Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 909: Deer, Roadkill, and the Surprising Impacts of Roads on Wildlife with Ben Goldfarb

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Ep. 909: Deer, Roadkill, and the Surprising Impacts of Roads on Wildlife with Ben Goldfarb · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the show, we are discussing the surprisingly fascinating science of roadkill,
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: wildlife crossings, and the impact of roads on deer and
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: other wildlife, and I'm joined by author Ben Goldfarb. All Right,
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: you by first Light, and today we are discussing the surprising,
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: the interesting, the fascinating intersection of roads and wildlife. And
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: there's a there's a little bit of a pun there,
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: but I'm joined today by Ben Goldfarb, the author of
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: a terrific book called Crossings. A road ecology is shaping
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: the future of our planet in this book and our
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: conversation today is all about this very interesting set of
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: ways that roads impact deer and other wildlife, and by
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: way of that, they impact us too as hunters. There
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: are the obvious ways you know, where roads actually kill
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: wildlife roadkill, of course, and the many ripple effects of that,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: and then there's this kind of wider set of like
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: halo effects of roads and how they impact human behavior,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: pressure on hunt you know, hunting pressure and other types
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: of pressures on wildlife. You know, the ways roads impact
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: pollinators and birds and all sorts of different habitat related things.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: There's lots there's lots of stuff here that's surprising, that's
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: eye opening and very relevant to I think a lot
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: of folks in the hunting world. You know, impacts on
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: migration corridors, impacts on wildlife, travel, impacts on you know,
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: the genetic viability of certain species as roads are kind
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: of carving up and fragmenting wildlife habitat more and more.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: So all that and more is what we cover today
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: with Ben. It's a it's a really interesting and unique
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: conversation that I'm excited for you guys to hear. Before
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: we get to that very quickly, I just want to
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: plug you know, leaving a review for this podcast and
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: subscribing if you haven't done yet, and then finally also
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: checking out the rest of the Meat Eater podcast network.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: We've got shows like, you know, the Meat Eater flagship show.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: But then Kels we can review God's Country, this uh,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: This Country Life, Bear Grease, the American West with Dan Floores,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: and several more. I think I'm forgetting something here, but
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: we've got lots to listen to after this chat with
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Ben Goldfarm, so let's get into it all right. Joining
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: me now is Ben Goldfarb. Welcome to the show.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: Ben, Thanks a loud mark. It's great to be here.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate it. I'm excited about this one. My pal,
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Ben O'Brien. Maybe I don't know, you're not to fact
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: check me on the dates here, but seven or eight
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: years ago something like that first introduced me to you
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: through your first book, Eager about Beavers, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Thanks,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: and I followed you and kind of your work ever
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: since from afar. And when your latest book, Crossings came
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: out a couple of years ago, now I feel like
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: it was isn't that right? It has been two years
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: now or a year and a half, yeah, three, okay,
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: So when that came out, I immediately put that on
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: my list of oh yeah, I have to read that
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: book because it's right up my alley, that kind of
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: intersection of kind of wildlife and conservation and ecology and
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: all those kinds of things, and both in line with
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: what I personally am into, and then also you know
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: my work life with hunting and writing about those things.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: But I saw right away that it was a book
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: that would be very relevant to a book project of
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: my own that I'm writing right now, and so I
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: put it on a different like reading list. So rather
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: than just like the reading for fun list, it got
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: put on the oh, you need to read that while
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: taking notes list, and so because of that, it kept
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: getting pushed back and delayed and delayed and delayed. So
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: this is a very long and roundabout way of saying
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Ben that as soon as your book came out, I
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: was like, I need to read that, but because of
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: my weird process, I didn't read it until just like
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: a month ago while on our family spring break trip.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: So I finally got around to reading Crossings, and as
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: soon as I did, I realized that just as I thought,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: it would be a very worthy read. So congrats on
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: a great book right out the gate, Ben just got
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: say that, well done.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: Thanks thanks for saying that, and I hope it checked
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: that fun to read box as well as the note
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  Speaker 3: taking box.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: It did it did, and that's that's a sweet spot.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: That's not easy to achieve. Being able to be able
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: to write something that's both really informative and a page
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: turner like and enjoyable compelling. That's no easy tasks. So
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: uh so, nicely done. You. You were able to survive
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: the sitting by the pool with a beer test and
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: I did not fall asleep.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: Oh man, it's it's me, John Grisham and Stephen King
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: in that in that category.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: That's quite the company to keep ben rights. But I
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: want to I want to quickly make this relevant to
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: people listening, because this book is about something that you
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: call road ecology, which to the average outdoors person might
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: sound kind of jargony and maybe not relevant to what
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: a hunter or angler might care about. But I guess
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: to open it, tell me this, what's rhodocology and why
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: should a hunter or angler or outdoors men care?
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Sure? So, you know, so RhoD ecology is basically this
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: relatively small, but I would say fast growing field of
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: science that looks at all of the different ways that
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: roads interacts with and connect with nature and often fragment nature. Right,
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: And you know, I think from a hunter's perspective, of course,
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: that dead deer by the side of the highways is
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: the most visceral obvious connection. You know, I mean a
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: couple million large animals at least are killed in wildlife
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: vehicle collisions every year, and that's a tremendous loss to hunters.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: I mean from a fish perspective. You know, I'm not
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: a hunter, but I'm a pretty avid angler. And every
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: place that a stream goes under a road, you know,
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: there's a culvert, and often those culverts are too small
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: or defective, and that's a huge loss of fish and
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: fish aquatic connectivity and habitat. So rhad ecology basically looks
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: at all of these different points that roads and ecosystems
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: intersect and thinks about, okay, and what impacts are roads
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: pausing on nature? And I think, really importantly, what do
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: we do about those impacts? How do we start to
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: solve some of the ecological problems that are massive four
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: million mile transportation network here in the US creates.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in your book, you write about I think I
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: believe this is a quote, as long as I didn't
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: mess up my transcription. He wrote, the pavement itself blankets.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Less than one percent of the United states, yet its influence.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: The road effect zone, to use ecological jargon, covers a
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: full twenty percent. So you mentioned the fact that there's
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: like a four million mile road network across the country. Well,
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: then here you talk about how the effective roads expands
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: beyond just that four million actual miles. But then there's
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: also this buffer or outside of that. Can you explain
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: a little more of what the road effect zone is
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: and what that means, because I kind of want to
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: lay the groundwork here for just how far reaching roads
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: really are.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think I think one of the
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: reasons that historically a lot of conservation groups and even
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: wildlife biologists to I think, overlooked roads as this ecological
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: problem is because, as you say, you know, they don't
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: actually cover a lot of land area. Right a road
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  Speaker 3: it might only be you know, one hundred feet wide,
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: let's say, for talking about you know, a big highway
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: from shoulder to shoulder, And so you know, what's the
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: what's the big deal right there? You know, tens of
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: thousands of acres of habitat out there, but those roads
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: and the traffic that goes along them prevent animals from
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: reaching that habitat. Right there's a you know, a really
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: famous map. Maybe can you know, you can include in
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: the show notes or something, this great graphic of a
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: grizzly bear's attempt to cross I ninety in Montana, and
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: that that bear is just you know, bouncing and you
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  Speaker 3: can basically see the satellite collar map of you know,
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: this bear's this bear's movements and the bear is just
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: bouncing off I'm ninety like a ping pong ball. Right.
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  Speaker 3: He keeps trying to find places to cross the highway,
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  Speaker 3: but the traffic is so dense that he's unable to do.
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  Speaker 3: And so that bear attempts more than forty crossings over
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  Speaker 3: the course of six months before he finally, you know,
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: finds his way across the highway somehow. So, you know,
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: from that bear's perspective, right, he's looking at the road,
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  Speaker 3: the road is only you know, one hundred feet wide
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  Speaker 3: from shoulder to shoulder or whatever, but it's denying him
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  Speaker 3: access to hundreds of thousands of acres of habitat, you know,
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: throughout the Northern Rockies, right. So you know, I think
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  Speaker 3: I think that's a really important concept that, yeah, you
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: have the the impact created at the level, at the
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: spatial extent of the road itself right again, that dead
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  Speaker 3: you know, that dead buck by the side of the highway.
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  Speaker 3: But you know what we what we don't see is
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  Speaker 3: all of the animals who can't complete their migrations find food,
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: would find mates, you know, who are being genetically fragmented
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  Speaker 3: by roads. So you know, that's another thing that rody
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: Kelogy tries to do, I think, is take this broader
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  Speaker 3: perspective on the impacts of roads that kind of transcend
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  Speaker 3: the relatively limited spatial area of the highway itself.
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  Speaker 2: And you know, another thing that you write about that
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  Speaker 2: I've also seen personally is the you know, the tag
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: along with roads, which is people. So wherever you put people,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: wherever you put roads, you add people to the landscape.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: You create a human presence and pressure on wildlife, and
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: so you get you get animals avoiding roads because of
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: that typical you know, human activity there, So you get
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: you know, as a hunter, we see this all the time.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: As we're trying to you know, as we're trying to
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: fire out, well where are we going to find the animals?
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: One of the first things you look at is, well,
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: where's the farthest I can get from a road? Yeah,
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: And that's the same thing that a deer or an
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: elk or a bear is thinking too, right, So every
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: time a new road is punched in and you lose
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: a little bit of that sweet spot. As you know.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: I've seen maps like this that were they show all
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: the different all the different roads criss crossing and you
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: can find, you know, the actual area of area of
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: zones like you, I don't know what the actual number is,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: but I know that the farthest you can get from
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: a road anywhere in the lower forty eight is not
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: that many miles from a road, and there are not
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: many places you can get more than five, ten, twelve
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: miles away from road in any direction. And that's in
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: the wildest places we have left most spots, you're always
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: within a mile or two miles, and critters react to that.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Critters behave differently because of that. Some species simply can't
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: exist because of that. So there's there's this far reaching
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: set of of weird things that come along with them,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: poachers and top of hunters, on top of all the
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: other things that could possibly tag along too. So it's
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: invasive species. We bring all sorts of critters with us
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: along the roads too. Yeah, it's there's a lot that
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: I don't think many of us think about, but totally
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: it's present.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I think you know to your
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: point about you know, about about animals, especially ungulates, you know,
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: responding to those roads. I mean I was talking in
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: the course of working this book, you know, I talked
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: to a Forest Service biologist in eastern Oregon. She told
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: me this, you know, kind of amazing story in the
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: Forest Service. You know, of course, this incredible steward of
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: public lands, right, but also has the single largest road
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: network on earth. You know, something like three hundred and
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: seventy thousand miles of road on you know, in our
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: National forest. I mean there are you know, forests in
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: Idaho and Montana that have higher road densities than New
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: York City, right, and all of those wild It's crazy. Yeah,
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: And so all of those roads, of course, are you know,
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: how we access nature. And you know I love driving
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: on forest roads out here in Colorado, right, That's how
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: I you know, reach fishing holes and trailheads and all
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: kinds of great stuff. But you know, the animals are
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: smart and they know that. You know, hey, especially during
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: hunting season, you know, the roads bring the cars, the
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: cars bring the people, The people bring the you know,
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: the sticks that go bang and kill you. And you
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: know what this biolotist was telling me is that actually
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: in eastern Oregon, you know, what she's seen is a
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: lot of elk leaving public land and ending up on
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: private land where, you know, where hunters can't access them
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: at all, because you know, those elk recognize that, you know,
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: those really dense road networks on public land and the
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: people that come with them are a threat to them.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, from a hunting standpoint, yeah, I
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: think it's you know, probably a double edged sword, and
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: that you know, roads permit access to an extent, but
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: as you say, you know, they also create tougher hunting
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: conditions in a you know a lot of respects and
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: you know, really provoke this kind of aversive response in
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: a lot of animals.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so roads have far reaching, surprise impacts on wildlife.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I feel like we've established that the obvious one of
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: those impacts is simply killing animals like roadkill, car deer collisions.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: And in the introduction to your book, that first chapter
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: you kind of discuss how roadkills now the leading direct
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: cause of mortality in land based mammals, so that more
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: animals die from cars than do from any other direct
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: you know impact. They are also one of the most
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: dangerous animals or deer excuse me, are one of the
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: most dangerous animals to people because of road car vehicle collisions.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Can you can you discuss a little bit more that
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: direct impact roadkill with deer and other big critters, and
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: how that's both damaging our property, hurting deer in wildlife populations,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: and also a lethal issue for humans. That's kind of
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: a double whammy across the boarder of problems.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, Yeah, you're you're right that, you know,
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: the white tail deer is this single most dangerous wild
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: animal in North America. And that's obviously not the deer's fault, right,
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: that's automotive society's fault. But you know, I do think
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: that goes to show how how frequent and problematic these
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: collisions are. You know, more more than four hundred drivers
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: killed in deer crashes every every year in the US,
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: and that's you know, probably a dramatic underestimyre, right. I've
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: talked to state troopers who say, yeah, you know, oftentimes,
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: you know, you get a single car, a single vehicle
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: fatal accident where somebody hits a telephone poll or a tree.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: Well that was probably swerving to avoid deer other wildlife, right,
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: the person didn't unfortunately survive to you know, explain the incident.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: But you know, probably those four hundred collisions are you know,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: dramatic underestimate if the real scale of the problem. And
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: then you've got you know, the the economic impact into
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: that property damage that you mentioned. You know, we know
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: that the average deer collision costs society more than nine
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: thousand dollars in hospital bills, vehicle repairs, insurance costs. The
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: loss to hunters is you know, is factored into that
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: equation as well. And you know, obviously deer aren't the
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: only big critters out there, right. You know, here in
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: Colorado we've got elk. You know, the average elk collision
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: costs something like twenty one thousand dollars per incident. You know,
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: the average moose collision is more than forty thousand dollars, right,
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: because moose are just so huge, of course, and have
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: much higher driver fatality rates. Collectively, all of these large
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: animal crashes are costing the US more than ten billion
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: dollars with a B every every year, and it's one
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: of the few crash types that's really increasing too. You know,
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: we're seeing these incidents become more common, you know, more
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: people driving around the landscape. You know, white tail populations
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: in many places are increasing, you know, causing more risk. Right. So, yeah,
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: it's this huge, i think relatively underdiscussed public health and
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: safety problem, as well as of course a big ecological problem.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So in the hunting world, there's always this rumor
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: that the car insurance lobby is working behind the scenes
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: trying to knock down the deer population. So there's people
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: in the state capital telling our fish and game departments like,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: kill all the deer, kill all the deer, et cetera,
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: et cetera. That's like one of the old wives tales
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: within the hunting world. I've heard from your research and
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: in your experience as you were diving into this, did
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: you learn anything about how insurance companies are in any
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: kind of way dealing with the roadkill issue, addressing the
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: roadkill issue, advocating for solutions to it. Is that something
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: that ever came up in your explorations.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's funny if people people often ask that,
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: and it is this really intuitive logical connection, right and
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: and you know, in my experience, they haven't really gotten
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: involved in this in this shoe at all. You know,
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: I've seen an insurance company or to say the right
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: things about the importance of preventing this, but I've never
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: really seen any insurance company, you know, put their put
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: their money where their mouth is. You know. There was
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: unfortunately here in Colorado, there was a proposal of bill
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: that just that just failed at least for now, that
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: would have added I think something like three bucks to
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: UH annual insurance premiums, and that money would have gone
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: partially towards you know, funding wildlife crossings and fences and
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: other you know, ro kil mitigation systems. And I think
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: I think Triple A and maybe an insurance company or
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: two you know again said the right things about supporting
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: that bill, though it didn't ultimately pass. But yeah, I
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: would I would love to see UH the insurance industry
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: getting more involved in you know, funding those those wildlife
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: passages and solutions and fences and other other solutions, because
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: you know, they're the they're the beneficiaries. Right when those
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: those those deer collisions decreased so yeah, if there are
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: any insurance executives listening to this podcast, you know, you
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: should should get on that, right.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So something that was interesting you mentioned how we're
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: having more car deer collisions now than ever before. Uh.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: But but at what point within the book you wrote
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: about the fact that, you know, there's a certain number
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: of like as as you were kind of writing about
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: the history, and as the road system was built out.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: Simultaneous to that, the white tailed deer population was growing,
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: and so we were seeing car deer collisions rise and
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: rise and rise. But then at some point it actually
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: slowed down and we started having less collisions and fewer
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: crossings because there was like a a threshold pass where
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: there was so much traffic that it was actually keeping
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: animals from eve from trying to cross over the road.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: And I know that there were some other interesting studies
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: in science that you had pointed to that kind of showcase,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: like a certain number of cars per hour or during
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: a certain amount of time, you know, might allow certain
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: animals to cross, but others wouldn't. Can you just vibrate
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: a little bit on some of the things you found
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: when it came to that, you know, what degree of
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: traffic actually impacts animal crossings and things along those lines.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely right. So you know, so I think I
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: think it's important first to think about how different species
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: understand traffic and what roads are.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: So, you know, they're guroty collegists to kind of classify
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: animals based on their their road response. Uh, and so
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: on one end of the spectrum, we've got animals who
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: are non responders to traffic, right, animals who don't really
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: understand what traffic is, and we'll just try to cross
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: the road no matter what, and they're you know, we've
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: got animals like frogs and salamanders and turtles you know,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: maybe not like the smartest creators on Earth, don't really understand,
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: you know, what a car road is. And those animals
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: are just trying to cross the road to you know,
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: get to their breeding ponds and wetlands no matter what,
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: and they're just getting crushed and mass right, So those
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: are the non responders. Then we've got on the other
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: end of the spectrum the avoids, you know, animals who
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: really do understand that roads and vehicles are dangerous and
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: we'll just steer clear. So like grizzly bears are sort
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: of the classic avoid where even one car every ten minutes,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: you know, a really rural road in some cases enough
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: to prevent a grizzly bear from crossing all together, and
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: that creates its own problems. Right, those animals are really
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: easily fragmented by by by traffic. And then deer are
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: somewhere in the middle, and they're what what scientists are
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: called speeders, which basically means that they're they're looking for
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: gaps in traffic that they can just run through. Right,
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: and you know humans are also speeders. You know, you
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: can imagine like standing by the side of a busy highway.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: You know, you look in both ways waiting for that,
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: you know, that gap between vehicles that will let you
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: run through traffic to get to the other side. And
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: that's exactly what deer are doing. You know, they understand
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: the cars are dangerous, especially you know ones living in
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: relatively irb in places, and they're they're just trying to,
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: you know, get through that wall of vehicles. So you
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: can imagine right at at lower traffic volumes, you know,
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: a relatively rural road, you know they can the cars
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: are infrequent enough that they can run through those gaps
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: if you have a really busy interstate highway like I
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: eighty or something, the cars are so dense that there
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: are no gaps, right, and the deer don't even attempt
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: to cross. The highest roadkill rates that we see are
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: on moderately trafficked highways, you know, like typically we're talking
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: about you know, state highways that are getting you know,
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: let's say, you know, five thousand cars a day. That's
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: when there are enough cars for it to be dangerous,
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: but few enough cars that the deer are still trying
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: to run through those gaps, right, So, you know, along
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: that's kind of one of the ironies of the you know,
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: the interstate highway system is that along you know, some interstates,
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: you really don't see a lot of roadkill, right because
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: there's just so much traffic thick that the you know,
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: the deer and other animals aren't attempting to run from
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: one side of the highway to the other. And so
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: you might, you know, you might look at the at
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: the shoulder and not see too many carcasses and say, well, hey,
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: you know, what's the big deal, right, But then you know,
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: that's when you're getting that fragmentation issue, right, The fact
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: that the animals can't move from one habitat to another,
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: they can't find food, they can't find mates, they can't
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: complete those long distance migrations in places like you know,
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: Wyoming and Utah where animals really do have to move
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: a very long distance to survive. So yeah, that's the
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: that's one of the you know, one of the kind
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: of the ironies I think of roadkill is that, you know,
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: a relatively rural road and a relatively high volume interstate
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: highway can have kind of the same low amount of roadkill,
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: but they're you know, animals are experiencing them in very
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: different ways.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: So one of the interesting things when it comes to
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: the you brought deer a couple times in like white
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: tail deer versus maybe mule deer or other western ungulates.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: And you can correct me if I'm wrong on this,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: but my assumption would be that more white tail deer
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: get killed by cars on an annual basis than mule
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: deer or you know, pronghorn or elk. But I'm also
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: assuming that white tailed deer do not have as large
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: of a negative don't experience as large of a negative
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: impact as a mule deer does, because those roads act
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: as a different kind of blocker for them, despite the
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: fact that maybe ten white tails get killed to every
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: one mule deer. Is that true and if so, why
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: might that be?
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're definitely right. I mean, first of all,
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: they're just a lot more white tail deer in North
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: America than new Leader obviously. So you know, when you
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: look at you know, the states that have the highest
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: animal collision rates right there, they're generally eastern and Midwestern states.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: You know, it's like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, you know, Michigan,
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Montana off and kind of slips in there. But they've
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: got some white tails too, So you're, you know, you're
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: you're totally right that a lot more white tails are,
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: you know, just being hit hit by cars. But I
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: also think I would I would also certainly agree that
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: you know that cars are having a much bigger impact
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: on mule deer from a population perspective, because you know, again,
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: I mean in places like Wyoming, you know, in Colorado
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: where I live, you know, these animals are undertaking these
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: really long journeys, right, these these really long migrations. You know,
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: it's not like living in Pennsylvania, where you know, the
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: weather's not too harsh, and you know there aren't the
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: mountains aren't too huge, and there's kind of you know,
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: plenty of corn and other anthropogenic you know, human based
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: food resources out there for them, right. You know, a
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: white tail deer in Pennsylvania can be pretty sedentary, right
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: and find you know, find food year round and you know,
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: escape the weather. Whereas you know, a mule deer living
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: in Wyoming, you know, has to this really long journey.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: You know, they're moving from their their winter range. You know,
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: these lower elevation valleys, uh that get super hot in
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: the summer up into the mountains. Right. They're kind of
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: surfing that green wave of of of new growth, and
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: then they're coming back. You know, they're deer in Wyoming
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: that are going three hundred miles round trip between these
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: really ephemeral seasonal resources in this you know, super harsh
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: Western environment. And and of course the problem is that
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: you know, if you're gonna walk three hundred miles anywhere
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: in the US, you know you're gonna end up crossing
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: a lot of roads, right.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: And you know, in the in the book, I talk
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: about this very famous herd of mule deer in in
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: southwestern Wyoming in the Red Desert, you know, and these
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: are these are these long distance migrants uh and the
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: and you know there there winter range abuts I eighty right,
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: which is you know, again of course the highest the
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: highest volume road uh in in in Wyoming. Uh. And
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: you know some years, you know, during harsh during during
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: those those harshest winter, you know, those deer will just
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: pull up on the north side of A. Eighty looking
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: for an opportunity to cross, and they just can't find
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: one because the traffic volume is so high. And you know,
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: there have been winters where forty percent of that herd
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: will actually starve because all of the good forage is
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: south of A. Eighty and they can't they can't cross
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: that highway. Right. So from a population level standpoint, you know,
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: that's probably worse than roadkill, right that. You know that
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: a herd of a thousand deer, you know, they could
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: handle a few collisions on the highway. What they can't
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: handle is losing access to so much of their winter range, right.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, historically, you know, those deer might have gone
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: as far south as Colorado, and you know, now they're
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: stuck up against the interstate. And you know from a
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: population level standpoint, that's a catastrophe for him.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I was traveling traveling out to our cabin
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: in Idaho a few years back. I guess this would
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: have been two years ago. And our route takes us
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: long eighty until at Rock Springs, and then he hang
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: a north turn up one ninety one. I guess it'd
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: be heading up into uh like Pindale, going towards Pinedale. Yeah,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: going right towards Pinedale, and along that route, I'm pretty
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: sure this is two springs ago or one spring ago.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: All along the road, along all these fences, you would
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: see these white ovals on the ground, and you would
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: see dozens, at times hundreds of them scattered across the sagebrush.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: And at first I thought it was patches of snow,
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: and then my son asked what it was, and then
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: I took a closer look, and I realized that what
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: I was seeing scattered all across the sage brush for
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: miles and miles and miles and miles, were the white
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: bellies of dead pronghorn Jesus. And what had happened is
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: some people might recall reading about and again I'm gonna
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: get my year wrong. It was either the last spring
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: or the spring before. But there was this mass die
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: off of pronghorn in that herd that just this year
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: came out exploring what exactly was to blame, and there
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: was there have been some disease issues, and then there
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: was also worries about starvation. And what the study came
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: back and showed was that the vast majority of the
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: deaths could be attributed to pronghorn being hung up by fences,
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: stalled out by not being able to cross the road,
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: not being able to get to the fences, and then
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: being stuck there, not able to finish their migrations, and
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: then ultimately starving. And so between that and the disease
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: pressures that had you know, catastrophic catastrophe for losses, I
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: mean the tens of thousands. And that was a very
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: eye opening recent example of exactly what you're talking about,
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: and that's happening, like you mentioned, not just with pronghorn,
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: but mule deer and other critters too. And I was
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: going to ask you which is worse, the direct roadkill
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: or the stalling of the migration, and you answered that,
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: But I'm curious if you could expand on that just
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: a little bit more when it comes to, you know,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: how these migrations are impacted by roads, and in some
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: of the research around that, there's been such interesting stuff,
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: especially in Wyoming studying, you know, the the actual points
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: where these animals want to move through or have to
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: move through, and how there's kind of unique roadblocks built in.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Can you just elaborate a little bit more on what
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: migration research and studies now are showing us.
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And you know this chapter of the books,
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: you know, really drawn from the work of the Wyoming
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: Migration Initiative. You know, guys like Matt Kaufman and Hal Sawyer,
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: you know, who are some of the best mule deer
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: biologists and migration ecologists on Earth. And you know, I
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: had the chance to go out and uh, you know,
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: collar collar deer with with with with Matt and his
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: crew for for a few days. And that was, you know,
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: really one of the great experiences of my of my life.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: It was so much fun and it just you know,
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: just gave me so much appreciation for mule deer. You know, this,
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: these these animals that just you know, hang out in
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: my backyard here in Colorado, you know, and try to
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: trample my dog and you know we see them all
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: the time, and you know, but but we but we
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: see them during these really limited windows in some ways,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: right we'd so you know, they show up in our
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: communities and then we don't see you know, the rest
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: of the migration. But these are animals that are undertaking
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: these you know, incredible journeys. They're doing it, you know,
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: with these amazing spatial memories. Right, they're great cartographers. You know,
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: they learn their migration routs. They don't you know, they
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: don't they're not instinctive migrators. And so you know, migration
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: is kind of this incredible cultural phenomenon that herds learn
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: together and that you know, dose teach their their fonds. Uh.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: And that's a lot of the work that you know,
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: that that that Wilding Migration Eddiship has done is you know,
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: figuring out how these animals understand their migrations and how
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: they time their migrations, and that timing ends up being
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: a really important piece of the puzzle. Right. So you know,
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: the term that you know that the w m I
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: folks and you know other diologists use to describe what
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: you know, these deer are doing is they're they're surfing
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: the green wave. Right, there's this this there's this wave
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: of green up in the spring that kind of lines
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: up you know, the slopes, and those animals are following
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: that green up when the you know, when the plants
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: are the most nutritious and tender uh and uh and
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: and best for them because you know, of course a
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: lot of these you know, these migrating deer are pregnant
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: as well, which is just also mind blowing to think
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: about that. You know, these animals are undertaking these journeys,
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: you know O they're carrying uh, you know, carrying their
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: fons and so that's you know, that's really one of
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: the I think the underappreciated problems that you know that
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: roads create is not only do they not only do
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: it prevent animals from you know, from from crossing, but
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: they can just disrupt the timing of that green wave surfing, right.
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: I mean those you know, those prong horn you mentioned.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: You know, this happens to deer too, you know where
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: if they're just delayed along along a busy highway. Uh,
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: you know, they can kind of fall out of sync
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: with that green wave surfing, as I understand it.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: And you know, and that has these really significant sub
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: leathal effects.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: You know, maybe uh, you know, you don't get hit
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: by a car if you're you know, migrating dough meal deer,
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: but you know, maybe you don't feed quite as well,
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: and maybe you're you know, your fawn isn't quite as
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: quite as healthy and you know can't escape you know,
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: a bear or a wolf as as a consequence of that. Right,
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: So that's not you know, direct road mortality necessarily, but
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: you know it's this kind of subtler, sub lethal effect
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: that can result in that, you know, in deer really
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: having having problems. And you know, I mean there's been
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: you know, lots of lots of great research. You know,
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: meal deer are really declining dramatically, you know in Wyoming
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: and then here in here in Colorado, and uh you know,
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: I mean the biggest factor there, according to some studies,
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: is residential development. Right. It's all those all those roads, uh,
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: you know, going into places which are you know, worse
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: for deer uh than you know, other forms of development,
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: even like oil and gastril. You know, it's just it's
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: just the presence of roads and vehicles and subdivisions on
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: the landscape that you know, cut off those migration routes
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: or this up to their timing and ultimately lead to
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: uh to population decline.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we're getting to a point where, you know,
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: the natural world has been so crisscrossed with roads and
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: development that not only do we have these like moving
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: fences as you call them, but we're creating islands. We're
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: creating metaphorical islands of even though they're not surrounded by water,
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: We're creating wildlife habitat that's surrounded by by an ocean
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: of development and roadways, and that has a whole other
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: set of sublethal factors, you know, on top of just
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: the direct mortality, on top of the delayed migrations, on
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: top of everything you just mentioned. You know, this isn't
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: as applicable to mule deer or prong horns, but with
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: grizzly bears or something like you know, panthers down in Florida, uh,
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: you start dealing with genetic issues right where some of
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: these species are so deterred by roads and development that,
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: like you said, they simply won't cross. So, for example,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: with grizzly bears, you've got a subpopulation around the Greater
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Yellowy ecosystem and a subpopulation up in the northern continental right,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: and you've got you know, seventy miles between the two,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: and they just won't cross that last seventy miles because
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: there's too large of roads, there's too much development there.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: It's keeping genetics from passing between the two populations and
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: getting the diversity that you know, these species need to
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: maintain long term viability. Is that something that you learned
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: anything more about through this process too, the genetic implications
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: or any other implications of that kind of island effect
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: that we're seeing happening more and more, not just with
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: big mammals but other critters too.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, And I mean you're look, you're exactly right.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: You know, you could take you could take a you know,
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: a snippet of DNA from a grizzly bear and you know,
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: and say with unerring accuracy, which side of which highway
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: in the Northern Rockies that bear was born at? Because
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: you know, those those those highways, you know, I ninety
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: Highway to you know, all of those, all of those
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: those highways you know running east west, you know through
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: Montana are huge, you know, huge, huge barriers. And I
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: think that's you know, that's one interesting kind of geographic
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: piece too that I think about a lot, is that
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: you know, our are our mountain ranges in the west
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: tend to run north south, and so do our valleys,
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: which means that you know, animals are often moving north
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: to south, and so many of our big highways you
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: know I ninety, I eighty, I seventy are running east
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: west right, So we have this, you know, this kind
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: of this inherent conflict where a lot of our transportation
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: routes are at sort of perpendicular odds with our animal
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: movement corridors, which is you know, a huge, huge challenge.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: And certainly that you know that genetic fragmentation you mentioned,
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's a gigantic issue. You know. One of
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: the the the poster populations for that, right are these
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: very famous mountain lions who live in southern California just
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: west of Los Angeles. You know, I bet of listeners
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: have heard of P twenty two, you know, probably the
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: most famous mountain lion on Earth while he was alive,
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: and he was part of this little population in the
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: southern Santa Monica is near Los Angeles, where you know,
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: as you say, they're basically this there's this island of
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: habitat in this ocean of freeways. You know, you've got
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: the one O one, the four oh five, and the five,
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: you know, the biggest freeways on Earth, you know, running
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: through that landscape or sorry, let me take it against
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: I know actually actually don't think the five goes through there.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: But you know you've got you've got the one O one,
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: you've got the four H five, you know, some of
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: the some of the busiest freeways on Earth, basically fragmenting
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: that landscape and preventing those mountain lions from dispersing out
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: to find mates. And so you know, in that little population,
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: scientists have seen individual mountain lions, male mountain lions who
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: have mate it with their own daughters, granddaughters and great
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: granddaughters because they just can't find an unrelated animal to
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: mate with. And you know the other thing that uh,
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: you know, biologist see in that population is lots of
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: fighting between nound lions, right, lots of mortality. And you know,
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: these these lion conflicts because you know, those those younger
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: male cats especially of course, they want to disperse out right,
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: they want to get away from their their fathers and
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: the other big males, uh, to go find their own territory.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: But you know, if if the one O one, which
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: has three hundred thousand cars a day, is in your way, right,
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: you can't go find your own territory. And so you're
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: you know, stuck on this island with all of these uh,
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: you know, these big dominant males, and you know, you
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: end up in conflicts. So you know, they see, yeah,
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: they see that that genetic fragmentation, but also you know,
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: the squeezing of territories and all of this lethal conflict
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: between you know, between individual mountain lions because of that
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: that fragmentation. So that island effect that you're you're describing
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: marks is exactly right, and it's a huge problem. You've turned,
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: you know, we've turned all of our terrestrial landscapes into
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: a series of islands.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: I've done a good bit of reading about that same
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: thing happening down in southern Florida and the Everglades and
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: how that's led to serious inbreeding effects that have led
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: to you know, reduced to rival rates of kittens and
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: all sorts of wild things happening down there too. So
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: it's a pathway to slow but certain demise unless something's
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: done about it. So we've talked about the direct impacts
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: of road killed, like white tailed deer smashing up cars
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: and getting killed. We've talked about migrations being impacted. We've
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: talked about genetic diversity being hampered. A lot of these
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: things have all been about large mammals, which are the
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: most obvious of animals to be impacted by roadways and
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: our roads. But you spend a good amount of time
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: talking about something much much smaller, but equally important to
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: a lot of the more charismatic things that we focus on,
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: like deer and the wild places they inhabit, and that
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: being dollinators in insects and butterflies and things like that.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Can you can you speak a little bit about that
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: how roads might be impacting our insects and why that
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: might be something we should pay attention to as well.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, that's it's an interesting it's a it's
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: kind of a double edged sword in a lot of ways,
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: because in a sense, you know, roads are habitat for insects, right. Uh.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: You know you think about states like uh, you know, Iowa,
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: Illinois or Kansas. You know these these these aren't states, uh,
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: you know that unlike states in the West. You know,
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: they're not blessed with a huge amount of public land, right. Uh.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: And so you know, in many Midwestern states, roadsides are
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: actually the largest form of public land. You know, there
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: are these these strips of of in many cases, you know,
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: native prairie plants that follow highways.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: And they're these you know, these these corridors of habitat
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: in this monoculture of corn and soy and and and lawns. Right. So, uh,
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: you know, there is this potential resource there. You know there,
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you're a monarch butterfly, you know, has
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: to lay your eggs on milk weed. Well there are
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: you know, hundreds of millions of milk weed stems along roadsides.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: In in in the Midwest. You know that the monarch
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: butterfly migration uh. You know that runs through the Midwest,
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: you know, basically follows I thirty five right from from
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: Minnesota to Texas. So there's you know, there's a great
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: resource there potentially, but it's also it's a it's a
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: dangerous resource, right you know, of course the road is
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: a dangerous place.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: And you know millions of migrating monarch butterflies are killed
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: by cars every year. We don't really think about insects
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: being road kill, right, but it is this enormous source
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: of mortality for migrating monarchs and you know all kinds
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: of other insects. And then there are all of those
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: those chemical effects as well, you know, all of the
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: you know, the road salts being added to highways. What
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: does that do uh to you know, to the the
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: nutritional value of the plants that those butterflies are feeding on.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: What about you know, the cadmium and the zinc and
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: the copper, uh you know, coming off our vehicles and
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: ending up in soils. You know, what does that do
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: uh to? Uh to to pollinators? So there, you know,
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: there's there's the direct mortality of cars, and then there's
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: the you know, the kind of the potentially problematic sub
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: lethal effects again along roads. So you know that's not
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: to say that that you know, we shouldn't have native
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: wildflowers and milkweed along our roads, right. I mean I've
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: you know, talked to biologists too calculated that you know,
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: roadsides are producing more monarch butterflies than they're than they're killing,
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: and that you know, roadsides are ultimately uh you know,
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: a valuable form of habitat, but again, you know they're
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: they're not the best habitat.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: If you said, you know, here's a million dollars you
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: can restore, uh, the side of an interstate highway, or
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: you can restore a cornfield far from the highway. I
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: restore the cornfield, right, So, uh, yeah, roads are habitat,
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: but they're you know, they're a dangerous resource for these
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: creators too.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, it is really interesting. You've got like
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: an attract and repel effect in that, like you're attracting
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: a lot of these species there with you know, it's
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: I think there's something called is it the Monarch Highway?
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Is that a stretch that you're ready, I think right
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: where they're trying to actively plant more milkweed and trying
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: to produce habitat. But then there's this debate about whether
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: or not you're killing more than you're helping but zooming out. Now,
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: I feel like there's three kind of hot buzzwords these
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: days related to the solution side, the now what part
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: of this whole conversation, and these three buzzwords that you
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: hear a lot these days, and that seem to have
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: a lot of support even across the political spectrum would
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: be corridors, connectivity, and migration routes. If there was if
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: you wanted to like do like a game where you
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: would take various environmental buzzwords and put them into a
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: ven diagram where there'd be some people on the left,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: some people on the right, and then there's like the
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: intersection in the middle. I think those three things will
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: probably meet in the middle of that Ven diagram is
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: something that both sides can generally support. I think as
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: evidence by the fact that during the first Trump administration,
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: one of the good things that happened for the environment
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: during that period was some progress on wildlife migration, conservation,
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: and some corridor work and things like that. So why
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: do you think that is? Why is there bipartisan support
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: for addressing the issues you're talking about right now?
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really good question, and I mean it
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: is kind of amazing just how bipartisan that support is
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: and how and how universal that support is. Right and
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: there you know, there's been public polling around wildlife crossings,
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: you know, overpasses and underpasses for big game and other critters.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: And you know here in Colorado, I think eighty five
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: percent of residents support more wildlife crossings. You know, you
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: see the same numbers in Oregon and Nevada and all,
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: you know, a bunch of Western states. And you know
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: you couldn't get eighty five percent of Colorad's degree. The
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: sky is blue, right, it's it's you know, it's it's
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: just a mind blowing you know how how universal the
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: desire to reconnect these these habitats is. And you know,
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: I mean I do think that a lot of that
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: actually comes from hunters.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: You know, you think about Wyoming as a great case study.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: You know, Wyoming has some of the some of the
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: most and the best wildlife crossings, uh in in the country.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: You know, when you drove up I ninety or one
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: ninety one past Pinedale, you know you would have you
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: would have driven under some a couple of wildlife overpasses
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: and over I think five underpasses for for mule deer
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: and prong horn. Uh. You know, there are some great
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: underpasses on Highway thirty in in Wyoming in a place
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: called Nugget Canyon, famous field deer migration corder. So there's
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: lots of great examples of of you know, of of
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: animal infrastructure in Wyoming and you know, so much of
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: that is is because it's a state with a really
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: powerful hunting culture and politically powerful hunters as well. You know,
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: one of the great groups who I wrote about in
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: the book is the the muly Fanatics Foundation, you know,
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: a mule deer advocacy group, and you know, they were
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: responsible for the creation of a license plate, you know,
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: a special license plate, the revenues from which go to
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: to wildlife crossing infrastructure. So yeah, I do think you know,
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: that's the that's the reason that you see you know,
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: people like Ryan Zinky right in that first Trump administration,
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: you know authoring was it thirty three sixty two? Was
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: this the secretarial order that required states to identify winter
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: range and migration corridors? So yeah, there's this, you know,
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: this great bipartisan, really nonpartisan relationship there. You know John Barrasso,
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: Republican senator from Wyoming, you know, he wrote some of
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: the language that ended up being this big wildlife crossings
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: grant program. Who's the first to introduce it in a
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: in a bill? And now that you know that program exists,
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: So yeah, you know, we live in this hyper polarized
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: society obviously, and and you know, I think that wildlife
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: crossings are one of the few issues that you know,
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: the hunting lobby and the humane society you know, both
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: vociferously agree upon.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd love to see it. Yeah, just seek some
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: kind of common ground. It also seems like it's one
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: of those interesting sweet spots and that it's it's most
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: of these migration or connectivity type initiatives, legislation or executive
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: orders whatnot. They tend to advocate for targeted protections or
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: targeted crossings, which viewed from one side, are like better
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: than like a very far reaching, wide ranging set of
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: protections that you know, some people might be worried about
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: impeding development. And then from like the other side, the
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: more protectionist side, which wants to see lots and lots
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: of protection, this is well, at least we cover the
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: very most important points right where we're able to find
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: where these key crossing points are and protect those. So
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: it's a some people would view it as the minimum
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: amount they can handle, and some would view it as,
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: you know, better than nothing, But one way or another,
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: it is better than nothing. So let's let's let's get
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: a little more into the crossing side of things. As
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: you alluded to, like, just right there on one ninety one,
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: there's several different forms of crossings being utilized by mule
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: deer and pronghorn. But can you can you talk us
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: through a little bit of you know, what kinds of
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: solutions have been found for wildlife crossings and it's it's
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: kind of pretty wild how many different versions of this
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: there exist, everything from something that's made to get amphibians
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: across the road to something that says, you know, a
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: suitable for a grizzly bear, mountain lion too. So could
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: you kind of expand and explore on what all those
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: things might look like?
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, And I think, you know, I think that
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: whenever you're talking about wildlife crossings, right, it's important to
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: start with a kind of a fundamental understanding of the
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: biology and ecology of the animal that you're trying to
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: get across the highway, right, so that you know, those
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: those one ninety one crossings by Pinedale at a place
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: called Trapper's Point, you know, that's a really a really
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: good example of that because there, you know, you have
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: this ancient migration route for both mule deer and pronghorn,
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: and you know, it's it's just kind of cool from
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: a hunting standpoint. Briefly, to think about how long that
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: migration route has existed and how long humans have understood
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: that migration route right there, you know, amazing archaeological finds
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: of you know, of pronghorn, uh you know that were
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: that were killed with stone tools, you know, six thousand
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: years ago in that in that spot, right.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: So I just love that idea.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so, you know, I just love the idea
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: of you know, humans and and and angulates kind of
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: moving through the landscape together there, you know, from this
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: deep time perspective. So anyway, so you've got these you know,
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: these two iconic species both hit in the highway, you know,
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: in the same in the same place. You know, mule
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: deer are pretty easy animals to get across highways, right
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: They'll you know, they'll they'll use lots of different crossing types,
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: you know, lots of data that they're you know, pretty
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: happy going through uh, you know, concrete box culverts as
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: long as they're large enough. But pronghorn really don't do that.
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: You know, prong horn don't like underpasses, and and you know,
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: to understand what it is, and it's important to think
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: again about the biology and the ecology of the prong horn. Right.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: The prong horn is this incredibly fast animal. Of course,
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: it's the you know, the fastest terrestrial animal in North America.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: It was you know, chased by American cheetahs during the
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: place to scene. Right. They also have incredible eyesight, uh,
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: you know, one of the farthest seeing uh mammals on Earth.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: And so that's an animal that doesn't want to be
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: in a little box culver. Right, That's an animal that
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: evolved to outrun and to detect and outrun its predators
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: in open space. That's an animal that wants to be
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: up on the deck of a bridge of an overpass
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: that it can you know, scan the horizon for threats
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: and run away if it has to. So they're at
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: a trapper's point. You know, you've got two types of crossings, right,
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: You've got those underpasses that the mule deer readily use,
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: and you've got the overpasses that the prong horn have
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: a really strong preference for. You know, you see the
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: same kind of dichotomy or division in in bears. You know,
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: black bears are you know, historically kind of forest dwellers
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: who are more comfortable and confined closed spaces, and they're
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: you know, they'll use underpasses pretty readily, whereas grizzly bears
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: are you know, these big powerful planes animals. You know
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: Lewis and Clark famously saw them in North Dakota. Right.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: These are prairie critters. They don't want to be in
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: a little underpass. They want to be again in an
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: open space, especially those sows with cubs because you know,
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: sometimes the the bores, the males will kill those cubs
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: to put the females back into heat. Right, so the
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: females are looking out for uh, you know, for for
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: males to protect their cubs from them. So you know,
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: so so grizzly bears, you know, have a strong preference
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: for overpasses, whereas black bears will happily use underpasses. Right.
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: So you know, whatever crossing you're creating, you know, you
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: have to begin with that understanding of you know, what
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: your target species is, what what sorts of of crossings,
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: what kinds of structures will appeal to those animals, And
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: also you know where those animals are moving through the landscape, right,
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: And that's where the satellite collar data being collected by
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: groups like the Wyoming Migration Initiative can really help because
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: you know, they tell you that that data tells you, Okay,
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: here's where the animals are approaching the highway and would
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: use a wildlife crossing if the opportunity presented itself.
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: Now, a lot of the examples discussed when it comes
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: to wildlife crossings come from the west or the north. Right.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: They talk about the parks up in Canada, they talk about,
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: you know, they're west of West of Glacier National Park.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: They talk about, you know, the things there in Wyoming.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: There's the more recent example down there with the mountain
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: lions in southern California. But is any of this happening
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: on the east side of the country. Are there wildlife
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: crossings unbeknownst to those of us in the Midwest or
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: the East coast where critters of some type are getting
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: across the road in ways that maybe we're just not
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: noticing because because I'm not seeing big sexy overpasses in
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: Michigan or New York or North Carolina. But is there
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: something happening there as well?
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really important question. I think that you're
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: you're right that historically, you know, West Stern states really
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: the leaders on this stuff, right, And again, I mean
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: that's just because that's just because of the migratory nature
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: of the wildlife. Right. If you have a herd of
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: a thousand mule deer crossing the same highway in Wyoming
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: year after year, you know, pretty soon there's this big
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: pile of carcasses saying, hey, put a wildlife crossing right here,
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: right where Whereas you know, in the Midwest and the Northeast,
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: you know, those those white tails aren't really migrating in
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: the same way, and it just kind of feels like
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: they're everywhere all the time, right. There aren't hot spots
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: in the same way. And so I think that you know,
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: historically Eastern states have kind of thrown their hands up
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: and said, yeah, you know, there's really nothing we can
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: do about this.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: You know, wildlife crossings are great for those those western guys,
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: but they don't make sense for you know, for our
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: our ungulits here. And you know, fortunately that mindset is changing.
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: You're right that you don't really see you know, big
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: sexy overpasses yet in those those Eastern states, but you
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: know you do see underpasses. You know, Florida has built
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: lots of underpasses for Florida panthers that that you you mentioned.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: You know, A great example, uh, that I talk about
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: in the book comes out of out of Virginia on
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: I sixty four where basically, you know that that identified
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: this you know, this frequent uh you know, white tail
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: deer collision hotspot. But in that in that stretch of
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: highway and I sixty four, there were a couple of culverts.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: You know, these these kind of concrete sided, you know,
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: dirt floored underpasses that beneath the highway, and those you know,
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: those weren't built for wildlife, right, you know, I think
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: one was built for a seasonal stream to flow under
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: the highway. One was built for a dairy farmer I believe,
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: who wanted to you know, run his cows back and
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: forth under under the interstate. So those weren't wildlife crossings
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: per se. But you know what some some folks at
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: the Virginia Department of Transportation realized is that, hey, if
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: we just built fences on either side of the underpass
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: of these culverts, we could make deer and other animals
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: used them. Right, Deer'd be trying to cross the highway
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: they'd hit that fence line, they'd follow the fence line,
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: and they'd find that that culvert and they'd go underneath it.
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: And sure enough, you know, that was exactly what happened.
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: You know, So they managed to reduce collisions by more
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: than ninety percent, and they you know saw I mean hundreds,
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: if not thousands, of deer and black bears and foxes
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: and the possums and all kinds of critters going back
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: and forth under that highway. And you know, I think
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: really importantly for the Transportation Department, that project paid for
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: itself really quickly. Right because we're talking earlier about how
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: expensive and dangerous all of these animal crashes are. Well,
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: if you put some fencing in that reduces crashes by
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: more than ninety percent, you know, you can recoup your
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: own costs really quickly, which is you know, we see
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: frequently with wildlife crossing. So I think that example and
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: a couple of others have helped other Eastern states say,
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: you know, wait a second, wildlife crossings are not just
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: for Wyoming, in Utah and Montana, you know, we can
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: build them here. And so if you look at you know,
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: the Byparts of Infrastructure law which had three hundred and
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: fifty million dollars for wildlife crossings in the form of
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: competitive grants going to states and native tribes and other entities.
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: You know, yeah, a lot of that money has gone
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: to Wyoming in Colorado and Utah, but you know a
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: lot of it's also gone to Vermont and Maine and Massachusetts,
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: which you know, got funding to you know, build a
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: crossing and overpass over the mass Pike, which was pretty cool.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: And you know, we're seeing Eastern states and Midwestern states
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: like South Dakota and Missouri and Pennsylvania, you know, getting
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: money to begin the planning process for wildlife crossings. Right
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: here in the West, you know, we've got lots of
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: shovel ready projects. You know, we have all this data.
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: We know where the migration corridors are, where the collision
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: hot spots are. We're you know, ready to build you know,
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: fifteen million dollar overpasses today, whereas a lot of the
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: Eastern states are you know, a few years behind. And
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: they're saying, Okay, now we have a desire to do this.
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: We want to build wildlife crossings and let's figure out
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: where to where to put them, because you know there
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: are it turns out that there are hot spots out there.
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: It's not just you know, a white tail free for all.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So so zooming out a little bit more. If
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: crossings get an animal across one road from habitat A
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: to habitat B, you might be able to zoom a
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: little bit further out and look at something that a
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: lot of folks referred to as corridors, which would be
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: these larger protected zones to some degree that connect habitat
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: to habitat to habitat, allowing you know, wildlife species to
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: do something like we talked about earlier, which might be
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: connect one genetic subpopulation to another, or to be able
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: to migrate, or to be able to adjust to a
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: changing climate or adjust to new development pressures. And there
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: have been discussions around these in different parts of the country,
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: Like there is a corridor type project in Florida where
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: they are trying to connect habitat from the southern tip
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: of the state towards more towards the Panhandle, try to
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: protect places along that route along with crossings. And then
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: there's you know, some big, more well known ones out west.
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: You talked about this a little bit in the book
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: You You you led towards the beginning with with how
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: the Yellowstone to Yukon Corridor kind of opened your eyes
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: to this whole idea of crossings. Can you can you
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: elaborate a little bit on this idea of corridors, the
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: importance of it today and and maybe speak a little
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: bit about why do I since that one is so
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: well known and compelling.
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, and you know that, I mean that
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: was really the project that got me excited about this topic,
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: you know, twelve twelve years ago now, So yeah, I
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: think it's I think it's important to remember, of course,
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: that roads don't occur in isolation, right, as you say,
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: as you allude to, they're part of this much larger landscape.
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: And you know, you have to think about habitat protection
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: and wildlife crossings going hand in hand, right And then
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: you know, I know, I know you're a big public
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: lands guide mark which I really appreciate. You have to
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: have public lands or some other form of protected habitat
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: on either side of the road, right if you know,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: if you and look, we see that you know here
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: in the west all the time where you know, if
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: you have a wildlife crossing and you can you can
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: build a great overpass over a highway. But you know,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: if the if the open space on either side of
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: that overpass gets turned into condos tomorrow, you know you've
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: got to You've got a bridge to nowhere, right, And
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: so you know, conservation easements and other forms of land
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: protection have to go hand in hand with the construction
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: of those those wildlife passages, and so that's we start
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: talking about, right, those larger corridors, uh, you know, those
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: those larger connected and protected spaces. And you know that
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: doesn't necessarily mean uh, you know, public land. It could
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: mean you know, a big ranch with the conservation easeman
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: on it, right that you know that that prevents that
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: open space, uh, you know from turning into uh you know,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: into into subdivisions.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: You know, in many places it means fencer.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: You talked about those you know, those prong horner earlier,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: which are a great example of a species that has
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: a really hard time crossing fences. You know, they don't
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: jump as well as elk and deer do, and so
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: they you know, they really get hung up by those
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: those those fences. And so you know, if you have
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: a wildlife overpass, but you know, a whole crapload of
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: barbed wire on either side. You know, that's that's gonna
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: be a bit a big problem for for proborn you know.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: The I mean another another big piece of all of this,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: especially when you're talking about you know about large carnivores,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: is conflict mitigation, right, Uh, you know, figuring out uh
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: you know, how to protect livestock and you know, other
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: forms of agriculture from you know, from wolves and bears
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: and cougars and coyotes. Right, I mean again, same same principle.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: You know, a grizzly bear can cross an overpass over
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: the highway, but you know if if on the other
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: side he you know, ends up killing a few sheep
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: and getting shot for it. Uh, you know, you haven't
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: really achieved connectivity. Right. So you know, these broader corridors
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: like the Yellowstone to uk On Conservation initiative, you know
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: they should they take this really holistic perspective on all
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: of the different barriers to to movement that are out
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: there on the landscape. So you know, wildlife crossings are
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: part of the story, but you know, certainly not the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: entire story. And you know why do why is a
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: great example of that, because they do take that bigger,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: you know, synergistic vision. I mean really their goal, uh,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: you know, is to create ideally a connected wildlife corridor
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: that runs from the Yukon all the way to Yellowstone
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: National Park, so that you know, really far ranging animals
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: like brislies and wolverines and wolves and cariboo you know,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: can can move through this connected landscape. And again, you
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: know that doesn't certainly those big protected areas, those big
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: blocks of public land like Glacier National Park, like Banff
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: and Jasper in Canada. You know, that's that's part of
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: the story. But you know that corridor also goes through yeah,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: ranches and farms and you know, and and industrial timber
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: lands and all sorts of you know of quote unquote
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: working lands, and you know, conflict mitigation in those spaces
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: is part of it too. So again, just thinking about
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: all of those different barriers on the landscape and how
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: we can address them synergistically, I think is really where
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: this corridor movement is gone.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: So I'm curious, Ben, as you have well, let me
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: take let me take some different approach. As I have
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: learned more and more about the various topics that are
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: related to conservation and public lands, and the future of wildlife.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: As I've worked on various projects on my own, I
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: find myself having two parallel energy kind of sources, or
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: maybe you can think about like a devil on one
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: side and an angel on the other shoulder. And the
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: more I learn, I will have this devil on one
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: shoulder that's saying, look at how screwed everything is, look
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: at all the bad stuff that's happening, and look at
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: all these depressing statistics and all of this bad news
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: and dire straits for this critter or this place. And
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: then on the other hand, on the other shoulder, the
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: more I learned, the more I also find out about
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: or hear from, you know, encouraging examples of good people
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: doing great work helping out in specific locations, or discovering
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: new ideas, or you know, banding together and achieving important
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: progress and protecting wildlife or installing some kind of new
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: conservation practice or whatever it might be. So I'm constantly
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: kind of oscillating between those two things. The deeper and
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: deeper I get into all this. So my question for
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: you is, as you worked on this project Crossings, as
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: you dove into the world of rhode ecology and wildlife
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: corridors and crossings. Where do you stand today on those
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: parallel tracks of good energy and bad energy? The devil
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: in the aim, angel on the shoulder? Are you are
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: you hopeful? Are you disheartened? What's your view for the future?
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: Dude? Did you just described exactly my internal conflict? The
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: the oscillation, the oscillation between hope and despair is it's
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: so it's so real. And I think that, you know,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: like any thinking, feeling, ecologically minded person can probably relate
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: to that. I mean, on one hand, out you know,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: I do feel a lot of hope. As we were
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: saying earlier, you know this this is truly a bipartisan issue,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: the need for you know, wildlife crossings and poor doors.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: And there are I mean so many fantastic projects uh
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: springing up all over the place. You know, I mentioned
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: those mountain lions in California earlier as kind of the
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: poster population for the genetic fragmentation that res can create. Well,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: guess what, there's uh you know, the largest wildlife overpass
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: uh in in the US is being built right now
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: that will cross the one oh one and you know,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: let those those cats move back and forth and not
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: just not just mountain lions, but also mule deer and
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: and bobcats and coyotes and all kinds of creators. So
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: you know, there are projects like that provide me uh
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: lots of lots of hope and are you know, are
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: really sustaining. But you know, then of course we we
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: know as you know, as you know all too well,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: and are writing writing a book about you know, we're
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: in the middle of this uh six mass extinction event
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: and our our planet's history, and not just extinction, but
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: also you know, common animals or once common animals like
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: mule deer becoming uh you know, increasingly scarce. You know,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: prong horn another another great, great example of you know this,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: animals just you know, sort of like terminally afflicted by
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: fragmentation all all across the the American West, right, and
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: and you know, it's it's hard to feel like the
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: you know this, the solutions such as they are, are
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: keeping up with the pace of those declines, right, they're
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: not really And you know, and now, uh, you know,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: unfortunately we're entering this you know, this political period that
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: I think is going to be really hostile to conservation.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: And I mean I don't think that we can you know,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: we we know that from you know, what this administration
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: is all already doing. And you know, I'm sure you've
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: got listeners you know, on all sides of the political spectrum.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: But you know, but I you know, I look at
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: you know, this administration's desire to sell off public land
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: and and you know, and and develop you know, housing
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: on a lot of it, and and uh, you know,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: roll back so many of the protections under the Endangered
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: Species Act. And it's you know, it's it's whatever, whatever
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: you think about you know about about the Trump administration,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: it's hard to imagine a world in which it's going
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: to be positive for wildlife.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: So, yes, there are these these points of of of
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: political consensus and bipartisanship in the world of of of
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: wildlife crossings and habitat corridors, but you know, ultimately it's
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: it's hard to look at the next few years and
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: feel really optimistic about where we're going from a conservation standpoint.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: So all that said, what do we do what what
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: What kinds of things did you find coming out of
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: this project that you felt that you could take as
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: an individual to make any kind of positive progress? What
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: can we as listeners do if if any of this
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: intrigued usin we thought to ourselves, Man, I would love
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: to somehow support this kind of work getting done, more
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: crossings being created, more corridors being protected with the ease
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: mints or or whatever other tool. What's your take on
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: what individuals can do to to be a part of
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: these solutions.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think I think this is one
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: of those great issues where doing the classic good citizen
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: of a democracy thing, you know, writing to your elected officials,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: your representatives, you know, supporting groups that support this stuff,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: you know groups, I mean, and that's one of the
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: great things about and one of the reasons I was,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: you know, really excited to uh, you know, to talk
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: to a kind of a you know, a hunting audience.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: Is that. I mean again, hunters have just been a
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: fantastic community for this, for this issue, right and you
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: know I mentioned I mentioned Wyoming, but also groups like
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: you know, back country hunters and anglers. You know, it's
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: creating this issue, you know, the National Wildlife Federation, uh
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: and so on. You know, there are so many organizations
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: now you know that that work on this stuff. And
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: and you know, again because this is relatively it's relatively nonpartisan.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: And it's also it's a thing that politicians and transportation
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: agencies like doing. Right. There's like, you know, you build
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: a wildlife crossing and there's a ribbon cut. You know,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: it's a fun media friendly that you know, transportation agencies
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: can you know, get fantastic you know, trailcan footage of
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: animals using their new wildlife crossings and you know, have
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: a go viral on social media, right and to about
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: you know, I feel kind of cynical about about you know,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: those transportation agencies at times. Right, that's it's like, okay,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: you're you know, you love talking about the wildlife crossings
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: you've built, but not about all of the ones you
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: should have built. But you know, but but it is
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: it is true that you know that this is this
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: is one of those you know, multi win issues that uh,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: you know that agencies and politicians want to be part of.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: And so you know, writing and calling your your legislators,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 3: you know, really does make a difference. And again, supporting
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: those groups that are working on this issue at a
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: state or federal policy level is also a big win too,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: because you know, we do see lots of states, uh,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: you know, states like uh, you know, Utah and Oregon
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: and New Mexico, you know, states on every side of
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: the political spectrum, right, passing bills that allocate new funding
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: towards the construction of wildlife crossing and crossings and the
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: conservation of corridors, so you know, and those those states
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: were all influenced, you know by groups like the newly
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: Fanatics Foundation, right, you know, hunting groups and other other stakeholders.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: So yeah, do you know, just do the do the
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 3: good citizen of a democracy thing?
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it's one of those things that never gets old.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's it's going to be one of
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: those deals. You hear about it, but you just have
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: to keep on working on You just have to keep
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: pushing that, uh sisspician, boulder up the mountain and keep
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: on keep on making the phone and send the emails
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: and uh and slowly but surely that stuff builds up
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: into into something that decision makers can't ignore.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's the that's the hope for sure.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: What Uh, I guess two things here to wrap things up.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: Number one, can you preview for us anything coming in
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: the future, any fun new projects, anything we can look
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: forward to? And then uh, well I'll guess answer me
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: that is there anything you can tell us about the
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: future yet or is that still hush hush?
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, for sure. I'm writing a book right now
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: about about phish movement, kind of the aquatic counterpart to
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: to crossings. In some ways, fish movement as this kind
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: of keystone ecological and cultural force that you know, like
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: with ungulate migration, we've screwed up in a million ways
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: and are now called upon to protect and restore and understand. So,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: you know, projects like the famous Climateth dam removal, Uh,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: you know, where four damns are just taken out to
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: you know, emit salmon salmon migration into four hundred miles
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: of newly open river habitat. Projects like that are gonna
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: going to feature prominently in this book. But it's also
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: mostly an excuse to go fishing and and see fish
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: and lots of cool places. So it's it's my it's
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: my finly veiled angling.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: Project, smart man. As I as I mentioned before we
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: started recording, the last portion of my book that I'm
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: wrapping up now is about salmon and uh. And so
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: I've spent a lot of time over over recent months
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: reading about uh, you know, Columbia River Basin and Snake
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: River Salmon and all that. And then last year I
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: got to go up to Alaska and spend time in
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: the Tongus where there's also to talk about culvert issues there,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: and then of course getting to go to a place
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: that doesn't have these connectivity issues yet like Bristol Bay.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: So yeah, you're gonna have a lot of fun with
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: that project. I can't wait to uh, I can't wait
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: to read that one. Yeah, but we've got to wait
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: a while for that one. But there are two books.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: People can rate it right now? Where would you like
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: to send folks to pick up a copy of any
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: of your previous books?
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: You know, I always love when people support their local
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: independent bookseller, So you know, see if they if they
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: have crossings, your eager instack there and if not, order
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: them through through your your local indie. But you know,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: if not there, they're available and every online retailer where
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: books are sold. So yeah, thank you, thank you in
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: advance to all you out there for supporting I really
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: appreciate it.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and do you do you like people to connect
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: with you on social media or a website or anything
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: else like that?
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure, but my website is just ben gooldfarb dot
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: com and I'm you know, active on on Instagram and
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: Twitter and increasingly Blue Sky and all the all the
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: other places where writers are now obligated to have social
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: media presences.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: Awesome, all right, Ben, Well, I will be impatiently waiting
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: for the third book. Can't wait for that. And in
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: the meantime, I will just send you my thanks one
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: more time for doing some really important work.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you Mark, thanks for having me, and
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: congrats on your own next book. I'm really stop to
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: read it.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: Thanks. If I can survive this next month, we'll hopefully
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: have something to show for us.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: Good good luck.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you. All right, and that's going to wrap it
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: up for us today. Thank you for joining me. I
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: appreciate you being here for this conversation, and until next time,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: stay wired to Hunt.