Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 162: Landscape of Fear

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Ep. 162: Landscape of Fear · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is me ea podcast coming in you shirtless, severely
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: vote bitten and in my case underwear listening past. You
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: can't predict anything. Okay, first, we're on top of where
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: we're at. We're gonna go micro to macro. How did
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: it come to be that we're in the wind River
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Outdoor Company of Lander, Wyoming? Is that to me anyone?
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I don't care. I mean, I don't know, honest doesn't know. Well,
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  Speaker 1: I'd say it was a year ago. I wrote into um,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: you guys over email on your from whatever contacts were
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: in the website, and I said, well, what's it gonna
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: take to get Steve to come out to our banquet
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: here for the newly Fanatics Foundation, And um, I believe
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: it was Michelle Jorgenson replied and said, well here's what
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: here's what you need to do and plan it out.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: And so I think it was exactly a year ago
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: we kind of ink the deal and and off you
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  Speaker 1: were here. So, uh, this journey and you just contact
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: your local hunt and fishing shop. Well yeah, so, uh,
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  Speaker 1: Ron Hansen here, who's the owner of Windover Outdoor Company,
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  Speaker 1: talked to him and and he was interested in being
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  Speaker 1: a sponsor of the banquet of which you're speaking at tonight,
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  Speaker 1: and so um he sponsored that which allows us to
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  Speaker 1: financially put together a banquet that will raise a bunch
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  Speaker 1: of money for mule deer as opposed to just throwing
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: a giant party and having people having fun. Well, they're
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: gonna have fun and we're gonna raise money for mule deer.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, talk talk real quick about the foundation and
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  Speaker 1: how sort of where it fits into the where it
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  Speaker 1: fits into the mule deer landscape. Yeah, so newly Fanatics Foundation,
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  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go ahead and and hit our our
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  Speaker 1: mission specifically, our our mission is to ensure the conservation
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  Speaker 1: of mule do and provide such supportive services to Sound
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: wildlife management and the sport of hunting to further the
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  Speaker 1: UH provide supportive services to further sound wildlife management and
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  Speaker 1: sport hunting. So we really work in what I would
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  Speaker 1: say are three arenas. We work in um AH supporting
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  Speaker 1: and funding research which the other people on on here
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  Speaker 1: today we'll speak to a little bit more. Um We
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  Speaker 1: also work and provide support to habitat enhancements when we
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  Speaker 1: get the opportunity, and then kind of our third sector
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  Speaker 1: is just recruitment and retention of new and existing conservationists.
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  Speaker 1: And we had your brother on before you did. Yeah,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: you know, he's the well I'm the better looking oak leaf.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, he was on talking about he was
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  Speaker 1: on talking about wolves because he's a research but we
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: talked a lot about catching them. Yeah, how to catch wolves. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: he's Uh. John and I have have really good conversations.
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  Speaker 1: I mean that that's one thing that I've always enjoyed
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  Speaker 1: is with my father being a biologist and of course
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  Speaker 1: John as well, and then being exposed to to these guys,
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  Speaker 1: the other biologists and researchers around it, it really helps
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  Speaker 1: to kind of give me a bigger picture of of
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  Speaker 1: what's going on ecologically, and and that makes for fun conversations.
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  Speaker 1: Do you guys want to let's introduce our our other
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  Speaker 1: guys here? Hit it. Kevin Montith, I'm a professor at
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: the University of Wyoming. And what's your How did you
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: come to be doing that? So? I came to be
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  Speaker 1: So I'm actually just a small town redneck kid from
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  Speaker 1: northeastern South Dakota. Uh. Grew up hunting and fishing, living
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: outdoors and didn't know anything any better. Found out there's
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: a wildlife school in South Dakota, and I thought, well,
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  Speaker 1: surely I'll go there to be a game warden. And
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: because that's all I knew, I had no idea there
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  Speaker 1: was a world besides being a game warden. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I grew up in a town of five people, high
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: school graduating classes twelve. It seems like all the kids
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: that hunting fish like when we were all kids, I
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  Speaker 1: wanted to be No one knew what it meant, but
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  Speaker 1: they all wanted to be either a game warden or
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  Speaker 1: a wildlife biologist. Yeah. Well, and I didn't even know
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  Speaker 1: wildlife biologists. All I knew was game war It's a
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  Speaker 1: very very not you were getting checked by them all
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  Speaker 1: the time or no, No, we weren't those kids. We
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  Speaker 1: weren't those kids. But yeah, just so, I mean, relatively
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  Speaker 1: poor family, didn't travel a lot, just wasn't exposed too
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  Speaker 1: much in the outside world, and it was actually just
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  Speaker 1: gonna go to tech school, the auto mechanic or something
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  Speaker 1: like that. I found out there was a wildlife school,
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  Speaker 1: so went there and began to learn that there's a
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  Speaker 1: lot more to the story than just that, and became
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: involved with some research projects as an undergrad and fell
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: in love with research, worked really hard, was told by
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  Speaker 1: many that the field is really tough and and there's
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: very few jobs out there, and if you want the jobs,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: you gotta do this, this, and this, you gotta bust
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  Speaker 1: your tail. You gotta put yourself at the top of
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  Speaker 1: the list. So through that time and through the rest
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  Speaker 1: of my duration there, I fell in love with research,
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  Speaker 1: worked really hard to try to put myself on the
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  Speaker 1: top of the list. Um, and got bachelor's and master's
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: degrees there, went on to Idaho State. Uh, did my
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  Speaker 1: PhD there, worked on mule deer in California. For that
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  Speaker 1: was your PhD. So it's unpopulation dynamics a mule deer
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: in this year in Nevadas of California. Yeah, and so
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: when I did my master's work, um, which hopefully maybe
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  Speaker 1: we'll talk about that a little bit more later. But
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  Speaker 1: I actually worked on captive whitetail deer. We did a
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  Speaker 1: lot of nutrition related work and so and then I
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: it was hands on every day with deer, so literally
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: living with deer. And although you know it may seem
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: sometimes like while they're captive animals, so they're not real dear. Um,
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  Speaker 1: you'd be amazed at what you can learn by literally
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  Speaker 1: just interacting with animals at that level on a daily basis,
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  Speaker 1: and the powerful things that you can do because of that.
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  Speaker 1: So through that and instilled in me an appreciation for nutrition. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And then we took that and then basically applied a
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  Speaker 1: lot of what I learned there to free ranging mule
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  Speaker 1: deer in this year Nevadas of California UM long term
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  Speaker 1: individual based work tracking animals through time, which has really
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  Speaker 1: kind of become a foundation for a lot of what
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  Speaker 1: UM we try to do in my program here within Wyoming.
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  Speaker 1: And so finish my PhD there, came here as a
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: post talc with with Matt actually and then just begun
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  Speaker 1: to sort of build some rapport in a research program
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: here and then and then ultimately moved up in a
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: couple of different positions to the UM being a professor
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  Speaker 1: as am now in the hop School of Environment Natural
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  Speaker 1: Resources at the University of Wyoming. Let me ask you
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  Speaker 1: a quick question, UM, because you have exposure to both
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  Speaker 1: Mulder and California. Is it true that if a Columbia
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: blacktail deer crosses I five in an eastward direction, he
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  Speaker 1: becomes a Mulder? Sure? No, that's now now, I mean
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  Speaker 1: because according to like the record books, that's true. Yeah, well,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: so you know how we understand what I'm saying. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I know what you're saying. You know how we are
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  Speaker 1: as people. We need to be able to draw lines
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  Speaker 1: and categorize things right and when those but in the
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  Speaker 1: real world, those lines are very blurry. They're they're not
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  Speaker 1: hard lines. Um. It's it's the same with when you know,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: we sit down and have conservator conversations about subspecies. How
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  Speaker 1: many subspecies of white tailed deer are there, how many
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: subspecies of meal they're out there? Generally over time, Generally,
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  Speaker 1: over time, especially since genetic work has come into play,
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  Speaker 1: the subspecies world has become less crowded in the lumpers.
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  Speaker 1: I feel like the lumpers are winning, you think. So
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  Speaker 1: we went from like seven Canada geese to two. We
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: went from like, lord knows how many bears to two.
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  Speaker 1: We went from like six kinds of bison to one. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but probably one, maybe two. I think a lot of
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  Speaker 1: that is It's interesting. He depends upon what scientists you
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  Speaker 1: talk to actually, and how those hairs are being split
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  Speaker 1: as as we go through time, And it's amazing how
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  Speaker 1: much work is done out there right now to establish
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  Speaker 1: those sorts of things and and for the for so,
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  Speaker 1: for example, for the animals themselves, Um, it may not
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: matter as much to them, it matters a lot for
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  Speaker 1: us as to how we potentially define that. So if
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  Speaker 1: we have something that's apparently unique, but there's not very
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  Speaker 1: many of them, then we're gonna care a lot a
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  Speaker 1: lot more by those few about those few, exactly. And
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  Speaker 1: so that's where the importance comes in. Whereas in the
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  Speaker 1: perhaps in the grand scheme of things, where there's few,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: but then we we determine that, oh, well, they're just
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  Speaker 1: the same as these over here. Okay, well it doesn't
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  Speaker 1: matter that much. That's where taxonomy becomes weaponized. Yeah, it's
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: exactly right, And it's a for for me. For me,
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  Speaker 1: I'm all four if it helps, if it helps, I'm
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  Speaker 1: all four. Weaponizing taxonomy in the cases where it helps
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  Speaker 1: what it makes what I want to happen possible? Yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but then I hate it when it interferes what I
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  Speaker 1: wanted to happen. Um, So okay, okay, So let me
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  Speaker 1: put it a different way. Let's say a deer, a
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  Speaker 1: mule deer, blacktail deer, whatever, hell it is gets hit
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  Speaker 1: by a car in the center of I five. Is
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  Speaker 1: there a way Is there a way for someone to
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  Speaker 1: say that is an X. Well, genetically perhaps they would
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  Speaker 1: be able to say, he leans black tail. Yeah, that's
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  Speaker 1: exactly he leans mulder. That's exactly right. But it could
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: be a confused picture. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, certainly, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: yeah yeah. And that's where like so for example, Booting
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  Speaker 1: Crockett Club and actually colleagues of mine and others have
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  Speaker 1: been have worked pretty hard to be able to help
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  Speaker 1: in identifying those sorts of things, especially hybrids, uh, and
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  Speaker 1: in trying to make sure that what gets in the
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  Speaker 1: record books is actually what we all think it is.
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  Speaker 1: So it's so it's really to me, it's an interesting
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  Speaker 1: thing because it's a it's something that that we as
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  Speaker 1: as humans have sort of um brought into that realm
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  Speaker 1: to allow us to make appropriate decisions, which which is good, um,
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  Speaker 1: but but it's interesting too. It just depends upon the
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  Speaker 1: decision that's being made, whether it's something that where does
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  Speaker 1: it go in a record book versus is it a
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  Speaker 1: small population that we need to protect because they're somehow
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  Speaker 1: unique in some way and you need to be able
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  Speaker 1: to retain them in that way. My brother is a
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: ecologist and a statistician, and um, he worries that and
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: talking about how like in in in genetics rewriting all
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: of our understanding of taxonomy. He kind of he he
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: looks at a little bit, not professionally, but just conversate
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: like just for fun that It's like we're in love
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  Speaker 1: with a shiny new thing and we had the we
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  Speaker 1: have these systems that sort of made sense to us
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  Speaker 1: about morphology, land use, like just like things where people
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: looking like that's different than that, but we're in love
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  Speaker 1: with this shiny new object that's in some ways overcomes
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: our logic. We're like, oh, so, I guess it's not different,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: even though everyone would agree that it is, because someone
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: can tell us now that you know, because this new
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: technology trumped all of our earlier observations about sort of
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: how we understood the landscape and understood creatures to be
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: that like a grizzly, you know, to like a grizzly
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: to brown bear. We do this thing, We do these
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  Speaker 1: trivia questions at our live events, and we always do.
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  Speaker 1: We always have people name six of the world's eight bears.
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  Speaker 1: Has there every honest is there? Ever been a time
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  Speaker 1: when someone didn't say, no grizzly bear, brown bear, no
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: kid ever Yeah never Yeah yeah, because to us they're different.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but now they're not. Now you're wrong to
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: think that they're different. Okay, let's move on with our introductions.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: You honestly you're here, Yeah, good morning. Yeah. My name
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  Speaker 1: is Matt Kaufman. So I'm a professor also at the
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: University of Wyoming. Um, I've been there about thirteen years
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  Speaker 1: and uh, yeah and so, and my focus recently has
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  Speaker 1: been big game migration, ngulate migration. Are you the guy
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  Speaker 1: that made it fashionable? Um? I guess I've he's modest,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: but everyone else nodded their head. Yes, I've contributed to
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: that for sure, But no, no, I mean there's uh
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: for a variety of reasons. I think you know, Wyoming
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  Speaker 1: has sort of uh done a lot of migration work.
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  Speaker 1: Like how did that come to be? Well, I think
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's partly like a sort of a
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: perfect storm. On the one hand, you have Wyoming is
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: a small state about five people a little more. Um,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: it's a state in which for species like mule, deer, elk,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: and pronghorn they need to migrate on this landscape. So
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: so migration is sort of the optimal strategy. And then
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: also migrations still exist because there's so few people and
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: such wide open spaces and so so you have a
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  Speaker 1: lot of animals migrating, a lot of herds migrating to
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: start with. Ah, and then you've just had kind of
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  Speaker 1: uh more interest in it in part because um, in
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: part because we have a lot of development in the state,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: energy development, and so researchers and managers are kind of
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: racing to stay ahead of the development and understand how
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: animals are using the landscape. And so that that's led
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: to a lot of coloring studies and a lot of
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: discoveries of migrations um. And then and then there's also
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: just kind of a few iconic migrations in Wyoming that
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: have sort of captured the imagination of the public, like
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: the Path of the Prong Horn and which goes from
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: the Upper Green River basin down your Pinedale, and it's
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: kind of unique because it goes up over this mouth
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: range between the grove ons and the winds and down
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: into Jackson Hole and Grantiton National Park summer an yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and and it's just a few you know, it's like
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: three animals or something, but they follow this really narrow path.
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  Speaker 1: And and that work was really popularized by a photographer
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: named Joe Reese and a writer named Emily and Ascelin
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: and they kind of like told that story in in
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: in pictures and essays and emilyne followed the entire path
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: and and and wrote about it, and so like they
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: brought that migration to people's imagination. And there's a big
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: story in High Country News that culminated with their work.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: And and then my colleague Hall Sawyer discovered this this
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: world's longest mule deer migration, which we call the Red
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Desert to Hoback migration, um hundred fifty miles from the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Red Desert and Wyoming down near the town of Rock
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Springs or a little town of Superior up almost to Jackson.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: And you know, in another sort of amazing discovery, and
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: they had something they had kind of like evaded understanding
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: even though it has always gone on like yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And that's the thing I think that, uh, that's sort
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: of we're all learning with these collering studies, is that like,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: obviously there's lots of people who who pay attention to
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Wyman's wildlife, and there's you know, professimals that manage our wildlife.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: But it's very difficult to understand, you know, where a
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: migration goes from from start to finish. Ah, you know,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: unless unless you either follow them with GPS callers or
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: you follow them on foot. And you know we don't
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: follow them on on foot anymore. Right, So you might
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: be in one place and or you're looking at the
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: winter range and you know, you know, uh, the fall
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: or early winter comes up and all of a sudden,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of animals show up, and so you know
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: they're coming from somewhere, right, or like I've spoken to
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: ranchers who who sit right on this migration corridor, and
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: you know, they knew about the corridor. They're like, yeah,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: I can sit on my porch and I can see
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: hundred animals a day, you know, move move across in
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: this quarter. I knew that there was a quarter here,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: but they didn't know that, you know, from their ranch
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: and extended you know, sixty miles down to the Red
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Desert and another ninety miles up to the upper Hoback. Right,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: you don't see that full picture until you until you
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: put the collars on the animals and and they reveal
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: the you know, the length of their journey. We just
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: had a conversation with a guy in Colorado who had
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: that that localized micro understanding of mule deer movements where
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: he was explaining in great detail what needs to happen
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: with the snow, and then that a lot of them
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: come through. He had like a uh Matt Cook's ranch manager.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: They got like a forty acre family property which sits
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: right by I think a home Deepot or something like that.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Remember they shot a mulder that actually died in the
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: home Deepot park a lot or something. But he had
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: this like really detailed understanding of like what needs to happen,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden tons of muled your
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: crosses forty acre plot, but then no sort of sense
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: of you know, where it ends. But he just knows
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: like on his place, all of a sudden they all
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: show up and then they're all gone. Right you know,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Um what real quick though? For people explain why mulder
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: you have to move? You said, that's that you have
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: a lot of migration and wyoming. What are the factors
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: that make them bump around? Yeah? So um, so I
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: like to think of Wyoming and and actually a lot
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: of the West is like this. It's a it's a
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: habitat of mountains and plains and for for species like
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: mule here, that's kind of a that's kind of a
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: problem because, um, you know, these animals want to be
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: up in the mountains because that's where all the best
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: food is produced. That's where all the best forage is produced.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: You get, um, you know that the mountains are really productive.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: They're fed by massive amounts of snow melt. So, but
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: you can't live out their year round because you know
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: they would they would die if trying to move to
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: the span on that just a little bit more because
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: I know that like the ranchers too, when I worked
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: on a ranch guiding in Colorado, and they were like
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: always like wanting to get those cattle up into the
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: high country as soon as possible because they would just
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: put on the you know, the pounds faster that way.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: What else is it besides a bunch of moisture up there? Yeah, well, Kevin,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: maybe the nutritional experts maybe answer that question. Well, a
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: lot of it, of course, even as you drive through
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: any of this country and just look, I mean, the
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: habitat the assemblages. The habitats between the low country and
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the high country are very different, and especially for especially
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: for mule deer, in particular getting them up into the
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: high countries where a lot of the more lush forages,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: and so mule deer are a fairly small ruminant so
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: they're in their digestive system, uh, they're they're uniquely adapted
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: to have a symbiotic relationship with these bacteria in their
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: guts that ultimately aid them in digesting their forage. But
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: given how in part given how small they are, they're
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: what we call concentrate selectors, meaning they need higher claw
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: lity food. So, for example, a mule deer isn't going
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: to persist out on a range where you put cattle
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: and just eat grass the entire year round. They're not
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: going to make it. They just can't. They can't adjust,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: they can't, they cannot digest that food as readily, and
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: so ideally they have access to either brows like they
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: do on winter range, or they get up in that
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: summer range habitat and and have either lush new grass
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: when it's early early growing phases or um for communities.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: And it's really the forbes On that higher, higher elevation
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: country along with even the shrubs still up in that country.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: That really gets them high energy, easy to digest, high
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: in protein, and they can really then not only finance
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: reproduction but put on fat um during those summer intervals.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Is there a measurement in wildlife that is like a
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: gut per body size ratio essentially, and so so that's
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: that's the relative index when we when oftentimes when we
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: talk about digestive morphology and their ability to maintain what
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: we call throughput or basically how quickly the food passes
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: through an animal, and so um that tends to that
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: tends to increase in correspondence with body size in general.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: But what we generally know is that those larger animals
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: have a greater gut capacity relative to their body mass,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: therefore allowing them to basically have have slower, longer retention time.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: They can keep the food in their gut longer, which
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: gives them more time to digest that food, which is
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: important on a lower quality for it, like if you're
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: eating primarily grass, well, yeah, like if you look at
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: when you open up a cab, we were a mountain goat,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: it's just like a huge damn gut compared to other
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: things that there's real you know, they kind of bulge
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: out in the middle yep, yep, and it's and it's late.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: So so going from concentrate selector to what we call
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: intermediate foragers like an elk elk is the classic sort
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: of versatile you immediate forager can kind of go both
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: directions from subsisting on mostly grass to also eating a
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: lot of woody brows those sorts of things, to the
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: the bulk feeders or the grass ruffage eaters like our
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: like our bison for example, that are just ultimately like
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: a bison. If you put bison in a tall forb
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: community that a mule deer is just gonna thrive on,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: they're gonna have malabsorption gut problems, um and they're not
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: going to be able to digest it properly because it's
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: going to pass through them so quickly and they're not
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: designed to do that. So they need that bulkier, high
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: biomass lots of food, but that's of generally lower quality
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: than on a mule deer is gonna live on. Thus,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the importance of how habitat feeds into each one of
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: these species somewhat uniquely or in some ways, its ultimately
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: ends in the same same result as far as them
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: garnering energy to survive, but what they need to be
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: able to do that differs across the board. So if
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: they can't be if a mule deer can't be can't
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: spend its whole year down in the bottom like in
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: the sagebrush flats, or doesn't want to, how is it
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: okay for it to spend four or five months down
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: there in the winter? Good Well, So that's also that's
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: a that's a great point. It's also a little bit
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: of a misnomer two, because deer actually can spend the
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: entire year down in those low elevation basins, and in
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: fact we do. We have lots of deer from the
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Red Desert to Hoback deer that Matt was talking about,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: there's a segment of that population that ultimately lives on
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: winter range all year round. And even in our our
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: deer that we work on in the Wyoming Range, the
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: vast majority of them migrate up into those high elevation
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: basins up in the high country, but we still have
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of them that persist on that lower elevation.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: What you would just call winter range, like why in
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: the world are they here? But even those ones at
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: lower elevation, they're still catching some of that green up
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: early in the year. And then then in all honesty,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: they're they're eating a lot of sage brush, and not
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: only during the winter, but all all through the summer
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: as well, stage brush, even though like as you drive
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: across Wyoming, we're kind of like, oh, the stage brushes everywhere.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: It's just this crappy bush that's lives in the deserts.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: And yet not only for prong horn, but mule there too,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: like it's their main staple, especially all winter long, and
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: even for those animals that live at lower elevation. But
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: what we're learning as well is that those low elevation
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: animals perhaps have somewhat of a different strategy and a
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: different kind of connection to their environment as our high
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: elevation animals do. And these are things where beginning to
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: appreciate more and more. There's a huge there are multiple
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: solutions to the problems that animals encounter within the environments
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: they live in, and we're just beginning to appreciate that
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: more and more, as opposed to the more simplistic they
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: have to go here, they have to do this, that
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: sort of thing. No, there's actually multiple ways for them
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: to live in the environments that they that they actually
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: live in, from those that are resident live on a
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: winter range all year round basically to those that are
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: heading into the into the high elevation basis. Is there
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: fluidity between the two groups or do they have like
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: a they have a ridge and sense that I'm like
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: this and you're like that like the mule, like you
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: have the migrating population to mule, Do do do dear
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: be like, oh you know what, this year, I'm gonna
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: go with those guys on a long ass walk. Or
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: do they tend to stick to their own course from
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: generation to generation? Yeah, So with with mule dear, there's
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: very little fluidity. It's h I mean, they learn that
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: strategy from their mother and then from what we can
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: see in our data, that's what they do their entire life.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: And even in cases like the Red Desert population that
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Kevin was just describing has three different strategies kind of
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the long fifty mile one, sixty mile one to the
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: south winds, and then kind of this resident strategy. And
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: we've never seen any switching between those strategies in you know,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: six or seven years of of of studying them so
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: and and even within their strategy, you know, they make
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: their migration up to some arrange and then oftentimes they
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: walk in their same footsteps back down to winter range.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: And is it reasonable to assume that if you took
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: all that, if you somehow removed all the mulder out
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: of this area and grab some new ones from somewhere
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: else and put the same number back, they would probably
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: never figure that out. They would never they would never
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: learn to replicate that route. Well not never, but it
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: would take them a very long time. So we just
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: we just uh, we just published a study last fall
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: um where we took to sort of address this question
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: because there's been this So there's kind of the spectrum
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: of how animals learned to move and to migrate, right,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: and with birds, there's some genetic cues. Right With birds,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: you can do the experiment you were just talking about,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: and they do know the the appropriate time to migrate
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: and the appropriate direction based on where they the place
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: on the earth and where they're from. Right. But with
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the idea with mammals is that it has to be learned.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: And so we did this experiment where we took um
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: all the transplanted bighorn sheep that had been transplanted into
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Idaho and Wyoming, and of course and many of those
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: came from places like around here up in the winds
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: where they were migratory, and so you know, and then
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: looked at whether or not they all GPS collars. You
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: could look at whether or not they were migratory in
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: their new landscape, but they have no knowledge of And
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: what you find is that, uh, basically all of the
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: transplants wouldn't couldn't migrate, didn't migrate. But the ones that
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: we have heards around Wyoming that have been extant that
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: never went through that export extirpation, so have lived in
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: these these mountains for two hundred years or more and
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: the vast majority of them migrate and then then and
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: so so that suggests that you have to learn how
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: to migrate. And then in that data set, we also
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: had animals that had just been recently released or other
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: ones that have been east into new habitats thirty or
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: forty or we also had some moose herds that have
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: recolonized habitats seventy eight years ago. And so you look
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: at this continuum of time since translocation, and there you
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: can start to see that them learning how to migrate
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: and learning how to use the landscape. And with with
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: bighorn sheep, thirty or forty years, they're starting that they're
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: they're trending towards migration. With moose, it takes seventy eight
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: years for them to learn how to migrate. So it's
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: not never but um, as one journalist put it, you know,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: we we essentially destroyed the ancestral knowledge that species like
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: bighorn sheep had when we extort extirpated them across the west,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: because you know, in addistant to losing the herds, we
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: lost all the knowledge that those animals had of how
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: to migrate on the landscape. And they can get it back,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: but a d fifty mile migration, like what did it
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: take in past experience of these animals to ever have
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: learned how to do that? And interestingly for mule deer,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: so that that work was with sheep and moose, and
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: at least for mule deer, with the work that we've done,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: they appear to be some of the most faithful. So basically,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: once they have a migratory route, that's it. They very
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: rarely change or do anything, and we think, we think
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: it comes, we think it's passed from mom to daughter,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: although interestingly we've never known that for certain. We're in
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the process of trying to do that right now by
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: following mom and daughter pairs through time. So literally, UM,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: with some of the work we're doing collering newborn fawns
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: within one day of age, those that survive, re catching them,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: putting a GPS caller on them, so we can follow
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: mother and daughter in the years to come to see
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: if those daughters ultimately stay with mom and then adopt
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: that same migratory route, which is what we think happens.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: That's the working hypothesis, and it seems to be trending
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: in that direction. But it also implies this this unique
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: value of memory as well, and we have We had
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: one animal from from this past year that I think
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: helped helps demonstrate that in a pretty powerful way. It
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: was a mother daughter pair that we had followed for
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: a complete year. So born on summer range, migrate to
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: winter range, and then mom and daughter migrate back up
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: to summer range, and then mom gives birth again that year,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: and generally mule deer around birth. UM attempt to seek solitude,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: and they'll literally reject, kick away, beat the crap out
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: of their previous I know, I know, it's so sad.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Stand up exactly. I don't want you around anymore. So,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: perhaps not coincidentally, one week after mom gave birth again,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: that fawn from the previous year took off, went on
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: a walk about for like forty five miles and in
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: the right direction, no, in the wrong to action. So
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: winter range basically winter range to summer range was was
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: was south to north, and then that fawn continued going
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: north for like forty five miles. We thought it was
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: a dispersal, like, oh, Mom just kicked her off. She's
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: going to head to a new summer range. She's gonna
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: found find her place in this world, which is exciting
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: in and of itself if that's what she did, right.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: But and this wasn't just like skirting around a mountain
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: and then following the foothills. We're talking going from over
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: nine thousand feet in elevation back down to five up
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: and down around around ridges, a very elaborate route. She
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: got to that end of that journey, and that took her.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: I think that took her like nine days she turned
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: right days. Yeah, she turned sutably, passing all kinds of
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: other mulder oh mule deer, all through all of that
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: country and other migratory routes. And this would have been
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: like third week in June. So most animals are not
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: migrating anymore. They've set up shop. Most of the females
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: are giving birth. So so although we can confirm it,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: there's no reason she would have been traveling with another
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: deer during that time. It doesn't really make any sense.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: All the other deer had set up shop. But literally,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: she gets there, she turned, spends one day there, turns
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: back around, and literally walks the exact same path all
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the way back to Mom in one week's time, literally
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: the exact same path. And this is country she has
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: never seen before in her entire life. She's never set
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: foot in it. Mom never took her there, we've had
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: her collared since day one, and literally walks the exact
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: same path all the way back. There is no stinking
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: way we could ever do that. And so yeah, so
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: to us, what that communicates is that they may have
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: this just amazing ability for spatial memory. So it could
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: possibly be that that mother, that daughter could learn from
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: mother maybe walk that route once and they got it
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: just like that. We had one other mother daughter pair similarly,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: I think a sixty mile migratory route migrated to winter
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: range and then at like eight months of age, mom
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: was killed by a mountain lion on winter range. Fawn
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: still lived and walk the same path all the way
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: back up to some range that spring. Do you ever
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: go have a look at that path, like physically walk it?
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: So we were we didn't physically walk it because you
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: know how the landscape funnels. Yeah, you know, for instance,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: you're out in the snow, right and you cut a
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: set of boot tracks and you're like, oh, ship, similar
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: guys here, and you keep hitting the same boot tracks
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: all day long because that person is just sort of
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: has the same sense of ridgelines openings, right, and just
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: people would be interested to go walk it so and
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: be like how much does it just how much is
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: it the logical how much is it the logical path?
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: And how often did it follow like a shitty route
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: and then took the shitty route again? Yeah? So we
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: so we literally so. One of my research associates, her
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: name is Samantha Dunell, and a team of women actually
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: this year. Our aim was to to do exactly that,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: to to set forth and walk one of the migratory
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: routes of one of our collar deer, and this animal
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: in particular, this to me, is what's phenomenal to her
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: journey is about eighty five miles. It's dear one thirty nine,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: which is just a hundred and thirty nine deer that
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: we've had radio marked in that population. She still alive. Yeah,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: in fact, she's pregnant with triplets. We just we just
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: we just handled her just like five days ago. I
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: don't know, I don't I don't know the answer to that.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: We can only hope. But she's interestingly pregnant with triplets.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: But she so she has about an eighty five mile journey,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: and she goes up and over the Wyoming Range, drops
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: drops down, crosses the Grays River, up in over the
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Salt Range to where her summer ranges. And so she's
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: literally crossing summer ranges and migratory routes of hundreds and
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: hundreds of other deer to stay on her route to
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: get to her summer range. And so it's seemingly and
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: and a lot of what they do is seemingly not
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: always that logical, but that's their out and so what
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: they did is they took videographers with them. We're in
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: the post production phases right now of working on putting
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: that documentary film together, but literally to experience on the
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: ground what the animals going through walking through that route,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: the experience that they have from how they're navigating some
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: of the snow fields, to the foods that they're potentially
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: seeing and experiencing, to the to the treacherous terrain, to
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: the fences that are there, all those sorts of things.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: And our aim was to experience that ourselves, so we
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: can hopefully help provide to a broader public some of
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: that the connection between an animal and their environment. But
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: in particular, if you imagine, I hope they don't disneyfy it.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: It's it's not gonna be disneyfy the movie. No, no
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: disneyfication going on. No, I'm getting backed up on questions. Man.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you the two questions I have, and
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: you can approach them. However, you guys want who pays
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: for all this? And and and that's great, um that
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: someone does. So how do you guys fund it? And
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: into what do you say to someone who says that
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: dear did that crazy little journey because you guys got
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: it all whacked out by catching it and messing with
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: it and putting a collar on it. Those are wildly diversion.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Well let's take that what I was getting backed up. Yeah,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: let's take the first one first. And maybe, um, i'd
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: kind of pitch it over to Jared here. Um because
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: one of the I mean there are there are multiple
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: supporters of this work, but one of the important ones
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: are sportsman groups and UM Newly Fanatics Foundation has really
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: been uh remarkable in their support of research and and
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: kind of unique among sportsman groups in that. And I
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: can't really speak to the history of this or why
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: this got set up, but first one reason or another, UM,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: sportsman groups are much more interested in funding on the
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: ground habitat work than they are funding research and and
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: and I and that I think it's a short term
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: and long term play. Right. Well, I fairly obvious results
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: right away, right, I mean, you can do habits at
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: work on your property and then a year later be
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: like holy shit, right and right and yeah, yeah, and
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: the and the vision is that you know, we're we're
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: we're cutting through all of the you know, all the middleman,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: and we're just enhancing habitat and making things better for wildlife.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: And you know, as as researchers, we're in the business
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: of like trying to figure out what's going on and
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: and you know why a population is declining and uh,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: and that's and sometimes research is risky, right, and and
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: sometimes you don't. You know, sometimes you come up with
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: great answers. Sometimes you map a hundred and fifty mile
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: migration and that spurs conservation actions. But sometimes you don't,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: and and then you know who invested in that research
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: that didn't quite pan out. It's it's risky in that
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: you might not we don't know the answers. But how
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: is it? Because how is how is there any wrong answer? Well,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: I think there there's some interest and enticement in unlocking
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: these big migrations. For example, the Eastern Greater Eastern Yellowstone
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Collar project that we are chapter helped the fund on
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: this side of the wind rivers. A lot of those
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: deer didn't migrate. In fact, the majority did not. They
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: just use their habitat a little different between summer and winter,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: and so that lacks a little bit of the pizzaz
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: when compared to a hundred fifty mile migrations that go
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: from the desert floors to the tops of the mountain.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: But it's but it is equally important because then we
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: have dear populations that interact with their landscape in a
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: way that is a lot like a stock investor, you know,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: having a lot of verse versification, and how those deer
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: use the landscape then kind of insulates us against climatic changes,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: whereas the big mountain deer probably are more susceptible to
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: win are killed than the ones that stay in the desert,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: but they're also insulated from drought. So understanding that is important.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: It just lacks the sex appeal that the big migrations has.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: And and so I'd like to follow up with that, Jared,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, and with respect to this this what I posed.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: You know, I think newly fanatics is has been kind
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: of unique in funding research and and I'm curious of
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: your take of you know why that why that has
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: been the case. Well, and that's what attracted me to
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: the organization personally, is you know, we we can go
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: out and do a lot of things. We can cut
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of trees, we can do a lot of stuff.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: There's no certainty that that's going to do anything, especially
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: for these wild populations. It's not you know the same
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: as say when when people back east or they're managing
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: a farm for whitetail, they do have instant results. A
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: lot of what we've found over the years and what
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: we've learned through the research is what we thought were
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: productive of treatments or projects really didn't benefit these wild
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: populations at all. And so one of the things I
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: always stick to, and it's something that I just kind
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: of keeping my head over and over and over again,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: is is basically science without action. It's just research, but moreover,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: action that isn't based in science is really an enterprise
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: of fools because you can't you can't focus your dollars
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: in a way that's responsive to the wildlife's need on landscape. Yeah,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: that's a good point. And and so then just kind
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: of closing closing the loop on the on the funding question, right,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: So sportsman groups, you know, the other other big funder
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: for our for our work has been Rocking Mountain Elk
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Foundation YEA, and especially in Wyoming, they've really kind of
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: worked hand in hand with with our research teams at
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: the University of Wyoming and and have helped you know,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: us discover these migrations. And now we're kind of getting
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: to a I think a really great place where we
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: recognize that those on the ground habitat projects that the
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: groups like Army F want to fund and have been
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: great champions for are now being informed by by the
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: research by you know, we've identified this migration cord or,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: so now we can look at how to conserve a
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: big ranch that is in the cord or that's gonna
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: you know, be maximally beneficial for migrating elk. Now we
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: can look at modifying fences or enhancing habitat that are
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: on stopover sights and so uh So with Army F
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: there's been this sort of great investment in in the
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: science of of in this case elk migration, and now
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: we're literally they're using that science to guide their their
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: work on the ground and maximize like a finite budget
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: exactly things exactly like exactly the right place. And the
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Wild Sheep Foundation is the other one that that we
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: sort of have to mention here. They've been huge supporters
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: of not only sort of like all of those reintroductions
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: that that I mentioned that led to that that learning
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: that migration and learning study, but lots of other research
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: and Kevin's been involved in some of that as well. Yeah,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: basically it's not with any of this work, there's because
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: of what it takes to get it done. There's really
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: no one single entity that can just come to the
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: table and say, Okay, let's go do it. Although I
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: guess it's it could possibly happen, but it's very unlikely.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: And so ultimately with all these things, it's a big
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: network in a big partnership. We may just bring the
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: science to the table, but all the others on the
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: other side of the table, we're all at the same table,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: and it's all everybody's playing their role, from the nonprofits
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: that are helping contribute to it too. We have great
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: agency partnerships from the way I'm and giving Fish Department
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: to Bureau Land Management to Forest Service, UM, there's other
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: other entities within the state. You guys get hard funding
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: from your university or do you have to get everything
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: through grants? No, all through grants. We don't have any
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: hard funding that comes through the university, I guess except
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: for my salary and then Matt salaries is paid for
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: through us. You go out and finance all your projects. Yeah, yeah, okay,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: what about whacking animals out by uh by Colum because
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: you know what, we were recently talking about a mortality
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: study in the Everglades, which is really surprising about what
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: kills you're in the everglades and uh a guy rolled
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: in and he was like you. He was saying that
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: by the simple fact of putting collars on them, you
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: change the dynamic. And he had this thing. What was
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: that study that came out? They were working on a
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: thing after they're painting certain animals. Was it actually studied?
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: You can't remember, they were like talking about it did,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: but it definitely seen. Yeah, so that they wash you.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Why are you guys look so irritated. I was just
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: thinking about painting some bucks and I'm saying, by hanging
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: some damn thing on him, it changes like when a
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: predator comes into a group of them, whether it recognizes
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: it as an injury or whatever, that it changes the dynamic. Yeah.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: My dad did a lot of research on UH pheasants
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: at one point in his life, and they were trying
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: to figure out how many of these pheasants that they
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: released made it, and all the pheasants were had a
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: little armband, wristband on their leg, and he watched several
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: predators key in on the ones that had the wristband
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: something shiny take them out, And so it was biasing
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: the research they were doing. Dudes, not like, I'm not
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: going to shoot a deer with the collar on it.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: So they're doing a mortality study that factors in human mortality.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: But if you're sitting on the woods and deer comes
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: through the collar, unless you know what's going on, most
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: people are gonna think like, well, I don't. These guys
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: just laid some callers on some really big deer, so
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: you might want to think twice before you say that
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: people shot him. Well, so we're in. I mean, definitely,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: there's been maths been working on deer over in the
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: uh the Sierra Madres and had callers on bucks, and
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: we just fixed a bunch of males with callers over
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: in the Wyoming Range as well. And I certainly expect
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: there are a couple really good deer that we that
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: we're fortunate to put callers on, which were really excited
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: to see where they go and what they do. But
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: so in that scenario, there's but never mind, never mind
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: the people shooting them or not shooting. Yeah, but I'm
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: talking about like the idea, and I don't believe that.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't know what this is true. But
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: you hear people say that when you do that, you
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: scramble his brain. Yeah, so whatever, Yeah, a couple of
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: different things associated with brain scrambling. So we did some
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: work in this year in Nevadas of California, and we
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: were doing um that deer work over the years and
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: and through through doing subsequent helicopter surveys and wanting to
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: get a good population estimate. It's important for us to
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: be able to know whether or not an animal has
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: a caller on So to do that to make sure
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: we didn't miss a collared animal. So for example, you
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: fly over a group and you didn't see the collar
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: that was in it, which causes some problems for bias
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: in your data. We have fixed orange bands around the
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: top of the callers to make sure that we that's
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: why they have those on them. Well, that's often times
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the reason, and so that's why we were doing it there. Um.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: But what we also learned subsequently is because of that
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: bright orange, it was subtle, very subtle, but it was
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: causing some bias immortality and in part associated with predation.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: So I will admit in that scenario that yes, there
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: was some potential effect there with regards to that, But
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: we don't affix big, bright orange collars on these animals anymore.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Oftentimes they're brown or they're black. They may have a
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: tag on it on one side, so we can I
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: D them in the field, that sort of thing, um.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: But ultimately there's little effect with regards to that. Now,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: that's not brain scrambling. Um. The brain scrambling I made that.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: I know I made. The word choice was mine, but
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: the sentiment the word choice is mine. But the sentiment
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: is that as as a relative to the effect of
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: affixing a collar on an animal. Now, we know from
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: previous work, especially before the technology got to where it
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: is today, that when we put a collar on an
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: animal that was too heavy, it did have an effect
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: on that animal um it. It's subsequently influenced their um
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: their ability to perform, reproduce um a slight effect on
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: survival thereafter, not huge, but it was a subtle effect.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Technology has come along where we don't have that issue anymore,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: and so those effects really are not there. And even
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: when you step back and you consider the capture handling
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: process and the things that we do which we get
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: like brain scrambling comments or questions like that. Sometimes have
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: you heard other people say, I mean, maybe not use
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: the term brain sam Generally it's using the term stress.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: You're overstressing them or or and so with with the
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: work that that I do, we're oftentimes UM. The way
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: I try to attempt to characterize it is is telling
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: telling an individual story. And if I can take multiple
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: individuals in a population and put all those stories together,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: a pattern of understanding begins to emerge. And so we
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: do our best to follow individual animals through time, and
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: oftentimes what we need to be able to do is
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: to catch and rehandle that animal over time to assess
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: the reproduction, to assess how fat are, their patterns of growth,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: those sorts of things. So we often catch animals UM
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: multiple times and so and right now in a number
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: of my studies, twice a year, so we can see
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: that picture of that seasonal change in fat and condition
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: and reproduction, for example, as we go through the seasons.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: And so many will say, well, as you continue to
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: do that over time, you're just like adding more stress
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: to their life and eventually the cumulative stress is going
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: to be so high that you're gonna they're just gonna
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: tip over the edge. But what what the the reality
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: is is that, yes, I mean, I'm not gonna try
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: to tell you a story that those capture events are
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: not stressful. Certainly they are, but it's it's also it's
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: very acute. So it's a short tim portal window. We
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: do the capture, we handle the animal, we processes, they
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: go back on their normal way. It's not like we
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: continue to add the stair stepping cumulative stress that ultimately
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: in the end tips them over. One of my favorite
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: stories to tell. It's maybe seemingly anecdotable. We'd have a
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: number a number of other animals that I could also
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: tell a fairly simil their story, but to me, this
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: one is the most powerful. And that's an animal that
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: we had in our work during our study in the
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: year in Nevadas of California, so a mule dear. She
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: was part of that work from when it started to
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: two thousand nine when we finished, and during that window
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: of time, our aim through a number of the years
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: was to handle animals once a year, but then we
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: switched to twice a year, so that we could see
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: that seasonal change your time. So during that window of time,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: we captured and handled that dear twenty one times. And
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: so if you tell me that there's cumulative stress effects
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: or whatever, that that we're affecting their viability through time
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: to handle that animal twenty one times over that window.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: But the story gets even better. When she was twelve
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: years old. Now this is an animal of known age.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: When she was twelve years old, she gave birth to triplets,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: and I call her all three of the of her fonds.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: She subsequently reared them all. At twelve years of age,
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: she successfully weird all of them old dry dough. The
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: old dry dough completely wrong, completely wrong, old dry dough,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: gave birth to triplets, raised them all. She was in
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: very very poor shape that fall. They pretty much sucked
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: her dry. But and we caught her that fall, not
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: only in that fall, in that following spring continued to
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: catch her twice a year fine and I call heed
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: her single fond. That next spring. That faon died at
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: thirty days of age to a bobcat. But ultimately in
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: the end she lived a fifteen and a half years old.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: When she was killed by a mountain lion on winter range.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: And so by the time was how many fonds did
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: she raised successfully if you measure success as me in
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: how many like lifetime reproductive six I haven't done that,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: but I certainly could go do that because we practically
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: have her whole life. But I don't. I don't know
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: the answer to that or whatever exactly. I'd have to
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: go back and look. But even in that year, she
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: had a kid get killed by bobcat, she got killed
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: by mom, She got killed by a mountain lion when
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: she was fifteen and a half on winter range. And
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: so by the time she was twelve, we had handled
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: her over fifteen times. And yet she gave birth to
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: triplets and reared them. I mean there, which is a
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: huge feat in and of itself, did get pretty passive
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: after So what's amazing is those animals that were the helicopter.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: So so I I was one of the years when
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: she was in the year that she was thirteen, Um
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: I would I was gunning and I caught her, and
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: she's she's fairly passive. I shot a net over her
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: that the one the back end of the net just
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: touched her head and she just laid down, so she
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: wasn't even really caught she but she just laid down,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: and I just got out of the helicopter and hobbled
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: her and we processed her and just super calm and
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: chill the entire time. And that's generally what we tend
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: to see. Those animals that we've handled multiple times are
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: just like, well, okay, we're doing this again and it's
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: no big deal. Which she captured the same way every time,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: by a netgun from a helicopter every time, one times,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: similar to being abducted by aliens. Yeah, yeah, we hear
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: that once in a while too. And then uh, you guys,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: tranquilis or don't tranquilize it? Do you need to tranquilized year, No,
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: you do not know. And so generally, generally, if we
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: don't have to sedate or tranquilize in any way, in
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: my experience, it's better for the animal because they maintain
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: all of their abilities to thermal regulate, to respond. Um,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: we don't cause that. You know that that cirin, there's
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: that surgeon in gentle and we just not it back
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: real fast again. Um, we were avoid that. And most
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: importantly then when we let them go, they're fully aware completely,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: can do their own thing. They can navigate fences, can
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: deal with predators, everything else. They're back on their way.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: So no drugging. Can you capture an ANTLERD Yeah, an
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: ANTLERD buck and not drug? Yes, so there's no safety concern.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Uh well, I mean they got bone on their head
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: that you have to be careful of. Um, you can
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: know it's can certainly be done, absolutely, and that's how
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: with many of them that we captured and outfitted this fall. Yeah,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: they were in hard Antler and you can catch them
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: within that gun and do it that way. Ye. Are
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: you guys familiar with Valarious geist and stuff all year?
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: What's his reputation? So it's so in my mind valarious
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: guys and probably everybody would have a different opinion. But
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: he was, Um, he's a brilliant scientist, without a doubt.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: But he's also so some and some scientists would say like,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: oh man, that guy, it was crazy. But interestingly, Vow
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: guys to me was so creative and thoughtful that he
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: postulated so many ideas that have become hypotheses that we've
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: since tested or maybe still like some of the groundwork today.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: Now admittedly some of those were pretty far out there
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: and pretty crazy, so yeah, OK, no way. But in
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: all honesty, I think it was just his creative mind
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: that he could come up with potential explanations to things
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: that ultimately lead to ideas that we could test thereafter.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: Remember someone saying that he, um, we'll kind of like
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: light a fuse and then leave the room by by
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: tossing something that yeah, right, like here's the idea. Here's
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: an idea. But before we of the brain scrambling, well,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: I mean all uh, I mean, I think Kevin gave
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: a great description about the ways in which you know,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: these type of coloring activity activities don't or minimally disrupt
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: the animals. But I don't want to lose the larger
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: point here, which is that this is the way that
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: we have advanced modern wildlife management for the last half
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: a century. Right, So, almost everything that we know about
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: how animals respond to roads, how animals respond to human hunting,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: predator prey interactions, disease interactions, competitive interactions, population dynamics, Capturing
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: and coloring animals is the tools of the trade. This
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: is this is the tool that has led to most
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: of the sort of modern advancements in our understanding of
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: wildlife management and wildlife biology, and so you know, and
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: as we go forward, right like, we need these tools
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: even more than ever, right because we are in most
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: of the species we're talking about are hunted, but um,
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: but we are in a biodversity crisis here and for
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: the you know, for a lot of the game species. Yes, um,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: we're not worried about losing mule dear, but we are
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: worried about losing mule dear migrations or you know, severing
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: those migrations, and for and for lots of other species.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: We can think of ungulates in in Africa another species.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: You know, we are concerned about losing these these herds.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: And it's not going to because when we lose them,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: it's not going to be because we somehow, you know,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: stress them out a little bit too much by capturing
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: one too many animals. It's it's going to be because
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: we didn't understand what these animals needed in terms of
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: their habitat requirements and their movement or requirements to live
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: on this landscape. And we didn't understand what we were
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: doing to alter that. So you know, that's what research
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: gives us. Research gives us that understand ending and and
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: you know, to me, that's to me, that's the big picture,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: and that's that's why we do this research. And there's
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: lots of examples of that type of understanding being applied
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: to better manage and conserve these species. And so you know,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: that's the flip side. You know, that's what I think
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: about when we get criticized about, you know, the the
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: acute stress that that we're putting these animals under. Yeah,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: I wanted to return to that, but I'm glad you
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: got that taken care of. You're welcome. I was devil.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: I was definitely davocate. I was being the devil's advocate there. Um,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: I understand that well, and we'll even revisit that. Let
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: you uh emphasize that point again. But the reason I'm
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: bringing up val Geist is, you know, his thing, like
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: his idea about how muleteer came into existence? Is that
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: is that does that have? Is there academic consensus and
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: his idea of how the sort of evolutionary path of
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: the mule deer, you know, let me let me approach
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: it is a completely different way. Let me approach a
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: completely different way. How did mulder come to be what's
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: through evolution, the evolutionary path that led to Mulder Well,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: and I just was curious to the same thing because
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: I've read Val guys book and there was a yeah,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: he talks about basically it muled there across between blacktail
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: and whitetailed deer and a really new species. And I
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: even texted the biologists about it last night. He said
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: he's like familiar with it, but wanted to go revisit
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: the idea. So the under Geiss theory, they're basically been
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: around ten thousand years splices Holli scene transition, and when
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: I read that, I instantly thought, wow, I was skeptical.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: Um Also he has within anything with science, there's usually
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: some counterpoints, and I got digging around and there's other
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: theories of maybe glaciers separated deer and then they evolved
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: into those those different different species that we know today.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: So there is too kind of counter theories. And I
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: don't know if you guys know, it is pretty commonly
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: held that they're fairly new species to the planet, um say,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: especially compared to white tailed deer who've been around, as
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: I'm told a lot long like fairly unchanged for a
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: long long time. I think that's the general consensus is
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: that what is exactly what you said, being a fairly
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: new species whatever whatever new actually means. Um. But with
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: regards to that, yeah, and then historically the notions with
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: you know, my the initials some of the mitochondrial DNA
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: indicating that mule deer were more closely related to whitetailed
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: deer as opposed to blacktail deer, and then more recent
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: analyzes indicating that well, no, mule deer and blacktail deer
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: are probably more closely related than our deer. It's just
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: like and that's like our referenced our conversation before. As
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: we begin to like, you know, split all these things up,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: it's like, okay, well fine, And interestingly, as far as like,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: ecologists tend to not dwell on those sorts of things
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: a lot um in the arena of the geneticists and
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: those sorts of things, there's lots of you know, those
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: talk taxonomic related questions, how do these animals come about?
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: Where do we where do we draw the lines? But
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: as ecologists, we tend to we tend to dwell on
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: some of those aspects um a lot less and focus
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: more on the ecology connections of animals to their environment
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: as as opposed to what should be split, what should
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: be split, and where the splitters versus you become curious
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: about it, I'm not that curious. Yeah, I just And
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: I think it's because I think it's because just our level,
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: our level, as we talked before, I mean, there's definitely
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: some value within that relative to how unique is this
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: versus that? And where do we draw these lines to
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: seek to conserve and protect? And I guess I like
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: to think of it more bigger picture, and I'm like,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: I think we want to be able to conserve essentially
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: every everything we got, even those that even those that
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: are not um small or isolated or or seemingly they
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: are unique. Um, I guess I like, I think a
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: little bit more big picture and in a bit differently
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: of just the connection between an animal and their environments
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: and within within those ways as opposed to the splits
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: or the lumps or But if if say, like a
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: mule deer, it's been on the planet much shorter period
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: pretty much agreed to on that, does that then ecologically
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: make them more sensitive to change and less able to adapt?
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: That's a really good question. Well, it depends, it would
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: depends upon how the various traits that that exists there
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: have become potentially fixed and thus la and thus are
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: more lacked in diversity. So something that's potentially newer as
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: so long as there's traits for adaptation to act on
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: that could lead to a viable strategy, then it's fine.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: That part doesn't really matter. Whereas if if various traits
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: have become fixed and then something changes, then there's there's
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: no there's no potential beneficial trait for that change to
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: be able to operate on that leads to some benefit
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: over time. Um So whether or not there's the diversity
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: in those traits to allow that to happen, depending upon
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: how long one has been around or not. I don't
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: know that it necessarily makes them one more sensitive than
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: than the other, but others could certainly argue it in
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: the opposite direction. I'm gonna layout the damn geist flock.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: Are you familiar enough with it? The fact? Check me
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: out it. We'll see. Okay, he's got this idea right,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: probably untestable. Are had this this long standing like very
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: versatile population of white tailed deer that had always been
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: and what's now the Southeast United States and climatic conditions
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: were such that had enjoyed this westward expansion um and
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: then climatic conditions were such that the middle ground faded
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: out and you had this remnant population on the west coast,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: and this this in that expanding population retracted back to
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: east and they enjoyed this long period of separation and
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: eventually emerged the black tail deer in the white tail deer.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: And then climatic conditions were such that those populations were
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: brought back together eastward and westward expansion. There was a
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: hybridization event. It's very beautiful in its details. There's a
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: hybridization event around the Rocky Mountain front or so, and
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: then and then the retraction again, and it left this
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: population of yeah, it's tidy, it's tidy, tidy, tidy, neat
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: So tell me then, no, no, listen, I don't know, no,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I no, no, Okay, So it's not it's not a question.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: It's not a question for you. Perhaps it's more of
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: no hybrids, okay, white tail deer, meal deer hybrids. How
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: do they do? I don't think they do very good? Right,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: they do terrible. Then they're not sexually they're not sexually
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: viol generally not. And in fact I had one in
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: captivity that we that because we have both meal deer
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: and if you are white till the end a few
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: meal there in captivity and we had um but got
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: in with their white tail mule deer buck broke through
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: the fence, got in with our white tailed does the
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: one year and happened to knock one of them up
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: until we ended up with a hybrid. Is that how
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: hybridization occurs? It's a mule your buck in a white
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: tailed dough or couldn't go the other way? Yeah, there's
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: lots of speculation on that it can go the other way.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: So people, I mean, but like, so you've seen it happen.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: Have you seen have you seen both happen? We have
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: evidence of that happening. I haven't seen it myself happened
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: that way, we have evidence is known to have happened. Yeah.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: And the general theory, which probably comes from geist to um,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: is that because of the way white tailed deer rut
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: and that they travel lots of country and then find
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: one female and stick with it. That sort of thing,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: as opposed to the maybe more sometimes storm hair harem
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: oriented a little bit, although they're not really lot, not
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: quite a lot within meal there it's little bit of
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: attending bond, but that it's more likely for a white
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: tail to happen to encounter muleedr dough and then ultimately
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, but regardless like that hybrid even in captivity,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: it's actually pretty hilarious watching if it, if it got
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: spooked a little bit and took off, it would like
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: stop once and then sort of run and then like
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: start again and then try to run again. Almost it's
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: completely true. You hear those stories, but explain stotting because
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of people are gonna know what that work is.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: So startting is where it is very common and mule
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: dear and it's where the animal lands on all four
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: feet at once and then pops up again. And the
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: idea behind that, which probably comes from Val guys To,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: is that within within the more the more in his book,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, I know he did. Yeah. Um, as
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: they as they live in the more like shrubby ruggedy
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: country and with some of the predators that they encounter there,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: that them bounding in between as opposed to the flat
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: out open wide open run in open country that white
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: till dere are that it's a better adaptation for them
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: to aid predator by that popping up and down and
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: so you don't see exactly and so it's that all
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: all four fet bouncing. But yeah, what that hybrid would
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: do is he would literally do that. He'd like stop
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: once and then open up and then start again and
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: then open up. Really bizarre. And so you can imagine
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: that an adaptation like that is not really fit on
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: either side of the spectrum where do you live and
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: and be viable that way? But in general, to get
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: back to your question, if that happened to me, those
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: hybrids should be way more viable than they are. And
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: the point is is they're not. And and that's one
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: of the greatest challenges with regards to that idea. Um
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: And unless reproductive isolation for whatever hundreds of thousands of
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: years or whatever it is, was long enough to cause
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: hybrids to not be viable from from that relationship, maybe,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: but it seems to me that they should be more
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: viable than they are. If if that was the case,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: so good job, man, is it. At what point in
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: time are you leaving val guys? Because I got oh no, yeah,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: but go ahead, man, you're not gonna go ahead. Yeah,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go. I wanna know if they If they
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: what about when they think about the shirking or shirk
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: or idea that val guys has big into this. Yeah,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: that's the super How he turns into a super buck
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: is that he removes himself from the breeding. Everybody else
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: has burned up their fat reserves. He just kicks back,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: keeps eating and like just for years. He takes himself
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: out for years of this, and so one day he
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: emerges just the man. Yeah, nobody can mess with him.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: And at that point he can just spread his jeans
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: everywhere so I can speak. You guys got a collar
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: one of them suck? Well we should, yeah, we should
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: potentially see that. So so back with the captive deer
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: work that I did years ago, um, we we sort
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: of we angled at a question along those lines, but
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: not exactly like that. We're in. Our interests was in
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: looking at how yearling males so kind of their first
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: year coming into that age where they could potentially reproduce
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: or participate in the rut, whether or not when a
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: big adult male was around, if that suppressive effect of
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: that hierarchy caused them to not engage in the rut,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: whereas in a scenario where we had yearling males with
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: no big males around, just two yearling males and their
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: access to females all by themselves, they can be the
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: top dogs. And whether or not they then expended more
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: resources in the rut. And so during the during that
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: those windows of time, we separated them out into those
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: groups like that, and we monitored their food intake, their
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: changing body mass during the rut, and then also they're
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: changing fat during the rut. And what was amazing to
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: me is those yearling males, regardless of whether or not
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: they had big males around, and by the way, they
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: acted very differently those yearling males where they didn't have
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: a big male around, you knew they were top dog.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: They acted like they were topped do oh yeah, oh
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: crap yeah. Behaviorally it was very obvious. But interestingly, their
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: forage intake in the mass they lost during the rut
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: was no different, which to me was completely phenomenal. And
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: in those big adult males, they were expending a lot
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: of energy during the rut. Fact, those adult males like
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: ford It four to seven years old, they could lose
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: eight percent of their body mass in a week like,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: and they're literally and these are in a We're literally
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: putting males in a four ft by eight foot what
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: we call metabolic box during the day, allowing them out
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: to interact in the mornings and evenings, putting them back
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: in that box, food right in front of their face,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: as much of it as they want, and they eat
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: almost nothing. So most of the mass loss associated with
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: the rut, even though we think it's because they're running
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: all over the place, is actually because it's it's voluntary hypophagia.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: They're not eating. They're simply not eating, and that's where
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: most of the change occurs during the rut. But we
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: learned from that work as well, so not only those
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: dynamics with those yearling males, but also the bigger males,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: is that it's largely what we call state dependent. So
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: a big male that has more fat reserves at the
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: beginning of the year is going to expend more of
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: those reserves in the rut than a male that is
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: simply did not pack on as many reserves early in
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: the year, or is younger and thus still growing. Therefore
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: it doesn't have the fat reserve to expend because it
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: was putting most of its energy into growth and body
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: structure and body mass, and then it's going to expend less.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: So while the Shirker mail it could have been a
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: big male that year and he went all out, but
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: that's because he had it. It doesn't necessarily imply that
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: he's been saving it up for years and then going
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: all in and in all honesty with regards to a
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: tactic wherein you would you know, attempt to contribute your
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: genes to subsequent generations. If you wait that long, there
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: you also could die and then contribute nothing as well.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: And so if you do that in a manner wherein
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: in the years you have the resources to expend towards it,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: you by all means should probably engage to take advantage
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: of that opportunity. Yeah, I don't I don't remember the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: Shirkert male, but it does seem like it's a little
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: bit counterintuitive of the way. You know, he used it
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: as like a way to explain, but you get like
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: the biggest you want him to save up and then yeah,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: but the but the problem is that like an individual
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: animal like, they don't know that that strategy is possible, right,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of a hard So you know,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: all the sort of evolution. He's like, you know how,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna play it boys, right, right, and for five
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: years when I come back, and then at year four,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: you're dead, right, So you know, animals discount the uncertainty
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: of the future, like they don't know what the future,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: their future reproductive possibilities are going to be. And so
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: but I don't think he's proposing that there game in it.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's just a thing that like it's got
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: low tea or whatever. I don't know. We should have
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: the guy on, yes, but I'm ready to leave him.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: I'm GOODA we touched on that because that brought up
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: some interesting stuff to listen to. This podcast is gonna
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: be a good one. Wait, you haven't been listening so again? Yeah?
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: Is it good that we move on? Please? Okay? UM,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: are you guys familiar with the idea that that at
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: the time, like at the moment of European contact, um
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: that shortly thereafter, we probably enjoyed the highest buffalo constant
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: buffalo bison. I'm gonna use bison because you guys professionals,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: the highest bison population perhaps that ever existed on the
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: continent because you had, you know, lost of the indigenous
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: hunters on the landscape and their other landscape changes. And
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: so we came in and sought us perhaps saw this
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: like very momentary artificial thing of the you know, the
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: much cited like thirty two or forty two or whatever
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: fashionable number of bison that around the landscape, when we
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: took it to be like, uh, yeah, yeah, used to
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: be the fashionable number, used to be sixty millions gone down. Um.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: But anyways, we looked like holy smokes, is a ton
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: of these things. But there's no reason to think that
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: it had been like that for a long time. And
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: there could have been factors that allowed this explosion and
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: that allowed the animals to be in places they weren't,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: such as like the mound builders in the Ohio and
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: Mississippi Valley. Um, they made effigy mounds to all the
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: animals around. They never made an effigy mound to buffalo.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: Yet when the English came into those areas, they're all
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: over to damn place. So people wonder what happened there.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: Had they moved into these places, why were they not
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: represented an art um? Was this just a temporary phenomenon
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: that they witnessed, So what what point do you feel
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: we had the most mule deer X. Yeah, I mean
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: it seems like it seems like that was that was
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: probably the hey day. So that is a that's a
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: legit idea. I mean, it seems like it's a you know,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: we don't have great uh data going back that far,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: but it definitely seems like that's kind of the the
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: conventional wisdom because you had cultures, like you had indigenous
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: cultures even that that focus like it's it's hard to
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: imagine not you had indigenous cultures that seem to have
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: focused on hunting big horns m m. Had indigenous cultures
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: that focused on hunting doll sheep, which seems yeah, wild right,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: And you had people that like very much focused on
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: all the things. But there's no sort of like mule
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: deer society. Right well, you know it's uh, I mean,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: of course, like our our understanding of these things gets
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: dimmer and dimmer the farther we go back, right, but
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: they you've probably read that journal The Trapper by Osborne Russell, right,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: and and you know, so this was this was a
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: trapper that was moving through the Greater Yellowstone Region in
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties and he was you know, hunting beaver
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: and and supplying beaver pelts uh to the regional markets,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: and and it's striking and and he was a fairly
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: remarkable guy because he basically wrote down in enough detail
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: his journeys every day that historians and could go back
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: and and trace his path right of of where he
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: was the entire season. Even he's been a couple of
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: different years moving through that landscape, and and he wrote
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: down every time they shot something. And what's remarkable is
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: they're moving through the you know, the greater Yellowstone landscape,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: and whenever they need food, it's either bison or bighorn sheet.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, needed, you know, needed to stop and
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: make something shot of bison shot. He he has an
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: observation somewhere up in the in the Gravant Rivers, which
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: is the Gravant drainage, which is kind of would be
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: sort of south of of the southeastern corner of Yellowstone
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: where he's at Camp. And he and he makes an observation.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: He counts on the cliffs around Camp a thousand big
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: horn sheep, which is just unimaginable today right from France's apartment,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: I'm not familiar. He's the historian he traveled with the
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: Oglala Sioux in the forties and they go into the
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: Black Hills and kill big horns with rocks to get
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: above them. They get above them and roll rocks down
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: to kill him. Crazy go Yeah, So I mean like
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: like there, you wouldn't occasionally, you know, occasionally Russell reports
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: killing a meal deer, occasionally an elk, and so I like, yeah,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: I mean that, and that's what if you're traveling through
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: there now, would be like your main right, that's what
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: you're gonna run into. Yeah, yeah, and so yeah, I's that,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: you know. It counts like that make me curious how
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: much bison shaped the ecosystem and you know, modifying the
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: habitat and and extantially competed with species like like mule
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: deer and elk you know, and you know, interactions and
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: dynamics that we have no way to really understand today.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: The school I found a school, a bison school at
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: like literally going towards an elk bugle at nine thousand
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: ft in heavy timber in the Madison Range, and you
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: just you cannot picture it now, like what what that
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: looked like when that thing died? And you know, it's
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: just it's it's so confusing, right, um so yeah, when
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: were there a bunch of them like the you know
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: the idea are you familiar with the idea that they're
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: like like that? The everyone talks about the mule dear
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: heyday of the nineteen sixties that might have been, like,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: what were the factors that could have led to something
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: like that? Yes, yes, don't like speculate about old timey stuff.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: It's because the speculation just tough for scientists, Like, Okay,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go there. Well, because you get skittish, Well,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: you get skittish, and it's I mean, we're our job
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: is to Our job is to um in our in,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: our passion ultimately is to talk science, use the evidence
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: that we have to talk about that, and to hopefully
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: help make sound decisions. No, it's true, I'm gonna I'm
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: gonna speculate. Please let me speculate. So sixteen seventies, so
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: many of referenced that as a potential eruption, right, interruptive
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: dynamics sixties or sixties, seventies, sixties and seven, Yeah, in
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: in that window and they're um in like the notion
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: behind eruptive dynamics and ungulate populations it's not it's not
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: a new idea. We know that that thing that that
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: type of dynamic happens. And where it's most definitely in
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: the word so eruptive dynamics, is just simply this notion
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: where a great example is you you take some some ungulates, um,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: put them on an island, and they grow and grow,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: they just explode to great abundance, and then they subsequently
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: crash and then we never see them recover to that
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: abundance again, um, which is what you see when you
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: introduce wild turkeys somewhere. Yeah, yeah, certainly. Yeah, it's the
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: same sort of notion. It's this explosion, make use of
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: this like brand new habitat that's that's been you know,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: unpioneered before you see them reach great abundance and then
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: they subsequently predators aren't used to you yet. Lots of things. Yeah,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: potential ideal scenario. And so the notion of the sixties
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: and seventies, which we're all potentially fond of. And I
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: think there's a general like desire and thirst to have
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: that great abundance of of mule deer again most most
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: certainly UM and and but also for us as people,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: I think we all, we often look in the past
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: and think, why wanted the way it was back then?
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: We should have that number again. But the only way
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: to potentially get that number again is for everything to
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: be the exact same way it was back then. And
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: things are very different that then. UM. Our forests were
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: at different successional stages. UM. So forest management has definitely
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: progressed through time. Um we've seen successful changes in those forests.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: Livestock grazing was potentially different, Predators were potentially different, climate
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: regimes were different, our presence on the landscape was certainly different.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: Our use of habitat ourselves was different. Agriculture was different. So,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: like you, you begin to think through each one of
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: those things that are different now than they were back then,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: and you begin and reflecting on that, you potentially begin
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: to realize that, Okay, well maybe there were a lot
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: of different things that potentially contributed to that great abundance
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: at that point in time. And another one is even
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: other other species of ungulus present on the landscape. I mean,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: we didn't have near the elk abundance back then as
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: we do as we do now. Most certainly, and regardless,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: there's you know, the way the way you ultimately get
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: that you get in abundance like that is, it starts
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: from the ground level. The only way that you can
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: get there and to maintain that much is to ultimately
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: have that have the habitat and that nutrition and fundamental
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: building block for populations. Now, maybe other things like presence
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: of predators and other things interact to influence those things,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: but you ultimately do not get there unless you have
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: that fundamental building block. And so for me most certainly
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: that fundamental building block had to be different predators aside,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: all those other sort of human harvest, all those other
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: things aside you had You had to have that fundamental
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: building block to be able to get there. And I
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: think that building block that be food, that being food,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: and use of that building block um today is is
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: different than it was than it wasn't a success. I
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: think you think about what led into that nineteen sixties eruptions,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: So you had probably landscape level disturbances occurring, and then
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: you kind of swing in the mid nine nine team
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: thirties or so, and then there's this relax and and
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: the disturbance kind of stop slows down, and that habitat
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: is allowed to mature to state that's very desirable for deer,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: and they just chase that habitat would be I'll go
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: ahead and speculate because I'm not bound by the Shackles science,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: but um, I agree. I think it had to have
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: been a disturbance regime followed by a relax And the
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: great thing about the disturbance regime that happened that time
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: is you didn't have all the external stressors that we
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: have now, um be at cheat grass or other demands
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: on the landscape. You had historically low predator populations. Yeah,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: I mean that that can could contribute to it. But
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: like Kevin was saying, you still need the groceries to
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: recruit the baby. So what what is an acceptable number
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: of milder? I mean, because you want to having like
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: a fatalism problem, right, Like if you ask me, if
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: you asked me, like, what's the benchmark of what's the
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: benchmark of what we should strive towards? If I never
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: really had to come up with like, oh, okay, what's
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: the ideal, I would say fourteen nine two? Is that
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: a number a year, a year, a hundred years before
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: you know, a hundred years before European contact. I don't know,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: Like what is the number if we say like, oh,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: we want wildlife, we want to make room for wildlife.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: We want to Like if you just say, like, my
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: job is just to tell you what's going on and
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: what's here. At some point, it's gonna lean into advocacy here,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: at some point it's gonna lean into preservation. So are
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: you always just chasing the idea that I want to
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: maintain what we have right now and that's what I
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: would like to see happen, or you're are you trying
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: to um? Are you trying to be to go back
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: and and hit some like retroactive point to say like, no,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: we pushed it too far. Now it's we we've messed
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: it up too much. We need to fix things. Or
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: is it just I just want to capture what's here
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: now and maintain that, or I'm willing to see us
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: lose a bunch more and then come to some point
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: when we want to stop the loss of wildlife. Generally,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: I know it's not your job, but as a human being,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: do you think about that? Does that motivate your thoughts
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: as a scientist? Well, this is sort of uh, well,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: this is a difficult question, right there is the most
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: difficult question I mean the right. So, I mean, I mean,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: one answer obviously is like for us, I mean, we're researchers, right,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: so our job is not to articulate how many meals
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: here there should be on the landscape. Okay, so that's
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: that's what he's here's the problem. Here's the problem. Here's
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: the problem. I didn't say. It was that if you
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: didn't care, if you didn't care, you wouldn't do what
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: you did. I respect, I understand, I respect, I respect
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: what you're saying, and I have because both my brothers
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: are in the business here, and I'll always be like,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: what do you hope happens? Like, I don't hope anything happens. Um,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't be motivated if you didn't care about dear,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't be messing with them all the time. You'd
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: be doing something different, right, right. Yeah, So that's one answer, right, obviously,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: one that you don't like. But I mean the other
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: answer is that, um, right, we have to. So I
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: think it's as when we when we manage these systems,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: it's just really hard. It's this sort of shifting baseline problem, right,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: It's it's really hard to go back. It's really hard
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: to get the public too, imagine, you know, to get
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: the public. And I've tried this to get the public
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: to think about what Osborne Russell saw in those mountains
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: outside of Yellowstone, Right, we don't nobody thinks about Nobody
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: can even imagine a world in which someone at their
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: camp could see a thousand big horn sheep on the
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: cliffs about them. No, that nobody can imagine that. And
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: that is not in the discussion when we think about
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: how many big horn sheep we should have on the
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: landscape today, right, and that ship is sailed, right, and
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: and and so so I think that we so I mean,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: when I think about it practically, and when I think
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: about conservation, I think about, you know, uh, how many?
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: And it's for me, it's not so much how many
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: mule deer, it's you know, where do we have mule deer? Where?
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: Will will we have migratory mule deer? Where where? You know? Where?
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: Where will we sort of continue to have these animals
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: um making their best living by moving across the big
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: landscapes of the American West. And when you think about that,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: like I think, you have to start in practical terms,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: you have to start with what we have now and
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: and the conservation discussion, Like, we can argue about what
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: it should be, but I think in practical terms, the
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: only place that we can start with is conserving what
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: we have now, right, I mean, it's it's it's called
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: conservation for a reason, right, it's conserving. You can't conserve
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: what you don't have, right, So we're conserving what we
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: have now. And the notion, you know, I think that
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: the big horn sheep people have been um. Of course,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: they have been tremendously successful in restoring big horn sheep, right,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: and so maybe that that's an example where they've been
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: able to get the public and get sportsmen to imagine
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: what the West used to look like and work towards
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: you know, getting sheep back on those mountains again. And
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: that's you know, that's been successful. They've been successful in
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: restoring you know, bighorn sheep in lots of places where
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: we used to have them but lost them, you know,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: went during European settlement. But with mule deer, yeah, I
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: think it's a bit more. It's yeah, I think you
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: have to start with with what you have now and
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: and hope you don't slip slip further back. Two Then
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: twenty years from now, we're having the same conservation question
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: in this restoration about or about what we have now,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: which is far less than what we had twenty years prior.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: Um Anyways, that's that's how I think about it. My
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: brother who works in Alaska, he talks about that they're
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: they're still in uh he works with fisheries, and he
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: says that there were still in the sort of the
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: descriptive phase, just trying to understand what's here. There's a
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: lot of things. They don't know what's there yet, no
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: one's measured it. And he talks about how here he
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: sees so much where we're in the rest down in
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: Lower forty eight, we live a lot in the restoration space,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: the restoration phase, because we know what's there. Yeah, there's
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of work here, like you know, Atlantic Atlantic
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: sturge and whatever. There's a lot of work down here
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: trying to restore populations. Which is kind of interesting because
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys, but I feel like
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: we're very much still in that descriptive phase when we're
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: still discussing fifty mile migrations. It feels like we're we're
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: learning as we're going along, and but we're also we
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: have now all these societal pressures on these animals, and
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: so we don't have the luxury maybe that we had
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: before of just kind of unknowingly making mistakes and then
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm doing those mistakes later. Yeah, that's
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: a good counterpoint to to his like casual observation is
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: that people just found out about some of these you know,
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: some of these things that we didn't know about. Yeah.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: The more I talked with these guys, the more lost
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: I actually feel on the older and what I thought
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: I knew. But it's a good of a lost man
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: finding yourself lost. Can you touch on the idea real
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: quick that that what happens to a fawn in utero
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: is that's the right term. What happens to a fawn
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: in utero will be then realized throughout its entire life,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: including whether or not it might turn into a big, huge,
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: giant buck. I'd love to. Yeah, So the easiest way
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: for me to do that is to actually tell a
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: little bit of a story behind some some work that
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: we did. And of course it ties back to like
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: the size that animals ultimately tained, which a lot of
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: us are are interested in as well. Um, and so
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: we in South Dakota, there's two two different primary regions
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: and habitats, So eastern South Dakota where I grew up,
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: um crop agriculture dominated landscape, and then the beautiful Black
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: Hills in southwestern South Dakota. And during that that, during
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: that time, there was this general observation that and I
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: don't know if you are you spent some time in
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: the Black Hills, perhaps, but those deer are tiny. They
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: look like little mini deer compared with deer in eastern
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: South Dakota. No, I didn't know that, like maybe a
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: hundred pound difference at adult white tailed I'm sorry white
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: tailed deer story, but but it's the best story. It's
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: probably the best example that we have that clearly demonstrates
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: um this phenomena. And so the question was, and this
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: is I think what's so powerful about this is I
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: think as as people and as as as hunters and
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: folks that appreciate the outdoors and think about big males
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: and those sorts of things. When when we see big
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: deer over here and we don't see dear, big big
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: deer over here, well, it's because it's genetics. We got
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: great genetics over here. For big bucks, and we don't
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: have it over here. And so that was one of
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: the questions with regards to deer in the Black Hills, Well,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: it must just be genetics that's making them that much smaller.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: And so we did what's called a common garden experiment
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: where we took common garden common garden experiment where you
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: take individuals from two different places, bring them into the
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: same place, and raised them under the exact same environmental conditions.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: And in this scenario, we took newborn white tailed deer
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: from the Black Hills, newborn white tailed deer from eastern
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: South Dakota. UH. We raised them in captivity, hand raised them,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: offered them a high quality diet, and watched them grow
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: all the way through to adulthood. And so we focused
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: on males because of the questions UM. But we raised
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: those newborn males all the way up to like seven
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: eight years of age and watched their changes in body
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: mass UH and antler size and low and behold, even
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: though they were raised under identical conditions, they were radically
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: different in body mass and antler size, like hundred pound
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: difference over a hundred pound difference in body mass, and
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: like fifty plus inches and antler size, huge, huge difference,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: um once they reached that peak size. So initially we thought, huh, okay,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: well maybe it is genetics. Then, because we had both
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: males and females that we had hand raised, we then
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: allowed them to breed in captivity, so we had black Hills,
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: may else and females, males and females. Okay, yeah, you
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: want to tell the rest of the story. I just
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: got excited, dude. I love this story because to me,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: it's so powerful. So we allowed them to breed in captivity,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: and then we did the exact same thing again. We
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: hand raised all of those back the ones. Okay, we
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: didn't cross, no, no, I got you. I just want
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: to make sure I'm clear on something. The ones that
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: you took, Okay, the ones you took and took them
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: for two different areas in raisins staying conditions. At What
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: age were they? Sorry? Oh? So we we watched those
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: males grow all the way up to seven eight years.
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: What age did you bring them together? Oh? Newborns? We
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: we literally we collected them from the wild as brand
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: new babies, so like two days of age, that's one
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: of two days we bottled bottle fed the funds. They're
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: already weaned, and they weren't even weaned yet. No, no, no,
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: literally right out of the gate. So the only the
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: only influence before was basically mom's influence in utero. And
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: that's why I wanted to understand, just like brand, spanking brand.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: And then they realized these different, that's right, that's right,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: that's exactly right. So bread them. We didn't cross East
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: River Eastern South Dakota with Black Hills. We kept we
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: kept them apart. So Black Hills males, Black Hills females,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: Eastern South Dakota males, Eastern South Dakota females, and then
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: hand raised those offspring, the Eastern South Dakota males, so
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: which means we now have first generation and second generation. Right,
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: first generation came from the wild. The second generation were
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: born in captivity. Right, the eastern South Dakota animals that
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: we watched grow, those males were like exactly like their
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: father's same body mass, same antler size, literally identical trajectory
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: and growth. But the offspring from those Black Hills males
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: at at peak body size and antler size, so like
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: that five to six year age mark, those those male
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: offspring were seventy pounds heavier than their dads and grew
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: thirty two inches more antler than their dads, same diet
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: as their dad's, oh, exact same environmental conditions. And I
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: mean literally mom, mom and their mom and dad came
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: from the wild, were small, but then got that much
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: bigger and and under the exact same scenario. And we
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: didn't see any change in those eastern South Dakota animals
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: that your growth trajectory was identical. So literally like overt
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: increase in antler size, over increase in body mass over
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: that one generation within within captivity. Now the notion is,
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: so all the animals we collected from the wild, where
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: all the maternal environment they experienced were from wild mom, right,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: and that wild mom being in the Black Hills Black
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: Hills Ponderosa pine dominated forest, pretty pretty crappy food source, yeah,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: mostly pine needles. Yeah. But then in captivity, once, once
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: that fawn had grown up in captivity, it had realized
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: the high high plane and nutrition. Now, although it never
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: changed its pattern of growth then basically and we saw
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: this with regards to birth masses all, it then began
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: to pump what we call like the silver spoon effect
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: into their offspring, and we've seen that saw that radical
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: changing growth within that subsequent generations, which means it connects
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: it all the way back to the maternal environment. We
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: call it a negative maternal effect. Maybe it's related to
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: epigenetics associated with like basically turning on or off jeanes,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: those sorts of things, but regardless, it ultimately stems from
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: the nutrition that mom experienced. And and what that means
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: is so even though we took those fawns from the
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: wild brought them into captivity, because mom had basically set
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: that trajectory for growth, it didn't matter how good it
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: got later in those years, because it was as good
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: as it's gonna get. Their Their growth was still quote
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: unquote stunted. It still followed the trajectory that mom had
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: set it on, like multiple generations down the line, right,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: And we oh, yeah, exactly. And so we suspect that
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: if we had kept doing that, maybe over two or
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: three generations, those Black Hills animals would have actually gotten
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: to the size of those eastern South Dakota animals. But
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: even with one subsequent generation after that improved conditions, they
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: made up over seventy of the difference in antler and
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: body size that occurred between animals from those two regions.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: So no genetic related influence. And I think, and I
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: mean I probably I certainly did it historically. And you
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: you hear folks say it all the time while we
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: got genetics for big bucks over here, but we just
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: don't have those genetics over here now. Our growing appreciation
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: now is that is almost most certainly largely an effective
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: nutrition and nutrition that's lasted over over many, many generations.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, we've done that work on white tailed deer,
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: We've done work on sheep in the Sierra Nevadas of California,
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: where over six different populations, we can explain over eighty
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: percent of the differences in horn size across those six
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: populations just by how fat females are, which is powerful,
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no joke, Yeah yeah, over eighty percent of
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: the difference. And and horn size varies markedly across this
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: its populations, we can explain eighty percent of those difference
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: just by basically how fat the moms are. And certainly
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: that's just like a broad indicator of nutrition across those ranges. Yeah,
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: physiological stress associated from nutrition and and those nutritional dynamics,
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: And so I think I think over time, as as
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: these stories begin to pile on that. For example, I've
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: I've started saying that you know when we handle animals
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: or we look at body mass. Body mass to me,
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: isn't we think of that, Well, that's the condition of
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: that animal. Well no, not really, body fat is the
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: condition that animal. But how big it is is literally
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: this long term signature of nutritional dynamics within that place
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: on the landscape. And so as you go from one
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: place to the next, Man, there's big animals here, they're
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: smaller animals here. Well, that's part of how they're in
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: tune and adapted to the environment that they live in.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: And if they were if they were trying to get
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: as large as they are in in the better environ mean,
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: they may not ever get there, or they may not
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: ever it's gonna be another year or two before they
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: get the chance to reproduce because they're focused on growing bigger.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: So the adaptation in is in nutritionally limited environment will
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: be smaller and as a consequence of that, you can
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: continue to be viable and you demand less resources through
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: the year as well. So it reflects not only the
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: underlying fundamental process of nutrition and how it feeds into
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: growth and dynamics within population. But it's also a cool
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: a cool way to think about how these animals are
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: just uniquely adapted to the environments that they live in.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: We got a buddy who's uh, he manages a big
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: white tailed property in South Texas, and he feels that
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: like he likes to keep it's a little bit off topic,
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: he likes to keep his buck numbers really low because
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: he feels that bucks stressed, dear out. Mm hmm, buck stressed.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: You're out having a bunch of males running around stresses,
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: and he feels they get fatter and healthier the less
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: that's going on around him. Huh. Would Wouldn't that just
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: be a factor of competition? Yes, that to me is
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: certainly it's it's just more milds feeding and just so
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: it's just more more individuals. You probably see the same thing.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: If he pulled females out of it, he pile those
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: out too. Wow. Yeah, So I suspect it probably has
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: more to do with that than anything. There's there's a
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: number of ideas out there associated with particularly during the
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: rut and rutting behavior and how that feeds into like
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: buck ratio and how many big males you have and
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: our young young males less experienced and therefore pushed females
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: that much harder because their immature and don't know what
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: they're doing, that sort of thing. And those results are
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: a bit equivocal. There's not really a clear pattern that
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: that emerges from that. So I have a feeling it's
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: mostly associated with density and just more minds being there.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: Have you guys looked at well that that kind of
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: ties into this. Have you guys looked at the effect
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: of exposure two predators, not even mortality, but effects of
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: exposure to predators on nutrition and on fat because I know,
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: like like cattle ranchers will observe that even in the
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: absence of wolves killing cattle cattle, you know, it's just
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: anecdotal observation, they'll say that they don't get as fat
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: as quickly because they're living with this constant stress and
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: moving in unpredictable patterns that do you notice that in
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: game animals, deer, elk whatever. Yeah, So this was a
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: big question with when when when wolves were reintroduced into
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: Yellowstone and and we did a big project on this
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: um that you know, same type of question that um
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: that wolves were causing elk to you know, be more
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: alert on the landscape, be more vigilant, not forage in
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: risky places that might that might have higher food value
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: and forage and less risky places that where there's not
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: as much to eat. And um and this was this
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: was sort of a big idea. Um we call it
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: the you know, sort of the landscape of fear, you know, yeah,
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: yeah uh. And so that that so there was this
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: idea that elk were responding to this new landscape of
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: fear that wolves had created in places like Yellowstone and
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: and of course wolves do eat elk, but there there
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: was this idea that there was this larger effect, a
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: so called non consumptive effect, that this sort of wolf
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: jitters kind of idea that elk just weren't weren't weren't
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: living as well, weren't finding as much food, weren't spending
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: as much time feeding because they're always alert to wolves
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: and um uh. That idea got a lot of traction
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: in the literature without very much empirical evidence to support it.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: And then we did a test which I think was
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: fairly definitive. We basically had GPS colored elk, GPS colored
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: wolves we could score for every elk um how often
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: it came into contact with wolf, so sort of like
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: it's encounter rate, right And and obviously the prediction is
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: if you're coming into contact with wolves more frequently than
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: and and this wolf jitters is a thing, then those
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: animals should have less fat, that they should burn more
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: fat through the winter, and it should be less pregnant.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: And uh we we captured all the all the animals
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: assess their their rump fat and body condition through ultrasound
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: and absolutely no effect. Can you go down to Colorado
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: and test the theory that the massive increase in summer
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: recreation is affecting here year round really now is affecting
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: the health and well being of mungulates. Uh well we should.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: I bet you'd be able to find money to do
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: that in Colorado, so we could. We did um basically
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: something along those lines with with mule deer, but with
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: an eye towards end energy development, which is not all
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: that different. It's a human presence and at times somewhat
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: unpredictable human presence those sorts of things. That's something we've
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: been concerned with for some time. UM, and we we
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: have known based on GPS caller data and a lot
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: of work that Hal Sawyer, a colleague of ours here's
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: in here in Wyoming, have done that the presence of
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: human presence within those energy fields results in behavioral displacements.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: So they're using those areas next to well pads and
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: roads um less on on their winter range. Uh. And
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: so we we took that a step further, and we
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: aim to address that question of is it like this
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: chronic stressor that So, for example, animals that are exposed
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: to more energy development are losing more fat over the winter.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: And so we did that with that too, you know,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: twice this twice a year capture to look at change
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: and body fat over winter, those sorts of things, and
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: then related that to exposure to energy development. And so
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: interestingly there was nothing there which maybe speaks to some
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: well let me go, let me keep going, what what
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: I think is powerful? So the other thing. So we
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: did not only that, but we took it one step further.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: And when you see this behavioral displacement, the question then
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: and ultimately how that potentially links to the population could
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: be through like this chronic stressor or it could be
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: because they're functionally losing food and habitat on the landscape,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: and it's that food that's ultimately determining the carring capacity
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: of their winter range. So what we did is we
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: literally went on the ground and and measured measured sage brush,
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: measured growth of stage brush as well as subsequent youth
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: use of sage brush at the end of the winter.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: What's really interesting is that dear the way in which
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: they select habitat and use habitat across those winter ranges.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: They're keying in on stage brush where we're getting more
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: leader growth, and it's it's those new leaders each year
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: that is really what's their primary staple if they can
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: have it. So that's one thing that's powerful that tells
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: either queuing and queuing in the food. But the other
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: aspect of that is what was happening is that in
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: those areas adjacent to or near the well pads or
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: the roads where we were getting that disturbance, they were
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: not using the food that was there as much as
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: they were in areas um that didn't have that level
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: of exposure. So what that means is that there's ultimately
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: residual food that's left on the landscape that's not being
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: used because of our our presence in that human disturbance,
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: which means a functional loss in the carying capacity of
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: that winter range. So with that displacement, not necessarily stressed,
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: not necessarily stressed. So it's a food it's a food
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: based link to the change in population and within that
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: one herd in particular, we've observed um I think it's
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: a thirty thirty six decrease in population size on that
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: winter range as that energy development has come into play.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: Does it take a long time to realize it? No,
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: I was over like at decade, So it didn't. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: but it didn't. It really didn't take that long. But
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: what that indicates to us is that based on that displacement,
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: you're resulting in increase in density in the other adjacent
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: areas where there's already dear and there's only so much
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: food to go around. And so if you you have
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: a grocery store that's feeding so many people and you
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: take out one whole corner of the grocery store, there's
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: you're not going to support as as many people. And
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: in that instance, we're not going to support as many
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: animals based on the groceries that are stored there is
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: ultimately what it means. So it's not a stressor link,
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: but it's a food based link. Do you translate that
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: to recommendations? That's well, yes, we translate that into here's
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: the realities of this, and so we've with that effort.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: We've also um because of the analyzes and the modeling
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: that we did, we've been able to place that into
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: hypothetical scenarios. So for example, if you based on a
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: modeling of food distribution on the landscape and what we
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: know about how dear use that food. If we put
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: a road here in a well pad here, here's what
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: that's gonna mean as far as an indirect food loss.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: Or if you if you place one big one here,
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: or you have three other one three you know, three
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: smaller ones as opposed to one big one. So we've
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: taken that and translated that into those relationships to to
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: derive a direct expectation as to what that's going to
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: mean for food loss depending upon a build out plan,
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And the hope is to simply
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: be able to communicate the realities of it. I mean,
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: we are humans living in this landscape. We're gonna affect
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: it in some way, but ideally however we are, we're
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: at least informed as to the effects that we're going
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: to bring to the table, and that we can we
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: can do it in a wise way, and when we can't,
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: we can at least speak the realities. Okay, well, if
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: we're going to do this, this is what this is
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: gonna mean, and are we willing to accept that? And
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: then if we are, we are. But ideally it's it's
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: less walking around of that. Oh, it'll probably be okay
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: sort of thing. Um, here's here's what's liable to happen.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: And I was gonna say that. So that work has
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: been translated into yea, So how do we manage these fields? Right?
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: So the result that Kevin was just describing as basically
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: means that meal deer avoid human disturbance, and when you
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: develop a gas field you can there are ways to
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: minimize human disturbance. So the most disturbances when you're actively
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: drilling the well. Then, um, we have wells that are producing,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: but but have trucks coming into constantly to call off
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: the content sate, and we have wells where that condensate
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: is being um taken off underground. And so this has
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: led to a shift in the way that wells are managed,
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: that the oil and gas wells are managed. We limit
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: the time of drilling, and we've shifted from you know,
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: pulling that condensate off underground so we don't have the
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: truck traffic. And so you know, it's the it's the
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: human activity in those in those fields that that that
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: the animals are responding to. And so we so we
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: now we now know that if we can reduce that
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: human activity, we can reduce the impact on on wintering deer.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: And just to close the loop on the cattle wolf
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: jitters question, we're sort of talked about three different cases here, right.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: So on the one hand, cattle not bred to to
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: deal with predators right there. They're bred to either to
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: put on fat and and grow grow fast, unlimited food
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: to go to market, right and and so but and
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: we kind of made this mistake when when wolves are
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: reintroduced to Yellowstone, researchers and certainly the public thought well,
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: this is this huge change that now now wolves are
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: on landscape. Now there's a landscape of fear, right, But
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: elk have other landscapes, like they have a landscape nutrition
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: and they have a landscape of starvation that they also
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: have to respond to and so you know, the reason
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: you we didn't see any effect. One of the main
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: reasons is that there's a risk of starving to death
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: every winter for an elk and Yellowstone, and they need
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: to make decisions that minimize that risk. They need to
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: feed where you know, where they can still find food,
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: and they need to not spend time and three foot
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: of snow where they're going to burn a bunch of
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: calories and then end up starving at the end of
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: the winter. And wolves are new to us in Yellowstone,
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: but they're not really new to elk. They still contain
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: all the adaptations of living with wolves for millennia. So um,
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: we think of wolves as being this novel um stress
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: in this novel predation for elk, but in reality, you know,
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: they're adapted to to live with these predators, but they're
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: not adapted to live with energy development. And that's a
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: very different kind of disturbance, right. That's always in the
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: same place, like you know, the footprint and the human
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: activity is at that well and at those roads. It's
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: always in the same place. So it it can it
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: can send a more common, more consistent que that that
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: animals respond to and there you do see this result
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: of you know, the mule that you're leaving the food
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: behind that's close to the well pads. I don't think
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: elk are leaving well I've tested this. I know that
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: elk are not leaving food behind that are in play
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: sis where where wolves frequent and where it's risky to
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: forage because of wolves. They still find it because yeah,
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: that that's a that's a stress, that's a sort of
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: source of of of risk that they're adapted to to
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: work with on the landscape. I just recently shared a
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: um photograph of a graphic that was in the mule
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: Deer Migration Assessment that was put out by the Wyoming
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: Migration Initiative, and it's a it's a graphic that shows
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: mule deer using winter range near Rock Springs, Wyoming, north
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: of I eight and I A d literally formed, so
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: it's like an The northern end of showing all the
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: uth patterns is a morphous. It's just like, as you know,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: like how do you describe it? It looks like a
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: head of cauliflower, right, It's just they're kind of going
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: along natural land use patterns. The southern edge of the
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: winter range is a straight line formed by a four
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: lane divided highway. Yeah. Like it's just like it's like
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: if you took a pair of scissors and cut off
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: the landscape, what are the like in your mind? Like,
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: what is it about that highway that they don't like? Yeah?
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: So in that case, you know, uh, and and you
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: know what you can't see in that graphic that you
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: just described is that you know those animals travel a
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles from the north down to that
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: winter range two. Then um, you know have have part
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: of it truncated by interstates, have to come a hundred
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: fifty miles. But then be like, but that I don't like. Right,
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: So so Interstate eighty is, um there are um right
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: away fences which are maybe eight inches high meal you
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: jumpable by a mule deer. That's not the problem. The
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: problem is that Interstate eighty has an incredible level of traffic,
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: and so the animals have just learned that like, this
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: is a this is a risky endeavor, and they don't
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: for the most part. Uh, they don't try to cross
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: Interstate eight because they're the traffic levels are just so high.
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: So if you if you ceased traffic, they would obviously
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: just walk right through. Oh yeah, because I was looking
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: at photographs of because at first when I saw that picture,
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: I was like, there has been another explanation, Like I
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: thought that the south it was maybe like that, it's
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: following the course of a large river. There's a giant
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: bluff like you find in places. But then I and
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: I voiced this to Jana's and he's like no, and
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: he pulls up a photograph. There's no damn difference. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: So I mean they would, uh, they might not do
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: it immediately, they have, you know, a bit of memory,
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: but they would eventually, Yes, they would. They would cross it.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: Um if if the traffic the war of trucks or yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: and that I mean, and if you if you travel
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: that interstate, you you you know what I'm talking about.
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, and oftentimes when you're driving on that interscape,
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: you can just look down the road and it's just
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: a line of semis in front of you and on
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: in the other lane. What would a cost to do
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: you have some familiarity with um overpasses, underpasses, what would
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: cost to like if you just take that isolated spot. Okay,
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: let's let's see you let me put it this way.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: Let's say you had all the morning in the world,
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: what would you do to fix that spot? Yeah, so
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: you can put in, uh, you can you can put
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: in so you can put in underpasses or overpasses, and
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: you know, and we've had a couple of those in
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: Wyoming that have been really successful, uh underpass and scared
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: the hell out of them. Well, so, yeah, it's interesting
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: that you say that. So when so inter eight was
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: created in the seventies, and there was there was like
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: a smaller road. But then when they built the Interstate
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: UM in the seventies, they knew that they were um
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: that they were going to disrupt migrations. You know, they
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: didn't have the maps of the migrations that we have now,
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: but they knew that they were going to disrupt it,
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: and so proactively they put in these tunnels underneath the interstate.
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: But the tunnels are like I call them tunnels because
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: I think that's what they look like to a mule deer.
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: They're like ten ft wide by ten ft high. Yeah.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: And and and the Interstate, you know, is is two
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: lanes here the big median and then two lanes. So
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: they're long. And when you when you look through them,
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: you know, you the afterlife. Yeah, you see this tiny
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: light at the end of it, and uh yeah. So
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: mule deer have not used those. You can imagine a
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: bobcat might be like, yeah, go through there, right right,
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: So so there's been monitoring that mule they have not
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: used those. Um so underpasses, you know, but but there
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: are options, right Like you could have a smaller underpass
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: that goes through the eastbound lane, then it opens up
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: into a into a fenced opening in the in the median,
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: then you go through this. You know, that would be
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: much more effective or overpasses. Those overpasses, um you know,
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: I don't have exact numbers, but there four to five,
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: eight to ten million um per probably to go all
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: the way over. And why does it have to be
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: before it ceases to be spooky to them? It doesn't
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: have to be that wide. I think the a the
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: one that I don't know if either you know, the
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: one at Trappers Point. We have one over We have
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: two overpasses news since two thousand twelve in Wyoming and
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: they're both on that path of the Prong Horn migration
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier, and also a mule deer migration,
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: and I'd say it's probably fifty or sixty feet wide
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: feet feet, but it has but it also has burms
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: on on the overpath, so if you're a prong horner
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: meal deer, you can't really see the traffic on either
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: side as you're going over it. I read somewhere too
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: that when you burm it too steep, they don't like
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: it too. Yeah, I could probably start making it goes
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: out of some findings out of Europe where it when
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: it's burned too steep, they feel like they're just afraid
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: of they're afraid of like amber. It needs to I can't.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: I wish I remembered it better, but there's like a
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: way that to make them feel at ease where they
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: have sort of awareness of what's to the right most
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: left as they pass into it. But fifty ft will
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: do it. I thought you're gonna say, like fifty yards. Well,
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm kind of guessing. I've never measured it,
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: but but being up on those that feels like about
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: what it is. It's not it's not like a football field.
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: They're they're they're relatively small. But but the challenge with
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: Interstate eight and you got to vegetate the thing. Uh,
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: well they do in in like they're some up in
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: Canada near Banff National Park. Those are vegetated. The ones
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: are those are like stunning. Yeah. Yeah. The ones that
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: we have are not. Um, I mean they're re vegetated.
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: So there's some grass on it, but it's not like
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: you got. But they're coming across the open country though
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: it's not they're not coming out of the forest. And
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: I mean he's not walking on concrete. No, No, it's
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: got dirt and grass. Yeah. But just to circle back
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: to the inter State Ada that so yes, where that
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: red desert to hop back migration comes down the winter
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: range that you were describing. You know, we could put
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: a crossing structure there and I think those animals over time,
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: difficult to say how long would discover it, move across
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: it and discover probably what was a historical winter range
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: that was lost when near State Ada was built. But
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: for Pronghorn and elsewhere along the interstate at a quarter
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: which cuts across the whole southern half of Wyoming, it's
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: we have lost those migrations. They've been severed. And so
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: now now and we a project looking at this, it's
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: very difficult for us to identify where the where the
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: animals used you know, where the ghost migrations are. Where
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: do they used to cross the interstate? And where now
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: if we put a crossing structure, will they rediscover it
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: and red and restore those migrations. That's a good point, man.
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: Everywhere else where we've done crossing structures in Wyoming, at
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: least they've been places where the animals are still migrating,
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: so they're still crossing the road. Mortalities are piling up
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: there on the road, so they're showing us this is
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: this is where we cross. And you put the crossing
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: structure there and they learn how to use it really quickly.
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: And those have been wildly successful. Tens of thousands of
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: animals moved across those crossing structures. Is there an element
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: of your work where you interface with historians who are
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: familiar with oral tradition to try to piece together lost
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: bits of knowledge about animal movements. Uh, We've we've been
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: interested in doing that, and especially and and on that
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: interstate ad project where we're trying to uh, you know,
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: trying we can't use sort of we can call o
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: the animals today, but those animals can't show us, right,
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: So we're trying to get a hold of old timers
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: who might have known where, you know, where some of
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: those movements were. UM. We've also done we've done some
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: work here on the Wind River Reservation and have done
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: some UM interviews with tribal elders trying to understand what
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: they knew about historical migrations. UM. And as you can imagine,
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: it's it's challenging, which I guess. We don't have any
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: examples yet where and I'd love, I'd love to to
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: stumble upon this, right, I can tell you, Yeah, even
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: with Pompey's Pillar along the Old Stone River east of Billings, Montana, No,
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: people would always run into stuff there. But you go
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: look and it makes sense. Yeah, people always run into
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: elkom bison there because the north side of the rivers
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: just giant sandstone bluffs and there's a creek comes down
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: that forms a pass through the bluffs. And it was
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: like people having shootouts there, people hunting there. People get
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: there and they describe like as far as I can
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: see you to the right and the left, you know,
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: and even though that stuffs not that they're still they're
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: not doing it now. But it's like very definite. But
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: it's funny because you go there and look and you're like, oh,
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: I can totally see it. Right. So it's it's reflected
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: again and again in in the journals people who traveled
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: through that this is like the spot right right, yeah,
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: And so what we what what would be nice would
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: be to you know, uncover some of that information which
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: points to a historical corridor that we can then work
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: they can increase our confidence in knowing that that's the
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: right place to restore. And uh. A related example is
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: at this, uh that path of the pronghorn where where
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: that overpass was built. Is that the is that a
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: place called Trapper's Point which was a historical rendezvous site.
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: And and also um, when they widened that highway, uh
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: two thousand, eight thousand nine, I think, um, now it
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: was earlier than that. They anyways, they had to do
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: an archaeological survey and they discovered a pronghorn kill site.
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not and uh uh and what was unique? So
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: they basically started finding bones after bones after bones, and
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: they all had you know, butchering marks on them. And
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: it was and it was right on the current. It's
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: at the bottleneck where they migrate there. And in addition
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: they found fetal bones, and the size of the fetal
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: bones indicated that those aren't those prong horn would have
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: been killed um during the spring migration when the winds
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: were pregnant and those and those so so that suggests,
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: you know, an an ancient kill site where early humans
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: were ambushing prong horn, killing them butchering them in the spring,
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: in the spring, right on the migration corridor. And they
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: date um from five to eight thousand years ago. Wow,
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: that's cool. Yeah, they have any idea how they were
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: killing them? Well, the archaelogists probably have a sense. Feels
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: like projectile points or if there's like net materials or what. Yeah,
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: I we probably have to get their archologists archaeologists in here.
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: You know. So what do we not hit? Johnnie? What
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: have we not hit? Yeah? I know there's a there's
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: a lot um. I've got a couple of follow up
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: questions if you can't if we can affectively hit on
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: those while we think of what we've missed. But um,
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: all the way back to the when we're talking about
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: the different types of like the migrate the different groups
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: and mule do that migrate in different ways or don't
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: migrate at all, do you guys? And without speculating if
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: you guys looked into it or have any ideas on
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: is that just like a greater species tactic to because
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: I'm just thinking in my head like, well, of course
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: it makes sense because if then one population gets wiped
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: out because they all got stuck in the mountains, you
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: still have all these other mule deer, these other five
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: different migratory patterns that are going to survive. Like you
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: guys thinking that way? Or what good question? So to
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: be the dorky scientist, Um, is there such a thing?
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: H imagine there probably is. You guys have been sitting
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: here thinking that that whole time. So that notion. So
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: that notion is what we would call a group selectionist argument,
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: which means that where in natural selection and how processes operate,
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: ultimately work at the individual level. So individuals don't generally
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: have the greater species in their mind right, it's their
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: their mode of operation is to survive, reproduce, pass on
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: their genes to their progeny and so forth, as opposed
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: to the like, well you go here and then I'll
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: go up here and our species will survive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: So that's that's what's called a group selection argument, which
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: that that contradicts directly the notion of natural selection and
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: how these processes operate. And it's pretty much been disproven,
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: so it's more of But but the angle you're headed
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: down is more of this kind of what we mentioned earlier,
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: or the notion of a um a portfolio effect, wherein
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: for the greater good of of the species or the population.
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: That yes, when you have a number of viable tactics
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: that are occurring as things change, there's some potential still
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: viable tactic even if others become non viable, therefore maintaining
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: the greater diversity, like in our minds from a conservation perspective,
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: maintaining the greater diversity. This whole portfolio ensures that we
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: have potential traits and going forward or behavioral tactics, those
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: sorts of things that are potentially going to be viable
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: in the future, what as it works for the animals themselves.
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: It's clearly more of an individual tactic of this is
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: what I do. Here's where I'm going to go. I'm
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: gonna do my best given my environment um to do
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: the sorts of things that that I do. And and
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: if you think about that, and so if if migration
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: is really inherited, especially mule deer, from mother to daughter,
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: and it becomes functionally fixed once they inherit that this
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: is what I'm gonna do, and I'm gonna do it
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: every year, which is interesting. Clearly, it clearly relates to
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: us a tactic or a strategy that has been viable
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: for many generations and in hundreds of years. Therefore, clearly,
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: you know, inheriting a route and doing what mom did,
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: if that's the way it works, must be something that's
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: allowed the species to persist all these many generations and
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: is therefore really important and intuitively, although it seems like okay,
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: then they must be less adaptable to change, well maybe
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: at it. Also, if if mom has been successful and
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: survived and she successfully raised you as as an offspring,
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: well clearly that's been a viable strategy, so perhaps why
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: once you adapt it? So that's that's perhaps one of
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: the arguments behind this cross generational potential inheritance of a
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: migratory route, and you're just doing that, you're in and
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: you're out. It's a known thing. It worked for mom,
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: it should work for me. It's worked for my mom's
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: mom's might you know, in in many generations beyond. Assuming
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: that that's how that process has come about, and as
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: a consequence of that you end up which is multiple
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: different tactics that exist within a single population that creates
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: this grander portfolio. Are you guys from we talked about
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: your night, but are you familiar with the like the
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: southern resident killer whales in the migratory killer whales in
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: the Puget Sound area? Not super familiar. So you have
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: this this kind of interesting thing where you have there's
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: a resident population around pus It Sound of killer whales
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: or some folks calm or because that they're they're chinook specialists,
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: and they're literally starving to death right now. Meanwhile, there's
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: a population that rolls up and down the coast and
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: their marine mammals, well they're more generals, but eat a
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: lot of marine mammals and they're thriving. They have different languages,
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: they avoid each other, and one is got fell into
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: the trap, you know, and they won't they won't eat seals.
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: So there it's also the situation where people treat them
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: like they treat him as like humans regard them as
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: this very separate thing, you know. And it's like this
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: idea that uh I see, like I see a semblance
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: of that, and what we're talking about with mule deer
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: or some like figure out how to survive without need
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: to move, and then some need to move, and at
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: some point in time, the ones that need to move
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: are going to be possibly become the vulnerable ones exactly.
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: So it's nice to have different there's a pathways. Like
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: people celebrate salmon for their fidelity to their natal stream,
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: but one of the things that allows salmon to do
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: well is that some don't have fidelity to the natal stream.
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: They pioneer new rivers and like rivers change and they
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 1: find new spots because some of them just screw up
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah, it's that diversity of tactics. And one
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: of the things that I think about in this context
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: is is climate change, right, and so like if you
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: think about it, uh, you know, a resident animal when
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: the when the climate change is like, they don't have
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: many options, right. All they know is this this small
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: landscape that they live on and as spring comes earlier
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: there there's more snow or whatever climate change brings. The
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: only place that they can adapt to that is within
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: this small range that they know. But if you're a
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: meal there makes a hundred fifty mile migration right well
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: over that hundred fifty miles. I mean, you can you
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: can almost choose whatever climate you want depending on where
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: you want to be on that So they have a
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: template that that they have detailed knowledge about, and they
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: can they can exploit that landscape template um to their advantage.
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: You know, when it's a drought, when it's a when
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: it's a really you know, they can make advantage of
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: when it's a really lush summer or when it's a
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: really harsh winter. They've got they have a hundred fifty
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: miles of options to choose from versus you know, the
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: three or four square miles at the resident animals has
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: and I think and to me, that's sort of one
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: of you know, that's one of the reasons to maintain migration.
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: It's also a reason to maintain sort of these diverse
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 1: stratag geez like you sort of alluded to it in
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: your in your in your question. Yeah, yeah, um, but
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: I know it's very interesting reading that assessment was how
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 1: narrow like parts of that migration got is that, I mean,
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 1: it obviously is partially of just like what it is today. Yeah,
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: and you guys have just figured it out recently and
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: are looking at it. Do you think historically it might
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: have been much wider? Is there any evidence for that?
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, is it just because there is it's parallels
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: a river and a highway and that's where the most
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: more development is or do you think even you know,
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: years ago, they were crossing right there at the same
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: spot where the outlet is of the lake. Yeah. I
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: I suspect that that that one. It probably has been
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: like that for a really long time. And the you know,
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: we don't so that's you know, very common for mule
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: here that they we see them following along the same path.
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: And uh, you know, there's there's a there's a h
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: a sort of a lot of interest right now to
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: understand sort of the benefit of sort of collective you know,
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: how animals move together and and you can imagine that
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: that there's benefits in a migration like that of the
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 1: animals following within each other's footsteps. I mean sometimes when
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 1: they go through, um, they're going over a little passes
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 1: that in the spring still might have snow in the fall.
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: When they come down they're basically playing this game to
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: stay you know, they want to stay up in the
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: mountains as long as possible. And they're playing this game too.
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: They don't just rush down to winter range. They make
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: their way down with each little snowstorm, with each drop
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: in temperature, and then and they're trying to avoid getting
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 1: stuck behind a big snowstorm. But if you do get stuck, um,
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: having a hundred or two hundred animals go through that
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: spot before you on that day makes it a lot
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: less energetically costly. Have you're observed a caribou migration? Uh?
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: You know only on YouTube. What's interesting about it is
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: that depending on where you go, you can go into
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: places where they are walking through like they're walking through
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: someone where they're somewhere where they've never walked through before.
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: They had this like very big they necessary big macro
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: sense of where they're moving. But they take different routes
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: and in some years will be like that. There would
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: be places where they hadn't gone through in a decade
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: and then they go through the area. But you'll watch
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: them and you wake up one day and they're all
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: using a pass for whatever reason, like ones that they're
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: spread out so far apart that you might watch four
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: comes through through all the course of the day, and
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: they really tend to like some little pass and the
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: next day you wake up and the whole line seems
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: to have kind of shifted a mile, and then in
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: the bulk of them seems to be taking some other
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: thing where they're just like going by smell, and they
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: like to go where the other ones have gone. But
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 1: it's not fixed year to year. It's just a general
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: sense of must be the those ones made it through,
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: nothing bad happened to them, so I want to go
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: that way. But then it meanders yeah, you know, yeah,
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: and that's you know, of course, a very different landscape,
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: much broader, sort of less topographically diverse than the sort
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: of mountains and plains landscapes that the Meal they are
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: migrating through. I think one point that's a good one
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 1: to your question, your honest is, historically I think the
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: common knowledge was really focused on winter range for Meal
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: there and maintaining that winter range. And one thing that's
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: been discovered with this migration route mapping is all the
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: attributes of that migration are important to long term species viability,
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 1: one being the bottlenext which you were speaking to. But
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: the other one are when you're looking at those migration routes,
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden things kinda stop and slow down
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: and they spread out, and that's called stop over areas.
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: And if you one of you guys could talk about
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: the importance of stop over areas and what we've learned
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: about that as far as the importance especially for me
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: older but also all on gillets, that would be I
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: think it's interesting thing to add to that question. Sure, yeah,
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: So just in thinking about how animals move across the landscape,
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: and in particular in the spring, we think about a
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: migratory route and whether it's twenty miles or it's a
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles or two d plus miles, we
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: just think it's well, animals are just going from winter
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: to summer range. But interestingly, the vast majority of the
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: time that they're quote unquote migrating, they're actually not just
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: moving and walking on a path. They're actually held up
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: on what what we've called stopovers, which are areas where
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: they're largely spending time feeding. And we know the attributes
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: associated with those stop stopovers are also areas that helped
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: facilitate feeding. So over the long term. If you if
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: you take and look at the landscape and you get
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 1: how green up, for example, occurs every year. The stopovers
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: that these mule deer are using. Our places that tend
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: to consistently green up early every year typically don't have
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: the level of snow deposition, are largely dry south southwesterly slopes.
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: So it's those sweetheart spots on their way where they
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: can stop and grab that lush new food that's coming along,
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: and then they pace their migration, especially in the spring,
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: in correspondence with that new wave of food as it
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 1: comes up progressively along the landscape. So if you imagine
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: staying in one spot, experiencing spring, getting that really great food,
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: and then just it's gone right if you stay in
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: that one spot, but if you follow it, you experience
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: spring for a really long time as you move across
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 1: the landscape, thus simply enhancing your energetic game. But I
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: think what's interesting is, as you're alluding to, is that
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: that migratory route isn't just a path they walk on.
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: It's functional habitat as well well, where they're gleaning resources.
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: And the other element that I think is really important
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 1: that maybe kind of gets lost and all the you know, my,
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 1: the the excitement and the phenomena associated with migration and
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 1: walking across the long landscapes is the other really important
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: thing to comprehend is that by functionally moving across the
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 1: landscape and going to a different place and thus garnering
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: different resources, it's a it's functionally for the population increasing
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: that population's carrying capacity. So for example, if you put
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: in I eight something new new, I A d somewhere
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: and you clip off a migratory route and you remove
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: all that summer range that those animals were using that
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: summer range because those animals were going there, we're walking
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: there using that food for how many months out of
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: the year. That's part of the capacity of their range.
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: So for example, as as we if we've lost migratory
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: routes in some places, we have potentially created vacant habitat
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: as in the food is there, which ultimately determines carrying capacity,
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: but nobody knows to go there and use it. Therefore,
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: what we can potentially sustain as far as the population
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: level thereafter, is not as many animals because they're functional
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: carrying capacity, their food based has been diminished because behaviorally
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 1: they're not making use of it anymore. And to me,
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: from a migratory perspective, like that's ultimately where the rubber
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: meets the road. That's why we can help maintain robust
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: populations is because by moving and integrating this huge landscape
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: with into into their behavior and into their nutritional dynamics,
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: they're functionally increasing the carrying capacity for the population by
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 1: them doing that. In the moment we clip that off,
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: there's no way we can sustain as many animals because
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 1: we don't have the food based because they're not going
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: there and using it, Which is really why you can
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: think about migration and it's connected and it's connecting it
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: to large viable populations because it's the food resources that
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: they're that they're garnering by going and moving there. You wonder,
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: it's a funny thing about migration because it kind of
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 1: almost sets in your head like the wrong idea about it.
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: But we hunt turkeys in areas where you could basically
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 1: say the turkey's migrate uphill, but in his head, he's
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: probably he's chasing young growth and as he does that
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: for six weeks, he winds up at the top of
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: the mountain and then things frost off. And start to
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: die and fin Angles is way back down and he
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: probably never like was like I'm going to head up
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: to the top of that mountain. He's just like every
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: day I'm maximizing my thing, or just making small jumps
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 1: to the next place. I know, without really having this
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: idea that like tomorrow we leave for the far away place. Right,
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, okay, but in in Meal Deer, they
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: do like this is something that we have shown they have. Yes,
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 1: maybe they're not thinking tomorrow. You know, we're we're headed
• 2:18:55
  Speaker 1: on this hundred and fifty mile journey. But they have
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: a mental map, yes, have a mental map, and and
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: the way we've and we've done sort of simulations, so
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: the describe the behavior you were just describing of them,
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: of the turkey, you know, following that fresh green grass
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: and eventually making a migration. Right, We've asked that question
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: of mule Deer, like, if you have perfect knowledge of
• 2:19:20
  Speaker 1: what we call it the green wave, and in fact
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: we call it surfing the green wave, I don't really
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: like that. It's just it. Yeah, it doesn't really matter
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: if you like it or not. Already entrenched in the literature. Um,
• 2:19:37
  Speaker 1: so it sounds a little too zippy, we're battle boarding
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: the green wave again, this ship is already sailed. H
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: So uh, mule deer can't recreate a d fifty mile
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 1: migration even when they know exactly where the green wave is.
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: They have to have memory of that of that migration
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 1: in order to do it. And and and the way you
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: can think about that is like, if you just imagine
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: a mule deer and a hundred fifty mile landscape, even
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: if they know sort of where it's the best place
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: to be at the best time during spring, that doesn't
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: get them to where, you know, to this hundred fifty
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 1: mile migration. What gets them to a fifty mile migration
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: is the trials and heirs of their ancestors, who for
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: generations and generations have done this. And and at some
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: point one animal figured, hey, if you go this way,
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: it's awesome, and there's all this green grass, or maybe
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: it's worked the other way. There was a harsh winter,
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: and they pushed further down to the red desert and
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: then that and then they discovered that they learned that
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: migration and discovered like, this is a great tactic, and
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: then of course passed that onto their young and did
• 2:20:55
  Speaker 1: well and and now we have the memory that now
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 1: that heard has the knowledge of that hundred and fifty
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: mile migration. So that's been an active sort of area
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: of research and we and we initially asked that question
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: that you sort of posed with the turkey. Um. I
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: don't think you put it this way, but you had
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 1: asked if the if the turkey serfed and it's O man.
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: I was going to talk about I'm not going to
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 1: get into it because we're gonna move into our we're
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: gonna move into our closers. But I was going to
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 1: bring up the idea of human migrations. Okay, so humans
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 1: coming into the Western hemisphere and imagine bring you like
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: the bearing Land Bridge. The first clan of people did
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: not have the luxury of saying, hey, we're gonna go
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: over there because they'll be sweet. They probably were born,
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: lived and died on the bearing Land Bridge, probably not
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 1: very aware that they were, over the course of generations
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 1: heading to Patagonia. But it was just and then they
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 1: would come to glaciers as they traveled the coast, presumably,
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: and you had no notion of what was on the
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: other side of the glacier, and you weren't being driven
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: by warfare. You weren't being driven by starvation, but you
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 1: one day I was like, man, you know, I gotta
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: check it out. And so there is that little I
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: don't even know where the connection is, but there is
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: that little sense of of pioneering. And so you have
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: the idea that that um, that species now today would
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: maybe come up with some cool new way of using
• 2:22:45
  Speaker 1: the landscape. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and she kind of yea yeah.
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: And so what we're really so she's still alive. We
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 1: just saw her the other day, and how she's old.
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: Winner Winner has been tough, So that young exter Winner
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: Winner has been tough. We sure hope that she can
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 1: make it through the winter in that country. It's been
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 1: it's been pretty hard on them. Um, they're they're in
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: pretty rough shape. But we're super excited to see what
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: she does. Is she not in this year? So that
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: she's now she'll be two here in June. And interestingly,
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: she's pregnant, so she bred is a yearling, which is
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: really cool. It's not it doesn't always happen for mule deer,
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 1: but so she's gonna give birth this year. Um for
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: the first time. Mom is still alive. We saw her
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: as well, um, and so we'll be really curious to
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 1: see if she's gonna go and set up shopping your
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: mom to give birth, or would she happen to go
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: on that forty plus mile journey again, that's what she's gonna.
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: She's gonna she kicks her phone out, fawn walks forty
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: five and comes back again. Then you'll be honest something,
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: yeah exactly, then you can publish a cool paper. So
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: we're really excited to see what she's gonna do. Because
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 1: by and large, what we know is that mule deer
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 1: are not We don't think they're very good pioneers the
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 1: evidence that we have, but we've been missing at early
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: part of their life yet we really, we really have
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 1: not explored that adequately yet. And so we're trying to
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 1: do that now to see if is that their pioneering
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 1: phase or is it really just this entrenched thing where
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: they're just they're doing what mom is doing, uh, and
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 1: gonna adopt that tactic. And then in reference to you
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: know the notion earlier, it's not even it is learning,
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 1: and it's learning what's viable, but it's also surviving and reproducing.
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: If you happen to go do something and it turns
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 1: out not to work. You're gone and so you don't
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: have subsequent progeny that are gonna adopt that because because
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: you're gone, bitch an idea, but you got dusted off,
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: and then it's it's done. It's it's not gonna happen,
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: and we're not going to see it in subsequent generation
• 2:24:42
  Speaker 1: because because you're gone and you had no progeny to
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: continue to adopt that adopt that tactic. So okay, we're
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 1: gonna move into our concluders. A concluder is where you
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: get to say whatever you want. Um, yeah, you want
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: to start us off, I'm just gonna say thank you guys.
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: You guys really just crushed it. Man, it's gonna be
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: an awesome podcast. At this moment in my life, I'm
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 1: like as interested in the science of mule here as
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: I am killing big Bucks, which I don't think that.
• 2:25:12
  Speaker 1: The whole time, I've been wondering if these guys would
• 2:25:14
  Speaker 1: be good muleed your hunters or not. Oh gosh, I
• 2:25:17
  Speaker 1: think they would be here. Yeah, I've been really wondering that. Well,
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 1: that's what the guy told me, the guy that Vincent
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 1: that gave me this copy of their migration assessment. He goes, uh,
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 1: I don't even know if I should say this on
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 1: remember Pat Dirk and talking about some of the cold
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: blooded his killing his white tail hunters. You know, can't
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 1: tell you what you're kind of tree they're sitting in.
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's true. But no he said he was using
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: this uh paper as a way to sort of figure
• 2:25:44
  Speaker 1: out where he was going to go hunting. Good good luck.
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work. It doesn't work. So yeah, that's my concluder,
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: I think for me, and it speaks to your point. Honest.
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: You know, I said, you get to talk about whatever
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 1: you want, you're gonna delimit me. Yeah, can you make
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 1: sure to talk about how people can support you and
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: then that will support research. But I will, I will
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 1: go into Meuly fanatics first, UM log Onto merely fanatics
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 1: dot org. There's many ways to support us. We have
• 2:26:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of raffles going on for commissioners, tags that
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 1: go out to certain projects that we unfortunately didn't mention,
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 1: but the Deer Alcohology Research Project was, which is a
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 1: big project we're pushing UM that looks at all the
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 1: multifaceted ways in which environments are influencing Meal deer nutritions specifically,
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 1: and it's also taken a very hard look at the
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 1: competition issues. So some of our raffle, our commissioner tag
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: raffles are going towards that. We have one locally that
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: we haven't allocated directly to a project, but it will
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 1: go to our main three core mission areas UH, so
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 1: they can get onto meuly fanatics dot org and support us.
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 1: I think another one that I should mention that anybody
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 1: in Wyoming can do to support migrations is by the
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: Wylming Wildlife Migration UH Conservation license plate, which is a
• 2:27:04
  Speaker 1: new license plate that we have in Wyoming where the
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: purchaser pays eighty dollars extra on top of their usual
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: licensing fees. Hundred fifty of that goes into a pot
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: that will then be doled out to reduce and alleviate
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: migration problems such as the I A DY one that
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 1: you mentioned. So there's a lot of ways to not
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: only support the organization but support migration also. The Migration
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: Initiative has fundraisers, we do some sometimes we sell some
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 1: commissioners tags or raffle commissioner tags to support them. So
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of ways to get involved, not just coming
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 1: to a banquet, which we're gonna have a lot of
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 1: fun at tonight. Uh, the other way, and it's one
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 1: that I want to speak to. That's a very important
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 1: part and and and has been extremely rewarding for me
• 2:27:53
  Speaker 1: is getting involved in starting a chapter locally. I get
• 2:27:57
  Speaker 1: to meet these guys, I get to have my horizons
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 1: expanded beyond just thinking big buck killers are cool. But
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 1: really the biology is that where it's at and and
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: that's the cool part. And that's really our responsibility within
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 1: the North American Conservation models as hunters is to actually
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: take time to learn some of the science before we
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 1: we advocate and and participate in that role. But but
• 2:28:21
  Speaker 1: there's just a lot of ways where people can get involved.
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: And starting a chapter would be a great one. Where
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: we have fourteen chapters across Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah
• 2:28:31
  Speaker 1: and always our our guys in in the headquarters in
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: Green River are always willing to support a new chapter
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: and it's it is a rewarding endeavor. UM. Just an example,
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 1: and I'll just go for no reason, couldn't be one
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: in New Mexico, Absolutely not UM. And I'll just close
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 1: with with what I find extremely rewarding is our chapter
• 2:28:52
  Speaker 1: has gone through four funding cycles and we put nine
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: grand back to Mulder specifically in the local area. I
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: could have never done that by myself. So it's extremely
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 1: rewarding to be able to as we work with the researchers,
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: identify needs and put money back to those needs and
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: be part of the solution. Great. I kind of feel
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 1: like we forgot to talk about conservation. No I tried to.
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 1: You didn't want to. I didn't because you're a scientist.
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 1: Oh maybe, okay, maybe I maybe I missed your cues. Um. Well,
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: so I I want to mention some of the conservation efforts,
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 1: um before we end here. I mean we' we've talked
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: a lot about different things and uh, and we talked
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: a lot about migration. I think, um, what we've seen,
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 1: you know, we we sort of started out talking about,
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 1: you know, why are there so many migrations in Wyoming,
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 1: right and U And one of those reasons is that
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: is that you know Whyoming still a small state. But
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: but it's changing and we're seeing you know, increased energy development.
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 1: We're seeing growth of towns that literally are growing to
• 2:30:09
  Speaker 1: sort of spill over into migration corridors. Um, and we're
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 1: just starting to map those things. And I think, uh,
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: one of the things, you know, for a variety of reasons,
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 1: Wyoming has sort of been at the forefront of this
• 2:30:23
  Speaker 1: and we've we've not one of the most exciting things
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: about I think this whole sort of area of research
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: is that we've now sort of proven up that we
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: can maintain these migrations. Right. So, there have been examples
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: in Wyoming of we talked a bit about the underpasses
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 1: and overpasses those have been really success successful, have reduced
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: mortality road mortality by eight to nine in some of
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 1: these In some of these bottlenecks, there's h fencing projects,
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 1: especially in the western part of the state, that are
• 2:30:58
  Speaker 1: now being guided by by the science by where where
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 1: the migration corridors are so limited resources, but if you
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 1: know where the corridors are, you can focus your attention
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 1: on modifying or moving fences that are within the cord
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 1: or um. We're involved in a project with the Nature
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 1: Conservancy and other land trusts that are bringing ten million
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 1: dollars to conserve big private ranches in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem,
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 1: with the Wyoming portion that exclusively our ranches that fall
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: within migration corridors, mapped migration corridors, and you know, those
• 2:31:36
  Speaker 1: are the places that it's where it's most important that
• 2:31:40
  Speaker 1: we limit, you know, residential development. Um that bottleneck that
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: you mentioned, the Conservation Fund raised two million dollars after
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 1: the after that magazine was put out and we identified
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 1: the cord or the conservation that we we listed that
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 1: as the number one risk for that herd forty five thousand,
• 2:32:00
  Speaker 1: uh meal there squeezing through a quarter mile bottleneck between
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 1: the town of Pinedale and Fremont, like this deep glacial
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: lake complicated by a parcel of private land with a
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 1: eight foot high woven wire elk fence on it. Yeah. Yeah,
• 2:32:17
  Speaker 1: I didn't know. I had no idea until reading that
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: about how many of these eight foot high fences Wyoming
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: has to keep I'm getting I think, I don't know
• 2:32:25
  Speaker 1: if it didn't explain that well, but from I get
• 2:32:27
  Speaker 1: from it is just to keep elk off of agg
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 1: and off of hay bales and whatnot. Is that and
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: kind of funnel them into the feed grounds that they
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: have established on that side of the state. Yeah. Yeah,
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: so in that case, you have, yeah, the eight foot
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: high fences there to keep elk where they're supplementally fed
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 1: from spill on the forest from spilling down into private land.
• 2:32:50
  Speaker 1: But then that then four to five thousand meal there
• 2:32:54
  Speaker 1: migrating a hundred fifty miles have to navigate that fence
• 2:32:58
  Speaker 1: as well. And uh. Anyways, that the identification of that
• 2:33:02
  Speaker 1: bottleneck led to the Conservation Fund raising two million dollars
• 2:33:07
  Speaker 1: to buy that plot of private uh land that was
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: slated for lakeside development and turn it into a wildlife
• 2:33:17
  Speaker 1: habitat management area, take down the fence, basically uncork the
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 1: bottleneck and uh and now it's it exists in perpetuity. Yep. Yeah,
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: the the land was was on the market. Yeah, that's
• 2:33:31
  Speaker 1: great man. Yeah. So so you know, for me, um, like,
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: we're sort of in a unique, uh a unique time
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 1: in sort of the history of wildlife conservation in the
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 1: American West, because this isn't this isn't a thorny problem
• 2:33:50
  Speaker 1: like climate change. This is a relatively simple problem. We
• 2:33:56
  Speaker 1: know how to map migration corridors, we know how to
• 2:33:59
  Speaker 1: identify through and we know how to implement solutions. It's
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: it's just a matter of you know, having this sort
• 2:34:06
  Speaker 1: of political will and and conservation attention to getting it done.
• 2:34:10
  Speaker 1: So so to me, that's sort of like that's happening
• 2:34:14
  Speaker 1: in Wyoming and starting to happen in other parts of
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: the West, and it's sort of a great example of
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: sort of science based conservation. You guys have the coolest
• 2:34:25
  Speaker 1: state in the lower forty eight. We like to think, well,
• 2:34:31
  Speaker 1: I think it is. And I often tell people, if
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 1: you want to understand wildlife in America, all you have
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: to do is watch Wyoming. Like every major wildlife issue
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 1: and from yes, a issues, migration is like like a
• 2:34:46
  Speaker 1: it's a case study where you can look at energy
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 1: like everything. Yeah, and a lot of it's still sort
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 1: of functioning the way it used to um because because
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: we have I mean, and it's not that Wyoming has
• 2:34:59
  Speaker 1: done you know, has has been way advanced in its
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 1: wildlife conservation or management. I think we've gotten a little
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 1: bit of a free pass because there are so few
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 1: people in Wyoming, half a million people in the entire state.
• 2:35:14
  Speaker 1: That's the size of you know, most many metropolitan areas.
• 2:35:19
  Speaker 1: It doesn't hurt. Okay, you can let your concluder rip.
• 2:35:23
  Speaker 1: Now my concluder, Okay, I've just been waiting patiently. You
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: got a good one. No, but we'll see so well.
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 1: First off, I just want to say thanks guys. This
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 1: has been great. Appreciate you guys taking the time allowing
• 2:35:35
  Speaker 1: us to visit for a bit. And also I think
• 2:35:38
  Speaker 1: I just wanna as well be able to say that,
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 1: you know, we get to be here talking about some
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: of the things that we've been doing, that we've been learning,
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 1: some of the science in our professional opinions and those
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: sorts of things. But at the same time, UM, there's
• 2:35:51
  Speaker 1: no way that we would be here without UM the network,
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 1: the partners UM that have ultimately made a lot of
• 2:35:56
  Speaker 1: the work that we've been doing possible, like Jared's greup
• 2:35:59
  Speaker 1: in really Fanatic Foundation and all the other various nonprofits
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 1: and agency folks that are willing to UM see the
• 2:36:06
  Speaker 1: value and research and allow us to go out there
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 1: and do our best to help learn what what makes
• 2:36:11
  Speaker 1: these animals tick, which to me is really important. I
• 2:36:14
  Speaker 1: feel I'm very humbled and I feel very fortunate to
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 1: be in the position that I'm in to be able
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 1: to do that. But I'm fully aware that without everybody
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 1: else that UM are maybe seemingly behind the scenes, but
• 2:36:24
  Speaker 1: I don't really want them to be. UM. We we
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be here having these conversations, and I feel very
• 2:36:29
  Speaker 1: fortunate to be able to UM, to be able to
• 2:36:32
  Speaker 1: do that. So I just want to thank all those
• 2:36:34
  Speaker 1: that are out there that have have contributed in those
• 2:36:36
  Speaker 1: ways and see the value and research UM and to
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 1: channel Josh Corsi, President Meally Fanatic Foundation a little bit
• 2:36:44
  Speaker 1: and he always says that we're only as good as
• 2:36:45
  Speaker 1: the information that we have, and arguably, then as a
• 2:36:48
  Speaker 1: consequence of that, the decisions we make are only as
• 2:36:51
  Speaker 1: good as the information we have, which I think is
• 2:36:53
  Speaker 1: a really powerful way to think about that, and hopefully
• 2:36:55
  Speaker 1: we're getting there one step at a time of getting
• 2:36:58
  Speaker 1: more of that information UM. But then as far as
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: just other other thoughts, I think for me and in
• 2:37:04
  Speaker 1: my career and in UM learning the things that that
• 2:37:08
  Speaker 1: we've been able to learn, as well as just the
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 1: perspectives that are out there, I think interestingly, and in
• 2:37:15
  Speaker 1: the hunting industry too, we've our culture is changing. It
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 1: seems like it's changing a lot. UM we've in in
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 1: in weird ways sometimes too, I think UM we've characterized
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 1: it as it becoming progressively more of a hornographic culture.
• 2:37:28
  Speaker 1: It's been focused on the head gear as opposed to
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: um and and maybe at sometimes in some instances losing
• 2:37:36
  Speaker 1: touch a little bit with our true like naturalist hunting heritage,
• 2:37:41
  Speaker 1: appreciating the outdoors and the open spaces for what they are. Um.
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 1: And I mean, I love to kill a big deer
• 2:37:48
  Speaker 1: or you know, a big elk or whatever, just as
• 2:37:50
  Speaker 1: much as anybody. But I think sometimes it's, um, we've
• 2:37:54
  Speaker 1: gone so far in that direction. We've just come by
• 2:37:57
  Speaker 1: become so myopically focused on what's on the head and
• 2:38:00
  Speaker 1: kind of lost the big picture as to what's behind
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 1: the scenes that's even allowing that animal to exist in
• 2:38:05
  Speaker 1: in that landscape. Uh and and just kind of um
• 2:38:09
  Speaker 1: creating a culture. Perhaps that's losing touch a little bit. Um.
• 2:38:13
  Speaker 1: And then along those same lines, as we've become I
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 1: think sometimes myopically focused on that, it's also caused us
• 2:38:19
  Speaker 1: to focus on genetics, which for me, unfortunately I'm I
• 2:38:22
  Speaker 1: am the nutritional ecologist, but I think so so I'm
• 2:38:27
  Speaker 1: perhaps biased, but I also know the realities from the
• 2:38:29
  Speaker 1: work that we've done. And it's like, if we're gonna
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 1: if we're just going to focus on genetics, like there's
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 1: few links to the population itself, there's few links to reality,
• 2:38:39
  Speaker 1: there's a few things that we can actually even do.
• 2:38:42
  Speaker 1: And so if that's all that we can think about,
• 2:38:44
  Speaker 1: is that you know that that individual had some fantastic genetics.
• 2:38:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, even when the um the new world record
• 2:38:50
  Speaker 1: big horn was found on wild Horse Island, there's a
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 1: flurry of who sweet genetics coming from this country, and
• 2:38:56
  Speaker 1: all I think is, man, No, it's an it's an
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 1: island system, food phenomenal from out of the gate today one.
• 2:39:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, if it's just genetics, and why didn't we
• 2:39:03
  Speaker 1: produce a world record the first first year or two,
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 1: you know, within the first decade that those animals were
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 1: on that island. I'm virtually certain it's it's nutrition. I mean,
• 2:39:12
  Speaker 1: sure the genetics needed to be there, but it's not
• 2:39:14
  Speaker 1: just genetics that made that animal so huge. And so
• 2:39:17
  Speaker 1: to me, I think that if there's a slight shift
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 1: in angle to acknowledging for me, like what I've often
• 2:39:25
  Speaker 1: said is I will have made an impact in my
• 2:39:29
  Speaker 1: career broadly, just just beyond science. If someday our our
• 2:39:34
  Speaker 1: our culture or hunting culture. When you know, somebody kills
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 1: a giant mule deer out of the Wyoming range, that
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 1: rather than having to see the articles that are referencing, Oh,
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 1: it's some impressive genetics out of the wyoming range, impressive
• 2:39:46
  Speaker 1: migration corridors well, or like that dude must have had
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 1: an incredibly fat mom like that, that's it, you know,
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 1: let's let's focus on fat moms. I mean seriously, like
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: so to me too, because if if we're if we
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: succeed in doing that, and it just taking the shift,
• 2:40:03
  Speaker 1: like we can appreciate those things. But if we take
• 2:40:06
  Speaker 1: the shift, the shift goes away from just the genetics
• 2:40:09
  Speaker 1: and the myopic focus on the headgear, and it shifts
• 2:40:11
  Speaker 1: it to the ground. It shifts us to the food,
• 2:40:13
  Speaker 1: to the habitat, to nutrition, which is ultimately that building block,
• 2:40:17
  Speaker 1: and I think can help get us places in a
• 2:40:20
  Speaker 1: much quicker manner. And by appreciating those sorts of things
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 1: from from that bottom up, that habitat driven perspective, because
• 2:40:26
  Speaker 1: we're gonna make more conservation advances if we if we
• 2:40:30
  Speaker 1: are thinking about that from the from the migratory routes
• 2:40:33
  Speaker 1: to the value of the summer range to making sure
• 2:40:35
  Speaker 1: we can maintain solid stage brush and pristine winter range,
• 2:40:39
  Speaker 1: and we can acknowledge like whether climate changes affects the
• 2:40:43
  Speaker 1: food and thus feeds into the population, or we have
• 2:40:45
  Speaker 1: a bad winter and animals are burning fat reserves to survive, Like, well,
• 2:40:49
  Speaker 1: we'll have a greater appreciation understanding for what's there and
• 2:40:52
  Speaker 1: I think can have a better conversation at the table
• 2:40:56
  Speaker 1: that that leads to more advances over the long term
• 2:40:58
  Speaker 1: if if we're able to succeed eat in doing that.
• 2:41:00
  Speaker 1: So it's all about fat moms. I think that horniography,
• 2:41:05
  Speaker 1: or like the thirst for big giant bucks, um, does
• 2:41:08
  Speaker 1: lead some people in down the path of being curious
• 2:41:14
  Speaker 1: about ecology and being interested in these things, which is
• 2:41:20
  Speaker 1: it's not the most direct path, but I have seen
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 1: it can it can get there. I've seen that happen
• 2:41:29
  Speaker 1: a lot. My final question, Okay, crystal ball game, right, Um,
• 2:41:35
  Speaker 1: an hundred years, Like this is not a this is
• 2:41:38
  Speaker 1: this is just speculation from you in just for you
• 2:41:42
  Speaker 1: guys to think about, like in a hundred years, Like,
• 2:41:45
  Speaker 1: do you think it's a given that things will be
• 2:41:47
  Speaker 1: a lot worse in a hundred years for just for
• 2:41:51
  Speaker 1: mulders specifically, do you think it's a given that there'll
• 2:41:53
  Speaker 1: be a lot worse or do you think that in
• 2:41:55
  Speaker 1: a hundred years, Um, that's too far years and fifty
• 2:42:02
  Speaker 1: years will invariably be that, like things are just shitty
• 2:42:05
  Speaker 1: or do you think in fifty years it could be like, Wow, man,
• 2:42:08
  Speaker 1: mule deer kicking ass h. I mean, I hate to
• 2:42:15
  Speaker 1: say it, but I two thousand and sixty nine, I
• 2:42:21
  Speaker 1: think it's going to be worse. I think, I mean,
• 2:42:24
  Speaker 1: we are we I mean, we we scrape away, cut up,
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: erect barriers over you know, mule deer habitat every day, right,
• 2:42:40
  Speaker 1: We're just we're on the slippery slope and were we're
• 2:42:44
  Speaker 1: continuing to make the lives of meal deer and especially
• 2:42:49
  Speaker 1: migratory meal deer harder, and so you know, for me,
• 2:42:54
  Speaker 1: I mean that's what sort of motivates my research, is
• 2:42:57
  Speaker 1: that is that I think we're to me, it's it's
• 2:43:01
  Speaker 1: stopped bleeding. Yeah, like we're we're heading in that direction.
• 2:43:04
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, you know what I was thinking
• 2:43:07
  Speaker 1: about this the other day, I wonder if we like it.
• 2:43:12
  Speaker 1: I'm often frustrated by the fact that we don't recognize that.
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: I'm often frustrated by the fact that I think a
• 2:43:21
  Speaker 1: lot of sportsmen don't recognize that, um that you know,
• 2:43:26
  Speaker 1: there's seems to be more of a mentality of like, well,
• 2:43:29
  Speaker 1: these mulity have always been here. I I hunted them,
• 2:43:33
  Speaker 1: and I'm a kid, and you know, I'm still going
• 2:43:34
  Speaker 1: to the same places. Maybe there's maybe there's less hard
• 2:43:39
  Speaker 1: to say, hard to its hard to say, but you know,
• 2:43:43
  Speaker 1: I think when when we look at when we look
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 1: you know, migration is a great lens to look at
• 2:43:48
  Speaker 1: these things. Those migrations are all getting harder. Everything we
• 2:43:52
  Speaker 1: do to the landscape makes them harder. Um and so
• 2:43:56
  Speaker 1: and and and and and and I think I wonder
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: if we kind of as a as wildlife managers, I
• 2:44:04
  Speaker 1: wonder if we kind of have this false sense of
• 2:44:08
  Speaker 1: optimism generated from the success of the North American model. Right, Like,
• 2:44:16
  Speaker 1: we went through this bottleneck. We we almost hunted all
• 2:44:21
  Speaker 1: of these big game critters out of existence in North America.
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 1: And then we developed policies and ways to regulate our
• 2:44:29
  Speaker 1: harvest and we and we and we, yeah, we we
• 2:44:35
  Speaker 1: brought them back right. Um, But that was you know,
• 2:44:42
  Speaker 1: the turn of the century. There were far less people
• 2:44:46
  Speaker 1: on this planet, and far less people in North America,
• 2:44:48
  Speaker 1: and far less demands on these landscapes that that these
• 2:44:52
  Speaker 1: that this wildlife um require. And I I think we
• 2:44:59
  Speaker 1: I wonder if if we have a false sense of
• 2:45:01
  Speaker 1: optimism that we we we we got through that. So
• 2:45:06
  Speaker 1: you know, all of these sort of changes that we're
• 2:45:08
  Speaker 1: seeing now are sort of temporary and we can we
• 2:45:11
  Speaker 1: can come up with fixes of them. UM. But I'm
• 2:45:16
  Speaker 1: not terribly optimistic. What and what motivates me is is
• 2:45:19
  Speaker 1: that you know, we that we are on the slippery
• 2:45:23
  Speaker 1: slope of making uh, making these habitats more more difficult,
• 2:45:29
  Speaker 1: less profitable. Um. And so you know, in my view,
• 2:45:35
  Speaker 1: we have a lot of work to do to figure
• 2:45:37
  Speaker 1: out how how to how to stop the bleeding and
• 2:45:41
  Speaker 1: how to sort of keep all this threaded together and
• 2:45:45
  Speaker 1: stitched together as we go forward. Fifty years was a
• 2:45:50
  Speaker 1: long time. I think the noteworthy part of that my
• 2:45:56
  Speaker 1: mind is you think about this downward decline from the
• 2:45:59
  Speaker 1: ninety sixties population whatever whatever you want to refer to
• 2:46:03
  Speaker 1: that as UM. But to know that in Wyoming, the
• 2:46:07
  Speaker 1: decline in Mulder since been about that says to me,
• 2:46:12
  Speaker 1: there's an acceleration that's at starting to move at a
• 2:46:16
  Speaker 1: breakneck pace. You don't have to be a mathematician to
• 2:46:20
  Speaker 1: recognize that that can be a zero sum game pretty
• 2:46:23
  Speaker 1: quickly and UH, from a conservation organization perspective. I think
• 2:46:27
  Speaker 1: it's important to recognize that maybe we aren't in capable
• 2:46:31
  Speaker 1: of reaching peaks, but we're definitely capable of drawn a
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 1: line at the basement. And um, that's that's where we
• 2:46:38
  Speaker 1: want to fit in, is to help stop that downturn
• 2:46:42
  Speaker 1: and at least start to maintain hopefully a gradual increase later. Yeah,
• 2:46:49
  Speaker 1: And I think I think that's a great point. And
• 2:46:51
  Speaker 1: I still I'll fall back again to the how do
• 2:46:54
  Speaker 1: we stop that downturn, which is ultimately going to come
• 2:46:57
  Speaker 1: come down to the science side of it anyway, and
• 2:46:58
  Speaker 1: there's there's still lots of questions associated with that and
• 2:47:02
  Speaker 1: if that was an eruption, how far are we going
• 2:47:04
  Speaker 1: to go down? And what are we gonna do? And
• 2:47:07
  Speaker 1: I'm still I don't necessarily disagree with Matt either, but
• 2:47:10
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe I'm a little more optimistic too, and that
• 2:47:13
  Speaker 1: I think from from a sign. So for mule deer,
• 2:47:17
  Speaker 1: although they've been declining, there's still they're still sort of
• 2:47:19
  Speaker 1: a fairly common species, right, And so I think in
• 2:47:23
  Speaker 1: some instances, as decisions are made there may be viewed
• 2:47:25
  Speaker 1: a little bit as a common species. Well, if we
• 2:47:27
  Speaker 1: give some here, if we give give away some here,
• 2:47:30
  Speaker 1: it's okay because we have them in all these other places,
• 2:47:32
  Speaker 1: whereas we can, I think, help gain that appreciation, helping
• 2:47:36
  Speaker 1: still some of that appreciation by by also increase in
• 2:47:39
  Speaker 1: understanding and how uniquely connected they're amazingly connected to the landscape,
• 2:47:44
  Speaker 1: in the environment that they live in, and by helping
• 2:47:46
  Speaker 1: understand that better and being able to relay that, I
• 2:47:49
  Speaker 1: would hope that I still kind of think we're we're
• 2:47:52
  Speaker 1: just pushing through almost to a breakthrough wherein we're getting
• 2:47:56
  Speaker 1: to the point where mule deer and some of our
• 2:47:59
  Speaker 1: other ungulates have much much more traction at the table
• 2:48:02
  Speaker 1: when decisions are being made. And I truly think that
• 2:48:06
  Speaker 1: that has a lot to do with the science and
• 2:48:08
  Speaker 1: the communication of it. And we're we're beginning to to
• 2:48:11
  Speaker 1: get to a point where we're learning these little nuanced
• 2:48:15
  Speaker 1: mechanistic things that can make a huge different yet our
• 2:48:18
  Speaker 1: difference yet are really interesting too and will help inspire
• 2:48:22
  Speaker 1: people that to garner an appreciation for them and not
• 2:48:26
  Speaker 1: just focus on economics, even though they're very economically valuable
• 2:48:30
  Speaker 1: as well. So I still think we're getting to a
• 2:48:32
  Speaker 1: point where maybe we're going to get a little bit
• 2:48:33
  Speaker 1: of a breakthrough doesn't mean we're not gonna have some
• 2:48:36
  Speaker 1: more bleeding um in the interim. But at the same time,
• 2:48:39
  Speaker 1: I think as we have that little breakthrough as far
• 2:48:41
  Speaker 1: as public sentiment appreciation those sorts of things, that there's
• 2:48:44
  Speaker 1: also going to be additional lines of information from a
• 2:48:48
  Speaker 1: scientific perspective that's going to help us help us do
• 2:48:51
  Speaker 1: better to the benefit of meal there two and that
• 2:48:53
  Speaker 1: could be managing other species, to managing habitat to even
• 2:48:57
  Speaker 1: more motivation associate with um, conserving protecting migratory corridors, and
• 2:49:02
  Speaker 1: the sorts of things. So I think it's one of
• 2:49:05
  Speaker 1: the challenges and being human is to be able to
• 2:49:07
  Speaker 1: have like a pessimistic, maybe you know, realistic, borderline pessimistic
• 2:49:12
  Speaker 1: perception of what's going on, but then still wake up
• 2:49:16
  Speaker 1: and do what you need to do. Remember the first
• 2:49:19
  Speaker 1: time I ever sat in a meeting about making a
• 2:49:21
  Speaker 1: TV show, the first thing out of someone's mouth as
• 2:49:23
  Speaker 1: they were saying, like, it's impossible, it's almost never happens.
• 2:49:27
  Speaker 1: Let's get started. You guys, thank you very much for
• 2:49:32
  Speaker 1: joining