Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 918: Eric Odell, The Man who Ran Colorado’s Wolf Reintroduction

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Ep. 918: Eric Odell, The Man who Ran Colorado’s Wolf Reintroduction · The MeatEater Podcast

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  Speaker 1: R S T L I T E dot com. Oh man, folks,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: we got a good one. Todave. I've been wanting to
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: talk to this guy for a long time. I'm sure
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: this is gonna get a lot of that. This episode
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: is gonna get a lot of attention from people who
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  Speaker 1: follow wildlife politics and intrigue and everything. We're speaking with
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Eric Odell, who is a veteran wildlife biologist who spent
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: twenty years with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, serving as the
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  Speaker 1: states first wolf Conservation program manager. So back following the
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  Speaker 1: passage of Proposition one fourteen, which, as our guests will explain,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: basically brought on the Colorado wolf introduction, his position was
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: created to execute on that directive. Beyond wolves, Eric led
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: restoration efforts for other key Colorado carnivores, including Canada links, wolverines,
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  Speaker 1: blackfooted ferrets, earning a reputation among ranchers and conservationists alike
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: for his pragmatic, field driven approach to wildlife management. And
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  Speaker 1: he retired on Friday. Retired on Friday. Now, I want
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: to set this first question up, but I'm need to
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  Speaker 1: try to give a little background. You ranended up running
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  Speaker 1: the project that became the wildlife news story.
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  Speaker 2: Of not just a year, but of a couple of years.
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  Speaker 1: It became an international news story, right, It was a
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  Speaker 1: big national news story. Every person who feels that they
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: have an opinion on natural resources management, wildlife management, every hunter,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: every rancher has expressed an opinion on the Colorado wolf
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: re introduction. It was discussed, you know, like the biggest
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: podcasts in the country being Joe Rogan experience, this issue
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: was discussed, probably came up. I would guess scores of
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  Speaker 1: times man on the biggest podcast in the country, Like
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  Speaker 1: it's a thing. It remains a thing. It was a thing.
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  Speaker 1: Tell tell people how it became, how it came to
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  Speaker 1: be that one day they they I don't know who
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  Speaker 1: they are. You can explain who they are. That They're
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  Speaker 1: like like, Eric, this is your baby. Yeah, bring wolves
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  Speaker 1: back to Colorado.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, well yeah, it's a it's a long story, but
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  Speaker 3: the short of it is wolves were reintroduced in the
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: state because of a ballot initiative and most recently, the
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  Speaker 3: whole interest of reintroduction of wolves to Colorado goes back
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  Speaker 3: a long time, and early in the nineteen eighties people
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  Speaker 3: were thinking about what would wolf reintroduction before Yellowstone, before Idaho,
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  Speaker 3: and for a variety of reasons, that never happened. And
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  Speaker 3: so then starting about twenty nineteen, there was a group
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  Speaker 3: that started to collect signatures and understanding that there's this
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  Speaker 3: way in Colorado that you can get an initiative on
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  Speaker 3: the ballot for the voters to go. If you get
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  Speaker 3: enough signatures on these petitions, it will go to the
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  Speaker 3: voters to make that decision. And so that's what happened,
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  Speaker 3: and they collected enough signatures two hundred thousand some signatures
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  Speaker 3: of people throughout the state to say should this be
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  Speaker 3: on the ballot, And in November twenty.
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  Speaker 1: I want, as you do this is great, keep going,
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  Speaker 1: but if you don't mind as you do this, if
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: you can just check in on on your individual where like,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, are you like watching this, yeah, this ballid thing.
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  Speaker 1: Are you watching this knowing this is going to become
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  Speaker 1: a thing of that's going to impact my personal world
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  Speaker 1: and my family?
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  Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah, for sure. So you knew you saw that
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  Speaker 2: before before the wolf, before all this.
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  Speaker 3: I've been involved with the agency for a bunch of years,
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  Speaker 3: like you said, working on a bunch of other projects,
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  Speaker 3: other non game, non hunted carnivore species, so primarily focused
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  Speaker 3: on links and wolverine potential for wolverine reintroduction. Been involved
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  Speaker 3: with Mexican wolf recovery planning efforts as well. And so
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  Speaker 3: the whole idea that if if this comes up, if
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  Speaker 3: this passes as a as a ballot initiative, then it
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  Speaker 3: becomes my responsibility. And so you had a weakling that
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  Speaker 3: this was going to be a major player, and so.
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  Speaker 1: Please keep doing the timeline. I just wanted to know
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  Speaker 1: at what point you saw it and then like, oh.
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  Speaker 2: No, it was this is interesting.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was it was election night that we knew
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  Speaker 3: that it was going to happen, right, and so so yeah,
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  Speaker 3: so leading up to this, there's there's you know, this
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  Speaker 3: is not a state led effort, right, this is not
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  Speaker 3: the agency saying hey, we want to reintroduce wolves. This
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  Speaker 3: is the citizens and groups saying, hey, should should this
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  Speaker 3: become an issue that the voters make a decision on
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  Speaker 3: first time that any any kind of ballot initiative to
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  Speaker 3: look at any kind of reintroduction, much less wolf for introduction.
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  Speaker 3: And the first time that wolf introduction would be put
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  Speaker 3: in the state's hands. Right when it was done in Yellowstone,
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  Speaker 3: that was park service. When it was done in Central Idaho,
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  Speaker 3: that was through the tribes and through the state to
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  Speaker 3: do that, or through the tribes to do that.
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  Speaker 2: Sorry, not through the state.
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  Speaker 3: And so this was this was unique, right, and so
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  Speaker 3: they got enough signatures twenty nineteen, very different time, right
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  Speaker 3: before COVID, before you know, all these different kind of
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  Speaker 3: things that were happening. November twenty twenty presidential election. Anticipating
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  Speaker 3: a big turnout, There's been a lot of polling going
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  Speaker 3: into into the election to say, what's what's the likelihood
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  Speaker 3: that this initiative is going to pass, like they do
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  Speaker 3: with all kind of political efforts, and you know, initially
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  Speaker 3: was expected this was going to pass overwhelmingly sixty percent.
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  Speaker 2: Seventy that's how it was polling. Yeah, it was.
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  Speaker 1: Pulling way positive I knew at the time, I'd kind
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: of forgot. Yeah, so what it was, it was it
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  Speaker 1: was expected to have a wider margin.
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  Speaker 3: For sure, and and and so you know it. And
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  Speaker 3: as the state, we're we were limited in terms of
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  Speaker 3: what we could or couldn't say. But just by statute,
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  Speaker 3: as you know, we can't take a position on a
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  Speaker 3: ballot initiative as a state agency, we we didn't produce
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  Speaker 3: a lot of materials or or you know, we didn't
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  Speaker 3: get involved to try to influence the decision one way
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  Speaker 3: or the other by by statute, by policy and so.
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  Speaker 2: But but explain that little bit to me. Yeah, who.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Who was supposed to sort of opine?
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  Speaker 2: Right? Who? Who would who was like?
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  Speaker 1: Who was who was doing who was doing the role
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  Speaker 1: of saying here's what that would look like? Ye, just
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  Speaker 1: politicians and private individuals, private individuals, private and you guys
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  Speaker 1: were said, you guys were you guys had as a
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  Speaker 1: state And I get it.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not questioning about it.
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  Speaker 1: I get it. Like it was stay out of this,
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  Speaker 1: that's right, and it not by choice the department. That's
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  Speaker 1: the Department's directive.
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  Speaker 2: That that statute. That's what we can't get it. You
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  Speaker 2: cannot say as a department.
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  Speaker 1: We think blank, right, that's right, and so well then
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  Speaker 1: I've seen people break that, Yeah, maybe so, maybe so.
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  Speaker 2: Not in this case. In other cases I've seen people
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  Speaker 2: break it. Yeah, and it may be specific to Colorado.
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  Speaker 2: I don't I'm not familiar with the other states and
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  Speaker 2: how it works there.
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  Speaker 3: But yeah, so we were we were limited in terms
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  Speaker 3: of what we could say, what we could do, and
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  Speaker 3: how we could say. This is you know, wolves could
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  Speaker 3: or couldn't that. These will be the conflicts, these will
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  Speaker 3: be the challenges. He will be the opportunities. We didn't
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  Speaker 3: We didn't have that opportunity to say those kinds of things.
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  Speaker 2: And so so.
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  Speaker 3: We watch essentially sitting on the sidelines watching how you know,
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  Speaker 3: the the those that were supportive of Proposers one fourteen,
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  Speaker 3: those that were opposed to Proposes one fourteen. We saw
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  Speaker 3: lots of television ads, We saw lots of billboards on
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  Speaker 3: the highways and vote no, vote yes, all all of
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  Speaker 3: that kind of stuff that you would expect leading into
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  Speaker 3: an election. And election night, term comes up, and and
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  Speaker 3: you know, the group of us that within the agency
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  Speaker 3: or texting back and forth, it looks like it's as
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  Speaker 3: results are starting to roll in, and sure enough that
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  Speaker 3: the story is well told that it passed just barely
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  Speaker 3: fifty one to forty nine percent, And it doesn't matter.
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  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter if it's fifty one to forty nine
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  Speaker 3: or eighty twenty. It still passes.
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  Speaker 1: Say I forgive you if you don't want to answer this. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: Like I get it. The first one is easy questions,
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  Speaker 1: two questions. The first one is you know it's a
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  Speaker 1: presidential election too, Was you was more of your mind
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  Speaker 1: space the wolf question than the president question?
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  Speaker 2: But for sure it was more more directly impactful. Right.
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  Speaker 1: That's like when you're talking about election results, most people
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: think like, oh, who's going to be the president?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you're thinking, is the wolf thing passed? And
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  Speaker 3: it's got a lot of attention, like looking at the media,
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  Speaker 3: I mean it was. It was a big deal in
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  Speaker 3: Colorado at that time. It was like you say, it
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  Speaker 3: got all kinds of attention locally, it got all kinds
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  Speaker 3: of attention nationally and even internationally, and so yeah, it
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  Speaker 3: it became a really really big deal.
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  Speaker 1: So the second part of that, and I totally get
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  Speaker 1: it if you don't even want to say, but did you
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  Speaker 1: have a hope.
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  Speaker 2: You know, I don't really want to say how I
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  Speaker 2: voted on it or what my thoughts were on it.
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  Speaker 2: I think that it's respect that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that it's it's a it's
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  Speaker 3: a unique way to make a decision. What I'll say
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  Speaker 3: is that it's a very unique way to make a
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  Speaker 3: political decision on a unique way to to to pose
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  Speaker 3: that question to the voters. Should this be something for
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  Speaker 3: for the state agency that's that's full of professional WILDLFE finalsyges.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So the next morning, you guys wake up and.
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  Speaker 3: Probably just one fourteen passes, right, and so then it's like, wow, well,
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  Speaker 3: now now what do we do. We'd given some thought
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  Speaker 3: to it, like we had, we had some some plans
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  Speaker 3: within the agency, you know, kind of sketched out plans
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  Speaker 3: as so what do we what if? And we had
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: scenarios about if this passes, if this doesn't pass. But
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  Speaker 3: you know, it's the other unique thing about this is
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  Speaker 3: that at this point in time, wolves were federally listed
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  Speaker 3: in Colorado. So they're they're not even in What that
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  Speaker 3: means is that they're they're listed under the Endangered Species Act.
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  Speaker 3: And so when a species, regardless of whether it's wolves
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  Speaker 3: or grouse or whatever species it is. When species is
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  Speaker 3: listed under the Endangered Species Act, federally, Fish and Wildlife
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  Speaker 3: Service has management authority for that, so our federal partners
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: have that.
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  Speaker 2: And here it is that we're.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: Now being tasked with this reintroduction of a species that
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: native to the state historically, and we don't have the
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: direct management authority, so we've got to work with Fish
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: and Wildlife Service on this process too. And so yeah,
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: so we have all of these different scenarios laid out
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: as to what could happen if this does pass, if
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: this doesn't pass, and sure enough it did, and then
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: we began the process to think about, well, how do
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: we how do we execute what the statute now says?
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, there's a little bit of confusion on that. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure you know it by heart. Can you say
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  Speaker 1: what the statute said? Because the statute wasn't Colorado needs
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: to immediately release wolves into Colorado.
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  Speaker 2: It was something different and more confusing it was.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was it said a lot, but fundamentally
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  Speaker 3: what it said is that we needed to do reintroduce
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  Speaker 3: wolves west of the Continental Divide, right the Continental divides
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  Speaker 3: that north south line in the state, Pacific and Atlantic
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  Speaker 3: watersheds had to release wolves west of the Continental Divide.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: We had to develop a plan. We had to do that.
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  Speaker 3: How would we do that. We had to develop a
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: method for compensating landowners that were experiencing conflict. We had
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: to develop some recovery goals, state recovery goals, so not
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: only federally listed species, but also it's also a state
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: listed species. We didn't develop any kind of federal recovery
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: goals as for the Fish and Wilfe Service to do.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Our role was to develop the state recovery goals and
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: then we had to do what it says is take
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: the steps necessary to begin reintroductions by December thirty first,
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, Right, so November I forget fourth or fifth,
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty till December thirty first, twenty twenty three, a
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: little bit over three years to do all of that,
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: develop a plan, and develop all the compensation programs, all
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: of those different kinds of things.
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  Speaker 2: So it was very prescriptive.
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  Speaker 3: It was very prescriptive. Yeah, I mean it was prescriptive
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  Speaker 3: in the sense that it said this is what you
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: have to do. It didn't say this is how you're
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: going to do it right. That became our role, our
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: responsibility as the state, and so it wasn't something that
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: they said, you will reintroduce this many wolves, these locations,
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: those kinds of things that became the process that we
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: then developed, our staff myself primarily leading the development of
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: what we call our Wolf Restoration and Conservation and Restoration
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Plan or some wolf frustration Management plan is what it's called.
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  Speaker 3: And so that's what we've put together. And there's a
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: long process to do that right. We began pretty much
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: immediately after the ballot initiative passed. We can talk more
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: about that. That process, but involved the public, involved tribes, involved,
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: stakeholder groups, involved technical groups, really to try to put
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: together what's the best way to do this. You know,
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: this is a task, this is what you have to do.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: You have to reintroduce wolves and you have to address
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: these these points. But how are you going to do that?
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: And so lots and lots of meetings, lots of discussions
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: about these are the kinds of things that need to
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: be incorporated into what's going to be a good management plan.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: Knowing that we're not going to get it right exactly
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: the first time. There's going to be you know, this
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: is the plan for twenty twenty to twenty twenty three
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: and beyond, and at some point we're gonna have to
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: revise this plan as things go on.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: And so help me understand what prevented you guys from
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: being smart asses and saying.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, we'll put two out.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because part of the statute said that we have
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: to develop a self sustaining wolf population.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Right, so there is an aspect to a spelled out right.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: So I didn't I didn't elaborate on that, but yeah,
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: we can't. We couldn't do that. We couldn't just say okay,
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: here's one wolf. We've we've reintroduced wolves. We were two
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: wolves we've re introduced.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: It was to find enough that everyone knew what.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: It meant, that's right, Yeah, it's yeah. I mean it
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: was a serious effort and and you know it was
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: state law. It is state law, remains state law, and
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: so that's what you know, that's what drives what we
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: do as as an agency is the state laws. We
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: have to abide by that. And so you know, we
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: took that very seriously. But you know, took that respond.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: And at what point did they create because you you.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: What was your job on the election night? What was
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: your job title?
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a species conservation program manager, right, so
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: more general working on all these other species that that
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: we've talked about links, wolverine and otters.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: And then what day did they come and go forget
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: all that you're the wolf guy.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: Oh it was, I mean it kind of became so
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: for a while I was doing both. I was trying
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: to do all the species conservation program stuff and the
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: wolf stuff, and it became pretty clear pretty quickly that
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: you couldn't do both.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: It really was.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: That was two separate jobs, both really high demand jobs.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: And so then I moved into the wolf job. That
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: was a new job that was created, a new position
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: that was created, and I've moved into that, and then
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: we've since backfilled that position to do all the other.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: It seems to me that.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: If you'd have gone out and done a call for
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: applications to come run Colorado's wolf for introduction reintroduction, you
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: would have had a boatload of applicants.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: We might have. Yeah, we might have.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean were you were you dying to get it?
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Like? Did you want it?
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: I look forward to the challenge. I thought it was
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: you work in wildlife conservation. I've been there for twenty
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: at that point, twenty twenty years, twenty four years, Wow,
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: twenty years, I guess at that point. And yeah, I mean,
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: here's this opportunity to do something pretty historic, pretty you know,
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: kind of setting a legacy for the work that this
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: agency is going to do.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I was excited to take it on.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: And did you know that you were going to become
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: like I don't want to draw too much for parallel,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: but you were going to become like this foucy like
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: character that all of a sudden everybody was going to
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: have an opinion about.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: I tried to avoid that. I tried to make it
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: not about me. I tried to make it about the
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: program and the agency and apparently yeah, yeah, I mean
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: I wanted this to be, you know, the success of
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: the program, and this is.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: The success of the ages, but you decided you wanted
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: to keep low profile.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean I wanted to do the job, and
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do it well.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: And you know, I think that it's and it isn't
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: just me that that did the job either, Like it
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I've gotten a lot of attention for it, I've gotten
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: my name has been associated with it a lot, and
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: I and I take a lot of pride in that
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: I did that well and.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: You had gotten threats and stuff too.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: Though well, it was there was times where it was
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: it was very tense. We would have meetings at our
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: commission meetings. We had discussions about you if things go south,
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: this is what you do, and that kind of stuff.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: Nothing ever personal.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: But was it nothing personal?
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Do you feel I don't want I don't want to
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: dwell on it's too long, but I just want to
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: kind of understand for you personally. Do you feel that
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: the public understanding was there that like, you're a guy,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: you have a job, this is coming from the voters,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: and you're there to execute on the job, not that
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: you're some not that you were the one that was like,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: hey I got an idea. Yeah, like that was understood.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, we made I made any time I had
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: the opportunity to talk about this in front of a
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: stock you know, a producer group, or or even the
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: the Wolf Advocates or our commission, or just to the
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: general public, it was it was, you know, we made
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: the effort to say we're doing this, We're in and we're
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: going to do a good job at this, and we're
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: doing it because probably there's one fourteen.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: In accordance with the law.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: This is what we have to do, right, I mean,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: this is and so you know, we did not, and
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: I think in some ways that helped us. You know,
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: if we go into these to these small slope communities
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: and say, hey, we're the agency we want to reintroduce wolves,
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: that's not that's not a winning of conversation, right if
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: we say, hey, state loss is that we have to
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: do this. And in fact, this was a major point
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: that the chair of our commission at the point was saying,
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: is that, you know, even though the vote was carried
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: on carried largely by the Front Range counties, right the
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: population centers for Colorado Fort Collins down to Colorado Springs Pueblo,
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: that vast majority. And remember that the initiative said that
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: we'll reintroduce wolves west of the Continental Divide, very much
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: the rural part of Colorado. Her statement was, we want
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: to do this with the west slope and not to
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: the west slope. And that was that rang really really true, right,
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: we we really wanted to incorporate their opinions, and you know,
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: it's we have to look for positive outcomes. We can't
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: just say it's a terrible idea, we're not going to
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: do it. It's a good idea, and.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: We have to do it. We have to find someone
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: right exactly.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: And so so working with the West Slope, trying to
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: find understand what their concerns were, understand how we can
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: address what they want to see in wolf frustration, what
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: kind of considering again federally listed species, how do we
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: manage this federally listed species that has, you know, certain prohibitions,
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: and how do you do work on that? And and
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: we found really good tools to do that kind of stuff.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: And so yeah, it was it was a long long process.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: And having that back to your question, like being able
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: to say this isn't an agency initiative, this is an agency.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: We're driven to do this by state law, by the voters.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: That was very helpful for us to be able to
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: do that during the So you had a three year
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: roughly a three year window to get this on the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: ground between election night and wolves around the ground, roughly
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: three years. I felt in watching this play out, it
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: was very interesting to me that during that three years,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: like something totally unprecedented happened in wild wolves on their
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: own four feet walked into Colorado.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: That's right out of Wyoming. Well and even before election
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: night that had happened.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Okay before okay, yeah, And I get, like, I totally
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: get that the piece of legislation that passed did not
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: contemplate that that occurrence.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: Didn't effect it didn't negate it.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: It wasn't written in that like all, this doesn't matter
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: if a wolf walks in on its own four feet.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Right, but it complicated stuff. Yeah, yeah, can you speak
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: to that?
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was so so two different things
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: happened to two different scenarios happened. One was in extreme
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: northwest Colorado, Moffatt County, right truly right on the board
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, right in that that little tri
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: state area. We found a carcass or our field staff
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: found a carcass of an elk that had been killed
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: by by wolves. Wolf tracks were there, Wolf Scott was there.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: We collected that wolf scat ran some genetics on it
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: and discovered that it was not just a wolf, but
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: it was several several different wolves that were related, right, so,
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: meaning that there had been some reproduction there had been
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: a wolf den someplace nobody ever.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Held far into Colorado's.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Miles not not far at all.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: So it's it's it's very likely that this this pack
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: of wolves, and it was a pack because they were
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: flirting with the border, right, it was learning with those
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: three borders somewhere Idahome or sorry you talk Wyoming, Colorado
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: and never heard, never saw those wolves again. We get
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: reports from them from time to time. We would see
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: individuals and then those wolves in Wyoming.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Wolves are not.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: Federally relisted, right, they're under state management, and especially in
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: that predator zone, they can be shot at any time.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: And that's what happened ultimately to those wolves. And so
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: though you know that's one scenario that Maffitt kntay scenario
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: in North Park, we had a black female wolf. We
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: get these reports from time to time and a very
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: clear photo of a lot of the times those come
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: back as like a German shepherd or malamet or something. Right,
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: somebody mistakes it clearly not a wolf. This was clearly
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: was a wolf, black canid. You see a caller on
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: her talk to my colleague in Wyoming, got the radio
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: frequency for her and started to monitor her from the
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: air and we were flying for her. Just a lone female,
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: a lone female, right, and so this was one was
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: this I think spring of twenty nineteen is when this happened.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: That fall, and so as we're leading up into a
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: lot of the ballot initiative stuff in twenty let's see
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, Towards towards the end of twenty twenty,
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: we saw a gray male or another gray animal with her,
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: and so then in early twenty twenty one we captured
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: that animal, put a collar on him, and so that
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: was the first time. So this is twenty twenty one,
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: right after the ballot initiative, and put a collar on him,
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: and they paired bread and reproduce and produce the first
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: litter of pups.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Do you feel that those two wolves knew each other? No,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: I don't think they did. I think they came. So
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: it was they came to freak like a freak deal.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: There's possibly at that time two wolves in the state
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: of Colorado and they found each other.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: I think that's right. And we had had other wolves
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: that had come down from the Yellowstone System from from Montana, Idahayoming,
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: and they've come into that that same general area. So
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: there's some way I don't know how the wolf see,
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: how it sees the landscape, but that that general area,
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: that North Park areas where they had come. We had
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: reports from them from I think two thousand and seven
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: that we had individual wolves and so, yeah, certainly, from
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: time to time, wolves are going to naturally migrate into
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: the state and it's a gauntlet. Now you're getting through
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: southern Wyoming is tough for a wolf, but it happens, right,
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: and they've done that, and so those wolves that reproduced
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: in North Park called them the North Park Pack. That
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: was the first time that we had had a documented
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: reproduction of wolves in eighty plus years. And then the
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: same kind of thing happened. They go up into Wyoming
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: and they can get shot there at any time, and
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: so there's still a few members of that pack that remain.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: But for the most part, that pack didn't persist long fizzled. Yeah, understand.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and again it just it had no bearing on
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: what you needed to do, right.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: It wasn't enough, right. Yeah, So a few individuals from
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: from time to time is exciting from a wolf restoration perspective,
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: but it's not. It doesn't meet the letter of the
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: law in terms of what the ballot and this one,
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: she says, when.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: You guys had to I know that there became this
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: this big issue about well, how let's say a fellow
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: wants some wolves, how do you go get them? Yeah,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: the legislation didn't contemplate this, No can you can you
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: explain like I mean, just like the whole basics of
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: the questions like okay, we need some yeah, and they're
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: not here.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Where do you get them from?
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Like how do you get them? How do you ask?
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Like who do you approach?
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: What are the conversations like yeah, so well there, I mean,
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of there's a much longer story to
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: the development of the planet and how we came up
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: with what the what we needed to do to get
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: restoration to happen. I think one thing that's really important
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: that that doesn't get told enough is that there's because
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: of this federal status, because they're they're federally listed as endangered.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: What that means fundamentally is that take is prohibited, and
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: take means a bunch of different things legally, and there's
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: been some new new kind of.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Interpretations as to what that means.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: But fundamentally means that you can't kill an animal. You
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: can't you can't chase, harm, harass an animal. And I
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: want to explain because you alluded to something really quick.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: We've covered this on the news show. Is like, I
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: can't remember what year. Some years back, the language of
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: the Endangered Species Act around take was interpreted to mean,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: let's say there's an endangered swallow and it only nests
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: on a cliff. So you'd be like, well, you can't
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: take a swallow, but they would they define that to be, well,
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: you can't destroy the cliff, because that's tantamount to taking
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: a swallow. And now they've now the current administration is
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: trying to walk back some of that language and more
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: narrowly defined take meaning if you kill it, if you
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: destroy a bird's nest, did you take a bird?
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Right, It's just like a philosophical question as much as anything.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: Because because there's the take has has habitat implications, right,
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: and so for wolves that's not really all that And
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: that doesn't really mean that much for wolves because wolves
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: are have tech generalists, they'll they'll live wherever. But what
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: what we learned in all of these conversations that we
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: had with other states that are managing wolves. We had many,
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: many meetings with the current state managers, state widlife managers
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: that are dealing with wolves. They say, you have to
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: have some kind of tools. You have to have the
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: ability to haze and harassed wolves that are not behaving
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: in ways that are good right, that are that are
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: getting into livestock conflict, and in some cases even even
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: kill wolves. And we've done that as a state agency.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: And so within that, within that confines, within that that status.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Of a federally listed species.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: What we developed was called a TENJ rule or what
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: the Fish and Wildlife Service developed, and that's something that
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: they've used for many different species, not just wolves, but
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: it allows take in certain circumstances.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: That's the that's the experimental populace or something like that.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: So it's called the non essential experimental population. And so
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: that was that was really important. And there's we spent
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: a lot of money and took and did this on
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: a very accelerated timeframe to get all of those federal
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: rule making processes in place. It has to get published
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: in the Federal Register and get all public comment on
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: their CPW. Color Parks and Wildlife paid for the consultants
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: to write that that those NEPA documents, the the E
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: A and the I S for that work. Uh And
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: and it was done on a really accelerated time frame
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: because it had to be in place prior to wolves
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: being reintroduced. And fundamentally, what the TENJ rule does is
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: that it relaxes those take prohibitions. It allows wolves to
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: be chased and harmed and rubber buckshot those and in
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: certain circumstances, even Lethally managed Lethally removed and so that
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: was really important that that we did that, and because
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: if he didn't, then we're reintroducing federally endangered wolves with
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: no management tools at all. Right, And so that's that's
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: a really challenging situation.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: That's where you when you were pursuing that experimental thing
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: that gave greater management latitude, were you at risk of
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: of lawsuits from from from wildlife advocacy groups?
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: I think were they were? They were they understanding that
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: that would be necessary.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: For the most I mean, it's it's hard to generalize, right,
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: there's there's a whole as much as there's a whole
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: spectrum of hunters, and there's a whole spectrum of ranchers.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: There's a whole.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: Spectrum of wolf advocate type groups too. Some wolf advocates
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: were absolutely opposed to the idea of the TENJ rule
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: of the experiment non essential experimental rule. Some understood that, yeah,
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: this is this is how you're going to buy some tolerance.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: This is if you have this ability, then you're you're
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: going to have, you know, some legal ways to manage
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: those challenging situations that are bound to arise that was pursuing.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: That was a decision of the department. Was it was
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: totally a CPW decision. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, it wasn't
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: our decision it was. It wasn't our doing it was.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: It's a federal rule making process, and so the US
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Fish and Wildlife Service.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: So it was the lad the way to do it.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: It was the only way to do it right. And
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: so they Fish and Wildlife Service had to be a
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: partner in this. And and through that process that we
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: developed an MoU that gives a memorandum of understanding that
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: gives us a status called designated Agent. So it allows
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: us as the state wildlife Management agency, to manage wolves
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: in the state. And so what it did, what that
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: TENJ rule do us is. It defines that geographic barrier
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: says from north to southeast to west. Within Colorado, any
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: wolf that's there, whether we reintroduced it or a wolf
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: that that comes in from from the north, will be
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: considered part of that non essential experimental population. And so
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: that allows that that management flexibility for for all wolves
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: in the state. It's you know, there's no.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Didn't need to find out who came from where.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: No, exactly, as long as it's within the state borders,
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: we can treat it as a as a member of
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: that population.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: That not so those so those wolves that came in
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: from Wyoming, yep, like doing this all of a sudden,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: their status would change.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: Right, well, even even without TENJA as soon as they
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: crossed that state line in Wyoming, it's a it's a
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: state managed species. It's a it's a I don't know
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: exactly what their.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Status is, but their status within Colorado.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: Change, right And then they come into Colorado they're federally endangered,
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: but within Colorado now they're considered part of that non
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: essential experimental population. And so that was good, right, and
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: so that's as well. That was one of those things
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: that we really needed to have in place. To to
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: get some of that that buy in from from the states.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: So back to your question, how do you how do
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: you ask for just.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: The following in the timeline were during this three year
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: period when you're working on this, I get this has
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: to be true.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Are there political figures or.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: Groups exploring some way to undo this for sure, to
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: challenge this, to sabotage this was Did any of that
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: ever come close?
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I don't know that it ever came close,
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: but it I mean, we had there were several lawsuits filed.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: There was a there was a federal lawsuit.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: Filed the day that we're driving out of the driveway
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: to go to Oregon, which is where we sourced our
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: wolves from the first time, that said that we hadn't
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: done the nep of process to do that TENJA rule
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: properly and and so you know, they were they were
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: trying to shut it down that the litigants in that side,
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: we're trying to shut down wolfree introduction because they they
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: on a procedural no. And you know, we're leaving, we're
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: going up to catch wolves to do this work, and
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: our agency leadership said just keep going. Well, we'll let
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: you know if we we'll give you a call if
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: you need to turn around. And no we didn't. I
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: mean all got dismissed through the courts and all of that.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: So there's there were a lot of no, there never
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: was a delay.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: No.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, So now on my earlier question, how do you
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: find one?
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: So, so what our plan said is that we're going
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: to reinduce ten to fifteen wolves a year for three
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: to five years. We passed that plan in May of
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty three and presented it to our commission. This
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: is kind of an interesting piece of it too, is
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: that when we started this process, we told the Commission
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: this is how as staff, we think we should develop
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: this plan. And we'll develop a stakeholder group, will develop
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: a technical group. We'll have a lot of public meetings,
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: We'll have tribal consultations, we'll have a lot of commission
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: meetings to hear that input and ultimately put all that
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: together developed a plan. And our commission's a broad, broad
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: based group too, a lot of diff representations of hunters
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: and outfitters and ranching communities at large members and so
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: it parks and we're now Parks and Wildlife Agency. So
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: we've got some of that representation in there too. When
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: it came to vote on the plan, the Commission gave
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: us unanimous approval, and which doesn't necessarily mean that the
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: Commission is all in favor of wolf free introduction. There
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: were certainly members of that commission that were not supportive
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: of wolf fre introduction.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: But to me, what that said is that we did
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: a good process. The process of.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: Developed that plan was thorough and complete and really evaluated
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: a lot of different perspectives in that and that was important,
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: I think, to have that in there. So here it
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: is May of twenty twenty three. The statute says by
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: December of twenty twenty three, we got seven months to
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: get wolves on the ground. We had a new director
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: that came in right at that time too, and one
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: of the first things he did was write letters to
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: his counterparts to the other agency directors in Idahoma on Tana, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: Oregan Department of Fish and Wildlife was the first agency
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: that responded positively that said that yeah, we'd be a
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: partner with you on this. That began that process of
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: developing logistics of how do you how do you do that?
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: How do you catch wolves? And transport and release.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: If you if you get into the heads of the
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: agencies that said no, okay, yeah, the states have said no,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: you can't have our wolves. Uh. Some of these states
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: are not under leadership that wants more wolves.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: What I didn't get is if someone says, hey, you
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: know these wolves that you guys are somewhat uncomfortable with
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: some some political figures in these states are uncomfortable with
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: these wolves presence, I would like some.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: One one might think.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: They would go have all you want, take them, yeah,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: but they but they were instead were like no, yeah,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: like what was the game being played there?
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, and these were discussions that happened at the
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: director's level. I think what I mean from from Wyoming
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: perspective as an example, in order for us to take
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: wolves from Wyoming, we would have had to take them
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: from northern Wyoming and release them in northern Colorado. Very
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: likely they would go into southern Wyoming, and the director
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: of Wyoming probably was very smartly said I don't want
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: to create a problem in southern Wyloma.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Right, And so you're, yeah, you're going to create potentially
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: like a big population and then it's going to be
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: you're gonna be dealing from the south.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: Right, and so so that was Wyoming's rationale. Idaho Montana
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: were the other two states that really have robust wolf populations,
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: big wolf populations, and they both said no. They very
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: explicitly said no. I think largely for political reasons. I
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: think that there was some influence that they had heard
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: that they did not want. You know, that some entities
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: within Colorado didn't want to have wolves, and so they
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: had made contact and communications and that that kind of
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: convinced them from a political perspective that, yeah, we don't
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: really want to partner on this, despite the fact that
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: we've got very large wolf populations.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I read it like I kind of read
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: it like what you're saying is I read it as
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: a way it was a way to express disapproval. Yeah,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: with how this happened, right in my way of expressing
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: disapproval is to deny, to deny you this thing that
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I'm not.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Really happy to have anyway.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right right, Yeah, And so then so Oregon, Oregon
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: and Washington, and the other piece of it too is
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: that we had to get wolves from federally delisted areas
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: right because of and it's a lot it's not that
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: interesting story. But the fact of the matter is that
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: they had in order to take wolves from a listed
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: area where they're federally listed, you have to do more
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: NEPA work, you know, more more of that EI s
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: and in environmental impact statement and environmental assessments to look
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: at what the impacts of those populations are going to be.
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: And so that that took a lot of those areas
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: out of consideration. So wolves are federally delisted Idaho, Montana,
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Wyoming and throughout those states, and in the eastern portions
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: of Montana or sorry of Washington and Oregon, and so
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: so that was it was really those five states that
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: initially we had that those conversations with and Oregon, like
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: I say, said yes, you can come and and and
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: at that time they said you can take ten wolves.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: We don't want you to take any breeding pairs, none
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: of the breeders of the packs, but you can take uh,
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: you know, essentially the the earlings of of the packs.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: We did not want to take pops, you know. And
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: so there's there's a lot of different considerations for what
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: makes a good candidate, what kind of wolves do we
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: want to take down to Colorado?
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: What of this what of this story that we Well,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: first I just want to revenue because when Montana did
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: you know, when Yellstone did it, it was that they
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: that they got stuck with these super wolves. Yeah, which
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: is you know whatever pretend, but that they got stuck
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: with these super wolves. And then the popular narrative that
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: I hear not from officialdom, but I just hear is
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: that you guys got stuck Colorado got stuck with the
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: cattle killers.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: Is there There's not truth to it.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: No, it's when you when you hear that, you're like,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: I don't get where that came from.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: I get where it came from, but I get where
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: it came from. I mean it came from the fact
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: that where wolves and livestock over lap, there's going to
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: be conflict.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: So there's in an eastern Oregon, there's a lot of
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: livestock and there's a lot of wolves too, and and
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: and there's history. You know, all of those packs have
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: had some some involvement, some some not good involvement with
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: with livestock. And so that was part of our criteria
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: is that you know, not only do we want yearlings,
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: we didn't want this super young. We didn't want the
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: super old wolves. We want something that's going to contribute
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: to this population and not be naive to know how
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: to hunt. But we also weren't going to take wolves
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: from an area that was from a pack that was
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: currently depredating in it in currently right and so and
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: we did not. Fundamentally what that meant is that we
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: didn't want to take wolves from a pack where Oregon
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: or Wildlife Services was doing Wolf Control Act action. There
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: were a lot of scenarios where we had wolves available
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: to us to capture. You know, they were they were
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: in a geographically just a flat open area, not a
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: treed area. They were on federal lands, but they were
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: wolves that had been involved in very recent depredations. And
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: so we passed on those. We said, no, we're not
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: we don't want to take that, anticipating that that was
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: going to be the kind of response that we would
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: get is that we're just bringing in these cattle killers.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: So we brought in wolves from packs that had had
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: wolf livestock history, but nothing that was that was current,
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: nothing that was active.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: And so that if your challenge had been if your
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: challenge was to go find wolves that had never to
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: go find wolves in the lower forty eight that had
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: no history of cattle.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: You'd mentioned sol, there's no way.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: I mean, well, I mean the only place is is
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: the park Yellowstone, right, and that's not an option for
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: a bunch of different reasons. And so yeah, within the
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: lower forty eight that that becomes it becomes nearly impossible
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: to find wolves. And that's a huge reason why we
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: went to British Columbia in the next year in twenty
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: twenty five.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: Did Oregon sell them to you, trade them to you?
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: No, give them to you give them they they wildlife
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: agencies do a lot of that kind of stuff where
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: we we've given as one of the projects I was
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: involved with Swift Fox. We took Swift Fox and put
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: them up in North Dakota and on some of the
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: tribal lands there. So it's it's there's no sale, like,
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: we're not buying wolves were we. CPW paid all the
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: helicopter contracts, We paid all of the all the fees,
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: all the costs associated with capture and transport of wolves.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: But we didn't there's no exchange, no monetary exchange.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: For those captures. Yeah, how'd you guys do it? Uh?
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: So we contracted all that out. We don't do the
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: capture work ourselves, but there are capture companies that that
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: go out and uh dart from the air and and
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: uh so Oregon was was great to cooperate with their
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: Their wolf program manager was great. She she had a
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: lot of information. She had been monitoring the wolves really
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: intently for the last several years, and so she would
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: tell us about which packs were available, which individuals were available.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: She knew which the which the breeders were and could
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: comment on those based on code color and call our
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: color and things like that. And so the gunner would
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: go up, the helicopter would go up Dart Wolf and
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: then they would bring those wolves to us and in
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: the field and we would do what we do, measure them,
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: weigh them, process and put callers on them.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: And how did you how did you transport them?
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: They were transported in the from the from the field
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: where they were captured to to where we were in
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: the field.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Was in the helicopter tranquilized?
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you want to put a wolf and
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: a helicopter.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: That's not what.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: They're hobbled. They've they're hobbled. They've got a muzzle on them,
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: for sure. They're in transport, but they're out. Yeah, and
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: then they're never held anywhere though, right, So did you
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: put did you put.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Them in in in an enclosure in Colorado?
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: No, So in Oregon they would be put in. Say
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: we captured them on a Tuesday, they get worked up
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: in the field that they get the color on and
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: they do we do the blood draws, we do all
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: the genetic samples, all that kind of stuff, put them
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: in a crate, a large reinforced dog crate, and then
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: they're flown to Colorado. That that probably the next day
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: is they're held overnight in those crates and then flown
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: the next morning and then released straight away just flat
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: out yeah, hot release. Call that hard release versus a
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: soft release, and and both work. You know, those are
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: two different strategies as something that we really considered a lot.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: And so that some kind of wakes up and he's
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: just in a new spot. He's in a new spot. Yeah,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: And so we would release them from Oregon. That they
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: were transported three to five animals at a time, and
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: so those animals would all be released together in the
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: same place at the same time, and they knew each other.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: You weren't mixing or remixing. They were mixed each other. Yeah,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: they were mixed. They weren't necessarily all from the same pack.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: There's probably some that that did come from the same pack.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: I'd have to look back it precise the relationships, but
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: for the most part they were We wanted that genetic representation.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: We didn't want them all to be you know, we
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: didn't move entire packs together. They were all individual animals
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: from from separate packs. And really, I mean that's kind
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: of the way wolf biology works. As they get to
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: a certain point, they disperse out of those packs and
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: start to create new packs and become defend new territories,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: and so that's kind of what we were trying to
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: mimic in a somewhat artificial way, but to say, here's
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: here's a yearling male a yearling female from neighboring or
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: separate packs.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Let's see if that if that works, and in some
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: cases it did.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: How'd you pick? How did you pick? And did you
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: make it public where you were actually letting them go?
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so we kind of made it public after
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: the fact, Like, you know, this is a sensitive issue, right,
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: We've got to protect got to protect the wolves. We've
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: got to protect our staff too. There were threats that
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: we were getting about, and who knows in some of
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: the social media world how how real some of these
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: threats really were, but that was definitely a concern. This
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: is this is a this is you know, we're again,
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: this is the responsibility that we're given. This is the
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: task that we're given by state law. And we got
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: to make sure that everybody stay safe and the wolves
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: themselves too. And so initially we were very secretive about
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: timing locations all that kind of stuff. The wolves were
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: released on state or private lands, and so we didn't
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: do it on federal lands. Kind of coming back, and
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: this is a criticism that we got is that we
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: took shortcuts that we didn't do the NEPAL. We did
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: not do the NEPA work on releasing on federal lands.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: If we were to release on for service lands b
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: LM lands, we would have had to do more NEPO work,
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: and that's cost money.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: That's funny because i mean, come on, you let like,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: if you let it go on, I mean you're effectively
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: letting it go on public land, whether you do or not.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: On federal land, they're going to go right, They're gon
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: gonna move. Hey, stay on this guy's place. Exactly.
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: There's never the expectation that you open the crate and
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: the wolf is going to stay on that ten acres,
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: one hundred acres, a thousand acres.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: These animals move, right. Did you put a collar on
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: every one you let go?
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: We did, Yeah, and not only just a caller, but
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: a GPS caller, and so you know the technology has
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: changed quite a bit, and so we have these callers
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: on that allow us to get points and they they're
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: they're not super frequent, you can change that, but these
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: catch a point every four hours or so. And so
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: really that the purpose of those callers isn't to say, look,
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: it's going this this way, it's going up this drainage
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: and getting minute by minute kind of action on. It's
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: really just to say, this is the general area where
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: the animal is. It's still alive, it's still doing this,
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: it's paired with this, and it's traveling with this animal.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: Those those kinds of things, and so yeah, so they
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: all have that that GPS caller on. There's some risks
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: with GPS callers. They're they're technologically a little bit more sensitive.
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: They're they're they we've had some collar failures versus the
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: more traditional the VHF callers, which is just the signal
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: that you have to be either in the field or
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: in a plane and you know with the receiver and
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: getting those those signals and so so yeah, every wolf
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: that we released had had a GPS collar on it.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: We will try to keep with what our plan says
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: is that within each pack we'll keep two callers active,
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: one GPS and one VHF collar just for the longevity
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: of it. These the callers last five six, seven years
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: hopefully in best case scenario, which is about the life
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: of a wolf. And so we don't want to be
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: replacing callers that much. Catching wolves, collaring them is it's expensive.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: For one thing, it's it's it's risky anytime you're up
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: in the helicopter. It's risky to the people, is risky
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: to the animals too, and so yeah, so so everything
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: had had GPS collars on.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: But but back to it.
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: We we did not release on federal lands, but new
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: full well that that wolves would go.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: On to federal lands. Like you say, these these things
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: move big distances. Tell me the numbers. So how many
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: wolves you did and when?
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so in year one, in December of twenty twenty three,
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: we did ten animals from Oregon, and then fourteen months
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: later January of twenty twenty five, we reintroduced fifteen animals
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: from British Columbia, and then we had plans to do
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: a third year of releases in January of twenty twenty six,
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: we would have gone back to British Columbia. And British
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: Columbia was great to work with. The staff there was
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: awesome that we had great cooperation, great facilities to use there.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: It worked well for their programs. They were in a
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: predator reduction mode for some of their caribou recovery efforts,
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: and so that it gave them a positive spin to
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: do some of their wolf work. And based on that
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: criticism that we heard from the animals that we'd reintroduced
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: from Oregon, there's no overlap with livestock. Are there are
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: no livestock in northern central northern British Columbia where we're
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: getting these animals from. And so it was, you know,
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: we were addressing that concern that we had heard after
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: year one that you know, you're bringing in cattle killers,
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: and we brought it wolves from British Columbia down and
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: sure enough they've they've been involved in some depredation just
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: because that's just what that's what predators do.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: When the ten hit the ground, the first ten, what
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: were some of the most immediately what were some of
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: the first things you saw in terms of distances before
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: they settled, I mean, did they wake up and split?
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so by the time they were released, they were
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: out of the effect of drugs, right.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: So they're in the crates.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: You open the crate and sometimes you'll take a few minutes,
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: a minute or two to get the gumption to leave
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: the crate. Sometimes they would go right away. And so
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: and they all, you know, in that first wave of five,
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: I think we did five, and then we did two,
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: and then we did three or something like. I don't
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: remember exactly the numbers on how exactly that worked, but
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: they some animals moved big distances right away. Some animals
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: stuck super close within five ten miles of thee these
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: sites too, and so they would they just they were
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: all in exploratory mode, right and some of them, I
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: think we're probably a little confused. I think they all
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: probably were at least in some way or others confused
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: about what they had just experienced, and and you're just
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: flown from from Oregon, driven in a truck, and then
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: the crates are open and they're in a different they're
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: in a different place. One of the things that we
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: really wanted to kind of mimic is taking wolves from
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: someplace that is ecologically pretty similar to Colorado. And so
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: that that worked pretty well. There they're in, you know,
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: an elk dominated environment. We've got obviously huge ungulate populations
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: in western Colorado, so that was good and they you know,
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: some animals moved quite a bit and some some stuck
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: pretty close.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: Uh. In that first year, we did have one one
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: pair and they developed a.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: Litter of pups that produced a little of pups and
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: started to defend a territory as well. So that was
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: that was the first That was in the spring of
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty four.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: What was the and I know you're only getting a
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: you're only getting a ping on them every.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: Four four hours.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how long do you have a guess when they
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: so they cut loose in Colorado? How many hours or
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: days went by before one of them had a successful hunt?
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: Got great question? So so we get pings every four hours.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: We don't get a ping. We don't get the result
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: of that ping. Every we get one download a day, essentially,
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: so we get to just to understand how that works.
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: The I don't that's a great question. I don't know
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: how how long it was. I don't think it was.
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: Your wolves don't eat every day, right, they don't. They
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: don't need to have a kill every day. Probably within
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: the first week that that we I don't remember. We
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: were really sensitive to to not wanting to go in
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: when we would see a cluster of points. We didn't
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: want to go in on that because we didn't want
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: to scare them off of that and create conflict, push
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: them off of that that kill of a deer or
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: an elk or something like that.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: You're not, Yeah, I imagine like there's a temptation to
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: go running over there to see what they've been doing.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Every time you get like that, he's in the same
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: place for twelve hours. That's right, you're dining and go
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: see what's up. But you would just stay back.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: We would stay back and then we would go in afterwards.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: Right after that, when they've moved on, then you can
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: go in. And we've got some great research that's that's
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: happening right now, looking at that kind of looking at
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: what what wolf diet looks like. And so that's that's
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: how we'll do that and go in and look for
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: scatt and then you can can run some genetics on
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: the scat.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: How many months went by before you had one kill
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: a cow?
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: Well, we had cal We actually had depredation from the
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: North Park pac before we did reintroduction. We had had
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: depredation in there. There was probably from the wolves that
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: were released in Oregon. I'd have to look back. I
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: don't I don't know for sure, but months, month, month
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: or months?
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, what's your take now that you've looked at
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: this so carefully? We were talking about this the other
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: day on the news show research around this question, but like, what's.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Your take on.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: The degree to which wolves are just opportunistic and remain
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: opportunity stick versus they they hunt elk, they hunt moose.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Those animals behave in a certain way. You might get
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: it kicked to the head, right, they're fast or whatever,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: and then you discover cattle and then and in the
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: wolf's mind, I don't know that's true or not. In
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: the wolf's mine, he's like man, I just prefer to
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: deal with cattle, like, do you do you see that switch?
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: No, you don't.
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: In fact, I mean there were there in one of
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: the first dens that we had in that North Park den,
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: there was there were yearlings right in the field right
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: right below the home site, right below where animals were,
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: and you would see wolves walk right through the cattle.
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: They would not touch the cattle at all. And so
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: you know, I don't I think that they It's not
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: as though they're just bloodthirsty killers and we'll kill whatever.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: So I think in those animals where we know that
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: those animals were killing native ungulates too, and so so
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: it's I don't think that they get that opportunistic feel.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: And I think that a cow is probably much easier
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: to kill for a wolf.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But what I meant more, I didn't do a
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: good job asked a question.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: What I meant more is do you see that a
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: pack or a pair or whatever will kill a cow
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: and then do you see that they all of a
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: sudden go like that's what they focus on? Or will
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: they kill a cow and not get hazed off it,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: just kill a cow and leave on their own and
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: then go back to elk and deer. Yeah, and never
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: visit another cow again. Or does it seem like once
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: they do it, they're headed down a path toward trouble?
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Good?
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: Good question. I don't think we have the resolution of
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: data on that yet. And I think that I think
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: that there are scenarios where they will find that situation
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: that they will they will find a situation that's easy eating, right,
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: and they'll they will stick with that. And I think
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: that there's other times that they will get involved with
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: livestock depredations and then they'll they'll be gone and they
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: won't come back to livestock, meaning that they're going off
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: and eating something else. I know that that both those
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: scenarios have happened. Whether they're more inclined to do one
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: or the other, I can't say definitively. Yeah, that's the
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: way it works. So that's not the way it works.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: I think that it's it's probably a mix. Wolves are
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: all individuals, right, they do. They're smart animals, they have personalities,
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: they have different kind of traits, and that's part of
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: the reason that that TENJA is so important. If we
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: can if we can document that wolves are getting into
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: livestock and we've got range riders out there, We've got
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: the producers themselves are out there paying attention. If we
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: can see that that's happening, and you can try to
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: get involved and try to get some of that behavior modified.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: You can get in there and hit them with bean bags,
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: hit them with cracker shells, hit them with you noises
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: and different kinds of things that that kind of scare
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: them away and let them know that that's not the
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: right thing to be doing. There's there's scenarios where that helps,
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: and that can change their behavior, and that's really good.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: That's what we're after.
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: And so I wouldn't say that, you know, once a
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: wolf has a taste for livestock, that they won't go
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: back to I don't think that that's a true statement.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: What was the earliest time what was the first time
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: you guys had to make a decision to go like
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: basically do a recall on one year wolves. You know, yeah,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: where you're like, all right, he's he's coming.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: Out right away, I mean right away.
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: It was it was that that first spring, so spring
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: of twenty four, we had this scenario where wolves were
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: getting into a lot of livestock. This was right after
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: we had had documented our first den. So lots of
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: attention on this media attention, social attention on the wolf
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: program has reinduced these wolves. We've got a documented breeding,
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: we've got a documented den, and we've got documented depredations
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: and repeated depredations.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: And those depredations were coming from that den site.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: Nearby, coming from that group.
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: That group, Yeah, and that was the copper Crete pack,
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: and that that pack has gotten a lot of attention
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: for you know, a variety of largely for this whole
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: whole effort. And so here we are, it faced with
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: this really challenging scenario, and we have that TENJ rule
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: in there to say that there are there situations where
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: we can manage wolves. It was not an intention, I
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: don't think, to say from you know, from day one,
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: we're going to start doing lethal management of wolves.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: We had we had had so much invested in this,
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: so much uh work had gone into getting sourcing those wolves, transporting, releasing,
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: and and to say we're going to go and and
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: and there was calls for us to you know, people
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: were trying to get us to remove those wolves, remove
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: the pups from from the pack. There were the two
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: breeders and I believe there were four pups well were removed.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: We didn't kill any of them, so I know, so
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: this is a scenario where there were there were four
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: There were actually were five pups in the Copper Creek pack.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: But what we ended up doing, because they're kind of
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: as the compromises, that we captured those animals from from
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: that private land, moved them to a facility, held them
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: there for a bit of time, and then release those
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: released the Copper Creek packs. Those that remained. One of
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: the breeder mail died. We were only able to capture
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: four of the five pups. We didn't realize that there
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: was a fifth pup at the time. So the the
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: breeding female and four and four pops ultimately were at
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: that facility and then they were re released in January
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: of twenty five into Colorado. Same into Colorado.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that had to get a lot of heat. It
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: sure did.
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it did, and and you know, part of it
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: was some behavior modification work and they were released, they
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: were re released in a different spot, you know, and
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: so it definitely got some criticisms for sure for doing that.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: So what happened then, did they give up their cattle
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: killing ways when you let them go to a second time.
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: So the female then paired again with one of the
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: British Columbia males and they had another den. It's different,
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: different part of western Colorado, and there have been some
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: depredation issues with that pack.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: Still, what was the first lethal removal you had to do?
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: The first lethal removal was part was actually I think
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: part of that I can't remember right off the top.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: I should know this. It was shortly.
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: It was either in that pack, one of the one
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: of the yearlings that was was part of that, or
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: in another part of a state too.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: So what would be.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: What's the decision making process or what are the sort
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: of inputs on that one will catch yep, and we'll
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: try to dissuade it from wanting to do to be
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: around people and let it go. That one we're gonna remove.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: It's gonna we're gonna lethally.
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: Remove that that well, to go back that capturing animals transport,
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: you know, to to re release them in another place
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: that we really don't want to do that. That that
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: whole effort that we did with Copper Creek, that that
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: first spring, it was that was terrible.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: So that was learning.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: It was a huge learning experience, Like it was.
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: It was a lot of work, it was a lot
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: of there's so many different challenges that that went into
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: that that effort wasn't good for anybody like it was.
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: It was really challenging kind of thing. So that's not
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: standard protocol for us to do that, and so for
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: us to to consider lethal management. We have a definition
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: for what makes up We call it chronic depredation. If
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: there's three or more depredations by a pack or an
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: individual and third days. So three confirmed depredations in thirty days,
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: and there's different level. You know, one is preponderance of
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: evidence so more likely than not, and one is clear
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: and convincing. Like we there's there's no room for doubt.
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: A wolf killed that cheap lamb, cow, cattle, calf or whatever.
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: So three three events in thirty days, and there's there's
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: been some some use of non lethal, some kind of
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: deterrence that the producer has done some of that. There's
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: the likelihood that that depredations are going to continue into
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: the future, and also that there's no attractives right, so
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: that the producers have removed dead and other carcasses in
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: the field too.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: And so there's little there's a little checklist.
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: There's a checklist, and that's that's form of formalized in
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: our regulations and how we go about that and it's
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: it's a process, and it's a conversation that involves the
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: local area staff that are our local game wardens, our
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: district wildlife managers, are our area managers, our conflict team
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: are even all the way up to our director. It's
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: it's ultimately the director's call is to win and how
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: that happens.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: And if you have to do a lethal removal, is
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: that are you contracting that out or were you guys
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: doing it on your own?
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: We do it on our own.
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we we do it on our own, so from
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: the air or no, from the ground, done from the ground,
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: so that there's there is a way that you know,
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: if if the agency doesn't have the resources to do it.
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: We haven't run into that situation. Every every lethal management
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: situation that we've had, you.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: Never had to bring it. You never had a fist
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: do it correct, right, It's always been our own staff
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: to do that. God it. Yeah. How many to date?
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: How many to date have leath removals? Have there been?
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: I think three?
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: Or we just another one? I'm not full on the
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: details of it. I think just this this last week too,
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: So I think four.
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: I think and.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: When you guys do a leath removal, I'm guessing you
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: just get blown up by certain interests.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: Oh for sure.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, you can't make everybody happy with any any
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: kind of wolf management decision. You're somebody is going to
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: not agree with the decision that was made. And that's
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: a challenge. It's just one of those things that you know,
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: it's just recognizing that it can't win situation.
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard, yeah, when uh, it's hard.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: But what I say is that it's important for us
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: to be responsive, right, and I and I think that
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: we're we're demonstrating that, like it's.
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: You mean, to not brush off criticism.
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah right, I mean you have to ye own it, right,
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: this is this is something that we did. This is
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: something that we said what we're going to do, right,
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: That's part of the plan. That's part of why we
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: have the TENJ in there. We're in this situation right
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: now where we've we've only had two years of reintroduction.
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: We had we had anticipated a third year, and the
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: wolf population will grow pretty quick. And as as it grows,
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: then we can be much more flexible in our management
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: and removing an animal an individual is you know, there
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: there are some that would disagree with that that's ever appropriate,
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: but it becomes easier to do that in it in
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: the long term picture, the big picture of what we're
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: trying to do is establish a self sustaining population that
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: helps us, right, and so we've we've made the argument
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: a lot that that getting packs established makes management a
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: whole lot easier. When we've got individual wolves that are
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: moving all around, and they truly are moving all around,
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: it's it's really difficult to predict where that animal is,
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: where it's going to go, and so it's truly needle
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: in a haystack. Whereas when they're in a pack, when
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: they're in defending a territory, they're still moving big distances,
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: but they're moving in a much smaller geography, and so
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: it becomes a way easier to deploy those tools.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: I can see, it gets easier to get your arms
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: around the whole thing exactly eloyes.
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: And and as that the number of the population size
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: goes up. When when there are problems, it's it's a
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: lot more palatable. I'm not gonna say a lot more palatable.
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: But it's more palatable to say we can we can
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: remove animals that the population can sustain, that from from
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: the conflict side of things, especially if that can reduce
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: that conflict, you.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: Might not think of it as a problem.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: I do.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: But uh, have you had the problem in Colorado of
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: celebrity wolves like we have in the greater Yellowstone area.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: We've we've worked to avoid that.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: We give day at the park man they core, Yeah,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: they love it.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: We we have I mean, we give our wolves a number. Right,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: there's a four digit number. The first two numbers or
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: the year that it was collared. The next two numbers
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: are if it was male or female sequentially, right, so
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: the first male captured in twenty twenty five would be
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: twenty five oh one. Males get the odd numbers, females
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: get the even numbers, and so so you have to
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: have that right. You have to know individuals that you're
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: talking about. There have been campaigns some of the advocate
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: groups tried, the wolf advocate groups tried to name have nameties,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: and we don't want to do that. Right, we don't
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: get for any of the wildlife species that we do.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: There are some interesting behaviors and we've seen some of
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: our animals make huge movements or and and you know,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: there there are very interesting things that we're learning, but
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: we're really not into that.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that, like the wolf celebrity thing gets leveraged, right,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: it gets politically leveraged. Yeah, because then it becomes you
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: wouldn't want that to happen to old Betty, right, you know,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: and then that brings into this whole other conversation, makes
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: it much more challenging. What was did there wind up?
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like I remember this.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: Did it wind up being that there was some legal
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: problem with the Feds around the decision to get them
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: from British Columbia.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: Well that's their interpretation and the state has a different
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: interpretation of it. And it all comes back to that
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: TENJ rule, right, And so remember that that TENJ rule
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: talks about how wolves are managed in the state north
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: to southeast to west. We can that relaxes those tape prohibitions.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: Fish and WILDLFE Services interpretation on it is that the
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: TENJ is explicit into where wolves can be sourced from
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: and we don't agree with that to us, and generally
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: that the TENJ talks about management within that that geographic boundary,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: and so you know, we we we don't feel like
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: anything was violated by us going to British Columbia. We
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: had all of the federal permits from there. There were
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: federal importation permits that we had to get from Fishing
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: and Wildlife Service, just like any any kind of wildlife
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: that comes across international borders. We had to get site
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: these permits in site convention of International Trade of Endangered Species.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: We had provincial permits, we had Environment Canada permits, we
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: had our callor Department of Active So we were buttoned
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: up like we we had everything we needed in place,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: and you know, all the way up until we got
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: back from there in January of twenty five, we had
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: planned to go back in January of twenty six, all
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: the way up until October of twenty five leading up
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: to it, that was our plan.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: And then we get the letter from the Fish wil
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: Life Service telling.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: Us, well, don't you feel that when they pointed that
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: out that it was probably the result. I mean, however
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: one feels about the reintroduction, but that bit them calling
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: legal fault on getting them from BC was probably the
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: result of someone saying I want you to go over
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: every decision that was made and see if you can
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: find me a problem.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And then they got creative and found a problem.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: They found what they found what they thought to be
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: a problem. We don't think it was a problem.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: And then I'm saying, but they might even know they
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: were being creative, right, No, I think that that's true
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: all time. Yeah, you're like, dude, there's got to be
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: a problem, find me a problem, and to follow up
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: similayers like I got.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: It well, and to follow up on that.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: Then after that, after we got that cease and desist letter,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: then we had had a wolf. We have we have
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: agreements with other states Arizona, New Mexico. If a wolf
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: goes into Arizona, New Mexico or Utah, those wolves can
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: be recaptured and brought back into into Colorado. And that's
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: really long story, but that's fundamentally to protect Mexican wolf
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: recovery all the investment that's happened there. And so that happened.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: We had one wolf that that went down in New Mexico.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: New Mexico captured it, transport transferred it to US. We
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: re released that animal in Colorado.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: I I I don't. I don't want to get into
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: names I have. I have some dear friends that that
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: that are very invested in the Mexican Wolf yeah project,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: And I understand that this desire that there's so much
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: time and energy put into recovering the Mexican gray wolf
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: in New Mexico and Arizona right in Mexico. Yeah, and
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: that that bringing wolves from BC, or bringing wolves from
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: Oregon and putting them into Colorado, and then they're gonna
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: go in and and and then by some definition, corrupt
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: these lineages down there. Earlier, I used the word like
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: something seeming academic. One would could look and say, well,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: historically wolves were present on the landscape from way into Mexico.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: To the Arctic. That's true.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: And there wasn't a line anywhere. It was all just
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: bleeding in right there was, I mean there was there
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: was lions here and there because of desert ecosystems. Saying
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: like any of these populations, I don't I can't tell
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: you this empirically, but I'm just assuming any of these
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: populations is being infiltrated by individual animals coming from the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: north or south at any given time. Right, They're not
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: like fence there's not walls divided.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: It's not like there's a wall that says, Okay, this wolf.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: Group is here, and then over the wall is the
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: next wolf group and they don't breed, they don't interbreed.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: So so.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: What's your take on that, Like, like, what's.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Up with wanting there to be aligne now where there
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: probably wasn't aligne historically.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: Is it just because of because of the politics.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: No, it's not it. I mean, it's scientific. There's evidence,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: I mean. And so wolf taxonomy is super interesting to
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: those that are interested in that kind of stuff. There's
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: been lots of different subspecies of wolves defined over time.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: Up to twenty five now there's five different subspecies recognized.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: And throughout all that time, Mexican wolves canas Sloopa's Bailee
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: has been recognized as a separate subspecies, smaller. They're just
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: they're different.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: And they had a barrier.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: The barrier between northern wolves and as far as south
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: as Colorado and Utah and Arizona was a substantial desert, right,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: It's it is not a great across.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: Do you feel that it functioned as a barrier.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: It must have because of because there is a different subspecies,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: something that moves so much. The idea of subspecies is
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: that they they are isolated for long enough time, consistently
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: enough there's not this infiltration of other genes coming in
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: that they develop another subspecies. And so that's because Bailei
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: can sloop as Bailey has been recognized as a subspecies
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: for as long as it has always independent. There's there's
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: there is some influx. Northern wolves can breed with with
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: Mexican wolves, for sure, and so it's happened. But they
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: are also unique in their and there's also the political
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: side or the the the policy side of of it
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: is that Mexican wolves are listed separately under in Dangers.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: That's when I say, that's what I say. I could
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: see that someone might say, I can see that. A
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: manager or a wildlife person might say. I get the point.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Historically they were all over they're not. Now we have
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: different management practices in place, and for that reason and
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: that reason alone, we don't want them to mix because
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: it's going to cause confusion of management strategy. Like I'd
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: accept that, but it does seem to me it's like
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: if what if what wolf advocates are striving for is
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: restoration of the wolf. I feel like that would mean
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: that they're striving for a situation where there's just like
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: wolfness continuity wolfness running like running up and down the
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: continent and they just move all over hell.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: And that in time, that might be the scenario. I'm
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: not the geneticist to ask this question, but you know,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: there there may be a point in time when having
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: Northern wolf genetics infiltrate, integrate with with Mexican.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: Will may make sense time when as appropriate.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: That that's really like, what they're doing is so intensive
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: with Mexican wolf recovery. They're they're taking pups that are
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: born in captivity and putting them in wild litters, which
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: all requires incredible timing and incredible coordination with that like that,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: there's huge efforts to do that. That that Mexican wolf population,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: just like a lot of these endangered species stories started
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: with a really really small population, seven to ten animals
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: something like that, and so there's there's genetic inbreeding concerns
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: and they're really very very deliberate about how that works.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: And so to have Northern wolf genes come into Mexican
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: wolf population now would undo a lot of that really
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: important that that's happened, and so so that's that's an
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: important thing, right, And so I think I mean that,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: and we got off on a little bit of sidetrack.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: But that's why when that wolf came down into New Mexico,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: we have that that MoU to to kind of keep
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: that from happening. The same thing, if if Mexican wolves
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: come out of their experimental population area, then they'll they'll
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: be captured by those states and brought back into that area.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: Let's say they go, and let's say it during the
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: current administration. I'm gonna give you my viewpoint. I don't
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: it's probably not your people.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I'll just tell you mine.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: From a wildlife from a wildlife conservation perspective, there's not
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: a ton.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: This is me talking like I want everybody know. This
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: is me talking, not mister Odell.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: There's not a ton that one can be hopeful like
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: from a wildlife and conservation perspective under the current administration,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: there's not like a bunch of guy could root for.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: But a thing I would root for is I would
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: like to see lower forty eight wolves just delisted.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: Right, there's a movement to do this, for sure. What
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: would that mean for Colorado? It would it would mean.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: Well, fundamentally, what it means is that Fish Wildlife Services
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: is no longer a partner, right, I mean they're a
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: stakeholder in it, but they're not a man. They're the
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: MoU that we have that gives us designated agent. All
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: of that kind of goes away. And if wolves are
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: managed like many of the other wildlife species in the state,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: managed solely by the state age.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: But they'd be a state endangered what do you guys
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: call your own in dangers?
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: It would be stayed in dangered until we meet and
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: our plan describes what those recovery goals, So it would
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: be stayed in dangered until we meet the threshold, and
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: then it would be downlisted to stay threatened, and then
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: it becomes a non game when it is delisted.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but don't you feel like this is a crystal
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: ball and shit a little bit? Here is when we
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: when we did the grizzlies and wolves and put them
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: under in Danger Species Act protection federal, yes, a protection,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: and we came up with a recovery objective. There were
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of players involved in that conversation that were
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: not being honest brokers, Like there were people protectionists wolf advocates,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: grizzly advocates, absolute protectionists, like protectionists, absolutists that gave a
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: verbal sign off on what recovery would look like, but
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: then once recovery was achieved, they renegged, right, and now
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: they sue and sue and sue to prevent delisting because
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: they're not really interested in the recovery question. They're interested
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: in protecting wolves from lethal removal.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: Or recreational harvest, right.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: And this is in these battles are taking place in
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: states that are politically red or politically purple, Okay, I
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: mean varying degrees of bluish Michigan Wisconsin or Michigan Wisconsin, Minnesota, right,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: And then you have like very red states Wyoming, Montana, Idaho.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: Then you go to like deep blue Colorado. It just
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: seems to me that whatever was agreed to about recovery
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: in Colorado is a lie. And that and that there
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: are factions in Colorado that will never accept delisting or
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: non game status. They will never accept it.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, so there's so a couple of things about that. One,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: there's never been recovery federal recovery goals for Colorado, right,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: and so the recovery goals are are for other parts
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: of the country, and so that there are not specific
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: federal recovery goals for Colorado.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: There's some in this I'm talking about in the event
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: that that the Feds. I'm saying, like, hey, Fed's DLST.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: Let's play this out there like it's if on if
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: the Feds move, they delist lower forty eight yep, okay,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: remain state list and it's what it state listed. What
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: I'm saying is or you know, never mind all that.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: Let me just say, let me ask what I'm saying
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: more bluntly. Can you picture in Colorado a situation where
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: they are ever in where there is ever a world
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: where they are issuing like wolf hunting tags like our
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: issue in Idaho, in Wyoming and Montana, like we're issued
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: in Michigan, in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Like that ain't happening.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's my crystal ball.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: There's a couple of things to that. Want.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: One is that the statue that the ballot initie of
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: the statue that passed defines them as state endangered species
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: and so so right now, and there's some uncertainty is
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: to how how much influence that has truly on the
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: state status of them, we have another process.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: Because but so the ballot language didn't spell out how
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: they would become not state endangered.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: No, it's definitionally state and endangered.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: Right, And so our plan, the plan that we wrote
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: has criteria. If we meet fifty animals for four years,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: it gets downlisted to state threatened.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: If we'll get to one hundred.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: And fifty animals for two years or two hundred animals,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: they become delisted and just have the non game status.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: Then if the Commission ever, a future commission ever, made
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: the decision to change that status from non game to game,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: that's that's a decision down the road. And who's to
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: say whether that's likely or I'll say it'll never happen.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: Maybe I don't know. It's not going to happen right now.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: And then I mean very clearly right now, it's not
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: every text.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: It would have to move to Colorado before that, not
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: just not just a trick of all the Texans would
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: have to go there.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's not. I mean, we're several years away,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: Like we just don't know what it's like to live.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: We know what it's like to live with thirty two wolves,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: right that's what we've got right now in the state.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: On our annual report that comes out of each spring,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: thirty two wolves was our account last year. What's it
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: looked like for three hundred wolves?
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: What do you think? What do you think is the maximum?
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: It's a social question.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: What do you think is maximum? Well, let's look at it.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: Let's take the social out of it. Okay, let's just
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: look at let's look at acres, yeah, and deer and elk.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: If you had to guess, no one's gonna hold it
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: to this. No, thousands, thousands, I get.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: We have the landscape with support thousands.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: We have a huge amount of public lands, wilderness areas,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: we have huge native ungi populations that we so biologically
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: we could have thousands of wolves, but not thousands for
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: a long time. No, I mean, that's what I'm saying,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: is that it's the socially.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: Social out of it.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's explore non social for a minute. Yeah,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: like you have a ton of elk, maybe thousands is
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: probably right. Well, you have a ton of elk maybe, yeah,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: because you don't have many wolves, right right, I mean,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: what do you think is gonna So just leaving the
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: social acceptance element out of it and just looking at
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: like like let's say Colorado could host a thousand or
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: say a.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: Thousand or more wolves.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: In your mind, does that mean with your expertise, does
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: that mean that it's elk Heard stabilizes that fifty percent
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: of current, it's elk Kirk stabilizes that eighty percent of current?
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: Like what is it?
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know what that but you
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: gotta have it looks like I think, I mean, it's
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: wolves eat right in any predator eat, So there's gonna
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: be to day there's going to be some impact to
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: unget populations. But it's in the Yellowstone. Wolves get credit
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: or get blamed for all the effect on the Northern Range.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: And there's so many different things that are happening at
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: that point that it's hard to say. You know, it's
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: impossible really to say that's cause and effect because of
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: the wolves. The elk populations went down. There's so many
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: other things that were happening at that point in time.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: The more wolves you have, the more prey they're going
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: to consume. That's ther fact, right, What it looks like
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: in time, I don't, I don't, I really don't know.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: It is it would just be a guess to say, well,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: that was a.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: Job or is it nobody? Like in Colorado, is it
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: nobody's job to model out what it might look like
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: for the deer and elk curd if there are two
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: hundred wolves, five hundred wolves, a thousand wolves, like, no
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: one's curious about this.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: Curious for sure. We're not at that point where we're
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: deep into that. I mean, I think we're many years away,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: a decade from wond from about that. Well not I
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: mean starting we're starting to wonder about it, but we're
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: a decade away from the reality of that happening. And
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: so in time we will get there. You know, we're
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: and I say we I'm not with the agency anymore,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: but it's it's yeah, I think that that's that's where
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: we the agency will start to look and say, how
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: how do we manage, yeah, for native on the populations,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: how do we manage for predator populations as well? Let's
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: bring in social Yeah, the social side of things. So
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 3: I think that that's that's part of the reason that
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: it's an interesting question. But I don't think it really
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: matters fundamentally because socially, I don't think that we can
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: we can hold that that?
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's the non social thing was a fantastical experiment, right, Yeah,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: I get it.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: I get it.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: With social pressures, I mean, and I know you can't
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: put numbers to it, but like you got thirty six now, right,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: thirty two yeah, thirty two now considering that humans are
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: here too, Yeah, and people are feeding the country and
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: agricultural and interests right right, not to discredit.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: Them, but they know not at all.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: They have they have needs and they provide a service
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: to people with producing food and all that.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: Like.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: So when you add that in, are you more comfortable
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: with a with a with a spitballing and number As
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: a retired guy.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: I mean half of that maybe maybe five hundred, five
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: hundred to one thousand animals somewhere in there I think
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: is a reasonable population.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: So it kind of someone said to you, if someone
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: if someone from the future, from twenty years in the
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: future came to you and said, mister Odell, there are
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: five hundred wolves, and we've been at that for quite
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: some time. We got about Colorado supports about five hundred wolves.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: You would you would think to yourself, well that's more
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: than I thought, or you'd think I thought it'd be more.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: No, I think that that's probably you know, we we
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: we never set an objective in the plan because we
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: just didn't know, Like, we just don't know what it
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: looks like. I think that that's a reasonable number to
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: have in Colorado. I mean, it's it's crowded. There's a
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: lot of people in Colorado. There's a lot of people
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: that recreate all year round there. It's not the same
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: as Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, where they're you know here in
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: Montana that it's just much more rural, there's a lower
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: population density, and so there's there are more people in Colorado.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: But you fly over it, you see the landscape, there's
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: a lot of there's a lot of good wolf habitat,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 3: and so I don't I don't totally buy the argument
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: that people say that Colorado is too crowded for wolves.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: I think that it's we certainly have the capacity to
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: have a self sustaining a fairly large I think, self
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: sustaining wolf population in the state. What number that looks like,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: It's too soon to tell, especially when you incorporate that
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: that social metric into it, but I think it's it's
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: probably in that five hundred to maybe two a thousand.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: I don't know something like that.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when you review the whole thing in your mind,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: what do you what do you wish would have gone differently?
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: You know, I think one of the things that we
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: learned is is the communications and how to outreach, how
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: to how to share information is is really really critical.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: And that's one of the things all all different kinds
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: of information, how especially from from day one, how we
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: share information about how we're doing the releases, where where
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 3: that happens, and so, you know, we we took a
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: very precautionary approach that that first year, and I don't
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: I don't regret that at all. I think that that
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: was very wise of us to do.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: When you say precautionary meaning undersharing or oversharped undersharing, we
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: were very you know, likewise you're quiet.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: We were quiet.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: We didn't say where we were going to release animals,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: and we didn't say when we only talked to people
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: after the fact. And I think that that we learned
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: from that that that was not acceptable and we needed
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: to be a bit more uh you know, still protecting
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 3: but of really sensitive details, but a little bit more
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: open with.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: That kind of stuff.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: You feel like that maybe loss and that maybe cost
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: you politically, not politically cost you publicly.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. With voters, I think so. Stakeholders,
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: I think so.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: And then you know, the communications about depredations, we've changed
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: a lot of that.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: We've gotten a whole lot better at.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: That was there was there a tendency within the department
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: to underrepresent depredations.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: No, not never.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: I mean we've we have a website on on our page,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: on our CPW website that that is very explicit.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: As soon as we get if it happened, it was
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: just like, here's the facts.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: I got it.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: I think one of the things that we could do
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: better is that is the media communications. You look at
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: the media, and the local media really emphasizes the negative,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: right they they local media, local, local, statewide media. That
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: in Colorado, when we get when something happens about wolves
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: or the personnel it gets, it gets talked about a
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: lot in the sense of, well, here's another chink in
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: the armor of the wolf program. Here's here's another example
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: of how the wolf program is failing. And it is
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 3: not failing. The wolf program is doing well, and it
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: even with my leaving of the program. I think that
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: we've got a really good, strong staff that's there. I
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: think that we've got really good biologists, researchers, field staff
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: that are able to address a lot of those concerns.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: But the media would have you believe otherwise, right, And
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: so if we could be more proactive in that and
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: tell the good stories and and and have the media
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: tell those stories. And we've tried that. We've we've tried
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: to reach out to some of the media and say, hey, look,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: I get it that this is what sells a lot
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: of your ads, but there's there's other other sides to
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: that too, And and some some have taken that opportunity
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: and done well and told some of those those good stories.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: But still we struggle with that.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: Well because the people that the people that announce and
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: amplify the missteps are the people that feel burned. Yeah,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: they want to find a problem, right right, Like if
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: you're just if you're just like a lot of buddies
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: of mine, they love to hunt out yep, and in other.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: Social circles to be people that like.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: They love to run cattle and they don't like it,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: and they don't like that it came from voters and
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: they don't like that. They feel those crammed down their
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: throat by Denver yep right, And so yeah, when something
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: negative happens, they're going to be all over it because
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: they want to amplify it as a way of expressing
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: discontent or a way of hopefully subverting the whole thing
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: because they feel it was an assault on them.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: One of the most poignant conversations I had was early
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 3: early on in this process. It was at an open
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: house that we had in Boulder, Colorado, very liberal part
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: of the state, very much a pro wolf state, and
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: we had a rancher come all the way from from
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 3: Western Colorado. He brought his daughter to this, and not
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: because they wanted to fight the whole thing.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: They just wanted to hear that perspective. And this rancher's been.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: Very involved with this whole work, the wolf planning work
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: has been great, really great to work with. And his daughter,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: I don't know, twenty years old, twenty five years old.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: I got in conversation with her and she's what she
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: said to me is, I don't I don't care about wolves.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: I don't care if they're here, I don't care if
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: they're not here. All I want to do is ranch
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: That's what's important to me, and to me that's stuck
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: with me throughout for the last six years is like
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 3: we have to figure out how to reintroduce wolves. We
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: have to figure out how to develop and maintain a
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: self sustaining population of wolves by the state law, and
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: we have to work with the people of Colorado. We
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 3: have to find the way to address those conflicts and
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: to allow not the idea is not at all to
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: keep ranching from happening, or to stop ranching from happening,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: or to stop hunting from happening, not at all. I
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: think that that's that's a misconception that's out there, is
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 3: that wolves are just an avenue to make that happen,
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 3: And that's that's not the case. That's not the case
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: at all.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: You're out of it now, and you were never this.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: You were never the mouthpie, you were never meant to
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: be the guy selling everybody on it. But I think
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: that like if you're curious and you say, you know,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: you have opinions about how news is shared, you have
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: opinions about how the public is engaged. Like a hot
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: tip that if I was going to offer your former colleagues.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: A hot tip is wolf advocates and protectionists have a
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: bad habit of I never use this word, but they
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: have a bad habit of gas lighting people to say so.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: When a guy says so, there's gonna be a lot
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: less ELK right, they don't want to have that conversation.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: They're reluctant to do it.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: I think that if they would come and say you're right, man,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: you're right, it ain't gonna be like it is. Yeah,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: they can't bring themselves to do it the same way
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: they can't bring themselves to acknowledge to a rancher, this
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: shit's gonna come kill your cows.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: They can't bring themselves to do it. They act like
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: he's a dumb redneck.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: The hunter doesn't understand the science right, And they cannot
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: just say, buddy, I know it sucks for you. You're
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: losing a lot of these elk it's gonna be harder
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: for you to get an ELK tag.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: I get it, I understand. I don't really care, but
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: I understand you're right. I'm doing what I'm gonna do anyways.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: But the fact that they cannot bring themselves to just
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: say the truth bugs the shit out of people.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and I mean we tried to be straightforward.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: I mean I remember at the very beginning conversations that
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 3: we had with the Commission, I said, wherever wolves and
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: livestock share the landscape, there's going to be conflict. It's
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: not it's not as though they're they're doing all these
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: great things for the environment, and it's there's no challenge
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: to life.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: That's going to be a challenge. That's going to be true.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: The advocates and you're I'm not saying you're one of them,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: but the advocates and the absolutest protection is that's the
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: narrative they spin. And it infuriates people. And in some
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: ways I think that a better strategy, or more harmonious strategy,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: or a strategy that would lead to a more harmonious
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: disagreement would be a higher level of acknowledgment about certain realities.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: And again, just tell them you don't care, but don't
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: tell them they're wrong.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean, it's infuriates I can imagine being it,
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: being it. I'm not a rancher, being in a rancher
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: shoes and having a wolf. Advocates say this is you're
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 3: not right. You know, there's nothing more intell them. You're right,
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: I don't care.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: He would he would sleep better at night, or an
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: el Connor is going to sleep better at night if
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: you go you're right, I don't care. Yeah, you have
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: to tell him that he's wrong. Yeah, yeah, that's a
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: hot too. What uh when you left on Friday, you
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: retired like you're just some people. I mean you hit
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: like retirement, that's right.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: You don't like storm out you know, No, it's no,
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: it's totally totally my call.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: There's no political influence. A lot of people ask about that. No,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: it's his long career with the agency. Very satisfied, and
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 3: it was just the right time to you. Did you
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: because what you've been doing is so high profile? Man,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: did you did you go home one night and just
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: like sleep? Like, what did it feel like to walk
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: out the door?
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: It feels good.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: Well, it's kind of been a process and we've we've got,
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: like I said, really great team in there. We've got
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: a mac fill into that position, and so we're you
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: know it, it's been a lot of work to get
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 3: to that point. And you're right, and once you're done
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: with it and you're not thinking about it and you're not.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: You don't wake up and have an inbox full of
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: emails about the latest conflict and all that that kind
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: of stuff.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: It's that's nice, you know, And no, I want to
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: I want viewers to understand I'm in no way drawing
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: a parallel. I'm drawing a light parallel, but I'm not
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: drawing a serious parallel between the war in Afghanistan and
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: the Wolf Warren Colorado. But when we when we finally
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: pulled out of Afghanistan. I have a friend that did
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: many tours in Afghanistan. He lost friends in Afghanistan, Like
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: he gave a significant part. I mean, he went in
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: the military as a young guy and like came of age,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: yeah in Afghanistan. And we've finally pulled out of Afghanistan,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: and I text them, I'm like, what are you feeling
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: right now?
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: He said that we should have left a long time ago. Yeah, right,
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: if which is not what I expect to hear from him.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: But if all of a sudden, there's like some I
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: know it can't happen, or I know it won't, but
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: if all a sudd there's some referendum, you know, when
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: it comes to vault and they're like scratch the whole
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: thing and they send some helicopters out and yeah, all
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: the wolves are gone.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: What would like, well, that would be that would be
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't want that. I would see that.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: I've got to be like, geez waste all that time exactly.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's so much has been invested in. I mean,
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 3: like I say, the conflict is there. Conflict is gonna happen,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: but it we can Also there's there's a lot of
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 3: stories about wolves not getting into conflict. What what you
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: hear about are are those scenarios where it's not gone great.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of scenarios where it has gone great
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: that that aren't getting that that story. So I don't
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: think it's necessary. I think it's I think it would
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 3: be a bad idea to kill all the wolves that
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 3: that we've introduced. I think that they're they are doing
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: what wolves do. I think part of what the Wildlife
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: Agency does is not only managed for deer and el
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 3: can trout and and game birds and waterfowl, but also
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 3: for all of our non game species as well. And
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: so this is a really important responsibility for for all
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: state wildlife agencies, but for Coloradparks and wildlife. I think
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 3: it's an agency that's really proud of of the work
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 3: that that we've done there, and so I don't I
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: don't think, you know, reversing what we've done is in
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: the cards. I think wolves are wolves are going to
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 3: find their way. They're they're going to do well, and
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: the program, the program is going to do well, the
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: species is going to do well, and and you know,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: the people of Colorado will do well with it as well.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: Like we will find ways to make that that whole
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 3: all that that that challenges, that that go along with
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: managing bears and lions and wolves, all all.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: That together is is part of it.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: And I think that we'll we'll get there and we'll
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: do a really good jobs the agency will. I went
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: out of my way, not out of my way, but
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: I was careful to articulate a perspective held by a
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: lot of hunters that I know. But in all fairness,
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: the perspective I was giving isn't the full perspective. And
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: there's the thing I've always observed with people with my like,
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: you know, my sort of community right of outdoorsmen and hunters,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: is no matter how anybody feels about wolf politics, I
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: never meet anyone who isn't really happy to see a wolf.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: You never talk to a guy who comes back and
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: he's like, da damn it, worst night could have had.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: So all wolf people come back and.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: They're like, dude, I know we're starting to hear that, right,
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: And so it's.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: So funny, is like, it's like there's in that way
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: it doesn't line up with It's just one of those
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: It's just one of those contradictions that it doesn't line up.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: And like, and no matter what someone's stated view is,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: they hear it howl and they get happy. They see
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: it and they get excited, and it's like their their
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: brain isn't totally aligned on what they're after. Yeah, like
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: people struggle, right, No, I hate them or love I should.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: Hate these animals, I should be afraid of them, but
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: in reality, it's I mean, and that was very intentional.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: We we brought people to these releases, are you know,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 3: to see wolves within the agency that were somewhat skeptical
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: of this, and let's let's get them exposed. Let's let
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 3: them see a wolf, handle a wolf, hear a wolf
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 3: like any of the and then from the public we
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: hear those reports too, Like I was camping, I was hunting.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 3: I heard, I heard the howls, and the people get
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 3: excited about it. Right, it's it is even for those
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: like you say that, I feel like, for whatever reason
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 3: they should should or shouldn't love or hate these animals.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 3: There's something there's something pretty magical about it.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: Remember hearing it would have been ninety eight or ninety nine,
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight or nineteen ninety nine, hunting Elk bohunt
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: Elk and.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: Not far from Yellowstone and thing king at dusk.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: It registered in my head that I was hearing a bugle,
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: Like the second it started off ways was like it's
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: a bugle.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my god, it's a howl, you know. Yeah,
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: And that being like the first yeah, you know what
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: I mean?
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 3: People remember that, Yeah, the first time you hear a wolf,
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 3: the first time, even maybe you don't hear, maybe you
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 3: don't seem you see the track and on the trail
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: and it's it's unmistakable and it's you know, you understand there.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 3: And we even hear from hunters that are that are
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 3: in some ways happy to be around wolves and say hey,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: I'm I'm hunting ungulates, I'm hunting elk or deer moose
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: in an environment that has the component that you know,
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: they added component of wolves to the system. And you
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: know it's not everybody that agrees with that perspective, but
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: but we've heard that, I've heard that.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: It's interesting.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: I keep saying, it's just it's just important to me
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: that that again, I want to return.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know why. I just feel very compelled to
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: return to a point that I know will come.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: Is it'll come if it's like you said, it's a
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: successful program and they really take off and it gets
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: to be where there's hundreds and there's like there's gonna
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: be a decline, there's gonna be an elk decline. I'm
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: wondering if they're gonna tell people that.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: That's not what it was.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: They're gonna be like it was climate, it was you
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: know what I mean, They're gonna obfuscate it and they're
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: gonna tell them.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: That's not really what happened. Yeah, it was other factors.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean I think that we maybe
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: it's it's hard to say how how the story will be.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: I'm telling you they'll obfuscate it. It'll be those other facts.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: It was climate, Yeah, it could be like there's there's
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: so many things making your prediction. Hey, Nate, go to
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: the get us on one of those prediction markets and
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: put my bet down. But man, I appreciate you coming
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: on and talking about it all.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, appreciate the interest, dude.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I look like like wildlife management, I
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: mean it's beautiful. So I mean it gets people routed.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: It's like it's complex, but just the thing in and
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: of itself is gorgeous.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's what we get into this field for, like
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: we love it. It's as biologists, this is this is
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 3: so meaningful, kind of kind.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: Of our country for a long time tried, well, what's
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: just let everybody go do what they're going to do
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: and see what happens, and it don't go well. No,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: So the fact that, I mean even the fact that
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: even the fact that like that there's all these sort
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: of opinions and and people want what's best for animals.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: You know, we're like spending money on these questions and
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: and thinking about them as like a big positive from
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: where we were.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in the late eighteen hunters when it was like
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: do what you want to guess? All that shit's gone.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 3: Right, No, it's there's something to be said that the
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: state wildife management agencies have a really important role, and
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 3: the and the hunters and fishermen too.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: I think that there's there's.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 3: A a all all of these pieces play together and
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 3: work to manage and conserve all of the wildlife.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: Speakings that we've got, and I do man, Like, just to.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: Close, I appreciate this, Like I appreciate the position that you,
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: as an individual found yourself in that that it was
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: it was you had a job, you work for the
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: people of the state of Colorado. Voters handed a thing,
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: and you like in good faith, took the will of
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: the voters and and put it into practice. Yeah right, Yeah,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: I mean that's big. Yeah, that's like, that's public service.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, I just want to
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: acknowledge that, Like, I don't want you to think that
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: I'm that I have an adversarial viewpoint to the situation you,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: as an individual, we're in where like you did your job, man,
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, I appreciate you saying that as handed
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: to you and the whole department.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're I mean, we're we're professionals. We take our
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 3: jobs very seriously and and yeah, we have a mission
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 3: that to drive and work work to get that done.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was at that time, it was the will
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: of the people. And you like did your job as
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: a carnivore guy or predator guy, and and and oh,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: thank you for doing great. Thank you for doing your
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: job at a state wildlife agent.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 3: Thanks, thanks. It's something I'm really proud of, you know.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 3: It's it was a great career. It got me to
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 3: all corners of the state and beyond. I traveled quite
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 3: a bit throughout the country. And yeah, it's been it's
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 3: been truly a privilege to be able to do that
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 3: and to call this a career for the last two
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 3: and a half decades. It's it's something that's that I'm
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 3: really really proud of.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: Ye.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: Well, good luck on what comes next. Thanks ladies and gentlemen.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: Again, Eric O'Dell from former I'm saying your last name Craig, right,
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: that's right, okay, former employee of Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 2: Or how's where do you guys go by? Coloro Parks
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: and Wildlife. Parks and Wildlife, Right, Thank you very much man.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: Thanks