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Nick Mott on the Endangered Species Act · A New Angle

0:09
SPEAKER_01: This is A New Angle, a show about cool people doing awesome things in and around Montana.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Justin Angle.
0:18
SPEAKER_01: This show is supported by First Security Bank,
0:20
SPEAKER_01: Blackfoot Communications and the University of Montana College of Business.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: Hey folks, welcome back, and thanks for tuning in.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: Today,
0:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm speaking with my dear friend and colleague,
0:31
SPEAKER_01: Nick Mott,
0:32
SPEAKER_01: award-winning journalist,
0:33
SPEAKER_01: producer,
0:33
SPEAKER_01: and now host of the new podcast,
0:35
SPEAKER_01: The Wide Open.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: So the question is like, how many grizzlies can we tolerate?
0:40
SPEAKER_00: How many grizzlies should there be?
0:42
SPEAKER_00: And this is the question we have for not just grizzly bears,
0:45
SPEAKER_00: but for really any species that we're talking about.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Like, how can we live with these things that we partially killed off to make our lives easier?
0:55
SPEAKER_01: Season one of The Wide Open is a deep exploration of the Endangered Species Act,
0:59
SPEAKER_01: and new episodes are dropping weekly right now.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: Nick, thanks for joining me.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: It's good to be here, Justin.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so for folks that don't remember, where did you grow up and what did your parents do?
1:10
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in Kansas City.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: I was born on the Missouri side,
1:13
SPEAKER_00: raised on the Kansas side,
1:16
SPEAKER_00: and my dad has always been sort of construction adjacent.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: He ran a lumber company when I was real little, and then he went to work for...
1:24
SPEAKER_00: sort of a door company.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: So garage doors, entry doors, windows, that kind of stuff.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: And my mom, she's done a number of things, mostly in the communications world, I would say.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: So we're here to talk about your latest project, The Wide Open.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: Before we get into it, let's talk about the Endangered Species Act.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: Give us a brief history.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: What is the act?
1:44
SPEAKER_01: How did it come to be?
1:45
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: So,
1:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:46
SPEAKER_00: we've had a long history of wildlife law in this country,
1:49
SPEAKER_00: going back to the Lacey Act in the early 1900s,
1:51
SPEAKER_00: which sort of banned
1:53
SPEAKER_00: the commercial trade in wildlife,
1:55
SPEAKER_00: but as the 20th century marched on,
1:58
SPEAKER_00: it became really clear that we were messing up wildlife pretty bad.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: So there were a couple of precursors to the Endangered Species Act,
2:04
SPEAKER_00: things that basically created a list of species that needed our help.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Didn't do a lot though.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: And so in 1973, under Richard Nixon, actually, the Endangered Species Act passed.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: It was almost completely bipartisan.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: There were just a few detractors,
2:18
SPEAKER_00: I think maybe 12 detractors in the House,
2:20
SPEAKER_00: completely unanimously passed in the Senate.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: It really didn't get a lot of publicity at the time.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: But it was a really big deal.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Like this was an era where we passed all of our landmark environmental laws.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: So under Nixon,
2:33
SPEAKER_00: actually,
2:33
SPEAKER_00: the Clean Water Act,
2:34
SPEAKER_00: the Clean Air Act,
2:35
SPEAKER_00: the National Environmental Policy Act,
2:37
SPEAKER_00: all of these things that are still on the books today that are,
2:40
SPEAKER_00: in fact,
2:41
SPEAKER_00: our most powerful environmental laws were passed under a Republican administration,
2:44
SPEAKER_00: which is a lot different than how we think about politics today,
2:48
SPEAKER_00: potentially.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
2:49
SPEAKER_01: so that is interesting when we look back and certainly contrasting with our current
2:55
SPEAKER_01: politics to think these landmark pieces of legislation came to pass under the Nixon administration.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: Was there something unique going on during that time that you think created the
3:06
SPEAKER_01: conditions for this type of legislation to go through?
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: There were a number of things going on.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, 73, we're coming out of several things.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: So we're coming out of the civil rights movement.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: So we're coming out of this really groundswell of activism to get things done politically.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: And that's part of what leads to the act.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: But as well,
3:24
SPEAKER_00: there's this real conservation minded sort of ethos,
3:28
SPEAKER_00: this aura in the atmosphere,
3:29
SPEAKER_00: almost the first Earth Day has happened.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: You know,
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was published,
3:34
SPEAKER_00: we're realizing collectively that the havoc we're wreaking on the natural world.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: The other thing that's going on is the Vietnam War and Watergate.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: So Nixon's president, and he's like, well, this stuff doesn't look so good for me.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: And this is a very cynical way of looking at it because he privately told
3:50
SPEAKER_00: colleagues they basically didn't care that much about the environment,
3:53
SPEAKER_00: but he wanted to win publicly.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: He wanted something that would be politically popular, and there was demand for this.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: So tell us about the Endangered Species Act in particular and why it is such a
4:04
SPEAKER_01: powerful piece of legislation.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing you may have heard and already know about the Endangered Species
4:10
SPEAKER_00: Act is that there is an endangered species list.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: So the so-called list is actually,
4:15
SPEAKER_00: there's two categories of animals,
4:17
SPEAKER_00: and it's not just animals,
4:18
SPEAKER_00: I should say,
4:18
SPEAKER_00: it's plants and insects too.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: But the two categories are endangered and threatened.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: Endangered means something is in danger of going extinct,
4:29
SPEAKER_00: and being threatened means something is basically in danger of becoming endangered.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: So one category less severe.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: And what the law actually does is really interesting.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: It says if an agency is going to do a project that could affect an endangered species,
4:45
SPEAKER_00: it has to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Effectively,
4:49
SPEAKER_00: it prohibits the government from doing things that could lead to extinction or even
4:52
SPEAKER_00: harm a listed species.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: This is, you know, it sounds kind of ordinary.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: It sounds like kind of common sense.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: But this is one of our few environmental laws that are what lawyers would call
5:02
SPEAKER_00: substantive rather than procedural.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: The Endangered Species Act is a hard stop.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: It's, you know, one of the framers of the act calls it it had teeth.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: It says you cannot do things.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: And there are other provisions in the act that apply not just to the federal government, but to anybody.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: They prohibit the take of species, whether that's killing animals.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: or even harming habitat it's come to be described as.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: So many folks call the Endangered Species Act the most powerful environmental law
5:25
SPEAKER_00: in the world because of its teeth.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: And at the time when it was passed, those teeth were perhaps not recognized to be as biting.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: The bill really got very little scrutiny in Congress.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: You know,
5:39
SPEAKER_00: I've talked with politicians who were around at the time and politicians who were
5:43
SPEAKER_00: around shortly after.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: Our own Max Baucus, for example, I talked with.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: He said an act like the Endangered Species Act is kind of like pressing the morality button.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: It's like doing the right thing and not thinking a lot about it.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: Sure, yeah.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: So politicians passed it.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: And they just didn't think much like, oh, we might not be able to drill.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: This could affect massive developments or highways or any all of these sort of infrastructure things.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: And even the very first paragraph of the act is this really biting indictment of
6:11
SPEAKER_00: like the logic of capitalism,
6:12
SPEAKER_00: of saying we've.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: prioritized our development at the expense of ecosystems and species,
6:18
SPEAKER_00: that there's this real downside to the logic that has propelled our country forward
6:24
SPEAKER_00: since its establishment.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: And that just flew under the radar at the time.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: Just talk for a moment.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: I know you've been interested in doing a deep exploration of the Endangered Species
6:35
SPEAKER_01: Act since before I knew you.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: Why is it so captivating to you?
6:41
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in Kansas, like I told you earlier, and didn't think a lot about it.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: It's mostly private land out there.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: I was in the suburbs.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: But then when I was in college,
6:48
SPEAKER_00: I started doing some journalism things and learned about this potential conflict
6:52
SPEAKER_00: between a prairie chicken and wind energy.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was interesting.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: And later, I went on to do conservation work for AmeriCorps.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: And I'd be doing things like cutting trees down to restore habitat for sage-grouse,
7:06
SPEAKER_00: which haven't been listed yet under the Endangered Species Act.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: But I was out in the desert where there were endangered species.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: And one of the prominent ones was a desert tortoise.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: So it looks like a tortoise.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I've been told kind of how to deal with it if I encounter one, which I did.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: If you see one on the road,
7:22
SPEAKER_00: you're supposed to pick them up very gingerly and gently and very slowly move them
7:28
SPEAKER_00: so they don't get hit by a car.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: They were on a lot of people's radar,
7:31
SPEAKER_00: including some of the sort of big environmental conflicts we've heard about in
7:35
SPEAKER_00: recent years,
7:35
SPEAKER_00: like the Bundy's.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: were very furious about desert tortoises.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I was at a diner and I was wearing this government shirt and these ranchers were like,
7:44
SPEAKER_00: basically tried to quiz me to see if I was working on tortoises.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: And they were like, you know what tortoises are good for?
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Turtle soup.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: And that was just really intriguing to me,
7:55
SPEAKER_00: sort of how this weird species that nobody ever really sees could make people so
8:01
SPEAKER_00: upset and spur so much passion.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: My first stint doing journalism in Montana, I was on the grizzly bear beat.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: I was
8:08
SPEAKER_00: covering delisting cases,
8:10
SPEAKER_00: which means removing Endangered Species Act protections in the courtroom here in Missoula,
8:14
SPEAKER_00: and just seeing all the things that are going on on the ground in terms of
8:19
SPEAKER_00: coexisting with grizzly bears,
8:21
SPEAKER_00: frustrations over government policy about grizzly bears,
8:24
SPEAKER_00: lawsuits,
8:25
SPEAKER_00: all this stuff that the Endangered Species Act spawned.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: It just seems so curious to me that
8:30
SPEAKER_00: You know,
8:31
SPEAKER_00: a species that whether it's a desert tortoise or a grizzly bear that none of us
8:35
SPEAKER_00: really have any tangible interaction with or the vast majority of us don't.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: We have these so deeply held opinions and passions about them.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: So what is the wide open?
8:46
SPEAKER_00: How did it come to be?
8:48
SPEAKER_00: The Wide Open is a podcast and public radio show.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: It airs on Montana Public Radio and it's a collaboration with the Montana Media Lab as well.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: The idea is this show will be a way we can keep highlighting really amazing
9:02
SPEAKER_00: journalism out of this region and storytelling.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: So instead of having to sort of reinvent the wheel for every show we release,
9:07
SPEAKER_00: you know,
9:07
SPEAKER_00: I've been involved in a lot of other shows we've done.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: including Fireline with you, Justin, and Richest Hill and Threshold and others.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: What we can do is use this as a home for really compelling storytelling that's unique to our region.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Threatened is season one of The Wide Open.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: Tell us about Threatened.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: Threatened explores this weird state of the Endangered Species Act we're in today,
9:31
SPEAKER_00: where it's one of the most loved and hated laws in the books.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: And when I say that, I mean people love it.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: People are like, yes, grizzlies need protection.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: Yes, wolves need protection.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: And that makes some intuitive sense.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, it stops people from doing things.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: And so politically, in certain communities, it is immensely hated.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: And there have been hundreds of bills to both strengthen and weaken the act.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: None of them have gone anywhere.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: And we're just kind of stuck in this weird place.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a series that's about...
10:05
SPEAKER_00: The Endangered Species Act.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: So in a sense,
10:07
SPEAKER_00: it's about these species,
10:08
SPEAKER_00: but really it's about us and this weird political time we're in and about our
10:12
SPEAKER_00: democracy and these weird battles we find ourselves in that have to do with whether
10:17
SPEAKER_00: it be a snail darter or a grizzly bear or a wolf.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: Episode one starts sort of in your backyard with you on a drive southbound from
10:27
SPEAKER_01: Livingston to go talk to some people about grizzly bears.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: Why start there?
10:32
SPEAKER_00: As we're driving on the road here in Montana,
10:34
SPEAKER_00: there's all kinds of weird billboards we probably see for all kinds of stuff.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: And,
10:38
SPEAKER_00: you know,
10:39
SPEAKER_00: I live in Livingston,
10:40
SPEAKER_00: like you said,
10:41
SPEAKER_00: Justin,
10:41
SPEAKER_00: and,
10:41
SPEAKER_00: you know,
10:42
SPEAKER_00: we've got our share of billboards there too.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: But I noticed this last summer that there were some new ones that just sprung up.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: The first one I noticed on one side of the road said D-List Grizzly Bears to
10:53
SPEAKER_00: support a conservation success story.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: And that alone...
10:56
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't all that weird.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: And it was sponsored by a bunch of hunting organizations.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: And so to dig into that,
11:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
11:01
SPEAKER_00: if we remove protections,
11:02
SPEAKER_00: there's likely to be a hunt for grizzly bears.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot we could say about that.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: As I was driving back the other side of the road, there were four other signs.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: all of which were opposing delisting.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: And this was a really interesting time because the government hadn't actually proposed doing anything.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: The government had tried to delist grizzly bears two times.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: They'd failed.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And the states of Montana and Wyoming and Idaho had petitioned the federal
11:25
SPEAKER_00: government to get bears off the list,
11:27
SPEAKER_00: but they were just thinking about it at the time.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: And still there had been this weird billboard battle that was forming.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: And this is a road,
11:33
SPEAKER_00: I should say,
11:34
SPEAKER_00: that hundreds of thousands of cars,
11:36
SPEAKER_00: often out-of-state cars,
11:38
SPEAKER_00: driving to Yellowstone National Park go through every year.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: So people that are coming to Montana as a destination from New York or Chicago or wherever,
11:48
SPEAKER_00: this is the impression they get of the things we fight about.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: And all the issues wrapped up within them.
11:55
SPEAKER_01: And they're probably thinking like, what the heck is going on here?
12:00
SPEAKER_01: Yet there's this immense battle about this concept of delisting that you mentioned a moment ago.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: When I heard of the Endangered Species Act,
12:09
SPEAKER_01: I thought like,
12:09
SPEAKER_01: well,
12:10
SPEAKER_01: the point is to bring species back to a sustainable population.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: And there's probably a point at which
12:17
SPEAKER_01: A species should be on the list and off the list.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: Well, it turns out that that point is a bit of a moving target.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: When you hear species is up for delisting or has been proposed to delist,
12:28
SPEAKER_00: it can sound like a really negative thing,
12:30
SPEAKER_00: right?
12:30
SPEAKER_00: It can sound like we're removing protections for an animal.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: This animal can be killed easier now.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: So first off,
12:37
SPEAKER_00: it's sort of a gut reaction,
12:38
SPEAKER_00: especially for a charismatic thing like a grizzly bear or a wolf.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: It sounds bad.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: But second,
12:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
12:44
SPEAKER_00: the Endangered Species Act,
12:45
SPEAKER_00: a lot of people describe as an emergency room for wildlife.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: So wildlife only goes there when it's in this desperate need.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: And when it's out of the ER,
12:53
SPEAKER_00: when it's no longer in need of this emergency care,
12:56
SPEAKER_00: it would theoretically go to the states.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that should be Hill's victory, right?
13:00
SPEAKER_01: That a species has recovered enough to the point where we could consider removing the protections.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: And that gets back to that first sign I described,
13:07
SPEAKER_00: do this grizzly bear to support a conservation success story.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: But then the trickiness is, is what is recovery?
13:15
SPEAKER_00: What constitutes a recovered population?
13:17
SPEAKER_00: And there are very weedy criteria the government has to fill for that.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: But if we're just talking population numbers...
13:25
SPEAKER_00: Those numbers are, it's not like we collectively agree.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: All right, the grizzly bear population around Yellowstone should be X number.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: The government sets recovery goals in terms of numbers.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people just think those are too low.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: So we're way over those numbers in the Yellowstone area.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Same goes in the glacier area.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: Those are the two distinct population segments,
13:47
SPEAKER_00: to use the jargon,
13:48
SPEAKER_00: the two populations of grizzly bears that have any numbers in the lower 48 states.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: But-
13:55
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people say there are a lot of other threats facing those grizzly bears,
13:58
SPEAKER_00: including lack of genetic connectivity.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: If there's not genetic exchange between populations,
14:04
SPEAKER_00: they get inbred and suffer population level health that way.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: There's facing a lot of threats in terms of getting killed for eating livestock,
14:13
SPEAKER_00: getting killed on highways.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: And people fear that because of this sort of antipathy that
14:22
SPEAKER_00: is perceived at least by a lot of folks in the state towards predators like
14:27
SPEAKER_00: grizzlies and wolves,
14:27
SPEAKER_00: that if management turns over to the states,
14:31
SPEAKER_00: then there will be a lot more dead bears,
14:33
SPEAKER_00: basically.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: Recovery, what constitutes a recovered population isn't really a scientific answer.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: It's like a social answer.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: We'll be back to my conversation with Nick Mott after this short break.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: A New Angle is proudly presented by First Security Bank,
14:52
SPEAKER_01: Blackfoot Communications,
14:54
SPEAKER_01: and the University of Montana College of Business.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: This show does not happen without these pillars of our community,
15:00
SPEAKER_01: and I'm so grateful for their support and encouragement.
15:03
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15:08
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15:12
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15:17
SPEAKER_01: So check it out at anewanglepodcast.com.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: Hello, this is Jeff Amott from Deaf Charlie, and you're listening to Justin Angle's A New Angle.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to A New Angle.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm speaking with Nick Mott about his amazing new program, The Wide Open.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Grizzlies are in 1% to 2% of the historic range they were in,
15:40
SPEAKER_00: and we're talking about taking them off the list.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: And of course,
15:43
SPEAKER_00: we could never have fully recovered to what they were historically population
15:47
SPEAKER_00: because we've manipulated the landscape so much.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: We've built our roads and our cities and there are hundreds of millions of people
15:54
SPEAKER_00: living in these ecosystems that were once inhabited by these animals that are hard
15:58
SPEAKER_00: to live with.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: So the question is, like, how many grizzlies can we tolerate?
16:02
SPEAKER_00: How many grizzlies should there be?
16:04
SPEAKER_00: And this is the question we have for not just grizzly bears,
16:07
SPEAKER_00: but for really any species that we're talking about.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: We partially killed off to make our lives easier.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: One of your guests says more is not always better.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: And that kind of gets at the heart of that difficulty in sort of deciding at a
16:30
SPEAKER_01: social level,
16:31
SPEAKER_01: like what is the tolerable solution?
16:34
SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily correct, but what is the tolerable number of grizzlies in a particular area?
16:39
SPEAKER_01: And that's a part of it too that we didn't mention is like it varies from area to area.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: Certain areas are probably able to support a larger population than others.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we don't want that many.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: And that gets tricky, too, because these bears tend to go wherever they want.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: So these animals are going to go where they want to go.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: And that can make life harder for a lot of people.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: So the person you describe with that quote is Mark Rose, livestock manager at Bee Bar Ranch.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: And they have so many grizzly bears there.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: It's wild.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: And they prioritize coexisting.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: They don't want all the bears gone, but it's a really fair question.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: He asks, is more always better?
17:20
SPEAKER_00: And to him, it seems like no.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: He showed me this folder of kills of his livestock,
17:27
SPEAKER_00: not just from grizzly bears,
17:28
SPEAKER_00: but from mountain lions and wolves too.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: And the state does reimburse ranchers for livestock loss if you can prove it.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: The problem is you have to be able to prove it.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: So you have to know where that animal has been killed and you have to locate it before it's gone.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't think this made it into the episode, but he told me about – he watched a carcass one time.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: And within –
17:52
SPEAKER_00: a few hours there were i think 15 grizzly bears wolves coyotes an unbelievable number of animals
18:02
SPEAKER_00: predating, just eating the carcass.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: And by the next morning, there was nothing left, nothing you could possibly prove.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: And so a common story you'll hear is like a rancher saying, you know, I was 14 calves short.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: I was 14 cows short.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: Don't know what happened to them.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: Could have been grizzlies,
18:19
SPEAKER_00: could have been wolves,
18:20
SPEAKER_00: could have been natural deaths,
18:21
SPEAKER_00: could have been something else.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
18:23
SPEAKER_00: But that makes a meaningful difference in livelihood and
18:28
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: And all the downstream effects of that.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: We've talked a lot on this show about the difficulty in keeping working lands working.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: These operations, we think that they work on huge margins.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: They do not.
18:44
SPEAKER_01: They work on thin margins and...
18:47
SPEAKER_01: lost predation is a big threat to the business.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: If a ranch goes out of business,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: it could mean that a friendly landowner takes over,
18:56
SPEAKER_00: preserves the landscape.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: So there's a real threat to ecosystems if we lose that working land.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: And that creates this really complicated picture.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: We often think about
19:08
SPEAKER_00: public lands value for our wildlife, but private land has an immense value for our wildlife too.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: So we have to find some way of supporting wildlife on both.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: And so let's,
19:18
SPEAKER_01: in our remaining time,
19:19
SPEAKER_01: I want to shift gears to another sort of genre of Endangered Species Act conflict,
19:25
SPEAKER_01: so to speak.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: And that, for lack of a better word, seems to be the weaponization of the act.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: At least my perception of it is that it's often used as a tool to stop things from
19:38
SPEAKER_01: happening that people don't like.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes that obstruction to a development project or some sort of initiative
19:47
SPEAKER_01: has little to do with the species that is endangered and more to do with just an
19:53
SPEAKER_01: opposition to some policy or some project.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: This began early on in the days of the Endangered Species Act with a little tiny
20:01
SPEAKER_00: fish in Tennessee called the snail darter.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: You know,
20:03
SPEAKER_00: this little three-inch fish stopped a more than $100 million dam on the Little
20:08
SPEAKER_00: Tennessee River called the Teleco Dam.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: It went all the way to the Supreme Court.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: The Supreme Court upheld
20:13
SPEAKER_00: That this fish, because of the Endangered Species Act, can stop a dam.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: But that sort of playbook that you can use the Endangered Species Act to sue and
20:22
SPEAKER_00: stop a project really has taken off.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: And it took off in a big way, especially starting in the early 90s with multiple different owls.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: You might have heard of the northern spotted owl in the northwest and the sort of
20:34
SPEAKER_00: impact that had on the timber industry.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: But then there's a lesser known story that we tell in the show about the Mexican spotted owl.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: And there's entire organizations dedicated to using this law
20:46
SPEAKER_00: in this way to stop things.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people complain that the Endangered Species Act,
20:52
SPEAKER_00: along with other environmental laws,
20:54
SPEAKER_00: clogs up our court system,
20:56
SPEAKER_00: that we can't get anything done collectively because of all of these lawsuits.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, these litigators will say, well, we've protected tens of millions of acres.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: We've gotten all of these species protected and all of these habitats protected because of these species.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: It really depends on where you fall on the spectrum, but it unquestionably
21:16
SPEAKER_00: is a deep headache for anybody involved in the world of government projects,
21:20
SPEAKER_00: of conservation,
21:22
SPEAKER_00: whether it comes to logging and fuels reduction,
21:24
SPEAKER_00: whether it comes to oil and gas drilling.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: And this comes back to this idea, too, that the Endangered Species Act is substantive.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the only laws we can use that says, stop, you can't do this.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: And we're in this time politically,
21:36
SPEAKER_00: too,
21:36
SPEAKER_00: where I think that power is like kind of appealing because we can't get anything
21:40
SPEAKER_00: done in Congress.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: And this is a way we can much more easily get our way.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: We're like, no, don't do that.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: Endangered Species Act says you can't.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: So it's really appealing if you like don't want something to happen.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: But if you do, it's a real pain in the neck.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure there's been all sorts of shenanigans around like,
21:58
SPEAKER_01: hey,
21:58
SPEAKER_01: let's go find an endangered species so we can say no to this project.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: And probably,
22:03
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:04
SPEAKER_01: maybe I don't know if you want to tease any of the details,
22:07
SPEAKER_01: but have there been cases of species being smuggled from place to place to sort of
22:12
SPEAKER_01: drum up a case?
22:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: There I can't say for sure yes or no on that.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: But what I will tell you is sort of the inverse of that,
22:19
SPEAKER_00: where on a lot of private land for for years and years,
22:22
SPEAKER_00: there's been the saying SSS or shoot,
22:26
SPEAKER_00: shovel and shut up.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: So you find out of there.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: You find a species that's endangered, whether it's a bird or a wolf or a grizzly.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: You kill it, you bury it, you don't tell anybody.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest demands from the private property side around the Endangered
22:41
SPEAKER_00: Species Act is both more flexibility for landowners,
22:43
SPEAKER_00: but especially more incentives.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: Like instead of penalizing,
22:46
SPEAKER_00: if we think about our environmental laws and systems of carrots and sticks,
22:50
SPEAKER_00: you need the stick,
22:52
SPEAKER_00: you need the regulation for sure.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: But then you also need the carrot.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: You need to incentivize people to do things.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: And there are mechanisms in the Endangered Species Act to do that.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: They're harder to achieve, and it's also harder to fund.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: When we're talking about private lands conservation,
23:08
SPEAKER_00: getting people to actively take measures when margins are already really thin is
23:13
SPEAKER_00: tricky business,
23:13
SPEAKER_00: especially when we're dealing with a relatively static budget.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: Are there examples of successful delisting?
23:19
SPEAKER_01: I suppose the bald eagle might be an example, right?
23:21
SPEAKER_01: Because there's not many people that want to hunt a bald eagle.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: Maybe there are, but it's not a very vocal lobby.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: Let's put it that way.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Right.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: The bald eagle was relatively non-controversial delisting.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: But most delistings are pretty controversial.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, we've talked about grizzly bears.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, the government tried to delist those twice.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: Wolves, same thing happened.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: They tried to be delisted a couple times.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: It got overturned in court.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: And I should say the reason that those were unsuccessful is groups sued.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: Then judges said,
23:52
SPEAKER_00: well,
23:52
SPEAKER_00: government,
23:53
SPEAKER_00: you didn't quite tick all the boxes the right way,
23:55
SPEAKER_00: that there are still threats to the population.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: So they're back on the list.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: And what ended up happening with wolves was it took...
24:02
SPEAKER_00: a writer on a big budget bill in Congress,
24:04
SPEAKER_00: meaning this last second thing slotted on to say,
24:07
SPEAKER_00: get rid of these protections for wolves and you can't sue about it.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: That was actually put on to a big congressional writer in 2011 for wolves in the
24:14
SPEAKER_00: Northern Rockies by Tester.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: One of the chief complaints about the Endangered Species Act is how hard it is to get species off.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: So there are these two numbers that get thrown around about the act that I think are really interesting.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: One is that people say the Endangered Species Act is this massive success.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: It's prevented 99% of species that are listed from going extinct.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: So they're still here, 99% of species.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: It sounds good.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: The other stat from the other side says is fewer than 3% of listed species have
24:43
SPEAKER_00: ever been delisted,
24:45
SPEAKER_00: which means it's become,
24:47
SPEAKER_00: they claim it's become sort of the Hotel California where you can check in,
24:50
SPEAKER_00: but you can never leave.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: So depending on who you ask,
24:53
SPEAKER_00: it's either 99% successful at stopping extinction or only 3% successful at
24:58
SPEAKER_00: recovering species enough to remove protections.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: And that puts it in this weird partisan place we're in.
25:05
SPEAKER_01: So give us an overview of Season 1 Threatened.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we talked about a variety of the issues.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: You start with grizzly bears.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: What are we looking at?
25:13
SPEAKER_00: We got eight episodes.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: We start with Grizzlies.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm still writing the last episode.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: I think we're going to come back to Grizzlies.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: We'll find.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to give away how it ends because I don't exactly know yet.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: But I'll say we span from the early days of the act from the 1970s and those early
25:28
SPEAKER_00: snail darter days even.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: And it spans the country.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: It's not just Montana stories.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Although we do have Montana stories in there.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: We have grizzlies and wolves, of course.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: But then we have other stories.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: We have stories about dams in the Pacific Northwest.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: We have stories about the rise of these litigators in the desert Southwest.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: And we have stories about hunting and hunting's value in conservation.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: And how the sort of if you describe it as weaponization,
25:56
SPEAKER_00: how the sort of progression of saying stop to things you don't like has unfolded from,
26:01
SPEAKER_00: you know,
26:02
SPEAKER_00: one species stopping one project to the sort of like massive economy level scale
26:07
SPEAKER_00: and these really surprising ways that you you've likely not heard about.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: As you mentioned, you're still writing the remainder of the episodes.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: We're catching you at a moment where you're deep in it.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: And I guess I've had the privilege to see you in it on a variety of stories,
26:24
SPEAKER_01: whether it's when we worked on Fireline together,
26:26
SPEAKER_01: your amazing reporting on the flooding of the Yellowstone River a couple of years back.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: And now this,
26:32
SPEAKER_01: like you have an energy about you when you're deep in the story and you can see
26:36
SPEAKER_01: like not only a deep command of the topic,
26:39
SPEAKER_01: but also passion.
26:41
SPEAKER_01: What's the experience like right now for you?
26:44
SPEAKER_00: stressful and tiring i'm surprised you say these things about me right now because
26:47
SPEAKER_00: i'm deep deep in the weeds but it does feel good to emerge from the weeds to talk
26:51
SPEAKER_00: about it so i'm mostly just like alone staring at a computer and writing things and
26:54
SPEAKER_00: stressing out about what i'm what i'm going to do next and getting edits and being
26:58
SPEAKER_00: like later today i have an edit meeting about an episode and i'm stressed about
27:01
SPEAKER_00: what my editors are going to tell me you know
27:03
SPEAKER_01: Yet you are playing a more public role on this project than other projects you've worked on.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: You're in the host seat, and that's a new role for you.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm really, really excited about this project, and that's truly how I feel.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: But I've got to be clear, this is the home stretch, and it's crunch time, so I'm also real stressed.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: Well, the show is amazing.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: Nick was kind enough to give me a sneak peek.
27:24
SPEAKER_01: When this episode airs,
27:26
SPEAKER_01: we'll be,
27:26
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
27:27
SPEAKER_01: two or three episodes in to Threatened,
27:30
SPEAKER_01: season one of The Wide Open.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: Nick Mott,
27:33
SPEAKER_01: I think this is not only important work,
27:35
SPEAKER_01: but work that listeners will find entertaining,
27:40
SPEAKER_01: educating,
27:41
SPEAKER_01: and inspiring.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: really help us sort of understand these thorning issues.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: And you do a great job of not only choosing topics, but helping us understand.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much, Justin.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: That's so awesome to hear.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: And I'll also say,
27:55
SPEAKER_00: listeners,
27:56
SPEAKER_00: follow the show wherever it gets your podcasts,
27:58
SPEAKER_00: Spotify,
27:58
SPEAKER_00: iTunes,
27:59
SPEAKER_00: whatever,
27:59
SPEAKER_00: and leave reviews and tell people about it.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: Do all those things, too.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, will it just be a podcast or will it broadcast in some way on the radio?
28:06
SPEAKER_00: It'll broadcast on the radio, too, so you can likely hear it on the airwaves.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: All right, Nick Mott, thanks for coming and sharing some of your time during a really busy time for you.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to A New Angle.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: If you like what we do and want to support us directly,
28:25
SPEAKER_01: please consider a subscription at anewanglepodcast.com.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: A New Angle is recorded at Studio 49, a generous gift from UM alums Michelle and Lauren Hansen.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: Our presenting sponsors are First Security Bank,
28:40
SPEAKER_01: Blackfoot Communications,
28:41
SPEAKER_01: and the University of Montana College of Business.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: Kelly Larson is our producer.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: Maddie Jordan is our production assistant.
28:48
SPEAKER_01: VTO Jeff Ament and John Wicks made our music.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: And Jeff Meese is our master of all things sound.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: Thanks a lot and see you next time.