Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 326: Cuddle the Scimitar

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Ep. 326: Cuddle the Scimitar · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven versatile
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. Okay, we're
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: gonna step through a gate marked Sahara Desert. So we're
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: gonna enter the Sahara Desert in Texas and it's sixty
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: acres well that yeah, that pass is about a square mile. No,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: that pasture is part of the six it's probably about acres,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: you got it? And how many scimitar horned orcs are
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: in there? Uh? In that group there are twenty two
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: adult females. UM, and I want to say, there's eleven
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: newborn kids. And there's nothing special about that rooster's playing
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: out over there. I'm interested. And to the right is
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: a bunch of orcs quest friends. Okay, So to interview, Uh,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: let me hear what you guys all, what your role
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: is here and what you guys do. Okay, I'll start out. Uh,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: my name is Stephen Fulton. I'm the manager of the
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Bamburger ranch. UM I've been I've worked here for about
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: eighteen and a half years. UM. I've worked with the
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: scimitar horned orcs UH for about ten years now. They've
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: been under my my purview. So other than that, when
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: it comes to ranch management, everything's up for grabs, every
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: job his mind. If I'm if I'm available, I'm Lee Burton.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: I'm the acting director and programs Manager for Conservation Centers
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: for Species Survival and based in Austin, Texas and Bamburger Ranches.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: One of our first members. And as a great story
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: and UM the scimitar horned ORIX and the founding of
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the Source Population Alliance, which is a consortium model that
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: helped bring these animals back and ultimately led to their
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: reintroduction and in the wild and chat when do you
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: say back? It's not back to Texas. No, that gets
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: into the whole topic of these animals are part of
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: a metapopulation that are spread out in x c QU environments.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: So we have in in that particular program, the Source
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Population Alliance, there's ten different species UH, most all ungulates
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: to cattle species, and the idea was to pick species
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: that were endangered or even extinct in the wild. Put
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: them in ex c two settings over here, repopulate them,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: do genomics testing on them to ensure you don't get
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: in breeding, ETCeteras, that they're sustainable, build up their numbers
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: within the hope that one day you can do things
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: like have happened in chat reintroduced them and we've had
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: three of our species have now been either put back
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: or supplemented in the wild. Um. Some of the other
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: ones it's not ripe yet. And so the ideas the
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: settings here on a ranch like Bamburger are ideal conditions
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: as close as you can get to matching what they
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: have back at home in sub Sahara, the weather in Texas,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the terrain, etcetera. UM. And additionally that the other big
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: benefit of it is these animals were mostly in Steve
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: will tell you the whole story of how it started,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: but we're mostly in zoos, and a lot of them
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: weren't faring well, not because the zoos are do anything wrong,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: but just because of space constraints, just not having the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: normal social dynamic that you have when you know breeding, etcetera.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: And so putting them back out here has been UM
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: an incredible benefit to the species and has helped these
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: populations grow where we can do things like that today,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: and you know, look at the future of doing reintroductions.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: The models interesting and you know, I'm sure you heard,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: you know, the story when they started trying to repopulate
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: American bison on the Great Plains. One of the places
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: they found them was in the Bronx, you know, and
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: sent him. So there's sort of like this irony of
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: like loading them up in the Bronx and bringing them
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: back up west, you know. And this is like on
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: a much much larger scale, right it is. There's some
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: other famous stories. There's a which is not one of
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: our species, but the Mexican wolf. Um. And I'm not
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: a geneticist, but um, I think you need three lines
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: at least to be able to not have in breeding.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: And so when they were doing that program back in
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: the Southwest, they had two lines. And then it was
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: a Canadian guy who had just on vacation, was driving
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: through Tucson, saw an ad in the paper to pick
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: up a wolf pup. Yes, put it up, put it
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: into saddle bag, got about an hour north or something,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: thought better of it. I don't know if he's pissing
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: all over his bike or whatever. The you know, Hill
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: was doing anyway, and so he stopped turned it over
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: to like some sort of animal shelter turned out to
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: be the third line. So yeah, So Dave Parsons, who
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: led that reintroduction effort on l fishing wildife, told me
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: that story, and so yeah, that's why they didn't have
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: to bring in the northern subspecies in Yellowstone. So yeah,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of strange stories like that. And Warren
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: saw I'm Warren Bluntser own and operak Warren blunts Or
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: while off consulting services and work uh all over the
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: US and then several foreign countries. And part of my
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: business is wildlife capture and we specialized in that, but
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: basically we worked with anything to do with land, water
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: and wilife. But I'm very very deep be involved with
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: exotics and humane treatment, um, the stocking of ranches, rebuilding
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: of these animals, and and so we have a we
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: have a company that does extensive wildlife captures. So I've
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I've been privileged enough to be on a lot of
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: these ranches like the Bamburger Ranch and get to see
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: firsthand what's really done and and help bring some of
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: those animals back and and and help advise on their
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: welfare and their their general well being. So Warrant was
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: also retired to game Warden Parks and Wildlife. Oh really, Okay,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: So I was a conservation officer as y'all know them,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: and state game Warden for Texas for twenty five years
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and sit on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Whitetail UH
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Advisory Board. And I sit on several disease boards that
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: helped formulate and I testify quite a bit to wilife
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: disease issues and try to get to try to educate.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: That's the biggest issue that I see in this wildlife
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: world now is the the separation between what the general
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: public understands about wildlife management and what it really means
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: and and how many benefits a person that that took
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: a ranch like this and brought it back to the state.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: It's end because they're shrinking fast. It's getting more and
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: more of a challenge for generations to hold onto these
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: ranches and these these are really special places. Okay, So
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: we're gonna jump in this pickup, go through the gate
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: marked Sahara Desert, and then we're gonna go find a
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: female that just dropped a calf within the last forty
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: eight hours and try to convince her to let us
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: handle the calf and put the ear tag into it
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: so they keep track of it. Whoa, here's serious horns.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: So to see a few of those up about two
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: weeks old. Let can see the color of them, howethery
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: or not white like the females they're they're more of
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: a tan, a baby color, which with this dry grass
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: they blend in very well. I'm still to tell the
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: males and females on these things. Man, it's like they
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: has to the hook of the horn is one of
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the things. This is an all female herd. Oh so
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: that makes me so yeah, well hard to find a male.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: The metals of mis do the feeding out of this track? Absolutely? Yeah,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: they're pretty well feeds. So what's the what's the orcs
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: that they you know, I've done that. I drew a
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: tag to hunt the you know, the off range New
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Mexico or that's gems box, that's but Gemsbock orcs. Yeah,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: there's four kinds. And who they are too, Arabians, Yeah, Cementars,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Gemsbock and what's the other I'll stable out of the
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: other three, I mean the other three besides these foreign
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: country you know, stable isn't pretty good shape. It's the
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: least threatened. Um. I think all the other ones are
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: a greater concerned. So the gams boxes hurting non native
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: ranch um some you don't see him as much as
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: these guys. But yeah they are. I'm not what I'm saying,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: like where they come from? Are they stable? It depends
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: on what part of the country you're looking at. Some
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: of them, the poaching is horrible on them, and uh,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: you know that those people are starting this, so obviously
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: they're gonna eat some of them. But where they're really protected.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of the game ranches now
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: in in Africa were in their concessions are are game ranches,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: so they can protect them down. They've got some good
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: herds over there. The games Boc is in much better
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: shape than the Semitar. Yeah. You know, uh, if there's
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: some males in here, would you see a lot more
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: broken arms on everybody? It seems like some pretty quiz
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: a horn length on those? Yeah? Yeah, I mean again,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: these are these are this is my oldest herd of
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: females um. So these these animals are nine years old,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: so a lot of them are uh. And then with
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: with that freeze two februaries ago, we've we've lost quite
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: a few horns on these older females. But in most
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: of the most cases, the females don't fight much, so
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: they don't really have much use to battle and and
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: break off horns. But when you when the male's got
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: a broken horn, that's is it more from fighting or
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: freezing for us fighting? Okay, so they do do that.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I don't know if that is to miss.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: But the rule of that exception is that we've never
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: been tim below zero. It's something this country. So we
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: had some of these these true horns two or three
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: months later just fall off of our ear damage the
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: ears froze off of and so we had a we
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: had if we see this female separate, yeah, that's from freezing. No, no,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: she's separate because this is the one we're coming to
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: look at. You tell what I'm saying. She got one horn?
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I know, but the one horn yet that
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: froze off. Do you guys go with bull calf or
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: bull kid? Male kid? So there's a calf, yeah, he said.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: She's she's super protective, so she's basically standing over it.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: So this this will be interesting. How long How long
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: is that calf born? Uh? I think yesterday afternoon or
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: evening so hard. Yeah, and we're not sure if it's
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: a male or female calfolic again because she's been super protective.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Um so I'm gonna get out. I would yeah, I
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: would know, I would. I would be korean. I'd be careful,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: keep keep the truck between you and it. Yeah, yeah
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: they are okay, So yeah you got you got a bench.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: She's growling at you. Yeah, they're been. It's very vocal.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Let they get I just so do you want some
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: distraction though? Ah? Yeah, this one y'all want. Haven't letting
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: me in? Finch'll tink? Wow. Yeah, I'm a good volunteer.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: I would hate for you to get I have gove
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: into the front of the truck before with one of
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: these narrows narrowly missed me. Um so how do how
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: do they get how do they get the hook in you?
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: When they're there horns helping, They'll put their hand the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: forehead all the way down there. That's what they do.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: They come in. Also, they also use that horn like
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: a club. Oh the dear, so they'll they'll hit you
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: with it um, then the hookie with a harn as
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: those far as we're made out of elements, how they
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: feel a line. If they don't get a good line,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: just the horn itself coming out of we'll lose a
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: filament inside the flesh on bad something distracted about that
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: thing stuck with them. These are serious business to get
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: taken care of, or you can lose your arm, your leg.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: But what we're saying about with lines, so when they
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: get a hit on the line or whatever, the predator
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: is after him, if they don't kill them a lot
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: of times just the horn itself see the film, it's
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: hanging off that horn right there. It'll stay inside that wound.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: It'll get infected and they'll die. You ask him like
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: like like splintered, like splinter it that cast only about
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: two days olmy yesterday. Every year, this one is very protective.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: How many calves that she produced every year for at
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: least last ten years? Just a year and there somewhere
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: do a natural breathing or natural except for it's rased.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: I've got I've got a herd bull that I want,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: you know, pass the jeans along and he'll get it.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: He'll get a herd of females, and then the other
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: herd of females has a different genetic background, so or
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: it'll get a different bull. Maybe you'll you'll, let's put
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: that's how you got your university. Make much closely? Maybe
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: m window okay, Chris Stee if you want us to
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: move off, it's easier just with no, No, it's not
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: gonna be easy anyway anyway, or for him, I've been there.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: I just formulated a plan. Drive over it, Drive over it,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: and it's just under the trump there it is. It's
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: a little boy. I think, Yeah, I'm good. Feels like it.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: So it feels like future ball, all right. So this
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: is just a tag daughter. This is basically the same thing.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: This is the only male when we'll keep this year,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: just because, as I said earlier, the geneticist that's doing
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: the work on these animals, I thought this female was
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: a particular interest genetically. So a lot of times we'll
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: take and we'll take the tag and we'll pull the
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: tag out like that to get air behind it, and
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: they'll prevent it from getting sometimes since but they're not
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: bad about getting infected at all. Yeah, it was a healthy, strong,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: young BULLI you want fasten the room, so you'll were
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: you were you guys like my kids are all grown up,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I'll hand it to you that way. And my nap
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: all the all the all the kids, whether it's bull
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: kids or a little fellas kids. I sell them as
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: he is of course once they're older. So I feel
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: it right now like we're snuggling and he's loving this
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: is his heart rate like way up because heart right
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: up the scary so we can and we also want
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: to take turn. You know, you want one of these
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: that this there's really only two times a year that
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: we have this kind of contact with them, and that's
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: this time of year. And it's usually only about six weeks,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: a six week period um where they're where they're burthen
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: because I put the put both males in with each
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: one of the herds um at the same time of
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the year. So well, how do you know the how
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: do you get all the females cycle at the same time.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: They tend to cycle together once you put them in.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Once you if you if you don't have them reproducing constantly, um,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: they tend to cycle together. So in that six week period,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: they'll all cycle and they'll all get pregnant. That's been
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: my experience now in in in a wild population um
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: where you got the bulls with them constantly. Yeah, I'm
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: sure the cycle their cycles are are are off set.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Quite a lot of their past ranges were all they're
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: breeding cycles to evolutionary were synchronized with vegetation range, and
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: that that was their biological signal that what they were
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: gonna do, they're gonna do. And so it's kind of
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: the evolution has taken it different. This is a different country,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: but they're still, like you said, they're still evolutionary. They're
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: still locked in on it, and it's amazing. That's why
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: you see all those animals giving birth on that grass.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: It's a hell of a feat. I mean from four
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: years ago there being none in their native range and
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: now there's a hunderfitted there and they're having kids. Those
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: kids are considered you know, of native stock, so they're
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: no longer considered endangered. This baby calf, let's just say
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: that he individually is tested or there's a sense of
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: what his genetics is. Is it possible that he would
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: be a chosen one time and these animals I tagged
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: him for that purpose because again that that side, that
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: damn was was told to me that of particular interest genetically.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: So my plan is to keep all of her all
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: springs is for as long as she reproduces. I wish
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: I'd known that, you know, four or five years ago,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: because I've had a lot more of her all free
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: representation on the range. The other aspect of having animals
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: out in a facility like this and multiple facilities and
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: this idea, this meta population, is that we've had to
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: rethink the number of individuals that you have to have
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: to keep your genetic variability um. And the goal is
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: in this program over the next hundred years to maintain
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: at least ninety and in the zoo world if you
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: keep them only in zoos, just because they don't have
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: the space to do that. I mean they there's something
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: like a total of a hundred and fifty eight of
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the a zoos, they had roughly about eleven thousand acres,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: and and just within our program it's closer to a
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand acres. And so the number of animals you
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: can get, you know, they used to think maybe you
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: need a few hundred, a couple undred, you know, now
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: they know you need well over a thousand, even two
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: thousand maybe or more. So that that is another aspect
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of it that you know, having them in places like
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: this beyond just individual genes, you don't want to lose
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: variability at all, as you can and a lot of
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: times zoos running to breeding problems just some species just
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: don't want breading a zoo. You know, they they will,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: but they don't like it, and so they missed times
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: and times or years and years or decades, and so
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: you can get behind quick. So when you have a
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: free range situation and and individuals like he's keeping track
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: of and and and switching out to keep that variability
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: in there. They that's there's where the truth the true
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: herds do well, and they're they're much more likely to
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: do better when they go back into the wild, being
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: in a wild or semi wild setting like this, you know,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: and and having those traits. Yeah, there's gonna be some
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: fighting sometimes whatever, but obviously that serves them well, you know,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: when they go back in versus a more docile animal.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: That's you know, several generations removed in a a zoo
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: environment and whatever the appo genetics is, however, all that
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: works or you know, just um, just train and behavior,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: not being passed on. So these animals are are likely
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: to do well and they have so far. All right,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: now that we've visited the the young do you guys
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: go by calf? What do you there's a bull cow calf?
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: What is it in orcs? Really? Is that universally accepted
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: bull cow calf? All right, now that we've visited the
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: cow calfe unit of the scimitar horned ORCS, it's like,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: walk me through, um, how that like, walk me through
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: how that animal fits into the broader picture of what
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: happens with the Conservation Centers for Species Survival, Like like
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: where it fits into the hierarchy of activities. Sure, So
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: the scimitar horned Orix is one of the ten species
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: and what's known as the Source Population Alliance, and that's
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: one of the programs under Conservation Centers for Species Survival
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: or C two S two for short. And we have
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: a number of different programs. Um, that one is focused
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: so other species um including cheetah, red wolf, southern black rhino.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: The Source Population Alliance folcus is just on ungulate species
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and it was originally four species, which were the ones
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: that we kind of discussed earlier and were the most
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: critically endangered or in the case of the scimitar horned Orix,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: was extinct in the wild. It also included the addicts
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and doma gazelle. Uh. And then the four species was
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: the sable antelope, which is not that's actually doing fairly well.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: They were the original four and the concept was created
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: back in two thousand and five. There was an out
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: scientists named David Wilt Smithsonian. He was a reproductive physiologist
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: and did some great work including artificial insemination, etcetera. He noticed,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: among others, that these animals, these angular species, were just
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: not doing as well in a zoo environment as they hoped.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: So they looked at that. They were concerned because of
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: the space constraints, uh, not having normal social dynamics. This
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: idea of you needed to have if you wanted to
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: keep them alive in these ex C two settings, having
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: a meta population explained x C two an n C T.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's from archaeology, but it's yeah, it's one of
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: these sort of terms. It sounds fancy, it's pretty simple.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: So n C two is just their native range, their
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: native habitat where they live. So again with with these guys,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the three we just mentioned, the scimitar, addicts and doma
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: gazelle that's sub Sahara Africa, okay, and so um that
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: would be n C two XC two is in were
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: removed out of that it's not their home range, okay.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: And so the idea was we wanted to have you know,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: the zoo world was set up for way back when
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons. Um, but the conservation aspects
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: several decades ago was there was I guess you'd say
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: re energized, refocused, and so these species survival plans were
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: created to try to maintain these populations and an ex
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: C two environment for a lot of reasons. And one
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: of the reasons was to have an assurance population if
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: something happened to the animals in their n C two
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: and the scimitar is a great example of that if
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: they go extinct. You don't want to lose the species
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: altogether if they get extirpated in that case. So these
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: species survival plans were set up and these animals were
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: bred for several decades in the zoo world, and they
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: did a great job. Again, they had the stud books,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: they knew the lineages, you know, they knew, Hey, I'm
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: gonna take this bull and breed it with this female
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: over here. But they were space constrained. And also again
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: it removed the natural conditions. It just take place and
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: how these species interact and compete, right and you know,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: survival to fitnest, all that stuff. So David Wilton noticed this,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: and so he and some other scientists got together and
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: some of our facilities and said, hey, let's take some
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: of these animals. Let's put them in you know, places
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: like in Bamberg already had simitar horned orcs, which is
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: a great story in and of itself that predates this.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: But let's put them in these facilities where they have
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: you know, big ranges that are not truly they're not
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: in C. Two, but there they closely mimic where they
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: come from. And and so you know, if we put
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: them in there, we think they're gonna do a lot better.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: You know, they're gonna breathe, their numbers are gonna build
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: up um and and our motto at C. TOWS two
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: is grow optimized return, So you know, grow the herd,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: optimize the genetics, and then hopefully, you know, when possible,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: return them into their native habitats. Do you guys feel
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the last part of that, the return part, uh, the
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: strikes me as being immensely important. But you hear people
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: offen like you hear people hold the belief that, like, well,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: it can't be like let's let's say we take the
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: scimitar horned orcs, which which effectively, if I'm not mistaken,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: like it went extinct in the wild. Yeah, in the
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: nineteen nineties was when they think that the last ones
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: in the wild gone ceased to be a wild animal,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Like I feel that you couldn't then say like, well, yeah,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: but we have them in Texas, so that's good enough.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I completely agree. That seems like a sentiment you hear
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: a lot. Well, um, I think maybe you hear that
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: among some people they just like to have them as
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: I hate to say, ornaments or just property. We clearly
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: don't view it that way because we're a conservation organ
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: You rolled the return into it exactly. So when when
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: this who's the guy you're talking about, the geneticist or
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: David Willed, He was reproductive biologists. His interest was in
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: things that his interest was in species that were imperiled.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Absolutely on their name like that that was sort of
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: the that was sort of the thing that they had
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: to that had to be there for him to want
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: to absolutely, and and he was from Smithsonian and they've
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: done a lot of great work. They do our genomics
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: testing right now. Um and you know they did the
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: first AI on a cheetah a couple of years ago.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: And so you guys have what we should have gone
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: looked at the cheetahs. Crint We Well they're running around
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: out here somewhere Steve can find. Um. Uh, they're a
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: variety of facilities. Yeah, yeah, there's and they're spread all over.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: So we're we're mostly North America and with a heavy
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: emphasis and Texas again because climate would have you ranch ran. Yeah, absolutely,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: and and breeding him and that that was another program
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: that was his success. Uh. That was about ten years
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: ago again kind of the same story. Cheat is definitely
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: smaller gene pool. Correct, that's correct because there were two
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: founder events with the cheetah. One was about a hundred
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: thousand years ago. They don't know for sure what had happened,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: but you know, population got very small, and then about
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: twelve thousand years ago it happened again. Which is why
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: you can take in Africa in Africa, which is why
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: you can take um, you know, skin from one cheetah
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: and grafted on to another one. That's you know, two
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: countries over, and it'll take it. They're that closely related. Yeah, yeah,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: it's crazy when they went through a major bottleneck, yes, twice,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: and so that's why are just insane to think about. Yeah,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: I mean in geologic terms, that's recent, right exactly. And
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: um is there is there an estimate how tight the
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: bottleneck was? Uh, in terms of a number of individuals,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know off top of my head. I've heard
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: some I don't know if they know exactly. I mean
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: even humans went through that, you know, seventy humans exactly exactly. So, um,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: so cheetahs are already in a bad state. And then
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: of course what's happened in the wild, and so this
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: idea of you know, breeding them and the North American
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: population it was, I want to say it was strug
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: glean but not doing as well as they needed it
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: to do. So we came up this idea we collectively,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: um scientists and our facilities about hey, let's set up
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: these breeding centers, share best practices, you know, do all
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: these things. And and cheetah's successfully bred. Their numbers shot
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: way up in just five years, population I think nearly
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: doubled from the North American population. So that was a success,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: and so we saw this model replicating UM over and
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: over and over again. Now every species is different, right,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: but sorry, could you explain what constitutes the North American
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: cheetah population? UM? Well, that gets complicated, but historically they
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: were in a Z A Zoos um so Association Zoos
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and Aquariums. That's the big organization. UM. It used to
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: be almost all zoos that were a credit or part
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: of that. There's another organization which is z A A
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: which is kind of a splinter group. UM. But in
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: any case, all there there's cheetahs who are in that.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: We have stud books on them, and it's UM I
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: think it's several hundred. I think it's over five hundred now,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: between those those two groups. But then you have all
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: of the illegal wildlife trade and depending on what the
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: laws are, you know, for each individual species. So there's
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: more cats obviously out there than that. UM. We're actually
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: on that. We're trying to assist with an effort to
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: what's called integrate these stud books between the various organizations
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: and international in the hopes of getting a better model
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: to manage these animals right, and and make breeding recommendations.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: We've done some genomics testing already, and to do more
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: of it because for for them it's especially important. You know,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: like Steve was saying, he's got this special scimitar, right, Well,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: if you find one or two cheetahs, you know, you
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: may not be able to find those genes almost anywhere else,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: and you don't want to lose those. Yeah, that's a question.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: That's what I need to understand before I could really
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: go much fur other here is h are you guys
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: with the Sika deer in Maryland? Okay? So they got
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: now and the Delmarva Peninsula, so the east shore of
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Chesapeake Bay. I mean I think got what ten thousand
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: of them now or something. They have an absolutely unknown
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: amount of deer because there's no way to there's no
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: way to measure them. But what they're able. Yeah, they
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: gotta pile them and they're able to go to there.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: You could I have had a guy take me out
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the boat. The islands barely there anymore, but he's able
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: to be Like you know, Bob Johnson had six on
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: that island and that's it. He got him, and he
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: got him from some guy in England, and the guy
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: in England got him from some guy there, and no
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: six swam to the beach and not the ten thousand
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: of them. There's no like and then some other guy
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: let some go. Right, it's just like you know where
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: they came from. But how many people how many people
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: cut loosa cheetah or cut loose's? I mean, how many
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: people go to Africa and bring home a scimitar horned
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: works the Ohio Zoo were at well or the private
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: collection rather that all of a sudden, well close to
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: twenty years ago, the the importation of these animals was
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: um basically cut off, I think primarily because of disease considerations.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: So how many years ago I think it was close
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: to twenty now. Yeah, so it's actually a problem in
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: some like for instance, uh, there's about a little bit
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: less than forty Southern black rhinos in North America. We
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: manage that population conjunction with the International Rhino Foundation, and
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: we need some more bloodlines. But importing them is almost
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: impossible now because the political situation. But on the ungulate side, um,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: it's it's just as difficult because you can't get them
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: in so you kind of have what you have now.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that's that's what I'm trying to get at,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: is do you now know? Let me give you no
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: let me give you no. Example. Um, in the late
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, when people were thinking themselves, holy ship, like
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the American bison is going to go extinct, they would
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: write letters to each other and be like he has four,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: he has three, right, and you kind of knew like,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: well he got his that way, he got his that way. Uh,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: how is it is? There is there like in Texas
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: an unknown number of times when someone managed to try
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: ship uh scimitar horned orcs to Texas or can you
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: be like, oh no, there was that event, that event
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: and that event that led them to be dispersed around
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the state. Well, population dynamics change some of that in itself. Unbeknowing, dush,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: it's a population dynamics. So these areas were changing. You had,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: you had perilous storms hit, you had equipment failures where
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: they escaped like you're talking about on the island. So
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: so as as time moved forward with the escapes and
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: the evolution of wildlife diseases, a lot of these endeavors
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: got more and more complicated. What endeavors. Uh, where you
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: had someone had a pin failure, a pasture failure, or
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: a ranch failure, fence, water gap, whatever, and they escaped.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: And in that period of time, population was growing. But
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: at the same time, evolution of wildlife diseases for changing
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: right in front of our our eyes. Now, I gotta
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: let me, I gotta re ask my question. Well, I
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: think I know I'm not explaining the question. Let me.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I think I know you may be going with this,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: so I have a really clean way to do it.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: How many times that the human being How many times
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: did human beings collect orcs in the Sahara desert and
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: dry and fly them, ship, sail them whatever, and caught
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: them loose in Texas once? Um, I don't know the
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: exact Do you know the answer to that? It was enough? Well,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: here's the thing. It depends on the species, right, So
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: if there weren't on the e s A prior to
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: this importation, man, if they were on the s A,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: then yeah, you can import kind of whatever back in
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: the day in Texas. So I don't think they were tracked. Now,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: the zoos tracked them very closely because they had stud
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: books and if they were in a species survival plan
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: they know exactly and you know they exchange them and
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: you know, bringing reasons all that. But the other species
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: that came in prior to you know, this band, Yeah,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: we don't really know. But they weren't thousands and thousands
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: of events like this. These were these were very well
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: founded connections in a lot of cases and and limited
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: numbers of imports. They weren't. They weren't just across the
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: country importing them like you, like you one may have think.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: But what happened is is if you if you look
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: at the habitat, the terrain and topography via Texas, if
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: you spend someone around and you can put them in
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: a certain part of Texas, they can't hardly tell if
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: they're in Africa Texas. So what happened the synonymous habitat
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: the weather belts were very conducive to those animals, making
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: it so boom boom boom. The stool went from three
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: legs to five legs, to ten legs to twelve legs.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't hundreds of events, it was the responsibility
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: are the preclude however you want to look at it
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: of a group of ranchers that started this from from
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: from a from a limited number of individuals. They sold them,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: they trade them, and then you throw in the escapes
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: the other things that perpetuate them. Because we've got in
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: some of these counties we've got free range and exotics.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: No one really owns them. But do you know, I'll
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: put it to rest, like I understand that the answer
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: is not as clean as I'd like it to be.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: But what was the first year that that someone What
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: was the first year that someone delivered an or a
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: scimitar horned orcs to the United States of America. I
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: don't know that. I don't know that. I do know.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Then in the nineteen thirties, thing was the San Antonio Zoo.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: UM I forget his first name, Mr Friederick. He got
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: some surplus animals they they had and put them on
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: a couple of ranches around here. And then it wasn't
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: too long after that. I'm sure you're familiar with the
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: King Ranch, right, They got some exotics down here as well.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: And there were a couple of other famous um exotic
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: ranches in Texas. There's one in the hill country called
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: the Yo Ranch, and so a lot of these animals
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: just came, you know, they were there and so that
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: that was around when yes, and then you had maybe
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: some surplus animals from zoos or whatever happened way back,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: and you know they were, however, put to pasture any
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: certain places. The scimitar is a different story though, because
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: there was only a smattering of those animals, and I'll
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: let Steve tell the whole story. But zoos, a few
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: zoos around the country had them in. Basically almost the
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: entire world's population was gathered up. And so uh here
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: on the ranch it was in uh n UM that
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: don't quote me on that. It might have been eighty
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: five UM. But Mr Barenberger was a board member for
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: the Santonio Zoo UM and they they had the grand
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: meeting to discuss the plight of the scimitar armed rics
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: and a couple of the other ungulates that we worked
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: with with the Source Population Alliance UM. And he was
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: privy to that as a board member UM, and he volunteered,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: basically volunteered UH to offer his ranch up as a
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: place where they can bring bring all the known genetics
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: to one spot to begin this species survival program UM.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: So at that time or short after that meeting, UM,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: they brought in this as as a member of the
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: a z A UH. They brought uh twenty eight animals
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: and those twenty animals representing thirty one different bloodlines to
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: begin the species of survival program right here on the ranch.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: And it was that that sort of was that like
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: the Texas bottleneck of that species. There was there probably
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: quite a bit more that weren't included in that initial
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: round up. Well, they're likely were other animals that were
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: not as a animals, but not many. I mean, that
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: was pretty much it. I mean, he he literally saved
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the scimitar, horned or x. But that seems incredibly diverse
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: for such a you know, very few animals. But but
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: they but they were very successful at breeding and perpetuating.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Whereas in the zoo environment they were there, We knew
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: they were there. We had genetics going on that that
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: you could see and touch, but not to the extent
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: of what they did when they put them on a
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: on an open range, quote ranch, whether high finch or
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: low finch, most of them are behind high fench because
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: they'll get a wipe from you. But but the the
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: perpetuation of them was astounding, how well they did. And
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: that's almost exactly right. We were fortunate because there are
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: that many bloodlines and they had come from different places.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: There was some risks there because you know, what if
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: we had had a disease outbreak or something and you know,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: you got your eggs in one basket. Which is why
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: this idea and why we use the term meta population
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: is that you've got a population here, over here, over here,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: and together they make up this greater population, which is
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: in a reservoir, if you will, an assurance population. Um.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: But but you know, thank goodness that they did that
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: because it's you know, im possible as animal would not
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: be around if that were not the case, not be
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: around period. Not just in Texas, correct, And I think
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: there were some other individuals um maybe in Europe and
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: some other places, but uh, this was certainly North America
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: and and may have been I don't know, see if
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: you know, the largest and only sizeable population in the world.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was certainly a cornerstone of it. So
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: it's very important to what you were talking about, the
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: return aspect, because you know that very possibly, if not likely,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: would not have occurred with without someone like Mr Bamburger's
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: vision to do that. And and some of this was
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: not just chance. These these these group of individuals, they
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: they knew of the sononymunity of Texas versus Africa, and
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: they theorize if they could just get them here, they
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: would they would perpetuate because of the synonymous of the
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: two countries, the habitat, the temperatures and all that. And
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: of course they were right. You know how it seems
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: like you hear more and more about these, particularly over
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: the last decades, Like the idea of a seed bank
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: right where you have where they built that one in Northon,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I think that's right, nor somewhere where
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: they have this they built this perfectly, that's right, stable
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: underground climate and they just store seeds there right that
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: there would be some global catastrophe and then you start
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: from scratch, right, plant stuff in the ground. Um that
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: with with mammals, I'm guessing that doesn't work to go
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: and uh have like a bank of frozen embryos that
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: you can't do that they don't like lose, you know,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, like without sort of a continuity of like
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: we watched today, Right, we go out and there's a
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: mother and she you know you you wanna get her calf,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: put it your tag in it. She doesn't want you
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: to do that, right, she presumably picked where she was
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: gonna give birth, Like, this is stuff she is exposed to,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: has done it before, learned from it. Um, I imagine
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: you thaw that stuff out and do it like you
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: probably you have to lose something like a herd, like
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: a sort of like her dynamic knowledge base or something
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: that's done. So yeah, that's what I mean. Like you
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: know what I mean, like how important is it to
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: have because like appartially, if you look like I'd never
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: give animals and zoos any I don't give me any credit.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm like, Okay, there it is, but it's
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: not right. It is, but it's not. It's species specific.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: It is, and it's a different it's it's all a
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: different theater versus what there's. There's great merit to zoos,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: but they have their limits and the the the the
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: issues with the property having the propensity to look like
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: act like ce like function like the open range. There's
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: no substitute for him because they do a lot of
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: different things out there they don't do in a captive situation.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's what. Yeah, that's the thing. Maybe it's probably
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: not easily answered, but well, there's some species like wolves
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: where it's far and I'm you know, I'm not wolf biologists,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: but if you turn them loose, they just kind of
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: know it to do, right, That's that's not necessarily the case.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: The mother has to teach them how to hunt and
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: talk about big cats in a way. Right. So but
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: to your point, I mean, that's that's relevant. But yeah,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: we we do do UM. There's an O site capture
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: you know, certain species and sperm banking UM. And even
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: if the species doesn't go extinct, you want to keep
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: some of those genetic traits. Like for example, we have
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: some rhinos that you know are have reproductive pathologies or
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: you know, old or whatever, but they might have some
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: valuable traits. Well we can't breed them, but um as
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: AI techniques artificial insemination get developed. Having a sperm bank
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: that becomes very useful in the future, right to reintroduce
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: those genetics so that animal, the line of that animal
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: is not lost. So even if this species doesn't go extinct,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: that's still important. But yeah, obviously there you know, there's
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: some other dynamics in there about behavior and training, and
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: you know, some of these species you you have to
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: maintain animals on the around doing what they do in
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: order to make that egg bank seed bank. Let's try
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: an actual resource. Well yeah, although even with the newer techniques,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: there's some new organizations that are foreigned about talking about
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: trying to bring back the wooly mammoth. It's yeah, so
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: are you guys into that or is that annoy you guys? Um,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: let me put it this way, It's not what we do, okay. Um. However,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: there are maybe some advantages of the in terms of
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: what you learn and some applications genetically. Yeah, because they're
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: not bringing back the woe mammoth. Well, they're they're messing
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: with an age and el to eventually accumulate a bunch
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: of traits where you can be like, that's probably a
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: little bit what it looked like. So but although you
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: never know it happened in the future, it is a
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: little annoying because but the stuff blinking out right now,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: it's like, we have a thing we don't even you know,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: we have a thing that went extinct, I don't know,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: thirteen twenty thousand years ago for unknown causes. But meanwhile,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: the you know, the mammals on the planet have a
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: sort of viable pathway to extinction and we're in and
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: now you've got all these like celebrity investors in this
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: whole mammoth project, or even we haven't we haven't sequenced
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: all of our animals yet in the SPA, so there's
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: an a neat immediate need, you know, for that. And
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: you know they're still alive and most of them are
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: still in the wild, so absolutely. Um. You know, again,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: there are some techniques that I think will be very
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: important that they're going to learn from. Yeah, it's like
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: the argument like, if it wasn't for NASA, we wouldn't
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: have tough lin Yeah, exactly, Like, but but they put
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: all that money into pan codings, Yeah, hell of pand coding. Well,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: I mean we we read about stuff every single day. Right,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: It's like, and this got collected a hundred hundred years ago.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: It's been sitting in this categorize shelf, and then all
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, somebody's well, we have this new thing.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Let me take a look at that old copper light.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, there's a rattlesnake in there. Uh. But
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: it's like, I'd love to know the hierarchy of needs
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: of the preservation of species, right, because you take an
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: animal that has this very known uh system of learned behavior,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: like I have to teach my young how to build
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: the nest, I have to nurture a bunch of eggs
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: to get some to hatch. I have to then teach
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: these little baby birds how to fly and and we
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: know that doesn't happen. But but also things that are
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: just so much like if there's not water here, go
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: look over there. Yeah, like that's not carried in the egg, right, yeah,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: but hopefully that that's a smell thing it goes right.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: I mean there's some species that we know, right, like
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: the sandhill crane, right is like that thing wants to
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: do everything but lift. I just was I said sandhill
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: crane instead of whooping crane. Some of those behaviors can
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: be taught I think by animal caretakers. You know, uh,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: there's probably a limit there, so um, you know, any
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: anytime you alter their their natural learning ability, your influence
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: and possibility what they're gonna do in the future is
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: far survivability. There's a lot of belief that if they
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: if they can't do it on their own, they can't
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: do it, and maybe maybe their their history is uh
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: is dictated but but the thing that we do know now,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: and I'll go back to the zoos versus the free range.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Both of those places have have great purpose, but that
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: the free range situation like we were in today, even
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: though it's an enclosure, it's it's so much closer to
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: what they're supposed to be doing, and they know it,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: and they do well, and they respond well from it,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: and that's reflected by like a very tangible result, right,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: which is off for well. And look at the ages
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: of those animals where we were at today that that
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: have we influenced That obviously we have. But but again,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: when when you have that scenario and they're not in
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: cages or pens and cages in the fair term for
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: an ungulent like that, they're just gonna do better. But
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: but some of this was not by accident. On the scimitars,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: there were people that knew if they could get them
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: to Texas, they felt like they were going to propagate
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: and do well. And those those few individuals with some
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: other carrying individuals were right. And this this is really
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: a success story as he as he pointed out early
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: because these things were they were gone. Basically, Now the
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: next species might not do exactly what this species did
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: because they're they're all different biologically and they're different sociologically
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: how they roam and how they how they they do.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: So answer, it's always better obviously if you have the
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: species and they can learn from their own. But we
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: have gotten a lot better. And I teach a couple
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: of animal behavior classes at a couple of universities, and
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: like in the bird world, they've learned this like a
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: navy ecologists I work with training these birds, you know,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: how to look for threats, right, Oh, yeah, it's amazing
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: what they've done is that now you know you hear this,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: you know, alarm, this is this it means it's an
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: owl or this kind of hawk. Um. And there's a
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: famous example. They tried to introduce thick billed parents. I
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: think it was in the eighties back into the uh
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: southeastern Arizona and um, I think you've been hunting down
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: their cou's here, right, And they put him in there
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: and they were great. They had done great, except they
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: had no idea that hawks were a threat. They all
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: got wiped out. That was That's like I'm sort of
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: like pulling all these little snippets from things I know
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: from native wildlife in the US and trying to like
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: interject them here. But when you talk to people who
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: are involved in the recovery of the American wild turkey,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: sort of the the aha moment was, you can't put
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: pen raised turkeys down up exactly. They're all dead just
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: they get annihilated. And you had to put you had
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: to put like wild reared. You had to put wild
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: reared birds on the ground if they're gonna have any
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: chance they had, you know, having any idea about how
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: to avoid predators. And another iconic thing about the simitars
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: that I find very interesting is sometimes we're our worst
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: on enemies. We have carrying individuals, knowledgeable individuals. They bring
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: them over here, they do good and lo and behole.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: We get a regulation that almost sent them backwards again. Yeah,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: I wanted to have you tell that story, but let
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: me hold that because that's important to hear um. But
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: I got one more. I got another question, just like
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: particular to the scimitar and horned orcs and how like
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: like let's let's say here in the US, you have
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: people who are globally aware, right they and globally ecologically aware.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: They understand that this species is imperiled on its native range.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: It's to candidate for extinction. Right. Um, at what point
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: do do those individuals or like your organization, at what
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: point do you wind up forming some form of contact
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: with the government or the the the the proper agency
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: in one of these countries where the country is perhaps
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: almost a failed state. Right, Like if you were to
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: right now recognize that there's a species in Afghanistan, I'm
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: sure there are many. Um. Yeah, so you're like, okay,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: the snow leopard ranges in Afghanistan. You know, at what
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: point does someone go and and introduce themselves to the
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Taliban to say, we understand you have a problem, we'd
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: like to help. Yeah, that's got to be like a
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: tricky It's very tricky. And so because you've already got
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: so much money into it. Yeah, and so I asked
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: this question a while back with the cheetah with some scientists,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: and it gets into politics, It gets into you know,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: these species off and times, particularly animal like a cat
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: like that that will you know, in some cases have
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: very large territories, make cross boundaries. You've got different laws
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: and some of them it's like, well, we're doing reintroductions. No,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: we only want native you know, born animals here. So
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: there's all kinds of things. So typically what ends up
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: happening is you have to have multiple organizations involved who
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: are working together and clearly one or two on the ground.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: So in Chad where the scimitars were reintroduced, there's Sahara
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: Conservation Fund. Really was were the guys on the ground
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: who put this together, but they had to have financial backing.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: And the whole program was a success because of the
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi, you know, and they helped
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: lead this, put the resources in. You know, they kept
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: they had their own stock of scimitars, so you have
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: to have buying, and then they had to go get
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: buy in from the locals, you know, because these are
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: on pastoral lands, there's domestic livestock running around, so yeah,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: it is tricky and so you have to have a
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: lot of buying and you know, we found this out
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: here as you well know, from reintroducing like the wolf
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: here and the learnings they got from that. The first ones,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: the red wolf was the first one they did was
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: and then the you know, the gray wolf of Mexican
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: wolf is that you've got to have buy in from
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: the state agencies and then from local landowners, people are
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: gonna have to deal with that, and you have to
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: have a comprehensive plan to make it all work. And
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: if you don't have that, you're gonna run into problems.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: So I think we know a lot more about that
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: than we used to. But this is why, even though
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: we may have enough numbers of a lot of these species,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: if the conditions aren't right on the ground, then you know,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: there's no point you're reintroducing. At that point, do you
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: have can you think of examples of of animals were, uh,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: you're poised to do a reintroduction, but the situation on
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: the ground is just not like you're in a holding
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: pattern because of the political climate. Um yeah, sure, yeah,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: Well in terms of numbers of animals, yeah, um, there's
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: several I mean, you know, the cheetah is one example
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: where certainly there's some possibilities there, but again given the
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: political situation and different laws, and and again we're not
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: the ones my organization is not the one that does
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: the reintroduction. To be clear about that, right, you'll just
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: show up and no, no, but um, but yeah, there's
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: there's several species. Cheetah would be one of them. You know,
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: and then the and then the other element that we
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: haven't talked about, but it's a major element, is conflict
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: with people. Some of these species are not viewed as
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: we're saving the species. The classic example of that was
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: the reintroduction of the wolf. There were big support to
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: do that until the public, the ranchers got into it,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: and it got in conflict, and and it and its
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: remained in conflict ever since. And uh, the dynamics of
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: the population swelling and growing. We're talking about Montana, Texas
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: is going through it all. All these western states are
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: going through this. So some of these species there are
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: other lines to walk and they may not get that
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: chance because of that. Well, it doesn't doesn't even need
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: to be a unulate versus a predator. At the Rocky Mountain,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: elk is a big issue with a lot of ranching communities.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: So we're buffalo if you talk to those, Yeah, it's
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: not even um competition. That's like recovering your own that's
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: what they're recovering your own native wildlife where you have
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: the animals. We just don't have the public willpower and
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: and the real truth maybe there are just some species
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: that aren't going to have the gracious because of because
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: of these issues we're talking about right now, and then
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: you get in even other issues like you brought in
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: the bison. We've looked at that is you have domesticated bison,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: they've got cattle jeans. Well, you don't want those in
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: a wild population, you know, for a lot of reasons.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: And so how do you manage that? I don't want
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: to straight too far by totally disagreement. I think it
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: looks like one. I think that people make that all
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: at this point. If it looks like one, let's go
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: with it. So then you'd want the William mammoth brought
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: back because it looks, well, here looks like I don't.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: But I'm saying you wind up being that. You wind
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: up you have like verma So they have genetically pure ones, Yellowstone,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: they got genetically pure ones Vermaho. It's just not that
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: many of them. Meanwhile, you got well here's the one
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: half a million of them. You got half a million
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: of them on the contin but here's the one seven
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: thousand or up to snuff the real truth. Maybe you
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: can't get them back here again. And and Buffalo is
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: a perfect clash of that example of that. You start
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: looking at how many of these buffalo have cattle jeans
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: and them lots of them do. But can you look
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: at him and tail? No, not not every time. And
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: if I was anti if I was anti bis and recovery,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: which I'm not, if I was anti bias recovery, I
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: would be like, you know what I'm gonna do, like
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: like a totally mock a Machiavellian move, and that would
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: be like, oh no, no, no, I'm all for it.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: But they have to be genetically pure. That's how I
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: would win my fight. Yeah, which I didn't want it
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: to have. The one caveat to that is that um,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: in some places they are selecting bison to be more domesticated,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: and so you can imagine and so over a long
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: period of time, you know, if that gets into um
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Daylor when I think was his name, He was the U. C.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: Davis professor who was like the foremost bison expert. That
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: was his concern. Yeah, that It wasn't that. It was
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: like it was like my comment about so I understand
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: what you're In fact, that doma gazelle. Actually there's a
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: they thought for a while it was a subspecies. There's
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: two colors there's one that's a predominantly kind of burnt
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: orange looking and there's once pure white, and they thought, well,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: it's you know, different gene or the subs. It's not,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: it's a phenotype. Right. So but had that been the case,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: I da mix those, do you not? You know? And
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: so I understand where you're coming from on that um.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: And unfortunately, because the more we learned about genetics and genomics,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: like there used to just be one species of black rhino,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: and then they realize, well, no, there's a Eastern, there's
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: a southern. Well, actually there's a southwestern, when now there's
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: a western. Several of them have gone extinct, right, So
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: where do you draw the line? You know, it's a
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: good point. I guess you have to weigh someone's motivations
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: and then and then help trust it. Okay, let's I
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: know the basic outline of the story. Someone the scimitar
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: horned orcs it's going extinct. Someone's like, hey, there's a
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: bunch of in Texas, thank god, and then they want
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: to say, okay, no one in Texas touch one. And
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: people didn't like that and it was counterproductive. How close
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: is that's the reality? The story I just told well,
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: I I think the word they is is probably begs
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: to be defined so well meaning probably people that thought
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: they shouldn't be commercialized because of other things in other
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: places and other issues that were going on. But but
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: those particular group of people weren't looking at the perpetuation
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: of that species and what was going on. And the
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: minute they came in and they put those regulations on them,
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: what was the regulation, Well, it had to do with movement,
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: hunting and barter cell exchange and trade. They hadn't it.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: They were on the SA, but there was an exemption.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: Then they removed the exemption. This has been two thousand twelve,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: I think. Okay, And who's the essay? How are they
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: on the US listed species because it's global, Because it's global,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: it's not just US species. They don't look at Texas
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: and make the law for the world. It's a global
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: view of that species. And of course I know governor
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: like was is that the i c U N Like
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: who's the governing like, who's the governing body that would
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: say like they're imperiled there, don't mess with them in Texas. Well. Ultimately,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: I think it was our decision for the E s A.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: But It's like if a species is imperiled, you know,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: wherever its native habitat is, right, then it's it's considered
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: under the umbrella of the s A. I mean, it's endangered,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: So any of those protocols can come into play in
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: terms of what you can and can't do. So once
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: it's endangered, then there's criteria under that endangered title, and
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: that criteria may say barter, cell, exchange, hunt, transport, all
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: those things can be under there. And what happened is
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: that happened to that species of animal. And when it
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: did that thing, that that plan that was going on
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: right before our eyes came to our crashing halt in Texas.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: And I'm gonna speak for Texas because I'm more familiar
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: with the plan being people distributing, allowing to breathe. Yes,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: because commercialization was predicating those numbers, and and commercialization was
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: the mother. It was pushing the numbers out, and because
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: there was a market for animals in the state, and
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: a byproduct of that market was creating more of them
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: and then you couldn't hunt them. Of course, you know,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: the market was dictating that people wanted to trade them
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: and all whatever people's view of that is that's the
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: reality of it, right, and so you know the market
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: crash and then furthermore, if you had them on your ray.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: I mean this is an exception, and all of our
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: facilities are like that. We're conservation, so we don't actually
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: hunt them here because we're trying to increase their numbers.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: But then you couldn't even hunt your own, So what
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: do you do with them at that point? And here
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: they go. They're perpetuating, right, So there you're saying, there's
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: some and and listen, it's for every listener out there. Um,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if the folks in this room like
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: it or not. The very first thing that we did
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: today was get a ci entire horn oracs and put
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: in your tag in it. So if you think about
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: it with along the lines of every animal out there
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: that have your tags and are run around in past years,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about in the commercialization right now. So, um,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: there were individuals out there who had purchased scimitar horned
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: orcs during this period where all of a sudden they're on.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: So if we we tag him for a slightly different reason,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: because we track and we do a census count every
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: year of you know, how many offspring, how many die, etcetera,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: And so he needs to track them. And for genetics
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: reasons as well. You know we oh that's animal number
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: twenty eight whatever. So that's the reason primary that we
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: do that. So, but there's other folks out there who
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: are like, I'm gonna buy some of these, I'm gonna
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: have them specifically for the reason that I'm gonna hunt
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: them on my ranch. But then when that regulation came down,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: they just became animals that were competing against the other
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: animals that had all of a sudden had more value. Yeah,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: and they can't do anything with them. They can't hunt him,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: you can't trade him, and so they're just paying to
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: feed them. So what did happen to him? Like the
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: numbers went down? Solution people shot him out of spite.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Well you're not supposed to, but you know, I'm sure
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: some of that happened. They did. Let's let's let's be frank.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: They the numbers dwintals for whatever reason, because the value
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: now was not on the animal. The value is what
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: brought the incentive to perpetuate the animal. And we were
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: in Texas probably well I know, so we got more
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: than anybody, and and and he was selling them to
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: a rancher. We were capturing them, we were moving him
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: over here. We were moving him for this reason, this reason.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: But everybody had a reason to perpetuate that animal. And
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: when those reggs came down, all of a sudden, it
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: disant it disincentivized us and ranchers. This is speculation, but
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: was the was the first off? What you're are we
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: talking about, um? Is it that it was risk the
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: exemption was put back in. Okay, so there was. So
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: there's a two year window when this this was going on,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: when this this sort of the prohibition on hunting, prohibition
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: on moving. Whether it's like an exemption that was lifted
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: or not, let's just describe it as like a prohibition
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: on these activities, was a two year window that the
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: number of animals during that two year window actually go down? Yeah,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: they have, but they so what I'm saying is they
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: weren't dying an old age. I mean there's like a
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: little bit of spite, right, Well, if I had to venture, guess, like,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: you saw how defensive that mother was. We talked about
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: how aggressive the bulls are in fighting. I'm sure they
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: can be detrimental on other animals inside your pastory there too,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: or they're just beating themselves to death. Sometimes I can
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: speak on on the ranches behalf. But for those two
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: years we had no breeding. I kept the males completely
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: separate from the females again, because what what were we
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: gonna do with them? We had We had our own
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: We have our own carrying capacity, which is top on
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: a good year of sixty animals. Right now, I got
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: forty five animals um with with addition of a bunch
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: of young. Um. If this year continues to be as
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: dry as it is now, I'm likely gonna have to downstop.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna run the grass. So we could we could.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: We couldn't breed because you had no outlet. Yeah, I
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: couldn't get rid of them. You have no outlet for
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: the ones that weren't essential for your program. And and
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: and one thing that we that we haven't mentioned, but
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: but I participated in this. When that was lifted. We
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: we had people that reached out and said, I want
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: to multifacet my operation. Um, I don't want cattle anymore.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: I want something that has multi value to it. So
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: we in the lot of cases we had Semitars, we
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: had Neil Guy, We had other undulus that were that
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: were exotics that were also used to manage grass pastures
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: just like cattle, but we had a multi value for them.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: We could breed them, we could sell them, we could
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: hunt them, we could manage grass communities with him. So
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: now now we've got an incentive on them, and that's
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: where we're at today, and that's why the numbers are
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: here like they are. But they wouldn't have been had
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: they not lifted that and we had not organized and
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: fought like we did, we would be down more so
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: than we were at half at the time that thing
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: would happen. And I just say this, and there's a
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: lot talked about the exotics industry and especially in Texas,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: but that way that was handled for conservation purposes, you know,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: was not a good thing. And when it was, when
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: it was rescinded, was it rescinded with a man? You
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: were right? That was the horrible idea. I can answer that.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: I can. I don't even need to think of that.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: It was it was rescinded because of political cloud and pressure,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: and that's the honest truth, or we'd still be right
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: where we were Texas spent thousands and thousands of dollars
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: lobbying in Washington. It's funny because just in my circle
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: I have heard and people not from the conservation biology world,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: I have heard people still grumbling about that. Well as
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: in their mind like just like you know, oh, you
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: want to talk about idiocy because everyone and they and
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: they opened a book and there in the book says
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: there almost are close to being extinct in another country,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: and these people in Texas are shooting them and commercializing them.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: What in the world is going on here? Well, what's
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: going on here is we're perpetuating these animals because they
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: have a value. No, I can see, like, it's not
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: it's not a stretch. I don't mean to run around,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to sound like, oh, they're
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: so stupid. I mean, you can see how someone would
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: draw that conclusion if they weren't really if they weren't
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: like acutely aware of like all the dynamics in place
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: and the motivations of people involved. If you went and
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: wrote like some goofy you know, newspaper headline Texans killing
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: endangered species, right, A lot of articles written like that.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: Some of us did interviews on those and they were
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: tough interviews. Um, there there's some folks out there who
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: at that time and still today would rather these species
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: not be here at all, that any of them are hunted. No,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: that's a yeah, I think that's a that's a that's
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: a sentiment. Um. I think it's a widely held sentiment
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: among people who would that. I would be like the
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: radical animal rights agenda would put a very strong emphasis
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: emphasis on individual animal experiences and that that would actually
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: matter more to them than population level. Because that's just
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: I can't have the argument, you know what I mean,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: It's like I would I would be hard for me
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: to sit with someone and have the argument. I wouldn't
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: even know where to begin. It's um, it all happened
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: when people I didn't know what luck nuts where anymore.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: M that's test. It's a good one. I heard someone
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: else bring up recently, like how did it go to
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: it just all of a sudden, No one knows how
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: to change a tiger. Well we're close. I'm usually luck
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: Nutch but but but really, um, as time goes on,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: that these challenges, these bicycles will have multiple riders on
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: them that we that we have to defend um, to
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: perpetuate an animal, to to to make it UH, to
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: be beneficial again, to have a value, because they're just
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: people that don't know what luck nuts are. And when
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: you have that, it's a In my world, I deal
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: with it every other day and I have to educate
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: as hard as I can. But I also have to
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: be a good mediator and understand how people think UM.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: And that's why I'm so sensitive about UM. The merit
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: of every good story and every good scenario is to
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: preside proceed both sides of the issue you have do
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: You can't hold it back, and it's tough sometimes to
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: sit in a room and talk to people about why
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: this animal's doing good. We got to start with the nest.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: There's also a lot of crossover too because of you know, obviously,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: as you well know, hunting brings in a lot of
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: conservation dollars. Right to go to that, but particularly here
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: with with the whole land rush UM, and he deals
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: with it very closely that you know, if you didn't
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: have this, you would have even more fragmentation and development
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: and what have you. So you know, we try and
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: incur ch people in bamburgers. The best example of it
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: of you know, you can have an exotic species, but
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: you can manage it sustainably and still you know, create
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: great habitat for native wildlife as well. Yeah. Now not
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: everybody can do what they've done here because it's fantastic,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: but you know you can still do that, and you
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: know Warren is a specialist in that, and so that's
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: that's the other message that we're trying to get across.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: What percent of the species that your organization is involved
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: with our native North American animals and what present are
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: Africa Asia? Um, most of them are Africa Asia, but
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: we have a couple of grassland bird species, so uh,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: the loggerhead shrike which you know, Texas sill has quite
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: a few of them, but their native grassland prairie habitat
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: as you you know well now is shrinking and they've
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: largely disappeared, you know, up in all the way up
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: into Canada. So um, you know, we support that and
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: doing some releases up there or they do genetics testing
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: to try to you know, help the viability. A couple
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: other grasslands species, um, even like the whooping crane. The
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: red wolf um is another one, and then most of
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: the rest of them are anxietic. So probably as a percentage.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know exact number, but you know it's probably
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: in native is probably you know or something they're they're
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: about to what to what degree if you compare let's
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: say you're gonna compare the Sahara. Um, and just I
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: know it's hard, but the U s in general. Um,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: if you look at something like like it takes something
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: like the Pacific salmon for instance. Um, it's not an
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: animal problem. It's a habitat problem. Right. It's like if
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: if you took all the dams out of the Columbia Watershed,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: your problems right, um in in in Chad and the
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: Sahara with the simitar horned orcs. I gather that it
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: was it became like an animal problem. It's multifaceted, if
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: I understand you correctly. So it's um, it's a bush
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: meat problem. UM. A lot of these areas you know
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: historically or you know at least last hundred years, war
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: zone problem. It's a human footprint expanding problem. UM, a
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: disease problem as well, you know, again having to cohabitate
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: with domestic livestock. And then when you get down another
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: aspect of what we do is that when we're looking
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: at something like this, we enlist the help of UM.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: There's an offshoot of a U see in called cps
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: G and UH they do great work like population modeling
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: and you know, figuring out you know, you have this
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: many animals and you know you're gonna add this MANI
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: to it. And here's how often drought happens, here's how
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: much poaching. You know, you can kind of pretty well
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: predict what's gonna happen. UM, And when you get down
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: below a certain number, you know, it becomes unsustainable. So
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: you know they're species out there right now. You were
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: alluding to it earlier that if it's just left to
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: their own over time, they're probably not gonna make it,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: you know. And fragmentation is another huge issue, right you know,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: corridors are cut off, you know, so you don't get
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: not only genetics crossing, but just being able to connect
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: populations have more room for them to disperse, you know,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: drought over here versus you know, it's better range over here.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: So all those problems factor into it. I thought of
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: another more extreme, uh visual way of putting it. Let's
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: say you just started flying sea one thirties into Chad
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: and offloading thousands of scimitar horned orcs at this moment
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: in time, you would find that, like in some number
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: of years, you're probably gonna be right back in the
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: same situation. A lot of the habits prepped. Yeah, because
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: it's localized. It's local age where they can not at
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: the they can't make it somewhere else, but they the
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: extruding factors on it will only let it make it
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: in that particular area or where they have that protection.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: A lot of it's been converted to agriculture. That's another
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: crash lands. And how many do they have? So how
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: many do they have on the ground now? And it's
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: sort of like semi wildish state simitars ch about a
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty And what size like on what is
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: it of size of ground comparable to where we're sitting
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: right now. No, it's much larger. It's a huge area.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: I don't have the exact number, but it's it is.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: It's a big area. And Steve do you know And
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: it's like I thought I heard it was the same
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: size as like West Virginia. Yeah, it's like hundreds of
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: thousands of millions of acres and they and they need
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: to they're actively they need to be actively defending the
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: animals from poaching. And I don't know about defending, but
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: you know, there's been a lot of education that's going
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: on about it, and you know they monitor it closely.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: Of course, you know, they're collared right UM, and the
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: animals will disperse a lot. I think the biggest thing,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: or one of the biggest things they've done is just
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: education with UM, the herders, the shepherders, you know, and
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: I think so far that's going pretty well. Uh but again,
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: we're only talking a hundred fifty animals, so it's hard
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: to gauge. You know, it's not like there's fifteen thousand now.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: Is that number growing? It is? Yeah, They've they've had
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: they've had offspring, and they keep actually uh there, I
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: think doing another release right now as we speak. So yeah,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: there's definitely plans to add on too. And I don't
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: know if there's a total number UM that they're trying
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: to get to UM, but yeah, they definitely want to grow.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously a hundred fifty of a herd animals
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: not you know, sufficient to you know, you need to
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: grow that ye that Yeah, it's still ever changing. But
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: but the only way probably to get it to where
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: they someday will say we have a stable population is help.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: Uh that they won't do it on their own. Probably
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: if they, it would be so eons out um that
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: that it just you couldn't monitor it. So the the
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: influx that that that groups like this can help is
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: what's gonna make it. Somedays, say we have a in
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: this area, we have a standardized herd, I mean just
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: off tope of my head. Again, I'm not a population
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: biologist disclaimers, so but you know, I would think you'd
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: have to have at least several hundred animals ultimately not
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: several thousand. But whatever that number is, unless it's into
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: the thousands, you're gonna need to supplement from time to time.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: What what is the stable number? Like, do we have
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: an idea what that that herd stability sizes self Sustama
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: Because that country is so different, it's it's hard to
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: classify it animals per acre um, And I don't I
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: don't know the dynamics to that number, but I would
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: say that they're they're they're people over there know what
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: they're what they need to do to where they could
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: finally say we do have a stable herd, they move
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: a lot their their micah, they're they're they're the larger
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: the herd, the larger the range needs to be their
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: nomadic and it's more it's more sparse than you know,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: Steve has this fantastic grass here and it'll rain in
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: one area of this of this area where they've got them,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: and they'll move to that area because a lot of
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: their all their ecologies is steered around perpetuation, so they
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: know to go to that area. Uh, and it's timed
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: with all their parturations and all the things they do,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: and so it will take time, um years before they'll
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: ever be able to say that's a standardized herd. And
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: we're comfortable. I mean, this is ideal for him here
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: in terms of what we're trying to do. And you know,
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: these guys have done such a great job and you
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: know burns and you know not you know, they don't
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: graze the rest of it and they're not and had
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: a history of overgrazing all those kind of things. So
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: it's ideal habitat you know. Yeah, I mean driving through here,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: this country probably never looked like this prior to folks
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: putting up fences, right. I mean, you guys don't have
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: a natural competition out here because you're you're managing it.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: You're seeing fifty years of intensive management. Yeah, maybe this
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: is how it looks like two hundred years ago, as
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: long as the bison weren't traveling through. He's being pretty
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: humble because I do what he does. He's worked his
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: rear end off and and he's got he's got the backing,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: and he's got the knowledge. And that's why you see
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: the garden growing like it is, and it's a and
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: you know, to the neck and eye. It's hard to
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: understand what he sees and what I see on these
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: properties because this is years and years of our lives
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: to get these grass communities back to where they're at.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: It just doesn't happen. I mean, this land has transformed
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: so much. I grew up around here, and it's you know, uh,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: Native Americans kept this burned off to a large degree
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: with natural fire. Uh. But you know, I'm sure you've
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: been around here. Now. It's changed tremendously. That juniper choked,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: you know, and so he's done restored it. Whatever you
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: want to call natural. If you want to call that natural,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: you know, you see, but certainly from a wildlife perspective,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: it's see what'd your bird count go from? Uh? The
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: first the first counts done in like nineteen seventy nine,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: seventy one. UM, they found forty eight species. These are
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: year round surveys and today we're over two and twenty.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: Really God, that's incredible man. So well, if you had
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: to boil that down, that's like is it? It's water,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: water and grass, diversity of habitat. So when Mr mambur
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: way more than just more grass. Absolutely. When Mr Member
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: first bought this property, it was in nineteen six or nine,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: it was basically a cedar a cedar forest, a cedar break.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: It was very much clad with cedar like you see
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of the hill country today from fire suppress
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: and sproach it seed down, overgrazing. Overgrazing led to that
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: a lot um. So yeah, in early seventies is said
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: about restoring the place, and that basically removing a lot
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: of the juniper, not all of it, because this is
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: a native tree. UM. Restoring the grasslands also given our
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: native deciduous hardwoods a chance to become a hardwood forest again. Um.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: And then with that came back water was one of
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: the first things that came back to the ranch that
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: wasn't here. Um, we have quite a bit of water here. Um.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: And then with you get that's such a diversitive habitat,
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: and especially that edge habitat, you know, that transition between
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: forest of grass or water's edge, that sort of thing.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, I imagine some of that, some of those numbers.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, it wouldn't account for significant number, but some
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: of those are sort of things on a more national scale. Absolutely,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: like like some raptors right, actually got a paragraph in
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: your thing, but it could be because of a green
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: activities happening hundreds of months, an impressive increase and improved habitat,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: as Steve said, uh brings uh diversity of wildlife. So
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of these ranches now that that have the
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: finances and the skills to do all this, they're not
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: only benefiting exotics, um dear there, it's it's all species, mammals, reptiles,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: bird life, avian life. All this is is benefiting for
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: people batcav Yeah, we're not talking. And that's what happens
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: when you get a commitment because we've done it and
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: restored it. Uh. Not I'm not talking about here. I've
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: done it on other ranches like Steve's done, but we
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: see the benefits. And this bird life is a classic
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: example of responding to improved habitat that doesn't happen by
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: accident because now they have these levels, they can live in,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: edge effect, hardwood for arrest, all the things that they've
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: done out here. So yeah, I mean Bamburger is like
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: a modern day example. And if you've ever seen Tending
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: the wild looking California about Native Americans managed the landscape
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: over there, this is an example of that. I mean literally,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: I saw a study recently where, um, I don't know
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: how they came to this conclusion, but researcher figured out that, um,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: this part of the world anyway, of the fires were
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: set here by Native Americans. Now it only burned the
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: landscape because you know, lightning fires would just go right.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: So they had controlled burns and they were managing it
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: for wildlife, you know, to bring back you know whatever,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: you know, the Coron's walnuts, yeah, track wildlife whatever. And
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: so he's actually kind of gone back, even though this
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: is a modern he's gone back to much more the
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: way it was in terms of managing the land for wildlife.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: Got it? Uh, I got two more big questions for you.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: Once once pretty concrete, once theoretical. Uh. The the scimitar
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: horned orcs. Uh. They came full circle. Okay, they were
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: in the Sahara. They were for whatever reason, lost to
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: you know, lost to us uh collectors, whatever brought him here.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: They were captain Zoo's they went extinct in the wild.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: They went back. Um, what's the next Like, who who's
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: in line to have that happened again? Most immediately? Like
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: what like what species is that that you're working on?
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: Is like you have the clearest path exists to being
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: like they're gonna go back on the ground. Well, the
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: two other ones that um of our species that are
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: being worked with right now actually in the same preserve
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: are the Domina gazelle um and the attics. And there
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: were some remnant populations there somewhere between a hundred and
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: three hundred animals but scattered about this. This is in
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: the same area Chad, yeah, and Niger. They so they
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: were they've translocated some. But yeah, they're they're releasing I
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: think right now actually some Doma gazelle. They it's already
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: happened and it's well, it's again, it's this multi step process,
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: right where maybe some of them came here historically and
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: then they went over there, announced two or three generations.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: There in the third generation got habituated, you know, and
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: then they let him go, right yeah, Like you can't,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: like it's not really practical to track the individual exactly.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: It's it's bloodline or exactly. And that that's why the
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: genomics is so important and why we want to keep
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: sequencing and testing these these animals, because we want to
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: know if we have valuable traits or whatever. Like Steve,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: you know, got his report on his his female scimitar
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: that hey, in the future, you know, that bloodline maybe
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: not that particular animal, but that bloodline we want going
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: over there, right um. And and so that that's kind
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: of the future, so that when the conditions are ripe
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: to do more of these were ready to do it. Um.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: Remember early on in our conversation we talked about the
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: idea that if it's not where, if an animal is
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: not where it's from, like it doesn't count. Now, well, well, no,
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: I don't mean that, because that's gonna sound wrong, because
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: I am a very avid wild turkey hunter. Okay, I
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: hunt wild turkeys in the state that turkeys aren't from.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're not that far down. I could drive
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: in a day, I could drive in a data where
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: they're from, but they're not from there. Okay, So I
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: love them like my children. Um so I got you know, well,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: not quiet in some ways more yess, some ways less,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: but so so I get it. It's like, there's not
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: like it's not a black and white issue in terms
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: of native you know, native animals and non native animals.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: But what's your sort of like, like, what's your take
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: if if we looked at that, that you determine that
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: for whatever reason we determine the Sahara Okay, since we
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: talked about that a bunch. It's just like you get
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: to a point where like, it's not gonna happen. It's
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: not gonna happen. It's divided up, it's war torn, not
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: getting any better. It just is gonna happen. Do you
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: then lose interest in the orcs or do you go, like, okay,
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: plan B is this part of Texas is Africa and
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: there's no and you know that it's not ever going
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: to be a reintroduction issue. Well, I guess there's two things.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: That's a loaded question, Um it is. Yeah, I mean one,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: I think you know, there's a difference between like I say,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: this part of Texas or letting them run rampant and
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: just keeping the species alive, not let them go extinct.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: For and you could have a still philosophical debate about that.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: A lot of reasons, right, you know, they deserve to live,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: you know, value in them, about what we discover about
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: their genes, or you know, it could be use of
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: other animals, you know, all kinds of right, yeah. Yeah,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: But then also you know, in terms of these assurance populations, well,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: what do things look like a hundred fifty years from now?
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I can see what you're saying.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: It'd be a pretty cocky decision. Yeah, ain't gonna happen. Right,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of like, if we're gonna keep them,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: then we might as well keep them in a setting
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: where they can do well, right, and in sufficient numbers,
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: with enough diversity. So when there's an opportunity, you know,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: we can We're ready, you know, we can put them
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: back up. And I say we, I mean collective, not
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: just my organization. Right, So that that's one of the things.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: And you know there's also I think an educational component. Um,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: there's even these guys have done it. We've actually partnered
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: I know it sounds bizarre, but uh, with a virtual
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: reality organization to kind of create some environments where people
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: can see what these animals look like, you know, in
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: their native habitats or I hear you. Hey, that was
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: my initial reaction. I got kids want to do it.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: You can do that. But from the standpoint of does
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: that raise awareness and does that get them interested and
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: you know, generate some moment. I mean, as we know,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: we're becoming a more urban world and people moving cities.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: And I'm a big believer that if if you don't
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: have your feet on the ground, if you're not out
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: doing stuff, then you just don't have the same attachment
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: or connection to it. So in lieu of that, do
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: these do something like that help And if it does,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: then maybe there are opportunities in the future. So I
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: think those are some of the arguments. I know, it's
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: not black and white, um, And you know it is
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: a little odds. Sometimes you drive around you see something
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: looks like Africa, and you know, you see more and
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: more of it, but you know we're focused really on
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: the conservation aspect, and I think you can make a
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: strong case for, regardless of what's happening on the ground,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: that we at least want to keep these remnant populations,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: you know, going for the future, whatever the future is. Someday,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: it just hit me, someday I'm gonna write a dystopian novel.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: It will be that humans are all gone, virtually all gone,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: and it'll be like some small group of people trying
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: to put all the animals back where they belong. Well,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: I think Jeff Visa has had that idea. One day
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: we'll be living, orbiting the planet and repopulation and I'll
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: be like, Okay, before I die, I gotta make sure
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: to put these things back and sudden, so I'll we're
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: coming around the table, so I'll put my two cents in.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: It'll be sharp. I think the limiting factors besides population
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: dynamics will probably be evolving wildlife diseesus. Oh go on,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: I knew you were gonna ask me that, and I
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: and that's my summary. We gotta do another show, now,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: are you gonna get it out of it? Well? No,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: give me give a little more there. Well, so I
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's like a like a like a conservation challenge.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: I think that absolutely. But but zoo gnosis. If you
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: look at what we don't know about wildlife reservoirs and
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: human interaction with diseases, we're on the pioneering edge where
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: all these lay. And I think as time goes by,
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: we're going to find more and more reservoirs that might
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: mutate and affect humans are vi subversa, and so I
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: believe that that as time goes by, the science will
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: develop that there might be a species you can't do
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: anything with because of evolving wildlife diseases that may affect populations.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: And guess what if it affects a human, who's going
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: to be first? I mean, this gets into strange territory.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: But what if there's a few species that are resistant?
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: It doesn't? Yeah, it does exactly what was it? What
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: was the question? Well, I mean back to your the questions.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: I what if you find, you know, some traits and
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: a few of these species are closely related one or
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: two that are beneficial and disease resistant. You know, could
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: that keeping those alive? Could that be useful? I mean
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: that gets into strange territory and it can. It can.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: But where the bridge starts getting weak is where is
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: where they're the possibility exists to jump from wildlife reservoirs
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: to humans, and typically that's from a mutation. And so
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: if you really look at a lot of things that
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: are happening with humans now, with the illnesses and things,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: and look back at wildlife reservoirs, you don't have to
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: be a rocket side just to figure out what's happening.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: It's coming. Yeah, I think that that's that's entering sort
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: of the public consciousness more as we have this like
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: pretty spirited debate about you know, bats while the markets,
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: and then these new strains of of COVID that seemed
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: to and then you know, like this six of the
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: white tails of the white tailed the year taking out
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: to think Indiana um I had been exposed to COVID
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: back we just we just just have this right, like
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen into the deer herd, that deer herd
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: spit it back out into the human population, and it's
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: very very close to COVID nineteen, but it's not quite
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: the same, right. I mean that, and I don't care
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: what you think of COVID, but that's something to pay
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: attention to. And when you sail across the sea. And
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not being a pessimist because I'm a biologist just
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: what I do for a living. But when you sail
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: across the seed to take a reservoir out to bring
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: it somewhere else to do something else with, there's always
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: a chance. But but I but I think we're on
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: the very infancy of of where this is gonna go.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: And also, just I want to add on the thing
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: you're saying, because you talk like there's organizations like the
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain Olk Foundation. Okay, there their business for for
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: well that you know, I hate to oversimplify it. Their
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: business have been twofold. It was habitat right and then restoration.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: It hurts with c w D right now moving herds around.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: That's not happening, man. I mean, like the appetite for
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: that stuff is it's just not happening. And it's like
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: it's because of this understanding of disease transmission that we
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: weren't talking about. He's ground zero for that. Okay, yeah,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: so so I mean we could We'll be here at
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: two o'clock in the morning. But but but I think
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: my message is it's not as easy as the wishes
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: and the money to save an animal. Now there's more,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: there's more to look and see to the fish bowl,
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: and I'll end mine. I'll pass it to Steve. Now. Well,
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: now as you said that, I would say, short of disease,
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: uh here here at the Bamburg Ranch, our philosophy is um,
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: it's our responsibility as long as we can afford to
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: do it. As long as that species is not detriment
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: to our native species and our landscape, our land, we
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: should do it. So that's something that's something you look
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: at that you're like trumping, this is native wildlife, but right,
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: novels things can be harmonious. How do you guys get funded?
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm assuming your funding doesn't come from the
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: residents of Chad No, so our membership institutions UH fundus
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: and primarily and then UM of course, and they're they're
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: great and they really are good at supporting our work. UM.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: And then we get some small fees from other program
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: members as well. And then of course you know individual donors,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: UM benefactors, so UM, you know, we it's obviously been
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: tough the last couple of years. You know, the pandemic
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: and would have you so fundraising? Yeah, you know, and
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: and it's we need to do a lot more things
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: like genomics testing, um, and so you know funding helps
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: for that. So if anybody wants to go to our
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: website Conservation Centers dot org, we have a donated it's
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: certainly appreciated. The one good thing is that, uh genomics
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: testing has come way down in price. It's only gonna
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: get cheaper. So um. But you know, conservation work is
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: Warren was saying earlier and uh testing to Steve Donne
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: has done all the work he's done, is that it's
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: not cheap. You know, it takes a lot of effort,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: as a lot of science involved. It's not just turning
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: the animals loose, you know, transport, you know, breeding the
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: whole nine yards. UM. So you know we're we need
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: support just like every other conservation organization out there. Do
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: you guys accept volunteers. I feel like you might get
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: some volunteer requests. Um, we get some. Um, it's more
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: for things we need in office because we're science based. UM.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: You know, we really leverage it's our facilities and are
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: our ranches like Steve you know, they really do the work.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: You know, I feel like people are gonna be like
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: a come out and raffle that works. Yeah, and that's
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: that's also why for this model to work, this consortium model.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: I just mentioned one other thing that there's over five
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: hundred species survival plans um in in the the A C. A.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: The zoo world. It's estimated in the next few years
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: for variety of reasons um both financial practicality, that half
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: of those may go away. And so this model is
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: consortium is going to be very important to picking those
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: species up and and they'd go away for what reason?
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: Funding issues, funding viability, you know, just hey, this isn't
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to say it's not working,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: but you know it may not be sustainable. Yeah, you know,
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: habitat all kinds of things, right, and so so so
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: there's like a plan. It's more than just a piece
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: of paper. Yeah, I mean, it's it's en developed and
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: this is all happening right now you know as we speak.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: So we're looking at how can we leverage this existing
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: model which has been very successful and you know, we
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: have a great end to end result case right here
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: and do that with other species. But as these species
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: become available so to speak. Um, you know, we we
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: need uh support to you know, help get people involved.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: And and that ties back into the earlier discussion, which is,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: you know, from a market standpoint, uh, bamburger is a
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: little different. But you know, these other facilities, the private
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: ones and even some of the public ones, they have
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: to make a living, so to speak. You know, so, um,
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: you know, they have to be able to move these animals,
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: you know, and make it work for them. And if
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: they can't there, you know, it's not that they wouldn't
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: have an interest in helping conservation, but it just won't
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: work for them. I'm with you. What is the liability?
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: He said liability earlier, Like when it's like, oh, I
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: want to have some entire horned or X on my place.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: I'll give you a really good example. Please do. Because
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: the only people that will enture my companies lords of London.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: Oh oh my gosh, my my, My farms are from
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: here to that canyon over there that I have to
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: fell out. But um, like, well we go up in helicopters.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: So here's a good example of liability. You take what
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: he's willing to do today because his his whole approach
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: is about education. And helping. Look at what they do
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: out here to educate the public. We got in a
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: pickup truck. We had a lady that was sitting on
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: the tailgate. We had a calf on the ground with
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: a mother that's not bluffing. We had a driver of
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: a pickup truck. So all those things come into play
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: about liability. It was like two minutes into our trip,
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: that's right, and so so the liability to include people
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: in what we've done. It is absolute um almost impossible
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: at times for a guy like me to include the
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: public and what I do because of the dangerous He's
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: very organized, very but don't think he doesn't have uh risk.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: Sitting in that pickup truck's a risk and so uh
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: if you if you turn a cemitar out just he's
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: going to be on his own. What if somebody walked
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: up on that calf? So this is all about this,
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: this just this just doesn't happen by accident. There's a
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: lot of responsibility and a lot of things you have
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: to do. You can see a liability because there's like
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: a there's an actual like ownership path. I mean, if
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: you get God, it's just the lands dear it belongs
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: to the state, but be like no, yeah, and it's
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: already happened. There's also the whole animal care ass man.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: We have all kinds of experts that we draw from,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: you know, veterinarian disease experts. I mean, these people are specialists.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: They've been doing this for you know, decades, right and
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: you know someone like Steve that's been doing this for
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: a long time. So it's not just anybody can show up, um,
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: you know and do this. And so we always have
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: a vatting process that we go through. We have an
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: ethics document when they want to join a program, and
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: you know, we we do a whole check on them
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: to make sure they know what they're getting into, their
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: capable they have experience, you know, and and every there's
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: a lot that goes into it. Not just anybody can
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: get in the black Rhino game exactly, that's exactly right, Yeah,
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: for a number of reasons. Yeah, so uh help so
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: people can come visit this. So tell people how to
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: come visit this place. Oh the Bamburger Ranch. Uh we're
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: not open to the public. Uh, it's all by reservation. Uh.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: But yeah, look on our website Bamburger Ranch dot org. Um,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: we do we do a multitude of things. We uh,
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: we see a lot of kids, about kids a year. Now,
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like a lot, but um, you've met
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: it sounds like a lot of time. Have zero That
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: sounds five hundred times more than how many you've met.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: You met a quarter of the staff. Uh, we we've
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: when we got really four people here that deal with
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: the people ranching or the eco tourism asspect. So yeah,
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: they can visit the website and come out for a tour.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: We do also all for a whole series of workshops
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: and landowner workshops, uh, to just give people new landowners
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: in the area and the idea of how to manage.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: That's great. That's cool man. So someone if someone bought
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: some property in the vicinity, they might come out to
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: be like, what's possible. You could come here and see
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: what's possible. We show you how to get on a
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: smaller scale what we have here. That's awesome, that's nice.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: He has some really interesting demonstrations like what happens when
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: you chopped the juniper and looking at the water retention
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: of grasses versus you know, cedar, and how that helps
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: your water table, etcetera. It's it's really good stuff and
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: then your inner child you might be missing out. We
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: do have dinosaur footprints on the police. We have places
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: where we collect fossils. Oh man, you've got to wrangle
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: in work. So that's what I got to call it
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: wrangled one. I called it special. And then how do
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: people go find Like, if they want to get the
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: broader picture of the organization, what's the best place to go? Look? Yeah,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: just Conservation Centers dot org. It's plural. And then go
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: on there you can see our programs and find out
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: just a wealth of information and our member institutions who
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: we work with, etcetera. How to make a donation, Yeah,
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: right there on the home page. All right, Well, thank
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: you guys, appreciate it, Thank you. Pleasure. It's privileged to
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: be here with you. Prof. Arter