Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 055: Bozeman, Montana. Steven Rinella talks with bear biologist Frank VanManen along with Janis Putelis and Nicole Qualtieri from the MeatEater crew.

Transcript

Ep. 055: Bozeman, Montana. Steven Rinella talks with bear biologist Frank VanManen along with Janis Putelis and Nicole Qualtieri from the MeatEater crew. · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming in. You shirtless,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: severely vote bitten and in my case, underwear listening. Don't
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: make even podcast. You can't predict anything, all right. Our
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: guest is Frank Temple. Tell us your last name Van
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Mannon or von Banning, whatever you prefer. So, No, but
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: you're not. I was surprised you walked in. You know
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: you're not. You weren't born in the US. I wasn't
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: born in the U s No, I am a US
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: became a bear bile, a grizzly bear biologist or a
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: bear biologists here. I came to the US in Do
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: you remember how old you when you saw your first bear?
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: When I saw my first bear? Uh, that was about probably. Yeah.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: So you at what age did you get into wildlife biology?
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Did you get that back home? Yeah? So I did
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: a master's in biology at the university and in the
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Netherlands at the Agricultural University and studying what like what
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: we're looking at their um well and again it was
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: actually a combined bachelor's master so in the beginning was
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: kind of undetermined and and towards the end UM I
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: got really interested in in doing an internship on a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: large carnivore because there weren't any in the Netherlands. You know,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: there's no wolves, there's there were no bears or anything like.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: The largest carnival we had there was was red not
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: that they had been extra paid, but they weren't there
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: in the first place. Uh No, they were extrapated. So
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: brown bears were excapated there probably more than a thousand
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: years ago. Um. And wolves, I don't know exactly, but
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: that that that have been quite a while as well.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: And interestingly wolves and now gradually returning to Western Europe.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: There's have been a few sightings of wolves now in
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the Netherlands. Um, how are they received their open arms
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: not as a controversial there as well, not not yet,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: but I think it's because it's it's just been a
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: sighting or two. You know, they haven't dusted off someone's
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: landing exactly, and that once stop that starts happening, that
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: might change, but but so far it's mostly excitement. Actually,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: that's it's amazing that in a place like the Netherlands.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: You know, it's sixteen million people in in the in
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the country to size that's one ninth of the state
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: of Montana, you know, so you do the do the math.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing that you' still find rules there. So
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: you started looking at large carnivores in what but not
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: in the Netherlands. Yeah, so that there were people were
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: working on on brown bears and what at the time
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: was still Yugoslavia and in Spain, and so I was
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: trying to get in on some of those projects and
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: the timing just didn't work out, but I didn't. Through
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: through those contacts that I made with those projects, I
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: was able to get an internship at the University of
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Tennessee with Dr Mike Pelton, who was a well known
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: black bear biologists UM in the Eastern US, and so
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: that's that's really where I got started with What were
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: you guys looking at with black bears? Well, a lot
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: of different things, primarily population dynamics, so population changes and
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: trend over time. UM looking at denning behavior, which was
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: really interesting over there because most of the black bears
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: there then in in high up in hollow trees, and
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: so that did a lot of lead tree climbing in
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: those days, and that was in a tree. Well, UM,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: the highest one that we ever measured was about hundred
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and ten feet up in a tree. So also not
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: in hollow trees. Yeah, the canopy. No, in hollow trees.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: So the hell's he got a hollow big enough to
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: hold the black bear hunter feet in the air? Well,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: there's in the smoke case. You know, you still have
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: some areas with with old growth. And what kind of
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: tree was it? Well, I think that was actually a
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: remember it might have been a tool of poplar um.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: And there was climbing tool of poplars. Some white oaks, um,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: chestnut oaks. Those were the most common trees. And so
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: are they up there because are they up there but
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: to avoid predation? Or they up there for some other reason?
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Um to not not so much to avoid predation, I think,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: but certainly to avoid disturbance. And you know, no better
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: place to beat and high up in the tree to
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: avoid the stones across the heck no, And so you know,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: we we would climb up, we set up a climbing
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: rope and which was pretty tricky most of the time,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: and then we get up to the to the entrance
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: of the den and and most of the time was
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: just a hollow. So it's a cavity into a hollow
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: part of the tree. That's uh, that was established your
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: years ago from a big branch breaking off, So a
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: wind break or a lightning strike something like that would
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: over to time, you know, for a fifty to a
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: hundred years, could create this this big hollow compartment where
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: bears we just uh basically hibernate for the reach in
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: there and touch him, right, I mean, yes, that's in
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: some cases they were that close. In other cases, we
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: you know, especially with chestnut oaks, you would go up,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: you know, ft up in the tree and you look
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: down in bear was all the way down at the bottom.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: It was hollowed out all the way to the bottom,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: and the bear would actually be resting basically at the
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: bottom of the tree. Um. But the only way to
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: get there is to climb up in the tree first,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: you know. So uh, some really amazing experiences to see
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: where those bears end up. Now, how is it that
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: you grew up using the metric system and you still
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: use it in your discipline, but you don't mind conversing
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: too Americans and standard. Yeah, I got to learn that.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: It's like a professional skills, that's right. It took a
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: while because when you published work, you published it's all metric,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: So just do standard Just to talk to people. They
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: know what you're talking abo try to Yeah, I mean,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: that's appreciate, that's important. And you know, I don't have
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: all the stats from uh necessarily in the in in
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: the English system, but but yeah, you know that's something
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: you Yeah. Um, you also told me once and someone
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: told me it's not true. Would you find that those
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: cavities that they would take a year off between using
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: those cavities, that the cavities would sit empty a year
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: and then the bear would come back? Is that not true? Um,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't necessarily come back to the same cavity. That
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: was actually pretty rare. We only saw about five to
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: reuse of of the same cavities. The hell they find
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: in the cavities, well, you know, they spent a lot
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: of time in trees, you know, so they're they're up
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: in trees eating grapes or or acorns even before they
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: drop on the ground. Um, so they're up and eating
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: out of fruits. So they're up in the trees a lot.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: And and my guess is that as they they spend
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of time in trees, they will they will
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: remember places where there's a cavity, so they know them.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Their habitat like like we know our house, you know.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: It's it's something that I think that that we underestimate
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the capability of these animals, the spatial awareness total. They
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: know every every square range of their home range. And
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: then the females they would they would drop their litters
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: up in the cavities exactly. Yeah. So for for those cubs,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: it's an incredibly safe place to be born. Do they
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: lose Uh that coke could probably would stay in a
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: little bit of fall, but it's gotta be dangerous getting
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: them back down out of there. Yeah. And and so
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: we've seen them come out and uh, and it's it's
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: pretty amazing. I mean sometimes, um, you know in April
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: or so, when they came out, you would seem climb
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: down this huge tree and you know, these tiny little cubs,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: but their their claws are amazing, you know. When so
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: when we would do these dent visits, we if if
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: we had an opportunity to do it safely, we would
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: nobalize the female and examine that give us give us
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: a chance to examine the cubs and all that. And uh.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And when you take those cubs out, I mean it's
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: their their closet, like fell crow, they just stick to you, Yeah,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: like a little kitten or something. So so it gave
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: him enough attraction on on the bark of the tree
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: to to to get down the tree. And it's it's
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: pretty amazing to see that how how well equipped they
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  Speaker 1: are right from from that age, you know, when they
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: when they first come out of the den to to
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: spend a lot of time and trees, that's that's there
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: their safety place. Yeah. So is there a for a
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: bear guy? Like you're a bear guy right like you
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: you focus on barriers totally? Is there a journal you
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: guys used? Like, is there like a journal called like
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Ursus or something? The World's Bearers? That's why I thought,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: I thought, I've never seen something like that. So what
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: other what other species of bears around the world did
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: you look at before you got focused on one grizzlies?
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Um so between my you know, so when I first
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: started on black bears, I spent quite a bit of
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: number of years working on black bears and eventually got
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: involved with some international work, um with researchers in other countries.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: So in Sri Lanka, for example, I worked with with
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: the researcher there who was working on the sloth bears.
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  Speaker 1: That was a really interesting project worked with two doing
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: population work on those as well. Population work also a
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: lot of habitat work, habitat analysis, you know, home range
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  Speaker 1: sizes and things like that, because there was so little
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: known about there's nothing known really about sloth bears in
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Sri Lankan, and they stable or they decline. Well, they
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: they're still holding on pretty well right now. Interestingly enough,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: you know, there used to be a civil war there
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: and in a way that was good for for sloth
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: bears because the rebel um the Tamil Tigers is is
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: the group that that that basically had a conflict with
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the national government and so um the t Aimalt Tigers
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: controlled a lot of the area where slot bears still existed,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: and and they would not allow people to go into
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: those areas with guns and such. So it's actually sadly
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: enough that the war actually created in some ways of
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: protection for pho those populations. Is there a bush meat
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: market there or voting for parts for the asiastic like
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: trade and affordesiacs or what it's um most of like
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: what happens a lot is there's people going out sometimes
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: illegally into national parks, going out for for honey, but
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: they in the in the process, sometimes they are attacked
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: by by slot bears because they slot bears tend to
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: be relatively aggressive, and so when that happens, you know
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of times those bears end up and getting killed.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: So it's not necessarily for for meat or anything. There's
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: there's really no boaching problem per se. It's just conflict
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that that leads to mortalities of those bears and and
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: now probably illegal loggings that tie into the habitat loss
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: and stuff. Is that not an issue for them? Not
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: so much. The bigger issue right now is now that
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: there is a peace agreement, people are moving back into
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: those areas, uh, you know, because they avoided the areas
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: of conflict. Of course, now they're moving back and moving
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: into slought bear habitats. So that is um that is
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: probably going to have a potentially lasting effect on populations there.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: So we will have to see how that how that
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: pans out in the future. And then have you done
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: work with the bears in South America? Yes, so I've
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: I've called sun bears right those are Indian bears or
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: in what's this where's the sun bear? From sun bears?
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Mostly in the Southeast Asia, so Malaysia, Indonesian, Indian bear. Yes,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: the South American bear, that's the only South American bearing.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of a relatively primitive bear species if you
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: look at it evolutionarily. Um, they're they're quite old. Same
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: with with giant panda. Is also an old bear species
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: of the current you know, the currently the eight species
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: that that we have in the world. Um. And it's
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: uh when you say old, meaning that like the animal
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: hasn't changed much in a over a long period of time. Well, um,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: old in the sense that that it stems from a yeah,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: an older evolutionary lineage. So you know, brown bears and
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: polar bears are the most modern bears so to speak
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: in that sense, so that these are the exactly yeah
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: and uh, and so the giant panda and and Andian
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: bear are the older bear lineages so to speak. And
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: so yeah, and Engiine bears was a really interesting species
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: to work on. Um. They occur in some of the
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: really high elevation areas in the Indian mountains. Um, Like
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: they're like an alpine species. Yeah, they they had they
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: covered quite an elevational range. Actually, some of the work
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: is in in in these areas called paramou, which which
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: basically means no no trees. Um. So these open areas
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: in elevations um, you know, over fourteen thousand feet or
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: so and uh. And they feed primarily on bromeliads. So
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: they they consume the the tissue that's at the bottom
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: of the leaves. There is that tissue that has a
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: lot of sugars in it. And then so they will
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: rip open these these big bromeliads and and eat the
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: base of those leaves. It's really really neat. And how
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: how they've adapted to them and do they mix it
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: up with people or as they are they pretty docile? Um,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: they they they're fairly you know, for for in terms
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: of calling any bear species docile, you know, it's yeah,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: they're they're pretty Uh, they're they're pretty easy going. They're
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: they're not very aggressive species. Um. They they occasionally killed cattle.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: But there's really not a not a large number of
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: of comps links between people and engine bears necessarily. But
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: if panda bears ever kill people, has that is that
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: knowing to happen? To my knowledge? I I'm not sure
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: they have no reason to kill livestock or anything. No, no, no, um.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: You know panda bears are you know right? Yeah, I
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: mean they almost all of their diet is is bamboo,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: so um yeah, of course, very unique. So they can
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: still can they move fast or not? Then fast? They can? Um,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: but but their home ranges tend to be relatively small.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Their movement still and tend to be relatively small today.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: They kind of you know, basically set up shopping in
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: in a good bamboo patch and basically wear it out
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and move onto patch. So that's that's their their typical
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: mode of operations. So they like the porcupine uses his landscape,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: you know, uh yeah, move on when when the resources
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: are you know, getting to the point where you're just
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: not efficient anymore? Um So then did all that? Now,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: how did it come to be that you were Okay,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I guess not at this point? Explain your job now
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: you're titled now, Um so I'm currently um my official
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: title is with the U s GS is I'm a
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: supervisory wildlife No what is it research bottle if biologists?
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Um with the inter agency. Yeah. So and that's so
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: I'm the team leader of the inter Agency Grizzly Best
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Study Team. And by inter agency that means a Geological Service.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: So where you work for U s G S. U
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: s G S so eight different entities altogether, So the
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: U S G S Fishing, Wild La Service, UM National
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Park Service for Service, and then the three state agencies
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: for Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. And then we also work
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: with the tribal agencies of the Northern Arapaho and the
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Eastern show Shownee tribes. And the only thing under your
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: purview then is the is the grizzly bears and the
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Greater yell Stone area. That's correct. Yeah, yeah, so we
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: this team was established back in nineteen seventy three, so
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: it's it's we've got a long history, more than four decades.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: So well, yere did they get listed two years? And uh?
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: And so we were actually in existence before the the
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: official listing of grizzly bears in the lower forty aid
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Son and A Danger Species Act. I read the Inner
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Agency Group. No, I guess we should explain too. So
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: you're not involved in policy, in pure research, correct giving information,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: providing accurate, non presumably non biased information to policymakers to
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: inform their decision making. And you guys got started the
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: right If I think I feel like I read this,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: you guys got started with involved just like closing dumps
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: like that was sort of a strange somewhat uh, you know,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: like a not very hot button topic. I'm mad at
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: the time, it was like the closing of dumps for
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: attracting bears in the park or something. Right, Yeah, so
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: that you know that there were open pin garbage dumps
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: in and throughout the Yelstone existence and including Yelstone National Park,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: which is where people used to do their bear viewing.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, I mean they literally had what they
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: call bear counters, you know, where where bears would just
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: be fed the garbage from the hotels and then people
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: would that they would have basically a gallery for people
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: to sit and watch these bears feet on their lunch counter.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: And and so after you know, the National Park Service
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: had done some had asked two for some reports and
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: this this famous Leopold report that that determined that that
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: they made a recommendation that the parkser was moved to
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: a more natural management of wildlife in general. No Starker, Yeah,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: and after his time, well after but made a report
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: that that that that change policies in in the National
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Parks in terms of their their management and and taking
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: a more um natural management approach to to all all
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: wildlife management, including bears and and so I think Yellstone
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: has been on the forefront of that right from the beginning.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: And uh, and so I don't think enough people realize
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: some of the things about Yellowstones, like people like people
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: who don't have a who don't have a deep background
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: and wildlife and wildlife management, wildlife politics always like they
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: kind of like to think of Yellowstone as this sort
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: of thing that's always existed in this static form. Yeah,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: when they don't realize that like all the buffalo or
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: all the bis and that are in Yellowstone used to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: be in defense and we're fed hay and straw exactly.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: You know that the bear viewing was, like you said,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: fed bears basically you watch you would observe bait stations. Yeah,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: you know what people have this image of it is
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: like this is like the Steen area where we all
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: we get to watch everything play out in its natural form,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: you know, without realizing what a sort of conscious like
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: that there, that there was a conscious act to create
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: this exactly. You know what I mean, it doesn't exist
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: because it doesn't exist just because it's been hands off.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: It exists because people have pursued a sort of vision there. Yeah.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: And and you know, management in the parks has always
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: been pretty heavy and in some cases there there's really
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: no way around that. And you know, I think um
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: man just will have to be pretty heavy handed. And
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: in some instances, in some small parks for example, and
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: um in this way management has kind of come down
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: to almost non management, but like making decisions to do
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: these things. Yeah exactly, Yeah, because yeah, there's still even
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: if if you decide not to do something that's that's
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: you could still call that a management decision. Um. So
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: they got rid of the bait stations, open bit garbage dumps. Yeah.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: So they got resistance to that from from park visitors
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: who wanted to see bears right now. Yeah. That so
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: there was resistance from from visitors that uh that that
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: we're worried that they wouldn't be able to see bears anymore.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: And there was resistance at that time from the two
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: prominent researchers on on grizzly bears and Yelstone and they
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: have John and Frank Craighead and of course that the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: pioneers of well what was their bearers, They wouldn't be
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: able to find their bears very easily, know they Their
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: concern was that that, so the parks are was proposed
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: to to close the dumps basically all you know, at once,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: not not phase it out. And so that was the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: major disagree displacement exactly, they'd like strike off across the
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: country and have no idea what there and and that
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: did happen, um. But the parts of his argument at
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: the time was that if we phase it out, there's
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: gonna be generations and generations of bears that still know
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: how to use that resource, and it's better to just
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: wean them off right off, you know, right away, and
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: and deal with the consequences. And I think you know,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: cold Turkey basically, yeah, yeah, we got a friend. Uh.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: I don't think he's downstairs right now, but he's trying
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: to quit you and he needs to do like they
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: do with the party bears, just shut it turkey. Yeah,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: he needs to shut it down. Yeah. So the you
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: know that there was a major disagreement, um, And and
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: the consequence of it was that that the was high
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: mortality of grizzly bears after that. Indeed, just like just
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: like you said, that's that's exactly what happened. Bears started
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: moving all over the place looking for foods. Then you know,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: previously they got on all these easy hand nowns and
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: now they had to kind of fetch for themselves and
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: people's yards and roadways, camgrounds. So a large number had
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: to be removed because of problem issues of conflicts and
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: so dead probably put it dent in population at the time.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: And the closing those open dumps happened in the park
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: and out of the part. Yeah, so they're the ones
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: out of the park where a little bit later, but
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: but by the early seventies, the ones in the park
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: had been closed. Now how many grizzlies were there in
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: the you know like this, I know this isn't something
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: you can you can you can't. You could probably have
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: no comment to this, but I think it was like
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: a strategic it's just me talking. I think it's a
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: strategic miscalculation to call the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem the greater
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Yellostone ecosystem because because the name is built around the
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: park and people have a hard like message that can't
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: separate and they think of it as the park. I
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: would call it something totally different, like I don't know
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: name you So, I don't know the Rocky Mountain, try
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: state areas, the like the something, I don't know, the area,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the area with a lot of animals, because the greater area,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: greater area. Because you do that, there's like we have
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: I think that you know, again it's just me talking personally,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: but I think we uh collectively in the West, there's
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: like a thing we suffer from Yellowstone syndrome. And it's
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: really hard for people to like sort out the differences
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: of the park and the not park, you know, and
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: what the challenges are within the park, how those how
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: challenges in the park affect people surrounding the park, and
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: it just becomes And so when they call it the
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Greater Yelostone ecosystem, I think people, you know, have a
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: hard time realize that that's like a little piece of
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: something that's the size of Indiana. Yeah, well people here, yell,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: they're they're gonna the Yellowstone bears when we're talking about it,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: but a fairly large region. But at that time they go,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: so go back to the inception of your inter agency group,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: how many how many grizzlies were there? So in the
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: g y e or in the actual Yellowstone or whatever. Yeah,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: so that the area of occupancy at the time was
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: much smaller than it is now. Probably, so it was
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: like Yellows basically National Park and a little bit of
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: of area around it. Um. But they would it be
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: fair to say back then most bears would probably coming
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: in and out of the park. Yes, so at some
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: point in your life. Yeah, And so after all those
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: bears have been removed from from a system in the
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: early seventies because of conflicts. Um. You know, there's really
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: no good estimates, and and there's some numbers out there
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: that that people you know, have a number of like
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: one thirty six. Well, I don't think we can get
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: it that exactly. And you're specialty is dynamics looking at
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: population down so you're probably extra cautious. I am extra cautious.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: So it's possible that there that there might have been
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: you know, around two hundred, maybe a little fewer than that.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: That's the probably, um at that time. So let let's
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: go back, you know, let' let's do this. Let's go
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: to the year of the year of listing. Now when
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: when people say listing just for listeners. When people say listening,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about is that the that they got
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: protection as a threatened species, not as an endangered species.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: But the grizzly bears in the lower forty eight we're
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: afforded protection under the Endangered Species Act, listed as threatened,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: so not listened as in endangered, but listening as threatened,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: like possible for them to become endangered. Exact way to
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: think about it. That happened in nineteen So at that point,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: how many we're in what's now the Greater Elstone ecosystem
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: and how many lower forty eight in total? So in
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: the great els in the ecosystem that probably would have
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: been around two hundred is our best estimate, our best
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: and it's it's pretty much a guess. But even uh,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: you know, based some of the earlier work, um, there
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: were just no really really solid numbers. But that's that's
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: a that's a pretty reasonable assumption. Um, you know, estimates
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: for any of the other ecosystems were pretty poor too
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: at the time. So it's it's basically, you know, some
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: big guesswork here and I'm just throwing out a number.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: It's it was probably fewer than a thousand at the time,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: So how were they counting him then? Like one six
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: were using models. Know that a lot of it was
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: just based on observational work identify know, so that the
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Craik has had done some works, you know, starting in
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the in the you know, through the fifties and sixties
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: and and so based on the animals that day had
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: marked and observations from from those studies, you know, there
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: were there were some indications of of what population size
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: might be. But but they didn't study all bears, you know,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: they studied primarily around the dump sides, so there were
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: probably a lot of outer bears that were never observed.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: So that's why some of the low numbers that that
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: I've heard, you know, we kind of wonder whether that's
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: really whether the population really was at low or whether
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of bears were actually missed in those um
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: kind of assessments. And and that's those were I would
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: call them, you know, kind of qualitative population assessments. At
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the time. Let's say we just knew, for whatever reason,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: we knew the two D was accurate. There was two.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Let's just say there was two. Can there be two
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: hundre for a long time or is that like a
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: number that just doesn't work? Oh, that that can be
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: two hundred for a long time, you know, And I
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: don't think it was actually necessarily that long anyway, because
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: we'll probably talk about this getting at like they said
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: with passenger pigeons, right, there had to be millions. If
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: you don't have millions, you wouldn't have any I mean,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: they really like just their whole system relied on there
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: being many. Yeah, and that's that's not really the case
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: with bare populations, you know. I'm there's some bare populations
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: in Europe, for example, that that for decades and now
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: existed in the in the range of a dozen or
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: so in the Pyrenees for example. Really it just like
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: how they mean, there are amazing animals. You know, they
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: can just hang on for for a long time, and
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: as long as you have a couple of females that's
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: still reproduce every now and then, it can actually you know,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: stay at that level unless there's additional threats. But they
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: can stay at that level for a long time. It's
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: it's of course not those those are not by any
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: means sustainable viable population levels in the long run, of course. Um.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: But there's there's populations in northern Italy and central Italy,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: um in in western Spain and the Pyrenees that are
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: all around that that size of somewhere between a dozen
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: for some populations to forty for others, to up to
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: maybe eighty or so for other populations. And and they
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: have been like that for probably decades, and and with
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: no foreseeable change in the future that that those populations
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: would get a whole lot bigger. So variations in those populations, um,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: that's been one concern for especially for the Pyrenees. So
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: they actually the cold quality, if I was just gonna
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: ask you any questions, so far, very good. So they
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: actually augmented the population and the Pyrenees with some bears
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: from Slovenia where there are very healthy populations. So and
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: it doesn't that's the other thing about genetics, and and
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: this is um I hope we get to talk about
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: that a little bit later on as well, But just
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: about the genetics of the Yelson population. There's a lot
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: of discussion about the genetics issues and and it it
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: is it is a potential concern for these really small populations,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: like if you only have a dozen animals or so. Yeah,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Yet genetics is obviously a concern, but it doesn't take
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: much to to reverse the effects of that. You know,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: so an augmentation of of moving some animals from with
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: another genetic background into a new area um is incredibly effective. Yeah,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: did you follow the debate. I don't want to get
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: this too off topic, but did you follow the debate
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: about the Florida panther? Yeah? Well I did some work,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: you know, like we're talking about dozens of animals in
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Florida and they're being a debate of of Okay, well
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: let's bring in something from the west, where we got
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: plenty of from Texas. Yeah, and then and people like, yeah,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: but this is the Florida p out there. We're gonna
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: sort of destroy, you know, genetic line. But then like, okay, sure,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: but you're just gonna lose the whole damn deal if
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: you don't mean I mean, like the choice to me, uh,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: seemed pretty pretty clear. You know, either you're bringing in
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: a risk the population that the only population you have
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: in the East, or you bring in eight Texas cougars
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: and introducing new genetics. And that's what they ended up doing,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: of course, and that population I'm convinced that's that was
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the saving grace for that population. Absolutely about the Texas cougars.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: There there were super cougars. Oh yeah, yeah, like yeah,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: the Livestock Interest in Florida they super coargar. No, at
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the time of Texas cougar. I don't think there was
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: a real concern at the time because because the cattle
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: depredations weren't real big deal at the time. They've in
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: recent years they've become somewhat of an issue. But um,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: it is amazing how how well that works. You know,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of the genetic defects um that that we're
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: obvious in the resident population, you know, kink tails and
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: something called crypt organism. We're only one test these the
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: sends in the in the mail, which is you know,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: definitely a sign that that these are not vigorous animals. Um,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: all that really was reversed and just the introduction of
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: eight Texas cougars did did the jobs they bring males
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: or females are both? I don't know what boats as
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: I recall, but I don't know exactly what what the
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: sex ratio was. And did they pull them from a area?
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Now we're seeing we're getting way off topic, but the
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: one last question, did they pull them from a wet area? No,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: not that I remember, um, a tough situation if you're
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: getting about a West Texas right, and also you're like,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: welcome to the Eppglades, buddy. Well true, but but I think, um,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: we we underestimate how well animals can five. You know, Um,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: it's the same we've we've seen that with with bears
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: to you know, you you reintroduce bears to new areas
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: and they tend to do very well, incredibly adaptable. I
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: got a friend who's working on a project where they're
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: looking at taking coyotes that live like let's say there's
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: a cod lives in an alpine environment, and when you
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: move them, where does he set up shop? Does he
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: travel long ways to find what he recognizes as you
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: know homecus you just go, well, I'm here now and
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: now I'm gonna figure this out, you know, displacement issues Sorright,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: So back to the main subject. Now, they got yes,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: a protection Right now we've got in your area, the
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: area under your under your review, under you know, where
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: you do your research. We've now got four times as many. Okay,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: let's talk about that number first, because a lot of
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: people like to say probably many more, or they like
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: to say probably less. Why is it hard to tell.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Why is it hard to tell us how many there are?
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: And how accurate do you think whatever the fashionable number
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: is right now? How accurate is the number? Yeah? So
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: that the estimates for two thousand and sixteen is six
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: d ninety bears. That's down a little bit from from
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: last year and from the year before that, but the
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: population has been pretty stable at pretty much the same
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: level since the early two thousand's. Now that number we
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: know is a likely and underestimate likely and under us Yes,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: And that's because the method that we use UM basically
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: has an underestimation bias building because you'd rather be wrong
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: that way than wrong. Well, it wasn't necessarily by design,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: it it just so happened, UM because of the type
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: of methodology that we use is based on looking at
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: unique females with cups of the year and and separating
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: sightings of those individuals out from UH from one family
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: group to another, and and some of the criteria they
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: were established early on. We're a distance criteria to separate
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: them out. So if they were if if you have
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: two observations of a female with two cups, you know
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: you don't know, um that whether they're the same animal
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: or not. And so to separate them out, they in
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: the beginning they use the distance rule that when they
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: established this this technique, they use the distance rule of
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: thirty kilometers. And so if they were more than thirty
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: kilometers apart, they had to be different females well as
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: the not even yeah not not even then yeah, um yeah, no,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: more like one point seven kilometers per mile, so say roughly,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: you know, twenty miles or so. And and so what's
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: what happened As the population grew in densities be came higher. Um,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: that that rule set wasn't necessarily as applicable anymore as
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: as it was in the beginning. So and so as
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: the population grew, that bias became stronger than underestimation bias.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: And so we may be underestimating by as much as
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: as forty right now based on you want to know
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: what I think you're off because this spring we glassed
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: up seven in a couple of days. And I'm like,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: how can we have seen such a significant percentage of
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: the bears just yeah, one drainage? No, absolutely, And of course,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: but it is like it's I can imagine, it's difficult. Yeah,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: we it is, And and so historically, you know, and
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: when they started developing this technique, Um, it was at
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: a time when when the population was in its first
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: stages of recovery. So there was a lot of reasons
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: to be conservative. Now that's that, you know, from a
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: biological standpoint, we've reached recovery. Um, we can it makes
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: sense to move to two a technique that that it's
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: just accurate, um, and doesn't have that built in underestimation.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: But when you check, so let's say you take the number,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: will tell me the number at six fifty six six
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: ninety four two six. But when you look at so
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: you got your method to use. Now when you when
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: you look at like hair trapping and genetics, does that
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: wind up giving you some other wildly off number or
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: does it sort of back up the figure under like
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: multiple ways to look at it, and if they sort
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: of line up and correlate. Well, so, um, yeah, a
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: couple of points there that so we we we have
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: not done a DNA sampling study for the entire ecosystem.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Um why is it expensive? And heart's you know we
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: calculated at the time. So what what what? Um? What
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Kate Candle did in the in the northern continental divide ecosystem.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Was it was it sampling that that really covered the
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: entire ecosystem with DNA sampling. That was a hugely expensive.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: It was a valuable information, but there was only one estimate,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: you know. It's it's an estimate for the population size
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: that's very reliable, very refined the understanding in that area.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: It's it refined the understanding of that area for two
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: thou four and that's what the estimate was for we
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: we decided in Stone not to do that. But I
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: got a question for you, what was the estimate before
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: that work, Kate Kendall, What was the estimate before that work?
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: And and and did that did that work make it go
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: up or down? You know, I'm not sure that there
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: was a truly a reliable estimate prior to that. It
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: was a question that was really kind of a benchmark number.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: And so that number has now been used by by Montana,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: fish wild and parks too based on the information they have.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: They can make population projections on what what level of
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: population growth that population has experienced, and you can lose
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the two thousand four number to kind of extrapolate into
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: the future, you know, where where the population might be now,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: So people liked that work and generally accepted that work. Yes,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: that number, yeah, we uh, and that I wasn't in
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Jailstone at the time, but but at the time that
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: the study team made the decision or discussed whether they
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: should be pursuing something like that. And can you can
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: you explain the process real quick what we're talking about. Yeah, So,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: what what that involves is basically setting up what we
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: call hair snare correl. So it's basically barbed wire. Um.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: That's that basically a single or two strands of barbed
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: wire that stretched around four corner trees. Um, it's a
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty small area. And you know by a
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: little fifteen by let's see, now I'm getting my metric
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: and english messed up because I'm trying to be So
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: it's about five five by five and and so I
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: wait with the lure in the middle, and the idea
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: is that the bear will be attracted to lure. It
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: goes typically under the barbed wire to to get to
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: the lure, so that the height of the barbed wire
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: is pretty critical. But it goes under the barbed wire,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: leaves a tuft of hair on the barbed wire. You
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: can collect that and if anyone who's ever walked along
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: barbed wire fence looking at the bottom strand or top
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: strand knows that there's a hell of a lot of
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: hair exactly. And so it's it's really it's a great technique.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: You know, it's non invasive, it doesn't affect They don't
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: even know what happened, They don't even know who do
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: you use to bring them in? Blood lure typically mix
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: and in some cases people have mixed it up with
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: fish remains and and and stuff like that. So it's
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty stinky, stinking mess. And that's that's the
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: whole point of course. So it attracts uh, just by
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: stand it attracts grusy bears from you catch some of
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: his hair, Yeah, so we get the hair, the roots
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: of the hairs have DNA in him, and that's that's sufficient.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: If if you get you know, five the ten hairs,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: typically that's sufficient to actually get a DNA DNA sample
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: and and get a basically a DNA fingerprint of that individual.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: And then the ideas that that you don't can calculate
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: not only the the number of unique individuals that have visited,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: but you can also do what we call capture recapture
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: analysis where you catch that individual visual ones and then
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: how many times do you catch it in in in
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: future sampling periods, and that will tell you how how
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: effective you are at detecting them. Yeah, Like if you
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: catch every bear's hair twenty times, you'd probably get the
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: feeling that you're catching most bears. But if you have
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of bears you only caught your hair wants,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: the assumption is probably you're missing some exactly. Yeah, And
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: that's and and the techniques are the statistical techniques are
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: based on estimating the proportion you're not you're you're you're
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: not sampling essentially. Yeah, that's that's the that's the hard part,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: that's right. And so um, the DNA sampling is has
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: really been great for a lot of wildlife populations and
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: that that was actually invented by by some of my
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: colleagues in Canada working on brown Bear. So that's really there.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: The the original idea came from for this DNA sampling,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: and they decided against wildlife management. So why decide against it?
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, well, I don't care. I mean I'm not
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: saying like that, like I think it was the wrong decision,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: but like what was the argument. That's uh, you know,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of discussion within the study team
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: on that, and we calculated to do something similar to
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: what was done in the Northern Contental Divide. It would
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: cost probably close to eleven million dollars um and would
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: own a lot that's at Yeah, I mean that's that's
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: for your agency. That way, beyond any any budgets that
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: that we could deal with. It would require something like, um,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: you know, some sort of congressional um funding source to
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: to really make that happen. And that's that's like like
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: what they did in the Northern Condental Divide, And uh,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: that's I just don't see that as a as a
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: reasonable way to move forward. Um. So the costs was
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: was a major issue. The logistics of covering such a
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: large ecosystem were a major Asian because the area here, No,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: just as we talked about this, so any part of this,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: I'm wrong, Grizzly Bears and the Lower Ford the are
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: divided into six distinct population segments, Yeah, of which five
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: half bears one exactly. Yeah, yeah, one of these distinct populations.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: So you have Northern Cascades. Yeah, we got Northern Cascades
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: has some small number bears or not, who knows how many,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: probably fewer than maybe fewer than six. But that's that's
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: they're flirting with the border in BC exactly. And then
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: you have um east central Idaho. Sel Kirk's referring to
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: is that No, I guess are you talking about half?
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: What's the one that the Bitter Selway is not does
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: not have the correct but it's regarded as a potential location. Yeah,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: and there were um uh reintroduction plans back in the
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: early to late nineties, early two thousands that eventually we're
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: not implemented, um, but they're gonna wind up there. Well,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: things are, I mean, things are looking as good now
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: as as they have in a long time for for
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: bears to actually get there, um, but the reality is
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: that it's it's gonna take quite a bit of time. Uh.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: And the first bears that would get there are probably
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: gonna be males only, and so for for females to actually,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: you know, actually make it down there, that's it's it's
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: still probably gonna need some uh management and that so
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: that means translocating animals. And then that's for the so
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: seeable future. I don't see that happened in the ecosystem.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: So there's one distinct populations segment in Washington when we're
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: just talking about that does not have bears is Idaho
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Montana Northern Continental Divide yep IS, which is by all
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: means a healthy population. Bob, that's Bob Marshall scapegoat Glacier
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: National Park is really kind of the core for for
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: that area. And then the Greater yelso On ecosystem Idaho, Montana, Wyoming.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: And then we have Cabinet Jack ecosystem which also has bears,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: which also has bears. About forty is the best. That's
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: extreme Northwest Montana and Idaho, Idaho pay Ana, Extreme Northwest Montana. Yeah,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: and you know there's reachers, fishing models. Sers are doing
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of research there and they have a good
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: handle on on the population UM and some recent DNA
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: work there confirmed that that that population is around forty
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: or so animals. So when you were looking at doing
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the hair trapping count, was it just that your area
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: was so much bigger than the north Is it bigger
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: than the Northern Continental to wide area? Um? You know,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: it's that currently the distribution is is a little bit
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: more I think UM it's it's also I think parts
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: of it are are more inaccessible. There's there's probably I mean,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: I know we have the Bob Marshall Wilderness in northern
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Continental the Vibe, but we've there's a lot of wilderness
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: areas on the eastern portion of of Yellowstone, So, uh cossibility.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: The logistics is a big part of it. Um. The
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: The other issue that that led the team to decide
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: against it was that that it only gives you a
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: single estimate, you know, it just gives you an estimate
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: for one year. And the feeling was is that what
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: the team was already doing was was actually sufficient to
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: keep track off of the population. What do they call
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: the system you do use? Well, the so that the
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: one method that we rely on primarily is something that
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: we referred to as the chowd To method. It's it's
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: basically it's bay on those sides, chow too. It's a
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: it's the the chow refers to the researchers, the statistication
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: that who's who, whose techniques are behind some of these
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: the statistical techniques that we use, And so that technique
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: is based on on identifying unique females with cubs UM.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: Then we have another one that's that we developed UM
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: to address the issue with an underestimation bias, and that's
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: what we call a mark Reside technique where we're actually
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: doing aerial basically systematic aerial surveys twice a year for
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: all the areas in the ecosystem and and try to
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: observe females with cubs. Again, is still based on females
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: with cubs. What's a good time a year to do that?
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: That's basically summer UM meant to mintilate summers when when
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: we do those surveys that got hit and miss and
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: it is and so that technique is bay based on
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: observing females with with radio colors and and it is
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: a little bit mitten hidden miss and so that the
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: problem is that on an annual basis, are sample sizes
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: are not really large and so the estimate is more
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: accurate UM, so it's it's more on target, but it's
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: not very precise, so you can have a confidence interval
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: it's way bigger than than any manager would want to use.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: So it makes it really difficult to look at a
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: trend detection over time. And that's that's what that child
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: to estimator that does a better job. And so for
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: the time being, we're sticking with that child to estimated,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: but we're still exploring ways to No one would say
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: that you potentially know about every female with cups, Like
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: if I went out and saw a female with cups, someone,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: oh no, Okay, So no one's gonna say like, oh, yeah,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: we know about a lot of them because they're very
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: you know, they people reporting to us. You know, we
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: have a lot of agency people out there. We observe
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: from our from our aerial surveys, so we do get
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: sightings off of the vast majority, I think, but we
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: we do use a statistical estimator to again estimate how
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: many we have not observed, but that that proportion is
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: is relatively small. We do observe a lot of them,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: but we miss We miss a lot too. So what
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: is the guess, like, what's the percentage that you guys
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: think you're missing? Well, if yeah, and that's that actually
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: matches with when we do that mark recite techniques again
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: that's still based on females with cubs um, the total
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: number would actually almost double from from what we typically
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: have with that that out technique that the child to
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: estimators so um, not not quite double, but but it
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: would put us in the range of of ninety two
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: uh females with cubs for this past year, for example.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: And if you extrapolate that out, you you easily come
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: come at a total population estimate well over a thousand
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: over over eleven under that actually, and so the real
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: estimate for the population is is certainly much higher than
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: what what our official estimate of six. So if you
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: absolutely had to say right under like this is the
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: imagine the most catastrophic thing that could happen to you
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: if you got the number wrong, okay, involving death and
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: injury and all every bad thing in the world, and
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: you had to say a number, what would you say
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: or just are you not comfortable saying because you just
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: don't know? Well, yeah, and we I would have to
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: still say that stick with the six nine and and
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: and with the caveat that that we know that that
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: is a suddenly by all means uh going to be
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: an underestimate. I'm not trying to be leading here, but
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: you know, you know it's not less could you be
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: could is there a way you're wrong? And you have
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: too many there there's always uncertainty with with any of
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: these these type of data. Um, there is always yes,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: I think it's it's fair to say that there is
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: always a statistical probability that that is below six. But
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: that's not as strong as that it's above six exactly so,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: because everything else is is pointing at that. And and
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: this is the this is the difficult situation that we're in,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: you know, with with our science. We we have a
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: technique that that the managers still want to use and
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: and is being used in how we move forward with
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: the de listing, how the how the agencies move forward
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: with the de listing that is now UH language in
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: what it's called the conservation strategy, which will be the
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: guiding document after UH delisting if if that goes through.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: And and so the managers have chosen to to stick
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: with this conservative estimator. Um that does not keep us,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: of course from trying to them up with with a
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: better estimator in the future. And uh and and for me,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: you know, that's as a scientist, I we have to
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: we have to have that desire to do better than
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: what we have now. You can always read a journalist.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: You can always tell where a journalist stands on the
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: issues because if the journalists fails to fails to mention
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: the caveat that there's likely more, you know that they
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: have a vested interest in there being not that many.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: If the journalists mentions likely more, then you know where
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: they stand politically. Which is a funny. It's a trick
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: you can use sure now. And so the one thing
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: that's important with that too, you know, you know we
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: we we have that that number of six ninety, right,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: and then we have a confidence in all around that
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: that's a statistical estimate of how confident we are in
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: those numbers. So that number is is plus or minus
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: seventy five bears and some so some people will will
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: take that number and then say, so it's it's really
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: not six ninety, but it's six ninety minus seventy five,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: and that's that's not right. You know that that all
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: these estimates that it's the central tendency of the data
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: would lead us to to six ninety more than it
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: would lead us to the lower end of that or
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: the higher end. Now, the only added thing here is
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: that we know, we've demonstrated in the past with simulation
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: studies that that that six ninety is an underestimate, that
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: that most likely it's it's much closer to two, probably
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: over a thousand individuals, and and so I'm totally confident
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: saying that. But but it also makes it very confusing
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: to the public, of course, you know, because we we
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: have an official estimate of six ninety, but we we
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: at the same time we keep saying, well, we know
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: that's that's an underestimate and that kind of stuff. Yeah,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: they want to know how many bears. Yeah, and it's like, like,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: that's the first thing I ask you. And so it's
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: science is messy, you know, and uh and that that's uh,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: that that's frustrating for us as well. You know, we
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: we would like to have the perfect estimator, but you
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: know that just doesn't exist. What was your question, Um,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: I was just wondering you'd have to know some populations,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: like the park populations a lot better than I don't know.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: This is just my guess as someone who doesn't know,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: But would you know those park populations a lot better
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: than like the Madison populations and the centennial populations and
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: the Absorka No, not necessarily. Actually, that's that's one thing
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: that that I really like about how we've structured our
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: our research and our sampling. Um, there's really the effort
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: is pretty equal throughout the entire ecosystem. So it's pretty
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: well distributed. And it's not like that. We have a
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: much better handle on bare numbers for Yellstone National Park.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: And in fact, we when we're asked, you know, we
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: were often are asking you what is their actual population
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: estimate for Yellowstone or for Dish National Fourth. So we
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: we don't provide those because we actually don't have those.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: We have them truly as as a as an ecosystem number.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: And uh, and that's because these these animals, you know,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: they cross boundaries all the time, and so you can't
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: there there is really no such thing as as strictly
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: Yellstone National Park population. You know, they a lot of
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: those bears do cross the boundaries. You mentioned earlier that
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: the drop you've seen in the last couple of years
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: is that just part of a normal rise and fall
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: or is that is that linked to some occurrence or yeah,
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: So for you know, and and and you know, additional
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: years of data will will will tell us. But um,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: you know, so some people have have argued that since um,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: you know two years ago was seven fifty seven, last
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: last year was seven seventeen and now it's six ninety.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: And some people would argue that we're in the decline,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: but we don't look at at at trends and grizzly
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: bear populations over short time periods like that. You really
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: have to look at it over a long the time piece.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, they can live up to thirty years. You know,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: their generation time is um close to fourteen years now,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: So to look at it on a on a three
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: year time frame is potentially dangerous because you can kind
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: of overreact. So you have to really look at a
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: longer time frame. If you look at at the variation
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: of that estimate since the early two thousand's um, this
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: still fits within that that that realm of variation that
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: we have observed in the past, and by all means,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: all the all the data are are indicating that that
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: the population has has basically remained pretty constant since the
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: early two thousand's after after several decades of increase. What
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: were the what factors this is the north You can't
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: answer in a definitive way, but what factors allowed there
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: in nineties that have two nine to having you know
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: the six nine? Like, what factors are are are most
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Is it most safe to say like thanks to blank measure,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: the bears were able to increase or do you think
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: that would have happened outside of federal influence or did
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: it have to do with ESA protections or or if
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: you can't answer in that way, how would you answer
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: that question? Well, I think, um, I think E s
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: A protections have helped a lot. Yeah, um it led
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: to UM. Well, so there's a number of factors. I
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: think the fact that there was an independent study team
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: that collected all the data and had all the information
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: to to give managers that you know, good scientific data
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: to make decisions on the then like that in and
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: of itself is helpful, is very helpful. I think. Yeah.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Then the establishment of the inter Agency Greasy to be
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: a committee, which is a policy group that is informed
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: by our science. They make decisions based on our science
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: UM that was established in the early nineteen eighties and
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: they these were this committee still exists, UM deals with
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: all the local forty eight populations. But they exist of
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: high lanking, high ranking officials and they are the type
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: of people that can make changes on the ground. You know,
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: they can direct a national force or a national park
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: to do this and that to help gristly bear conservation.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: And that's actually exactly what happened. Would be an example
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: of something they would ask, Yeah, good example. So that
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: the one thing that the study team identified at the
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: time was that that adult female survival, which is the
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: driving engine of of any bear population um was too low.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: How did you define an adult female breeding age? Yes,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: like there's actually viable and sexually mature um typically at
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: starting at four or five years. And really yeah, so
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: you know, they have relatively low reproduction because of first
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: of all, that there's a three year reproductive cycle, and
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: and they don't produce their first leader of cubs typically
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: on average around age five point eight. Actually, so meanwhile,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: wait till deer were cranked out eight Yeah, so that
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: that's that that's there's a big difference there when black
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: bears are only two years, right, that's correct. Yeah, yeah,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: so that's why black bear populations can when their numbers
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: are down, they can recover from from that quicker than
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: than grizzly bear population. That's that's just pure demographic differences.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: So you identify the importance of those breeding age females, right,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: and and because the mortality of those was was really
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: um too high for for sustainable levels. So what was
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: causing the mortality? Well, um, in those early days, some
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: of it was poaching um that that was in conflicts
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: with with live stock. So one of the things that
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: the Interagent Greasy Bear Committee did was to start closing
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: down livestock allotments within the recovery zone and uh and
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: start to deal with bears accessing garbage you know, so
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: bear proof dumpsters, baarproof garbage cans. All that started in
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: in those early days. The limit conflict, to limit conflict,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: and and I think those are the type of actions forcers. UM.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: You know, put a lot of effort into closing roads
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: because we know that that road access typically means lower
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: survival of of grizzly bears. Um. That's that's that's just
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: a given like road creates a higher likelihood that that
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: bear is gonna wind up mixing it up exactly the
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: person and the bear is gonna be the one that
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: ends up dead. Yeah, and so it's not necessarily a
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: road kill situation, but it's it's just access into grizzly
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: bear habitat by humans tends to reduce survival because of poaching.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Higher likelihood of poaching or conflicts and things like that.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: So UM, closing down roads, UM and reducing road densities
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: was was another big aspect of this. So all those
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: actions combined, UM, you know, there's no hard data to
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: show a direct cause and effect here, but there's no
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: doubt in my mind that all those actions really made
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: a difference. And that's what helped start to recovery of
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: the population, which interestingly, after after listing in, the population
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: still kept declining because some of those actions had not
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: implemented been implemented at that time, didn't really start until
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: the early eighties, mid eighties that they started to implement
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: those and sure enough, you know, we saw the populations
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: started to pick back up in the mid eighties, late eighties,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: and then started increasing through the very rigorous growth through
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: the nineties, and then started leveling off in the early
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: two thousand's, And some of our research recent research has
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: indicated that that might simply be UM a result of
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: of bears kind of reach, reaching social carrying capacity within
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: their own population. I don't want to ask about, but
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: just for a little background for people, So at the
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: time of listening, they didn't sketch out what recovery would
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: look like, if I understand right, Well, other than setting
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: some recovery criterion like a minimum of five hundred crazy
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: as for example, within the Yellstone ecosystem, or that at
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: the time, I thought it only came later once the
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: distinct population segments came into existence. Well, um, the numbers
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: have changed over time. Um, but what recovery might look
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: like has changed over time a little bit, you know.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: And the the the initial numbers um in the eighties, and
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: we're a little bit different than the lay. The one
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: was a revision and the supplement to the recovery plan,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: and that's where some of the the recovery criterion were
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: ultimately based on. So one was related to population size,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: one was related to sustainable motelity limits, and one was
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: one recovery criterion was related to occupancy of reproductive females,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: so not just females with cups and also females with
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: dealings or two year olds. And they've met the bears
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: in the Greater Yellstone have been at what's been defined
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: as recovery levels. They've been at that for a number
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: of years, right, yes, how long has that been? Basically
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: since the early two thousand's they had early two thousands.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: They have been at at they've met all those criteria.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: And what was the first attempt that the US Fish
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: and Wildlife Service made were they first proposed the listing
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: was two thousand seven, That's that's correct. Yes, So that time, um,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: when they did their findings, when people sort of reviewed
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: all the available data, some some suggested that they had
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: not accounted for I think it was two things at
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: the time. One was cut throat trout and then the
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: white park pine. Academic hadn't happened yet, right or was
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: it going on? It was going on going on. Yeah,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: so that was actually the bigger one, the white buck pine.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: They change, you know, changing the food resources in general,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: but especially white buck pine. Let's touch on the trout thing,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: because that always, to me has felt a little bit
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: like bs it like that cannot have been enough of
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: a rest source to be what was what was propping
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: up grizzly bears and the lower forty eight was eating
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: spawning cut throats. I'll never accept that that could have been.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: I don't disagree. I think you're here at an actually point.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: People love that story so much, but it's like it's
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: just it's not if you look not like salmon runs
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: on the Pacific Coast. No, it's it's not at all, um,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: I mean it's and and so in two thousand and
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: thirteen we did we did this big comprehensive project. We
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: called it the Food Synthesis Report. And that was in
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: in response to the Ninth Circuit cord ruling, which is
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: a pellet cord um that that indeed brought up that
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: argument that the fish and wild lust servers had not
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: adequately considered the effects of climate change and especially white
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: back pine as as a food source, and and and
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: and and and the effects of other changes are out
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: of food resources as well. So we we had a
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: very comprehensive look at that. And and I would agree
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: with you because uh, it's it's one of many good
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: resources that bears have access to. And and as we
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: as we found out, um it sure, it's it's it's
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: a resources that is high calorie, it's available to some bear,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: that is available to some bears at the time. The
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: estimate was that might have been around ten of the
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: population at the time might have actually been fewer if
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: if you know, depending on actually had access to the fish,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: that actually had access to the fish. That's right. So
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: it's one thing to keep in mind. It is we
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: we refer to it as a kind of a provincial resource.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: You know, it's only those bears residing near Yellstone Lake
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: that that historically took advantage of that resource. And it
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: was a month or so long every yeah, um and
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: and sure for those bears that had access to it,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: it's it's a great source of calories. People fall in
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: love with that story. I think it's because part of
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: the things like it's part of this uh, it's like
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: this thinking like this, Malcolm Gladwell I and thinking where
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: it's like you can always find these little surprise elements
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: that actually explain the whole planet, you know, like, oh,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: if you want to understand that, all and you do
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: is understand you know, these are trout and as we
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: we see with anything in nature, um and and certainly
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: with grizzly bears, it's not that simple. And and for
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: a species that you know, we've documented more than two
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: hundred and sixty different types of food that that grizzly
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: bears consume in in this ecosystem. I mean that's so
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: that's an astonishing number of rattle. Rattle if you are Nay,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: you name some of the more interesting Well, I mean,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: so did you know the certainly do you have the
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: high calorie ones like cuts, road trout, white bug, pine, army, crust, wore, mods,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: and ungulus. Right, that those are by all means, you know,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: those are valuable resources. But but they I think somehow
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: in in in the minds of some folks state they've
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: been constructed as essential resources that every bear has to
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: have access to those, and that's that's not true by
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: any means. Um, not all bears have access to those
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: four resources in every part of the ecosystem. It's it
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: varies depending on where you are. So what people forget
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: is that we have things like biscuit, rooten yampa um uh,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: while caraway. You know, it's an exotic species that bears
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: are consuming in tom minor basin. That's that's that's where
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: they're congregating. I mean, you see a hell of a
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: lot of them digging for various species of ground squirrels
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: and markets and whatnot. Yeah, so you've you've got that, um,
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: you know, small mammals. Um, they're they're eating algae. In
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: some cases they're eating mud. You know. That's uh, that
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: is kind of a totally unique situation, but like a mineral,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: like a mineral rich motor. Yeah, like in some of
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: the thermal areas they've the past week documented them eating,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: you know, consuming. This is just called geophagi um and
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: it's it's probably yeah, for searching for particular minerals. Is
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: this I was just wondering if it's true that the
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: tom minor basin um, like I've heard that it's the
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: largest uh like grouping of bears when they're going for
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: the wildcare away in the lower forty eight UM. Actually,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: I would say that army cutform moths is probably the
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: larger um grouping because some of those sites you know,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: can can have like twenty five bears at at one time.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: I've seen them tom minor a tom minor. It is
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: pretty amazing. I mean, that's that's a vegetative resource that
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: they're after, um, the roots of a wildcare away. And
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: then they're they're digging for some out of stuff while
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: Loretta too, but but that that seems to be the
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: driving food source they were looking for. And yeah, you
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: can you can see sometimes up to a dozen and
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: more bears there and in the evening, which is pretty remarkable.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: And you know that that's pretty small basin, and for
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: that many bears to show up in that one place, um,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: that leads you to believe that, yeah, there's there's maybe
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: a lot more bears in the system than we think
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: of the white The White Bark Pine issue did strike
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: just from personal observation, did strike me as a legitimate
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: concern when you because if you've spent any amount of
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: time on those ridge tops that are colde in White
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: Bark Pine, it's like you've never seen anything like it
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: when it comes to how many animals are when you
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: go from black bears, pine squirrels, grizzly bears. You know,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: Clark's not you know, Clark's not hatches. Uh, Stellar's grays, right, yeah,
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: Clark's snot crackers. I mean, it's just kind of amazing
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: who shows up in those places it is. I mean, yeah,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: when those trees started to die off. And also I hunted,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: I bow hunted elk a lot in White Bark pines,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: So I want up having like a view of it
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: as the same way if if you spend a lot
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: of time along the stream and you see bears eat
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: sam and you start to think that all bears eat salmon.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: I had in my head like, man, if this collapses, um,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: it was like, it's the death of these bears, but
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: against this very personal anecdotal thing. But and as it
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: turns out, it's it isn't. Um. So what are they
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: all like? So all those bears, like, what are they
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: doing instead? And that's the one of the questions that
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: we address with with that research back in two thousand
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: and thirteen, in in response to the and and by
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: the request of of the inter Agency Creasy Bear Committee.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: So one, you know a couple of things we looked
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: at that. First of all, white back pine did decline.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: You know, there's there's there's in some of our transsex
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: that we've been monitoring since the early two thousand's, we've
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: we've seen seventy of the adult mature trees dying. So
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: that's that's pretty substantial. That's pretty good. Nuts. You ever
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: eat that nut? Um? You know it's the collective and
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: rollsome it's a pain and he asked, but they're good man. Yeah,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: you can use them. I mean the humans can consumer.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: There's not a real market for it or anything. Yeah,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: it's yeah, And it's it's funny you see on the
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: when we capture grizzy bears during that time period. You know,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: they have their their hair on their paws, it's kind
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: of matted down and sticky from the from eating eating
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: the white buck pine. UM. So, one thing we found
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: was that that bears did respond and and use white
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: buck pine habitat last over the over the last decade,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: so basically the decade from the early two thousands to
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: the early you know, two thousand tens and uh so
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: there was a response um where initially they were really
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: selecting for those habitats that that selection just gradually went
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: down and now they're basically using it in proportion to availability.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: But they're still using it, and so it's still in
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: in in good white buck pine years, they're still taking
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: advantage of that resource. And even even though you know,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: have such we've had such high mortality of white buck pine,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: there's still a large number of viable, healthy trees out
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: there that that do produce for whatever reason, we're resistance.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: We don't know if they're if the resistance um. You know,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: there's a couple of factors. You know that the mortality
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: of white black pine was really primarily mountain pine beetle.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: There's a little bit of blister rust um and and
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: some trees may have natural resistance to that, um and
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: some may may not. But it's really mount pine bal
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: and also wildfire and have have something to do with it.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: So um, with mountain pine beetle I think some stands
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: eventually just weren't weren't reached by mountain pine deals. So um,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: not necessarily that they were resistant to it. They got
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: they got lucky basically, yeah, and so um. You know bears,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: we're used to assist them of you know, even before this,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: this this whole mount pine bal at pandemic, it was
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: still a annually very unpredictable resource. So in some years
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: it's you had a bumper crops. It's a masting species,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: which which means that the tree puts out throughout the ecosystem,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: just massive amounts of seeds in one year and almost
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: nothing the next year. I think it's got an oak
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: tree in their yard. It's like some users to yeah, yeah,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: and it's the strategy of the of the trees of course,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: to to to kind of uh make sure that they reproduce.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: And if you if you produce just a little bit
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: every year, all the squirrels and everybody else is gonna
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: eat all the seeds and you're not gonna not gonna
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: be able to reproduce. So the strategy of the tree
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: is too in one year just produce nothing and the
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: next year overproduced, so that you have small populations of
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: rodents that cannot hammered all the all the seeds. You know.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: It's it's pretty smart strategy, of course. But bears were
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: used to that, and that's that system has been in
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: existence for a long time. Of course. Um, you know,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: where you get a good crop maybe about every two
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: to three years, So a thirty year old bear has
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: seen a hell of a lot of years exactly. Yeah,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: we didn't start death. And so what we found was
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: that by by looking at um at body condition and
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: and and i'm body fat and and also consumption of
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: of animal resources. Um, what we found was in year
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: of poor white buck pine crops, they would simply eat
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: more animal matter. And and what what we're seeing is
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: that as the white bug pine as declined, they have
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: switched because it's a fall resource, you know, it's it's
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: the period of what we call hyper fagia where they're
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: just consuming calories. You know, something like twenty tho calories
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: a day, UM, and and so they just switching to
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: other alternative resources. And and ungulates are one of them
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: ungulates and that includes um, you know, ungulates left from
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: from hunter kills, piles and things like that, at which
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: they are incredibly efficient to locating those. Are they good
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: at um, like in the fall months when you don't
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: have you don't have young on the ground. Are they
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: very adept at killing adult ungulates in the fall months
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: when they're not depleted by bad weather? They're not there's
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: no young around during the ruts primarily, Yeah, so during
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: the bison rut and during the elk rut that bears
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: do take advantage of of um. You know, the injuries
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: that some of these animals I'm going to sustain during
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: the rut and so UM, that's when we kind of
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: see an uptick in the in in in the ungula use.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: So you're right though, and you know that what we
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: see in in in the spring, of course, is that
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: the cal elk having season that's black black bears and
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: and and grizzy bears will take advantage of that. UM.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: They're really pretty efficient predators on on elk casts. But
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty short season. You know, it's it's it
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: only last you know, it's really only the first ten
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: days of an elk calf that that a grizzly bear
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: has a reasonable chance of obtaining this around Memorial Day
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: into early June. It's good pick. Yeah, how many do
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: you have an idea of, like how many elk calves
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: one grizzly will eat in a season? Um? In a season? UM,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: I don't have any numbers right off, but I mean
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: it's you know, it could it's possible for a grizzly
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: bear or even a black bear population too, to affect
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: population growth of of elk populations based on you know,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: predation on on elk casts. It's it's um, there can
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: be an influence of that, and sometimes if it maybe
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: is an in combination with having other predators there. So
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked that question because what's really interesting
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: if if you look at the word range, you know,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: the elk population in Yellstone's northern Range has has changed
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: dramatically from I think at the peak it was somewhere
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: around seventeen twenty thousand and and that number has dropped. Uh,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: And of course there were a lot more wolves out there.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: A number of years ago. Then there right now, I
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: think um Yelstone Park now has has about about a
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: hundred bulls now, so it looks like we might be
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: reaching kind of some some sort of stable system where um,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: where you know, there's there's there was also maybe some
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: over harvests in terms of hunting of that population, so
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of cow hunts. Yeah, so that that number
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: has dropped. The wolf population and reintroduction wolves have certainly
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: have had something to do with that. Um. And then
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: as the grizzly bear population grew and and and especially
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: how they affected elk casts, you know, that probably has
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: has added to to that mix as well. And that's
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: that's probably what what let the elk population to do
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: what what it's done, and and drop in numbers and
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: and you know, maybe stabilizing a little bit now. And
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: imagine there's also the two large beers just them learning
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: how to deal with that predator. Yes, I mean like
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: right now, you haven't been you know, people haven't been
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: allowed to hunt Yellowstone for a hundred years. Right. If
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: you all of a stud open hunting and Yellowstone, you
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: can see a hellbot of elk get shot real quick.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: And then in about ten years, you're gonna find it
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: becomes real hard to shoot Elk and Yellowstone. Yeah, I mean,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: and then so elkaf also responded to to the presence
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: of wolves and bears everyway. Yeah, they just get used
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: to Yeah in the area days you know, they might
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: drop a calf out in the open, and now they're
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna be more enforce it areas and they're
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: gonna be hidden a little bit more because of the
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: pressures of of bears for example, and the bowls as well.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: So uh yeah, elk behaviors is changing because of that. Well,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: they how do you know how long they have actively
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: because they have haze bears, don't they every spring, like
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: in order to essentially get them to change their behavior
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: around people, because I mean, animals in the park are
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: still habituated, whether like people are walking up to them
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: or not. Yeah, but the typical unless bear is really
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: causing problems, that the typical response to that is not hazing. Um,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: that's really kind of used and as a last resort um.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: So in terms of the hazing, what you know, the
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: management agencies will will use that in some instances, but
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: but it's effectiveness is really kind of limited. And and
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: so what's what yells On Park, for example, has the
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: policy that they have adopted with with grizzy bears near roadsides,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: is that as long as as they're showing natural behavior
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: and they're they're not keying in on on human foods,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: they just let it be. And I think, um, there
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: was another really good management decision, I think is to
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: to to let that habituation just take place. And you
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: can do that in the National Park. Now that's that's
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: different in areas outside the National Park. You know, you
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: may not necessarily want want that type of habituation. So
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: we we make a distinct difference between food conditioning and habituation.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: And so if we're talking about habituated bears, typically hazing
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: is not an uh is not a tool that's needed
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: now for for food condition bears. It might be, and
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: eventually if that doesn't work, then then removal of that
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: individual is just really your only last choice. Over the
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: last twenty years, say how many, um, how many people
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: have been mauled killed by grizzly bears? Average is about
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: one or two a year, right, yeah, and in recent years,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: but you know, we we went a long time without
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: without any at all. Yeah. Um, well Malling's so let's
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: just say death fatalities. Um yeah, in recent years we've
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: we've average close to at least one a year. Yeah. Um.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: But like I said that, there was a time period
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: where there really weren't any, um much at all. So
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: it's kind of you know, you you you're dealing with
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: such small sample size. It's always kind of hard to
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: to put a specific number on it. Butily acute psychological
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: feel it is. It's like everyone talking about it always
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: likes to point out, um, oh you know they do.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: They always go to like what they compared to you
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: dying by falling off a ladder. They compared it to
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: dying by getting stung by a bee. You just like
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: go to the same way you want to make something
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: seems small in Land Mass you compared to Rhode Island. Yeah, right,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: or like if you want to seem big like Texas,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: it's like two Texas is um. But but I think
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: that the other thing that plays into it, and I
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: thought about in the past, it's like it's a psychological fear,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: and it's like when people look at what are the
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: odds it's gonna happen to you? They're sort of looking
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: at the human population in the g y e or wherever,
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: most of whom don't engage in high risk activities. But
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: when you get down to the individuals who engage in
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: very high risk activities such as it winds up being
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: that you know someone or your buddy knows someone who
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: got scratched up by a bear, and it starts to
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: feel very different. So in one hand, people are telling
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: you like, oh, you've got more chance of getting killed
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: by a cat, a house cat, you know, but they're
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: hare like, well, you know, I have to know a
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: lot of people who have been who mixed, who've been
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: scratched up or run over by bears, because I belong
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: to the high risk segments, like talking about verneural diseases
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: with people who are who go who hang out in
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: brothels all the time, like they have a very different
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: view of careneerally uses the people in the monastery. Yeah,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: you know. So it's like it really is like I
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: don't like the t That's an interesting analogy, but yeah,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: well I don't like the tribualized I find myself and
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: sometimes I'm pointing out, you're not gonna get maulled by
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: a bear. Then sometimes I'm want to point out, like
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: man I should do you know a lot of people
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: who have been charged by bears or run over by
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: absolutely a lot of people. Yeah, the context is everything there,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: you know. No, you yourself, I mean, have you had
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: some run ins? Uh? No? No, but you know, as
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: I indicated in the in the in the bear spray
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: and we had the discussion about you know, use of
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: bear spray versus firearms. Uh. In our work, we try
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: to do everything we can to to avoid encounters, and
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: we can do things that hunt hunter doesn't have the
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: luxury you're doing, you know, like shouting and and and
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: and things like that as a prophylactic really like preventative
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: preventative measure. Yeah, like shouting before it's before you're actually
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: shouting at the making our presence known basically, and you know,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: as as a as a hunt or you don't have
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: those options, you know, that's it's just hard to exercise it.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: Well yeah, but strategically no, yeah, So have you have
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: you have you you've cut loose on with pepper sprouted
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: bear though, right? Or no? No, I have people on
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: our team have yeah around for you know, for example,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: when sometimes in trapping situations you're you're working up a
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: bear and out of bears are you know, inevitably hanging
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: around might be attracted to that and come in, what
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: do you mean hand around like, because we're you know,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: in in our traps we use we use baits, and
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: so there is that attracting. There's there's also any time,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: you know, I think there's there's a lot more social
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: interactions among bears than we realize, and and so just
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: having a bear in a trap and and and being
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: handled might actually attract out of animals as well. So,
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: um so we've had situations where where I field pushing
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: all have had to use empty a number of of
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: bear spray cans on on bears that were getting too close. Now,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: my brother is a researcher in Alaska and he works
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: for a federal agency in Alaska, and they he used
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: to work for university and there the policy there was,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: I believe you had to have you could you had
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: the option between leath and lethal or non lethal. Because
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: he spends a lot of time in aircraft, um he
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: tended to carry lethal because dealing with the pepper sprays
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: when you're flying on when you're flying on scheduled flights,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: so scheduled flights you can't have it, and then you
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: often land in a place where you're not gonna go
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: down to Walmart or whoever the hell sells bear spray,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: so you're on or if you're in a helicopter or
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: in your airplane and that thing cuts, lose your debt.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: So they taped to the outside that they taped to
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: the struts. Anyways, various complications has made it that he
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: would generally carry the lethal means, and what he carried
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: was that's probably the standards that he carried at eight
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: seventy with slugs. Now where he works, he's at a
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: federal agency now and it's they carry lethal and non lethal. Yes,
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: we do too, So everything he does, he's got to
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: have that. Yeah, you gotta go whatever you gotta go
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: through to get that spray there. It's funny because him
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: live in Alaska. He has boxes of spray. Because everyone
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: comes to Alaska to visit, they buy spray they can't
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: bring there, and so he it's like it looks like
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: this area is garage, you know, bear spray. So that's
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: what they do now is lethal and non lethal. And
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: you're obviously encouraged to exercise the non lethal first, even
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: though they're in the area where there's no serious talk
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: about there being any kind of shortage of bears. I mean,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: they occupy nineties percent of their historic range in the
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: state of Alaska, and here they occupy what five or
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: six percent of their historic Yeah, so it's pretty low.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: But yeah, we we carry boats too, and uh and
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: and like you said, you know, first lethal option, what's
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: the lethal thing? You guys carry handguns or uh carry handguns? Um,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: but we also, um, you know, carry shotguns and seventies.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: How do you tote your spray? Like? Are you really
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: good about just keeping it right handy? Yes? Yeah, you
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: like to do personally where well, um, you know it's
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: I have if you're asking about like like like, actually,
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: how do you handle your bear spray? Um? I typically
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: have it just on my belt. Yeah, but um, you know,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: when I'm hunting, I actually prefer to have the chests
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: the chest halter, you know, where it's on your chest.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: You won't actually have to take it out. You're just
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: shooting straight, which which I prefer that you can. You
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: can get them at any place, you know that it's
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: just espasically, you know, the the same system. But but it's
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: just a chest holding well maybe his holster couldn't fit,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: you know, like on the so you but you attach
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: it to your backpack strapping. No, I just I haven't.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: I put that on first and then I put my
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: backpack over it. So you you always have it on you,
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: not from the hip. Even if you check your back off,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: you still have the bear spray on you. And that's
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: that's one thing what I like about. Have you been
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: injured by bear spray? No, I've seen to, like not
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: not serious, pretty, but we're getting ready to go bear hunting.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: One hunting black bears, and my brother had his pack
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: laid out and he stepped down the bust of the
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: nozzle holds everything down with bear spray that I got.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: I got pickpocketed going through a thicket and BC and
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: holds myself down. It's not awful, but it's not good.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: Your pack is done. Yeah, you gotta replace your pack.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: I got a friend up in Alaska that had it
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: cut loose in her car and it total her car.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: There's nothing you can do. It just got punctured every Yeah,
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: everything in the car. There's no we've had I know
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: that that. There's been instances with without a federal agencies
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: where people left it on the front dash, you know,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: and the sun burst and the heat. Do you is
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: it true. There's a rumor that floats around and maybe
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: you know, is it true that a woman, a tourist,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: I think it was a Yellowstone, bought some spray and
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: sprayed it on her kid as those mosquito repelling I
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: have not heard that one. I've heard people. You have
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: heard people spraying it around their tent. Yeah a repellent, Yeah,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: as a repellent. You know, that's a rough night sleep.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: So if you, let's say the goal, let's say you
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: weren't dealing with a with a population that um let's
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: say grizzly bears are white tailed deer. Okay, No one's
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: talking about there not being enough of them. There's just
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: no question about their stability. And your thing was that
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: you were just going to protect yourself from bears, and
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: you could pick the lethal or not leath. You could
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: pick shotguns with slugs or hang on, or you can
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: pick pepper spray, and nothing to do with the preserving
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: the animal or helping the animal out, just had to
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: do with your personal safety. Based on the people you've
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: conversed with in your own personal experiences, what what would
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: you pick? I would pick bear spray, Yeah, because I
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: think you know that the the key thing about bear
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: spray is you can be really poor at aiming and
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: still have a good chance of of deterring a bear.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: And whereas with with a firearm, you really have to
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: keep your composure and and hit that animal because if
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: if you don't, you know, it's it's too late. And
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: so with with bear spray, you you increase those chances.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: And and and the research you know that has shown that well,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: I think I think it's shown in a pretty in
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: a pretty convincing way when you look at when they
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: do it. But then again, you're dealing with such small
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: sample sizes that it's hard to get real excited about it.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: And then people like to point out like you'll hear
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: a guy's sprayed a bear with bear spray and it's
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: still scratched them up. But there's a help about of
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: people that shot guns at grizzlies and shot their body. Yeah,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: and people don't talk about that nearly as much as
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: they talk about the speller spraying a bear is still
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: getting scratched. It's like people like one story more than
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: the other story. Yeah, I think there's a thing that
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: there's like a thing like if you're a badass a gun,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's just sort of this
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: feeling there's there's a maybe a bit of a macho
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: thing there, you know, when when in reality, um, I
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: would I would feel a lot safer with bear spray alone.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: You know. For for me, I think just because that's
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: so much time I spent outdoors. That spen so much
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: time I spending grizzly hunt. I'm actually hunting. I'm actively hunting.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: I'm quite often carrying both anyway, you know, not counting
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: bow I mean bo is you know, I mean if
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: you got if you have time to shoot a bear
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: with a bow, he wasn't a threat, that's right, Yeah,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: or you're war in the hell of a Yeah, are
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: you're real good? Yeah, you're a long bow hunter. Maybe
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: get have time to get a shot off. So what
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: do you think, like, what what's the future hold? I mean,
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: do you think we're there? Like do you think that
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: this is about the proud number of bears we could
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: hope to have and you know, barring some huge change,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: some huge societal shift that welcome bears into areas where
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: they had a high risk of conflict. Exactly, we're probably
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: about where we're gonna be. Yeah, I think, um, you know,
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: all the all the data that we have, and and
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: we actually, you know, we talked about two ways of
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: estimating population. We have several lot of ways of of
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: doing that. We look at a lot of other things,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: and we never look at one single data data set
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: um to to to draw our conclusions. You know, all
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: our conclusions are based on looking at a number of
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: data sets and a number of different types of of
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: indicators and you put all that together, Uh that the
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: indication is that this population is at a level where
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: you know, within the core of the area. We we
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: we we just can't have much higher numbers than what
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: we have. We're seeing these what we're called density dependent
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: effects where uh, this kind of this internal population regulations
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: starting to take place. So the only potential for this
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: population to grow would be to expand, to keep expanding,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: and for people to allow that. And and that's that's
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: so that gets exactly what you were mentioning. As as
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: long as people were tolerant and and and able to accommodate,
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: then uh, there could still be growth. But then you
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: have to deal with the realities of bear showing up
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: in people's backyards. Um. You know generally most of us,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: um would would not find that acceptable. And yes, the
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: thing I brought up and something I wrote once where um,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: you know, these bear is historically occupied a range you
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: might think of from where the Missouri River hooks south
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: that westward to the Pacific coast. And when when the
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: question of delisting in the Greater Yellostone ecosystem comes up,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: people will point out like, well, they're not recovered across
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: their entire range, and I point out, well, Golden Gate
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: Park is in a very different situation than ye also
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: the National Park, so when we're talking about range wide recovery,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: that would include San Francisco and Los Angeles exactly. Yeah.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: So it's a it's tricky. It's like you wind up
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: getting stuck in these um I think a lot of
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: people get stuck in these these utopian views, and it's
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: these ideologies of of you know, you know, we need
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: to have grizzly bears everywhere there's suitable habitat well there
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: maybe pockets of suitable habitat that and then elsewhere in
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: the West, but they're not large enough. I mean, look
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: at you can look at Yellstone. It's a huge area.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: Now it's we now have bears occupying more than fifty
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: eight thousand square kilometers. But very personally, I would like
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: to see, very personally, I would probably draw like if
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: you if you mapped, if you were able to put
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: people's perceptions of suitable habitat on like a number line
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: or some sort, I would probably put it. I would
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: probably declare more areas suitable than than you're average American
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: because generally like wanting more bears mount Like I look
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: at the Northern Cascades thing, and and I know there's
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: varying views. And I look at the Northern Cascades area
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: in the state where I live, and I'm like, yeah,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: like I get it. There's there's conflict. But in my mind,
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: if if I was like king of the world, right,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, let's go for it. And I would
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: There's a handful of places where I would say let's
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: go for it. But I think that in other places
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: really hard like Wyoming holds more of the bears than
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: anybody else of the g y E. And I think
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: that when the powers to be in Wyoming look at
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: the map. I think they politically feel like they're kind
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: of filled up. You know, they've got them where they
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: can have them. Anywhere else is just gonna lead It's
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: gonna lead to a lot of conflict. Yeah. And then
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: we're seeing that, you know, the range expansion that we've seen,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: and we've seen continued range expansion even with the population
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: level in the core kind of leveling out. Um. But
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: we're seeing more conflicts specifically in those areas. So we're
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: getting more lifestyle conflicts there. Like this year, we we
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: had a number of bears um. You know that we're
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: just killed through accidental in accidental type situations like um
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: in one area misidentification with black bear hunters mean no
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: in um in in in uh where they're encountering new
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: dangerous situations. So in this case it was irrigation canal.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: We had three bears drowned in the irrigation canal that um.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: It's some of these canals and this is in the
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: in Wyoming, so east of Cody, so well outside what
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: we would call you know, typical suitable habitat um and
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: and these irrigation canals are pretty large, really heavy high
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: flow to it, and like sea walls, so steep concrete banks,
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: and so bears got into it, probably because they were
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: on auto. Animals in there that that they were, you know,
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: ungulus or cattle that they were trying to go after
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: made it in there and then got sucked by the
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: current and couldn't you know, because the walls are are concrete,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: couldn't get out three of them and three of them.
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: And I think it's an indication of the type of
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: situations that we can expect more as their range keeps expanding.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: And it's also an example of of of that we
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: should expect higher mortality rays in those areas. And that's
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: that's why we make a distinction between this this central area,
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: the core area where where we have a suitable habitat
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: which we refer to as the demographic monitoring area, and
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: areas outside, you know, more we can expect a lot
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: more mortalities outside of that core area of habitat um
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: simply because there's more situations where bears can get into trouble,
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: even accidental deaths like that, or cattle predations and things
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: like that. So, do you think it's possible that in
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: fifty years, is it plausible or possible? I guess I
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: mean mostly the same thing that in fifty years we
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: could have a situation much like we have now that
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: we have six grizzly bears that live in this area,
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: and it just kind of bend that way. Yeah, I
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: think that's I think that's that's very doesn't have to
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: be moving in these wild oscillations. No, No, I mean
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: there will be some oscillations, you know, as you as
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: you can expect that for a population that's that's kind
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: of you know, occupied most of the suitable habitat. Um.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: There will be years that that the population will kind
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: of dip down. It will be years that it will
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: it will be hired and where we are now, um,
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: but with proper management, you know, scientifically based informed management,
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: I'm convinced that that this population can be maintained at
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: this level for the foreseeable future. Do you feel that, um,
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: Do you feel that we're culturally doing a good job
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: of of scientific management management from your perspective, or do
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: you feel that there's a lot of pressure, um, political
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: and social pressure to sort of tell people certain things
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: that they want to hear, or do you feel like
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: there's freedom to do your work in the way that
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: you guys see fit In terms of our our work,
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: I feel like we we are allowed to be completely
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: independent and and I've strongly feel that two managers take
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: what we say seriously. Um. They they do not question
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: our our findings. Stay. I think we we have a
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: lot of credibility with two managers and and the public
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: at large about our data. And there's certainly individuals and
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: groups that's that that are critical of our work. Um,
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: that's gonna happen with with anything, uh you're doing with
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: dealing with an iconic species as as greasy bears and yellstone.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: But you don't feel that someone says, you tell me
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: what I need to hear. I'll find some of those
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: that I would that would not I would not be
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: in this position if if if that were the case,
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: that would Yeah, that that would not be acceptable for
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: me because as as a scientist, I need to be
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: able to be completely independent of of any sort of
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: political influence, and I would I would I would not
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: accept that at all, um, and I would certainly let
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: that be known. So Yeah, it's it's it's nice to
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: be working in a situation where you are working with
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: with the with the managers and the management agencies, but
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: not UM. But we're not getting directors as other than
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: hey investigate this particular thing because we we need more
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: information on this to make decisions UH. And then and
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: when we come back with with that information, that that
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: information is seriously considered. And that's that's actually the for
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: me as a researcher, the gratification of of working here.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: You know, a lot of times as researchers, we we
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: kind of we work in isolation from from managers and UM.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: And that's certainly I would be the first to admit
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: that was the case when I was working with Black
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: Bears and so working with with this study team and
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: working with with with the inter agency Greasy Beer Committee
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: and the managers on that committee and the subcommittees of
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: that UM, it's been really satisfying because for the first
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: time in my career, I actually feel like the people
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: that that can make changes on the ground in terms
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: of management and managing the population are actually listening to
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: the scientific findings, which I think that's ideal set up
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: for for doing good management. And you've been at this
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: how long I've been at this UH for over twenty
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: five years now. It's almost almost just in the last
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: deck or when did you start? Basically the last five
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: years five years you feel like it's finally happening this yeah, yeah,
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: where where because of the because of the system that
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: it was set up, you know, with with the study
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: team doing independent research, that research being um formative for
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: the decision makers on the interagency greasy Beer committee who
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: are able to implement it in in in the real world.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: You know, that system was set up for for that reason.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: And uh, you know, there's really not many species or
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: populations where I can think of where where it's so structured.
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: You know, it's by design, it was, it was done
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: that way. And in most other cases, you know, research
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: is kind of like I said, they you know, we
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: kind of tend to work in isolation from from a
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: lot of managers. Not always, but this, the way it
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: was set up was was really ideal situation. What's the
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: next bear you're gonna work on? This will be the
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: last bear? I'll probably know what are you do? Just
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: stick around? Oh yeah, absolutely, So you're into it now?
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, you know this, I mean if you
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: look at as far as sort of what has the
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: what sort of captured the popular imagination, you're there? Yeah,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: it's got man. You know, there's not a lot of
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: bear jobs in the world, and for the bear scientists
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: like mock me to work, um, you know, grizzly bears
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: and yels, and that's kind of the epitome of of
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: what what I could have ever hoped for. So uh,
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: there's every reason for me to stay here until every time.
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: That's my intention. Anything you want to add, well, yeah,
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: it's like we're always like all you guys do, all
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: of the biologists and scientists that we talk with, you
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: guys do such a good job of saying that, like,
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm in it for the research, but obviously,
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: like you love the bears, right, oh, absolutely love them.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: So but I know that your goal is the first
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: and foremost to get good research and not let the emotions,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: you know, muddy the waters. Um, So, like, is it
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: a success now where it is? And if in fifty
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: years were at the same level, would you consider a
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: success or do you not even like rate what you
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: do that way because you just you can't look at
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: it in success and failure from a personal staying a point. Um, No,
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: I think I I still look at it from a
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: biological standpoint, And so uh, regardless of of what the
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: legal satus of the population is now versus the future,
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: in your fifty years from now, if we're if we
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: are still at this at this level fifty years from now,
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: I would still I would say that that is a
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: total success. That would that would be an incredible success, if, if,
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: if that can be done. Um, because really, we we
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: have reached biological recovery in my opinion, and that's that's
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: just based on scientific data and and nothing else. So
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: regardless of of whether um, you know, the listing happens
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: or not, it's it's the The biological fact is that
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: every everything indicates that we have biologically recovered population of
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: gristly bears in Yelstone. I guess that's kind of follow up.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: It might take too much time, but what's just can
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: you hear us like the latest on delisting and like
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: where it's well probably let me let me quick point
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: out what that means. So, um, the US Wish and
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: Wildife Service has for the second time proposed that grizzly
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: bears be delisted, that they that their federal protection under
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Act um, that that end and they
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: returned to what's called state management. Now but the states, however,
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: in the process of states, so we have to come
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: up with management plans that are acceptable to the FEDS,
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: and that that's part of the de listing process. So
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: when someone says de listing, what they mean is that
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: would be one of very few, would be one of
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: about two percent. I think of the species that make
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: it onto the Endangered Species List that are then taken
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: off because of recovery. Animals get taken off in various ways.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: Some have been removed from the s A protection because
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: they simply went extinct. Some have been removed from s
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: A protection because they figured out that didn't they didn't
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: belong there in the first place. Um, it is just
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: they were operating off poor data. Some have been removed
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: due to taxonomic lumping and splitting, where they had listed
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: a thing thinking it was, you know, its own subspecies,
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: and then realized that it's part of a of a
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: different population, or that they went and found other unknown
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: populations and realized that in fact the animals were not
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: as hard up. And then some number uh bald eagels
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: being one of them, have been removed just simply from
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: recovery regators. So so yeah, there's a proposal now to
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: do with grizzlies, what we do with alligators, what we
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: do with bald eagles, and say the e s a worked.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: It functioned as the way it was meant to function.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: It's a two way street. Recovered species are meant to
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: be removed from listing and we're facing it now, but
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: that will be litigated by UM. That would be litigated
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: for I don't know a decade or more unless they'll
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: propose the listing and someone's gonna see Yeah, so that, Yeah,
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: the the d listing has been proposed UM to line
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: it up the presumably and uh, you know, the agencies
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: at this point have are ready to sign what it's
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: called the Conservation Strategy and so that will be the
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: the post delisting uh management guidance basically and uh and
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: and so most of the pieces are are in place
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: at this point. Now because of the administration change, there
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: might be some delay. So you know, we might be
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: looking at at the middle of next year before the
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: final rule to D list would come out and then
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: will that go through its own comment period? Uh No,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: that will be the final one soon next year might
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: be the final. Yeah, So the common periods have already occurred.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: Um and uh, and so that that the for a
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: moils Service is still working on addressing those those comments
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: because every every substantive comments has to be addressed. That's
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: that's quite a task. And and and you know they
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: tried it in the past and it was deferred, you know,
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven, I guess he got deferred
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: for eight or nine years while they looked into the
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: answering some more questions. Yeah, well, the eventually, I think
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: the Ninth Circuit Court decision came out in two thousand
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: and eleven, So yeah, it was it's I expect any
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: litigation on this if if a new delisting rule final
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: rule does come out, UM, litigation will likely happen, and
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: that we might be looking at a similar time period
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: for four or five years before any any final decision
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: comes out of that. I asked someone what one of
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: the legal strategies might be and they pointed out that, um,
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: you know, there's some technical strategies you can take where
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: the um, the crew creation of distinct population segments happened
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: after the listing, and so that if you're trying to
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: d list because they're only like like again for listeners,
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: they're not trying to delist the grizzly bear in the
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: lower forty eight. They're trying to delist one population set,
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: so they're trying to delist a population of grizzly bears.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: So they're trying to delist grizzy bears in a you know,
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: in a define herble geographic location about you know, like
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: we said earlier, like maybe I consider like the size
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: of Indiana. If one of the bears that lives there
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: should take a major hike and wind up safely outside
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: of that thing. He's covered by the e s A
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: because the s A applies to because the distinct population
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: segments just one little spot. Now a strategy they're saying
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: they might use to thwart this. UM. There are a
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: lot of people this is just me talking persons us
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: do our guests, UM, there are a lot of people
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: who use the ESA as something called the Favorite Animal
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: Protection Act and people who you who like to think
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: of the ESA has the Favorite Animal Protection Act. One
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: of the things that they'll do is they will um
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: question that distinct population question the sort of legality of
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: creating distinct population segments. So it might not even come
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: down to like are there enough bears or whatever. It
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: might just come down to legal wrangling over definitions and
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: and uh, procedural stuff. And thankfully none of that, none
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: of that affects you, right, Uh no, not really. Um
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna you do a job, provide information. We
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: provide information and will continue to do so. Um and
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: and the Fishing Widelo Service has addressed that that distinct
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: population segment issue within their proposed rule. Um and and
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: you know, use all the biological information to to make
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: that argument. And I think by all means you could
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: argue this is a distinct population. So I think it's
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: like it's you know, it's it is still a nice
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: plush management. I mean we do it all the time.
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: Months like Alaska's divided up into what third d sum
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: or twentysome game management. You know. It's I mean like
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: it's a thing we do as humans when talking about animals,
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: is that we sort of try to break up landscapes
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: in the way that makes sense. Now, we drew state lines.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: We drew state lines almost arbitrarily along latitudtional longitudal lines.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: But oftentimes we're talking about animal populations, it's a little
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: more informed and nuanced about landscape features. But that's all.
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: That's pretty new thinking, and correct me if I'm wrong,
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: But I think it wasn't until like the early eighties,
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: and so we kind of said, Okay, we don't need
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: to manage whit until dear By County anymore. We should
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: be managing them by these landscape chunks or areas well.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: I think it happens all the time. Frederick Jackson Turner.
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: He I think it was him, the environmental historian, who
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: proposed that we drew states all wrong. And he thought
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: we should have drawn our states as watersheds. And he said,
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: like state politics would have been a lot easier if
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: we had drawn him in the instead of just like
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: these straight lines up and down and gritting off, you know.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: And he said that just makes it hard for for
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: group cohesion, you know, different different things that YouMagine, like
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: even take us like we're sitting right now in Montana
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: where you have the you have part of the state
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: great Planes and part of the state at the inner
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: Mountain west, and just in his mind, we got it.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: We got it wrong, right, you know, we drew it
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: up so that Nicole anything, last thought, does the I
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: G b ST still stick around? If the bears are delisted. Yes,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: that's your agency. Yeah, so that is that is our
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: our group, our your injury and is inter agency agency
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: or a group of eight different agencies that work together.
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: So there's um yeah, and that's that's also kind of
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: written into that conservation strategy. There's you'll you'll still continue
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: to we will still continue to do basically what we
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: do right now and at at basically the same level.
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: Um And and to my knowledge, my my agency is
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: committed to to keep funding this this effort because it's
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: it's such a high priority population. Well, I think it's
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: really cool that you guys have so much transparency. I
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: mean when I go onto your website, like I can
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: look at the mortality of every single bear that you
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: guys have recovered, like figure out I had read about
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: those bears that have been in the canal, and then
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: you actually see like how many are human cause, how
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: many are like maybe bear on bear like where you
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: don't know natural causes. And I would just I would
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: encourage if people are interested in this, you can read
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: the whole recovery plan. And I know around the time
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: that the Bozeman commenting was going on, we were talking
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: about it in some groups that I volunteer in, and
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: so I read the whole recovery plan and it gave
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: me such a better idea of how Bears would continue
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: to be managed and how the states could take it over,
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: and so like if you actually just go onto their website,
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: there's so much just incredible information there that people don't
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: want to go learn a whole bunch of ships, like
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: just sit in the bar and be like they don't
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: know what they're doing. But you hear so many people
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: around here like just say stupid things. I mean, the
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: reason that I I don't know, you mean to tell
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: me that people in Montanea go spouting off about Rozzy
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: Bears about knowing the full story? Come on, I think
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: it's come on. Well, that's you know, for for us
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: as as researchers, that's always the challenge from we when
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: we get our inevitable critiques from from some directions and
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know what people tend to focus on
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: this and then then what people tend to do is
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: kind of cherry pick certain things and take it out
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: of context. You know. But but as a team are
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: our approach has always been we look at everything combined,
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: We look at the big picture and we look at
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: longer time frames and things like that that are relevant
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: to the species that we're studying. And and if you
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: do that, you you could come to you come to
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: different conclusions. Then when you look at a single data
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: point like this, this idea that that the population is
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: declining because it's twenty seven bears fewer than last year,
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean when you look at the confidence intervals,
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: that just doesn't that inclusion doesn't make any sense and
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: it's not supported by the data. But that's those are
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: the type of of ideas that that you hear people
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: throw out right now. And it's and it's it's really
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: not based on the on the best information that we have.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: For the best information that we have says that is
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: well within the the type of variation that you expect
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: over the last fifteen years. Now, you could let that
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: be your concluding thought, or you could add a concluding
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: thoughts anything we haven't touched on. Well, the one thing
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: that we haven't touched on, which um which I think
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: is an important issue, is is this whole idea of
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: of genetic connectivity that's that's been brought up. Man, we
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: didn't get into that. Yeah, that's that's been brought up
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: a lot in the comments. One of the things being
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: that the bear that we need to have corridors, ye,
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: but the bears in the that these bears, these different
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: population segments are able to interchange. And so you know,
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: we've we've done some work genetic in recent years, and
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: then we we've we've we have a huge sample size
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: of bears that we have genetic samples off and we
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: know the history of those bears and and so UM.
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: What we were able to determine from that is that
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: even though genetic diversity is a little bit lower in
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: Yellstone than than other populations, because it is an isolated population.
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: You cannot get more diversity in an isolated population. Your
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: mutation doesn't doesn't take care of that. UM. But what
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: we found was that that it hasn't declined over the
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: last twenty five years. There's there's there's no indication of
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: the kline in genetic diversity. There's a strong indication that
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: the number of individuals that genetically are contributing to the
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: population is increasing, as in fact increased three to fourfold
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: over the last twenty five years. So those are really
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: good indications that genetically UM there are no major concerns
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: right now at this population level. And and so if
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: you would ask me do we need to have connectivity
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: with auto ecosystems, my answer would be yes, it might
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: be desirable for for their long term future, but it's
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: hard to argue based on what we know right now,
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: that it's essential before delisting or any any anything like that,
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: because genetically things look pretty pretty good right now. You
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: know how you're talking about how people cherry pick various
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: part pieces of this to paint the picture they want
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: to paint. I like the connectivity argument because it services
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: my greater goal, right be like, oh, sure, I love
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: the idea of establishing great wildlife corridors, but we all
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: do the Bob Marshall Complex and the Greater Yellstone ecosystem.
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: And if that were to happen because someone pointed out
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: the importance of genetic exchange, I'm like, I don't care
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: how it happens. I just want into the half of
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: because I think it's a step in the right direction,
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: just generally for wildlife. I agree, So that's the case
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: where I would be guilty of cherry picking. Yeah, And
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: if if it's that reason about great, let's still find
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: a different one. Well, there have been sightings in the pilars,
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: and there are two settings in the big hole the summer,
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: and like there haven't been bear sighted there since the
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: early young young males, right, well we we don't even
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: note that in some cases UM, but presumably UM males
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: and and presumably younger ones. Those are those are there
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: the animals that are possibly a mother with cubs was
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: seen in the pilars, which around where my family is
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: at a cabin for a long time. So it's a
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it's pretty yeah, and and so I
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: mean that that would actually that that would be pretty amazing,
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: you know, because that's that's the thing about UM about
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: range expansion and and and bears eventually getting into the
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: sailway beta route. You know, it's it's it's going to
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: require those females and female bears just expand their range
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: pretty slowly compared to the males. You know that, So
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: that much of the expansion that we've seen into eastern
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: on the eastern portion of the ecosystem, for example, it's
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: been really driven by by meals and and what we
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: what we see is that that females will will lag behind.
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: It might be as as many as ten years behind um.
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: But but it's still occurring. But the point is that
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: that with females is just going to take a much
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: longer time period to eventually reach a place like Selway
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: Bitter Route, and and so having to Certainly that's why
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: I say it's desirable if if if the habitat connectivity
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: was search that that was actually feasible. But if you
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: ask me, and this this is where again, you know,
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: where some people don't want to hear my answer simply
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: because I'm just laying as scientific fact as if if
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: you ask me, is it essential for this population? No,
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: right now that I can't say that. I I just
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: based on our data, I can't say that it is
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: absolutely essential for this popular to have that connected. I'm
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: surprised that some enterprising young vigilante hasn't uh culvert trapped
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: a style with some coming and under the cloak of
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: darkness just dumped him in the bitter Root. You'd be
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: the hell out of trouble. You would be Yeah, I'm
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: not gonna I'm not and it's probably hard to hide
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: that sort of but you know that's you know, the
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: the closest example I can come to that is that
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: that links populations in Switzerland where actually reintroduced kind of
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: clandestine really like bucket biologists. You didn't link I I
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: don't know who actually ended up doing it, but I
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: don't know if it was even biologist. But you know,
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: it's a term I don't know, Ian like ab just
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: be like guys who like the ice fish and you're like, hey, man,
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: I like fishing northern pike. Yeah, and they put a
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: couple of pike in a bucket and dumping into some
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: other lake and then you know, and the major repercussions
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: followed the for the ecology, like you know, you know
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: that's the reintroductions in Arkansas were kind of the same.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: Um in the Washington Ozark Mountains. Um, those those are
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: what animals black bears. Yeah, those are to reintroduce black
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: bear populations doing great, um. But but those initial efforts
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: were we're done by by the state agency at the time.
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: But but you know, somewhat under or the go through
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: all all the perfect process and so in those days,
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: you know that you could you could do that and uh,
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: you know that's that's of course not happening anymore. But
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: but it's interesting that that some populations have benefited from
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: basically Clantestine activities. Yeah, what's almost close to that. I
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: guess this will be my last thing to add. What's
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: almost close to that would be I wrote about this
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: in my in my Buffalo book, where you know, they
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: had they took some bison out of northwest Spontana and
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: put him on a train and you know, hauled him
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: out to Seattle, then put him on a boat and
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: took him up to wait Tier, Alaska, and from way
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: Tier put him on a train. Cut them loose in
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: Delta Junction. Later they had too many running around Delta Junction.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: They put into military installation. They were causing all kinds
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: of problems with landscaping, and they had come into rut
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: and caused problems with people. One day they took thirteen
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: of them and put him on a truck and drove
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: him out to an abandoned mine, opened the door. Everyone
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: assumed they were all dead because no one then saw
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: him for a decade, at which point there's a hundred
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: of a hundred of him turn up about a hundred
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: and fifty miles from there, you know, and there was like, oh,
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: that's what happened to him. You know that those kind
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: of days seem to be a little bit over because
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: if you look at when they just tried to do
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: the wood bison reintroduction in Alaska that came on the
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: tail end of about twenty five years of fighting and
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: arguing and quarantines and lawsuits, you know, and used to
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: just oh, it took us one guy with a truck,
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: you know, and he could he could establish his own
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: little population animals somewhere. You know. He just asked, like
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: a guy named Bob, if it's okay, and you know,
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: he says, yeah, then there you go. You got you
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: gotta population. All right, Well, thanks for coming on, man,
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: are you're welcome? Yeah, thank you? All right, Um, hopefully
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: and the next time I shouldn't say hopefully, maybe the
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: next time we talked, there'll be big bear news. That's right,
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: at which point out to have you back on and
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: talk to you about what that's gonna mean. All right, great,
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: thank you,