had this firsthand experience seeing
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: wild places wink out and wild creatures pushed to the brink.
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  Speaker 1: And all of this has seemed to have led Doug
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  Speaker 1: to a realization that maybe it's time we rethink our
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  Speaker 1: place alongside these animals, or at least rethink how we
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  Speaker 1: think about her place with these animals. Doug, it seems
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  Speaker 1: began to think that we might have more in common
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  Speaker 1: with these animals than we once thought. And if that's true,
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  Speaker 1: if we do have more in common with these animals,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: what does that mean for how we live with or
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: conserve wild places and animals. These are the thoughts and
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  Speaker 1: ideas that eventually led to this recent book by Doug,
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  Speaker 1: Four Fifths of Grizzly, which, within its pages explores the
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  Speaker 1: real and widespread threats currently facing wildlife all across the
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  Speaker 1: world today, what we might be able to do to
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  Speaker 1: address it, in some great examples of successes that we
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  Speaker 1: are seeing today in that pursuit. That is that's what
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  Speaker 1: made this book so interesting to me, and that is
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  Speaker 1: why I was so excited that Doug was willing to
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  Speaker 1: come on here and talk to us about a new
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  Speaker 1: way of seeing ourselves as a part of nature, not
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: apart from nature, but a part of nature. This fundamental
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: shift in how we think about ourselves that I think
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: can help us become better hunters. I think it can
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  Speaker 1: help us become happier humans, and I definitely think it
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  Speaker 1: can help us become more effective stewards of these wild things.
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  Speaker 1: And so if we can, if we can process some
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: of this and think about this and maybe reconsider where
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: we stand in relation to the deer that we hunt,
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  Speaker 1: the turkeys we chase, the fish we catch, the bears
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  Speaker 1: we watch when we drive through Yellowstone, whatever it might be,
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  Speaker 1: maybe all of that can help us take these next
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  Speaker 1: couple of month s worts of conversations and put it
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  Speaker 1: into action, leading to better things for us in our
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: outdoor pursuits leading to better opportunities for our kids and
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: so so much more so. That is the game plan today.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks for being here, Thanks for tuning in. Let's get
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  Speaker 1: to my chat now with Douglas Chadwick. All right now
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  Speaker 1: with me on the line. I'm really excited to have
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: mister Douglas Chadwick. Doug, thank you so much for being here. Oh,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I'm happy to be here, of course. And you're in Bozeman,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: aren't you. So the company Meetator is based in Bozeman,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: but I actually split my time between Michigan and Idaho,
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  Speaker 1: so I'm kind of all over the place. Well, I
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: was gonna I was gonna try to console you because
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I think they got almost two feet in so snow
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  Speaker 1: em Bozeman yesterday. Yes, because spring of going rapidly backwards
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: in some parts of the Rockies look good today on
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: the west side. Yeah, A lot of my friends and
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Bozeman have been sharing pictures of that dreaded two foot
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  Speaker 1: snowfall when they're hoping to see some kind of green
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  Speaker 1: growth again. I think at my place in Idaho there's
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: something like four feet still. So I'm gonna be digging
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  Speaker 1: my way into the driveway here in a few weeks
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: when I get out there. But I'm sure you've had
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of that snowfall up in your neck of
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the Wits two. Huh, we have. It's been good. I
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: do a lot of cross country stand and just animal
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: tracking getting out and of course all of us in
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Montana well and a lot of the country. You know,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: we're praying for more and moist here and save us
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: from once again having a wildfire season start a month early.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: You know, the bigger picture of things here is there's
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of transition going on. I'm looking at the
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Continental Divide from my home in white Fish, and I've
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: hiked out all my life, and I'm watching glaciers literally
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: shrink in front of my eyes and trees marching up
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: the slopes into the tundra. And you know, it's it's
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: a real phenomenon, that UM effects. I used to study
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: mountain goats and in the park as well as in
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: the San rang Von, Canada, and and uh, you know,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: the use high altitude critters have got a whole new
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: um center rules to survive by. So um anyway, lots
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: of snow is good. Let the glaciers grow bigger. Yes, yeah,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: we need we need the snow, the moisture, the coal.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: That's going to be good for some critters out there,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: will be good for the fish and the rivers. Uh,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: it'll be good for exactly like you said, hopefully not
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: as bad of a wildfire season. So yeah, I think
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: I'm sure all my buddies in Bozeman, uh can handle
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: a little extra snow in their hopes for spring because
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: of the greater good. Um yep, So you mentioned the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: work you used to do with mountain goats, and um,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I've I've become relatively steeped in your history
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: preparing for this and reading your works over the years. Uh,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: You've you've lived, and I guess I'm speaking for you,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: so correct me if you think I'm wrong here. But
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: it seems like you've lived a fascinating life. That you've
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: been able to go to some wild places, you've got
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: to study such charismatic animals, You've you've been able to
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: travel the world and just see and experience unbelievable things. Um.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: And and I'm sure it's it's obvious to me about
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: you know, why you would want to do these things
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: and why you why this I'm sure self fulfilling for you.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: But what my question is, to a degree, is is
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: when did those things? When did those travels in your
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: work as a biologist and a writer, When did all
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: that shift for you from just adventure seeking or curiosity satiating.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: When did it shift from that to advocacy? When did
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: you shift from me a consumer of these wild experiences
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: to then wanting to protect them or advocate for them.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: When did that happen for you? How did that happen
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: for you? Well, boy, us along and complex question. I'll
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: try to keep it short. It actually started pretty early, mark,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: because I did my graduate work and wildlife biology studying
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: mountain goats, and I studied them in an area that
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: was back in the day. I'm getting kind of antique,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: And this was back in the seventies when mountain goats
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: were being hunted unlimited. They didn't know anything about them
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: and didn't recognize them as a whole different kind of
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: critter than say, deer and elk, their closest relative in
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: North America, as the Muscos and other relatives are all
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: found on the east coast of Asia, and they have
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: a whole different social system and slow reproduction and all
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: kinds of things. So Anyway, I was up studying mountain goats,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: and I was watching new roads going to the back country,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: and grizzly bears were essentially being on being hundred unlimited
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: in those days too, and there were very few regulations
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: on logging and road building. So I kind of got
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: activated early on because I was watching goats disappear and
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: that was happening throughout the large choke of the goat range,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: and I was also watching grizzly bears disappear. They were
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: listed as threatened while I was still on the job
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: of being a goat boy, and so I struck me, well, wait,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: use their public resources. And they're both committially inspiring in
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: their own way. I mean, we all know about grizzlies
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: and the emotions they evoke, but mountain goats kind of
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: sentinels of the high country and live in one of
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: the highest steepest niches ever invented for a warm blooded mammal.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: And anyway, I just thought, this is silly to be
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: having the youth vanish at this rate. What can I do?
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: And so I did start writing for you know, popular
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: magazines looking to do how to affect public policy. I
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: don't clam to be any good at that. I just
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: got activated, So that took place early. And then I
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: did get lucky and latch onto a kind of a
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: career with National Geographic as an independent writer. But I
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: worked for him for many, many stories and books, and
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: that's got me sent out around the world. And it
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: turned out that everywhere I went us started looking better
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: and better. And I'm watching animals disappear around the globe,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: and I'm talking about up to and including the giants
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: I work with, elephants, I work with great whales, and
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: or I should say I volunteered as a researcher when
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: I could, but a lot of time I was just
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: tagging along after the experts in the area where I
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: was trying to figure out what would work and what
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: wouldn't for conservation. So a lot of good, I'd say,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: blind luck plus passion to be in wild places among
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: inspiring wildlife. Yeah, going to all those places dug in
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: and being with so many people working towards either researching
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: these wild animals or you know, actually working to protect
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: them in one way or another. You've seen all these
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: things firsthand, You've been with people working on these problems
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: and issues. Do you feel having that set of experiences
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and being exposed to all of that all over the world,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: both here at home and elsewhere. Has that made you
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: more worried about the situation at hand and disheartened? Or
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: or has that given you hope and confidence because you
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: see the good things being done? Where have you landed
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: after being exposed to the reality on the ground in
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: so many places? Okay? Can I tell one quick story? Yeah, yeah,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: please do. I was working with people who were studying
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: the vocabulary, basically the songs, the vocal messages of humpback whales,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: and we were allowed to swim with them by special
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: permission because there are protected species. But you know how
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: we all go out to have wildlife adventures, and the bigger,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: the better the critter. And I remember a whale that
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: came over to me and I was, you know, really
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: steaming along, you know, full speed, headed straight for me.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: This is a humpback and it and then it put
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: out these big fins it has called pectoral fins and
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: just acts as instant breaks and stopped about two feet
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: from my nose, and you know, I felt like, now,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: this critter has a brain about three times my size,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: and it lives as long or longer than team minutes,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: and it sings the longest song in the world, and
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: it came over to see me. I felt like a
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: little bug that someone bent down to look at, you know,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: And you can just imagine the presence of a thirty
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: five foot forty foot long animal being nose and nose
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: with an underwater and I mean, back up onto the boat.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: My first thought was, damn, what now? What? How can
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: I ever get any better than this? You know, I'm
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: far venturing, but I guess I'm trying to lead into say,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: working with elephants. I was. My first introduction to them
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: was during the late nineteen seventies early eighties, and they
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: were all being slaughtered void, just at a mass level
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: for their ivory, which at the time was worth more
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: than the third tusks had been made of solid silver.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: So you can't stop a market like that in countries
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: with very little law enforcement and corrupt governments. And I'm
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: just walking from dead elephant to dead elephants. So I
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: guess I'm working my way towards saying that the activism
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: part the passion to God, Chadwick gets smarter, do something,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: figure out something to help here, and if you're talking
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: about authors, you're talking about whole landscapes it takes to
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: support them, and also the welfare of the people that
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: live there, and the economics of tourism and all kinds
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: of things that some countries rely on. So if I'm
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: looking at let's say tropical for us, and I'm watching them,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: I've been in the Amazon on the Congo and watch
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: the forest, you know, being transformed into palm oil plantations
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. I don't go there looking
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: for problems. I don't go there all fired up and
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go out and be an environmental activist
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: frame of mind. I just go to learn about the
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: animals and what I see keeps do keep me what
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: motivated to to figure this out? What groups? Okay, so
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: that's the bad part. I mean, there are eight billion
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: people in the world. It's not real apparent when you
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: live in the mountains of Montana, but that's almost three
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: times as many as we're around on this planet. When
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I was learning how to do biology and conservation and cool. Right,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: it's a whole new ball game, and I don't think
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: most people are at the speed on it unless they
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: travel a lot. In parts of Asia, and Africa where
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the animals are simply running out of room, especially big animals.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And I guess I could put it this way. If
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: you take the living weight of all the land dwelling
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: mammals on the planet, about oh twenty two three percent
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: of that is humans all but a little slice of
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the remaining percentage is our livestock. It's like seventy six
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: percent and or seventy three percent, I don't know, somewhere
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: in there. And there's a little little slice of the
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: pie left that is four percent. And that's all the
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: wild animals that remain on Earth today. Okay, all the while,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, well I'm talking about mammals, but what you know,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I gotta get my terms right. But that's all. That's it.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: And so you know, people try to compromise, and the
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: compromise is lung has been made in my experience. And
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: so even as I get more motivated to try to
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: do something, and you know, I have been yeah, near
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: to despair, outright despair in some places, just people everywhere
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: doing everything and the animals losing and losing and losing.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: But the other motivation is to go out and find
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: projects and programs that are working and I'm especially intrigued
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: by ones that. Again, I'm a biologist. I love working
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: with animals. I didn't plan to work with people. But
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: now it's really key to go out and find communities
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: that are working together to keep the health of the
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: land and the wildlife communities that they all share, and
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: that means protecting their water and the quality of their
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: land and for grazing or whatever it is, what's working,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: that's what peop I want to know. It's I mean,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: environmentalists and pretty good at alarming people and coming up
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: with some pretty hard you know, you go to a
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: party and pig and hold people and say, here's another
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: terrible thing you might not know about. Sound fun, here's
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: another awful statistic. But I want to be able to say, look,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: here's a program where the people are doing better. They're
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: getting you know, more stable environment for their other activities.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: They're getting water that's healthier for their children to drink,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Disease is going down. They've got more money from some
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: tourism for health of children and women and the community
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: as a whole. And they're doing this for their own reasons,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: not because people are coming from the outside from some
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: rich country and saying here's we're here to help, right.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: So I'm actually on the foundation. It's an international foundation
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: that supports community based conservation all around the world. From
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: I was just reviewing plans in Laos in Argentina, you
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: get the idea and these are these are programs that
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: are working. And so you combine more scientific information about animals,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: and boy has that changed in those that period I
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: mentioned since I was in school. We know cons more
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: about their behavior, their genetics, and their physiological needs. And
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: we also know a whole lot more about the need
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: to work with the people that live on the land
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: and not and get away from that old idea more
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: than a century old now of we protect animals by
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: declaring an exclusive reserve and sensing everybody out and or
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: limiting an access and and then one of the people
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: who have relied on that part of Asia and that
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: part of Africa, or that part of the US for
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: that matter, where are they supposed to do? So communities
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: working together, that's that's a big part of the agenda
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: for me now is to explain that to people's working
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: on a larger and more connected scale. And we're used
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: to working on with the old model of conservation. But
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I think a good point to several projects that do
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: work like that, and I did put some in a
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: reacent book. Um, I'll leave it at that. That's a
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: pretty long answer already. Know you touched on some you
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: touched on some great things there. And you know, I
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: think one of the one of the things that you
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: do really well in that book you just mentioned is
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: you help reframe how we look at these others, these
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: other species, these other parts of the um natural world.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: And and you titled the book around this idea. You
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: lad the book with this idea, and I think it's
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: I get why you see it as being foundational to
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: helping us think about how we, you know, live alongside
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: of these other animals. And this this idea of being
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: that that the old narrative of us being apart from nature,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: or that nature and us are two separate things. You
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: seem to want to turn that on its head and say, no,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: not so much. We're all in this together. We are
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: actually four fifths so grizzly. Um, can you can you
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: can you give us a quick cliff notes into what
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: you mean by that and why you think that kind
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: of reshifting our perspective on a relationship with a natural
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: world matters so much. Sure, well, you know I was
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: raved pretty normal childhood, I guess, And I think we
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: all kind of come away into our older years or
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the years we start questioning things. We don't really question
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: the idea that we are kind of a supreme species
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: and we're either independent of nature or somehow liberated from it,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: separate from it in quality. We have the biggest brain
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: for body weight, and you know a lot of rationales
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: for doing what we've always done with resources, which has
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: claim as much as we want, wherever we want, for
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: as long as we want, and then paid off pretty well. Right,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Like I said, there are eight billion of us now,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: the only other species that have a growth curve like
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the human population or bacteria. But again, now we're in
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: a situation very well no other mammal has been in
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: and you know we're changing those the atmosphere, those you know,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: the water, the land structure, the patterns of habitat, at everything,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: and so yeah, I think a new view of conservations
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: in order, and that's going to start with I don't
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: think we'll put it this way. I don't think we're
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: going to save nature as long as we don't see
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: clearly our relationship with nature, and the reason we're at
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: least four fifths of grizzly is that we there are
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: about six thousand and four hundred species of mammals on
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: planet us, and you know, never mind, there are four
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand species of beetles identified and they're probably a
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: million out there, but we focus on the big charismatic critters.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: That's natural. And we share eighty to ninety percent of
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: our genes with every mammal out there, and it goes
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: up to ninety eight percent with the great with chimpanzee's
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: and behind nineties with other great eggs. So you know,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: we are built from the same genes and they, and
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: what we're discovering is a lot about how much we
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: share in terms of behavior, of emotions, of other qualities
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: built by those genes. And one of the most common
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: phrases I see as I look through research papers on
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: animal behavior is the comment a trait formerly thought to
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: be exclusive to human? Why was it formerly thought to
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: be exclusive to humans? Because it sort of suited our
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the story we tell ourselves. And the other thing about
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: being part of nature is that and this, you know,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: this gets into the geeky part. But you know, we
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: have up three thirty trillion human cells in our bodies,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: and we have more single celled creatures living within and
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: hon us than that, and they are doing our digesting
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: for us, just like they would in the room and
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: of a white tailed deer can't live without it. They
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: produced satty acids and vitamins we can't make ourselves. They
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: keep us going, and they're fighting off other possible infections,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: other single celled triggers and their effect. They're producing hormones
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: that are very much like dopamine and serotonin and other
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: things that influence our mood and our thoughts and our actions.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: So we're actually a compound creature, you know, we're like
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: resemble a liking, which is, you know, an algae plus
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: a couple of different kinds of fungus plus a bunch
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: of bacteria. We call it a plant. And I would
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: challenge anyone listening to go find an animal larger than
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: bacteria or a similar group called their KaiA that is
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: actually an independent creature. There doesn't seem to be any
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: such thing. So we're combinations, partnerships, collaborations where we joint ventures.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: That's what we are. And you know, you can't be
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: apart from nature, And no matter how badly you want
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: it to be so, um, that doesn't oblige you to
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: go out and start dragging subarus and holding up signs
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: of protests. That means, here, we're not who we think
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: we are. Our nature doesn't work why we like to
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: think it works. And and genetically we've got ken all
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: over the world. Um, And the last thing I'll add is,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: I'm look, we're also fifty to sixty percent genetically identical
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: to fish, and we share thirty to forty percent even
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: with some insects and uh with a wine grape. Um,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe a little more in that some nights, you
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: know the company, right, yeah, um, so yeah, I wonder
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: that's why I wrote four fifths of Grizzly was too.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: I've been working with single species that represented whole ecosystems.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Grizzly bears. You're taking care of their needs for home,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: range and habitat and quality of food. You're probably encompassing
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: everything from trout to trumpeter slans to lengths of wolverines
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: and help and deer, but um, you know whales. I
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: worked on grizzly bears in the Gobi Desert anyway, just
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: anyway I could come come at it, But it was
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: always single species. But if you're protecting them, you're protecting
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of biological diversity. You're protecting a lot of
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: nature of an ecosystem. And then I thought, well, I
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: haven't written a book like that. I'm still focused on
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: the individual species or special places that need more attention.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: You know, as a writer, you're sort of an arm
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: waiver or a cheerleader for things people haven't been paying
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: attention to, and you're trying to trying to get their attention.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: But I thought, no, we need to rethink a lot
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: of things again with the idea of that what your
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: saving nature mean? And first we have to, I think,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: have a long and useful discussion about what is nature
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: and what's the nature in us and where do we
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: stand in relationship to it. I heard you mentioned on
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: another show at some point you said that people might say, oh,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm not that into nature, but nature's into you.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: I thought that was pretty that's pretty funny. I know
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of those in your audience we're all mediators,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and you know, I've never turned down a fresh medicine
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: of my life but while we're still kind of touching
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: on global situation, there's and I don't throw off statistics
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: again to be an alarmist or for rhetoric or slay
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: soone's opinion. It's just the facts based on a tremendous
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: number of studies. And that's that about sixty percent of
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: all the herbivores or the hooft mammals mostly greater than
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: two hundred pounds are imperiled species these days, and about
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: sixty per of all carnivores that's all non human meat eaters, right,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: greater than about thirty three pounds are also on the
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: rare threatened or endangered species lists. So it is it's
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: a different world out there than the bubble I live
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: in in Montana, where we've still got a pretty hack
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: wildlife communities in pretty good shape. Yeah, So that that
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: that ties in really well to a story I wanted
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: to tell you, Doug. I posted a photo on my
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Instagram page a couple weeks ago of an excert of
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: your book. On page forty six. There's a like a
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: like an enlarged piece of text where you were talking
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: about kind of this very issue of the biodiversity crisis
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: in the in the quote here that I took a
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: photo of and that I shared was this as the
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: number of people was roughly doubling in the forty two
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: years between nineteen seventy in twenty twelve, the total population
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: count of the planet's wild animals fell by more than
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: half yea. So I posted that picture and I didn't
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: really add any context. I just said, for your consideration,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: was my caption and put it out there, and it
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: generated all sorts of questions. There was outrage at like disbelief,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: like there's no way this could be possible, there's no
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: way anyone could have that kind of data, or that
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: there's no way anyone could actually measure this. There were
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: some people just very despairing of that. There were some
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: folks who had genuine questions about how do we how
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: do we know this, how do we come to these
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: kinds of conclusions, what can we do about it? There
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: were some folks who said, you know, there are folks
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: who start to point fingers. It's because of this, it's
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: because of this, because of this. It generated a really
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: interesting beginning of a conversation that sent me then down
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: a wormhole to try to answer or at least provide
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: a little more context. So I ended up recording and
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: sharing a fifteen minute video explaining I dove deep into
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: where that number came from. I did research on trying
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: to understand the Living Planet Report from the World Wildlife Fund,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: and I read up on how the Living Planet Index
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: is compiled and shared all that and discuss some different
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: things around what we're seeing as far as the larger wildlife,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: these larger wildlife trends. So it was a great kind
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: of exercise for me to have to think about think
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: about what these statistics, like these kind of negative, depressing
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: I guess metrics in the world right now, what those
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: things mean, How we can do something with that data.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Because it's one thing to just say it, like you said,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: like you can say this depressing, sad number that does
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: point to a fact and point to reality, But how
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: do we understand what that actually looks like? How do
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: we get to these numbers and what do we do
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: about it? So this is a long winded way, Doug,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: of asking you to tell me this that quote that
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: I just shared with you, this idea of this biodiversity crisis,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: this idea that folks are saying that we are moving
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: towards a sixth mass extinction event. As someone who's been
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: out there on the ground talking to the folks researching
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: these things, studying these things, and you've seen some of
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: a much of it of yourself. Does this ring true
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: or is it hyperbolic and it's alarmist? It's true? Um. Again,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: if I'm if I'm in Missouri, or I'm in California,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: if I'm in Montana, especially if I'm in Montana, I'm Alaska,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: and I'd read that statistic and I go, what what
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: What in the world are they talk about? This is
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: more rhetoric, you know, propaganda from the Greenies. Um. But
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: when I'm in Asia and walking through a jungle and
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: there's a snare, you know, every hundred feet and the
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: jungle is lush and intact, but it's empty of big critters, um.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: If all too clear. And when I'm in situations where
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: I'm carrying a gun in Africa because of the threat
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: of poachers, because I'm with park rangers and we're coming
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: upon you know, freshly killed carcasses all over the place,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: It's it's very real. And I I I did read
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: the same report you did carefully, and I would say
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: it was a Worldwhilife Fund planetary evaluation. I think the
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Solological Society of London and they it isn't like they
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: just went out and did their own surveys in a
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: few places. They wrote to everybody around the world and
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: got all the census stata they could and it's always imperfect,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: but thousands of studies and put it together and actually
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: it came out a couple of years ago. I recently
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: saw the figure raised from almost fifty percent to you know,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: sixty percent plus, and some have The hard part is,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: you know who's who's out there counting salm every salamander
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: or wizard and that sort of thing. But you can
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: certainly take large sample areas and get those figures. And again,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: depending on where you are, it makes sense to you
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: or it just sounds catastrophic. But worldwide, that's the situation.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: The human footprint now lies across eighty three percent of
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: the land surface of the Earth. Those kind of how
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: long agen throwing out gloomy gloomy stats here. The prediction
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: is that the plastic in the seas, including all the
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: decayed plastic that becomes microplastics, gets into every living thing.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: It will outweigh all the fish in the world's oceans
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: by two thousand and fifty. So it's really hard for
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: a single person living, you know, with in a you know,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: a familiar home with comfortable routines and enjoys getting the outdoors.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: And Um looks around and says, I don't see anything
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: much differ from day to day. But where are you
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: if you I'm not sure we're even built you see,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: you know that far or on that scale, But whenever
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: you put it together globally, with eight billion plus people
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: on the planet in need of resources and with a
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: whole lot more technology to get those resources and change
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: environments to do it, I'm sorry. It's it's what's happening.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: And that's why there was a recent meeting to take
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: on to try to get all nations to make a
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: commitment for reserving a certain percentage of biodiversity that they
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: have on their lands and in their waters, much as
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: was done with you know, the international meeting to take
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: on the climate crisis. So I know a lot of people,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a feeling like you're almost inclined to
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: reject all this because it's just too much. You're used
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: to people overstating crises and you know, they'll be warnings
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: about some particular chemical and we're all going to die
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: and get deformed. And then you know, two months later
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: they say, oh no, we we we did some more experiments.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: Turns out it's not a big deal. So it's easy
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: to put these things in that category. But the loss
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: of our fellow creakers is enormous, as unprecedented has been
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: seen since asteroid whack into the planet at the end
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: of the Age of dinosaurs. But it's slow mow enough
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: by our standards that we don't go running out into
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: the streets. And I wish it weren't true. Yeah, Yet
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: it is hard to face that. It's hard to accept that,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: both because it seems it seems beyond possible, and it's
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: as you said, in many cases, it's it's hard to
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: see the actual shift happening right in front of your eyes,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: especially if we're somewhere like in America, where we are
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: relatively at least compared to many other places in the world,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: we still have, you know, relatively wild places. We still
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: have full suite of wildlife in some parts of the country.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: We still have you know, well regulated wildlife management principles
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: in play too. To give us the resources and the
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: opportunities we have to see wild critters out there. But
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: that's not the case in a lot of places. But
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: I think, I think even in each of our own
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: individual lives, on a really micro scale, we can see
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: examples of this. I mean I can. I was just
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: telling my son. I've got a five year old son
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: who is at this phase in his life where he
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: is fascinated by any of dad's stories. He just wants
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: to hear stories about when I was on some hiking trip,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: or the day I caught my biggest walleye, or that
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: time that Grandpa pretended to be a black bear and
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: scared my dad, or the time I caught my first snap,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: like all those things. He just whenever we're driving, he's like, hey,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: will you tell me a story. We tell me this
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: story of that thing, that thing. And the other day
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: he was asking me to tell him stories about catching
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: snapping turtles when I was a kid, and so I
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: told him about you know, every day during summer break,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I'd go out behind the house and there was this
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: swamp and this pine this pond right next door, and
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: every day in the summer, me and my next door
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: neighbor would go there, and we'd catch frogs all day,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: and we would catch snapping turtles when they would actually
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: overnight be crawling across the road to get to another pond.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: And we'd wake up in the morning and get out
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: and see these turtles crossing the road and we'd go
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: pick them up and take them back or take them across.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: And that was how we would catch these huge snapping turtles.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: They would always be crossing. And he said, Dad, let's
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: go there. Can you please take me to go see
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: this swamp and this pond and the snapping turtles. Can
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: we catch those snapping turtles? And I had to say, Buddy,
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: it's gone, that pond, that wood lot, it's it's houses now.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: And I don't I don't think there's anyone listening today
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: who can't point to some example like that in their
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: life of some favorite fishing hole or a favorite wood lot,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: or a field where they used to chase butterflies or
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: hunt for rabbits, or hike or bird watch or something. Well.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: I live in mike Fish, growing rapidly if Ski town
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: and close to Glacier Park and a lot of tourism,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: and during COVID, it seemed like everybody east of the
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Mississippi decided to move here as well as California. But yeah,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I could tell you about and you know, my kids
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: know about canoeing the river that runs through town and
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: watching moose and and you know, we still have deer
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: in our yard, but a lot of yards i've also
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: seen him and around me are now hopes and the
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: moose are gone, and the wild turkeys are obvious frequents.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: And you know, there's just a lot of people coming
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: in and they don't have you know, they don't have
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: bad intentions. They simply want to live in a nice place.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: They actually love the outdoors. That's one reason they come.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: But you know, they don't always come with a commitment
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: to try to find some way to make room for
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: these other creatures as well as for ourselves. It can
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: be done. I mean, there are plans and there are
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: models for for limiting the pace of habitat change. I
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: know you guys focus often on white tails, right, And um,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: you're lucky because you're working with a speciesis doing very
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: well yea, and rapidly reproduces, and most of all, it
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: seems well adapted to disturbed habitats. So originally that help
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: fires and floods and and you know other other changes
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: from natural forces, but they do equally well or suburban areas.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: I'm just telling your your audience things they know very well,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: and so that's always heartening. I mean, I when I'm
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: out picking apples in my in my field, um, I've
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: usually got white tailed deer standing below the tree whining
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: for me. I was on kind of butterfingers and I
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: drop a few, and you know, I'll be up on
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: a ladder and I'll feel a ladder shake and say,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: oh it's a deer, so um waiting. So you know,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: it does give you a different view. But if you
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: are looking at other creatures and you're looking at you know,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: there's been a catastrophic loss of insects in the order
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: of you know, two thirds to three quarters. And all
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: you have to do is occasionally checked the number of
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: bugs on your windshield this summer. It's not like I
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: used to be less place as well. You know, there
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: goes pollination, there go to wildflowers that m all. You know,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: so much of our wildlife community eeks and who knows
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: what else. But it just it's well worth paying attention
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: to all the little things that run the world. If
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: you're taught to an insect person or a worm person,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: or got to help you a microbe person. I mean
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: they say, look mammals or a side show in terms
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: of weight, in terms of numbers, and to begin with there,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: they're they're kind of I don't know, um, a little
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: feeling somewhere in the food web, but um, they don't
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: the energy and the nutrients and the things that cycle
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: through an ecosystem to keep it healthy and to help
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: all the animals large and small survive over time and
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: the change of time brings um, most of them are
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: invisible or require some serious looking. Yeah, it's it's interesting
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: kind of speaking of some of those things. And pollinators
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: are another great example of this. There's you know, there's
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: there's one set of UM, I guess rationale for trying
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: to protect wildlife in biodiversity is like just like the
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: moral imperative of it or just the fact that we
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: as individuals find these animals fascinating and we want to
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: see them around or we feel some connection with them.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: So there's that side of things. But then there's also
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: like the practical side of things, the practical argument of
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: the fact that you know, as you mentioned, with pollinators.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: They provide ecosystem services is this term for what they
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: natural wildlife and wild places provide services. They do things,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: they support, things that are foundational to human business, economy's life.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: You said something in your book that I really liked you.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: You proposed a new golden rule. You said, do unto
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: ecosystems as you would have them do unto you. And
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: right after saying that, you kind of I guess the
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: way I would you framed it. I guess I'm trying
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: to say, as you framed that, not as like a
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: high minded moral rule, but more as a practical survival strategy.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: So do onto ecosystems as you would have them do
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: unto you. And that is a golden rule because it
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: is a necessary survival strategy. Can you can you expand
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: on that that you know what that means and what
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: you think about that. I'll start I'll start with the
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: full golden rule was do into ecosystems as you would
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: have them do unto you. Nurture, sustain, help, allow to flourish.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: So our health is long term, is indistinguishable from the
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: health of the land, air, and water we we all
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: depend on. Right, And and you mentioned the some of
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: the the more obscure species, the ones we don't pay
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of attention to, but they're absolutely vital. And
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't you know, it sounds like you're
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: it's asking a lot of people. Um, you go out
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: and get to know all these varied life forms there are.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: There are so many as too many and unless you
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: like a geek out on some of the things I do. Um,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: I mean I say, I've worked with elephants of Wales,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: also with ants and beetles and even talk toure geographic
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: in doing stories on them. And because they in Australia,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: I've been in places where the ants control the whole forest,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: cannopy and and any cree, kangaroos or koalas or whatever
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: else wants to live there has to deal with it
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: part of their their environment. But UM, I guess the
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: question we're I feel like we're coming to mark is
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: is you know when well, let's just go back in time.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: And I know hunters are proud of the fact that
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: you know or see themselves as the original conservationists. And
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: granted it came about in an era when the national
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: philosophy seemed to be if it moves, shoot it and
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: if it doesn't, cut it down. But they were the
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: original conservationists and and continue to be so for a while,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: and all credit goes to them and and some other
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: four sighted people that maybe looked at some of the
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: non hunter species, but it was huge. My question, I
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: think to you and some of the folks listening, is
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: who are the leading conservationists today or where do hunters
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: stand reside on that list? Are they still are they
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: still leading? Are they still, you know, by really important
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: to the conservation work that remains to be done, and
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: what do we do with that? Yeah? Yeah, And I
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: think the answer is from my perspective that there are
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of hunters and anglers who do care deeply
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: about these things and who are leading, but there's so
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: much more that needs to be done. There's there's so
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: much more, and I think that there's there's so much
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: more potential good we could do if the hunters and
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: anglers working on these kinds of things are not working
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: on these kinds of things in isolation, but are working
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: with them hand in hand with the non hunters and
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: anglers who care about these things and are leading and
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: doing great work for conservation. So I one of my
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: big hopes and dreams to the futures seeing these two
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: communities working more and more together, because it's a big
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: number of folks. It's a it's a serious constituency of
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: people and of voters. If you combine those two groups
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: of people, if you combine animal lovers and outdoor recreators,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: skiers and hikers and bikers and all those folks with
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: all of the tens of millions of hunters and anglers,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: all these people that love nature, all these people who
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: appreciate wildlife and fish and open space. And yeah, we
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: might engage with it in different ways. We might live
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: in the city, or we might live in the mountains
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: or in a farm. But I feel like there's so
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: much we could do if we could get better at
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: looking past those differences and instead kind of compound our
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: powers together to tackle stuff like what we're talking about today.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Couldn't agree more. And I know here in Montana the
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: hundreds and anglers are tremendous folks for taking better care
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: of the environment, for public land protection and access and
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: proper access, and and uh, I think it would be
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: wonderful if it could, you know, follow up on that,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: because I I think we've spend way too much time,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: you know, discussing, um, how people feel about hunting or
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: one way or the other. And look, we can't make
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: everybody an ethical hunter overnight. We can't make every conservation
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: to stop acting like holier than now uh or or
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: you know, being annoying. And I think, I think it
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: would be tremendous to bring you know, the different forces
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: who care about the different groups that care about the
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: future of of well life on the planet, but of
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: the wild word the world they go into, and that
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: they know a lot about. Yeah, And I have great
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: respect for a one of my friends who are both
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: avid hunters and very keeen naturalists, and I think one
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: comes together. You got to know what you're doing out there, um,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: but not you know, not in all situations, all types
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: of hunts. But really the guys out roaming the woods
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: tend to do it and and and it means a
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: lot when they speak up for protecting the the whole
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: community of wildlife. And you know, I when look, when
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: I see a deer, um a couple of things. I
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: think every creature out there is the right answer to
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: the question of how best to live in a certain way.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: A certain place, um or wouldn't be here, I wouldn't
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: have survived over the millennia. But um, I don't know.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: This is This is a tough one, but I feel
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: like we need to somehow look at the deer and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: see what shaped it, you know, the vegetation it eats,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: the animals that competes with for that vegetation, the predators.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: Why does the deer as have the senses it does.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: Why does it have the fleetness, the ability to you know,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: jump over an eight foot fence of this practical stand still.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: You know that was the work of you know, predators
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: over thousands of years. And I do know some hunters
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: who you know, pretty down on predators because they see
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: them as as competing for me. But that respect the
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: greater community that made the deer, that may the elk
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: as social and communicative as they are m as you know,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: living in groups. Many eyes are better than one, you know,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: one pair. And what made the moose so strong and
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: able to punch through deep snow and fend off you know,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: the midsized carnivores. It was just all all these different
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: natural forces and you don't get one without the others.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: The way I look at it, and if you just
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: focus on one single species, nature doesn't really work that way.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: It's a process that takes place over time that makes
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: each animal what it is, and that naturally leads you
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: from whatever animal your favorites are. Could be wild jerkys,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: could be deer, could be gosh, I don't know. Help
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: here in Montana, certainly, but who else is living there
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: with them? And what are they doing that are we
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: taking care of them? And obviously works they were all
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: here when we invaded this continent, and wildlife management sometimes
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: makes it sound like boys, sure good that we got
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: here just in time to save all these animals. Well, now,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: what they were doing just great, and they were diverse
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: or abundant, and nature was at its healthiest and most
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: fertile um. So you know how how much of that
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: has been lost is something we can all debate over,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: but it's it's been a lot. And when you asked
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: me earlier about the startling decline in numbers worldwide of
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: vertebrates or animals with backbones forty percent on up to
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: some say sixty percent now and say we don't see
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: it in the US, But that's got to remember that's
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: partly because we don't see bison in the millions anymore.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: You know, we don't see grizzlies in the tens of thousands.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: We don't see mountain care to move back. And they
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: were in the forests of Wyoming right and old grow
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: forests of Idaho farther south and anyway. So it's hard,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: you know, to come up with these comparisons. What was
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: the natural state, what's here now? How much it's declined.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: But I think rather than get lost in that, I
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: would just say, here's what we've got. We've done a
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: decent job with the tools we had of conserving it.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: We can do much more, much better. I mean, I've
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: been out. I was volunteering on a wolverine study just
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: because I realized it's an animal i'd seen but didn't
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: really know anything about. And then I realized nobody knows
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: much about them, and they were getting overlooked and they
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: were declining. We've probably got three hundred and fifty or
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: fewer in the lower forty eight states, And you know,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: I just there's a lot of animals and situations like
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: that candidates for listing for protection. If enough people are
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: working together on management of plans and ways to improve
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: things for those critters. They don't have to get listed,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: or if listed, they'd be off the list pretty during quicker.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: If we've made a few right moves, and I that's
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: all worth looking at, it's all worth considering. And if
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: all every animal deserters, I think the same amount of value.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: And I'm not going to say that deer hunters are
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: going to turn into you know, avid wolverine fans um.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: But wolverines are. Wow, what a critter. I followed them
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: up to the tops of mountains that are ten you know,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: there's ten thousand foot plus and right around here, and
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: they're climbing ice and snow that no human can climber,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: could get it up. They go forty four hours a day.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: I mean the custom it's likely they fueled by nuclear
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: energy or something. And they can stand grizzly bears over
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: a carcass. I mean, wow, that's the attitude. Yeah. So,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: you know, it's funny. One thing we haven't really touched on,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: which probably a lot of folks are asking, is what's
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: causing all this other than the other than the overarching
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: umbrella of humans. Uh, you know, there might be people saying,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: all right, I hear what you're saying, we are losing
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of wildlife across the world. There's lots of
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: threatened species, there's lots of trends going in the wrong direction.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: But what's specifically is making this happen. And as I understand, Doug,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: in my own reading and research and projects related to this,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: I've seen most of the causes lumped into five buckets,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: that being you know, the various forms of habitat destruction,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: the impacts of climate change, pollution in its many different forms,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: invasive species, and then you know overkill or overharvest or
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: poaching of fish and wildlife in different situations. I've seen
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: those as the five main culprits of this overarching biodiversity
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: crisis across the world. Would you say, does that sound
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: right to you, Doug? And secondly, is there any one
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: of those or several of those that, from your work
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: and experience, seems to stand out above the rest? Unfortunately, no,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: but but there are some we can fix more easily.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: And the pollution is that's just heedlessness and it's causing
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: as many look, more people die from air pollution every
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: year than from eggs, malaria, and I forget what else.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Certainly COVID combined. It's huge. And if you go to Beijing,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: or you spend time in Delhi or someplace, you you're
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: gonna get sick if you breathe that airline enough. And
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: millions of people are being affected, and that's just economics.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: And that change has to come from the people being affected.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, man, I rapidly get out of
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: my element because I'm say, I'm just I'm just an
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: ot go boy, a wildlife biologist, and all of a sudden,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: the the changes that need to occur are social and
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: economic and involved. You know, the resources were taking from
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: the land, and whether it's it's harvesting animals or illegally
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: or in most of the world, illegally or simply because
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: there's no law enforcement. Um, that's one thing, But Jeeves
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: taking on the economics of resource extraction is that that's
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: above my pay grade. UM. I got to be people,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: and unfortunately they're not those in power. But the people
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: are being affected often, but they have somehow to get
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: support from other other places, but start making those changes themselves,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: just as each of us. You know, sometimes you feel
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: silly recycling your pop cans, are doing those little things
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: turning off the lights and all that. But of course
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: if millions we're doing it, it it would make a huge difference.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: I do it just because it makes me feel a
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: little better at trouble. But I think the next stage
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: is people taking part of meetings and writing letters all
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: their usual things. But we talk about it, but not
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: that many people do it. And again, if legislators are
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: starting to hear from hunters about a proposed development of
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: some kind, and it doesn't have to be oh, we're
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: going to go lie down in front of the bulldozer.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: It's just we looked over your plan and you could
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: do a better job of making sure contamination is limited,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: or you know something, the facility somewhere else besides the
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: side of that mountain, more elk reader, or put that
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: new subdivision somewhere else people can learn. You know, we
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: can make a big change down at city hall. We
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: can make a big change by going to the county commissioners,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: and make a change by going to the states legislature
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: and hollred about things. I'm just saying I'm not here
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: to fight, really, I'm here to make a change that
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: we can all live with. Let's start with that and
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: the being a generation after us I can continue doing that.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Yeah, oh yeah, it does. So
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: I've got a question about maybe one specific example of
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: something like this that hunters have started engaging in and
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: maybe could do more. And then I think ties into
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: a couple of these larger challenges to wilde being in
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: the form of habitat fragmentation and destruction and the impacts
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: of climate. Let's say, um, there's something I'd love you
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about, which is the the
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: island effect and the importance of migration corridors. And this
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: migration corridor push is picking up steam within the conservation
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: community for for many, many years, but now in the
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: hunting community. There's been a lot of interesting studies over
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: the last five ten years about pronghorn migrations, mule deer
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: migrations that are kind of opening the eyes for people
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: and realizing how far these critters go. And so that's
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: that's I think opening a lot of hunter's eyes to
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: the necessity for connective tissue between different wild places because
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: they're now seeing a species they pay attention to a
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: lot needs these connections and corridors. But there's a there's
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: a much wider impact to these wider to having these
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: quarters of vailable because we're seeing, you know, whether it
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: be grizzly bears or pronghorn or any number of different species,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: they need to be able to move, not only because
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: of natural migrations, but also because the temperatures and the
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: climate zones they need to survive are shifting and they're
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: going to have to shift north or up to be
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: able to continue to have that kind of thing. And
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: this is becoming increasingly challenged because of this island effect.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: Can you can you tell folks about the island effect,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: how that impacts wildlife and how we might be able
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: to start dealing with that and creating better corridors and
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: connections to solve for that. Sure, um, and thank for
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: bringing that up, because that's that is key, and because
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: we're on the solutions and satans right now. And the
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: old bottle of conservation was kind of like the King's
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: Hunting Reserve or you know earlier, where you've set aside
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: a hunk of land that scenic, has recreational values, has
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: wildlife values, and you limit access or put offense around
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: it as they do in some of the African reserves
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: and say, hey, we save nature well the eighties percent.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: Almost of the extinctions that have taken place since the
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: year fifteen hundred have been on oceanic islands, and it's because,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: of course they're isolated. They're subject to whatever comes through
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: disease or invasive species, hurricanes, you know, changing climate in
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: that particular part. But they can't go anywhere, and they
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: can't get replaced from neighboring populations. And the whole time,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: if they're not a very large population, they're going to
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: be inbreeding. And the way genetics works is nine times
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: out of ten that specigoes extinct. And that's essentially a
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: model that applies to the way we've done this on
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: land on different continents. We make isolated reserves here and
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: there whereas possible where there was still wild land and
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: still a rich wildlife community and declared a reserve. And
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: now the big push worldwide because of all those factors
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: I mentioned and more studies over the past half century.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: All point in this direction is that you have to
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: build in that flexibility for animals to adapt and met
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: you brought up a changing climate here in the continent,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: they have to move up, maybe north or south, maybe
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: to a moister set of conditions. But they've got to
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: be able to move and flow and swap jeans and
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: meet new girlfriends and party in different places. If I
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: put a I go out with a bare biologist who
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: flap a radio color on yet another grizzly. It might
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: be a glacier park, but the next week it's in Canada.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: It's an Alberta nsover in British Columbia. Then just down
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: the National Forest in western Montana, etc. Do you guys
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: do move a lot? I once followed a mountain lion
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: from the Black Hills in South Dakota. I did it
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: indirectly where people had collected scats and done DNA analysis,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: but from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: edge of a interstate highway in Connecticut, thirty miles from
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: New York City. Wow, where I got hit by car.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: Animals can move, and then they're always probing, and that's
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: part of the value. It's like white tailed deer, right.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: They they produce a lot of the young, and those
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: young have to disperse to find habitat in the stages
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: that they like, the early stages of forest succession with
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of brush and you know, very grasslands and
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: well a variety of plants that you don't get in
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: a closed forest, as you know, so you know, they're
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: dispersing all the time. So if they're contained, or they've
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: got potentially a fence in the form of new housing,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: new agricultural lands or whatever that they're not allowed on,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: how do they do that? And so if you're in
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: Africa and you're looking at the elephants in Manyara, they've
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: got to get to Ruaha. They have to get from
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: Ruaha to the Serengetti. They have to you know, there's
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: a string of wonderful wildlife parks there, but they are
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: all islands. And so what they're doing now is going
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: in between those reserves, working with communities and who have
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: problems with wildlife coming through. Sometimes the elephants are eating crops,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: or the lions are considered dangerous or taking livestock coming
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: up with you know, a whole lot of creative plans
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: that end up making that passageway between the existing reserves
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: termeable to wildlife. You don't have to go and create
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: another park. You don't have to make a superpark over
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: the whole area. You have to make corridors or wild
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: waves or habitat bridges or whatever you want to call
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: them that allow animals to move and adapt and reproduce,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: and that is being undertaken in parts of Africa, in
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: parts of Asia. Thailand have some reserves bordering Myanmar, the
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: old Burma, I guess. And here in the US we've
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: got some landscape level plans taking shape in a number
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: of areas, but actually in reasonable shape in the what
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: it's called the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, which is
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: two thousand miles from south of Yellowstone up to well
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: north into the Yukon, and that they say it is
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: the size and scale of of land nature needs to
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: and wildlife populations need to stain themselves over time. Oh
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: and one thing I'll add, if can I ramble on
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: and y okay Um. Part of this is because we've
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: got a lot of America is graced with a whole
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: lot of public land that alone distinguishes us from so
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: many countries. And as part of the reason you and
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: I have been pointing out that things are are looking
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: pretty good here compared to much of the world. Um.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: But what we're finding now as things get busier, highways
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: get busier, communities grow there's more logging and mining, and
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: you know, road access into the former back country um
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: our parks in the Rockies are turning into um let's
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: call them near islands. But there's a lot of land
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: in between public land that can be managed UM more
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: in favor of wildlife, less in favor of of just
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: cut and run extraction or big and run UM. And
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: then there's a final key element, and that is private
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: land UM in the areas between wildlife strongholds. If a
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: bear was to get from Yellowstone Park to Glacier Park
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: and the Yellowstone population is isolated, or the elk migrate,
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: or the as you say, the pronghorns, you need to
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: get down into wyoming UM from from the Red Debt, sorry,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: from from say Teton National Park into the Red Desert
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: one hundred miles UM. You you're going through private lands
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: and fences, so you can change the fencing rangements. You
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: can put overpasses their underpasses where they have to cross
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: a freeway and occasionally get slaughtered. They many died during
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: storms and they come up against fences they can cross.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: And then there's still just the land itself. And if
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: a landowner is operating in certain ways of no use
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: to those animals. If the landowner is willing to keep
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: some of the habitat intact and some of the cover
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: that dear and help need, for example, in just again
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: a corridor a right of way for the four legged critters,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: that makes all the difference in the world long term.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: And so the factor I'm trying to put it out
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: is land trusts, by which groups go out and arrange
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: conservation easness with private landowners. And these are willing landowners.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: Nobody's regulating anything, nobody's forcing anything. It's a win win
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: deal where they get paid to maintain their land in
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: a wildlife friendly manner. And maybe you've discussed this on
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: previous podcasts and probably have. Um, this has proven to
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: be a key in Montana's a leader in in this.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: Uh you know this, this what strategy for keeping wildlife
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: able to move and adapt and being done with Joe
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: Blow next door. You know, the neighbors, the people in
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: the community who what I see that wildlife and have
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: it in your lives and um, it adds up to
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of acreage in the right places. And because
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: they're you know all this has been pretty well mapped
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: out over time by biologists and ecologists where you can
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: look at a map of a region and say, okay,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: if I were an elk or a white kill deer
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: or a links, where would I go? Where would I
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: need to go? And if you're looking at public land management,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: some pressure from the public to maybe manage it more
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: in favor of wildlife, and then you're looking at private
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: landloders who willingly will take part in this movement pattern.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: Making a movement pattern available, we can make great strides
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: and we can conserve big nature and that's what a
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: full wildlife community needs. Yeah. So if IF IF advocating
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: for these kinds of things, such as migration corridors, wildlife
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: passages across highways, helping fund different easement programs, you know
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: on the migration quarteror thing. We have had some good
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: news on that recently. I think there was something like
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty million dollars for migration corridor related
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: work in the recent ira UM Flas Reduction Act. And
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of dollars in the infrastructure bill
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: from two years ago. So I think there's there's some
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: steam building there. Yeah, So that's that's exciting. UM. But
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: I guess Doug if if you were too, if you
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: were to have one of my audience members sitting in
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: front of you and the two of you were drinking
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: a cup of coffee right now, and they've just heard
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: everything you had to say. And I think anyone listening
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: to this podcast is already someone who you know has
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: some kind of connection with nature. They're a hunter and
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: an angler. They appreciate these things. But maybe they haven't
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: zoomed out quite as much as we have today and
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: looked at the larger picture, or looked outside of their
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: favorite species. And maybe they're hearing this and recognizing, Man,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: I do need to try to do something more than
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: I'm already doing. And you were sitting there across from them,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: what would be two things that you would tell them
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: now that that you would encourage them to to do.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: Two actions they could take that you think could make
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: a difference in some kind of way. Uh Um, okay,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: I would first, depending on who I'm talking too, but um,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: settling down and say I don't know what I'm doing, um,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: and I'm making it up as I go along. And
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: by the way, you don't have to take off your
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: camo and start wearing hemp clothing. You know, um or anything.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: You know. Hundreds like to say, there's a there's this
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: weird distinction in our culture where people say, I'm a conservationist,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: but I'm no environmentalist because they you know, environmentalism means
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: marching on nuclear power plants or uh, you know, whatever
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: is going on and or a big fight over a
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: polluting plant or something. And and a lot of people
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: just don't see themselves in that role. And I don't
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: see it in my role. Um, So I would say
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: the right now, maybe the most effective thing hunters can
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: do is talk to each other and and come up
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: with their own solution, rather than listen to this guy
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: you're talking to right now and just say, well, look,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: I know, I know we love hunting together, and um,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: you know, we've spent a lot of time outdoors together.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I've noticed you're kind of a
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: U you like to track the other carnivores out there,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: m or you like you like to spend time, I
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: don't know, just just seeing what else is there. I mean,
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: that's part of the joy of being out, you know,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: a day in the woods and and there is a
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: problem going, you know, and and what can we do
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: just to make life a little easier for the critters
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: here and make sure are still around for the next generation.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: And um, gosh, I don't know what do you think.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: I mean? I'm not I don't see myself as a
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: letter writer, but I might be able to get down
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: to that city hall meeting about the development going in
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: UM in that area we like to hunt here or
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: that maybe that area we like to hunt in UM
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: and put it in our two cents worth and you know,
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: learn a bit more about it and go in and say, well,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: here's what the deer need, here's what the you know,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: the whatever your favorite critter is and our plant um
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: and start at that level rather than me throw out
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: you know, you should join this group or that group. UM.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: I would recommend looking into land trusts. They always mean,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: you know, a few extra bucks and maybe some time
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: from people. And I know, I'm sure some of your
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: listeners are are already active volunteers and going out and
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: restoring some landscapes, restoring, rehabbing trout streams or you know,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: their favorite fishing spot. I don't know how many would
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: be looking at the the endangered muscles probably live in
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: that water and filter it and help make it clear
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: and keep pulling this down. But as he's worth getting
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: to know more about UM. I'd start small, and I'd
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: start with like minded people and try to figure out
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: together what difference one person can make. And you know,
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: it's a big global problem. We've got a head start
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: on some of the solutions here in the US. How
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: can we make them happen sooner and better? Yeah? I
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: think that's pretty va I'm sorry if that, but but
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: great advice, but great advice. I think that there's there's
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: I think it was it was Teddy Roosevelt who said
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: something like he appreciates the man that takes the first
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: step more than he appreciates the man that strategizes about
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: the two hundred steps to come. You know, there's something
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: there's something to be said about just doing what you
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: can right now, like taking doing that one little thing,
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: starting small, but doing something. And it's so easy to
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: want to just sit around and think, well, jeez, this
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: is so much bigger than me. I don't know what
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: to do, or I could you could do this, you
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: could do this, you could do this, and then never
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: actually take any action. I was just yesterday, you know,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: this morning I emailed you and told you I was
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: running late because my flight got delayed. I was in
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: Massachusetts yesterday at a volunteer habitat day on a wildlife
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: management area just outside of Boston, and we had almost
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: one hundred folks come out to clean up, pick up trash,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: pick up shotgun shells, take all sorts of stuff out
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: of there, put up wood, duck boxes, put up bluebird boxes.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: It was it was nothing fancy. We weren't doing anything profound, profound,
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: We weren't solving all the world's problems. But there was
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of people out there together in a community,
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: hunters and anglers, people who care about wildlife and wild places.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: And they were making a difference that day in a
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: small way, but in a tangible way. And I felt
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: this like energy when we were talking, you know, with
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: in different small groups, people could feel the you know,
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: the positive impact of in one small way today putting
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: a dent in this thing. And I think that there's
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: and I'm curious if you think there's truth this or
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: not dug but I think there's there's power in momentum
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: and if you can take that little step today and
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: and I think it helps form an identity if you
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: act in some ways. So so yesterday I picked up
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: trash all day with a bunch of folks who care
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: about wildlife, and that steeps into my pores. And now
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: tomorrow I feel more and more like, you know, I'm
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: someone who who works for wildlife, who cares about these things.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: And so when I get that email from some conservation
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: organizations saying, hey, you know what, we need people to
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: call their senators because there's this thing coming down the pipeline, well,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: now you know, hey, I just did this thing last weekend.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: I can do this thing now tomorrow, and then after
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: that the next thing comes up, and all of a sudden,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: two months from now, I'm planning trees or whatever it is.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: I think these things can snowball, and there's momentum that
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: builds with every tiny little step, and eventually all of
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: that adds up. And I think if more and more
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: people start taking these little push the snowball down the
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: hill kind of actions, all of a sudden, we've got
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: an avalanche and we can tackle this thing. Is that crazy? Yes? No, No,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: of course that's look you are. You're doing a lot
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: yourself and at a lot of levels, and I certainly
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: thank you for that and on behalf of a lot
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: of overlook critters. But um, and you can tell I'm
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: really reluctant to offer advice and um, and yet that's
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: what people need. And I think you put it. You
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: put it splendidly, and you know, I just feel really
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: good about that sort of thing. And it was not
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: because I feel righteous or or oh boy, am I
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: a good citizen here. It's just planting trees is a
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: joy in itself, and pulling out weeds is the same way.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: It's weird, but it works for some of us. And
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: and if that leads to, you know, meeting other people
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: and sharing ideas and seeing what you have in common
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: and then taking some next steps, that's just about perfect.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: I mean I when you ask the recommendations, and you
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: talked about Teddy Roosevelt, and I'd say, well, I did
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: forget to recommend that somebody out there just needs to
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: run for president and turn into the next Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: one of your listeners, Come on, guys, Gallos, Yes, got
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: to step up. We need we do need that. Well, Doug,
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: this is uh, this has been just the conversation I've
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: been needing and been wanting to have so so thank
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: you for for chatting with me about all of this. Um,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: I would recommend anyone listening to pick up your book
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: four Fifths at Grizzly. It's it's great. It takes everything
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: we talked about here today and expands on it in
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of different ways, and it's it's it's a
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: beautiful book, amazing photos. You know. I couldn't recommend it enough.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: But what I would like you to do, if you
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: don't mind, is is there any other one of your
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: books if you had to recommend one other of your
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: many many publications and things out there that you think
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: our audience might be interested in, or that you're particularly
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: proud of. That maybe is Collecting Dust in the Archives
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: that you published long ago since you've been you've been
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: at this a while. Is there any other piece of
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: work that you'd like to send folks to check out
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: other than this one that I will shout from the
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: mountaintops for you. Well, yeah, yeah, I'm strictly unbiased here. No,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: I would recommend The Wolverine Way, which was published by
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: Patagonia before Four Fifths, so Grizzly. And the reason I'm
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: bringing that out is I just in the course of
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: learning about wolverines and again starting almost in a scrack.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: Nobody knew much about them at all, and the work
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: we did and I did just as a volunhappy volunteer
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: stand for weeks at a time out and remote outposts
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: and catching wolverines and get radios on. They move like
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: nobody else stays, social systems all different. It was just
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: a every day brought new discoveries and that is a
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: reward unto itself, and and it also brings up the
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: fact that, look, I love to hunt. I love to
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: you know, stock animals, get close enough to watch them,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: and you know, I just I'm not so much into
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: taking something home with me. Um. But man, when I'm
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: doing that, all my senses are firing. I'm I'm the
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: human of the day. But I'm also the human that arose,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: you know, from our ancestors, with all my nerves and
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: hormones and senses going, and you know, like they're like
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: they're built to be. And I know that's a good
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: White guys like hunting and I like hunting too, just
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: to you know, I come out in a different way.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: But I'm not going to say I totally get it,
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: but I certainly get that, and I got it with
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: tracking wolverines and already about them. And you know, on
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: a typical day, I'd be following their tracks past big
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: horned sheep and mountain goats and moose and crossing lion tracks,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: wolf tracks, kyoats that follow the wolverines to scavenge for carcasses.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: They leave snowshoe hairs at the kyo veered off on
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: to go hunt. You know, it's just brought the whole
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: community fully to life, and and I think it gets
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: at the dedication of some of the researchers out there,
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: but mostly at the joy of learning about new species
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: and how they live. And it's a good adventure story too,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of mountaineering and pretty tough animal to work
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: with and pretty pretty fierce, but not nothing like it
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: for reputation for you know, being a danger to people
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: in the woods. But but wow, um uh. Anyway, that
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: would be the one um perfect because it's the closest
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: closest I've written to a hunting book that does that
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: does sound like a good read. That's that's when I
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: haven't read yet, so it's it'll be on my list.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: The only thing I have against wolverines is that I
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: went to Michigan State University and our arch rivals are
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: the University of Michigan Wolverines. So I will try not
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: to hold that against your book, and uh, and I'll
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: give it a read. I appreciate that, and um, well,
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: but the other thing I wanted This isn't um shooting
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: my own horn here. I just it's just that that's
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: why I do what I do. I didn't plan at first.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to go out and learn about wolverines
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: or I like hanging out with the guys. They're all
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: good woodsmen and you know, skiers and and uh, comfortable
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: out in the remote areas. But part way through I realized, God,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: we don't. We just need to know so much more
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: about them. We need to manage them differently. And and
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: it's made a difference the age. The wildlife management agencies
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: are paying much more attention now the wolverine than they
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: did in the past, and the wolverines seem to be
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: doing a bit better, and they're expanding their range over
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: in Washington State down into Oregon all looks like. So
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: that is really rewarding. That comes back to, you know,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: whether it's picking up trash or if you're a writer
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: like me. You you point and wave and try to
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: spur smarter people or more capable of people to take
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: the next step. So anyway, thanks for asking that, and
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: thanks for gosh, thanks for all the time. This has
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: been great. I really enjoyed it me too, Doug. I hope,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: I hope we can chat again soon, and I know
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: that our listeners will be looking forward to the next
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: book from you whenever that comes down line too, so
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: we'll be waiting on pins and needles. Get to work, Doug,
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: thanks much, Thanks for another job. Okay, I'll get on it.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: Thanks again, and that is a rap. Thank you for
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: tuning in. I can't recommend Doug's book enough. Pick up
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: four Fifths a Grizzly. I highly highly recommend it, and
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: it sounds like the Wolverine Way is is certainly worth
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: our time too. And all that said, tune back in
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: next week. We're diving in deep to a specific piece
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: of conservation legislation that can make a big difference this
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: year and next year and in the future, and we
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: can help make that come to fruition. So until then,
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: thanks for being here. Keep on doing good work out
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: there for wild places and wildlife and until next time,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: stay wired to hunt.