Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 823: Restoring Alaska's Wild Buffalo

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Ep. 823: Restoring Alaska's Wild Buffalo · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
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  Speaker 1: first light dot com. That's f I R S T
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  Speaker 1: L I T E dot com. Ladies and gentlemen. Joined
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  Speaker 1: today by Tom Seaton from Alaska Department Fishing Game, Montana
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  Speaker 1: Native and Tom runs you tell me the title of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: the program you run.
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  Speaker 2: Wood Bison Project Biologists partner of Fishing Game.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, Wood Bison Project Biologist yep, okay, kind of
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  Speaker 1: lay some context, Yeah, to tell the story you're gonna
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  Speaker 1: tell you. Tom's gonna tell the story of what I
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  Speaker 1: consider to be the most exciting thing. It's big. You're
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  Speaker 1: gonna be under a lot of pressure what I considered
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  Speaker 1: to be the most exciting thing in bison recovery in
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  Speaker 1: the whole country. There's really nothing like what you guys
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  Speaker 1: are doing. In order to set up the story of
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  Speaker 1: what you guys, I'm gonna tell I'm gonna talk a
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  Speaker 1: little bit about what's going on around the country if
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  Speaker 1: that's cool with you. Just lay the context as people know,
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  Speaker 1: and we talked about this's a ton on the show. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: For some reason, the American bison or buffalo are the
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  Speaker 1: only animal in the United States of America. They're the
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  Speaker 1: only wild native animal mammal in the United States of
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  Speaker 1: America that is not treated generally, not treated like a
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  Speaker 1: wild animal. I guess some examples. There's the one I
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  Speaker 1: always bring up, so everybody knows. Everybody around the country
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  Speaker 1: knows or has some familiarity with the fact that in
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  Speaker 1: Yelstow National Park, there's a buffalo herd in Yelso National
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  Speaker 1: Park and they've been in the park continuously since the
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  Speaker 1: beginning of time. Now, there was points in the history
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  Speaker 1: and the only ones left in the park were fenced
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  Speaker 1: in and they were feeding them hay bales. But they've
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  Speaker 1: been there right. However, when those animals, if those animals
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  Speaker 1: walk north out of Yelstow National Park and come into
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  Speaker 1: the state of Montana, they stop being wildlife when they
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  Speaker 1: leave the park and they become they walk into an
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  Speaker 1: environment where they're under the authority of the Montana Department
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  Speaker 1: of Livestock. In the last twenty years, there has been
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  Speaker 1: some efforts to be more lenient with the animals. There's
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  Speaker 1: some these little things they call tolerance zones around the
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  Speaker 1: area of Gardner, Montana, where the bison can leave the
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  Speaker 1: park and mingle around without getting rounded up or hazed
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  Speaker 1: back in. But it would not be allowable. It is
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  Speaker 1: not allowable for a little band of those animals to
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  Speaker 1: decide to leave the park and just go wandering their
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  Speaker 1: way down the Yellowstone or wandering their way into the
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  Speaker 1: National Forest and set up shop, say in the Gallatin Range,
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  Speaker 1: or set up shop in the Absorcas. They would be
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  Speaker 1: under the jurisdiction of the Department of Livestock, who would
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  Speaker 1: have the authority to shoot them, down, load them up,
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  Speaker 1: send them off to slaughter. They're just not welcome as
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  Speaker 1: a wild animal. We have all around the country a
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  Speaker 1: lot of habitat where we could be putting buffalo on
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  Speaker 1: the ground and building up populations that are big enough
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  Speaker 1: to support hunting, and we just choose not to do it.
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  Speaker 1: With a lot of species that are imperiled or endangered
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  Speaker 1: or absent on the landscape, sometimes it winds up being
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  Speaker 1: that The reason we can't recover them is because it
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  Speaker 1: would be really hard, or be really expensive, or there'd
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  Speaker 1: be like intense social risk, right like putting grizzly bears
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  Speaker 1: back in Golden Gate Park in California is going to
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  Speaker 1: come with inherent risk to individuals. So you don't go
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  Speaker 1: and do it with Buffalo. We could fix a lot
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  Speaker 1: of the problem we created when we wipe them all out.
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  Speaker 1: We could fix a lot of the problem by doing nothing,
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  Speaker 1: because we have these little populations all around the country
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  Speaker 1: that could be allowed to grow and expand. The example
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  Speaker 1: I gave the Montana, and again this is all setting
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  Speaker 1: up for Alaska. The example I gave the Montana is
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  Speaker 1: here you have y Also National Park. It's administered by
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  Speaker 1: the Park Service. The Park Service is very friendly toward
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  Speaker 1: the animals. Since two thousand, they've had this idea that
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  Speaker 1: the park and support around three thousand buffalo. Three to
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  Speaker 1: five thousand, I think is what they have. Recently, the park,
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  Speaker 1: National Forests, and tribal entities all agreed on a new
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  Speaker 1: management plan and they're like, hey, we're going to double it.
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  Speaker 1: We're gonna say that the park can hold six thousand,
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  Speaker 1: trusting that some of these animals are going to migrate
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  Speaker 1: out of the park. So the state of Montana turns
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  Speaker 1: around and sues them, saying no, no, no, no, no, you
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  Speaker 1: got to drop it back to three thousand because we
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  Speaker 1: don't want the risk of these wild animals leaving the park.
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  Speaker 1: Elk can leave the park, Bighorn sheep can leave the park,
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  Speaker 1: grizzly bears can leave the park, Mountain lions can leave
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  Speaker 1: the park, black bears can leave the park, moose can
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  Speaker 1: leave the park. Everybody can leave the park, but not him.
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  Speaker 1: If he leaves the park, we're gonna shoot him, okay,
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  Speaker 1: or round him up. Then you got this other example,
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  Speaker 1: like we'll jump down to Arizona for a minute. So
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  Speaker 1: Arizona has had buffalo, a couple buffalo, a buffalo herd
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  Speaker 1: going back to nineteen oh six. Okay, there's this dude
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  Speaker 1: named Buffalo Jones. He was a reformed hide hunter. Toward
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  Speaker 1: the end of the animals engagement in the country, when
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  Speaker 1: they were wiping them all out, this dude went out
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  Speaker 1: and caught some wild ones. He literally went out and
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  Speaker 1: roped up some buffalo calves, and he bought some from
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  Speaker 1: other guys and got this little herd worked up in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen oh six, this herd makes us way into Arizona
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  Speaker 1: and they set up this game area where these animals
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  Speaker 1: live in confinement. Later they move some to another game area.
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  Speaker 1: Eventually they shoot those ones off and bring them in
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  Speaker 1: from Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. And so
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  Speaker 1: like these genetically peer ones. And then at one point
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  Speaker 1: in time, a group of this herd breaks off and
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  Speaker 1: they go down and they set up shop in Grand
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  Speaker 1: Canyon National Park. So here you have the inverse of
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  Speaker 1: what's happening in Montana and Arizona. The Grand Canyon National
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  Speaker 1: Park is tended to be antagonistic to the animals. They're saying, oh,
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  Speaker 1: they're not from here. There's these problems. They're damaging habitat,
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  Speaker 1: they're restricting, they're causing trouble with other wildlife, so we
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  Speaker 1: don't want so many of them in the park. And
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  Speaker 1: when they leave the park and go on the national forest,
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  Speaker 1: they're welcomed. So it's like an inverse relationship to what
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  Speaker 1: happens in Montana. But for the animals that boils down
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  Speaker 1: the same thing where again and again and again in
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  Speaker 1: the lower forty eight their movements are restricted. We have
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  Speaker 1: in in the country in North America. So between US
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  Speaker 1: and Canada, there are about five hundred thousand buffalo in existence.
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  Speaker 1: Ninety four percent Somewhere around ninety four ninety five percent
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  Speaker 1: of all the animals in existence are privately owned. They
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  Speaker 1: could be privately owned by a tribe okay, or they
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  Speaker 1: could be privately owned by you know, an agricultural producer.
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  Speaker 1: Every most people have heard of Ted Turner. Ted Turner
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  Speaker 1: owns a ton of privately owned animals. They're out on
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  Speaker 1: the landscape, but they're owned. They raise them for meat,
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  Speaker 1: they raise them for leather, they raise them for production.
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  Speaker 1: They're treated like livestock. So what does that leave. It
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  Speaker 1: leaves about somewhere four to five percent of the buffalo
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  Speaker 1: that exist in North of Erica are in some way
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  Speaker 1: arguably free ranging or wild right. You have a small
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  Speaker 1: number in the Henry Mountains of Utah.
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  Speaker 2: You have a small.
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  Speaker 1: Number in the Book Cliffs area of eastern Utah. Some
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  Speaker 1: of those have been moving over into Colorado. Colorado just
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  Speaker 1: did an interesting thing and they've made a new rule
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  Speaker 1: that was just passed, and they said, if a buffalo
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  Speaker 1: walks into Colorado, naturally, we are going to treat it
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  Speaker 1: like wildlife. They did what Montana has not done right.
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  Speaker 1: Montana has buffalo walking into the state on their own
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  Speaker 1: fore legs naturally, but we don't welcome them as wildlife.
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  Speaker 1: But Colorado, in a brilliant move, has come in and
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  Speaker 1: they've gotten out ahead of it. And they said, when
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  Speaker 1: an animal walks into the state, naturally, that animal's wildlife.
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  Speaker 1: If you own in Colorado, they're still yours their livestock.
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  Speaker 1: If they walk in as wild animals on their own
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  Speaker 1: four legs, their wildlife. The reason they did that is
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  Speaker 1: because some of these book cliffs ones in Utah are
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  Speaker 1: crossing into Colorado. So Colorado has a future where they're
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  Speaker 1: going to have to potentially have a wildheard. On the
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  Speaker 1: north rim of the Grand Canyon, you have what I
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  Speaker 1: would call it wild herd there. As I mentioned, what
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  Speaker 1: makes them wild is they can move from one jurisdiction
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  Speaker 1: to the other. That's like a definition of wild right.
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  Speaker 1: They can move from the park onto the Kaibab National
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  Speaker 1: Forest into a state game area, and when they're doing that,
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  Speaker 1: they remain wild animals. So that's like a wild heerd.
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  Speaker 1: They can move across jurisdictions and remain wildlife. But these
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  Speaker 1: are just little isolated things. The reason we had I'm
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  Speaker 1: having Tom seton here is because he is in charge
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  Speaker 1: of a program that I've been watching for over twenty
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  Speaker 1: years of finding some ways to bring wild, free roaming
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  Speaker 1: bison into Alaska and put them onto suitable habitat and
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  Speaker 1: allow them to live as wildlife. Okay, So, as I
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  Speaker 1: handed over to Tom, the first question I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: ask him, and this is when I was joking with
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  Speaker 1: him that we might have different understandings of the history,
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  Speaker 1: but he's gonna educate it on us, and it's gonna
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  Speaker 1: be the first thing you think, the listener thinks when
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  Speaker 1: you think of bison in Alaska. Huh, I didn't know
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  Speaker 1: they had bison in Alaska. So Tom, you can talk
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  Speaker 1: a little bit about your program. But for the first question,
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  Speaker 1: how do we call how is Alaska buffalo country? How
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  Speaker 1: is Alaska like? Did Alaska have bison? And if so? When?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems a little bit odd to a lot
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  Speaker 2: of the public. But if we just take today, we've
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  Speaker 2: got about a thousand wild bison in Alaska. And when
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  Speaker 2: I say wild, I mean you know, unfenced, unrestricted in
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  Speaker 2: any way, subject to natural selection, exposed to all forms
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  Speaker 2: of predation, that they originally had in North America and
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  Speaker 2: and and you know, exposed to a lot of difficult weather.
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  Speaker 2: Of course, Alaska's got some difficult weather as far as
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  Speaker 2: bison range goes, and so they're valuable animals far as
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  Speaker 2: conservation goes. But it's like, say, a thousand is about
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  Speaker 2: what we have in the wild. And I think a
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  Speaker 2: lot of estimates say that there's probably about ten thousand
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  Speaker 2: wild bison in North America, like truly wild, not not
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  Speaker 2: fenced in any way. And so Alaska has around ten
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  Speaker 2: percent of the world's wild bison, really, which is shocking.
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  Speaker 2: I didn't really understand that until he got into it myself.
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  Speaker 2: But the reality is is that there's not a lot
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  Speaker 2: of habitat left for wild bison to be wild anymore.
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  Speaker 2: You know, most places that were good bison habitat historically
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  Speaker 2: for the last say ten thousand years, are now agricultural.
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  Speaker 2: You know, bis and eat things that are right at
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  Speaker 2: the ground level, and that's the same place we like
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  Speaker 2: to grow crops, you know. And and so it's it's
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  Speaker 2: it's difficult to try to restore bison anywhere anywhere but Alaska. Now,
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  Speaker 2: like you said, there's just not a lot of habitat
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  Speaker 2: left or places to go with them.
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  Speaker 1: Go ahead, Yeah, I don't agree, Okay, I understand what
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  Speaker 1: you're saying. Yeah, but there are a lot of places
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  Speaker 1: I think so, I think, but it's like a it's
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  Speaker 1: a different definition than what you're thinking. Yeah, and I
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  Speaker 1: don't want to get into it. But man, like the
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  Speaker 1: area of Missouri breaks areas in the Gallant and Range,
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  Speaker 1: areas in the Madison Range areas and absorb it is
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  Speaker 1: just the name a few areas around here. It could
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  Speaker 1: definitely have some man, yes, they just it would require
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  Speaker 1: more social tolerance, yeah, than what you're speaking about.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think there's always been a conflict between
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  Speaker 2: agriculture and bison, and I'm not sure. I've done some
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  Speaker 2: thinking about that, and I just don't totally understand what
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  Speaker 2: it is. I mean, there's the obvious part that a
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  Speaker 2: bison can graze on crops and damage crops or break
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  Speaker 2: fences and things like that. And you know in Montana
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  Speaker 2: with the arguments is to bring disease to cattle. Of course,
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  Speaker 2: the disease that they're bringing was originally from cattle and
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  Speaker 2: got into bison.
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  Speaker 1: That's one of the great ironies of the whole thing, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: is it. Yeah, there's a Eurasian disease called brucellosis and cattle.
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  Speaker 1: It can cause a cow, it can cause a haffer
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  Speaker 1: to a border calf. This disease came in on cattle,
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  Speaker 1: was transmitted to elk, was transmitted to bison. Then they
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  Speaker 1: got rid of it. For the most part, they've gotten
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  Speaker 1: rid of it in cattle and stockmen are worried that
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  Speaker 1: bison will give the cows back their own disease. Elk
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  Speaker 1: carried the disease, and no one's worried about elk giving
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: them back their own disease. And no one can point
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  Speaker 1: to a case in modern times one a cow has
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  Speaker 1: gotten it from a buffalo. But it's kind of I
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  Speaker 1: viewed as kind of a red herring. It's not really
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  Speaker 1: what they're talking about. They talk about it, but it's
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  Speaker 1: not what they're talking about. Well, it's almost grazing competition.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that perceived conflict with agriculture is why
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  Speaker 2: bison are the last great animal to be restored. I think,
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  Speaker 2: you know, we nearly wiped out antelope and both pieces
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  Speaker 2: of deer, and you know, buffalo and most other you know,
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  Speaker 2: cats and bears and everything and elk.
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  Speaker 1: We eliminated elk from nu metically.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, but now we've brought them all back, right. We
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: took all this effort to get all these animals back
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  Speaker 2: on the landscape, but bison haven't really come back yet,
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  Speaker 2: and we don't really want a lot of folks don't
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  Speaker 2: really want them to come back because there's really not
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  Speaker 2: a lot of space for them. That's what's perceived, and.
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  Speaker 1: That is the perception. Correct. Yeah, I'd agree with that.
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  Speaker 2: I think in Alaska it's a little different. The Alaska
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  Speaker 2: Partment Fishing Game really wants to restore wildwood bison as
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  Speaker 2: a wild animal performing their wild things in a niche
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  Speaker 2: that's unoccupied at this time for a large lowland grazer.
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  Speaker 1: Can you do too? Can you two things layout and
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I haven't gotten into it. Can you lay out when
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  Speaker 1: you say wood bison? Can can you contextualize that against
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: what we what most people are familiar with the planes bison?
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  Speaker 1: And then also, can you talk about historically, prior to
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  Speaker 1: any kind of introductions or reintroductions, what evidence do we
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: have that they were present in Alaska?
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  Speaker 2: Sure, I don't know how far you want to go back,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: but the history really starts about ten thousand years ago
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: the end of the place of scene in the beginning
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: of the Holy scene, which is, you know, the era
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: that we're in now, and bison were kind of there's
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: a bunch of species of longhorned bison, you know, larger
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  Speaker 2: bison that occurred, you know, like they're just generally called
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: step bison in the places scene about ten thousand years ago,
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  Speaker 2: when a lot of megafaon in North America went away,
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  Speaker 2: bison persisted, but they became short horned bison revolved into
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: short horned bison, and it's the two persistent subspecies left
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  Speaker 2: of those short horned bison are as bison and everywhere
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: from northern Mexico through lower forty eight, you know, eastern
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  Speaker 2: Oregon to Pennsylvania, all the way up to central Alberta, Saskatchewan,
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  Speaker 2: British Columbia. But then north of that was the wood bison,
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  Speaker 2: and they occurred in the boreal forest all the way
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  Speaker 2: up to the mouth of Kenzie River, which is uh.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: You know, it goes into the Arctic Ocean there and
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: all the way west to the Yukon cus Cum Delta
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: and western interior Alaska and UH. And they kind of
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: stopped at the at the bottom edge of the Boreal forest.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: And so if you look at a map you can
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: see that, you know, the Great Plains kind of ended
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  Speaker 2: and became forest, uh, somewhere in central Canada, and it
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  Speaker 2: was wood bison in the Boreal forest and plains bison
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: south in the plains.
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  Speaker 1: And those soccers look a little different. Like if you
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: weren't used to looking at buffalo at all, I else
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: you say, I'm gonna stay bisonse you'd like the word bison.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: If you weren't used to looking at bison at all,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: and you were driving down the highway a sixty miles
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  Speaker 1: an hour, you might just look and be like, oh,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: some bison. But once you look at them a fair bit,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: you'd look, even at that speed, you'd think something's different
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: about those. If you were looking at wood bison, you'd
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: recognize something's different. They got like some physical differences.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: With thirty seconds of training that they're abundantly different at
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: one hundred yards distance, you know which. To me, that's
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: that's pretty grand for subspecies. Most subspecies you got to
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: kind of have them in hand, and you're not really
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: sure what the difference is between the two of them.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: But planes, BiCon and wood bison are quite a bit different.
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  Speaker 2: You know, the plane spison have a much more forward hump.
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  Speaker 2: It's a taller hump and more forward. The way their
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: hair lays on the bodies a little bit different. A
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: plane spison has that really big, thick cape and it
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: goes into thin hair after that, with a real strong
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: demarcation between the front shaggy hair and the and the
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: thin hair in the back. Wood bison just kind of
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: has curly hair along its whole body and it is
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: a little bit bigger, you know, a little bit longer
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: and thicker in the front, and it isn't the back,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: but it's it's it's fairly uniform. Then. You know, a
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: plane spison has really curly hair around its head, and
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: especially the adult males that get this big kind of
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: afro and and and there's for lack of a better okay, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: and it's just thick and maybe it's you know, six
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: eight inches thick, and sometimes it even covers their horns
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: and everything.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: A wood bison, a classic wood bison, doesn't have that.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: A wood bison has like a a bill that sticks
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: out that's just like straight, perfectly straight hair that that
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: kind of looks like the bill of a baseball cap
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: and uh, and these hairs all lay flat and straight,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: and then and they can get the curly hair on
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: the sides that that can cover the horns a little
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: bit too. But then planes bison have a really big
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: beard and really big shaps and all these grand secondary
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: sex characteristics that wood bison don't have. Wood bison have
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: really diminished cape and uh beard and and shaps and
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: all that. The other thing that I find really interesting
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: is that planes bison roar during the rut, but wood
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: bison are fairly oh really, And it's been hypothesized that
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: wood bison occurred in much smaller groups since they occurred
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: in the boreal forest. They live in these tiny patches
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: of habitat which are mostly wetlands, and so they never
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: really needed these strong secondary sex characteristics to compete with
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: other males and work out which females they could breed,
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: as opposed to the planes' bison that lived in these
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: groups of you know, a thousand, ten thousand, whatever, you know,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: when they would come into rut and these massive groups
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: where they had to roar and have secondary sex characteristics
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: that really stood out amongst everybody else, so they could breed, right,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: So that's hypothesized why that might be. But the whole
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: big hump and the big head and a little bit
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: bigger body size is hypothesized to be a reflection of
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: the demands of the environment in the north. So deeper snow,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: colder weather, that sort of thing, and deeper. Well, the
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: reason why snow is important is bison sweep snow with
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: their face. That's how they get to the vegetation in wintertime.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: And to do deeper snow you need, you know, more
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: bone structure and muscle structure and tends to be able
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: to sweep that big head. And that's why it's not
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: the the humpus. Further forward and.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Tell her how far back you got to go in Alaska, Like,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: let's get rid of the modern times, because from a
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: period I think it was around the nineteen twenties I wrote.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: I wrote about this extensively when I wrote a book
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: that I published seventeen years ago called American Buffalo in
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Search of a Lost Icon. I wrote a story, the
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: story about how some buffalo were brought from Montana and
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: released up in Alaska, and that these planes bison from
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Montana wound up this little shipment of Planes bison from
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Montana formed the nucleus of what would become four little
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: scattered herds of Plaine bison around Planes bison around Alaska.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: And at that time in the twenties when they brought
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: them up there there were none in the state. But
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: if you went back one hundred years, two hundred years,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: at some point you would have found in Alaska there
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: were there were there were wood bison in Alaska that
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: were wiped out, perhaps by natural causes, perhaps by man.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: What is your what is? What is sort of the
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: academic consensus about when they were there and what happened
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: to them?
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Well, it's believed that they were in interior Alaska for
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: most of the last ten thousand years. And there's there's
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: a paper that we published in two thousand and one
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: and it's on our website and you can read it.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: It's called wood Bison in the Late Holst Scene in
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Alaska and Adjacent Canada, Paleontological, archaeological and historical Records, written
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: by Bob Stevenson and several other folks. He was published
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: in two thousand and one and it goes takes a
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: deep dive into collecting a whole bunch of specimens radio
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: carbon dating them and they look at like accumulation of
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: specimens through different periods that and not ten thousand years
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: and the most recent radio carbon dating is about one
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: hundred and seventy years before present. And then they went
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: into oral history. They asked a lot of local Native
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: elders about what they knew about bison in the area,
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: and they were amazed to uncover a pretty rich oral
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: history about woodbison, especially in Yukon flats. Give me some examples,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: so in this paper, I'll read you a couple real
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: short ones. Here a couple that really grabbed my attention,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: and that's here's one. Virginia Titis recalls that her father,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Robert Albert, described to her how he and his adopted father,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Pretty Albert, encountered a bison near Tananau Village, probably in
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: the winter of nineteen eighteen. This occurred when they were
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: on their trap line and when her father, who was
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: born in nineteen oh four, was only fourteen years old.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Her father remembered being scared when they encountered a large
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: animal in the brush. His father shot the animal with
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: a lever action rifle, the first cartridge rifle they had obtained.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: The animal was a large bison. After butchering the animal,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: they stored the meat and an underground cellar insulated with grass.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: The hide was given to their chief, which he used
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: in their quote unquote talking house as a place to sit.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: The carcass provided food for their dogs for a long time.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Missus Titus said that this was the last known occurrence
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: of bison in the Tananaw area, and so that was
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: a huh. That was, you know, nineteen eighteen roughly is
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: what that's expected to be. And if you get this paper,
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: there's twenty or thirty maybe more, just oral accounts that
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: are a lot like that. But there's a second one
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: that I really enjoy, and I'll read it. With regard
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: to their disappearance. To the disappearance of woodwison, Missus Mary
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: Sam said that quote unquote, maybe they ate it up,
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: suggesting that hunting might have contributed to the disappearance of
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: bison in a Black River area. She also described how
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: on one occasion, her grandparents pointed to another young girl, saying, quote,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: when this young girl grows up and her children grow up,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: then the bison will come back, quote unquote. And the
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: cool thing is if you kind of lay it out
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: in a timeline.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: It's about now, Oh the prophecy, the prophecy exactly. Yeah,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: that historical stuff matters, right because nowadays, well, let me
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: talk about what used to happen, because I referred in
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties. There was a long period an American
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: kind of wildlife conservation when the idea was generally with
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: state game agencies and others. The idea was generally the
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: more animals, the merrier, and people would look around the
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: country and they would find areas that they thought were
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: game poor, right, they would see areas they thought should
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: have more animals than they do. So let's say someone
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: goes and looks in New Mexico and it's like, there's
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: just not that many animals in New Mexico. It's desert country.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: The desert doesn't support things. Well, let's try some other animals,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: and you would be able to just seemingly at random,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: move creatures around the world to see what would take.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: So to give you a few examples, like sambar deer
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: were brought into Florida, seek a deer from Japan and
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: areas of Asia were brought in in turn. Loose in Maryland,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: ibex were brought in in turn loose in New Mexico
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: or from Asia. Or x were brought in from Africa
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: and turned loose in New Mexico. Aw Dad cut loose
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: down in West Texas and other areas. Nilghai brought in
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: from the Indian subcontinent and turn loose in Texas. I
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: hogs brought in, wild hogs from Siberia brought in and
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: turn loose all over the place. Ring neck pheasants brought
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: in from Asia, turn loose in North America. I could
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: go on like this for an hour. Bison planes bison
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: brought from Montana and turned loose into Alaska. In those days,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties up into the nineteen fifties, you could
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: just do this stuff. They didn't have environmental impact statements.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: It's like if you had the money and the will,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: you would probably work it out and you would cut
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: animals loose. Right, That is not hip anymore. So with
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: this project that you're working on to bring wood bison
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: into Alaska, you need to have the sort of authority
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: of history, right. You need to be able to say
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: this is a reintroduction, this is not us really nearly
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: moving animals around, right, Can you explain that that process
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: a little bit of how you sort of get the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: political go ahead to do a project like this.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Right, So, the Alaska Department Fishing Game has a policy
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: to not release animals into places that they weren't previously there.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: And of course, like you say, history is not quite
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: like that. You know, there's there's deer on Kodiak, black
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: black tail deer weren't native to Kodiak. They're there and
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: they're super successful. And you know moose in the in
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: the in the Copper River delta weren't there and humans
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: did that too.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: And elkinto Elkin do a fog neck and Raspberry Island
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: and yeah, all that.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: And and of course even here locally, I'll just do
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: a little side thing real quick. Right here in Bozman,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: there's brook trout, rainbow trout, brown trout, you know, pheasants,
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: you know chuckers, hungarian partners. I mean, that just list
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: goes on the things that you're really familiar with that
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: you don't realize that they were from somewhere else anyway.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Uh It there were problems that were created when you
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: look at things that were released in Australia and Hawaii
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: and stuff. Whethy is there's uh, you know, isolated groups
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: of animals that that got you know, didn't do well
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: with with incoming new animals, and so there's problems that
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: they were created. So people are scared of recreating a problem. Well,
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: in in our situation in Alaska, there is a lot
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: of a record of wood bison being there and so
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: what we're really trying to do is restore were these
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: animals and we believe that hunting played a significant part
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: and their demise, and so humans may have caused their disappearance,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: so we want to kind of correct that, but it
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: is a challenge. Would bison are listed as threatened under
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: the Danish Species Act, and so we can't just grab
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: a bunch of animals and start releasing, and we have
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: to go through all the process of the Danish Species Act,
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: which includes the neep A documentation, which for us in
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: this particular situation is environmental reviews and environmental assessments, and
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: we have a non essential experimental population rule for interior
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: Alaska so that we can hunt them. That's pretty unique
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: as far as those kind of rules go, but it
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: is complicated to make it happen.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: So once you guys got the idea, once the State
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: of Alaska. I understand this happened before you're in your
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: current role, at some point in time, like very much
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: in our lifetimes. The State of Alaska started moving ahead
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: with a plan to reintroduce these animals. People might be thinking,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: where are you going to go get them from? Can
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: you explain the source herd? Like if you want to
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: find a sort of disease free, somewhat genetically pure wood
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: bison to begin turning them loose in Alaska, how do
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: you get them?
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's excuse me. There's a park in Canada called
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Alkyla National Park. It's east to Edmonton, and they've got
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: planes bison and wood bison that are separated from each
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: other with a highway, and so there's just no mixing
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: between the two subspecies. And they maintain those herds specifically
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: for conservation purposes where they kill test and live test
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: for diseases every other year, and they produce animals that
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: can be provided for release to create new herds of
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: planes bison and wood byson and some of those if
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: they don't have a need, like if no agency comes
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: along or or Native American group comes along and says
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: I want these bison for conservation. They just sell them
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: into you know, private ownership, like you talked about, there's
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: a lot in private ownership. But for the wood bison
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: that they have, we're one of their highest priorities right now.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: And we have agreement with them to get their bison
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: every other year. Their surplus had them outs to about
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: forty bison every even year, so twenty two, twenty four,
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: twenty six like that, and and we've been getting them
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: for a while.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Now do you guys get them for free?
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: No, we have to pay. It's close. We pay for
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: all the effort to collect them from the wild. I
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: think they have seventy five square miles in their park
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: and maybe a third of that is wood bison habitat,
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: and so they're collecting out of let's say twenty square
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: miles or something like that. So it's not that easy.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: But they lure them in through supplemental feeding in the
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: end of winter, and then they capture as many as
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: they can. They have to run them through shoots, and
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: they have this handling facility and they get all these
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: people there to do that process. And so we kind
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: of pay for that process, and then we pay for
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: the disease testing, all the veterinary services that are needed
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: for all the new disease testing. You know, they do
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: to the disease testing, but then as the State of Alaska,
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: we do it again just to be redundant and you know,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: do due diligence to make sure that we don't bring
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: anything from there that that might be bad for native
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: wildlife in Alaska. So that's main thing we pay for
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: is just the handling and the keeping and then the trucking.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: You know, in Canada has they kind of have their
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: own versions of what you guys are trying to create
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: because they had like wood Wood Buffalo or Wood Bison
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: National Park. They have a couple of populations that even
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: had the support limited hunting.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah. One of the greatest populations in
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: my view is the one in Yukon Territory between white
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Horse and the border, and that's around two thousand wild
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: wood bison and it's still growing at something like fifteen
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: percent a year, really well something like that. Yeah, and
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: they harvest two hundred and eighty bis in a year
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: the last few years out of that herd, and it
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: was only put out in nineteen eighty eight, so it's
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: not very old.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: This was doing good.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, unbelievable.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard from like like that there's some schools
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and stuff that will take the students out to do
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: field harvest on those animals.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: And yeah, right, because bison. You know, I I think
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: if you lived in North America at sometime in the
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: last you know, one thousand years up until just two
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: hundred years ago, you would have thought of North America
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: as a bison continent. You know, we think of it
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: now maybe it's an elk continent or deer continent or something,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: but it would have just been predominantly bison then. But
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: people have lost that connection with bison, and so sometimes
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: it takes you know, training to help people understand how
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: to deal with such a big animal.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. When what year was it that Alaska started to
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: have a confinement area where they were keeping wood bison
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: in anticipation of trying to find good habitat to bring
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: them and put them on. It's been going on for.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: A long time, it has. In two thousand and eight,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: we have imported fifty three wood bison from from Elk
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: Island National Park. A farmer imported some in two thousand
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: two ish illegally because they were needed as endangered under
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: the ESA at that time, and he went and got
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: something in Canada anyway and brought them in without the permits,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: and then those were confiscated by the Fishing Wildlife Service,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: and we ended up with those and their progeny in
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: two thousand and six or so, and then because there
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: was really nothing else that the federal government could do
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: with them, and then we combine those with the ones
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: we imported from Elk Island in two thousand and eight,
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: and then we've received more in two thousand and two,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: two thousand and four, and we'll get some next spring too.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: So what was the most you ever had in one little.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Spot in the captivity? We had about one hundred and
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: forty five in captivity in twenty fourteen at the Alaska
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Wilife Conservation Center south of Anchorage.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: No. I saw those ones there one time.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they're still about thirty five or so there
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: right now, and they've got there's got a really good
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: operation going on there, and those cows are really productive
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: and they produce eight to ten releasable animals every year,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: and so every other year is when we tell to release,
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: and so we could we can get you know, fifteen
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: to twenty or so bison out of that hurt every
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: year and take it out. And then we have something
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: that at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Large General Research
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Station too, and that's a smaller group, it's like a dozen.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: But we are importing the ones from Elkla National Park
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: to UAF these days and just holding them there temporarily
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: and then taking them back out to the wild.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's that process like to go find them? When
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: I was looking into this subject back in early two thousands,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: it was kind of undecided where Alaska might try to
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: do a reintroduction. I would hear things like the I
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: hesitate to even say where. I remember initially hearing talk
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: about Yukon Flats, But Yukon Flats hasn't happened yet. Can
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: you can you explain the process of identifying a place
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: to do it, and then the sort of political and
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: social process us of ever getting the okay to go
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: take this large herbivore fifteen hundred pounds sixteen hundred pound
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: animals and turn them loose into place where they have
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: been absent for over a century. Like, you can't just
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: spring that on people.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, No, it's complicated. The first thing we did
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: is after we acquired all this information about the paper
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: I discussed with radio carbon dating, the oral history, the
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: habitat that's available in modern times compared to historic times,
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: and all that. We took that to the public in
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: a feasibility assessment in nineteen ninety four and asked for
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: public input. And the input from the public at large
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: that came in verbal and written feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: And that really set the course for Alaska Apartment of
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Fishing Game to pursue would Bison Restoration Estate, because the
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: question in that feasibility assessment was do you want to
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: do this or not? You know, this is something we
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: should pursue, and then we were essentially directed by the
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: public to pursue it. So at that time a wood
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Bison Project biologist was created, and that there's been a
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: position like that for the last you know, thirty some years.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: And that was Bob Stevens in that time. I met
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: with him in Fairbanks, I believe year ago.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And so there's been other folks on that
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: program too over time. You know, sometimes it's as many
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: as three people. But you asked, how do we identify places?
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: So what we want if we're going to try to
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: restore a species a place that's large enough to have
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: a minimum viable population, And through modeling of genetic work
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: with bison, it's decided that a minimum viable population is
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: more than four hundred. You'll maintain most of your genetic
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: diversity over one hundred years if you have a population
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: of over four hundred. It's even better if you can
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: get a population over one thousand. So what we were
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: seeking was a habitat patch that was big enough to
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: hold four hundred to a thousand bison or more or
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: something like that. And so it had to have certain
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: characteristics too of not really deep snow and not really
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: firm snow. It had to be soft snow that wasn't
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: too deep, but also the wintertime food. So you know,
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: bison our generalists grazers, so they can get by with
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: durn near anything in the summertime, but they really need
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: grasses and especially wetlands sedges in the wintertime. And so
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: the three largest areas that had those qualities that we
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: came up with and we wrote an environmental assessment about it,
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: and in twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen were the Enoko Flats,
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: which is kind of west central Interior Alaska, Minto Flats,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: which is just about fifty miles west of Fairbanks, and
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: then the Yukon Flats, which is about one hundred miles
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: north of Fairbanks. Well, the Yukon Flats was the original place,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: and that's where Bob Stevenson was an area biologist. That's
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: where all the oral history comes from, and that's probably
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: the largest and best piece of habitat on all of
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: interior Alaska.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: That's kind of that's a stunning area. Yeah, you got
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: like the Brooks Range to the north, you got the
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: White Mountains of the south, all these big famous rivers
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: flowing out of thee coming in there. Oh yeah, tons
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: of mosquito.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a difficult place to stand in the middle
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: of June.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the flats. Eventually, you guys settled on the
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Innoco Flats.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: That was an interesting thing, since would bison have a
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: listing under the ESA Oil and gas and mining industry
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: was worried about the influence of that listing on development,
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: and there were no oil and gas prospects at the time,
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: and the Inoko and so a lot of the industry
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: leaders were like, well, we understand, you have a non
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: essential experimental population rule that protects us and we understand
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: that they're only listed has threatened right now, but just
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: to be safe, let's go with the Inoko.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: And because what they're worried about is that they're worried
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: that you're gonna you're gonna re establish this population. There's
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: gonna be some protection of the population. They're gonna want
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: to industrialize the landscape, and then they're gonna have to
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: hear from people about how there's an endangered species living there.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: So the argument would be, well, don't put them there.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Then we won't have to worry about them being.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: There because it could potentially stop oil and gas development.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Well why, I'm just like, I don't want to drag
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: you into like a quagmire here, but like, why would
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: anybody ask them anyways?
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good question. Well, Alaska, their economy is
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: based on oil and gas and mining. Really, that's what
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: Alaska's commedy is based on. And and so all the
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: political leaders and big business leaders care about the fact
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: that we need to be able to extract resources to
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: make Alaska survive. And so that's why I think it mattered.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: And they have influence, you know, in the legislature and
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: the governor and everything else, you know, and it's important, right,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: and that's why we spent so we spent five years
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: negotiating with the Official Life Service to make a non
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: essential experimental population rule that gives full deference to development
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: and talks about bison, you know, can live and play.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: This is where there's development and and the reality is,
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: you know, most of that country's boreal forest, and so
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: any sort of development breaks down that boil forest into
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: you know, places where sunlight gets to the ground, whether
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: it's fires or roads or or drilling pads or whatever.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: That turns that into better habitat for bison than forest really,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: and so there's it's it's a hard argument to say
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: that that development would hurt bison anyway. It's just that
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: the the Endangered Species Act has been used as a
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: club in the past to herd industry, and the industry
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: leaders know.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: That I want to just touch on this for a minute,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: this experimental status, because this is something that you see
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: come up again and again and wild They're recovery efforts
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: would be that oftentimes, let's take let's take the recent
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: move to bring wolves into Colorado. Okay, here your you're
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: you have proportions of Colorado that have no wolves. They
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: were historically there that gone for a long time, and
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: someone proposes, hey, we're gonna bring wolves into the state. Well,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: right away, there's a negotiation that's gonna happen where you're
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: taking you have a landscape that doesn't have an endangered
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: species or a threatened species, and all of a sudden,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: you're putting a threatened species on the ground right and
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: you know that it's going to cause conflict with livestock growers,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: for instance, So they're like, oh, man, the minute you
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: bring them in, they're gonna start killing my cows. And
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: there's nothing I can do. I can't shoot them, and
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: the state can't help me out because they're they're an
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: endangered species. So you're just creating a headache for me.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: So this deal that will often get broken in these
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: situations is people will say, we're going to bring them
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: in and turn them loose, but we're not gonna treat
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: them the same way we might treat an imperiled historic population.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: We're gonna give managers greater latitude to deal with this
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: new pos population that we're creating. Then we would give
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: managers to deal with a historic population that's imperiled, and
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: it just greases the wheels a little bit. Right. You
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: might come in and say, sure, we're going to turn
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: you know, we're going to reintroduce bears into this area
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: and there will only be a few. But if a
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: bear is killing your chickens, go ahead and shoot it.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: You're not gonna get prosecuted, whereas in other areas you
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: might under different circumstances. So this is kind of like
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: a way to. It's a way to, it's a compromise
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: that can be made when reintroducing animals.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's a monumental irony there, Like when I
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: think the ESA was really designed for when when populations
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: are in a decline, to stop that from happening and
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: try to keep animals from going away. They didn't really
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: plan for, I don't think as well for when you're
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: trying to restore an animal on the landscape and the
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: in Danger Species Act, this stuff has probably been the
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: biggest detriment to wood bison restoration in Alaska because every
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: time we'd want to do something, the bureaucracy and political
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: nature of the Endangered Species Act being involved just makes
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: it extremely difficult. You know, and so it would have
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: been a lot easier to There's been several times when
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: political you know, higher ups above me have said, let's
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: just do this with planes bison. This is way too hard.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: Planes bison aren't listed. And then we have to, you know,
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: from the biology perspective, we have to say, look, you know,
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: our policy is not to release animals here that weren't
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: originally here. You know, let's try to stick with wood bison.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: And it's a real challenge to get it on the ESSA.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: I don't want to stick you with having his viewpoint.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: But so this is I just want people to clear
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: this is me talking, not Tom talking. But you're here.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: Especially lately, you hear a lot of people talk about
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Act being cumbersome or aspects of it
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: to be revisited. Oftentimes you'll see that and you'll think
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: it's people trying to dismantle protections for imperiled wildlife. A
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: lot of times it's like kind of like good guys
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: will say that sometimes too, Like people that are pro
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: wildlife will say that for the things we're talking about,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: where it just when they drafted the legislation, they couldn't
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: anticipate all outcomes, and you don't have a crystal ball,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: so you can create situations that later you're like, I
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: wish we'd have thought of that. And that's the thing
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: that they hadn't contemplated, is they hadn't contemplated what about
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: ways in which it would make it harder to restore wildlife.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: And it happens with other pieces of legislation, like famously
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: like the wild Horse and Burrough Protection Act. When they
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: enacted that, they're like, there's these wild horses out in
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: the desert. People are killing them all off. We should
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: try to save them, and they they create this piece
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: of legislation that winds up being its own worst enemy,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: and then you're.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Just stuck with it.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: You're stuck with it because it takes a super majority
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: to change it, right, and so then generations thereafter have
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: to live with a cumbersome ESA or have to live
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: with the wild Horse and Burrough protect At, which is
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: wind up. You could almost at this point call it
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: like the Wildlife Habitat Destruction Act is what the Wildhorse
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Burrow Protection Act became.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: And I think if you live with it, yeah, if
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: you deal with an amal like wood bison, that everybody
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: kind of wants on the landscape anyway. It's just an
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: impediment to have the essay there because you know, people
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: want this grand resource to be able to use there.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: It's different than if it was a tiny fern that
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: only grew in wet spots along creeks or something, and
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: we really had to focus on trying to make sure
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: there was habitat for this fern. It's not like that.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: You know, people want bison on the landscape.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: So we got a little off subject. But explain the
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: area that we're talking about, Like, explain the Anoko, what
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: the flats the wetland. Well, I shouldn't say the wetland,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: but like basically it's it's a river coming in from
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: the south, I believe, and flown into the Yukon. Yeah,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: and that's kind of where this site is, right.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the the Anoko kind of comes out of
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: the northeast and the Yukon happens to be flowing to
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: the south there, and they kind of come together to
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: make about forty miles apart, they make this valley, and
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: then they kind of come together at the bottom of it.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: So this valley's maybe eighty miles north and south and
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: forty miles east to west and sometimes only twenty miles
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: east to us, and it floods on a regular enough
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: basis that it keeps that habitat in grass and sedge.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: It inhibits tree growth there because it's so wet, and
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: that's just perfect wood bison habitat. And since it floods too,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: a lot of the productivity or the nutrient value of
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: those plants is really high along with their productivity, and
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: so bison really like it and it's worked out great
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: as a good piece of habitat. The problem that we've
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: had is in that particular place is it's snow, and
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: we worried about that somewhat in the past before we
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: release bison there. That occasionally has as deep snows and
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: ice layers and snows, but the reality is that winters
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: have been very wet and warm in the last decade
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: or to fifteen years in Alaska, and that's been really
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: hard on all wildlife There's you know, we've had an
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: eighty percent loss and a lot of sheep populations. We've
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: lost about half our caribou in most places of an
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: interior Alaska, and then we've lost it depends on what
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: you're looking at a boy. As far as moose goes,
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: it's something like thirty to forty percent of moose have
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: gone away in a lot of places in Interi, Alaska,
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: and it's mostly attributed to these really difficult winters we've
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: been having where they're just so wet and warm that
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: it makes snow that it's hard, it's deep, so it's
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: hard to get through for a lot of ungulates, and
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: it encapsulates the forage where the animals can't get to it,
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: especially sheep where they rely on the mountain sides to
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: be blown off so the snow blow off and so
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: they can get to the grass and things they eat.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: Bison are similar, but they live in the lowlands where
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: they get through the snow without a problem if it's soft.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: But if there's a rain on snow event that makes
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: an ice layer in the snow, it's much harder for
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: them to get through that vegetation or through the snow
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: to the vegetation. And so one of the things I
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: often have a difficult time with is all the history
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: and the legal process and the political process and the
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: funding has all come together and culminated in to now
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: for releasing wood bison. But the weather is just really
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: difficult because it's hard for all angulates right now, and
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: we're trying to restore a species of ungula in the midst.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: Of this is this winter shape, and it would be
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: more the same, No, it's the opposite, which is great.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: Like last winter, the winner of twenty four to twenty five,
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: we had two ice storms even in Fairbanks. It was crazy,
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: you know, trees falling down everywhere and forage getting you know,
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: covered over with ice. But this winter has been like
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: an old school winter, the winters I remember from my
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: twenties and thirties where it's really cold. We've had long,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: long spells of thirty below forty below the snow falls,
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: but it's just super dry. It's like the way it
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: used to be, you know. So the snow can two
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: feet deep, but you could just smack your hand right
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: through the whole layer of snow, you know, it's just
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: so easy to get through. And so bison and moose
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: are I think, are probably doing real well this one
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: so far. You know, I haven't had any mortalities from
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: snow conditions, and in the bison herd that we just
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: released in mental flats.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: So talk about how you guys got them in how
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: you guys brought animals in for on the Innoko Valley.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: Okay, so in the Enoko this is well. First of all,
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: I mentioned that that local people were really supportive when
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: we were trying to pick between Yukon flats, mental flats,
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: and Oco flats. Uh, the Inoko people were always, hey,
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: bring them here. You know, if you got political or
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: otherwise conflicts in that country, bring them to us. And
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: so that was one of the major decisions, not just
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: the the lack of conflict oil and gas industry, but
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: also the support from local people made us go there.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: So now now that is that when you say that,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: is that with with Native Alaskan and who who is there? Like,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: what group is there?
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: So there's four villages around the Yoko landscape where the
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: bison are, and that's the villages of Grayling and vic
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: Shagalak and Holy Cross. They call it the gash area,
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: you know, just the abbreviation of those four places. And
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: so those are communities that are they're mostly Native, but
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: there's other you know, people, non natives in those villages too,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: and they've been involved in the process of deciding whether
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: bison could should go there. Or not through through the
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: whole time. Now, when we've went through all the political
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: process and all the public planning process that we did,
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: you know, we finally got down to okay, we're going
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: to take bison there in the spring of twenty fifteen,
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: and so we had to get bison. This place is
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: more than three hundred miles from the closest road, you know,
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: the road system. You know, there's a couple of little
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: roads to airports and stuff like that from villages, but
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: it's really remote and it's way down the Yukon River
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: from any road too. So what we did was we
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: had these animals in the Alaska Whilife Conservation Center, and
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: like I said, at that time, we had about one
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: hundred and forty five there. I took one hundred and
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: third of them and took them to the Ynoko. But
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: it was it was kind of a complicated process. The
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: state only had enough money at that time to release
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: a smaller subset than this one hundred and forty five
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: we had in captivity, and so I kind of had
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: to do a piece mail bit by bit, and I
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: was able to get donations from Safari Club and Bass
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: Pro and then match that or really with match that
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: with Pittman Robertson funds and come up with enough money
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: to fly bison. First truck them far out that they did,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: which was great. Yeah, yeah, and uh, first truck bison
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: from the Alaska Islet Conservation Center to Anchorage Airport, put
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: them on Linden cargo plane see one thirties and fly
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: them to Shaga Luck which had a good runway with
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: bison habitat nearby and a place a little road we
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: could take bison. We could pull them in these containers
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: to a little pen that we could build along the
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: Enoko River. And so we took a hundred total of
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: fifty cows and fifty younger animals there in the spring
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: of twenty fifteen, that was like late March twenty fifteen,
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: and we released them on April second, twenty fifteen, and
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: that was I think there was seven loads herkloads went
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: back and forth with feed equipment, bison, all kinds of stuff.
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: But in the previous winter we'd built this like six
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: acre pen that was kind of divided into pieces that
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: we held them in. That was about three and a
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: half miles out of the town of shag Look. Anyway,
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: we released those animals, and then in May and June
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: of that following summer, we released a load of bulls
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: by bar, two loads of bulls by barge, as I
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: realized that I had enough money to do that through donations.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: So you brought the females in by a plane? Did
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: you not bring the bulls in by playing because they're
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: too kind of wild?
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: Well, they're big, and then you know, if you fly stuff,
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: it's you know, the more weight, the more difficult it is.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: So I brought fifty cows and then fifty young animals.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: Those fifty young animals were about half and half male
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: and female. So there was plenty of bulls there to breed.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Like they would have gotten old enough bread anyways.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I had all these adult bulls
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: in captivity that that I wanted them to be out
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: there too, And so the barge. Yeah, I put the
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: barge process out to bid, which would have been a
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: seven hundred and fifty miles that would I think it's yeah,
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: somewhere around seven hundred and some miles from the barge
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: station at Nynana where the Parks Highway hits the Tannel River.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: They would get barged down the tanne down the Yukon
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: to the mouth of the Enoko and then back up
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: the Enoko to where these cows were. I put that
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: out to bid and one of the bidders.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: Seven hundred river miles.
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, that's crazy.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: Well, that gives you a sense of the remoteness of
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: that stuff. Seven hundred river miles. Yeah.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And it took like four four plus days. So
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: we had to truck them about one hundred miles actually
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: like two hundred some miles two hundred and fifty miles
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: or so by by a semi truck and then get
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: them on the barge and then go down the river.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: And that whole process was four and a half to
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: five and a half days. But the cool thing is
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: there was a guy named Charlie that owned inland barge
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: at the time, and he drastically discounted his rate to
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: barge those bison seven or d fifty miles because he
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: really wanted to see this project, to see you really Yeah,
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: he was super cool guy's great man.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: And.
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: He helped us git those animals down there. And so
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: what they would do is they'd come down by barge
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: and it would take them all those days. I'd be
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: down there with the cows, and I would fly to
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: find out where the cows were and figure out where
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: we could land the barge closest to the cows. And
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: with the cows and young animals, we did what's called
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: a soft release, where you hold them to kind of
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: get him to calm down before you release them, so
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: you don't get animals just like scattering everywhere from fear
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: of the stress of transportation. So we held those animals
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: about ten days and then they kind of they stayed
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: there pretty good. Well. Then I would figure out where
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: they were at when the bulls were coming, and then
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: I would just hard release the bulls, which means you
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: just show up and open the gates onto the bank.
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: But we needed a place where we could you know,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: land the barge and all that. Anyway, it all worked
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: out pretty good, and about sixty percent of the bulls
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: got into those cows in the first twenty four hours.
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: The other thirty percent of the bulls would just kind
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: of wander around and eventually connected with the cows.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: But you think they smell them and find them.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: Man, I don't know. I think it's smell. I suspect
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: there may even be some sort of low low frequency
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: sound that they do, you know, like elephants do that
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: low frequency sound that communicative long distances. And I can
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: hear bison making low frequency grunts and stuff. But you know,
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: my ear, you know, nobody's ear. Human ear can't go
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: that low. So I don't know if anybody's testing that
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: with bison, but it's fascinating.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: So I just went right to it.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: That's crazy. So you hear you have you know, these
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: animals have been in captivity most of their life. You
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: got these bulls that have never been allowed to be
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: with the cows other than when they were first young animals.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: You kept them separate in captivity. You fed them. Hey,
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: they're just in a pen, you know, a thirty forty
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: eight re pen their entire life. You take them to
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: this place that's a thousand miles away in total wilderness
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: and just dump them out on the river bank and
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: they just navigate to a cowgroup that's a you know,
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: a mile away or something over the course of a
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: night or something. And it's just it's mind blowing. That
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: other also, when we released these cows and young animals,
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: a lot of the young animal we made feeding stations
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: because I had all this grand ideas that I thought, well,
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: if I make feeding stations on these native sedge habitats,
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: they'll kind of transition from captive feeds to wild feeds
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: and stuff. And they kind of kept their calves there
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: a little bit. And by calves, I mean like eleven
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: month old. But the cow started doing this the exploratory forays,
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: and they'd go on a foray until you know, they'd
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: walk five ten miles until they got out of bison
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: habitat and they would walk back in to where to
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: that original spot that I released them, and then they
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: would take another exploratory forewhere in a different direction, and
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: they would come back. And they did that over and
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: over again until they went all the way around the
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: you know, all directions and every it depended on how
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: much bison habitat there were there was available that they
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: would walk through. So to the south bison habitat goes
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: for sixty miles and they would walk that whole sixty
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: miles and they'd get to the end of it where
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: they hit canopy forest, and they would turn back and
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: go all way back. Oh really, yeah, it was really cool.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: And so here you have these animals that haven't been
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: wild during their lifetimes that can just navigate a landscape
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: so well, and and and they would, they would they
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: do all that well, then in the winter they would
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: go to these places that were really good habitat winter
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: habitat and summer habitat. And if you look at it.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: It's exactly they they they were just like serving the
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: whole lampscape.
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: Okay, what do we have here, and we're going to
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: cover fifteen hundred square miles in the course of this
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: summer and figure out what's out there, and then we're
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: going to use it. And they found places, for example,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: that have a lower snow load than anywhere else. Now
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: I didn't even know that this this low snow existed
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: in this little snow shadow behind the Russian mountains, which
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: is about sixty miles to the south. And now they
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: all winter down there. They go down to this place
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: that's maybe ten miles across that you know, the storms
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: come in off the Yk Delta. They go over the
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: Russian mountains and there's just this little spot where, you know,
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: not little ten miles across that has low snow shadow yep,
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: and they go there, you know, for winter. That's where
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: they winter now, and that they found that sixty miles
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: away from their release site. And so there understanding of
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: navigation and habitat is so much greater than us. You know,
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: it's pretty cool, you.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Know when you mentioned doing the cold release, and you
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: hear this in wildlife work a fair bit where you
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: take animals to a spot where you're going to release them.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: It could be any number of kind of creatures you
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: do this with, and like you said, you bring them
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: into an enclosure and feed them there and just let
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: them calm down. And then one day you leave the
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: door open, right and they might even leave and come back,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: but just try to get them settle in. There's a
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: great story from Alaska when they brought those ones up
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: in the twenties. They went to this area delta junction,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: and eventually they got a bunch of them there and
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: they wanted to just try to move them around. So
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: at one point they take i think it was thirteen
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: of them, add a delta junction and bring them up
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: the Slana towards Slann of Mine in a truck and
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: they just opened the door of the truck and show
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: them all out of the truck. Well, they split for
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: so long that people thought they were dead. I mean
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: people will there'd be rumors of them. People applying over
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: would see them or something. And they didn't settle in
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: for a hundred miles. And that's the ones that wound
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: up being in.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: That copper herd.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the copper herd, so like the Nodina, Doddina Chattisleena,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: and they're migrating between a glacier and all the way
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: down to the Copper River. But they went one hundred
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: miles before they found a spot they liked, you know.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: And that's like a cold that's a hot release right there.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they just split. You know.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: I know a daughter of a homesteader name's Sharon, and
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: she used to live on the Danelli Highway and they
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: would see him years after that release in Slanta and
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: she'd say, well, there was you know, when I was
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: a kid, the bison walked through here, and then three
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: years later they walked through there. And yeah, I think
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: one of the issues with that is that we didn't
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: understand their habitat needs as much then. And if you
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: look at the habitat around slam And it's kind of
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: Tussic thunder, which is not it's not quite like Alpine
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: tussic tunder it, but it's it's it's tussics, and it's
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: uh not what bisons select for habitat. They'll eat some
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: some tustics in the spring, you know, especially the top
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: end that turns green first. I mean, that's what a
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: tussic really is, is just a micro climate that allows
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: you know, thowd parts at the top while the bottoms frozen. Anyway,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: it seemed like they didn't like that habitat and that
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: hard release might have been not enough to keep them
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: there too.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: So some of the ones you guys cut loose, you
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: were telling me, they went on some tracks. Man. Yeah,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: if you talk about a few of the outliers, yeah,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: like what they did, why they did it, you know,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: but mostly I guess you don't know the why, but
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: the what is incredible.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I want to make it clear first off that
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: that ninety eight and a half percent of them stayed
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: right where we had a habitat assessment and right where
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: we wanted them to stay. And so these really are outliers.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: They're they're they're very unique individuals.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: So that's a that's a solid point ninety eight point
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: five percent stayed put. Of course, let's talk about the
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: one point yeah, right, So the one point five percent
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: was three animals and that was.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: Uh. We had two cows that went on really long
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: exploratory forays and a bull and I'll explain them all
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: right now. So we had a ten month old cow
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: that just disappeared right after release, within maybe less than
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: a month of when we released animals in the spring
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: of twenty fifteen, not wearing a collar. Well, she had
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: a collar on, but then at that time, we made
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: them out of like spandex, like you'd wrap your ankle with,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: you know, the spanex wrap with a little canister collar,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: and it was a VHF. So I had to fly
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: and actually get within like ten miles of it to
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: hear it. And then since it was made out of
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: spanex with this growing animal, so that it would just
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: rip off early and when I was radio tracking, that
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: one just disappeared. And so sometimes they go off the
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: air and things, and so within a month or so
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: after release, I couldn't hear her, and I thought she
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: was just you know, her collar fell off and fell
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: in the mud somewhere or something like that. So I
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: didn't know. Well, a biologist in Galina spotted her that
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: winter in a in a habitat about I think one
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty miles north of where we released him,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: and she's by herself still, and we went and called
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: caught her then and put a caller spelled.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: He was a biologist doing aerial surveys and and spotted her.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: And you were able to go find it.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well he he yeah, his name's Brad. He
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: lives in Gallina as a great biologist, and he uh
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: he kind of kept track of her, you know, and
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: uh so we went and searched for uh and found
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: her in the winter when things were froze up and uh.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: And you know, bison, they're not that hard to see
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: that they're they're dark, and they stay in open areas,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: and so you can you can tendly generally pick him out. Anyway,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: we put a caller on and we've tracked her ever since.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: And she stayed up there, uh, which was in like
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: if anybody knows that that the area it's like the
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: Pilot Mountain habitat, you know, the marshy area, the big
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: open marsh areas, and so she like that. But then
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: she moved down in the Cayu Flats east of Caltag.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: After that she started kind of migrating back and forth
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: between those two kind of really nice wood bison habitats,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: always by herself, always by herself. And she's stayed now
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: she's she's east of Caltag now in the Kayu Sto. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: so she's old.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: What is she?
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: What would she be this year? She'd be twenty or twelve,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: you know, coming.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: There's never like just lived the rest of her life
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: on old spinster.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: I guess so. And we've had some that The reason
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: why we don't add more bison there is that it
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: has really deep snows there, and uh, I think without
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: the demands of gestation and lactation, she's been able to
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: survive even in these horrible winters where the snow will
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: be you know, forty inches deep with ice layers and
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff. And she just should just be
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: standing out there and doing her thing. And yeah, anyway,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: kind of depressing it is. Yeah, but here's here's the
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: very interesting thing is that I often wondered, well, why
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: was it her? Did she go do that? I tried
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: to take all the animals from captivity, you know, the
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: full social structure that we had in captivity that because
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: bison's social structure is a very powerful thing, and it's
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: generally matriarchal lead. And then they and these big groups
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: of bison include all the young animals from calves up
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: to about three years old. Once they're three year olds,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: the bulls kick off and go do their own thing,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: but the cows tend to stay with the older cows
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: for their whole life. So and I think if you
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: look at bison and the way that they're a generalist
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: grazer and they can occupy all kinds of different niche
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: like I mentioned, from northern Mexico to Pennsylvania to Oregon
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: to the Arctic Ocean. I think they can do so
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: much diversity because of their ability to learn how to
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: adapt to a particular site, and they are very their
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: adaptation is very plastic. Since they're generalists, they can occupy
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: all these places and just learn what the best thing
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: to eat is there. And I think part of that
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: is the education from the adults, you know, like hey,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: you know, eat this and not that, and go here
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: and not there and that sort of thing. Anyway, that's
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: the preface to the concept of why I think she
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: went away the cow that gave birth to that calf
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: that did that. She was still back in captivity. She's
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: one of the cows they didn't take out because she
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: was so n me that I didn't want her to
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: hurt herself in transport, So I left her back in
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: captivity because I thought she just might throw a fit
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: and you know, hurt herself and.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: Her calf didn't have that bond to the herd.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: And split looking for mom. I don't know that this
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: is totally you know, a guess.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: But if you can somehow measure her contentment, like is
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: she content or not content where.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: She's at now, I don't know. I don't know much.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: I think I think she knows. I think she knows
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: how to get back, you know, yeah, maybe not.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: Well, if you look at the work of the Monteeth Shop,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: Kevin Monteeth, those things have incredible abilities, Yeah, to retrace journeys. Yeah,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: like when they go somewhere, they can, I mean from
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: his stuff, his collaring projects, not with bison, but with
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: Mule de Or and Elk. When they go somewhere, they
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: can damn sure walk back on their same tracks, like
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: they know where they're going.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: And maybe she was kind of in shock. When she
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: left because she just got transported and I don't really know,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: but onto the other things because it ties into that
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: one a bowl. Then in twenty sixteen, so a year
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: after release left and went north to the Cayu Flats
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: where this cow that had already gone up there. Let's
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: say she's cow number one and he's bull number one.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: She was going back and forth between the Kyo Flats
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: and the Pilot Mountain area. This bull went up to
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: the Cayu Flats and so at one point we had
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: both this cow disperser and a bull disperser in the
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: Kyu Flats and a lot of local people were like, oh,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: we're not gonna make a herd, you know, this is
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: really gonna work out. And then he stayed there.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: And then how close did they get to each other?
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: Maybe fifteen mile apart or something like that, so not
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: quite close enough I guess to smell each other or
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: whatever it's like it was. And then uh, rut happens. Right,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: So this bull that did this dispersal, you know, he
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: just takes off on heads north and rut and she
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: starts heading west. No, no, she's she was north of
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: him at the time, and they crossed trails like they
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: were like four days different or five days different or
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: something like that. But they didn't you know, like turn around,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: try to find each other whatever. And the bull went.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: Now onto the story of the bull. He crossed the Yukon,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: got into the kayakuk went all swam. You know, they're
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: good swimmers. They they're they're very dense and they don't
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: have hollow hair, so they swim really low. Like when
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: a bison swims. The only thing sticking out is like
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: its nostrils, its eyes, and its horns and maybe a
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: little bit of its hump and uh so that you
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: don't see much and they can be drowned easily with waves.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: But yeah, he crossed the Yukon. In fact, there are
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: those cowgroups and those exploratory forays I talked about. In
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: that first summer, we had some that were crossing the
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: Yukon with calves and everything down in that lower Yukon
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: it's a mile or more wide, and then going back, Yep,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: they were just you know, they go over there for
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: a week and then they crossed back to the Yukon for
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: a week and yeah, just crazy stuff. Anyway, this bull
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: went north. He went up to Kayakuk, hit the upper Kobuk,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: went into the Brooks Range and got up in the
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: high Brooks Range between the Kobuk and the no Attack
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: and and Rutt was over by then. He got up
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: in there in like October or something, and I don't
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: know what happened to him, but he died somewhere in
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: there in late winter. And if he had a GPS
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: color and she'd kind of see his movement, say, he
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: looked to me like he got up in this high
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: mountain valley and then couldn't get out of it. And
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: I think what had happened. He must have been injured
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: or something, because when we finally dug him out of
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: like nine feet of snow, he you know, he died
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: in there, and the way he was trying to make
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: forays out of this valley, he just couldn't make it out.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: And I don't think it's because it was too much
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: snow at the time. I think that, you know, he
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: got buried in snow afterward. But anyway, and then the
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: other the third one that I know of big dispersal,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: was a cow that left left the initial range, went
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: south around Anniak and Kowskeg, and then came back to
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: the main herd, and then she left again a few
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: months later and went down by Russian Mission, which is
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: so Annie and Kowskak are on the lower Cuscquim. Then
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: she went down Russian Mission, which is the lower Yukon.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: And when I say those villages, I mean like right
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: out the village, I mean that's the closest landmark. Yeah.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: She spent much of a winter down in the mountains
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: or the hills around Russian Mission, and then she worked
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: her way down and end up on the lower Cuscquim.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: And she was like, we called her like a diplomat
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: because everywhere she went, you know, everybody was, you know,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: writing us letters and called man, the wood bison's here.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: People.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, they were super excited about it. In fact,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: you know, we got a light, nice long letter from
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: the village of Eke where they said, you know, hey,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: how can we get more wood bison down here? I
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: really like this, you know, we want to start a
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: population here too, and all that. And but it went
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: past Eke and went to down by Quinnahawk.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: How far from the release.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: Uh, it's probably it's probably something like one hundred and
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: fifty miles down there.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: Too.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: I might have to measure it to be more accurate,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: but that's roughly about right. And she got into that
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: lower Cusquin, which is just phenomenal habitat their sedge as
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: far as I can see, and it's good thick stuff.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: And I had a friend from Bethel, the biologist there,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: radio tracker and took a picture from the air, and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: she was just fat.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: She was really having a good time down there, I think,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: and all alone, all alone, And.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: Why can't you sling a mail over there go get
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: her and sling her back?
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: Or with all this good publicity that she was doing
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: down there, I thought that was going to happen. But
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: she got to near a village of Quinnahawk and a
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: guy shot her. Essentially he was he did, yeah, he was.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: He was long ways away. He had a thirty thirty
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: that had gotten for Christmas or something like that, and
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: he shot it at her like nine times and finally
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: got her wounded enough that he came up and finished
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: her off.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: And then what do you think it was?
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: Well, first he thought it was a bear, and then
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: that's what he said. And then when he got it
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: close and side it had horns, he thought it was
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: a muskox and and uh, then he saw it had
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: a collar, so he shot the collar, so we couldn't
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: use any of that information, and then shot the collar.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, and then then he got it back to
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: the village. So he did take some of it back
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: to the village, and then the elders were like, you
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: ding dong, you shot the wood bison, you know. And
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: then he felt kind of bad about that, and then
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: we talked to him about it, and he had to
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: give a he didn't have anything. He couldn't like find
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: him or put him in jail or whatever, and and
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: so he had to give a public apology on the radio,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: which he did, and uh he had to uh get
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: all the meat to the elders building and in Bethel,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: and you know it was all fit out there and
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: stuff like that. So but it was it was pretty
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: much a tragedy. It would have been kind of neat
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: to have because I.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Let you hear that public apology. Yeah, it lengthy.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know it was on the
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: radio there. Yeah, I didn't have an opportunity radio yet. Yeah. Huh.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: So there is kind of a long tradition in America
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: of seeing something you're not quite sure what it is
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: and shooting it. Yeah, yeah, that's a that's like a
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: common response with people.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: I've had several old timers call me and say, hey,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: you can't do this because people local people are just
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: gonna shoot them all. And I found that not to
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: be true. I think a lot of most local people
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: are pretty darn excited about it, and they want it
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: to happen, and they want to be uh, you know,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: conservation conservationists for these animals, you know, they want it
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: to work. But there's a.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: Defense of that one. Bro though the muskos is plausible. Maybe.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, if he wasn't aware that you guys were
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: doing the reintroduction, what the hell is you gonna think
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: it is at a distance?
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know, big brown object.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: I went time in the fog. We went after what
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: we went after a grizzly beard had turned out to
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: be a muskox and a fog shoot. But I mean
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: it was enough to make us cross the river heavy fog,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: but it was enough to paddle across the river. And
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: they were like, no, shoot, that's the muskogs.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, anyway, that's all took off.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: Man, you gotta go save that one. I'm not gonna
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: be able to sleep at night. I didn't realize it
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: was still live. Man.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, I mean a lot of folks
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: say that too. We should a lot of folks argue
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: that we should supplementally feed when conditions get tough too,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: there spend times. I don't think that, but I think.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Because that would that wouldn't go along with the objective.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: Right to have wild populations doing wild things.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: Yeap, it wouldn't. It'd be like an it'd be like,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: this is just me talking. In my view, if you
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: start feeding them, yeah, what are you doing right? It's
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: not it's not anything. Well but here here's gone.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: Well one of them we're trying to go do anything
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: with her is that she is outside of the areas
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: listed in the environmental Assessment that we can do stuff.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: That's another thing where it comes down to the essay
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: the Danger Species Act making things difficult is we have
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: to go with what is written like ten years ago
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: in that in that document. We can't just like go
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: I would like to go the path of least resistance.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of villages that say bring them here,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: but we're like, I'm sorry, we can't because the essay says.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: I want to set the record straight on something. If
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: I was in your shoes, I would do the same
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: thing you're doing. I'm just saying, like, as a guy
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: sitting here feeling all sad about that one and anthropomorphizing
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: its experience, that makes me say, like, go get it.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: But of course in your position, you can't go take
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: your money and be like, oh, you spend thousands of
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: dollars to do what? Right? Like, I totally understand an issue,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: But here's here's when you look at the numbers. And
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: I'm rooting for you on this, I'm rooting for you
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: on it. But when you look at the numbers, man,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: you guys have put more animals on the ground in
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: Noco in Thenoco Valley, You've putt more animals on the
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: ground than are currently alive. It's right, So what like
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: what does that say to you? I mean, you dressed
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: that this series of bad winners right right?
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: Where are you at? Like, like, where are you at
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: right now? Mentally about this whole thing? Knowing that you
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: turned out what one.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: We'd released one hundred and thirty right off the battle, you.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: Put one hundred and thirty on the ground but you
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: don't have one hundred and thirty alive right now, so correct.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: You would expect with the reintroduction, and they're exploiting new habitat,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: they're not competing with other animals, there's all this room
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: to grow. You'd expect that to just be like boom
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: boom boom, like population growth, population growth, population growth, population growth,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: and that you'd be seeing it like skyrocket.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: Yep, right, that would be the hope.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it didn't know, So what's your like, what's
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: your what you take?
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: There's been several years of growth like that, even up
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: to twenty five percent growth in a year. The problem
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: is we've had these catastrophic bad winners with ice, you know,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: rain on snow events and ice laders in the snow.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: Like I mentioned, it makes it hard for them to
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: get to their forage and you can lose a lot
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: more bison to mortality and winter. Then you can replace
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: that by calves because you know, there's only so many
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: adult calves that are of breeding age. So the population
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: can only grow you know, twenty percent or twenty five
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: percent in a year based on reproduction, but it can
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: lose eighty percent or one hundred percent in a year.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: You know, in the spring of twenty eighteen we lost
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: thirty percent. Spring of twenty twenty we lost twenty percent.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: These are rough numbers. But in the spring of twenty
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: three we lost was it twenty three, Yeah, spring of
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: twenty three we lost fifty percent of the population. And
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: the two previous years were really great survival. So twenty
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: one and twenty two, like all of the calves and
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: all the yearlingks survive in the population was just cranking
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: and and then we had What happened was it snowed
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: in mid October about two feet deep and then it
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: melted down to about eight inches of just concrete and
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: just you know, locked in their forage, and then that
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: they had to go through seven months of winter with that,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: with most of their forage, so you know, locked in
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: the ice.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: He had a bunch get drowned, right.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right after we released them in the spring of
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, we had about nine that we knew of
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: go through the ice. You know, there's always going to
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: be bison going through the ice. That's that's a common
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: cause of death in Canada, you know, where they have
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: a lot more bison than we do, and it's you know,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: I mean humans still fall through the ice, but they're.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: Well they're real. I've written about this. I mean, they
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: got an incredible capacity to drown. Yeah, you wouldn't think
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: Well, they're so they're so low in the water that
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: they can't get out. So once they get in a
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: hole in the ice, it's done. And I've had them
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: go through holes by beer houses where they're just they're
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: just there's under there, you know, and you can't even
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: radio track. I'm tell the spring when when the ice
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: melts and I can hear the collar and the carcassol,
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: you know, float up to the surface and stuff. But
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: like a moose, when a moose falls to the ice,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: you can see a whole bunch of struggle where it
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: tried to get out for a long time and stuff,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: because it's you know, somewhat buoyant. But a bison is
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: so danse Advan. Yeah, they're just under the ice.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: So what do you think, like, what do you think there?
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: What do you think is gonna happen? And let me
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: set this up to as you answered that, because here's
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: the deal, though, you got like these other you got
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: these other four populations trying to think so Copper River
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: farewell burned Chittina, right has some is that it for?
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: For plane? Yeah? So three other groups.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: And deltah, yeah, Delta.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: I knew there's four since nineteen twenties. So for a
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: century there have been planes. There have been these populations
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: of planes bison, which for all intentsive purposes, could be
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: just as well adapted as anything else to live there.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: So for a century you've got these populations of buffalo
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: that weren't even put on scientifically selected habitats. They were
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: turned out that have that have survived for a century
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: now in Delta Junction. Sure they hang out in those
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: oat fields and there's agriculture around, but the other three
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: groups are just living off the land and they got
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: their ups and downs, but like they made it, and
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: if you didn't mess with them, it's safe to assume
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: in one hundred years they'd still be there. Right, So
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: that makes me think that like there's a really good
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: chance that these things could take off. I don't know how,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: Like I don't know, just see like other animals are
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: doing in other places, why not there? But what's come
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: to be your opinion about the survivability of that herd?
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: And could it ever turn into like thousands of animals.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: Well, the way I look at that heard as I
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: look at individual years and what to try to understand
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: their potential. So they've only been there ten years, and
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: like I mentioned, there's years where the snow was fairly normal,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: you know, it was fairly soft. They could get through it.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: That the population gained twenty eight to twenty five percent.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: If you can maintain that over the long term, they'll
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: be in the thousands in a short time, you know,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: a couple decades. The problem is this, this weather regime
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: that we're in right now is much different than the
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: history that we had before we released them. You know,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: if you look at the weather records before we released
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: them compared to just the last ten years. And I've
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: got a good slide on this in a lot of
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: presentations I give that you can find on you know,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: YouTube or whatever, that in the last ten or fifteen
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: years it's been so wet and so warm in Alaska
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: that we get these you know, rain on snow events
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: and isolators and things, and a bunch of that has
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: happened just during this time that the Unoco bison have
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: been out. Even with all that, they still have grown
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: in seven of the ten years that they've out there.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: It's but the problem is that you know, a catastrophic
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: winter can can kill a lot more than what they
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: can reproduce.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: In a year.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: So right now, I'd say they're persistent. But the reality
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: is is every one of these populations is an experiment,
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: right you know, we if we we could sit on
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: our hands and just say, well, let's not do this
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: because it's too scary and they might die, but we
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: can also just say let's let's give it a shot.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: You know, there's good habitat here that you know, the
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: snow they might be able to have, the snow they
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: might not, and then you give it a go. And
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: so that's kind of where we're at now, I think,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: is trying to just run these experiments and see if
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: it's a reasonable thing. That's why I mentioned it's so
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: it's such a difficult time, you know, and all like
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: all the money and the legal process and the politics
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: all came together to do it now. But we're in
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: the middle of this thing where ungulates and Alaska are
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: just getting pounded by these warm, wet winters, and I'm
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: trying to do it right in the middle of.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: That let's jump to the next one. So that wasn't
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: the only release site, correct, some time went by and
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: you move down to release site number two.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's the three lease sites listed in the
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: environmental assessment, and that's the Anoco Flats, the Mental Flats,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: and the Yukon Flats. And we were directed from the Commissioner,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: which is the highest level person in fishing game, a
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: couple of years ago to pursue the Mental Flats one.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: And so we went through the public planning process and
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: wrote a management plan and we took bison out to
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: the wild in Mental Flat State Game Refuge in the
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: fall of twenty twenty four and then we held them
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: in one hundred acre release pen that we built out
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: there all winter long and then released them about May
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: thirteenth of twenty twenty five. That was about sixty animals.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: Since then, we've we had three calves and lost two bisons,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: so we're at you know, sixty one animals now and yeah,
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: that he seems to be doing pretty well and it's
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: pretty exciting now that habitat there doesn't have as much
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: historically of the heavy snows that are wet with with icing,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: you know, rain on snow events, but it does happen
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: out there. You know, there wasn't a rain on snow
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: event to my understanding until about fifteen years ago in
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: interior Alaska, like around Fairbanks area. But now it's more
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: much more common, and like I mentioned, last winter, it
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: happened twice and you know Fairbanks area. So some of
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: it's just going to be luck. And the weird thing
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: is if it's colder, like like the historic winters the winter,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: the snow is soft, bison can get through without a problem.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: If it's just a little bit warmer, you have these
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: chinooks that melt out the snow and so then they
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: can easily get to the forage. And when that happens,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: that's happened twice in the Enoko and every time that
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: only one melt out in the course of the winter
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: produced about one hundred percent survival on bison that winter.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: And so all it takes is just a little bit
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: warmer to when a storm comes it melts stuff out. Well,
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: we're not in that regularly, and we're not in the
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: cold part regular We're stuck right in this middle thing
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: where we're snow is wet and there's ice layers in it.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: And so if there really is, you know, climate change
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: that's making us go more warm, I'm hoping we just
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: get off this pinnacle of of difficulty, you know, one
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: way or another.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it'd be like if that would be that as
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: the climate changes, if it wound up being that that
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: was one of the winners, you know, that that it
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: made that uh whatever, moose suffer and bison. Yeah, it's
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: going to take those balancing acts have occurred, right, and
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: it would maybe it'd be some peculiar balancing act.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: And I'm not a climatologist, but a lot of folks
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: from the University of Alaska that I've talked to that
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: are have mentioned that that they think the future of
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: interior Alaska is very conducive to to bison. But that
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: stuff is changing so fast, you know, like a lot
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: of the predictive models that i'd heard of before in
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: interior Alaska was drier, uh more, drier summers, more fire occurrence,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: So it would kind of kind of convert more to
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: an Aspen parkland sort of thing, like like Yukon Territory is.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: But it's gotten so much wetter, just so fast, that
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know if that's still true with those climate models.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what surprises me is that I guess
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I surprise is the right word. Yeah,
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: sure that wolves don't hammer them, or the brown bears
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: don't hammer them, But then you think, like they don't
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: know how to deal with them, because they can. They
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: have a defense mechanism, right, they got sharp horns, they
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: got really powerful hoofs. And I've read in the past
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: that like it's a real learning curve for wolves to
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: figure out how to kill one, yeah, without themselves getting killed.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: But I think you did say you've had a couple.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's an argument out there that with these reintroduced populations,
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: it takes wolves and all predators maybe a couple decades,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five years, you know, that's kind of the
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: Canadian experience for the predators to learn how to really
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: kill efficiently bison. But even after they do, and even
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: in populations that persist half persisted forever, like well Buffalo
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: National Park and Yellowstone, predation rates are low in bison
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: compared to all deer species like you know, white tails, meinies,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: you know, moose, elk, that sort of thing. Much higher
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: predation rates in deer species, and if you think about
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: a bison, they kind of look like a you know,
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: big slow animal, but they're not. They're they're quick and agile,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: and they can kick with all four feet. They got
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: the horns. They're super strong, they're big, they're fast, you know,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: they're fast runners, and so it's hard to kill those things.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: And then they work socially together against predators. So uh,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: you know, when when a bear shows up, they'll or
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: any predator. And I've seen this from the air. You know,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: when when wolves show up that they'll they'll approach those predators,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: which is really interesting, you know, I mean go to them. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: they'll just kind of the calves will kind of work
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: their way to the middle of the group, and the
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: cows will just kind of like walk toward the wolves.
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: And I've seen, really I've seen a group of bison
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: and the anoka where there was you know, three or
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: four wolves kind of around the edge, and and uh
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: and they just kind of had a standoff for half
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: hour forty minutes and then and and the cows just
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: you know, kept you know, working their way toward the wolves,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: and eventually the wolves just kind of got tired of
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: it and and worked their way you know when it
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: did something else.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: That's a spear fisherman move with sharks. Really, the friends
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: of mine them just show me, don't Yeah, they'll go at,
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: they'll go to them. And it throws the sharks whole
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: perception of what's going on, like changes his whole groove.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: He's like home and what, Yeah, you're coming to me,
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: and they don't like it.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: There's a body language, there's a predator and prey body language.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: And I remember the most significant time I've ever done that,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: if you'll allow me, a little rabbit hole is a
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: buddy and I landed uh in the spring for bear
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: hunting in the Brooks Range, and UH at night overnight
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: the river came up and so we couldn't take off
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: in the place that we'd landed, and so we had
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: to make a new runway fartherer up on this growbar,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: and there's a bunch of rocks. So we're throwing off
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: all these rocks and we're just, you know, heads down,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: throwing rocks and making this runway, and at one point
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: we look up and there's a wolf that was kind
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: of in between us, and he's scouting us out, and
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: you can tell he's in predator mode. He's looking at
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: us very carefully, you know, and like kind of stalking
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: us a little bit. And we were kind of just
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: bent over doing all this work, and he thought, man,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: these must be prey animals, you know. And my buddy
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: like looks at me, and there was a gun leaning
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: against the airplane and you could tell like as soon
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: as my buddy like went to you like looked back
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: at this animal in a predatory posture, that wolf that
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: knew that immediately He's like, oh my god, these are
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: prey predators. They're not praying. He was gone no in
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: a second. And so I think about that a lot
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: when I'm working with wildlife. If I can act like
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: a prey animal, I can, you know, make a lot
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: more progress being around bison than I can a predator.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: And you know, cowboys do that a little bit with
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: horses too. You know, if you try to act like
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: a predator that they're not real happy about that.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: Buddy mine, we were talking about this this thing with
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: shark body language and sharks and a body mind who's
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: had a ton of exposure to sharks. He had an
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: interesting observation he made me one time where I was
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: I was commenting on and I didn't growup around sharks,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: so everything's new to me with sharks. But I was
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: commenting on, it's weird that you can like intimidate them
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: by going at them, and he said, they can't afford
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: to get hurt. Like when he gets hurt, he's done.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: The minute he's hurt, his body's all rip him apart.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: They're just careful, you know. And it's like you think
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: about two with a wolf or a bear or whatever,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: like they don't want to get hurt, you know. And
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: he put them in this and if you put him
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: in a situation where sometimes you put them in a
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: situation where they're like, I don't know this thing, maybe's
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: gonna mess me up, it just changes their conversation, you know.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: They don't want to get hurt.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: Well, back to predation on vice, and I think that's
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: their strategy is to try to face those those predators.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: And I think with bears it works really well because
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: you got you know, twenty thirty bison on one bear.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: It's a little bit Wolves can kind of break that
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: because I think wolves as a group can work against
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: a group of bison and finally get them run and
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: then try to pick something out of the population, and
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: you see that in the videos from Wood Buffalo National Park.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: Of course, Wood Buffalo National Park is a diseased heard
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: so that both brussels and tuberculos brings down enough animals
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: that it's wolves can actually have a better time killing
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: animals there and in a lot of these non disease populations.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: But I think that strategy that bison have to avoid
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: predation is probably central to the reason why humans killed
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: them off in North America is because we have weapons
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: that if you stand and face a human being and
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: the human being has a rifle, you're done. You know,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: you have to run and get away. And that's what
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: serve its. You know, deer speed have done, is they
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: running it away and they hide and things. Bison are
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: in the wide open and they stand and face you.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: And so there's an argument out there that bison are
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: the only really, you know, the only North American angulate
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: that absolutely requires modern conservation to exist because of their
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: predator avoidance strategy. It's impossible to just let people shoot
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: whatever they want with rifles or even bows and they'll
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: just all be gone.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: Well, you look at another one. Muskogs have a similar approach,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: and they're very easy to wipe out.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: There also exists at much lower numbers, but they were
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: very easy to wipe out, yep. I mean they're riping
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: those things out, the Russians, even just the Russians initiating
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: the fur traders wiping out muskogs in the Arctic, you know,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: because it would be the same thing, like, yeah, they
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: don't boogie.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: And so far, you know, alasa's been trying to restore
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: muskos too since nineteen fifty. And one of the issues
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: there is that bears have figured out, you know, grizzly
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: bears have figured out predation of muskogs, and they can
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: get them running and out animals. You know, the muskots
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: go into that you know, the tight group where they
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: put the calves in the middle and stuff. But if
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: they can get them run, and they can, they can
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: kill some. And I think a bison are just so
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: much larger, you know, Bison are you know, roughly three
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: times larger than a muskox, and it's a little bit
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: tougher for a bear to kind of make that happen,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the last one is the last area.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: So you you you got the Anoko Valley Mental Flats
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: rub one hundred ducks and fished. It's a cool spot.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you a funny thing of Mental Flats. We
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: one time at Mental Flats had been duck hunting and
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: left our ducks land, I mean just right in our camp.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: In the morning. We had them all gutted and they're
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: gone and mink had hauled them off and we were
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: able to recover them just by hunting around. You find
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: them stashed in the woodpile, stashed in the holes, you know.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: But uh so you got some there. But it seems
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: like the real promise, man, is that that that the
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: Yukon Flats would work out? Like what needs to fall
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: into place to do someone at Yukon Flats And if
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: you imagine at Yukon Flats, and you can say this
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: about the other release sights too, like if everything went perfectly,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: what is the estimate of how many you could have
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: at Yukon Flats?
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: Well, the estimate from the habitat assessment in nineteen ninety
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: five was more than two thousand. Okay, so that's not
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: really a number. It just means greater than great in
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 2: two thousand, Yeah.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: So it could I mean, let me ask you this,
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: could it possibly dethrone Yellowstone National Park as the high
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: number figuring there, you know, typically around you know, three
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: thousand and four thousand, Could it possibly I mean, would
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: it have the potential to knock that off? It's to
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: knock Yellowstone off, it's off its bison pedestal.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 2: Well, humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future, but
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: I think that, Yeah, I think it has the habitat absolutely.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, It's going to depend a little bit about the
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 2: appetite for harvest from human beings and Yukon flats and
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: you know, Alaska a little bit about the social uh density.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: So if we have we end up a lot of
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: bison and Yukon flats, how do people do the people
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: like that? You know when it comes to bison interaction
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: with infrastructure, human human infrastructure, and so uh, there's a
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: lot of regulating factors there. But if you just take
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: like what could live in Ukon flats, yeah, absolutely, I
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: think we could have way more than Yellowstone in there.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: But you know, the asiac herd in Yukon territories ahead
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: of us now they're you know, they're passing two thousand
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: with a growing population. And so again the Asiac herd
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: is the is the herd between white Horse and the
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: Alaska border and Yukon territory. They're going past two thousand
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: animals with a growing herd right now. That's super productive.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: I mean they're and they're just in like boreal forests
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: and like aspen stands, and.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so weird. Yeah, they're just open mixed forests
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: essentially with some kind of aspen parkland. They've got some
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: old like pleisiscene step kind of habitat on some of
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: the big hills, you know, where it's just kind of
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: these grassy It looks a lot like that picture on
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: your wall there where it's just like the grassy slopes
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: with you know, uh, you know, spruce and things mixed in.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: But it's mostly boreal forests and a lot of it's
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: burned and stuff. You know. But that the productivity that
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: population always stounds me. And I'm a little bit jealous,
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: to be honest with you.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So what would it take to be able to
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: do a release up you like, like, what are the
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: obstacles right now to doing a lease? A release on
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: Yukon flats is the obstacle having the animals.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: Not really. We've got the two captive populations in Alaska,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: we've got in agreement with Canada get more animals. We've
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: gone through the public process, the public planning process here
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: in the last few years, at our third public planning meeting,
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: where we get thirty different interest groups or representatives from
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: thirty different interest groups together in one room and we
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: sit down for three days and we go through every
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: possible thing anybody could ever want to say about bison.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: We record all that, we summarize it all, and we
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: turn it into recommendations for the Board of Game and Fishing,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: Game and local Landowners in what's called a management plan.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: That's where we're at right now. That public process has happened,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: and now we have to write that into a management plan,
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: which I haven't done yet. So I'm going to be
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: summarizing the public process here over the next month or two,
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: and then I'll be trying to write a management plan.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: Over the course of the next year, we're going to work
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: out some logistics on how to get bison into Ukon flats.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: So a whole bunch of Yukon Flats is National Wildlife Refuge,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: and a bunch more of it is Native corporation land,
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: both local Native corporations and regional Native corporations. And then
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: there's about five hundred square miles of state land in
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: eastern Yukon Flats, and that's where we're going to go,
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: is to that state land. We don't have any access
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: overland to that state land, so we're gonna fly them
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: all in. And so I got to work out all
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: those details. And I've done some proof of concept work
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: with flying bison and smaller airplanes, like to havel in beavers.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: Really yeah, I flew to.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: Uh, you can stand one up in there.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, they're immobilized, so we just they just
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: you just dart them, toss them in there with a
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: lightweight veterinarian and uh, and go for it. And so
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: I flew to the Mento Flats that way.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because a beaver can haul like two thousand pounds.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, and you got a six hundred pound year
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: ling or something like that, it's no big deal. The
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: two cows that I hauled were twenty two months old
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: and they were there were something like that seven hundred pounds.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: Maybe, So why not barge them in?
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: Well, the state land that we're going to go to
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: is Uh, maybe twenty miles or more from the Yukon River,
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: so there's no barging. There is a little tiny corner
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: of it. That's many many my it was probably two
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: three hundred miles from the closest boat landing, and you
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: could get there by riverboat. And so maybe you could
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: haul one at a time on this, like you know,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: three day treks in a riverboat or something like that.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: But it'd be a real challenge.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: But you got the legal go ahead to do it.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I won't until I write the management plan
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: and the Border Game approves the management plan. But right
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: now all the political support exists, and I just got
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: to make it through that last process of getting the
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: plan written, approved internally in Fishing Game, and then approved
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: by the Border Game, which is a panel of people
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: appointed by the governor that sets wildlife regulations in Alaska.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: You know, I mentioned Colorado's recent move to sort of
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: buy for kate bison in the state of Colorado, where
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: they've said there are bison in Colorado their livestock. We're
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: creating a new classification and just three mind, folks, it's
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: a new classification saying buffalo that come in naturally into
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: the state that walk into the state will be treated
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: as wildlife. They pave the way for hunting, which is
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: a brilliant move because a thing you wind up with
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: when you do introductions or reintroductions is you wind up
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: with you might have wildlife managers that are planning on
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: using hunting as a control mechanism in the future, and
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: they'll bring in an animal, and then later down the
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: road you'll encounter public resistance to hunting, even though it
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: was the intentional long people down the road will be like,
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, I thought they were endangered or imperiled,
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: and now you tell me we have a hunting season
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: for him. So in Colorado, they've already laid out that
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: they're like, they will be a big game animal. And
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: the bill they passed even specified what a tag will cost.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: They set out the fine if you kill one or
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: capture one, it's a ten thousand dollars fine. There's one
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars restitution to the state for the loss of
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: its asset. There's a resident tag price, there's like a
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: really hefty, like twenty seven hundred dollars non resident tag price.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: But they don't even have the animals yet. But they're
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: laying out like, here's what it's going to look like,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: right as this becomes a thing, Here's what it looks like.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: What would it look like in the future, Like, how
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: have you guys contemplated what it would look like when
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: one of these populations is in the many hundreds or
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: moves into the thousands, What would it ever look like
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: to open up hunting opportunities? Because that's probably part of
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: the public buy in with locals is that in some
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: way they are setting up a future in which they
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: have a diversified portfolio of wild game available to them. Yeah, right,
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: so what would how have you contemplated this?
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: So the primary reason for this restoration is to restore
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 2: this subspecies as a component of the ecosystem that functions
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 2: in this empty niche. So that's the that's the number
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: one reason. But if we are successful at it, then
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: it will be a renewable natural resource that we can harvest.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: And that's what you like you mentioned, there's a lot
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: of people that are counting on that. That's that's why
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: we get a lot of support from your average person
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: is because they think that someday they could harvest that
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: that animal and it's a pretty big boon, you know,
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: to harvest you know, eight hundred pounds of meat or
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: something like that. You know, it's a it's well worth
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: it to a citizen to have that on the landscape.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 2: The way our regulatory system works is that every few
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: years for each area, the Border Game meets and they
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 2: hear proposals from the last compartment Fishing Game, and just
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: average citizens can just put a proposal in to change
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: regulation in Alaska and so that there then there's a
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: process of locally elected citizen advisory committees, and each village
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: and each large community they can also produce proposals and
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: they you know, vote any proposal from anybody else up
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: or down, and that all works its way up to
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: the Border Game and when they get to these Boarder
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: Game meetings, the Board of Game reviews that proposal, They
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: hear all the public testimony from everybody else, including the
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 2: department's perspective fishing Game department, which is usually just a
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: biological perspective, and then they make a decision right then there,
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: this is how we're going to do it. But there's
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: a lot of options, Like I've written in the management
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: plan for the Mento population or lower ten and not populations,
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: it's the formal name where you know, there could be
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: drawing permits, there could be registration permits that there could
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: be all of the permits that are available to hunt
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 2: any other species are as a possibility, and so we
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: really don't know what that hunt structure is. When we
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: first started releasing animals in Anoko, before we were going
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: to go to the Yenoko with the animals, the planning
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: team there set up this. They had it all figured out.
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 2: They were like, Okay, the hunt's going to be this
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: many drawing permits, this many locally registraed locally available.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: Registration gets them on the ground totally. Yeah.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: And they had they had you know, we're gonna have
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: a trespass fee on on these lands and and so
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: people can you know, access these bison on private lands,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: and like, we're gonna have a scholarship fund that a
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: bunch of these trespass fee dollars goes into and that
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: helps local people go to college to study, you know,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: by and they were just going for it, and and
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: they I thought it was a beautiful piece of work
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: of people trying to work together to make something happen.
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 2: It was just absolutely wonderful. However, over time, when the
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: Ynokle population didn't perform as well and then different people
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: you know, were elected into different these different groups that
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: helped make that that then it changed over over over time.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: I think one of the important things to realize is
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: that it's not the people from Night teen twenty eight
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: when they release the bison and delta junction that determine
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: how we're going to hunt those bison today. It's the
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 2: people of today that determine how we're going to hunt
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: bison today, and through the Board a Game thing, and
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: so we can record everything that people want to see
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: happen with wood bison now before they go on the landscape.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: And that's why we have this public planning process where
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: we we write down everything everybody says, any opposition, any support,
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: any any concerns, all that stuff, and then try to
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: address that and these management plans so that later on,
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 2: when the Board A Game does hear proposals regarding a
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: harvestable surplus in a particular bison population, then they can
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 2: look back at these recommendations that were there originally and
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: be like, oh, yeah, well they really wanted the harvest
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: to be you know, to include local people as much
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: as it includes everybody else, and you know whatever, and
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: then try to act in that way if they if
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: they choose to. But as you know, public trust resources,
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of conflict there because and there always
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: will be. That's why we have a Board of Game
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: and all this citizen advisory groups and all that is
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 2: because there will always be conflict about something that we
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 2: all own together, you know, because we're a territorial social animal,
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 2: and we want those resources to go to our group,
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 2: not some other group, you know, whatever our group is.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 2: And so it's a challenge.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you raise a really good point when you say
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: that when it's time, if and when it's time to
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: do a hunt, it'll be the people. Then figure it
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: out because like I said, with the original, the nineteen
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: twenty eight ones, I mean, think about what happened since
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: then and now statehood, the Native Claims Settlement Act, I mean,
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean like you can't anticipate.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: Totally, you know what I mean, right, And in Alaska
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: regulations I'm not sure if you're familiar, but prior to
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 2: like nineteen eighty nine or so, we could discriminate by
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: someone where you live, we could give more permits to
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 2: people in this town than people in this town because
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 2: say they were closer to the resource, or they had
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: more subsistence you know, history there in a particular resource
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: or something like that. Well, we lost that to a
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: court case in the late nineteen eighties where it said,
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: all right, the last Constitution says that all people have
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: equal access to wildlife resources, and so we have to
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: treat all people equally. We can't discriminate based on where
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: you live. That was a difficult thing. Well, then does
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: the federal government stepped in and said, oh no, that's
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: not fair. Through a nilka, we are going to say
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 2: that you have to provide a priority for rural people
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 2: on resources and you know, on federal land. And so
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: that created this kind of dual management system between the
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: state and the federal government. And that's been really complicated.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: Well that just happened.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: That's gonna I mean, we're going to talk about this
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: on an upcoming up. So that system is in a
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: review process right now. The current the Trump administration is
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: reviewing the Federal Subsistence Board and so some of the
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: decisions they've made recently, and so that could be again,
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: you know, just another we don't need to get into.
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 2: It now, but I mean it's like, but my point
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: is that things do.
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: They're poking and prodden at it right now, you know,
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: and you.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: Just added to it. I mean, I think things change.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 2: You know, thirty years ago the state could do that,
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: then the federal government can do that. Well, who know
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: thirty years from now, when we have a big harvestable
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: surpus of bison in a particular area, who knows what
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: the regulations are going to be.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: Then Hey, I don't want to I don't want to
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: paint you into a corner here, but I mean, just like, no,
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, just just for conversation's sake, what would you
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: put one hundred and thirty animals on the ground. Okay,
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: you put one hundred and thirty wood bison on the
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: in the lower n Oocle Valley If you just had
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: to get like, what would be a number that would
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: make sense to you in the future where if you
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: heard from your grave or wherever you heard, hey, they're
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: running a bunch of the they're giving out twenty per
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: permits in the Anoko Valley, you'd think to yourself, well,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: I hope there's at least blank animals on the ground.
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: Ten permits they're given out ten permits, you'd say, I
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: hope there's at least.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I want to see a minimum viable
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 2: population of four hundred or more for the long term.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 2: But we've harvested plane spice, and you mentioned all the herds,
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: the plane spice and herds in Alaska, and it's a
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: lot of those bisons. Bison herds have been managed at
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 2: less than two hundred for for decades and decades, and
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: uh so we know it's possible, and I think we
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: could have a hunt in the Nooko now. We could
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 2: have one or two drawing permits. There are no problem
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: without any sort of issue with right now, yeah, right now.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 2: But the planning team doesn't want that yet.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: Now the last it does, I'm all for a little hunting,
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: you know, it does feel a little free mature.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 2: Well what they what the planning So the planning team
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: includes all kinds of people, right, it's all the local
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: people and urban people and safari club and animal welfare
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 2: groups and all that we.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: Are welfare groups in on it. They didn't do anything.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: I think I'll let that one go with So we're
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: doing it's just part of we're trying to get be inclusive, right,
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: you know, get everybody in there. Maybe Animal wor for
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: Chris is the Whilelife I don't know, like Alaska Whilelife Alliance,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: and there's another one I can't remember the name of
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: it right now. Anyway, we're just gonna want to keep
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: everybody involved so people don't feel alienated and come back
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: later with them.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I understand.
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: Anyway, where was I going with this?
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: So this group that's the planning team, the site specific
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 2: planning team for the Unoko Uh. They first started out
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: and said, well, we don't want to start any harvest
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 2: until we have a harvestable surplus of twenty animals. Are
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: going to run part of that into drawing permits and
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: part of that into locally issued registration permits so that
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: local people will have the ability to harvest in the
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: presence of drawing permits. Well, when the population wasn't that productive.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: Then now they lowered that to they're like, well, when
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 2: there's a harvest of will surplus of ten and so
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 2: at the last meeting, I was like, well, do you
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 2: guys there's enough to have a harvest of a few?
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: Do you guys want a harvest few and they were like, Nope,
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: we want to start this in a way that there's
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 2: local harvest and drawing permits. And of course drawing permits
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: do service local people too, but they just have a
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 2: small chance of getting a permit. And we have no
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 2: way because of that court case and the last constitution.
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 2: We have no way of just giving permits of local people.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: We have a way of you can issue local registration
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 2: permits where you're more likely to get it if you're local.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: The problem is the planning team can predict this and
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 2: they can say what they want, but ultimately it'll come
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: down to a border game action. And nobody's done a
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: proposal to start a hunt in the enoko. If somebody
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: would would propose that there should be hunting the enoko,
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: then that would kind of force the issue and we'd
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: have to go through that process. Uh.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: With the when you talk about the permit thing and
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: the local hunt and all that, they also have a
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: mechanism to stay as a mechanism too, where you have
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: to destroy the trophy value of the animal.
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: That's that is in some places, yeah, on some species.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Win said, here's the deal. Though you can't take
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: the horns, you cut the horns in half. You would
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: lose a lot of outside You wouldn't lose my interest,
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: but you lose the outside interest.
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that happens. People do that if they think that
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: the you know, Yeah, there's a bunch of little tools
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 2: like that to try to level the playing field between
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: different user groups.
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: But I think, man, I think that you got to
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: wait till you got a way, till you're on a
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: steady upward incline. Man, I think it's a little early right.
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: Now, and I think that's going to depend on the weather,
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: which is something we can't predict, right.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: But I think it's like I don't care what I think,
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: but I'll tell you anyway. I think that having that
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: I think that having that hunter buying is really important,
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: and it's a it's a thing that frustrates me down
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: here in the Northern Rockies and well in the entire
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: in the West. The thing that frustrates me is it's
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: just an area where you don't see, we don't see
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: widespread hunter buy in on buffalo restoration. I think people
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: can't picture it meaning this whole brucellosis thing. If someone,
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: if a politician in Montana said, hey, man, we're really
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: worried about brucellosis. We're gonna start killing every elk that
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: walks out of that park. It's a political suicide. It's
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: political suicide. Hunters have a fit, you know, hunters that
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: have a fit. They're like, if anyone elk walks out
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: of the park, we're shooting it or hauling it away. Yeah, dude,
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: they would. They would be apoplectic. Hunters would be. And
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: as much as I invite people to be like now, no, no, listen,
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: like restoring these animals is a long term hunting play.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: Like restoring these animals, I'm always like, picture man, picture
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: that we have public herds on public land and you
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: draw tags and hunt them like we do for moose
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: and everything else. And I think it's too far fetched,
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: Like you just don't see hunters in on it some
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: but not all. It's too far fetched to picture. But
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: I view in order to get more more of the
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: animals on the landscape, I think that it's gonna be
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: really important for hunters to like advocate for that, knowing
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: that it might not even be for their benefit, but
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: it might be for their kids benefit. And that happens
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: all the time because you look at like you go
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: to like, look at people in bighorn all the people
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: that do work on bighorn sheep. Okay, all the people
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: that support Wild Sheep Foundation. There's a lot of people
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: that support wild sheep we're called and conservation that are
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: never going to hunt big horns. They're never gonna hunt
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: big horns. I've never hunted a big horn. I'm all
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: for big horn recovery, right, So it's not just that
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: people do it. Like the people that were involved and
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: bringing elk back into Kentucky, there were people that were
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: heavily involved in bringing elk back into Kentucky that knew
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: they were never going to hunt elk, but they did
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: it as hunters, right. They did it as they were
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: their heart as a hunter, motivating them to get involved
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: even though they themselves weren't going to benefit from it.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: So I think that like I wish more hunters were
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: involved in, like in building up public publicly owned herds,
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: using public land as a long term play of being
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: not just that you're doing the right thing by the wildlife,
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: but motivated as a long term play of restoring this
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: really important game species onto the American landscape. It's like
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: the forgotten game animal. Yeah, and you go back and
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: look like the tribes that lived here historically, that was
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: their pick man. They were slumming it when they deer meat,
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: they were slumming it when they pronghorn. Yeah, that's what
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: they wanted. And I just think we need to get
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: back there.
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that that is the main motivation for
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: most people, is the concept that someday they might get something.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: But we have to be But I don't think it's
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: a bad motivation.
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: No, no it's not. But we have to be as biologists.
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 2: We have to be brutally honest with them and say,
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: this is an experiment. We're going to try to make
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: a renewable resource. We're going to try to fill this
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: empty niche in the ecosystem and improve nutrient cycling at
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: all trophic levels, from insects up to human beings. But
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 2: it may fail.
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 2: The unocle population, as you pointed out, is you know,
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 2: is not climbing at this moment. Maybe these other populations
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 2: that we try, maybe maybe they won't work out either.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: But if we look at history and we look at bison,
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: what bison can do, it might be a massive success.
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: You know. And earlier I made like I made a
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: comment about I think before we started recording, I made
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: a comment to you without explaining myself, where I said,
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: use an oral tradition or archaeology or paleontology to prove
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: that bison were in the modern period present in Alaska, right,
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: so that you have the political cover of saying it's
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: it's a reintroduction or recovery effort, which relies on you
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: saying they were here and they were wiped out by
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: people or people were influential in wiping them out. That
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: gives you the political cover right to go ahead and
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: bring the animals back in. And I said, I don't
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: really even care if it's true or not. What I
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: meant by that is at European Contact, we had forty
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: million of them, Somewhere around forty million. You hear twenty
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: eight million, you hear sixty million a bunch. There was
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: a bunch, and not all areas are suitable. So in
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: bringing the animal back me personally, I'm not so concerned
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: about having it match up exactly to where they were historically.
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: I mentioned that group that's living on the north rim
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: of the Grand Canyon. They're spending a bunch of time
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: in Grand Canyon, National Park. And in this whole conversation
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: about whether the animals belong there is this thing, well,
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: how many were there historically? And they're like, oh, it
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: was marginal habitat at best, it was fringe habitat at best.
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't care. It's suitable. It's a suitable
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: location for them now. They can be there now. Maybe
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: maybe there were more of them one hundred miles away, Like,
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: I don't care. The public wants them there, the habitat
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: supports them being there. It's okay for them to be there.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: Let them be there because there's places like they're not
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: going to be in downtown Dodge City, but Dodge City
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: had a lot. It ain't gonna have a lot now.
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: So it's like where its suitable put them on there, right, yeah,
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: because there's a lot of places to be covered up.
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: And so if it winds up being that, you can
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: go into valleys in Alaska and it's not and they're
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: not coming at the cost. They're not pushing moose into
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: extinction and they're not pushing caribou into extinction, and local
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: people want them there. I'm like, go for it, because
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: we have a lot of ground to recover.
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 2: I completely agree, yeap, that the problem is right now
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 2: is the constraints of the endangered species that actn make
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: it difficult to just do those paths of least resistance
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 2: where we find places that people want them and the
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 2: habitat's good and we can just put them there. We
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: just can't go willy nearly like that. We have to
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: stick to that.
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: And it's a lot easier for me to be a
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: dude sitting here like telling you all about everything that
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: should happen, Like, yeah, you're the huge that there's a
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: huge difference between me and you. I mean, I can
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: say all these like grandiose ideas, but then you got
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: to live the reality and like, thank god, I'm not
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: putting animals on the ground you are. So I appreciate
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: the obstacles. Yeah, you know, I appreciate the obstacles, but
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: I I just like that's all like a long wind
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: away of saying that. I'm like, I really am elated,
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: Like I'm the work from my personal perspective, the work
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: you guys doing is beautiful. I think it's like a
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: really cool testament to the state aspects of the political atmosphere,
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: the social atmosphere, the state game agency like to kind
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: of have the audacity to like try to do this.
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: You know, I think it's great, man, I think it's great.
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: And until someone can come and point out some overwhelming
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: harm that none of us have anticipated, I think it's
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: like full steam ahead, man, I think it should. Like
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: I wish you guys the best of luck.
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 2: Thanks. Yeah about the harm saying, there are no studies
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 2: that I know of where bison show that they've harmed
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 2: other species. But there are many many studies that I
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 2: know we're buy some help other species, you know, like
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: I said, everywhere from all trophic levels, from insects right
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 2: on up to you know, human beings, and so it's
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: a yeah, I think they bring a lot of benefit
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: to most systems.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to point out folks, like there is
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: one last thing I'll make on the same point is
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: if you go back to European time of European contact,
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: they think that there were turkeys in thirty four states.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: We have wild turkeys in forty nine states. Now, why
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: is that? Because it just no one people have looked,
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: No one can go and find where they're causing harm.
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: They're not driving species to extinction, they're not displacing native
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: wildlife right, It's like they're just not causing problems. That's
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: why we don't have turkey eradication effort. People welcome and
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: being on the landscape, and I think there's gonna become
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: more and more places. This is where not only do
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: people welcome out in the landscape, there's gonna be come
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: more and more places where people like, hey, man, why
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: can't we have some right, like, let's get some back.
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: And they're big, they're dangerous, I don't know, tough shit.
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like I hope it can be that way
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 2: with bison, and I think it can be. I mean, yeah,
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 2: there's such a valuable resource. I think it's worth trying.
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 2: Oh now, I tell you what too.
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: I used to when I first got a hide off one,
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: we'd try to sleep under it. It's got pretty cold
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: for you to sleep under that thing. Man. It's all
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: there is a useful animal.
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: But I sure I appreciate you coming in and talking
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: about your work. Glad to be here, thank you, and
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: this is home for you originally. Yeah, yeah, I was
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: born and raised in Montana. I left when I was eighteen,
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: But did you go right to Alaska?
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 2: Went right to Alaska? Go to school UF Fairbanks.
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're married. Yeah, I'll long. You been married.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 2: Twenty six years this summer. But I was with her
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 2: for three years more than that, so almost thirty years.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: So if your wife is driving at sixty miles an
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: hour and she looks out the window, can she say
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: wood bison or planes bison?
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 2: I don't think she could. No, I'm not totally, but I.
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: Understand it's stressful. Well, dude, thanks so much for coming on,
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: and thanks to your agency for letting you come on.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 2: Welcome.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: I know sometimes there's reluctant to cut people loose some big,
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: long conversations about policy. I don't think. I don't think
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: you cause any trouble for anybody.
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 2: Hope we'll find out when I get back.
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks man, I appreciate it all right, everybody else? Tom
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: Seaton from Alaska Department of Fishing Game tell me the
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: title again.
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: Uh, Wood Bison Project Biologists for Apartment of Fishing.
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: Game, Wood Bison Project Project Biologists. And if people want
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: to check out some of you guys work, what's the
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: best place to go? Look?
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: Well, I've got a website if you just google, you
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 2: know Alaska wood Bison Restoration and Alaska Apartment of Fishing Game. Uh,
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 2: there's all kinds of documents on there. The website's a
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 2: little bit old right now. We've got a new draft
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: that will should come out in the next few months.
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 2: But yeah, there's all kinds of information if they want
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 2: to dig into it.
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: And if you're looking for where you click to apply
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: for a tag. It's too early, but you can apply
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: for the planes bison hunts, right, you know you can
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: apply for those. Be allowed to keep waiting to get
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: your wood bison permit, So stay tuned. Thanks again, Tom,