Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 796: Heart of the Jaguar

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Ep. 796: Heart of the Jaguar · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening past, you
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  Speaker 1: can't predict anything brought to you by first Light. When
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  Speaker 1: no shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at
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  Speaker 1: first light dot com. That's f I R S T
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: L I T E dot com. When's the play start bill?
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Second week in December?
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I think no, No, I got we got tickets. We're
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: doing date night. You know, it just came up in here.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: It came up in here, and we followed through. Turn
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the machine on.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Phil, Sheine's on Steve. It always is.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: It's the Crash Report. Here we go again, the report
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: filled the engineer. II feeling Phil, I'm feeling great.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: By the time this airs, where we're a week or
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: two away from opening, I'm excited. I've got like seventy
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: five percent of my lines down. I know that that's
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: an important stat for you.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Hit me, hit me with just give me a line,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Give me a line. I saw your script was open
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: on your desk.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: The yelling for a five thing. Yeah, it screwge.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: He seems unaffected by the season, so even on Christmas Eve, Well, that's.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Your British accent. Hit me with it again.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Oh no, this is a bad time for you to
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: be doing this.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: To hit me with it again.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: He sits by the fire after uh, after working, goes
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: over the Femmes accounts.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Hum, right a little bit, Okay, I'm not buying work
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: on it.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: You're not buying it because because it doesn't sound like fit.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He wants you to sound like a cab driver site,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: bring it man, He to be a from.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Braveheart more Harry Potter, More, Harry Potter one night?
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Are we going to be there? Randall?
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: Uh, it's it's the Sunday performance, I believe the thirteenth.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: So on the third, I don't care what you're doing.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: I'm not there on the third, greinh I want you
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: to just come in hard.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: Okay, so scratch your previous notes about about all American
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: accents American currency.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: You don't want that you want.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Full I did, but change my mind. I want you
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to bring it now, and I want you to sound
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: like what I expect. A old timey English guy is
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: unwell Cockney Man. Yeah, yeah, joy today. Bye. The author
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: James Campbell, who's got a ton of books Man books
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: that would be a very of high interest to listeners.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: James Campbell, he's a magazine writer for a long time,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: but he wrote The Final Frontiersman, which if you haven't
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: read it, you've seen it around. I'm sure. He wrote
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: The Ghost Mountain Boys, which I just finished nights ago.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Here's the problem I run, and I always I'm always
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: honest with guests. Yeah, I didn't get to the Jaguar
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: book yet because I got sidetracked by Ghost Mountain Boys.
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure what I should think of that, but
• 3:13
  Speaker 5: thank you, I'm getting there.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: It's like the stack, the stack. See, I got onto it,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: and Randall's been on one too. I got out into
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: a whiskey whiskey to book kit. Kid. They spent a
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: lot of time in the Pacific. Well, it's a two books.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: So I read The Battle of the Battle for Manila,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: The Battle of Manila like an academic title that just
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: came out, and that got me all fired up about
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: World War two. And it's just about the Pacific theater
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: mile Man was European theater was so I know that. Well, yeah,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: but then I got to then I I just it
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: just kind of opened up this whole world of suffering. Yeah,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: just like it's like World War two with malaria, you
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: know what I mean. Yeah, it's just like the disease.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Just stuff. I wasn't like I was familiar with all
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: his stories, you know, like people freezing their toes off
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: and everything. And then and of course I was aware.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: You know, my my my wife's grandfather was a marine
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  Speaker 1: on Ewo Jima, Right, I was aware. But anyways, I
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: got into the Battle of Manila, then I got into this,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: and I never got to the damn Jaguar. We're gonna
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: talk about. I'm like super interested in jaguars.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Sure, but it hasn't dissuaded you from continuing on to
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: the Jaguar book.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, Yeah. But The Ghost Mountain The Ghost
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Mountain Boys, what you did? This one come out two
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: thousand and eight. The Ghost Mountain Boys tells the tale
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: of the campaign and Papua New Guinea.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, and a lot of them were from your country,
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: from southern Michigan. Yeah, lots of the guys Company G Company, Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Comes them from the county I came from. And the
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: thing that uh, there's a couple of things that are
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: like about it that really stuck me. One just the
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: disease factor, Like most your casualties are tropical diseases.
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: Which MacArthur never took into consideration when he sent those
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: guys over the mountains. You know, they had they had dysentery,
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: they had jungle rot, they had trench foot, they had malaria, hookworm, hookworm,
• 5:11
  Speaker 5: and they he never considered.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: That that would happen.
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah, how could he not after having been in the Philippines.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh, it's just And then in the end you
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: realize they're taking these guys and I don't know if listeners,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you've been on malaria medication. Yeah, Like malaria
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: medication leads to like its own little form of psychosis.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Like there's people that can't take it. Yeah, that's right.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: I mean it gives you like wild dreams, It can
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: send you into balts of depression, especially the stuff they
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: used to use. They take these guys and like there's
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: this one guy that you follow through the book. He's
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: writing all these loving letters with his wife, he's got
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: kids waiting at home. Yeah. Then they go to treat
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: them for malaria and they dose them so heavy with
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: this drug. They didn't understand the psychological effects. They start
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: dosing them with this drug and shoots himself.
• 5:59
  Speaker 5: In the adaburin psychosis it was called. So he was
• 6:03
  Speaker 5: the division surgeon, a guy named Major Simon Warmanhoven, and
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: he was an amazing guy. So I'd finished the book
• 6:11
  Speaker 5: completely ready to turn it into my publisher, and Simon
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: warm Warmenhoven's two daughters happened to find my number and
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: they called me up and they said, I want to
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: send you the love letters that my dad sent to
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  Speaker 5: my mom from Papua New Guinea. Would you be willing
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: to look at him? And I said, yeah, I'd love
• 6:32
  Speaker 5: to see him. So I read all one hundred love
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: letters and then I called my publisher and I said,
• 6:39
  Speaker 5: stop the press.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: These are two beautiful lts.
• 6:42
  Speaker 5: I have to completely rewrite the book and write in
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: this character and write in his love letters because they're
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: just so heart wrenching. And my publisher gave me an
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: extra two months to their credit.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: But that's not much. I wrote hurriedly.
• 7:01
  Speaker 5: But can you imagine that the first of all the
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: courage of his daughters, because obviously, you know you there's
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: a stigma attached.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: To the you know, to to shooting yourself.
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  Speaker 5: But it was adebrit psychosis and they had a lot
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: of that.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean I didn't know him, but like you
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  Speaker 1: look at the transition and even say his last letter
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  Speaker 1: home and he's on the treatment, his last letter home
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  Speaker 1: is like I try not to let it happen. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but I have the blues. That's why I haven't been writing.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, and he had to.
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  Speaker 1: He had.
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  Speaker 5: He was in Brisbane at the end, just outside of
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  Speaker 5: Brisbane at the at the thirty second Division Hospital, and
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  Speaker 5: he was caring for all these men, you know, who'd
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  Speaker 5: been wounded in battle and who had various diseases and
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: tropical diseases, and I mean he was just overwhelmed in
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  Speaker 5: addition to taking Adebrant and having Adebritan psychosis.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a just a horrible story. You know,
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  Speaker 1: nothing that came out reading this and reading that book
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  Speaker 1: about the Battle for Manila and also just documentaries I've
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: been seeing and stuff. Is it seems like but we're
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: kind of running out of them now. It seems like
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  Speaker 1: as a lot of veterans from World War Two got
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  Speaker 1: to a certain age, they became more ready to discuss.
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  Speaker 1: I don't want to call them like what would what
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  Speaker 1: would be regarded as war crimes, but I don't even
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: want to condemn it. But it became like later in life,
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  Speaker 1: like I watched this, watch this series, and they're now
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: is watching these old guys being like they're talking about
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  Speaker 1: the the concentration camps, and they're like anyone that worked
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: at a concentration camp, we just lined them up, shot them.
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  Speaker 1: And guys in here they're like guys that are talking
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  Speaker 1: about stuff later or whatever. It just seems like for
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  Speaker 1: a long time, a lot of that stuff was just
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  Speaker 1: not mentioned. They don't get their day in court. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And now it seems like more people are like, no, man,
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  Speaker 1: I mean we didn't we didn't deal with prisoners, or
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: we don't like to deal with prison Yeah.
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  Speaker 5: I mean you're talking about the wounded Japanese. They would
• 9:03
  Speaker 5: just stick them with their bayonets. And of course they
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: didn't talk about that till a lot later. But a
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: lot of those guys I contacted, ultimately contacted about eighty
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  Speaker 5: guys that fought on the island in New Guinea, and
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  Speaker 5: I interviewed a lot of them, and a lot of
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: them I drove over to Michigan, you know, to interview
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  Speaker 5: these guys and typical story. You know, they never told
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  Speaker 5: their stories about World War Two. I think James Bradley
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  Speaker 5: in Flags of Our Father said, they came home and
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: they got on with living. You know, they didn't want
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  Speaker 5: to remember, so they, you know, they deliberately just repressed
• 9:36
  Speaker 5: this stuff.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: And I started talking to.
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: Them, and initially they'd tell funny stories, you know, and
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  Speaker 5: I'd go to their Old Timers Division meeting and they'd
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: tell jokes and listen to bad poke music, you know,
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: and play cards all night. But slowly they started to
• 9:51
  Speaker 5: like reveal stuff, and then it was like it was
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: like this.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Gusher of emotion.
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: You can imagine after you know, fifty years, is trapped
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: inside and you know, they never talked about it. And
• 10:04
  Speaker 5: sometimes their wives would call me up and say, you
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: know so and so, you gotta you can't interview him anymore.
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: He's he has nightmares, you kid, and it's haunting him.
• 10:16
  Speaker 5: And I said, okay, that's the last thing in the
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: world I want to do, you know, is put him
• 10:20
  Speaker 5: through this again. But then they would call back and
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: they would say, no, man, I gotta talk about this
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: is the first time I've ever talked about this in
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: my life. My kids don't even know these stories. I
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: have to keep talking. So it was Yeah, it was
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: pretty it was pretty emotional.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. You know. I don't like you know,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: I usually I don't like any well, not any I
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: think the only Yeah. But I'm a Bob Service fan.
• 10:51
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, sure, I love Bob.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: He's a poet, is a poet. Yeah, and Cladie Bayley
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Cladi Bailey used to dude wrote, Yeah, that's the first
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: time we had read a poem possibly quite possibly Bob Hartman. Yeah,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Bob Hartman, Right, this is a veteran grand rapid. Did
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: he write this much after the war? Yeah he did,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: he did. Okay. I laid him down by the bend
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: in the stream and he erected it across at his head.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: His funeral song was a cockatoo's scream, as if they
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: knew my buddy was dead. I've even the score, yes,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: a do a dozen times over, but no matter, the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: distance between my mind wanders yet, and I'll never forget
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: his grave by the bend in the stream. Yeah, it's poignant,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: it's got a Bob Service.
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: It does have a Bober These poets.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: That don't even bother Ryman. It's just that.
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: Bob, Bob Hartman is the same guy that said if
• 11:55
  Speaker 5: I owned New Guinea and I owned Hell, I would
• 11:58
  Speaker 5: live in Hell brant out New Guinea.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: But you just got back from New Guinea. I just
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: got back here. So what we're gonna get don't worry
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: about this. We're gonna get to this jaguar. We're gonna
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: get to the jaguar situation. I love talking about New Guinea.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: But what were you doing there? Now?
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: So two things?
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: You help me understand something?
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: Sure?
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Why do What is the difference between saying Papa New
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Guinea and saying New Guinea.
• 12:22
  Speaker 5: So the entire island is called New Guinea. Papa New
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: Guinea is a separate is a separate nation on the
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: eastern half, formerly an Australian colony German colony. Once upon
• 12:32
  Speaker 5: it it was called Kaiser Willielm's Land way back when.
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: And the other side is owned by is part of Indonesia,
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: and that's called West Papua. So the whole island is
• 12:44
  Speaker 5: called New Guinea.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, no idea, Yeah, okay.
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: So I've been going there since nineteen eighty nine. My
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: brother and I first went there on a you know,
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: you know, young men's adventure or misadventure.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: But somewhere in that took my wife there for our honeymoon.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: By the way, she got malaria. How romantic.
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: Her parents wanted her to ditch me so fast, so
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: fortunately she did in three daughters later. But I discovered
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: for the first time I didn't even know the story. Okay,
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: I didn't even know the story of the war.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: In Papua New Guinea.
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: But anyway, So in two thousand and six, I repreat
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: repeated the track that the Ghost Mountain Boys did for
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: the first time since World War Two, and I became
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: interested in the villages and just the World War two history.
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: So on the most recent trip, we brought in people
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: there in the villages, isolated villages, they die, skin infections,
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: you know, they're dying and malarious. We brought in four
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: thousand dollars worth of medicines that the one health clinic
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: can you know, can give out to the people. You know,
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: they have a little cut. You know that they eventually
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: lose their leg or lose their life, so you know,
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: it doesn't have to be dramatic stuff, but medicines to
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: help them and that the Ghost Mountain Trail used to
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: be called the Kapa Kapa Trail because there was a
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: village called Gaba Gaba. The soldiers couldn't pronounce it. It became
• 14:20
  Speaker 5: Kappa Kapa. It was called the Kappa Kapa Trail, and
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: we want that to be a national historic trail like
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: the Kokota Trail.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys have ever heard of it.
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: That's where the Australians fought the Japanese on the island
• 14:35
  Speaker 5: in New Guinea, on the Kokota Trail. And now five
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: thousand trekkers come every summer to Papua New Guinea to
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: trek the Kokoda Trail where they're you know, grandfathers or
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: great grandfathers or great uncles fought the Japanese.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: So it's a big deal.
• 14:52
  Speaker 5: So we want to try to bring Americans over to
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: Papua New Guinea to walk this trail. It's twenty one days,
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: it's over the own Stanley Mountains.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: It's tough. Yeah, you'll run that song the bitch what's that? Yeah? Yeah,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: you run it?
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: How many miles is that?
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: One hundred and thirty miles?
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: But it is straight up and straight down, straight up.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: You know you go up to nine?
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: Are you a runner a little bit by a little bit,
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: like one hundred miles at a time.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, how what's the elevation when you say up and down?
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: Well, the plane we tried to find on this trip
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: was at about ten thousand feet, but don't Stanley's get
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: up to about twelve thousand. But you're going through solid jungle,
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: I mean absolute solid jungle. I remember, I don't want
• 15:38
  Speaker 5: to go straight here. But I was reporting in two
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: thousand and six for National Public Radio and I was
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: doing I was calling them and doing interviews with them
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: from the jungle, and my first interview.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: I was late for.
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: So I grabbed the SAT phone and I wandered out
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: into the jungle and I did my interview, and then
• 15:59
  Speaker 5: I thought, I don't know where the hell I am.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: I have no idea where I am. You lost? Yeah,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I lost my direction that fast.
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: I was probably like forty feet.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: You're not being deliberate, no.
• 16:15
  Speaker 6: Not being delivered at all, And so I'm screaming, you know,
• 16:19
  Speaker 6: my lungs. And fortunately one of the villagers, one or
• 16:23
  Speaker 6: one of the carriers that was with us happened to
• 16:25
  Speaker 6: find me.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, who knows is there.
• 16:29
  Speaker 7: When you say trail. Yeah, I can have a lot
• 16:31
  Speaker 7: of different definitions. So at this point, what is it
• 16:34
  Speaker 7: like just a regular old hiker follow.
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: No, it's like when you want to like a deer
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: trail or a rabbit trail through the woods. And the
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: people of New Guinea are the most like physically fit
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: people you've ever seen. It's like the people of the
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: Andes or something. They they they live in the mountains,
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: so they're accustomed to it. They just walk straight up
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: and straight down. No National Park switchbacks. So yeah, I
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: mean it's tough, but if you ever want to come in.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: You big, you can't run it, so you need to
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: organize like one of them races. Yeah, it was.
• 17:16
  Speaker 7: I'm sure with the recent explosion and participation in these
• 17:21
  Speaker 7: endurance races, you could very easily get that's for people
• 17:25
  Speaker 7: to go and fast hike, run you're that track.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Hadn't even considered it.
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: But just to finish the story, we were my part
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: my co partner in Australia found a plane called the
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: Flying Dutchman, you know, the ode to the michigan Ers
• 17:43
  Speaker 5: at ten thousand feet. He found it last year and
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: it hadn't.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Been seen since. I think like nineteen sixty seven.
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: So we were taking a small group up into the
• 17:53
  Speaker 5: mountains to identify the plane, see the plane, touch the plane,
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: and retell.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: The story for the remains in there. Still no, they're gone.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: They've been taken. They were taken out.
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: I think in night. I can't remember the date, but
• 18:06
  Speaker 5: the plane. Plane has this really poignant story about it
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: crashed and I think six of the guys were killed.
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: Eight fifteen of the guys were too injured to get out,
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: but two parties tried to make it out. One party
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: march to the north coast. That took him about thirty
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: days to get through the jungle, and another party marched
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: a guy from named Ed Holloman from just outside of
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: Grand Rapids, Michigan, found safety after about thirty days. And
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: they tried to court martial him for leaving the plane
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: and he did, I mean, he saved these guys' lives.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: And it was well, what happened to the guys went
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: of the other direction.
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: The other guy they they actually two of the guys drowned.
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: They tried to they tried to ride logs on the
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: river to the north coast, and two of the guys drowned.
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: The other two of the guys. The other two guys
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: made it to safety, tried to get a rescue party
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: to come back to save the guys on the plane.
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: The rescue party stopped one day short because they ran
• 19:11
  Speaker 5: out of food, and ultimately all the guys on the
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: plane died. So in fact, the chaplain died in the
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: arms of the villagers who found the plane on January seventh,
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: nineteen forty three. So it's yeah, it's really it's a
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: terrible story.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: So what was the plane, what was it? What were
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: they doing at the time.
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: So you read about the Ghost Mountain boys who walked
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: over the mountains. They were trying they'd found usable airfields
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: on the north coast of Popping the Guinea near the
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: battlefield of Buna, and they were trying to fly the
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: guys over instead of having them walk. And they were
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: probably trying to punch holes in the clouds because they
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: hadn't they hadn't really flown over the own stanleys very much.
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: They called it the hump like in Burma. They called
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: it the Hump, and the you know that plane crashed
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: up there at ten thousand feet, so, but they were
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: the intention was to fly him over to the battlefield.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Wow, okay, but we have a transition into Jaguars. That's
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: why you're here, right, Yeah, sure, but I love talking
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: about Papa the Guinea and the Ghost Mountain Boys. Uh,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: it's gonna be a gradual transition because's two things so
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: so so. James's books are are for reading. Ours of cooking.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: We got just letting people know here. So we took
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: our two cookbooks, our Meat Eater, Fish and Game Cookbook
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: and our Outdoor Cookbook and made like a gift box.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: You can get both of them right here. This two
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: for one great gift item we signed. We signed a
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: whole mountain of.
• 20:40
  Speaker 8: The only place you can get to sign ones is
• 20:43
  Speaker 8: on the mediater website.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Not true, where else you get in the stores retail stores. Yeah,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: we just signed a whole mountain of them. And then
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: uh yeah, it's a very it's a very economical way
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: of getting both our books for someone for Christmas. I'm
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: not even going to get into ff old trucks. But
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: look at this. Can that make you want to get
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: a calendar? The hell of a calendar? Now get into that.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: The other plug is this. Well. While back on the show,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: we ran an episode of something called blood Trails. It
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: was about that dude who was turkey hunting and got
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: shot in the back while he's turkey hunting, and they've
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: like interviewed all these guys. They've definitely interviewed whoever did it,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: but they have yet to how many years has been,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: like seventeen years, eighteen years, something like that. So we
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: got a whole series out now called Blood Trails, a podcast,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: and it's about hunting and fishing related like murders, cold cases, mysteries.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: It's really good. Jordan Sillers has been doing a phenomenal
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: job on it, So check out and subscribe to the
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Blood Trails podcast feed. It turned out. I'm very proud
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: of it. It turned out very very good. It's well worth
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: to listen. He did a phenomenal job. And rather like
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of that kind of stuff. It's like some
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: dude will go read like a Wikipedia entry or read
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: somebody else's book and then they'll make like a podcast
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: where they basically like regurgitate some stuff they just read. It.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: It's like interviews. It's interviews with it's interviews with investigators,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: it's interviews with victims, families. It's it's very well done,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: like a ton of original reporting in it. It's a
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: great series, all right. Jaguars Jaguars? Is this stuff good? Here? Phil? Yep?
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: How many jaguars are floating around in the world right now?
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: Well, there's a big discrepancy between the numbers. One number
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: is sixty three thousand, the other number is seven one
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: hundred and seventy three thousands. Most jaguar biologists think the
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: lower number is the more accurate number. But about eighty
• 22:55
  Speaker 5: percent of those jaguars, let's say sixty three thousand, let's
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: say one hundred thousand are in the Amazon or the
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: Pontinal of Brazil. Outside that, so in the IUCN, the
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: jaguar is considered threatened or near threatened. But if you
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: eliminate the Amazon and the Pontinal, they're considered endangered or
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: critically endangered.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Which would be true of a lot of wildlife species.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you eliminate their core range. Yeah, good point.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Then it looks grim. It looks grim. Yeah.
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: However, you know, with the corridor, there's a reinvestment of
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: time and effort into the corridor. There's something called the
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: twenty thirty Roadmap that a lot of the environmental organizations
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: have signed onto including Panthera WCS, lots of other IUCN,
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: and by twenty thirty they want to they want to
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: solidify thirty jaguar conservation unit and connect thirty more potential
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: jaguar units. So there's a big across Latin America and
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: South America. There's kind of this new appreciation of what
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: the jaguar represents.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, explain their historic range a little bit. And while
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: you're doing that, can you touch on do you believe
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Coronado ran into jaguars, like way up in Kansas?
• 24:24
  Speaker 5: First of all, Yeah, I do believe Coronado ran into jaguars.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that.
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: When was Coronado what was the date, late fifteen hundreds, definitely, Yeah,
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: I think jaguars were pretty much spread across much of
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: the United.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Because he talks about he talks about leopards and he
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: talks about lions. Yeah, and you're like the lions, mountain lions.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: But then people are like, what in the hell is
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: he talking about when he mentioned seeing leopards.
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I do think up until up
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: until probably nineteen hundred, they were in you know, Colorado,
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: in California and West Texas, Alabama, Louisiana. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 25:09
  Speaker 5: you think that.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Alabama and Louisiana you think legit.
• 25:14
  Speaker 5: I think it's legit. I mean you look at their head,
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: look at the habitat. I mean that's the that's the
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: ideal habitat for a jaguar until what year, up until
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: maybe nineteen hundred, maybe maybe mid eighteen hundreds. But their range,
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: their range is now five thousand latitude and a miles
• 25:35
  Speaker 5: from southern Arizona. Right now, there's one jaguar roaming the
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: mountains of southern Arizona.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: The US is usually good for like y know, you
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: wanted to write.
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: His name is co Chiese and he was discovered in
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: I think late twenty twenty three. But so all the
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: way down to the Eberra in northern Argentina. But of
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: course once how you say that word?
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the eber Era, No, I've been there. Oh have
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: you thought of Iberra fish down there? Oh? Really no,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: the Ibera wetlands.
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: Well maybe it is, I've called it Iberra. Well, well
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: we'll ask a Spanish expert, I suppose. But so in
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: where they're actually doing a reintroduction of jaguars now, but.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: That's like near the that's where like that that deadly
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Triangle Paraguay, Uruguay. Yes, exactly, it all come together. It's
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: like kind of a little bit of a lawless.
• 26:27
  Speaker 5: What kind of fishing were you doing down there, Golden Dradoan. Yeah,
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: so once upon a time, yeah, they I mean, they
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: migrated obviously over the Burying land Bridge like a million
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: years ago, and then they saw a bunch of ice
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: in front of them, so they they they stayed for
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: many generations in kind of the Yukon and Yukon territories.
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: And then as that as that ice began to began
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: to melt during the place the scene warm ups, I mean,
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: what whether like twenty or something like that, the jaguars
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: started moving south, moved into Canada, then into Montana and uh,
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: you know the grasslands of North and South Dakota and Kansas,
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: and then continue to move down to you know, almost
• 27:07
  Speaker 5: the tip of South America.
• 27:08
  Speaker 8: So they didn't evolve as like a warm weather tropical species.
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: No, they're they're they're complete generalists. You know, they can
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: they can live anywhere in it like a mountain lion,
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: like a mountain lion. Or so I was down in
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: southern Bolivia in the Grand Chaco the Grand Chaco is
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: like parched country, brittle parched country, and the the the
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: jaguars thrive there, really, Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. They thrive
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: in the Sierra Madres of Mexico, they thrive in the
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: in the Madraan Sky Islands of of Arizona. They're they're
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: really they're remarkable creatures.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I know there's a picture. I have this book
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: called Candid Critters, and it's like it's like influential trail
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: cam photos. Yeah, and there's I think at the time
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: was maybe the only known photo taking an Arizona of
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: a jaguar standing in the snow in the Wachuka Mountains.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I think, Okay, yeah, you're saying that that's not a
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: problem for the jaguar. Well, I don't.
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: I don't know about snow. Snow might be pushing it.
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: But he was obviously not she but likely he was
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: obviously in the Wachuka Mountains. You know, you get snow
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: there and you know, in late April. So but I'm
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: familiar with that photo.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen a bunch of tracks, Jaguar tracks, not
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: in the US. One time we weren't remember we were
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: we were It was in Guyana, and we were there's
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: this big sand bar where the turtles were, oh yeah, nesting.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: So we went there with native people to dig turtle
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: eggs and you could see where the jaguars were digging
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: the turtle eggs out and probably also hunting the turtles
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: when they come out of the water. Yeah. Right, We
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: go back to our camp and then a couple of
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: guys went back to the sandbar to take a bath
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: and there's tracks all over. I was dying to see one.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I was dying to see one. Yeah, there's tracks all over.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: They turn around and go right back to take a bath,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: and they're like, as soon as we got there's jaguars
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: standing on the grave bar. Missed I'm not kidding. I
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: missed it by twenty minutes, just because you didn't want
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: to take a bath. Yeah, yeah, whatever. But no, no,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: I've never let eyes on one. Man, I would.
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, they're incredible.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: You've no doubt laid eyes on Yeah. What was the
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: first time you saw one in the Pontinal.
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: So the Pontinal is kind of like Kruger National Park
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: of Brazil, So the jaguars there have become habituated to people.
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: And this was during this was during COVID, so there
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: were almost no other tourists, but we were.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: We were on the Quiaba.
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: River in motoring, motoring down the river into one of
• 30:01
  Speaker 5: the tributaries, and all you know, we're all looking at
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: the banks of the river, and all of a sudden
• 30:08
  Speaker 5: I spotted I spotted one, you know, kind of lounging
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: in the sand underneath the tree. And just then the guide,
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: you know, the boat captain and guide also also saw
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: that jaguar. And I'll never forget he was like barely whispered,
• 30:24
  Speaker 5: he said, Onsa And you know, Panthera on is is
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: you know the name for the jaguar.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: What's that? What is that word?
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: So Panthera is the genus and then Osa, I mean,
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: Onsa is the is it?
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Would it be the family name? I'm not sure, but man,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: what does that word mean? Jaguar?
• 30:49
  Speaker 5: So he just said, he just said jaguar, and all
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: he had to do was whisper it.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: And man, my whole body was and this hue.
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: We we we anchored the boat just outside, just outside
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: the bank, the river bank, and all of a sudden,
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: this jaguar rose, just this absolutely enormous jaguar, absolutely beautiful
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: and came to the river to drink, and he was
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: just unperturbed. You know, it wasn't it wasn't like he
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: he moved quickly in I think in the book I
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: describe its something like music. I mean, like every part
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: of his body just operated so beautifully. And he stood
• 31:33
  Speaker 5: there drinking and then he looked up at us, and
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: then he walked kind of broadside to us down the river,
• 31:39
  Speaker 5: and it was just I mean, it was magnificent.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just like a like having not seen one,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: I'm just fascinated by him. And it is just a
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: different crater man.
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: Even people who's just a how do they compare it
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: to a mountain lion?
• 31:54
  Speaker 7: Yeah, as are the sizes a burlier.
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: Right, So I think the biggest there I was with
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: this this Brazilian trapper he traps in you know, collars jaguars.
• 32:10
  Speaker 5: The biggest one he's I think trapped in collars one hundred.
• 32:13
  Speaker 5: His name is Joe rs May and he's famous and
• 32:16
  Speaker 5: he's trapped about three hundred you know, maybe one hundred
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: and twenty jaguars. The biggest one he's ever trapped.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Was three hundred pounds.
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: Wow, you know, like a you know like a lioness
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: in Africa, but in the in the Pontinal they grown big.
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: In the Amazon they grow them big. But you know,
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: if you get one in northern Mexico or say one
• 32:38
  Speaker 5: in Arizona, they're going to be maybe one hundred and
• 32:41
  Speaker 5: thirty or one hundred and forty.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Paums like a lion.
• 32:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah, like, yeah, exactly like a lion. So they're much
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: much smaller, same species, but just much much smaller. And
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: I don't know if it has to do with habitat
• 32:54
  Speaker 5: or food. I mean, jaguars eat like eighty five different species,
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: everything from frog to skunks, you know, to have a
• 33:02
  Speaker 5: line's but I think Teddy Roosevelt he he hunted jaguars
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: and the Pontinal with his with his son Kermit, And
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: I think there's one account he said, uh, Kermit shot
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: a jaguar with a four h five Winchester and it
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: was as big as a small male, you know, African lion.
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: So I imagine that was three hundred pounds or maybe even more.
• 33:27
  Speaker 8: Do they have like uh, leopards and tigers in India? Say,
• 33:32
  Speaker 8: do they have a reputation for attacking people or not?
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: That's that's the thing, just almost no accounts of unprovoked attacks.
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: And Alan Rabinowitz, the guy I wrote about, called them
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: the reluctant warrior. He said they were much much more
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: comfortable kind of eluding man. And there's a biologist down
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: in Brazil who said and was never part of their
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: prey template for one thing.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: And also there's something.
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: Called the t Griyadas, which was the jaguar craze which
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: Jackie o' nassas set off when she stepped out of
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: a limousine in a knee length, double breasted Somali leopard
• 34:20
  Speaker 5: coat and she started this this fashion craze for spotted
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: cat accessories.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: So you make me like Kennedy.
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah. So so what happened during the Tigriyadas maybe is
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: like what happened during to Grizzly. What is the word,
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: it's t I g t gre yadas.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the jigger craze. Yeah, And and that set off
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: a market hunting campaign huge in the sixties.
• 34:54
  Speaker 5: In in the sixties to nineteen seventy five when Sighte's
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: finally stepped in and to eliminate the trafficking. But from
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: nineteen sixty two to nineteen seventy five, one hundred and
• 35:08
  Speaker 5: eighty thousand jaguars were killed in Brazil alone for the
• 35:12
  Speaker 5: fashion maybe not all for the fashion industry, but for
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: far part of the fashion industry. More jaguars than we
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: have now were in total during what years.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty three to nineteen seventy five, during the day
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: they were not running a quota program.
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: They were not running no, everybody was out trying to
• 35:30
  Speaker 5: kill jaguars. Alan Rabinowitz said they had the dollar sign
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: on the back right next to the bullseye.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: What was at that time? What kind of money was
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: a jaguar hide like? It must have been extraordinary to
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: drive that level of commitment, because it's not like they're
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: like hanging out now Falcon.
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, right, maybe two hundred dollars, but two hundred
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: dollars for you know, I hate to say lowly, but
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: two hundred dollars for someone living in a village in
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: Bolivia or jag Or or Brazil is a lot of money.
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: And they killed them like snakes, that's.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: What George Schaller said. They just killed them like snakes,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: even though but mostly all black market.
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: All black market. Yeah, they until side stepped in in
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: nineteen seventy five to try to shut down the traffic,
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: which they did to a certain extent. Yeah, there was
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: a there was a lively black market in Jaguar Pelts.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: If you look over your left shoulder, you see that
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: that's a bobcat right there. Okay, right now, here's an
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: interesting thing about side's and spotted cats. So that's from Texas.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Uh okay, yeah, in Texas there's no close season on bobcats.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Bobcats are non game, no close season on bobcats, no
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: bag limit on bobcats. Wow. Part of it is because
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: texts those south like Texas bobcats aren't valuable. Okay, Like
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: a bobcat up here, oh yeah, I mean mean about
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: cat up here could be like five six, seven hundred bucks,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: sure right about cat from certain areas like high Desert
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: country could be one thousand dollars. But those cats are
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: effectively valueless. So there's not like a huge push on it.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: But what's interesting is you haven't you haven't in Texas.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Here's an animal. It's non game, no close season, no
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: bag limit. But you can't move that cat out of
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Texas without a site's tag. And you'd be like, well,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: why the state doesn't even manage them? And it's because
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: it's because.
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: Like spotted cats in general.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so any spotted cat is going to have regulatory
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: pressure on it because it's so easy to be like,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: oh no, that's not that. Do you follow what I'm saying.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: So it's like like they're trying to regulate the movement
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: of spotted cats because there's so many imperiled spotted cats.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: They just want to be that if it's a spotted cat,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: it's a painted even if it's worthless. Yeah, if it's
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: got spots, we just don't know what it is. Is
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: it like is it that or is it a snow leopard? Yeah,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: you know or whatever?
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, Well you've had Dan Floris on you know that,
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: and you know his book American Serengetti. He talks about,
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: you know, what they did to predators, you know in
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: Colonial America, and jaguars were one of the things they
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: just you know, they just shot.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Would they would they poison jaguars too? Yeah?
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: I think they poison all predators. You know, wolves, bear,
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: coyotes in in Brazil, in you know, South America. Sure,
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: they used to poison them, poison them all the time.
• 38:34
  Speaker 8: You mentioned Colonial America, are are do you think black
• 38:39
  Speaker 8: jaguars and colonial America are responsible for the continued sightings
• 38:45
  Speaker 8: of black like claim sightings of black panthers wherever in.
• 38:49
  Speaker 5: Southern the southern United that's interesting there, there's the black
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: jaguars only come from one place?
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Is that right?
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: To one place? Like the colonists would not have Taylor
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Sledge in Clay's dead or listening in the entire state
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: of Mississippi. I was listening right now. I don't let
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: you know, but they have on their hands right now.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Black jaguar. Who does he's just roaming or it's a cat,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: it's a house cat. There was just a picture that
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: our buddy in Mississippi sent us, and he's like, he's
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: like the whole state's panties are on fire. And you
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: kind of look and you're like, maybe it's like a
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: house cat. It's like a guy has a picture of
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: a cat standing on the side of the road. But
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: it's also people.
• 39:32
  Speaker 5: Like black mountain lions.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but everybody knows there's no such now that
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: now that words out, there is no never has been.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: There's no such thing as a black panther. A black
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: panther is a wet panther. So then the black Panther.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Crowd hit on the thing that there is melanism in jaguars,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: so Taylor's sledge was staying. He even had a veterinarian
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: tell him it's got to be a melanistic jaguar in
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Mississippi terrorizing Mississippi, as.
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: We well, maybe that's the second jaguar we got coaches
• 40:08
  Speaker 5: in Arizona and whatever. The black jaguar is named the Mississippi.
• 40:12
  Speaker 5: But there's a place in Brazil called the Sahavo. It's
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: it's c E r R A d oh, but they
• 40:18
  Speaker 5: pronounced the double r like ha though, in the Sahavo,
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: and that's the only place that black jaguars there.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: So there's like a melanistic est jaguars. Is he like black?
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Or is he got like dark spots? No, I have a.
• 40:32
  Speaker 5: Pulled off a picture, Oh, pull up of your friends.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: I can read picture. I'll put it up there like
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: they show fill.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: More serious theater, you know. Quit. Yeah, I'm gonna get
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: a guy that's just pummeling pictures on that screen.
• 40:51
  Speaker 8: Stop like jet black ones, but also like spots really
• 40:59
  Speaker 8: barely like yeah.
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: So it's like, uh, it's it's like those black bears,
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: you know, like the the spirit bears.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Or whatever in Canada.
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: It's it's like a very localized expression of some sort
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: of gene.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah that must be. Yeah, I don't that. I expect
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: that's what it is.
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you can see that.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Take that back. I don't think you should do that, okay,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: because some places I've been on they do it, and
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: it gets a little anoying. Like every damn thing you
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: talk about up on the screen.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: I'm glad you've had a complete one eight in the last.
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: Your original instincts for correct feeling.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Don't put it up. What was the what was the
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: give me some of the like of the and let's
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: say let's take meso America, okay, familiar like like Mane culture,
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: different meso American cultures, pre Contacts or pre Columbian cultures.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: What was there? Is there a way to generalize about,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: like what was their understanding of the animal, like like
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: the Amerindian indigenous understanding of the animal? Was it like
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: a prize thing to get? Was it like what you know,
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: if you had to sort of typify the relationship.
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: They worshiped it, I mean metaphysically, there was like no
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: more important animal, but it was it represented to those people.
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: What say the grizzly bear represented to you know, northern
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: Native American tribes. It was part of their religion, part
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: of their art, part of their architecture, part of their iconography.
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: They absolutely worshiped it. The Mayans believed that the jaguar
• 42:42
  Speaker 5: escorted the sun from day tonight and back today. The
• 42:47
  Speaker 5: Olmecs would would would mutilate their heads so they resembled
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: jaguar heads. And but at the same time they did
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: kill jaguars because they value their pelts, they valued their teeth,
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: you know, et cetera. But they had I mean it
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: was you know, it was their totem. It was something
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: you know that was important to every aspect of their lives.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: But they didn't regard it as like as one of
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: their predators. You mean it has something to be feared. Yeah,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Like when you went out, you know, like, let's you
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: talk about the northern plains, right, and the northern plains
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: you knew people, everyone would have known people that were
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: killed by grizzlies, yeah, right, and so but there wasn't
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: like an element of that, like a thing that was
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: you were afraid of.
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: No no I I from all the reading I've done,
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: and you know the traveling I did, I never got
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: I never got that impression.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was you know, they they were worshiped.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Mm hm. So what what At what point did you
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: go from being like kind of interested in jaguars to
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: being that you're gonna do a whole book like that
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: little transition?
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah, right right, Well, let's see. I read I was
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: living just above Boulder, Colorado, on a little mining town
• 44:10
  Speaker 5: called Jamestown, and I was going to grad school at
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: CU and I read Jaguar for the first time in
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: like nineteen ninety It came out in nineteen eighty six
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: or something like that, and I.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Was bold, over, what is that book? I'm not faking.
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: That's Alan Rabinowitz's first book.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: He wrote Jaguar. It was about his.
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: Experience in Belize when he was there for a year
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: and a half and he radio collared the first jaguar
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: in the rainforest. But he dedicated himself to this Coxhoam
• 44:44
  Speaker 5: Basin in Belize. He dedicated himself to the jaguars of Belize.
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: And I read that book and I was like, man,
• 44:52
  Speaker 5: this guy's my hero. He's incredible. He's like fierce and fearless.
• 44:57
  Speaker 5: He'll go anywhere. He'll do anything. And he brought his weights.
• 45:02
  Speaker 5: He was like he was a he was a martial
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: artist and he was a weightlifter. Brought his weights to
• 45:08
  Speaker 5: this little, tiny, little Mayan village down in Belize and
• 45:12
  Speaker 5: he would do his weights and he had green eyes
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: and a hairy chest. And the people of the Maya
• 45:18
  Speaker 5: people didn't know they were they feared him. Initially they
• 45:23
  Speaker 5: thought he had the eyes of a jaguar. But anyway,
• 45:25
  Speaker 5: I would go around and you know, I would I
• 45:28
  Speaker 5: would hike around the mountains, fish or hunt or backpack,
• 45:31
  Speaker 5: and I would pretend like I was looking for jaguar tracks.
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: And then like fast forward to two thousand, I don't
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: know one or two I didn't. I did an interview
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: with Alan Rabinowitz for I think it was Outside magazine,
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: and I talked to him at length, what.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: Year like two thousand one or two there? Then, oh
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: you were I started writing there in two thousand. Oh
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: well then I'm sure I read it.
• 46:00
  Speaker 5: Were you in Santa Fe?
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: At the time? I was just like what they call
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: it a time contributing editor contributing Oh yeah, yeah, so
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: I was never under contract? Why did like cover stories
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: and yeah.
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: Sad what's become of outside.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Was different now, but not sending you over to the
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Philippines for now.
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: They got no budgets now. So anyway, I I interviewed
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: him at length, and I proposed writing a biography at
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: at that time of him, and he kind of entertained
• 46:33
  Speaker 5: the notion. And about six months later, after we had long,
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: long conversations about his life, he'd just been diagnosed with
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: chronic lymphatic leukemia, which the doctors told him would eventually
• 46:46
  Speaker 5: kill him. And they told him not to get like amoebic.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Dysentery or malaria or whatever.
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: It would, you know, it would it would set him back.
• 46:54
  Speaker 5: But of course he didn't, you know, he didn't listen
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: to it.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: And where was this guy from? He was from He
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: was from New York.
• 46:59
  Speaker 5: He grew up in Queens, New York. But there was
• 47:02
  Speaker 5: nowhere he wouldn't go and nothing he wouldn't do. He
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: I mean, he studied tigers in Burma and Thailand. He
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: studied clouded leopards on the island and for most of.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: A big cat guy, oh, big big cat.
• 47:15
  Speaker 5: The most you know. They called him the Indiana Jones
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: of wildlife ecology. He was super fit he's super courageous,
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: would do anything.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: But anyway, I gotta tell you something, this nuts man
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: that I feel like lines up with this. Yeah. So
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: then it would have been around ninety or ninety one, No,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: like ninety one or ninety two. I went to a
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: National Trappers Association convention, Okay, might have been in Iowa,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: and I go to a lecture by a prominent trapper.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: His last name was Brown. I'm trying. I feel like
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: his name is Jerry Brown. But that's like the old government.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: There's probably million Jerry Brown's. He's a he's a predator trapper,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: like a kyo trapper, cat trapper. Yeah, he was giving
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: a lecture. I'm not shooting you. He's giving acture. He
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: had been contracted and had been down in South America
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: with researchers trying to figure out how to get collars
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: on jaguars using foot snares and other things. And because
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: he's like, he's like a big cat trapper and he
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: was like talking about his experiences like that dude had
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: to have somehow been lined up with the guy you're
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: talking about, because.
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: I'm sure he was. Was his name Darren Simpson? Not definitely,
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: not that definitely not that okay, And he was like he.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Was just a consultant and a guy that knew his
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: way around cat trapping, and he was taking I remember
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: him talking about they were developing because he's trying to
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: hook him and he just gave this lecture about I
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: remember at that time even thinking like that was bad
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: ass because those professional trappers are I was trying to
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: find ways to round out their income, and that was
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: what he was doing. And I wonder if he, like.
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: They first started trapping jaguars and the pontinal in in
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: the early like late in the seventies or early eighties,
• 49:03
  Speaker 5: but then but it wasn't prominent. It wasn't a you know,
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: common practice. They will cable snares on the foot, on
• 49:11
  Speaker 5: the foot, yeah, like a loaded snare, like a loaded snare, right, No,
• 49:14
  Speaker 5: no bait, no bait, blind sets, blind sets. Yeah, yeah,
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: that's the way you got to You got to be
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: really good. So this Joe rs May, he's a veterinarian
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: and a big cat trapper that I spent you know,
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: considerable amount of time with in Brazil. The guy's amazing.
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: He's like my cousin Himo trapping wolverines. You know up
• 49:34
  Speaker 5: in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I mean he's he
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: traps osclity, traps mained wolves, he traps jaguars over one
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: hundred and it's really pretty simple. But the trail sets
• 49:47
  Speaker 5: trade yeah yeah, and he and it's it's it's amazing.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know how he goes about, like what is
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: he doing?
• 49:55
  Speaker 5: So you have the so he sets the he sets
• 49:59
  Speaker 5: a piece of you know, the base plate. He uses
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: rebar and he anchors it like two feet down. Then
• 50:07
  Speaker 5: he has then he has swivels in springs and then
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: he attaches that to the thrower. And then there's the
• 50:16
  Speaker 5: cable snare so and then there's the pressure plate just outside.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: You know the cable snare.
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: Which is just a sponge with with.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: Dirt on top.
• 50:26
  Speaker 5: And and then he makes this little lane.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: And that's the trigger. Is the weight on the pressure.
• 50:31
  Speaker 5: Exactly, that's the that's the trigger, that's the weight is
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: the weight on that. And then he makes this little trail.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: It's amaze.
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: I don't know how.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: And they don't worry about about scent human scent, which
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: you know, they don't give it. They don't care. That's
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: kind of true. Like cat trapping in general. Oh is it? Yeah,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: they're not like.
• 50:50
  Speaker 5: They're not like I don't watching my my cousin Jimo
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: trapped wolves.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, cats like bare hands, you know,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: you don't even a lot of guys don't cover the pan.
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. So so then he made this kind of
• 51:04
  Speaker 5: trail of leaves to the to the snare, and then
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: he got out all the all the stuff in the
• 51:14
  Speaker 5: middle of the trail. Because jaguars like to walk side,
• 51:17
  Speaker 5: jaguars like to walk silently.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: They can't even be a leaf there, can't offer him
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: a quiet place to put exactly, offer him a quiet
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: place to put his foot.
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: And then and then they have a little like fishing
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: line attached to the cable snare which runs up a
• 51:34
  Speaker 5: pole which attaches to a magnet in a transmitter. So
• 51:39
  Speaker 5: when the cat trips that, you know you have a receiver.
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: You know that that that kid that yeah, you know
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: that that trap has been tripped and it's.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: And you got like a tape here or a white
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: lipa you don't know what's in there.
• 51:56
  Speaker 5: Sometimes you got a taper, right.
• 51:58
  Speaker 8: Is there some urgency to get there so they don't
• 52:01
  Speaker 8: hurt them?
• 52:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, they they they have a cat in
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: the catch circle, you clear everything out of the catch circle.
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: Otherwise they will tear the thing up like a wolverine or.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Something, hurt himself and hurt himself. Yeah.
• 52:13
  Speaker 5: In fact, in the book Alan Rabinowitz, one of the
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: the first jaguar he traps is i Puk, which is
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: the Mayan god of death, tears tears off his tears
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: off his canine in one of the in one of
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: the traps.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so it does. It does happen?
• 52:33
  Speaker 8: Is he using trail cameras to zero in on specific
• 52:38
  Speaker 8: jaguars or just to like keep Yeah, they use.
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: They use lots of lots of trail cams to zero
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: in on jaguars.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and then you know, they they start establishing the
• 52:49
  Speaker 5: big cat's routine and then they'll put you know, then they'll.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: Put bea ah. So they're like targeting a cat.
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: They're targeting a cat. Yeah, they're targeting a specific cat.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: How many countries you been to you in your life? Oh,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: my god, in my life? Yeah, like a hundred? No,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: probably not, no, I don't know.
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: I for the for the book, I traveled, you know,
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: all over South America, Central America. You know, my my
• 53:15
  Speaker 5: friend's lab. My friends joke that I only write books
• 53:18
  Speaker 5: when I so I could travel to those places. Oh yeah,
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: so I guess there was an element of truth.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: To that, but.
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah, i'd have to get I have to think about it.
• 53:29
  Speaker 5: You know, been to Africa, been to you know, all
• 53:32
  Speaker 5: over Southeast Asia, now South American, Central America.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Probably not as many places as you, not a bit more. Yeah,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I've repeatedly gone back to New Guinea.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: So you keep burning up opportunities, right, yeah. So, uh,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: when we got off on a couple not tangents because
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: they're very relevant, you were warming up to you were
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: warming up to your subject. Yeah, and he got sick.
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: Oh sorry, yeah, sorry, yeah, so he got he got sick.
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: But ultimately he said, you know what, this has been great.
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: We remain friends, but I'm going to write my own books.
• 54:08
  Speaker 5: By that time, he'd already written Jaguar Chasing the Dragon's
• 54:12
  Speaker 5: tale about trying to find the foremost and the mythical
• 54:17
  Speaker 5: formos in clouded Leopard, which he never found.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know what that is.
• 54:22
  Speaker 5: A clouded leopard is a little is a little, you know,
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: small little leopard out of very elusive Thailand formosa, you know,
• 54:33
  Speaker 5: and it's not an actual thing or it is, no,
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: it is, it is, but they I say mythical because
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: they thought it existed.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: But you know, he probably died one hundred years before. Oh,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: like he thought it was like a Lazarus species. Yeah, right, right.
• 54:46
  Speaker 5: And then he wrote a book about two books about Burma,
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: one called Life in the Valley of Death and one
• 54:53
  Speaker 5: called Beyond the Last Village. So he's a great writer.
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: And I mind all his books, you know, and did
• 55:00
  Speaker 5: lots of interviews with friends and his wife to write
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: the book. But ultimately he decided, you know, he didn't
• 55:06
  Speaker 5: need me to write a book. But we remain friends.
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: We remained friends for a long time. And then, you know,
• 55:13
  Speaker 5: as some of these friendships do, you know, we we
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: just we stopped talking for no other reason than we
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: just got busy. And in twenty eighteen, I went to
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: New Guinea and we'd been in touch and I talking
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: again about doing a documentary about him or a book
• 55:29
  Speaker 5: about him, and we've been talking and you know, in
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: back in touch, and I was elated, because you know,
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: he's an amazing guy. I got back from I got
• 55:37
  Speaker 5: back from New Guinea and one of the people at
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: panther The communications director called me and told me he died.
• 55:46
  Speaker 5: So so, you know, he died way before his time,
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: you know, of actually leukemia together with with a skin cancer.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: So you know that was in twenty eighteen. I think
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: he was sixty sixty three at the time. But you know,
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: he was just he was fearsome and you know, fearless.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: He was someone to be admired. Yeah, so eventually you
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: decided to I mean, obviously I'm looking at it right now. Yeah,
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: he picked up the project.
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so I picked up the project and you know,
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: got in touch with Panthera, the organization he kind of
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: helped establish.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: And there was this other guy named.
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: Howard Quigley who was a famous jaguar biologist and also
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: tiger biologist. He was one of the first people to
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: collar amyer tigers in Siberia.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: Amazing guy too.
• 56:39
  Speaker 5: So he helped me, you know, kind of find places
• 56:43
  Speaker 5: along the Jaguar Corridor, you know, along that five thousand
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: miles to visit you know, people people that wanted to talk,
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: people that were doing amazing things, and also people places
• 56:53
  Speaker 5: where I might have a chance of seeing jaguars.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, along that corridor. Imagine the Darien Gaps got be
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: a real bit huh, Like that's got to be like
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: the problem, right, that that is the yeah exactly.
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: I feel like the Darien Gap only gets brought up
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: in the context of it being a problem, yeah, for
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: various reasons.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: Well. And then and then at the height, like at
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: the height of the Biden administration, when there was so
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: much illegal immigration, it like brought in tons of people
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: into the into the Darien Gap, and then the Darien
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: Gap kind of became like almost like a conflict zone.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: I mean, wasn't there a New York Times reporter who
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: went down there and walked the Darien Gap with the people?
• 57:33
  Speaker 5: I mean, can you imagine like four year old children
• 57:36
  Speaker 5: going through the Darien Gap.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: And people in there preying on them? Oh oh yeah yeah.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: And it like this this very isolated place became also
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: like a very visited place, yeah, right, and a lot
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: of a lot of violence out of.
• 57:50
  Speaker 5: A lot of violence, yeah, a lot of trafficking.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: But for yeah, for the Jaguar that that's like a
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: pinch point. And when they were first establishing the Jaguar
• 57:59
  Speaker 5: cort Or, that was something they really worried about is
• 58:02
  Speaker 5: the Darien getta.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess, I guess through that context,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: let's talk about this corridor. Like the objective presumably is
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: to get jaguars back into their northern range, right back
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: in the meso America.
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, that's part of it.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: But the.
• 58:21
  Speaker 5: Major point is that because jaguars are the only wide
• 58:26
  Speaker 5: ranging predators without a subspecies, that's to preserve that's to
• 58:32
  Speaker 5: preserve the DNA. You know, there are no taxonomic differences
• 58:37
  Speaker 5: between jaguars. You know, when that was discovered in nineteen
• 58:41
  Speaker 5: ninety nine, Alan Rabinowitz was elated. He's like, you know,
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: we can treat jaguars as a single ecological unit, as
• 58:50
  Speaker 5: one species. So that was the idea, you know, is
• 58:53
  Speaker 5: the genetic flow, genetic freedom, make sure that jaguars could
• 58:59
  Speaker 5: move throughout the corridor, you know, in spread their genes.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: What is the what are the the corridor, what are
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: the what's the northern terminus in the southern terminus? Like, like,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: what is the corridor?
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: So the corridor is this kind of loosely connected they
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: call them jaguar conservation units. The the kind of the
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: the avenues or the trails or whatever you want to
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: call them the passageways by which they connect the jaguar
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: conservation units, which are just areas that produce a lot
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: of jaguars that are just you know, good habitat for jaguars.
• 59:36
  Speaker 5: But it goes from again the Ebera or Ibera all
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: the way up to essentially the Sierra Madres of of
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: of Mexico or to southern Arizona. Essentially everything below Highway
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: ten in southern Arizona. In Arizona, that's the corridor. So
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: it's a huge quarridor it's one of the biggest corridors
• 59:58
  Speaker 5: of any animal on earth, except the leopards may be
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 5: a little bit bigger.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: Just for like, as far as there their range like
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: of an individual animal and their social lives, is it
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: fair like what would expect, like males rome and they're
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: fairly solitary creatures. I mean, is there anything unique in
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: terms of jaguars and how they move around the landscape
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: and relate to one another.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I mean they're first of all, they're they're solitary.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 5: You know, they get together to mate and that's pretty
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 5: much yet. But jim, oh yeah, sorry, And the the
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: females they have what they call range fidelity, so they
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: don't move that far. But the males, particularly a male
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 5: in what they call natal dispersal, a male that has
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 5: not mate it like like co cheese or like this
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 5: this famous jaguar el Hefe. You know, they'll come out
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 5: of they'll come out of the Sierra Madres of northern Mexico,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 5: the Northern Jaguar Reserve, which is like one hundred and
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 5: twenty five miles south of the border, and they'll they'll
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: roam all the way into you know, the Santa Rita
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 5: Mountains of southern Arizona. So they have huge ranges.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: So that's that's where those Arizona cats are coming from. Yeah,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that that was that close to the border.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, one hundred and twenty five miles south of the border.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: And that's you know, kind of like the a Waning Well,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: I wouldn't say waning, but the last population, the farthest
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: north breeding population of jaguars.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: And are we talking like ten are we talking hundreds?
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: Now you're probably talking like thirty or forty in the
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: Sierra Madra in the Sierra Madres. Yeah, eating Cou's deer,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: eating cou's deer.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I know, you've had Jim Jim Hefflefinger. I
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 5: know you've had Jim Heffelfinger on it. He I talked
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 5: with him at length. He's a great guy. We've discovered
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: that we grew up like ten ten miles from there.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so I was just I wasn't gonna bring
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: up Halfelfinger by name. But let's talk a little bit
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: about wildlife politics and Arizona. Yeah, sure, Well you can't
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: avoid it, all right. So the like there's a sort
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: of I don't know, man, there's a sort of battle. Okay,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a management battle where in Arizona there
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: are there are forces, there are powers that be that
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: want to just kind of wash their hands of this
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: whole jaguar thing, and they want to say, sure, like
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: maybe now and then a male would wander up into Arizona.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: But you can't call this core habitat because once someone says, no, bro,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: this is core habitat, then they're gonna be like, it'd
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: be like the same thing like Colorado them saying, you
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: know what, we have a mandate. We're gonna we're gonna
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: reintroduce wolves in Colorado. The fear is that someone down
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: the road says, and this is not my fear. I
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: think it's a great idea. The fear is that someone
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: down the road, someone says, Hey, this is historic jaguar range,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: this is core habitat for jaguars. We have a legal
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: responsibility to restore jaguars in Arizona, which I think is
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: a phenomenal idea. I'd like it even more if I
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: live there.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: That's a cool I want to see because you didn't
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: see it.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: I just like all that. I like I like all that,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: Like I like looking over my shoulder, you know, And
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: even though they're passive and all that, I just like
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: the whole thing about them. And you're never gonna have
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: it's not gonna have like enough jaguars where you're having, Like,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: it's not gonna have like a it's not gonna be
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: that all of a sudden predation goes up because what
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: it's gonna come. It's gonna come at the expensive mountain lions. Yeah,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? So I think it's
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: a phenomenal idea. I'm just throwing that out there. But
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: that's like the wildlife politics end. And so these guys
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: came up with this great map. Yeah, it's every known
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: and so it's in the U in the United States
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: of America. It's this map of like every known instance,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: and they track down stuff even like photos and bars. Yeah,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: like some old photo a barers, like a dude with
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: a dead jaguar.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 9: Like what is that all about? They're like, oh, yeah,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 9: my grandpa he shot it. Yeah, does anyone No, No,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 9: it's just like a picture in the bar. But then
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 9: they get to interview people.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: Are like, legitimately at some point in time, like it
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: seems like this dude's grandpa, no joke, shot a jaguar,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: and so on the map and people argue about the map,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: and on the map is also jaguars that dudes trucked
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: up there to turn loose for jaguar hunts, right, And
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: so the map is like a contentious map where they're there.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: There's people going like not legit, not legit, not legit,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: and other people are going like, no, these are all
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: legit sightings. And it boils down to is someone someday
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: gonna say we're gonna do a release of jaguars. Well
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: you seem to not like this subject.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: Well, I'm telling you you called it controversial, man, that's it.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 5: In the nail on the head and it's been going
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 5: on for a long time since pretty much nineteen ninety
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 5: six when two ranch when one rancher Warner Glenn guy
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 5: straight out.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you if you ran he caught that one.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, straight out of Central casting. You know, saw
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 5: someone in nineteen ninety six and this other guy named
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 5: he and his wife Jack Childs, and he was a
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 5: he was a you know, he ran lions with his
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 5: with his daughters.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: And yeah, we've we've had like our colleague Clay has
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: done a lot with him.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 5: Oh oh Jack video Warner with Warner, Yeah, well with Warner. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 5: well they're both They're amazing, amazing guys and probably pretty
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 5: middle of the middle of the road guys as far
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 5: as jaguars are concerned.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: If you go into like even in those years like
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: back then a little bit later that know, it's much
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: in two thousands. Yeah. Uh, there's a guy that knew
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: those guys that that me and Yanni are friends with
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: Floyd Green and you went into his optic shop and
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: there's a picture of that jaguar. Yeah, and I was like,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: what's up with that jaguar. It's like the Warner Glenn jaguar,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: oh Marazona.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he talked about the shiny green, shining green eyes.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: You're thinking Leopold, Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: In Leopold.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 5: Leopold loved, ultimately loved jaguars. He wrote a lot about jaguars.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: But I won't we won't go that far straight.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: But so, I mean, this is.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 5: Really really complicated, and I won't give you too much history,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 5: but there is. There was an effort called CANDRA, the
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 5: Central Arizona, New Mexico Recovery Area, and this group that
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 5: this group that you're called you were talking about, wanted
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 5: to set aside twenty million acres from the Elder Leopold
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 5: Elder Leopold Wilderness and the Hila all the way up
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 5: to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon along the
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 5: Muggy and Rim as jaguar historically, historically it was probably
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 5: jaguar habitat. So they wanted to do a reintroduction of
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 5: jaguars ninety to one hundred and twenty jaguars in that area,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 5: which was shot down by fishing. US Fish and Wildlife
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 5: Service and the Secretary of the Interior.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Did you want to talk about people's panties getting on fire.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 5: I'm sure you can imagine the Cattleman's Association, et cetera.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 5: But you know, and the hunters too. I mean, I hunt,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 5: so you know it's a tough thing.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: But jaguars and I wasn't like, here's the deal. Yeah,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: I feel and I'm not a cat expert. Yeah, I
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: feel this is just my me ballpark or like crystal
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: ball in it. I don't think you'd see because this
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: is all mountain lion country. Yeah, I don't think you'd
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: probably see an increase in predation.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 5: I think you'd see it shift from what to what.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: I think the mountain lions would would pay the price.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: Oh like if you if you species, you don't all
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 4: of a sudden double your big cat population.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like when you put so if you put wolves
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: into the mountain lions, you get like additive predation has
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: been very demonstrated. I just have a hard time picture
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: and it throwing another cat in the mix. Maybe I'm wrong,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: throwing another cat in the mix. I still think you're
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: going to see X number a dead deer killed by cats.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah, not not double or trip now, I don't think.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well what do I know?
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: I don't know, yeah, makes sense though I can see
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: it both ways.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: It makes complete sense.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 5: Well, first of all, jaguars living really low low densities.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 5: Second of all, they eat eighty five species. You know,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 5: they're not They're not going to just eat cous deer
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 5: and elk. They're going to eat frogs, They're going to
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: eat skunks, They're gonna eat turtles. They like turtles, Yeah,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 5: they love turtles.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: No turtles and airs.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but yeah, I mean they're real generalists, you know,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 5: so they're not going to concentrate, you know, on the
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 5: deer or on the yelk. And I think Jim Heffelfinger
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 5: has said that, you know, I don't think that predation
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 5: would be increased that much, right, I.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: Don't want to drag him into this. Matter of fact,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: I can't remember what his take on this whole thing is.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 5: Well, I think he I think his take on I
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 5: think his take on critical habitat and reintroduction is very
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 5: is negative. I mean, he's like, it's a it's a
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 5: powder keg. And also why waste in endangered species money
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: on a cat that may or may not want to
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 5: live because because they got the jowel muscles?
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you see one of these cats.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 5: I mean they are so magnificent.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: I mean their heads are like that. Oh, and they're
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: so powerful.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 5: I mean they and they live in trees. They swim,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 5: you know, they swim rivers with caman in their mouths
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 5: for a mile. I mean they are like they are
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 5: like the most they are like the most athletic cat
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 5: there is athletic beast there.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: When I get attacked by a lion or grizzly, I
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: can pull their upper and lower jawpart so they can't
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: clamp down on me. Like I don't know what the
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: jag man one hundred and fifty pounce, I don't know.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 5: Pounds of pressure per square it.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna start working out so I can hold them.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 7: They said, yeah, I've never seen a jaguar, but I
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 7: think it was at a Denver zoo. They had some
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 7: sort of tigers, and I don't know if they were
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 7: the bangle tiger what tiger. But I remember having that
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 7: that this sense of awe that you're describing, and it
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 7: was only, you know, there's a pane of glass between
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 7: me and this giant cat, but when you look at it, it's.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: Just, Yeah, it gives you a weird feeling.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: Well, this is what you said earlier, is like when
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: they move, every part of their body is activated. They're
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: not like my lab where they're kind of walking and
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: there's like legs like like there's shaking and jiggling like
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: when a cat moves. It's like it's almost like a snake.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: It's like the whole thing is Yeah, like a.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: Runway model, dude, We're like just the whole thing. There's
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: not a muscle out of place.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's exactly That's exactly right. You see one of
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 5: those things. It's something to behold.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: People.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 5: Jaguar biologists who've seen like, you know, dozens in their
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 5: lives still.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: Think it's like a dream to see a jaguar. And yeah,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: they are. They are just incredibly beautiful, and there's such
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: magnificent athletes.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 5: You know, they're just you know, I mean, you know,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 5: they jump twenty feet you know, standing jump into a tree,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 5: and then they can live in trees in certain parts
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 5: of the Amazon. When it floods, they live in trees
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 5: for months. It's crazy.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: Huh, So what the what the sciet these protections? YEA,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: with more awareness with the quarters are we like has
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: the decline and jaguars been reversed or is it Are
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: they still a species in decline and is there is
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: their territory still shrinking.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's a good question. I think jaguar biologists
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 5: have hope.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: You know, they have to have hope.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 5: You know, it's kind of in kind in the you know,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 5: conservation you know, hope can be hard to come by.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 5: But yeah, I think that I think that people are
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 5: hopeful that the jaguar will persist, that they can kind
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 5: of lock down these jaguar conservation areas and they can
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 5: defend the corridor. So I think they're Yeah, I think
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 5: I don't know what's happening to the population in general,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 5: but I do think that they have hoped that the
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 5: jaguars will continue to persist, if not, if not thrive.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you didn't have, like in your book, you
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: didn't have a through all that reporting, you didn't come
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: up with like a strong personal opinion about what's going
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: to happen with the animal. It just seems like it's
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: like a legitimate question.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I'm it's it's it's tough. I mean, it's tough.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: I hate to be you know.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 5: I there were times when I was pessimistic, and there
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 5: were times when.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: I was optimistic. Yeah.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 5: Well you go to the Pontinal and you're filled with
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 5: optimism because you see, you see a lot of jaguars
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 5: and they're you know there, there are a lot of
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 5: jaguars there. But the Amazon, you know, the the the
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 5: Amazon is imperiled, you know, and that's where the bulk
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 5: of jaguars, maybe seventy to eighty percent of jaguars live,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 5: and the Amazon, I could you know, when I was
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 5: in Brazil, when when when I don't mean to be political,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 5: but when Donald Trump slapped tariffs son Chinese goods, Chinese
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 5: you know, reciprocated or retaliated slapped tear of son soybeans.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 5: So you know, our soybean farmers couldn't send soybeans to China.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: So what did they Chinese do. They went to Bolivia
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: and they went to the They went to they went
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: to Brazil and to invest in soybeans.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and they just raised forests for you know, thirty
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 5: forty miles you see nothing but bean fields and that's
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 5: where they that's where they got their beans. So and
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 5: jaguars cannot live, you know, in a bean field.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: But you don't need to apologize for being political, because
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: what's not political? Yeah, particularly these you know what I
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: mean like like, well, no, I mean like wildlife is political. Yeah,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: it is. It's like you can't. There's no world in
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: which you could talk about wildlife and have it not
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: intersect with politics. It's just it's like it is political. Yeah.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 5: And Alan Rabinowitz worked in Burma shortly after the generals
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 5: crushed the pro democracy movement, and he worked there and
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 5: he was criticized. He was criticized by fellow biologists. He
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 5: was criticized in the newspaper newspapers. He said, you know,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 5: since when do you know tigers get a vote? He said,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 5: I'm going to go save tigers.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: And well, they expected him to withdraw from Burma.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah, they expected him to withdraw from Burma and he wouldn't.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 5: And you know, in some cases he was dealing with
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 5: generals you know, who were you know, pretty unscrupulous people.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 5: But his commitment was to you know, was to the
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 5: jaguar or they're the tigers, I mean to the tiger.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, thanks, Yeah. Do you focus mostly on his
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: work with jaguars or do you get into his work
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: with other cats?
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 5: I get into his work a little bit with tigers
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 5: in Burma, but mostly I focus, you know, on the jaguar,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 5: just because it was so kind of, you know, revolutionary,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 5: the notion of the jaguar corridor. You know, that swath
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 5: of land, you know, five five thousand, five thousand miles
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 5: just hadn't been attempted before for one species.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: And then how much did he live through by the
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: time he died, Was it clear that his vision was
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: going to carry was going to be effective.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely he inspired. I mean, the jaguar Corridor was
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 5: essentially his idea in the jaguar Corridor lives on today,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 5: and I mean they're countless biologists and countless environmental organizations
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 5: who are dedicated to it.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it lives on.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 5: And I think that he was aware before he died,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 5: you know, that that there was a commitment to maintaining
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 5: the jaguar Corridor.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: Do you think he's looking down and he's pissed that
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: you want to write the book after all? After that
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: be thankful? Well, he's like son of I asked ten
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: times his.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 5: His wife was really really helpful, and it was I
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 5: think it was still a painful experience for her because
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 5: she still hadn't taken all his journals out of his closet. George,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 5: he was a he was a protege of George Shaller,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 5: and George Shaller said, your job is at the end
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 5: of every first of all, take field notes, and at
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 5: the end of the day revisit those notes and write
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 5: about the sights and sounds and smells, you know, he said.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 5: I think his quote was the the the pen is
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 5: your is the weapon against oblivion. So Alan Rabinowitz followed that,
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 5: and he was a He was a he was a
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 5: very careful and dedicated note taker. So his his wife,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 5: you know, it was pretty brave to allow me to
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 5: to you know, to do Yeah, exactly, Karin.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: When we were in Africa, wasn't it wasn't those guys
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: from Pantera that we were talking the lion guys.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 9: Yep, yep, exactly.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We were with some dudes that were we just
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: shared a camp with them, and they were coming in
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: to set up they were coming in to set up
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: a huge camera trap array. Yeah, we'll call them trail
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: cams in our circle. They were coming in to set
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: up a huge trail cam array around lions leopards. I
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: think mainly, I think mainly those two. Yeah. Oh wow, yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 5: I used to call them trail cams too, but I've
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 5: been around jaguar biologists for so long I call them
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 5: camera traps.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: Fast. You had to assimilate, Like I got a thing
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: like like coyote, coyote. You know, there's very like you
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: don't meet many people who you don't meet trappers and
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: stuff to.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 5: Say you got a code switch.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, trail cams you kind of know where they're coming from.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: Camera traps, you kind of know where to comes.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 5: You don't call them mountain lion. Mountain lion, you call
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 5: him cats, right, yeah.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, So it's a yeah, it's funny you can
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: tell someone's background there, but it's been what an amazing
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: tool though, And my understanding too is with with leopards
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: and also with jaguars, the rosettes are identifiable complete, so
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: it gives you the ability to to name them and
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: know them.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's how that's how they Jack Child's
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 5: identified a jaguar in two thousand and five he caught
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 5: him on his trail cams and in two thousand and five,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 5: and he looked at the rosettes and said, these are
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 5: the same rosettes that I saw on the jaguar that
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 5: we photographed in nineteen ninety six, and then.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: What year was it in two thousand and five? Okay,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: So he recognized.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 5: There was one that resembled Pinocchio and one resembled a
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 5: cartoon character called Betty Boop. I don't know, I don't
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 5: I'm not familiar, but that's how he identified that cat.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 5: So that cat had been living in Arizona from nineteen
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 5: ninety six through two thousand and five. Huh so, yeah,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 5: so that is the no.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: No Arizona that long without getting in trouble. Yeah, without
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: getting in trouble. Yeah. Yeah, pretty amazing man. You know.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 5: Uh, they're one thing their grout there. Jaguars have this
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 5: modified hi oed bone in their throats so they can
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 5: roar unlike any other cat in the United States, and
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 5: so every jaguars roar is different too. That's kind of
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 5: their auditory signature. No no, no roar is the same.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: Huh really? Yeah? Do you know the story This was
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: another controversial one in the book. Do you tell the
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: story of the jaguar that gets killed by researchers in Arizona?
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: Tell that story real quick?
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 5: Oh man, that's a that's a that's a sore one. Right,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 5: that's a complicated one. So that that's called that's macho
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 5: b that. So in two thousand and eight, oh man,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 5: this is gonna be tough. In two thousand and eight,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 5: the Department of Homeland Security set aside or made it
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 5: known they had fifty million dollars to give to agencies
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 5: who were studying who wanted to study the effects of
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 5: the border wall on endangered species. And there was a
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 5: group called the Jaguar Borderland Detection Group, and they set
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 5: up trail cams all over southern Arizona from the Chiracaua
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 5: Mountains or the Anamous Mountains in New Mexico all the
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 5: way to the Barbakiveries, you know, in southwest of Tucson.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 5: And I've kind of lost my thought from moment.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: Oh we're talking about that cat that turned up got killed. Yeah,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: So so.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 5: They what what the Arizona Game and Fish Department wanted.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 5: They wanted to They wanted to capture and collar a jaguar. Now,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 5: there was a group called the jag the Jaguar Conservation Group,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 5: which was made up of guys in the government, conservationists ranchers,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 5: et cetera. And the environmentalists in that group said, if
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 5: you're not going to set aside critical habitat and refuse
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 5: to why do we have to call her a jaguar
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 5: Because that's essentially what you want to know. You want
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 5: to figure out what his range is and where.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: He's But then you're not going to do anything with
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: the info. But you're not going to do anything.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 5: You're not going to do anything with the info. So
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 5: so the so there was a surreptitious plan to capture
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 5: a cat, this Macho B, in an area where they
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 5: were also trying to trap mountain lions and bears. So
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 5: in February eighteenth, two thousand and nine, Macho B was captured,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 5: and he was captured in a snare which they baited
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 5: with the scat of a female jaguar in heat. Yeah,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 5: this is this is a long.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: This is gonna be a long. There's like some little
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: ring go here, I pressed.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's still a sore point down there.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 5: There was this guy named Amo McCain who was had
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 5: studied in Brazil with learned and was an amazing tracker. Well,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 5: he had set up this snare with these two other
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 5: biologists from the Arizona Game and Fish Department, and he
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 5: said everything had been cleared, everything was above board. Well,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 5: it turns out it wasn't above board. So this jaguar,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 5: Macho B, was snared in February eighteenth of two thousand
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 5: and nine. Two biologists said he was extremely frail at
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 5: the time, and so the they collared him, and then
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 5: they waited six hours for the telezol to drift out
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 5: of his body, and then the jaguar stumbled off, but
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 5: he already was in bad condition. And then about two
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 5: weeks later, they weren't getting a signal from Macho B
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 5: from the collar. So about two weeks later some Arizona
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 5: Game and Fish people went to check on Macho B.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 5: And they said he was extremely frail and stumbling around.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: Check on him, houf and not getting a signal from
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: the collar.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 5: They went back to that that site, the snare site,
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 5: and essentially he hadn't moved. The jaguar hadn't moved. So
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 5: then like a couple of days later.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: So they're not getting a move they're not getting moved,
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: they're not getting any movement off the college.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 5: So then on like March second, two thousand and nine,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 5: a whistleblower came out. This woman named Janey Brunn, who
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 5: was working with the Borderland Detection Group, said that she
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 5: had placed the female scat at the snare site to.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: Lure Macho B.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 5: So right there, the Arizona Game and Fish essentially rationale
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 5: went out the window because it was deliberate.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because their deal was that it just inadvertently got.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 5: It was an incidental thing, but they had baited it.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: But they had baited.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 7: It for jaguar, for jaguars, And I'd like to know
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 7: what it takes to get female jaguar in heat's gap.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 5: That's a great I have no idea. It's a great question.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 5: I have no idea. That should be asked.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: But then a day later, so what how is that
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: a whistleboard? That seems more like an admission.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 5: Well, because the the the Game and Fish department was
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 5: trying to cover up that it was, you know, an
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 5: incidental inadvertent.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, and so she was like, hey, it wasn't. In fact,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: I did it.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 5: And then she wrote eventually wrote a book called Cloak
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 5: and Jaguar.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: Was actually it was actually a.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 5: Pretty good book. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right right, So anyway.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: We had good titles. So anyway, on.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 10: Let's see March third, another party went out to check
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 10: on Macho B and captured him because they could tell
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 10: that he you know, he was hurting.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: He was hurting and hurting bad.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 5: So they brought him to the Phoenix Zoo and they
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 5: did the bunch of tests and they.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: Were like this, this jaguar is going to die. So
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: they thought about they thought about putting and what did
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: the tests revealed that he been drugged bad or he
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: was starving. He was starving. He he he was he
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: had already starving.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah, already starving physically in bad condition. And his kidneys
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 5: were shot old old animal, so he would kidneys were
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 5: shot from the drugs. No kidneys were shot from dehydration.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 5: When when they found him the first time, he was hypothermic.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 5: I think his core pressure was his core temperature was
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 5: like ninety degrees or something like that. So so yeah,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 5: I mean this if I want so, I'm trying to
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 5: give you some kind of broad brushstrokes. But ultimately they
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 5: had to put the jaguar down. And when they put
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 5: had to put the jaguar down on March third, all
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 5: the pay you know, papers across the Country covered the
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 5: death of Macho B. And then the whole, the whole
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 5: kind of I hate to say, guys, but the whole.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: Thing just blew up.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 5: Sure, and to two reporters for the Arizona Daily Star,
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 5: a guy named Tim Steller and I think Tom Davis
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 5: waded into this for for months, wading into all the
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 5: all the all the literature, and ultimately sided that what
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 5: had happened was that the Arizona Game and Fish Department
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 5: did not have an incidental take permit from the US
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 5: Fish and Wildlife Service for jaguars. They had no jaguar
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 5: protocol handling protocol, so they just you know, because ultimately
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 5: there was another reporter who reported on this and said
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 5: it was driven by greed, driven by environmental politics, and
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 5: driven by a desire to get some of that homeland
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 5: security money that for that they had set aside for
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 5: endangered species.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: Can you get close it to your micro Yes.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 5: They they thought if they could capture Macho B, they
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 5: would be able to get, you know, some of that
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 5: homeland security money.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: Does that all make sense? It's yeah, here's the one part.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: Here's the one part doesn't make sense. Yeah, not nothing.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: If this jaguar there seems to me like a little
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: bit like what was the result of and what was before?
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: If this jaguar is on death's door, right, how much
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: does he give a shit about a female dropping I'm saying,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: he's out doing jaguars stuff. Okay, he got himself, Like,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: he gets himself to the snare location, right, and they
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: might have had a great set, a great trail. But
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: he's there. He's enough to be interested, he's got curiosity.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: He gets hooked. But then all of a sudden, it's like,
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: oh no, he was half dead already. It's like, are
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: you sure? Because he showed up there but never left,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: so you caught him at the moment at his last
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: gasp was stepping on that plate. He's like, I'm good
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: for one more step. It's just I feel like there's
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: a little you know, like you could say like, oh no,
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: he was all but he was in rough shape. He
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: was all beat up. It's like, could have been that
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: bad shap, dude. He caught him. Yeah, right, If he's
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: in bad shape, he's laying in a thicket.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 5: Right, Well, I should on the second printing of my book.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: Having not been there, having brief consideration of the fact
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: that case.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 5: No, So that that was a real that for me,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 5: that was a real conundrum about do I include that story?
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 5: Do I dredge up all that old crap?
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: Well you have to, yeah, but because it's a new story. Yeah,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: that's right.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 5: But there were a lot of people, you know, who
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 5: were kind of injured by by the story. And Jack
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 5: Childs said it put put jaguar biology in Arizona back
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 5: into the Stone Age. So I really really thought long
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 5: and hard, or thought long and hard about whether I
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 5: wanted to tell that story, and ultimately I decided to
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 5: because guys, I mean that pretty much has set the
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 5: course for jaguar conservation in the Southwest in what way.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 5: It just it's just it's a stain. It's a stain
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 5: that you know that nobody, nobody wants to dredge up.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: And note right now, nobody really wants to touch.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 5: The jim Heth helthfel finger that the Arizona Game and
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 5: Fish Department may be a little more receptive to jaguars
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 5: in Arizona had this not happened. But they're just they
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 5: just don't like talking about it anymore, rightfully, So.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: You look skeptically, Well, no, I'm just picturing the email
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: on it.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 5: That's what I'm thinking, literally literally think.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: We will get Yeah, I'm not saying who, but there
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: will be emails.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there will be emails. It's a I mean, it's
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 5: a it's a complicated, unfortunate, tawdry story, you know. It
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 5: just it's just I think there were a lot of
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 5: people who meant well and things just went bad.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: But but I mean, just just to talk shop a
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: little bit, not even about jaguars, just to talk shop
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: a little bit. The the as a writer whatever, yeah,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: podcast or writer researcher, the why do you got to
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: go bringing this up? Thing? Right? I understand it. But
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: it's like the answer is kind of like because because right,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: so I should apology.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: It's like, because it mattered, It mattered, Yeah, mattered, matters,
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: It matters.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, it's it's a it's a big, big
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 5: deal and a lot of a lot of jaguar biologists
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 5: were like, I didn't give a shit about a geriatric
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 5: old jaguar that died in Arizona. But but because.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: You know, but it's also the cover of the only
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: one in the reality.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and it was the only one in the country
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 5: at that time.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: So trust me, if that if they had hooked a
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: mountain lion and it died, we would have been talking
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: about it. We wouldn't know. But it's like the only one.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: There's just I mean, you can't well and like bad
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: stuff happens. I have a dear friend who I'm not
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: gonna name his name because what he said to me
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: in private. He said this one time he was doing
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: a mark and recapture project. I'm not gonna tell you
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: what kind of because people will put it together. He's
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: doing a market recaptured project with with with wildlife, he said.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: His advisor once said to him, if you're not killing shit,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: you're not working hard. Wow, because he initially was like
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: so afraid of and he's supposed to be getting collars, yeah,
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: on right, and he was so afraid that it was crippling.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: And eventually someone said that if you're not if you're
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: not killing seff, you're not doing it. It's hands on work. Yeah,
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: it's like you got there's an inherent meaning, there's like
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: an inherent risk. Yeah, that becomes very different. One. There's one.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: There's one. It's a different conversation.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 5: Well, the protocol for capturing jaguars in for instance, Brazil
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 5: is like super complicated.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And if you're going to do if you're going
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 5: to do a capturing coloring program, which I was part of.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: You thought you were talking about.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 5: Seeing this magnificent jaguar, you know, just behind the glass,
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 5: and how it made you feel.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: You know, we had prepared.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 5: Night after night after night for the chance of capturing
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 5: a jaguar, and when it finally happened, no one had
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 5: ever told me about what an emotional experience it would be.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 5: When they presented that jaguar and laid them on the
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 5: back you know, of the truck and said, okay, now
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 5: you can touch that jaguar.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 5: I mean I still still like, I still get a
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 5: little shaky thinking about it.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: It was just like, you know.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 5: As the jaguars breathing, like touching, you know, touching the
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 5: belly and just moving my hand, you know, moving my
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 5: hand along the jaguar and the chail.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: Trying to get one of those teeth out. You would
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: love jaguar too, to hang from their neck. But it
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: was really like he's yeah, so, I mean, but that
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: was that was pretty laid a hand on, laid a
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: hand on one. Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty and that's
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: gotta feel just like muscle man, just complete muscle.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah, like the hind quarters you know that's oh man, Yeah,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 5: just solid muscle, solid muscle.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: That's cool that he's breathing, you know.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was pretty pretty special.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: Exp what's a jaguar smell like?
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 5: Just nothing, no fact, And that jaguar oddly didn't smell.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 5: But there's this guy named Eduardo Correo in Costa Rica
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 5: who said he was talking about how elusive jaguars are,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 5: you know, cryptic, and he could he said he could
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 5: be crawling through the jungle and he knew that jaguar
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 5: was close because his trans he because his his receiver.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 5: He was getting beeps. And he said what he does is,
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 5: he said, you know, jaguar could be three feet away
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 5: from me, you and you wouldn't see him. He'd listen
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 5: for the monkeys, or he'd.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: Use his nose. Oh, you're kidding me.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 5: No, he said, jaguars reek, so he would use his
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 5: nose and smell them out.
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: Huh. Johnny got to do that with lions. Oh you
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: did well, collared lions and y'all. He was saying It's amazing, man,
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: Like tell him, like, you get close to that sucker
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: and you don't know he's there.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 7: Oh that yeah, I thought you were talking about the
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 7: part where we had him drugged and then we're handling them.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: Oh no, you're like letting me get this close.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 7: Yeah, but no, we he was doing a study where
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 7: he was basically seeing if he repeated hazing would cause like,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 7: would be a deterrent for mountain lions proximity to humans.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: Right, oh yeah, if that makes sense. In the one
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: broad brushstroke and so to do.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 7: That, they were collaring them and then walk once they
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 7: had him collared, walking towards known locations of lions, coincidentally
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 7: playing the Meat Eater podcast at eighty decibels on a speaker,
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 7: and then he's watching the GPS as he walks towards it,
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 7: and he's like, okay, we're at fifty meters, we're at
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 7: thirty meters and the closest one we got to I
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 7: think was twelve And I'm like, are we going to
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 7: keep going?
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: And he's like, no, at this point, we can stop.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 2: It's there.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 7: And what was amazing is that it's literally right there.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 7: He says, it's in that cops of trees and he goes, oh,
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 7: now it's moving and you're looking right there, and you
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 7: ever see ith you never see the cat?
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, so amazing. Yeah that's great, Yeah, so amazing.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: Are you to retire now? Oh?
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 5: Man, No, you know, I'm a writer. I can't I'll
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 5: retire and I'm pushing up daisies here. I'm not sure,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 5: you know, that's a good question. Usually I should have
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 5: a book, you know, another book project ready to go,
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 5: but I don't.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: Looking for that plane. Is this for the hell of it?
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 5: Looking looking for that plane is about, you know, a
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 5: passion project.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was not a book I assumed as a
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: book project.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know, it could be, you know, it
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 5: could be like a long form story or something like that.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 5: But I'm not sure if it's a book project. But
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 5: I'd love to write about New Guinea again. Maybe maybe
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 5: next book will take me back to Alaska.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I got a few ideas.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 5: But this book, this book because well for a lot
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 5: of reasons, because of COVID. Actually, the the guy who
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 5: filled it, who became the new Alan Rabinowitz, who was
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 5: a great friend of Alan Rabinowitz, a guy named Howard Quigley.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: He died in the middle of my research and it
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: just you know what he did cancer too.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, And so this project took me way
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 5: longer than it should have, and it became ultimately it
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 5: became a passion project, you know, not a not a
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 5: not a pain project.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you spent much time.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, and some you know, not unnecessarily, but necessarily.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: But yeah, like the the economics that makes sense.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, which you know a lot of writers will
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 5: tell you these days. It's hard hard to make for
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 5: the economics to make sense.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: But you know, I got a couple of ideas. But
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: you know, we'll we'll see it's hit me at one.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you if it's a good one or not.
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: I was thinking tons of time right now. Yeah, okay,
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: I was thinking i'd tell the don't give it away,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: and if it's a cut it out of the podcast.
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: I better not talk. I better not say. Give me
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: a hint.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 5: Alaska.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: That's idea about as vague as yeah, the collapse of
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: the Yukon salmon collapse. Yeah, that's it. That's it.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 5: That's a great story.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: I got it. Well, that is no, but that's a
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: great story. So should do a book on that.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, somebody should. That's you know, I know a lot
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 5: of guys who ran fish wheels on on on the
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 5: Yukon and.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: They're you know, you know what the answer is that
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: they're leaning toward yeah, hat trees. Oh is that right? Really?
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: In Alaska of all places, that's the political that's the
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: that's what they're coming in with, is like, oh that's
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: easy hat tries.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 7: Wow, that's the fix, not the that's not the reason.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's like because it's the whole thing of
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: it's it's just like, what's the problem everything m hammer
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: and fishing, the see like hammer and fishing to see
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: intercept fisheries, water temperatures, it's like it's just too big
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: and too it's it's it's you can't unravel it. Everybody's
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: got it's this. It's that there's a real problem. I mean,
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: it seems to be that there's a real problem with
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: like intercept fisheries, like hitting those fish, hitting hitting those
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: fish before they're in the water in the fresh so
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: you know, and they got like even like subsistence people
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: like subsistence people living along the river, like Native alask
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: and subsistence fishermen aren't able to put their wheels out.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: It's bad. And I guess like the way that they're
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: you know, as people at high levels in the state
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: look at they're like, why it's easy fishery setcheries.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, well Alaska, yeah right, I mean the public
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 5: lands issue up there is pretty dire now.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: Too, right now it is, yeah, right now it is. Yeah. Alright,
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: that's a good book. Thanks, come back out and finish it. Yeah,
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: tell us what you find out. How I save the
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: sam I think cover Yeah, yeah, we can get it.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: We can get on this right now. I'll blur it
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: right now. Help book. You guys are amazing. Hell yeah,
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: oh throw well James Campbell, thanks for coming on.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I appreciate it.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: Thank you. I got one more for you. What's your
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: favorite book that you wrote, Like one where the fight
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: of your man.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 5: At the height of them. I like to think I'm
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 5: still at the height of my powers.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: You know, I wrote a book, say this one because
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: it's for sale right now?
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 5: Well, that's true.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: I mean that, Thank you. Apparently I'm a really marketing
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: firm as well. Publisher's gonna kill me. Yeah, I mean,
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: this was a.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 5: Real passion project. There's no question about it. But you know,
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 5: I love you know, I love writing all my books.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 5: I got another one about my daughter and I doing
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 5: a bunch of stuff in Alaska, including building a cabin
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 5: with my cousin I'm ocorth and you know, the Arctic
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 5: National Wildlife Refuge. That was a particularly personal one. But yeah,
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 5: all of them, you know, you know, audios. I mean,
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 5: you're a writer, it's all you know, it's all really
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 5: meaningful stuff, all of them you do, and then when
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 5: you're done, you're like kick them out of the house,
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 5: like I'm.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: Tired of that book. Yeah. Yeah. The latest is A
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: Heart of the Jaguar, the extraordinary conservation effort to save
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: the America's legendary cat. And then if you're into whiskey,
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: whiskey too, I highly recommend Ghost Mountain. Thank you, Ghost
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: Mountain Boys. Right, I can't see the covers, the proper
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: title Ghost Mountain, Ghost Mountain Boys, about the you know,
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Theater during World War Two, particularly the Battle
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: of New for New Guinea. Oh, that rips your heart
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: out there, That still still rips my heart out. A
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: lot of suffering, a lot of heroism, a lot of sacrifice.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on my pleasure. I really enjoyed it.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: Thanks guys, Thanks Jams,