Latest / NaturallyScott / E80 John Squires – Canada Lynx, Wolverines & a Lifetime in the Wild

Transcript

E80 John Squires – Canada Lynx, Wolverines & a Lifetime in the Wild · NaturallyScott

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to this edition of Naturally Scott.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Scott Harris, and as we do every week, we're bringing you another podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: We're trying to balance this podcast between um a human-based podcast that we're going to have today and what we're calling Naturally Scott Adventures, where we take some of the things that I do outdoors and try to bring them into a podcast.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: So we have some fun with both.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: And um, it is exciting for me to be the host, and more exciting uh to have you guys watching.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Today is going to be a great conversation.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the gentleman that you're looking at is John Squires.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: John is a research wildlife biologist with a Forest Service, and he's with the Rocky Mountain Research Station.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: And John, welcome today.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's great to be here.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm excited about it.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: John and I met last week, so I've got a little bit of head start on you guys.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm in the middle of writing a book called Why We Love Mammals, and John is one of the 52 guests that um I had on there, and uh, you know, we had a chance to talk about some Canada Lynx and some other things.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna do that again today.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: But John, let's let's go backwards just a little bit.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: The one of the questions I asked you for that book is what was your spark mammal?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: What was the mammal that kicked off your love of mammals and now virtually a lifetime of studies?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you came back and said falconry.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: It was birds.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: So tell the audience just a little bit about your initial love of raptors and falconry, and then we'll slide right into some mammals.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, sounds good.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: I would I was obsessed with birds of prey when I was a very young person, me in junior high school.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I remember I called the Colorado Falconry Club when I was a seventh grader and called the president and said I wanted to go out in the field.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Okay, bring you, you have your mom drive you out of Denver, Colorado.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And he showed up early in the morning with a goshawk on his fist.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we walked through scrub oak and hunting cottontail rabbits with a goshawk, and that just um made me completely obsessed with raptors, and I just carried that.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: I still work with raptors today, actually, also.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was my first, you know, that and then just other raptors was my first kind of true passion where I started really developing a science interest as well as uh, you know, a deep personal interest in natural history in the world.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's fantastic.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: And that interest in raptors is carried through today into your 30s.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: I yeah, I wish.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's carried through today.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh we're like working on Frugenous Hawks in Wyoming on related oil and gas fields, and so um very much still into the raptor world, but also very much in the Lynx world too.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, and I I gotta tell you, I've got it sitting here right next to my desk.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's one foot from my hand, is a beautiful picture of Ferrugius in flight.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: I love Ferrugious Hawks.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: They are cool.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: Just so spectacular.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: I love the way their feathers go right down to the pad, and they're just amazing animals.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: So one day we'll talk about Ferrugenus a little bit.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: But today, we have promised our audience Canada Lynx.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: So now, obviously, you didn't go from Falconry to Canada Lynx because you've continued your your love and your interest and even your exploration of raptors, but where did Canada Lynx enter the picture?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, I used to work at the Rocky Mountain Station as a postdoc in Laramie, Wyoming.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh my boss at the time said, Well, they're gonna shut down this lab.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm moving to Missoula.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And um if you want to come, you can.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not, you know, we'll see you.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I uh said, yeah, I would love to come.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I moved my family up to uh Missoula, uh, Montana to start a lynx project.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and this was the context was that lynx were going to be listed federally as a uh threatened species in the contiguous United States.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so the Forest Service didn't have any knowledge on how to manage this species.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so my job was to start a study to fill some of these information gaps.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: So if uh if an animal like a lynx gets listed, does that automatically put some kind of responsibility on the Forest Service?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: Does that trigger things that you have to do?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: What would be examples of those?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they would have to um think about how their forest management impacts the persistence of lynx populations on the landscape.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, how do you manage uh forests, how do you manage bird landscapes, how do you manage recreation, all those issues relative to the conservation of this species now, and not to further push it into endangerment, but to try to push it toward recovery.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I think lynx is one of those animals that's kind of right outside of most of us as far as our consciousness goes.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Meaning we're familiar with bears and and and wolves, and you know, you mentioned to me once uh not having seen a mountain lion except as a ghost or a whisperer.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: But most of us are familiar with that, whether we call them cougars or pumas or catamants or whatever.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: But lynx are a little bit different.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think even people who love mammals, most of us have not seen a lynx in the wild.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us about lynx, uh their size, their habitat, how much ground they need, you know, what their territory is, what they eat.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Bring us up a little bit on the executive summary of lynx, if you will.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so lynx is is mainly a northern species.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: So where they're most abundant is in Canada, Alaska, high, like you know, up in the boreal forests of the, you know, and so that's where their primary um range is.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: But they are, you know, peninsulas, islands of and and peninsulas of habitat that come down into the contiguous United States along the northern borders.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so those are the populations we're interested in.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Lynx are, you know, they're snow-dependent species adapted to hunt mainly, almost primarily, um, certainly in the winter, snowshoe hares in deep snow.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, paws the size of a mountain lion, you know, on a 25-pound um, you know, animal that can walk through snow hunting snowshoe hares.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And um, hares and lynx depend on cool, high elevation, moist forests.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're tough to see.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're secretive.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And and so, so part of the reason why people don't see them one is they're fairly secretive.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: They live in dense forests, and they're um mostly north of the United States.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're also, you know, they're in these islands in Montana, a little bit of Idaho, um, some in Wyoming, and they've been reintroduced into Colorado, and then also on the um east over Maine in Minnesota.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: So um they're restricted in their distribution.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: I've never seen a lynx in the wild.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, well, I saw a lynx in the wild in the same way that you saw uh a cougar or a mountain lion.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was a ghost of a lynx.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: I was out on an owl trip in the Sax Simbog in Minnesota, and our leader of this trip had been going there for years and had always wanted to see a lynx, and one shot by in the forest.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it could have been a house cat or a water buffalo for all I knew.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but he was certain it was a lynx, and he started screaming, and and a couple of us, you know, the snow was thick, and we well, I do have large feet, it did not keep me above the snow.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we did find lynx tracks.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess in a way I saw lynx the same way you say you saw a mountain lion.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, it's with some tail going across the headlights.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's what I saw.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: But I did, it was confirmed by the tracks.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you had a day uh early in your lynx career where I believe you saw close to two dozen lynx tracks in a day.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, you you know you kind of asked a question earlier.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: You said, you know, what was my feeling when I first encountered this animal?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer is kind of relief, because um I was, like I said, I was hired to put this study in place the first day.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I remember it really distinctly.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: We had two technicians, myself, and we hired a local trapper, hunter, he's a conservationist, passionate wildlife advocate, um, and knew the country really well.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And this is, you know, in near Sealy Lake, Montana.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so we got on snowmobiles, drove about 40 miles, and encountered not links per se, but 23 sets of tracks like you just saw in your experience.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like relieved and said, okay, we can probably pull off a study here.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that was um, you know, almost 30 years ago, and we've trapped and collared 260 links since then, and um, you know, have an extensive database and knowledge now, and still it's still vital.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're still doing it, um, and learning new things all the time.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: But um, that was how it started.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it was, it was uh, I remember the relief saying, okay, I think we can do this.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: What what kind of territory does a lynx need?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: They live in pretty large landscapes, um, you know, between, you know, probably depending on some environmental factors, between, I think in metric here, uh, you know, between uh 60 to 100 kilometers square of what they need.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it's my you know, it's miles square, you know, home ranges.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, they live in a big spot.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: They uh males overlap females, but they have a defended territory against other males, so it's kind of like a honeycomb of territories.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then the females tend to be separate too.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: But um yeah, so you know, but they also, you know, that they they are territorial, but there are some instances that they certainly recognize each other.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like we've had we've had a lynx, you know, a kitten disperse off, you know, maybe 30 or 40 miles, spend the summer in a completely different place, and then come back to its mother's territory and spend the its first winter there.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she knows it's there, it knows where it's at, you know, they know each other, and that was tolerated.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And and then it finally the next year left and made its territory and stayed there.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: But it was these kind of softer, you know, dispersals.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go back where I know where how to live and uh and then I'll go do it again.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that's pretty interesting to watch that's not just set in stone, but they tend to be very territorial.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Now, when that happens, like when the kitten comes back, do they reconnect with mom?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, is there is there cooperative living again or I don't know, but you you have seen, you know, we don't know exactly the extent of that with our data, but we have seen situations where you have a long large congregation, a congregation of lynx in the winter.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so usually, you know, it's a mom with two kittens or three kittens, and that's the congregation.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: But every once in a while you see a you know five animals together and and um you know, and they're just traveling together, and I'm assuming that those are early, early uh, you know, progeny that they certainly know each other.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Now with the with the uh hares that they hunt, how how often does a 25-pound adult male lynx need to eat a hare?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: About close to once a day.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: They're hunting a lot, hunting all the time.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Day or night?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: All the time.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: They don't have a strong they're not strongly nocturnal, they're nocturnally diurnal, probably more in the in crepuscular in the dawn and dusk, but not set in stone.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: You can see lynx active and hunting day and night.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: So and if they're not if there's if they're not catching the hares they need, what else will they hunt to supplement?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um in very rare situations when the snow is deep and they catch some deer at a high elevation that are in deep snow, um, we've had male lynx kill um whitetailed deer.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so they certainly can.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And but more likely is that they depict they hunt um red squirrels.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're actively hunting snowshoe hares, but if they have a fortuitous encounter with a red squirrel, they will certainly take it and feed on that too.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: In the northern population.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: Fortuitous from the lynx's point of view.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: For the lynx, yeah, not for the squirrel.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so um in the in the northern part of the range, you know, where hares strongly cycle, which they don't really in Montana, um, where the populations go up and down, you know, at the bottom of the hair abundance, they will shift you know more to squ you know to squirrels as uh kind of an emergency food to carry them through until the hares start to recover.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: Now, will they at at times when the um uh when the hair population drops, will that be reflected in the size of the litters?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: It will, but we yes, in the north, yes.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but not what we see.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: We don't see uh we certainly don't have the amplitude.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: We don't we see hair populations change some or fluctuate, but not cycle like they do in the north.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so we don't see we see very consistent output on the litter sizes of about two kittens, two to three kittens a year um uh you know a year for a for a m female.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: All right, and so it doesn't we don't see variation now.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Back to the squirrels.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Do the lynx climb trees?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: They do, but they're reluctant.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And all the the with the mortality the the hunting we saw was all caught caught captured on the ground.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's the fortuitous part if they if they're able to find a squirrel on the ground.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Because squirrels, squirrels aren't as adapted to running over snow as say the hares are.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: So okay.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: Now, does is there something out there in the in the range that you're studying that um that hunts the lynx?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: Is there something out there that uh that that is that is going after a a mountain lion or something else?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, about a third of our mortalities of lynx are from mountain lions.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Are they really?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so lions, you know, just like wolves will kill coyotes when they encounter them, um, lions will kill lynx when they encounter them.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just and it looks like it's just bad luck, you know, for the lynx being in the wrong place at the wrong time because the lions are just a crushed skull, you know, uh teeth marks in the top of the skull and left.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they don't feed on it, they just kill it and walk off.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, they don't eat it?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: We haven't seen it anyway.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: So are they just trying to kill the competition?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you I I assume.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: But you see that a lot in nature, you know.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Wolves do kill coyotes, and they're you know, are they in true competition?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily, where you have these species that are very closely related and um and have you know direct you know, inflect direct mortality on each other.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I see you know, but they certainly because they're eating very different foods, you know, lions are hunting deer, at least in our country, they're hunting, you know, mainly white-tailed deer, mainly at lower elevations, out of the deep snow zone in the winter.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and then most of our mountain lion mortalities, I think, or all of them, um, are always during the non-snow period when link when lions are up high into lynx habitat, and they typically will hunt deer, but lynx are hunting, you know, snowshoe hares, you know, and smaller game like grouse and other things in the summer, and not competing with them for deer per se.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's puzzling.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: Now, do the lynx migrate or once they establish a territory, they're good to go till old age or a mountain lion gets them?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and we've had lynx we've collared in the older days when we've um followed lynx for a longer period of time than we do individuals.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um we used to follow the same individual for year in and year out.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: We've had them for eight years in the same territory.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: The oldest lynx we've encountered was 16.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and we've had lost many females at 14 producing kittens.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so a non-harvested lynx population, lynx can get very old.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: You think of this animal that's solving all the problems it does every day and food and not getting hit by cars and mountain lions and people, and you know, living as long as a house cat does basically is being taken care of in a house, you know.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing, really, how how long they do persist.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, is there mate fidelity with the lynx?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: To some degree, until the mates break, you know, until there's a mortality event and new mate comes in, and then they would certainly breed with that new male.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, and then also males will trespass into other males' territories during the breeding area, during the breeding season, and you know, fit late March, and uh and try to breed other females too.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: All right, and I assume if there's a mortality, nature abhorring a vacuum the way it does, that there is a lynx there quickly to fill that a juvenile.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: All right, fantastic.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us about one of your memorable lynx days.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: Not that finding 23 tracks in a single day isn't memorable, but well, memorable, yeah.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's been so many for you know, over share away almost 30 years.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, like one um, you know, memorable day was, you know, I was by myself, you know, we we locate dens.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: An early part of the study was to find dens and to understand denning habitat per se.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: That wasn't known, you know, um, was in the northern country, but not at the southern range periphery in like in the continental United States.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was um using radiotelemetry to track this female.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: I saw the female run out and um of the den of in the den in these piles of dense trees that are falling down, like in the kind of jack straw dead trees.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, even though you can be very close to them, it can be very hard to find you know small kittens in in this pile of wood.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so I saw the female took off, and so I was scrounging around, I was by myself, and links act very different when you're by yourself than when you're with somebody else, usually with multiple people, because we need several people to search, you know, it helps.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: But I was by myself and I was reaching under this log and I saw these two little kittens, about a month old, they're about, you know, pound, you know, tiny little kittens.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I was picking it up to take a genetic sample just to pull this, a couple pluck a couple hairs, and now we swab they're inside their mouth with just a Q-tip to get a genetic sample from those little kittens and then put it back.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I look up, and here's this female um growling, walked up, growling at me like three feet on the other side of the log.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: She was just right, right there.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I was holding her kitten.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was, you just kind of talked to her a little bit, you know, hey, I'm not gonna hurt this little kitten, I'm gonna give it back to you.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I just sat there and I did the other kitten while she was just sitting there, and she was just standing there very intense, growling, and me knowing that if she decided to jump on me like she would a deer, um, it would not be good.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: But that's one way to put it.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's they're so fast, you wouldn't you couldn't even react.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, um, you know, backed off.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: That was certainly a you know, memorable experience.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: I would think so.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: I would think so.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: Being three feet away from an angry mama lynx.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: That would be just yeah, I might go back to Gosshawks.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: She just stare.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: Not many of us have had that, by the way.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we're just gonna have to take your word for the intensity of an angry lynx stare.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you have also, and I would be remiss if I didn't give you an opportunity to talk about this, uh, you've done work with wolverines, which is another of those animals that most of us are aware of but not familiar with, if that's the right way to say it.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, wolverines are not an animal, you know.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: I d have worked with wolverines.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um Um in mainly, you know, southwestern um Montana and some of those more kind of island ranges, the Pioneer Range and some of those areas near Dillman, Montana.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: And um yeah, they are, you know, you don't see them casually.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've only seen two Wolverines in my life casually that weren't in a trap.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we built these log cabin style traps made out of just trees with a big heavy lid that drops down when they pull on a on a bait.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how I've seen most of my wolverines was after we captured them and put a collar on them.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, they're you know, they're in remote areas, they're very, very low density, you know, large home ranges.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're very they're you know, they're rare.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're in Montana, they're broadly more broadly distributed than lynx are, but they're rare just naturally.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: What and and how do they compare, say, territory-wise?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Their territories are probably five or six times bigger than lynx.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: And as I understand it, they are they are high motor animals.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: They are constantly moving.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: Is that fair to say?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: They can move, yes, they do.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and they um you know, yes, very much so.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: And um you know, they they are they're just in remote areas and they're just tough for people to see.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean um you know, the ones I saw was, you know, and and they in is unlike a lynx, the Wolverine like when I was we saw when I was with my daughter actually, and we were um near near Big Sky, Montana, and uh we saw it, and my daughter saw it first.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so we looked up and and you know, though it was 400 yards away, 300 yards away, and looking down on us, and it saw us.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was reacting to us.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was with my bios, it was looking over boulders, kind of agitated.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a lynx wouldn't care, a bear wouldn't care hardly at that distance, but that wolverine surely knew we were there, and you know, it was way it felt safe, it was long from us.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: But um it just struck me, you know, how perceptive that animal was.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, when they don't want to be seen, they probably aren't seen a lot.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: I would imagine.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I don't like to make assumptions normally.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my wife would disagree with that statement, but I really try not to.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm gonna assume that you would rather not have been three feet away from an angry Wolverine.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, I would I would not.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um of course we're in the trap, we're three feet away from a but we, you know, immobilize it before we try to handle it.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: But I imagine you double check to make sure that it's completely immobile.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we do, yeah, for both links and wolverines, actually.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: Fair enough.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Now what have you learned about wolverines?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: What what what should we know as casual um naturalists or uh or hopeful observers one day of a wolverine?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: What do we know?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think well, one thing I think wolverines are doing better than they were twenty years ago when I started the link study.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think um the primary reason is I think that um you know they we they used to be trapped more prevalently.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think mortality was higher on them, and um they've changed that.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: The state, you know, changed their laws and improved them and reduced the harvest, and they're responding to that.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so um I'm seeing more wolverines now than I've ever seen in the history of the link study.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I see.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think the more common, like we're seeing tracks, wolverine tracks every couple days now in the field, and that's a good thing.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that that that'll push that'll make wolverines just as their densities build up, you know, they don't tolerate high density with each other, so they're the the animals will disperse more and that'll flow out into other states, Wyoming, and and you know, increase uh the chances of them um re-esta you know establishing and augmenting other populations.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's you know, so they're present.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: They are they are around.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they truly are in most mountain ranges now, in at least in western Montana.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I think yeah, and some ends in northern Wyoming too.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: Now we talked a little bit about mountain lions occasionally killing lynx.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: Does anything attack a wolverine?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I remember one of the first Wolverine's mortalities I recovered.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's in t we skinned it out, you know, in a lab.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: We found it.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: It it was a collared animal, it died, we recovered it, it was in a lab, we took it and skinned it, and its entire neck and back was all black and blue where it would have been alive and hemorrhaged, and it looked like it had just been thrashed, just shook.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if a bear did, a lion a wolf, I mean that wouldn't be a lion, they would just bite it, you know, and but no, did that animal die through m you know predation.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, they are very strong, you know, have strong jaws and they are a fierce animal for sure, and very determined when they try to hunt, but um they have they have to they have predators.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: And what do they hunt?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: What do they predate?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're mainly in the winter where we understand their diet the best.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: They're mainly scavengers.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: But they're really adapted to that.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: They can cover this on they can they have like plantigrade flat feet, you know, that they walk on the snow like a lynx does.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're they can travel through deep snow and cover a lot of ground.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're very you know, have a strong olfactory sense where they can find um carrion.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: I know I backtrack Wolverines and a coup is astonished on how often it would drill down the snow and find carrion that you know, as a human, you couldn't even find like a pile of bones.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're looking for carcasses, and they live on you know, winter mainly on carrion at high level elevation, mainly, you know, deer help um mountain goats that die, you know, in Glacier Park.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of mountain goats are in their diet.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, you know, so that's their primary mode, and they got really, really powerful jaws for crushing femurs.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Most animals can't access that kind of um food.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, hyenas.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And over in dimension, the one that had all the uh the bruising on its back and was killed, its stomach was packed with about one inch bone fragments, just packed.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, interesting.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it is.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: Both the animals that uh that you study are interesting.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, um John, thank you so much for this.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate it.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna throw my email up here.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: Forgive me, which is Scott at naturally scott.com.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: If you've got questions for me or for John, I'll pass them on to him.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, please send them.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: I love getting the questions.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's great to know that you guys are watching and listening and and learning and questioning.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's a it's a pretty neat thing.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we really do appreciate you doing that.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: If you happen to be watching us on YouTube, which I think the majority of our of our viewers do, do us a favor and hit subscribe.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: Every time you do, the podcast goes out to more people.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: So more people can learn from John about Canada Lynx and Wolverine's and teenage goshawk and falconry as well.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but uh we always enjoy that, so please hit subscribe.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want to, you know, drop a comment or hit like, that's fantastic too.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then uh John, I usually wrap up my shows encouraging people to get outside because I think that's where the best things happen.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: And outside can be anything.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: It can be your backyard, your front porch, your local park, Laker National Park, the Rocky Mountains, you know, whatever it is.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: But get outside because that's where things happen.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe you'll stumble across a Wolverine or a Lynx, who knows?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: But when you're out there, make sure that you stay safe and stay curious.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: John, thank you so much for sharing some of your stories with us.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: Really, really appreciated having you on board today.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Scott here.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was it was great for me.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: I get to talk to you twice in a week, so I feel like I've learned a lot.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm Scott Harris, I'm your host.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: This is Naturally Scott.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: I hope you enjoyed this show, and I hope you come back next week, and uh we'll see what we're gonna be sharing then.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: Have a terrific and a safe day.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: Stay curious.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to Naturally Scott with Scott Harris.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally Scott is hosted by Scott Harris, produced by Justin Harris, directed and edited by Frank Sierra.
• 31:24
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• 31:30
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• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally Scott thanks you for viewing and listening to this podcast.