Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 243: Boggeying in the Brushworld

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Ep. 243: Boggeying in the Brushworld · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: where you stand with on X. All right, guys, we're
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: gonna start right out with the introductions, right off the bat. Okay,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Michael to us, professor at Texas A and M University
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: of Kingsville. So that's how you say that to us?
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: To us? Yeah, got it? Yeah, my computer keeps calling
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: me two weeks, but yeah, it's and Um. I serve
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: as a Caesar Clayburg while if at the the Clever
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Wilife Research Institute. I've been there since nine is a
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: professor doing cat biology and cat research. Uh cats worldwide.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: We've done some work in Southeast Asia, some cats, uh,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: clouded leopards, marbled cats, golden cats, cats you've probably never
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: heard of, and uh and and leopard cats, some other cats. Okay,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: and you can patriot here. I'm Neil Wilkins. I'm the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: CEO of the East Foundation, and we're an outfit that's
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: uh about two d seventeen thousand acres of private lands
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: in Texas that has been set aside to serve as
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: an area for research, education, and outreach, mainly for wildlife conservation.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: And how close because we we first connected, I feel
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: around the fact, I can't remember how it lined up,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: or maybe it was coincidence that we were going down
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: to the Eteria ranch, I think, so, yeah, you're just
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: happened to be that. Um you guys were located around there. Yeah,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: we've got one of our ranches of the l Sous ranches, Uh,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: backs up real close to the ranch. Okay, so yeah,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: we tried to. I was hoping to range some kind
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: of visit we were down there, but it never worked out.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Now uh oh, and also Cal's here on a computer screen.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: He's gonna have an entirely diminished role as Yes, it's
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: just you know how it goes, Cal. Yes, So I've
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: got to send some bad news to one of the
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: ladies that I worked with. She wanted me to get
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Cal's autograph, So I'm I'm gonna have to go back
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and tell her that she's not gonna get it. I
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: think you just provide an address and he'll send it okay. Um,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: we're also used that E signature thing, Michael, Oh sorry,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: we also have a common um Jim hethelfinger. Yeah, I
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: want to loser that guy is. I agree? Yeah, he
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: was one of our. He barely got out of graduated
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: from our university about years ago. No, he's still are.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: We're really proud of me. We used to do a thing.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: We used to do live shows back when people did
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: things with each other, and we would have these trivia contests,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: like we had these pre shows we do, like these
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: v I P pre shows, and we'd have trivia and
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: one of our favorite trivia questions because it always like
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: really stumped people is we would hit him with I
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  Speaker 1: can't remember if it was. I can't remember the numbers now,
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  Speaker 1: but it was like name five of the six or
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  Speaker 1: named the six wild cat species of the United States
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: of America and a man guests which too, in descending order,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: were most likely to stump everybody of the cats. Yeah,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: guess which too, like no one ever got if they
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: if they got one of those two, it was are
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  Speaker 1: you talking about North the real end or North America
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: in the present day US. So you would hit people
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  Speaker 1: with like name I can't remember how we would phrase it.
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  Speaker 1: Let me just think in my head. Real actually Jaggeranni Noslo, Yes, yeah,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: well yeah, we would do North America. Yeah yeah. If
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: you do North America includes Mexico, you gotta add jaguar
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: and yeah, but you have to have jaguar inn if
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  Speaker 1: it's the U S and mar Ga Mark, yeah, Mark,
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  Speaker 1: And there was only one record of a mar gat
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: in Texas, and there was in eighteen fifties. See, we're
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: screwing the I feel like we gave people stuff that
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: they didn't deserve. Did they include the house can No,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: we would, we would point out that. So let me
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: just walk it through to hell with how we asked
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: the question. Let's walk it through links. Everybody knows that
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: not everybody, but a lot of people know there's a
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  Speaker 1: there's like one wild cat in Alaska, though I think
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  Speaker 1: it's rumored and maybe substantiated that a mountain lion or
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  Speaker 1: two has finacaled this way into southeast Alaska. One was
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  Speaker 1: found alway on the Mackenzie Delta with its ears frozen
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  Speaker 1: off or something like that, so they get around. But
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  Speaker 1: you have links mountain lion, bobcat, Yes, Jaguar, Jagger Rundi ocelot,
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  Speaker 1: but you're telling me there is another one I don't
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  Speaker 1: even know about. It's a it's a baby oslot. It's
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  Speaker 1: like half the size of an oslot. It looks almost
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  Speaker 1: the same. And we we did, I guess, one of
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  Speaker 1: the first studies on them in Mexico and published an
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  Speaker 1: article about five years ago in the Sierra tom APIs.
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  Speaker 1: It was a population of markets there that there we studied.
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  Speaker 1: So it's like a little ten pound wildcat, yeah, eight
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  Speaker 1: to ten pounds, bigger eyes than oslots. But everything else
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  Speaker 1: is is very similar. Talk walk us, like, what's up
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  Speaker 1: with an azl lot? Okay? And why is it no
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  Speaker 1: one knows about? No? Why does no one know you
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: have oz lots? Right? And do you think most people
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  Speaker 1: understand know what an ass lo it is? Because I'm
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  Speaker 1: surprised that I've been working at this thirty five years
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and I feel like I'm still felling getting the message out.
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  Speaker 1: I remember when I was young, reading uh, how to
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  Speaker 1: trap books all the time, old how to trap books,
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  Speaker 1: and I remember I would always be like, what in
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: the hell because you would see they'd have a section
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  Speaker 1: now and then I'm catching and it would have mentioned
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: like an ocelot. Well, I we may have looked at
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the same trapping book. I had this one book in
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  Speaker 1: the early nineteen eighties and then had a chapter on
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  Speaker 1: trapping asots. And it's the only one I've ever seen.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: And I mentioned they're easy to trap, and sure enough
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: they turned out to be pretty easy to trap for me.
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  Speaker 1: Just the problem is you have to find out where
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: they are. Once you find out where they are, the
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: easy to trap. Yeah, so it's our people through like
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  Speaker 1: what what it is and where it lives? Yea, where
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: it used to live and where it lives. Okay, the
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  Speaker 1: asoughts of the forty species of cats the most beautiful.
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  Speaker 1: It's just a fact. It's uh, that's an objective realityjector reality. Um.
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  Speaker 1: It's about an own cat about two ft tall, and
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  Speaker 1: the at least the cats in Texas, the United States.
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  Speaker 1: The females are eighteen to twenty two pounds and the
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: males of two to twenty five pounds. Um. And they're
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: beautifully striped and and and spots and rosettes. It's really
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: an interesting tangle of of of markings that provide the
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  Speaker 1: ultimate camouflage. I think for for a cat, it's like
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, is it's is it's coat different than the
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: jaguars besides just being a smaller version. Uh yeah, I
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  Speaker 1: think it's much more complex than the jaguar. Jaguar has
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: the rosettes with a dot in the center of it.
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  Speaker 1: Oslots have have spots, uh, rosettes, all kinds of and
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  Speaker 1: then and some of the rosettes form chains to where
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: it looks like chains going down the shoulder and down
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  Speaker 1: the back it's in. It's such a very difficult animal
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  Speaker 1: to try to describe. You can you can't do it.
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  Speaker 1: And from one side of the oslot to the other
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  Speaker 1: has a different spotting pattern, and each one's like a fingerprint.
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  Speaker 1: They're very unique. So it helps us when we use
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  Speaker 1: cameras to census of population. We can identify individual loss
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  Speaker 1: lots that way. So they how would you describe the
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: general color scheme? Yellow yellowish background with a little bit
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  Speaker 1: of whitish underneath, and then um. Like many of the cats,
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  Speaker 1: they have two very distinct facial stripes um and then
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  Speaker 1: um and then these very distinct black and then the
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  Speaker 1: tail is about an eighteen inch tail with black rings
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  Speaker 1: around it. And then and that's all very similar to
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  Speaker 1: market as well. But the except smaller version for a market. Yeah. So,
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  Speaker 1: um they're an incredible cat. Their distribution goes all the
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  Speaker 1: way from northern Argentina to southern United States. They used
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  Speaker 1: to occur and there there have been a couple of
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  Speaker 1: males identified in Arizona. Never a breeding population Arizona, but
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  Speaker 1: they've always been a breeding population in Texas and the range.
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  Speaker 1: One of my hobbies is collecting uh reports of leopard
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  Speaker 1: cats is what they were called in the eighteen hundreds.
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  Speaker 1: So from eighteen thirty to eighteen eighty, you have leopard
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  Speaker 1: cats identified almoch every almost every river in Texas up
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  Speaker 1: to East Texas and and and they so they really
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: like the dense brush cover that would be a longer
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  Speaker 1: ripe hearing area. So I can imagine distinct populations of
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  Speaker 1: oslots on every major river Brazas Trinity, Colorado River into
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  Speaker 1: East Texas and um. So so they did occurrently losing
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  Speaker 1: in Arkansas at least recorded to there. Now are they
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  Speaker 1: do they show up in the oral traditions in Native
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  Speaker 1: American oral traditions for the Mayans and Aztecs, they do. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you know the Mayans and Aztecs worshiped jaguars are very
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: important in their in the religion, but the Aztecs, uh,
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  Speaker 1: they kind of recognize the the offside is a smaller
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: God likes symbol or it was smaller in there in
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  Speaker 1: the symbolism back then the jaguars. If if you're ever
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  Speaker 1: eaten by a jaguar, you you went into the portal
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  Speaker 1: to hell. So you don't want to be eaten by
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  Speaker 1: a jaguar. That's that's It's really rich tradition all the
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  Speaker 1: way down to I think the Anchors even had had
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  Speaker 1: some of that jaguars worshiping. But deal or cause of
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: cause of death that's not self inflicted is rewarded with hell. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think anyone likes to get that, doesn't pop. Yeah,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: those uh it hurts to be bitten by a can. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: When you say that they bumped into Arkansas perhaps or
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: bumped into Louisiana perhaps, Um, those come from this very
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: like small like single references or whatever. That's right there.
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  Speaker 1: The type specimen for the subspecies Alvessons comes from Louisiana.
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  Speaker 1: It does yeah, and and and sometimes I get a
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: little mixed up in maybe in Arkansas, but back when
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: it was shortly after being Louisiana purchased, so they called
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: it maybe Louisiana. But the type specimens from there, and
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  Speaker 1: then how many at once pot the time, how many
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: we're running around, it's anyone's guess. Now. Really, the records
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  Speaker 1: that you you have from the eighteen hundreds is one instance,
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  Speaker 1: one anecdote, I shot a leopard cat. I found a
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: leopard cat. With a couple of exceptions, there's um one
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: trapper who reports UM several leopard cats in his catch
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: at the mouth of the San Bernard River. So whereas
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: that's it south of Houston, about about thirty and and
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: and so so that's kind of U is really believable
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: to like he was log in his season's catch. Uh,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: at least that Yeah, I don't know if the whole season,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: but it was very probably a very large population in
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: that area at that time. So yeah, it's uh. And
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: and the spelling it was really funny how the anecdote
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: there and the or the narrative was he misspelled everything
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: you could misspell, but he got leopard cats and bears there.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: And then another one was, oh, the hunter that led
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: the Roosevelt hunts uh and came out of Louisiana, went
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: to Texas and then Um Lily Ben Ben Lily and
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: the guy that ran the um is he the guy
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: that was tangled up in the hole Teddy bearry thing. No,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: that wasn't now now Ben Lily is a character. And
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: he would never sleep indoors. He already slept outdoors. It
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: was a tremendous cat dog person. He did. Went from
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Bears in Louisiana, spent nineteen o six, collected a few
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: offslots south of of Houston, Houston that went on and
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: may became famous in Arizona and leading hunt with Teddy Roosevelt.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: But interestingly, a couple of samples that he collected southea
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Houston and sent off to the Smithsonian. We we got
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: DNA from the bones of the skull from those cats.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: So we analyzed that a hundred years later. It's kind
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: of interesting then, But Bill, really, if anyone ever, I mean,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: that's that's an interesting read just there. If if you do,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: if you can't get a good sense like how many
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: oslots were ever running around? And what's now the US?
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: We do now we have a good idea for the
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: U S what was running around? Oh no, no, not previously.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Now it was probably many hundreds at least maybe a
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: few thousand. But can't you guys when you're doing genetic work,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: can't you guys find um, like if you got an
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: old bone from a hundred years ago, isn't there some
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: process by which you get the mitochondrial DNA from that
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: and you can tell the effective breeding population size by
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: like how many how many contributing mothers are in the population. Yes,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: we've done that. My student, Yanya netscha Um is now
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: professor at Ducane University in Pittsburgh. But he published four
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: really good Ostlar genetic papers, and one of them was
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: looking at effective population size. Uh. And another one was
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: just where he documented the genetic erosion that's been going
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: on from to ninety five and then two thousand and five.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And we've had a very steep decline in genetic variability
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: in the Austal populations. The two populations that occur in Texas,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: they've lost saying it's called private a lials. Uh, it's
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: where very few of lials are very specific to that population.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: We would find only one or two in the Texas
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: populations and compared them with our research in Mexico where
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: we'd find thirty private lials. Um, so it's just we've
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: lost heaters. I got genetic heaters igacity. And then the
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: effect their population size is very few, uh down to
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: well we've only really sub sampled a subset of the population,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: so so but there was very few. And then I
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: had another student, Jennifer Corne, look at the inbreeding and
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: we found four or five inbreeding events in both of
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: the populations. So they've got they've got problems. Can you
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: walk through real quick image, Cause you've been in the
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: cat business so long, you probably know this story about
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: than anybody, or at least as well as anybody what
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: happened with um different cat but has like the inbreeding,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: wasn't the Florida panther like severely in bread and that
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: led to taking lions out of Texas and putting them
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: in Florida. Yes, that that's that's the night of the
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: of the case. And is that I want to at
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: some point get to like why we can't why you
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: can't just dump a bunch of in Texas now from
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Mexico and have the problem taking care of Yeah, that's
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: a good story to having a second But one of
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: my former students David Schindel is now the Florida panther
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: lead for fishal Life Service and uh um so, so yeah,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: they the panthers. I think at one time we're estimated
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: thirty five or fifty individuals. And then there's a discussion
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: about bringing Texas and ended up moving eight or more
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: lions from West Texas into Florida to help with the
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: genetic erosion and increased variability, and that that has been
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: very successful. My understanding is they've really the demography of
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the populations as really expanded, and I think it's been
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: helpful by most assessments. Yeah, it was kind of a
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: deal with the devil a little bit, because, yeah, there's
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: one argument. One side said we want to keep the
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: pure Florida panthers that Corey i with subspecies, and then
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: the other said, we don't care, we just want Florida
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: panthers to exist in Florida. And those are the two
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: basic arguments there. Uh. I didn't realize that that you
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: saw that AUSELT populations were still collapsing or continued to
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: collapse like from as recently as five to present, but
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: walked through what happened to what happened to this cat
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: to get into trouble in the first place. Well, I
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: think the first settlers came and settled on the rivers
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: where they also populations were. And since we've already said,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: also so easy to trap they are and to kill
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: right off the bat, he had that conflict between humans
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: and people and so over the years. Uh, there was
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: a pretty extensive poisoning going on in the nineteen fifties
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: forties fifties for prindor to control they help benefit game species.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Why were they pissed it? Azlots. It was just universal
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: and everything strychnine to kill just about everything because asels
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: they probably killed chickens and stuff. If they're not gonna
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: take down cattle or and that's the worst thing about
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: it also as it kills chickens and so if not
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: a chicken fish on ato, who cares, you know. And
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: i'd really have awf lots where they're very they're very
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: uh um, a very peaceful cat, I mean, and that's
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: probably one reason they easy to catch and a lot
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: of people had him as pets. But they don't they
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: don't hurt livestock, they don't hurt game species. Uh there there,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: And I think they're general demeanor they're very popular pet
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. UM. I know some of your
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: audience is probably too young to remember who Don Meredith was,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: but he was. He was one of the first commentator
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: on on on Monday Night football, and he was the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: quarterback from Dallas Cowboys from n to sixty eight. I
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: believe he had a pet awful lot. His name is
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Peppe and uh, and so he really enjoyed that cat.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: And he came home after losing to the Washington Redskins
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: for a weekend and it got a concussion during that game,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and I only to find out that the housekeeper let
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: the cat out and it got ran over. So it's
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: kind of double double loss that weekend for down Aria.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: But a lot of people had them as pets and
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: then in the fifties and sixties and thought it was
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: a glamorous thing to do if you kept them indoors,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: though you regretted it because they would spray urin all
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: on everything, and then they have a very distinctive smell
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: in the urine. Uh, And you don't want to live
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: there for too long after that happens. Was that still
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: legal in our country in the sixties, that you could
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: just take an animal like that out of the wild
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: and turn them into a pet. Yes, in the sixties. Yeah,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: they didn't become endangered internationally until nineteen seventy three and
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: nationally until two. There was a overlook. They missed adding
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: it to the list in seventy seventy three. But yeah,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: and people have had them pets even in the in
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties. And you may still be able
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: to do it if you have all the different permits
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: that's required. It's it's very much difficult to do it. Now.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Where do they sit on the Endangered Species Act List? Now?
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Are they listened A threatened or listed is endangered? The
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: listed is endangered. Yeah, fewer than a hundred left in
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: the United States? What at what year did you take
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: note of something? And that little film you guys put
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: together it mentions how when you first got interested and
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: people told you that you wouldn't be able to catch
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: one because there weren't any to be caught. Yeah, um uh.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: A professor that Neil and I share in common was
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Dr Jack English. He was one of my wilife professors
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: and bet me a bottle of Jack Daniels that I'd
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: never catch an awesol lot and um, and so likely
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I did on March two, which was awesol at day
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: happens to be Texas Independence Day by the way. But
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: so I caught the ouslet on that day. And a
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: year later Jacking was bought me the bottle of Jack Daniels.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Take him a whole year to do it? Well, we
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: only met at a conference a year later and we
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: drove around Austin. They bought that bollo of Jack Daniels.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: And every time my students and I caught a species
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: a cat for research, we take a shot out of
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: that bottle. So we've had over trail shots. We're studied
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: over trail different kinds of cats, and so we and
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I hope to have a few more shots coming out
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: of it. Walk through, uh, walk through sort of you know,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: like a career path of someone like your interesting career
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: whatever to where you got to be like I'm gonna
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: try to catch an oz lot. I'm gonna try to
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: trap an oz lot, which supposed they aren't here anymore. Yeah,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: if you want to do it as student? Um, you know,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: is that? Is that what you mean? Kind of like
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: how did you get in the situation to even care? I? Yeah,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: I think. Uh. I think serendipity and luck had to
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: play a lot with it. But I think also hard
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: work puts you in that position to to to be
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: at least noticed by your the next level. The professors
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: that were willing to take a chance on me. And uh,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: but I've been very lucky throughout my career. I think,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: very fortunate to do what I am able to do.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: But I was in the right place to my master's
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I did okay on on my master's projects, so they
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: offered a PhD which involved awesol lots. And then I
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: got with the old trappers the first few months and
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: and the people that have trapped aff lots for forty
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: years and kind of learned a lot of techniques from them,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and and then I hit the right place and uh,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: and that's why I came down to it's just finding
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: the right place. Did you grow up hunting trapping? Uh? Yeah,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: I did. I I hunted um and yeah, I can
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: think of a little trapping possums and things when I
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: was younger, and did some limited hunting. When I was
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: a kid, I did some bird hunting, dove hunting and
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: duck and but I I've gotten where I'm so obsessed
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: now with cats. I don't do any I can't fish,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: I can't hunt. I can't do anything except read or
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: study about cats. And that's a I probably need some
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: psychoanalysis for that. But but uh, but I so that
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: was yeah, and it was in the outdoors. I was
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: a bird watcher. I don't tell I consider myself mamalogist.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: And I learned early on that people well that ornithologist
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: didn't have as much fun as mamalogist had, and so
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: I ended up becoming a mamologist instead of ornithologist, at
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: least in my opinion. They may argue that with back
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: in the so you caught your first one at eighty two,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: and what was it? What was the reason that you
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: needed to go out and catch an oz lot? We
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: got a contract from the Fish Wife Service to to
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: study assorts as they were putting them on the dangerous
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: species list that year. They wanted to have a little
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: bit of information and found to find out even if
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: they existed in the state. I had several gray hairs,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and professors tell me they no longer occurred in Texas,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: that they've been extrapated, but people weren't just hitting them
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: with cars and stuff. No, not. Well, if they were,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: they weren't being reported back then, because that's the weird
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: thing about with Florida panthers, right, it'd be like, oh,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: there's only thirty left, but then every year three of
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: them get hit by cars. Yeah, that's right, that's the
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: picture you could hide. It's a parallel with oss loots there.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: But the refuge La gonna As goes to refuge where
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: I began some of that work. The refuge staff didn't
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: know they had them there. They knew they had them
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: in the mid sixties when they did some prida to
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: trapping they found something. They've gone ten years and didn't
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: even realize they had them, And they probably have always
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: had about seven to fourteen as lots even now. Are
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: they just super secretive? They're secretive the nocturnal um, and
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: they liked and they enjoy really dense brush brush that
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: no one wants to walk into. So those three factors
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: alone makes some A lot of ranchers will not A
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: few ranchers have all slots, but they didn't know it
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: because of those three factors. I would just think that
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: with I mean, I guess it's testament to how few
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: there maybe were. I would think that with guys out
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: predator calling and Kyle and bobcat trappers that if there
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: was one left, someone would have it. Well again, you're right, Um,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I consider roads a very effective sampling technique. You know,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: if if a population is somewhere, they're gonna get ran nowhere.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: That's why Harry and the Henderson's would happen for real,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: if there were bigfoot. Now that's not I've used that
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: same example, like if they were there, someone would run
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: over them and it wouldn't be like a secrety thing
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: now and they would just be a big dead one
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: in the road. And then when I when I expressed
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: my doubt about that, I started getting hate mail from Michigan, Wisconsin.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: So I don't talk about bigfoot anymore. Quit, No, yeah,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: you don't want to talk about bigfoot. They there's some
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: serious people out there still convinced. Would that be in
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: your like, as a mammalogist, that'd be right in your wheelhouse,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: right yeah? Yeah, But I'm going to a different direction. Okay,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: you don't even want to be implicating this conversation. I'm
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: kind of figuring out how to get out of it. Actually.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: So anyways, I was saying with all these ways in
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: which they could that awesl lots um. Yeah, I guess
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: the point where I'm saying is this. I always struggle
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: with um Lazarus speak, you know, this trying to if
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: you guys use the term Lazarus species like species that
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: rise from the dead, right, So like blackfooted ferret, um
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: it's gone, and it's like, holy sh it, it's not gone.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: A guy's dog just dragged one. And then uh, the
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Tasmanian devil. What's that? What's that animal called cal I'm
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: trying to engage with calm throwing them. I'm throwing him
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: an easy one. What is the animal that is most
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: similar to a Tasmanian devil? No, they have a better
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: name than Tasmanian devil, Like the tiger. That's what I'm
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: trying to say, Tasmanian tiger, theistee or something like that, right,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: that thing, Yeah, that is that's like the saddest pick
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: of all is like the this cool looking strape dog
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: cat combo that is in a jail and it's like
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: the last one. But people have been every year feeling
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: like they saw one. Yes, you know, well, that's the
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: equivalent of Jagger Rundee's in Texas in the United States,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: throughout the South. I to this day, I have biologists
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: and we were just talking about it. I've had five
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: or six what I considered famous bologists argue with me
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: about Jagger and news occurring throughout South, the South, Florida, Texas.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: In my opinion, Jagger news don't exist, haven't existed in
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Texas since Night in the Last Road killed in nineteen
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: eighty six. But do you have a loan eight six?
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Someone ran over at Jagger Runde in Texas well in
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: April nineteen eighty six to two miles of east of Brownsville.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Also very close to not being in Texas. Yeah, there
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: you go. Well they even never were never located north
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: of Royal Grand Valley anyway, although people think they're cur
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: throughout the South. So there you are. It's early eighties.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Some people say there may be gone. I would have
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: been They're definitely gone. If someone thinks there may be gone,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: I'd say they're gone. Oh you know what, here's another one.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Everybody's still looking for the ivory build woodpecker. Yeah, well
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I saw when when I was back when I was
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: a bird watcher. By the way, it would be early seventies.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I thought I saw one anyway, but I'm
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: sure it was a poor But no one's laid eyes
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: on one since I don't know, But every year people
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: go looking for him. Yeah, and they see what we
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: what we call where I'm from, pilliated woodpeckers. Yeah, affiliated woodpeckers.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: And it's the same phenomena. I think that the bigfoot
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: of the locknest monster. Here's another thing. To have a
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: viable population of any species, you need fifty more individuals
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: to live for a hundred years. Huh, Well, okay, but
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: who gets to make that? Who gets to say that
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: that's the truth that came out Michaels Fule is like
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: the beginning of m v PS minimum viable populations and discussions,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: and it has since became much more complicated since then.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: But he's so he's like here, you hear you, Yeah,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: if you have fifty of something, well, and that's a
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: computer modeling will show that for a kind of species.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: And now it's called population viability analyses. We've done two
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: different PhD projects on that. You put in all these
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: life parameters and you can estimate how long a population
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: of a certain size will persist over time. I guess
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: I'm incredulous of it because I could see if you said,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: for large mammals, for instance, it would take a population
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: of x right, for large marine mammals, it would require it.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: But if we're talking about a plant, you know what
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: I'm saying, it's a chargian. Time is an important part
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: of a mouse, which is an elephant. Yeah, And as
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: part of this modeling, it's there are a lot of
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: variables to go on this MA but there's there's been
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: much research done on that. But the gist of it
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: is is if you have a very small population, it's
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: it's very unlikely to survive a long period of time.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: So so I kind of call it a viable population
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: of a bigfoot or Lochness monster. You probably need at
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: least fifty of them. If you're gonna have fifty Lochness monsters,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: you probably need several locks to have a population. I
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: went to that lock one time and looked out upon it.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: I didn't see anything. Um, I wish you were more.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: I wish you'd like to talk about bigfoot because I
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: could think and talking to you, I could get better
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: at arguing with bigfoot people. Yeah, yeah, No, I I
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: I'll just call you sometimes. You could give me a
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: crash course on on what one might say in an
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: argument with bigfoot people to make you seem more right
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: for you to those strengding letters that I got. So
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: viable population question is like so right now, you know,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: like when you're at wolf ree introduction, like the lowest
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: folks are willing to go is a hundred animals. That's
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: like the bare minimum. There's a lot of folks that
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: are It would be like pulling teeth to get them
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: to go below two fifty animals. And that's a pretty
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: fast reproducing animal. You know. I was just doing a
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: lot of research on Australian lyre birds, which are pretty
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: dark and cool. That's a songbird, big songbird that doesn't
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: even get around to thinking about reproduction on the male
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: or female side until they're between five and seven years old.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: And it's like, think at all the stuff you gotta
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: survive to get to five or seven years old, and
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: you're a ground dwelling songbird. Six million feral cats whatever
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: the cats, Yeah, mongoose is feral cats. Yeah. Uh, kids
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: with sling shots bb guns, um, and so like how
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: does that I understand? Like the model was set up
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: to be manipulated, but it is something that seems like
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: it is kind of an arbitrary number. Well, that's another
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: variable that goes into the model is age the first
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: reproduction and and what it turned out for oslots and
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: and many of the cats is how many how long
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: does a breeding female UM produce young? And and how
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: many young do they produce? And oslots typically only have
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: one to two young compared to bobcats at two to
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: four and and then so and also it's reproduced well
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: into the years. The Bill Swanson, who is an expert
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: on ALLSTO reproduction Cincineti Zoo will have reproductively active males
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: well beyond ten years, and same thing for for females
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: they last reproductives. So they are all these variables kind
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: of go under these models UM and I'm by no
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: mean an expert on them. That's why why we have
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: other people doing but and it's really and you really
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: have to take it with a lot of grains of salt.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: It just kind of really gives you an ideal of
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: of say I'd rather put into it, and fifty wolves
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: in a hundred wolves because of these factors and for us.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: It helped us identify what what kind of information do
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: we need most? And what it turned out to be
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: was how many young does a female produce for how
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: many years? And so it really kind of guide you
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: into what kind of information to collect to get more
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: fined refined estimates and and and things to worry about
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: and not worry about. I want to keep moving with
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: the chronology of of the like the story of the
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Awful Lot. But if at some point there's the way
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: to weave this in, I'd like to understand this. We
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: will often say that, um, if a female of whatever
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: species let they were talking about ass lots like, if
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: she can successfully produce use two, if she can have
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: to offspring that make it to breeding age, she was successful,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: and you would hold the population like the population remains static?
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Is that like an acceptable thing to say to somebody? Well,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: what is it? The humans? You have to have at
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: least two point three humans to maintain? Okay, well I
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: learned that twenty years ago, maybe, because but I think
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: about that with salmon and stuff, right, is they're dropping
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know, thousands of eggs and being like, if
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: two of those eggs makes it, the fish was successful Yeah,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: two of the eggs out of or with sturgeon, they're
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: putting in producing in a lifetime millions of eggs. Two
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: of those make it. That's a successful fish. Yeah, and
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: there you know they're they're strategies just produce eggs and
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: there's no parental care. And then you have the reverse
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: where elephants might put in years for for making sure
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: that young survived to breeding age. So you have everything
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: in between. But yeah, two point three humans, I guess
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: everyplace and in uh that that seems logical. Can you
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: real quick explain those strategies where you have there's like
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: they have letters applied to them, right, like the rabbit
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: strategy or whatever. O K K selected species and are
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: selected species? That's right? I mean like you have a
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: ton of them and don't pay any attention to them. Yeah,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: that's our select a selected species were and help me
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: know if I'm wrong. K. Selected species is where they
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: invest a lot of energy and time in raising the
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: young and making sure they reach breeding age. Like a
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: black bear, Right, she's gonna spend she's gonna spend two
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: years tutoring her offspring, caring for and tutoring her offspring. Yeah,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: and the rabbits like see you. Yeah, yeah, I want
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: to live. You can get out of here. No, I
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: know a lot of prayer like that, you know, the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: rodents and everything else. Um, what was it that you
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: actually wanted the oz lot for when you went out
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: to catch one? When you said I'm gonna study oslats,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: People like it's probably I need to study or whatever,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: But like, what, what really were you winding one? We
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: had everything you could list that at the time we
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: wanted to learn about it. It's home range, size, how
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: many there were, Um, what kind of social organization did
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: they have? Whatever? Their activity? Just the basic natural history,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: like enough to fill out an Audubon guide book. Yeah,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: and we've probably did. We probably did at the time
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: we were That was the very first offlot study and
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: another one starting Venezuela a few months later, but nothing
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: was known at that time about oslats. It was the
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: first off lot stuff. When you learned from the when
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: you when you had to go ask around about how
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: to go get one, Uh, layout, like what kind of
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: sets you were making and how you were catching them
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: because it's kind of weird. It's like, I think I
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: haven't seen a strategy that I don't know why it's
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: not more widely used. Well, we used birds, Yeah, we
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: use box well, and they stay alive. By the way,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: this want to make that point, we we use box trap.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, okay, Tom, imagine the night. Imagine the night
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: that pigeon spends separated by some quarter inch mesh from
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: an azal. We started all for chickens for the first
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: twenty thirty years, and it's amazing. It's not what you
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: would think. I would walk up in the morning of
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: the check traps and also be sound asleep, and the
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: chicken was trying to pick fleas off the ears of
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: aust more than multiple times. That happened. Several times. They
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: attained relationship during the night. So it doesn't like destroy
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: the chicken psyche. Not well, it's hard to tell the
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: chicken psyche. But I couldn't. I don't. I didn't detect that. No,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: I'm not condemned. I mean it's like, plus, you have
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: every justification when you're trying to like find out what's
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: going on with something that's gonna be like wiped off
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: the face of the earth. If it gives a chicken
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a heart. Well, Ted was my
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: favorite rooster, and and and he did. He lost one
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: eye in a battle with the raccoon and things, but
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: this is eighty three. But he persisted and he caught
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: several aw slots big white rooster. I would place the
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: roosters a certain distance apart, so in the early morning
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: they'd be crowing to each other, and then it's like
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: a natural predator to call that was I'm sure it
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: helped ow slots. That's a great idea. Describe the trap
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: now that like it's kind of like where you go
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: to set it and how you figured out where to go.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: I want to know why we don't use chickens anymore.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Pigeons now, Well, they crap too much and eat too
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: much foods pigeons. It's cheaper where they do less of both.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: They they're less defecation problem less and less of food
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: and uh and they're very happy. And the birds we
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: take very good. I mean, you wouldn't believe the care
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: we take care of the pigeons in the aviary and
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: then treated treated very well and uh so, but it's
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: very effective and so I so I use white pigeons
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: to try to increase the light during the night, and
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: and we'll catch as many bobcats and all slots. Uh,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: typically a hundred trap nights hundred fifty trap knights to
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: catch one after one bobcat, that's ten traps out for
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: fifteen nights to get a hundred fifty trap knights. One
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: trap for one night is one trap night. So they're
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: pretty easy. But jagger rundys in Mexico, there's over a
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: thousand of trap knights that catch jag Undy. They're very,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: very difficult to catch, and that's why no one's published
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: on them, I guess. So far explain the set like
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: the set for an awesole lot, and I want to
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: get back into the bait thing too. Okay, Well, first
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: you find out where there's a road kill if you can,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: so there's probably a population nearby. Then you look for
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: the densest brush near that road kill. Just one road
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: kill pretty much. Yeah, they're they're not all, but it
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: probably will reflect where population is. Yeah, it's a really
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: pretty effective And you can't be telling me that every
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: time you drive down the Southern Texas Highway you see
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: a road kill, that there's a population of oslots nearby. Well,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: there've been very few locations of road kills. They have
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: only been there. The two populations A sorry, sorry, yeah
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: I was Oh I got you thought any old road, Yeah,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, oh, there's a dead nil guy, let's set
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: up no, So you find the recent Oslot road killed
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: dead and then go from there. But there were but two.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: There weren't dead sts on the road. There there one,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: And I understand now the refuge only had so into
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: fourteen and no one had reported a recent Oslit road
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: kill there. The other larger population of the OSTs occur
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: on on five to seven ranches, large ranches, and you
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: were probably on one of them, the hassianit Eteria ranch
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: just recently. We believe there's probably of some nearby there.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: But these are large ranches away from the two roads
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: that are there. There are only two highways and so
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: so the big populations away from roads. That that explains
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: part of it. So when you went out to make
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: the to catch one, you just went to the last place,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: like like, how do you know? I mean, how did
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: you decide like, well, here's a place to try. Well,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I had to go the last place. No one to
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: have seen one or something. Couple of old trappers told
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: me where they trapped them in the past, and Uh,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: and sure enough they it's really the same place they've
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: been trapping them since nineteen forties and fifties. And then
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: they're still there, Uh, in those few places. And talk
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: about the set now the box trap. Uh. So we
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: find the densest brush and the the largest patch of
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: that dinsant brush that we can thorn shrub is their habitat.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: There'll be thirty five different species of thorny shrub species there.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: It's amazingly beautifully complex shrub community. Any place we can
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: find a trail in that that we can get too easily,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: or where a trail intersects another trail you have, it
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: increases your odds. So so we'd look for that and
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: and so a history of cats, good habitat and then
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: looking for trail sites a place to trap, and then
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: uh and then pretty good chance you'll catch a cat
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: if there's one there in a short period of time. Uh.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: You know what we didn't talk about. That meant to
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: ask about what, um, what the hell are people doing
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: with them when they're trapping like one like in the
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: whatever in the forties, fifties, sixties, when they were getting
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: knocked Yeah, yeah they were, they were They sell them
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: as in the fur markets. Yeah, yeah, they were. There's
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: a record I just sent Neil from the nineteen forties
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: of these two off lots that were Chaptain in the
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Star County, which is right adjacent Real Grandy, and he
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: sold them for two dollars and fifty cents perpelled. So
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: they would sell them in the old days, and like
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of the pelts, they sell them so you
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: could go down and get like yourself, like an Awesolt
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: jacket or something. Back then. Yeah, yeah, if you go
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: back for enough in time, there was a very popular
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: trading uh thing on the frontier. People didn't have cash,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: they didn't couldn't spend money. Stuff. You wanted to to
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: get some milk or some eggs, you trade something and
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: often a pelt awes up pelt was very valuable in trading,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: and the comanches would use them for saddles. They would
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: just throw an afsup pelt on the horse and then
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: ride on that. It's kind of yeah, and there the
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: quivers for the arrows would be awest quick quivers as
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: up pelts would be. Is really interesting, you know. It
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: was important in the frontier just because they're so cool looking,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: probably exactly so when you caught the first one, what'd
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: you catch down the a chicken or pigeon? The very
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: first one of all the cats we've caught tun or fifty,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: we technically caught it on a padded leghold trap at
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: two and a half. That was pre live trap. Yes,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: you were using live traps. Yeah, and we in our
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: federal permit, we had in there the fact that we
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: could use lagold traps, box traps or even hounds. And
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: and um, John, my my buddy who's out of Maine,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: help me catch that first off alot on the on
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: the Gallopy ranch. And then and he he was um
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: working on so he had the padded lake holds and
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: so so that all the other cats since then, since
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: that very first cat had been with box chaps. Five
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: days later we caught another I kind of know, the
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: oslot with a box chap. So so yeah, it's it's
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: and and the chicken thing has worked around the world again.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: We've we've trapped twelve different species of cats, all on chickens.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of amazing. He you got a box
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: trap and in the back of the where you put
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: the bait, there's a separate little cage exactly, and the
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: bird hangs out in there and they're protected in their
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: food and water. All they want to eat. But cats
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: like chickens, and he comes in there and triggers a
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: thing and kicks the treatle or whatever, and the door
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: shuts exactly. Yeah. We used to put lures sometimes, or
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: we'd hang some flagging. You hang a feather so it
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: blows the wind, or some fur we've we found it.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: We don't even need to use lure. If you just
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: have the bird there, that works as good as anything.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: No find that thing. Yeah, yeah, I like that crowing trick,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: putting them out so they crow back and forth. Yeah. Yeah,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: it made me feel good, maybe think that I actually
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: had it figured out and stuff, But I don't know.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I think it helped a little household. I was gonna say,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: your PhD PhD student in that video though I was
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: doing a little like covering the floor of that trap.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: They are sensitive a little bit to the to the medal. Well.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: I tried to teach that to make sure that I
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: teach the perfect set and the setting dirt along the
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: medal and the travel and encase it in brush so
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: there's only one entrance from the front and I get
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: him the perfect scenario. But but I've put traps where
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: they're even sitting almost in the air and sometimes and
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: so I start off with the ideal trap. But you
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: can at least for all thoughts, you can catch them
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: in other ways. It's not a perfect trap set. Didn't
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: make the news when you caught one, or was there, like,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: was there media around the fact that you started catching them? Now,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: I I always for the first two years, I thought
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: that it was I would catch them and work him
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: up all by myself, and and I always thought this
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: was a very I felt like it should have more
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: attention than it was getting. I was just there by myself,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: and and then the cat research and and a couple
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: of years later there started to be some media things. Yeah.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: Well after a while there was a ton of media things. Yeah,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: there there's been a variety of There's been a lot
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: of things over over the years. And then when you
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: came into it, I would have thought that at that
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: point they get ees a protection and two two for
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: the U S. Yeah, Why did that not lead to
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: why was that insufficient to like? Why were the numbers
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: still going down? Like an eight five? They're still going
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: down the numbers were probably very similar, but the genetic
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: erosion of the same population. We were monitoring the clind
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: of Hitteror's igocity or the genetic variation, so that's why
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: I was going down. The numbers were probably about the
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: same I think for the last since we started three
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: to eight years ago, the numbers have always been about
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: the same, but they increase in wet years and you
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: have high prey. But when the droughts hit, you get
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: a two or three year drought, it it affects that
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: this astle survival. We've documented that through our research that
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: um you get a severe drought six months into the
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: vegetation is really pretty much gone. The rodents and rabbits
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: that decline from that vegetation and then you see failure
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: of also reproduction about about twelve twelve eighteen months later.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: And they can only go for so long when they
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: have so few cats, and and the oslots disperse, A
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: lot of the sub the subordinate or sub dominant individuals
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: will disperse, and we found that the home ranges of
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: the residents will expand so and they're the residents will
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: survive because they've got it figured out. They know what
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: the home range is they know where to hide, where
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: to find food. Every night, they really intensively explore their
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: home range, and they have an understanding of real time
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: understanding of where the prey is, where the dangers are,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: where the coyotes, risks are, and things, and so they
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: know when the prey starts to decline, the residents probably
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: push off the dispersers, and the dispersers are the ones
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: that died. They have much lower survival. They die from
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: road kills. Yeah, by cars. Yeah, that's number one form
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: of mortality now is road kills. What else you were mentioned?
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Kyle's kyles to kill them, We've never documented that. I'm
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: I'm sure it wouldn't be it would happen for kittens
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: at least, but the fact that they used really dense
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: brush most of the time coyotes won't go into that brush.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: But if a pack of coyotes, UH found one in
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: the open, and it probably would be a problem. But
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: there's enough other things that woul kill him. We've had
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: had him die from ral snake bites, uh ingesting a
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: grasper into the lungs. Main do you lose them to
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: just some people being like what the hell is that?
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: And then shoot it? Um, which seems to be a
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: real thing. Well there, it happened only once that I
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: can think of, in the late nine You didn't, I
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: wouldn't identifying myself. I was just that was that was
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: not me, that was exactly well, that's how that's how
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: he got interested in the subject. The story I heard
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: was it was a hunter out of Houston shot one
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: with a bow and arrow. Yeah, because because he thought
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: it was a bobcat, okay, And and about went out
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: of ten of bobcats and spots just like an awf lot.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: So so it's really hard to distinguish. Well, but yeah,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: the whole tale problem. Yeah, you know, and a bobcat
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: has sometimes surprisingly long tail six inches, you know. So
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: so someone who's not out there hunting all the time,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: you can fall into that. That happens all the time,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: even with people that know what they're looking at. I
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: was a young biologist and I was about five, and
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: I was working on a piece of ground and called
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Mike two us out in five and told him that
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: he that a buddy of mine and myself had seen
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: an awesol lot and it was close by jim Wells County,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: And sure enough, an awflot population hadn't been found there
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: since Bob. Yeah it was Bobcat. We don't know what
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: we were talking about. Uh, what if someone were to say,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: if the population just doesn't seem to have changed since that,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: maybe in fact they're not endangered. Maybe they just aren't
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: that many of them never were and aren't. Well, we're
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: just how do you handle like, how do how do
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: you handle that question? Yeah, it's a good question. It's
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: a they're definitely many more in their range of Mexico,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: Central and South America. There are thousands there where. So
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: it's we're really talking about the US population, which is
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: fewer than a and um and so it and probably
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: the hardest question the answers why should we care? Why
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: should we spend a lot of money? I don't struggle
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: that one, but go on, Okay, so some people do
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: and and and I just um um. For me, it's
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: just that the people that are involved with saw conservation
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: have already gone past that question. Regardless of what kind
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: of argument you want to use, They're determined they want
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: to keep them for whatever reason. And uh, and their
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: variety of reasons, Well, I want you to get into that.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Sell me on wanting to keep them. I mean, I'm
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: on board because I don't like I don't like us
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: playing god and deciding that we're gonna eliminate species from
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: the planet. But uh, sell me on that idea. But
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: but what about I mean like but also like talk
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: about the one I'm talking about where how if if
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: since the moment, the first time someone ever studied them,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: they found like, hey, it looks basically like this, and
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: then that's that remains static for thirty forty years. Um,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: how do you demonstrate that there's a problem, because but
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: there's no baseline, there's no real baseline idea, right, Like
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: if you're going in an A T two to do
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: like baseline data gathering and not like what are things
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: supposed to look like? But what do they look like?
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: And it looked like that and it still looks like that?
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: How do you convince people that we're facing a problem? Well,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: I think that just the fact when that one what
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: we call the refuge population only has seven to fourteen individuals.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: If you're lucky you have half of that, it's females seven.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: And there's a saying called demographic stocasticity. Sooner or later
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: you're going to have you're gonna have fourteen males and
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: no females just by chance over time. That's why I
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: happened with the seaside dusky sparrow came down to six individuals.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: They're all ten uply males, and that was extinction. There's
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: some real practical, practical reasons why we should think that
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: they were more widely spread. Right now, if you were
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: to look on the coast and the center of the
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: population for oscelots, we had Hurricane Hannah come through what
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: was it maybe five six weeks ago, maybe a little
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: bit longer. Hurricane Hannah was Category one hurricane. The eye
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: of that hurricane came right over top dead center the
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: center of the universe for oscelots in Texas. If in fact,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: that would have been saying category for hurricane like Hurricane
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: Laura that hit the southwest coast of Louisiana, we probably
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: would have lost that population of ausselots. So if you've
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: got you've got them geographically confined in an area right
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: there and they all exist, you know of them got
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: to be below twenty ft in elevation, and you get
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: a storm surge, you get the you know, you get
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: everything that comes along with a major hurricane. There's no
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: way that they will last and will last for very
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: much longer, just with that one particular source of you know,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: potential catastrophe to them. Yeah, I got you that. That's
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: an interesting point. And also that idea that if you
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: have like carrying capacity for such a small number. I
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: never thought about the fact that you could wind up
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: in a situation where they're all the same gender. Yeah,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: that's the demographic stocastasy. You've got the environmental and stocastasy
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: saying you get a five year or tenure drought, that
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: might do it. Every hundred years we get we get
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: a five or teen year drought, and we've got habitat elsewhere, right,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: not not right next to it, but habitat elsewhere. That's
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: perfectly good, awesome lot, habitat not occupied? What what is
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: what is not? What is like? Not worked? Why has
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: the ees A protection not been I guess if you
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: look at the s A protection is being keep it
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: from going extinct. We're here to keep it from going extinct. Um,
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's not what it is. But if you
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: look at that being success, you could argue, like, okay,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: it was successful because they're not extinct. But if you
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: look at ees A protection as being a vehicle that
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: would lead to recovery and it's not a one way road,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: and the expectation would be you know, I think it
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: only happens two percent of the time. Um. I'm not
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: saying that's the fault of the ESA, but has a
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: very low success rate in terms of something going on
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: the e s a list uh and getting off. There's
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: two percent of things. I think a variety of this happens.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: That it goes on and then they realize that it
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have gone on because they find other populations. It
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: goes on and it's already gone. Um or it goes
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: on and it becomes gone. Yeah. So not many things
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: make it off. But what like what is preventing sinceo now?
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: What has made it that? Now we're not like the
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: same way we are about bald eagles where you aloneys
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: get sick of looking at bald eagles? Yeah? Yeah. Well,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: and in Texas it's nineties seven per cent private land.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: It's probably unlike any other state, um uh, Texas retained
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: its private lands. So any management conservation wilife is dependent
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: on private landowners and um and and Neil can probably
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: addresses as good as anyone. Um. This incentives that are
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: built into the Danger Species Act, and the fear that
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: many landowners have that they'll lose their ability to manage
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: the lands they wanted in the way that they want
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: to gives them no incentive to even I did fact
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: that they have an endangered species on the property. In
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: their view, for many of them, it's a distancentive. No,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: you think, yeah, so, I mean, if you look at
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: awesol lots. For example, a hundred awesol lots, probably greater
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: than sevent those awfl lots are on private lands in
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: and these are large ranches. Um, there's against the tide,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: uh desired by those private landowners to somehow conserve awesol
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: lots for reasons of their own. Some of those are
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: stewardship reasons that it would be a shame, given that
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: treasure that exists on those lands, to let that species
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: go extinct. Now, if you look over at the Endangered
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Species Act, and let's say it's a realm of paper.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: You know, they just print the whole Act out and
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: everything that has to do with it about a realm
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: of paper. About two sheets of those papers say something
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: about private lands. And basically it says thou shalt not
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: kill and in dangered species intentionally absolute, except for some cases,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: and it's some nuanced exceptions with wolves and other things.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: And and thou shalt not take an endangered species incidental
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: to any other land use practice. That's it. I want
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: to say that last part again. Now, shalt not take
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: an endangered species as an as it being incidental to
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: an otherwise legal land use practice. An example of that,
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: and the example of an AWCEL lot is if you've
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: got a fence line that runs through ault habitat and
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: you were to disturb the habitat by clearing out that
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: fence line, that might be considered by US Fision Wildlife
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Service to be an action that alters the behavior or
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: the breeding probabilities of AWCEL lots, and therefore it's a
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: prohibited act under the FOLI. I think that they would
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: lead to, like the direct death of not that it
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: could lead to. That's that's what it originally was meant
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: for in the Act, but it's interpreted now as deteriorating
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: habitat type or whatever effecting the behavior take take just
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: affect sure. Yeah, And of course that you know we
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: came up with that in what nineteen seventy two, right,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: And so we're driving in nineteen seventy two Ford Galaxy
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: five hundred policy, trying to work with two thousand and
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: twenty conditions, trying to work with things like groups of
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: landowners that are trying to work with the U. S.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: Fish and Wilife Service to figure out how to recover
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: an endangered species, and the Fish and Wilife Service, sometimes
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: through no fault of their own, can't figure out how
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: to get out of the way and to let it happen.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: And you know, it's been called at least once vigilante conservation.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: You know, when that was first laid out there that way,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: I thought, well, it's kind of a pejorative term. But
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: then when you really think about it, vigilante is a
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: group of citizens that have taken up a cause because
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: the officials that are supposed to be doing it have
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: abandoned the cause. And so it will be an example
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: of vigilante conservations. Vigilante conservation would be a a group
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: of a group of landowners. For example, in in this
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: particular situation, we have landowners that know they have awesol
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: lots that would like to do three or four things.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: One is to survey for those awful lots to know
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: where they are, where they are, and how many of
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: them there are. Well, if you do that, then there's
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: some confidentiality standards that those landowners would like. They'd like
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: for that information not to be leaked to the US
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife Service simply because the Fish and Wildlife
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: Service would then have to make that available to a
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: lot of these organizations that would file lawsuits and force
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: the Fish and Wildlife Service too do the two things
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: at landowners like don't like to hear, and that's enforce
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: and have the authority over and so if they don't, okay,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: if you want, like a rancher wants to know, or
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: landowner wants to know, do I have them? I think
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: they're they're like maybe they're like, I think they're totally cool.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: I wish I had more. I'd like to know if
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: I have one, But I don't want the FEDS to
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: know who are they trusting to sort of like keep track.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: That's the that's the problem. And part of the problem
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: is you're you're inclined to not allow people like Mike
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Toois to put his graduate students and researchers on the
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: ground to survey for awesol lots because it's trouble. You know,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: we think there's somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: awesol lots in Texas. There could be more. It's it's
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: an unknown so that's an extrapolation, right. We don't know
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: how many of there are. We don't know exactly where
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: they are. We've got some known populations. One known population
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: is on the East Foundations l Sal's Ranch, so we've
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: got the largest population known. And we're not afraid of
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: the Dangered Species Act or the U. S. Fish and
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: Wildlife Service. Uh, perhaps foolishly, but nevertheless, we're not afraid.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: We're you know, we're going to continue to to work
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: the research management recovery system and we feel like it's
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: a stewardship responsibility as do other ranchers to recover that species.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: There's for for whatever reason and and and it can
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: be a religious reason, it can be a reason that look,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: we don't want this to go out on my watch,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: whatever that is. But but you've got to take into
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: account in that at least in that part of the state,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: in the state that has DT two million acres of
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: private lands. Those private landowners are buying large the best
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: conservationists there are, I mean, they care about that land.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: They care, and they've got a stake in it, and
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: they've got a stake in the future reputation for themselves
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: as ranchers and caretakers of that of that ground. That's
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: the scenario we're finding with awesol lots as we just
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: simply are trying to figure out how to get rid
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: of the disincentives and be able to assure private landowners
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: in and around that awful lot population that they can
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: allow monitoring research and then proactive measures for say translocation. Uh.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: We're doing things like collecting semen from Maile awesol lots
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: so that we can perhaps and pregnate Zoo awesol lots
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: and have offspring that we might be able to either
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: from a wild population or from or from that cross
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: At Zoo population create another translocated population elsewhere so that
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: we don't have to worry about that next hurricane that
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: comes through turning into a Category four. I mean, the
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: clock is ticking on that type of catastrophe when you
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: get a population confined to that small of a geographic
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: area and they're that small. If you had to if
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: you had to characterize the UM, if you had to
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: characterize the sort of anti fed sentiment around. Let's say
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: someone is they know their family knows they have oslots
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: on their property. UM, they don't want to be rolled
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: up into any kind of activities with the scientific community
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: at a federal level for fear that someone's gonna come
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: in and go like, oh my gosh, you do have
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: awesl lots. I'm shotting this place down because you know
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: you're not gonna be allowed to do X, Y and z. UM,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: maybe you're not gonna be able to do the very
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: things that made it it was a good as loot
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: habitat anyways, like sort of having economic viability on your property,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: which makes it that you don't need to develop it
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: for instance exactly. But do you find it like the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: average sentiment that's like the anti fed sentiment is educated
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: in precise meaning they're like, oh, I would love to
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: tell them, but if I tell them, then this could
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: happen to me and it would look like this. Or
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: is it just generally I hate the fetes I gets
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: across the board obviously, because I mean, you've got I mean,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: in our our state, we've got three fifty thousand decision makers,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: three fifty thousand landowners, So it's going to be across
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: the board there. So and and there's experiences that they've
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: seen with other species. So you take something like the
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: golden cheek warbler that may have been used in some
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: cases to halt development in and around the Austin area,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: and take something like the Dunes sagebrush lizard that in
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: some cases was used to halt oil and gas development
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: in the Permian Basin, like was used opportunistically. Sure was
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: like if someone wanted a thing to happen and that
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: was the way to make it, or something wanted something
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: to not happen, and that bird or that lizard was
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: a way to make it not happen. That gave you
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: legal legal It gave you legal grounds to get your way.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: Now we've got the flip side of the coin with
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: awesol lot Really interestingly, there's there's the organizations that use
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: it as a mascot for fundraising that that then don't
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: do much for the aucel lot um we've got. Uh.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: I think it's a this is a good thing. Our
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Texas Department of Transportation, You can get an AWESOL lot
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: license plate. There's more AWESOL lot license plates in Texas
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: than there are awesome lots in Texas. And you can see,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: in fact, you can see more driving between San Antonio
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: and Austin. You can see more Awesol lot license plates
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: then there are awesome lots in deep South Texas. So
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: people love them. You'll see ranchers with US a lot
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: license place, and you know, ranchers love them. They want
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: to figure out how to recover awes lots without putting
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: large ownerships that are depend on economic viability at at stake,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: and so they need assurances and so and I think
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: it's I think it boils down to, you know, just
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: raw trust and economics. And it's not just the and
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: And it's not that there's bad people to the US
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Fishing Wildife Services, good people. Um, they're they're caught managing
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: an act that in some cases is antiquated, and they're
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: sophisticated organizations that have figured out how to soothe them.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: And they know. In every conversation you'll have with the
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: Fishing Wildlife Service over anything, it'll all come down to,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: you know, Okay, what happens when you know group X,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: Group Y or group Z uh SUSA because we've worked
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: out a deal with you as a private landowner. So Okay,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: here's how we're gonna here's how we're gonna make sure
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: that we're uh fully solid on our conservation measures. Uh,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: we're legal on maintaining confidentiality, all of these hoops that
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: you've got to jump through, and for some landowners, they
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: just look, I'm suspicious when I have to apply for permits,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: when you're telling me you have enforcement authority over me
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: and those types of things. We I think, in the
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: spirit of antiquated and sophisticated, uh, we should probably h
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: take a quick crack at defining vigilante again, I think, uh,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: I mean if that was, if I may slightly romanticized
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: textan definition of vigilanti where uh oftentimes, especially if we
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: look back through history at our vigilanti groups. Uh, some
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: would characterize the Texas Rangers as one of them. That
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: they aren't just folks stepping in and taking care of
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: things that aren't getting done. Uh, Like it's implied that
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: it's like justice being done, but oftentimes that's um some
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: self serving justice as well. Right, So yeah, if you
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: top it with the word conservation. Then you're sort of
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: qualifying it from vigilanty. Uh asshole is um. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: I'm fine with that. That's a fair that's a fair
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: comment because if I vigilanti charity, vigilanty charity, you'd be like,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it is, but it sounds like
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: a good thing. Yeah, it sounds like somebody throwing money
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: out the window. That's great. So I was letting it
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: ride because it's a vigilanti conservation, not vigilanti type. Take
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: a push at it because I use that one all
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: the time. So no, I think just revisiting that point
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: is all that was needed. So the computer is spoken.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: Uh e s. A reform like Endangered Species Act reform
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: is one of those things. I'm like, you hear it
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: all the time, and I'm leary about it because I
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: support it, but I probably don't support it in the
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: way that other people support it. It's one of those
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: things that's become to mean. It's become it's like it's
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: happening to the word conservation, like I could say on
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: pro conservation, like different politicians say on pro conservation. You're like,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: what exactly do you mean? And you realize that they're
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: talking about something that you're not talking about, and a
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: lot of people to talk about Endangered Species Act reform,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: A significant amount are saying what I mean by that
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: is I would like the damn thing to go away.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: In a significant amount are saying I mean that it
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: could be more effective if we change it and make
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: it more flexible to account for like what you're talking about, UM,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: in the situation of the OUs lot. So for me
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: to now say, if someone asked, like, do you support
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act reform, I'd have to say, um, I'll
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: have to ask you a series of questions before I answer,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: because I don't know what you're getting at. I agree
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: with you, I'm when I say that, and I don't
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: say reform often, I just say changes to the Endangered
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: Species Act or how it's administered, and I don't care which.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: I'm looking for better performance on private lands? Why that?
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: What's the what's the big deal there? When you look
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: at more than one third of endangered species that are
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: currently listed entirely depend on private lands, and somewhere in
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood of seventy have a large portion of their
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: range across private lands. So if we've got an endangered
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: Species Act that's not performing as well as it could
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: perform on private lands, then maybe it needs some reform.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: But I get it about being worried about cracking the
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: Act open. You know, if we're driving that nineteen seventy
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: two Galaxy five hundred, you know, we crack it open,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: and we want to reopolster the seats and put a new,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: more efficient engine in it so it's not getting three
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: miles to the gallon. Somebody else might want to put
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: some whole bunch of other stuff in there that you know,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: and oftentimes you'll hear people just lay out, you know,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: the one liner, well, the Act needs more teeth. Well,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: that's one of those things that means a different thing
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: to different people. You know. Oftentimes when someone says that,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: they basically mean we want the Fishing Wilife Service to
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: be more like policeman and enforcement officers rather than doing
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: whatever it takes by any means possible to result in
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: the recovery of endangered species across all lands, where there's
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: public lands or private lands. I think it would be
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: phenomenal if we could find ways to better if we
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: could find ways to better work with private landowners on
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: E s A issues, in a way that still allowed
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: the ultimate goal to move forward. But I do think
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: that the way we do it now and the way
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: that we handle private interests leads to a thing where
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like the spotted owl syndrome, where a
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: spotted owl, after the whole debacle with logging and spoted
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: awl a spot it all didn't mean that word didn't
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: mean a bird anymore. Like when you hear the words
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: spotted out, you don't think like, oh, it's a little
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: owl that lives an old girl force. You think like,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: spotted owl is federal overreach, right, because there are things
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: that we do that really there are things that we
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: do in the service of prolonging or saving species that
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: makes them have like this entirely negative connotation in people's
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: heads who have to suffer with it most. And I
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: think and around here in this neck of the woods,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: the most egregious examples are what's been done to people
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: around es A listing for wolves and e s A
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: listings for grizzlies, which they've been recovered by definition for decades.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: Yet you continue to make it hard on private landowners
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: to go about their business because we like sure move
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: they move the goal pulls all along, and then that
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: creates this sort of like this anti wolf sentiment, this
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: anti grizzly sentiment, that I don't think it's necessary to
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: create the anti wolf, anti grizzly sentiment, Like I don't
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: think that you have to make that in order to
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: save those things. There has been a way to reduce
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: the friction and still hit the ultimate outcome, and it
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: would probably come around from some form of reform. Sure,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: And I know what you're talking about. I was a
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: I was a wilife biologist for a timber company in
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest in the early nineteen nineties, and so
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: I was hated from both sides, right because I was
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: inside the timber company, so I was hated by our loggersogist,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: and I was a biologist, so I was hated by
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: the you know the others. But learn learn to learn
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: to work put habitat conservation plans together so that we
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: could live with the spotted out There were huge financial
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: reasons to do that, and so they're in the in
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest around spotted owl's, marble, murletts, Pacific salmon.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: There's huge financial interests at being able to put together
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: some type of collaborative deal, a habitat conservation plan that
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: worked for private lands and worked for endangered species. We
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: don't necessarily have that with all species in all places.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: You know, when you've got a small salamander that shuts down,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: uh what you think is a housing development that ought
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: to ought to go forward, you're likely to just shake
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: your fist. If you're the housing developer at that salamander.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: Figure out how you can hide the fact that it's there.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: You know, we don't want it on our property. It
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: be it, It in and of itself becomes the enemy. Right,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: We've got to figure out how to remove the distincentives
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: and and this is the canned comment, right, remove the
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: distancentives and create incentives. And that's easy to say, it's
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: hard to do. It's a really hard thing to do
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: to create those out of the box incentives that always
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: work with private landowners. But it is dual. What's the
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: thing that landowners are primarily worried about. If people know
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: they have oss lines, is that that they're worried about
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: being able to drill like oil extraction, Like, what's the
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: thing that they're mostly worried about losing? They're mostly worried
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: about losing their ability to make spot decisions on land use. So,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: for example, uh, the fence line situation I was telling about,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: I've you know, I've I've been worried on our own
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: lands about road clearing and habitat that we might lose
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: when we need to come in and clear an area
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: so that we can increase increase the forage production capacity
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: for the land, those types of decisions. But branches creating
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: a pasture exactly exactly, we need to make sure that
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: you know, we're not We're in a situation where we've
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: got on staff scientists, biologists and managers that no one
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: understand that so we can craft a solution. We've got
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: our friend right next door with Mike Toois, who's the
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: you know, a pre eminent, awesome lot ecologist. But not
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: every e landowner fields that comfortable and they tend If
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: you're a large ranch, you might have a family that
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: you're responsible to and a board of directors that you're
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: responsible to, and you've got a fiduciary responsibility to make
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: sure that you don't lose your ability to manage that land,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: you don't lose your ability to graze a ten thousand
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: acre pasture. Let's say, uh, we've got to figure out
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: how to make sure that people don't lose that they
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: gain the incentive or remove the disincentive for at least
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: raising their hand and saying, you know, I've got awful
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: lots here. They are working with Caesar Clayburg group over here.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: But the first way to do that is to make
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: sure that there's some confidentiality so as they're stepping into
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: the game, so to speak, there they can do it
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: with some safety and do with them. Is it, Lee,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: I guess it's got to be. Is it legal for
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: someone to know that they have something? Right? Okay, let's
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: say it's an endangered species, right, and you got a
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: ranch and you know what's on there. This it's not
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: like illegal for you to keep that secret. Nothing wrong
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: with keeping it secret and managing for it and increasing
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: their numbers. But how many of these ranchers, all right,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: how many these ranchers are actually let's say, you know
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: they're there? Yeah, I just want to poke at the
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: motives here. You know they're there. You enjoy them being there.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: If you could shake a magic wand and have there
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: be more, you would do it, and there would be
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: more you don't want to have anybody coming and tell
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: you can't do X, Y and z to keep your
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: place solvent viable, to keep your property like you know
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: in your family functioning cattle ranch, whatever you got. Um,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: what are they actually like what are they doing in exchange?
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: It's like, what are they proposing that they would do
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: to help us lots if they could somehow let the
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: cat out of the bag. That's a good punt. Yeah,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: Like what are they gonna what would they do to
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: make more of them or like what do they do
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: to contribute rather than just that they're just looking for
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: a way to not be interfered with, Like what gift
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: are they giving to the people or what gift are
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: they giving to the cat? So I'm gonna pitch some
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: of that to to Mike, but just to just to
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: comment straight out, they can be an example to other
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: landowners where we might translocate a population so that those
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: landowners would agree, Oh, I had thought about the translocation.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: You know, we've got to have another population, and you
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: know what, Look what's happening to those guys? Like, hell,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: am I gonna let you let the cat loose? Here?
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: I got you? So that's the ask that is one,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: there are some things that you can do and ask
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: would be man, your place is has none, could have some?
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: Why don't you get on board? He's like hello that
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: the minute they let him go out here, I'm screwed.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: And plus plus we need to know from those landowners
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: just I mean, there's some real conservation benefit just knowing
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: exactly how many oslots there are where they are. Uh,
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: there's some there's some long term habitat development that can
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: be that can be done, and ranchers no better than
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: anybody how to develop habitat and so that Uh, I
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: don't know, Mike any Yeah, yeah. Frankie Terria he established
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: one of the first conservation easements in in nineteen eighty
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: eight where he set aside two different tracks, each of
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: them was only about two hundred acres each, the best
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: offlat habitat that is left in Texas and created a
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: conservation easement with Fisher Wife Service. We've had eleven different
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: territorial aslots at the same time, all these very small
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: core habitats, and we consider that to be a source population,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: a source habitat, which I I really believe that that
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: kind of serves like the heartbeat for that population in
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: the ranch country. We've had several instances I think at
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: least eight different oslots that moved from those very small
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: patches onto uh the east ranch there. So it's a
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: very source. So that so that and and over the years,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: he added two more conservation easements with the Nature Conservancy
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven and two thousand and nine,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: and just about four or five years ago put the
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: remaining ten thousand acres into some kind of an an agreement, uh,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: mostly range land, but some kind of agreement to protect
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: the outslet into the future. So over time, although it's
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: mostly grass and very little habitat and the rest of
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: that ranch, it will eventually provide for oslots that little
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: pocket of habitat well, and that rest of the ten
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: thousand acres that's range land. When that starts to grow back,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: grab more more carbon in the atmosp fair and that's
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: great for brush. Ultimately that the carbon and that the
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: atmosphere will help the brush. I want to explain that, Well, no,
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: you're more of arrange. Arrange how you threw that one
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: out there. Now we're now we're gonna rabbit trail long.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: But you mean like carbon in the atmosphere, decreases grassland
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: and increases brush, increases the opportunity for brush for brush growth. Yeah,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: so it leads a grassland loss, right, huh, Right, in
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: what capacity because for precipitation changes or no, it's actually
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: the now I'm not an expert on this. The biochemical
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: changes that that result in the better competitive ability for
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: woody species versus grass to actually capture the resources on
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: the site. Yeah, water so here like juniper encroachment and
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: stuff that could there's some factor there that could be
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: linked to, like more carbon or less carbon in the
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: atmosphere that could lead a juniper encroachment. Did you out
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: that carbon thing? You shouldn't fill that car that we
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: don't we don't need to hang on. I never heard that. Man,
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: that's interesting. Slip one in what's still I'm I'm confused
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: at why what's preventing if we have these core populations
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: and you know that they are breeding right, and we're
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: not trapping them and shooting them legally as much as
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: we were a hundred years ago, and so how come
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: we just don't have like a just a general increase
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: in population. And this excellent question, excellent question. The couple
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: of things. One is they all thought as a habitat specialist.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: It seeks a finery, It seeks the densest brush that
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: you can find. Horizontal cover is ideal for that. And
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: keep explaining that horizontal the shrub layer, the shrub layers
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: fifteen feet or shorter, that's where the shrub layer occurs.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: And also throughout the range where use different vegetation communities,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: but a common factor is extremely dense cover near the
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: ground where the operations. But what's the percentage? That mean?
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: If you if you did a measuring line or transsect
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: over over the brush, it's called line intercept or more,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: that would be solid brush. It would be just a
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: wall of brush. And so they're very selective on that.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: And twice once in the eighties and the nineties we
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: flew transac of low. I was so confused. Picture like
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: a very nice lawn. Okay, huh, that would be zero
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: percent in picture you're an aunt going through a very
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: thick lawn. Would that aunt say this is one brush
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: coverage as he finagles his way through a thick girl.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: Depends on your grass, I guess you know, if you
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: have a solid standard grass, yeah, if it's botty, maybe not,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: but okay, so if you measured that's them saying like
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: if you measure one d centimeters. So I take a
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: thing that has a hundred centimeters and a stick, and
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: I hold that stick up. Nine point five of those
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: centimeter marks are going to have a piece of vegetation it.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: There are a few different ways to measure, but the
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: one I've always liked it's called line intercept. You do
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: a tape measure for say ten feet, and then you
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: you identify what's called the drip line of each shrub
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: individual shrub where the full edge canopy, and then you
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: consider that continuous. And so if you measured over that,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: that that that's what I got you, because I would
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: say that's thick as brush. Well yeah, And and what's
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: interesting is those two small tracks have remained. Is what's
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: left of that. They called it the l harding. Back
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, before the real Grand Valley
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: was cleared, there was a lot of of the l
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: harding the garden Spanish just solid brush, and that was
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: one of the last vestiges of the core population of oslots.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: What's kind of ironic is, prior to the Spanish explorations
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: that occurred in the sixteen hundreds. There are a lot
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: of accounts of South Texas being a grassland or primarily
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: a grassland. So that probably wasn't really good alsodde habitat,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: except along the rivers where you had the really dense brush.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: Over time, because of the stopping the fire and overgrazing,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: you've had more encroachion the brush over time, and that's
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: benefit of the oslots. So we've we've actually helped the
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: oslots in some places in some ways. And there's some
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: some places like the awesome population on the Attorney. So
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a ranch there called the Punta del Monte,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: and that's just the point of brush, the point of
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: the woodland. Yeah, and so that that was the old Spanish.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: Even as thick as we've seen it on the multiple
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: South Texas ranches that we've gotten to hunt on, it's
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: still not thick enough. Probably not because the rancher, if
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: he has a rider horse through that says it's thick.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: But it's a very special kind of thick. And we've
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: done surveys and we found that less than one percent,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: really less than one half of one percent of South
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: Texas has that very special cover type less than one
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: half of one. That they mean they called the brush country. Yeah,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: they used to be. They need to have an aster
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: after kind of Yeah, the brushy kind of brushy country. Yeah,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: so that's that's. That's that, like answers his question, like,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: why are they not if we're not just out shooting
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: Willy Nillion trapping him. Well, that's part of it. But
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: important part is the very poor dispersers, because that's spotting
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: pattern that they have. They stick out like a sore
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: thumb in the open, so they need that dense brush
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: to move from one air to the other. Those two
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: populations are separated by less than thirty miles, and over
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: thirty five years we've never documented one. I'll stop moving
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: to the other. That's even that just that's what I
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: wanted to ask, is what's the when you're throwing a
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: collar on one of them? What's the farthest you've ever
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: seen one of them go wearing a collar? Miles? Uh?
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: And that went from the ranch of population down to
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: what we call the port Haarle engine. Typically it's about
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: ten miles and that usually ends unsuccessfully being killed on
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: the road. Him. Well, well that he was killed on
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: the road to that the longest one was there. That's
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: how we find him. They killed the road. So this
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: ideal of the disconnection, or they went the farthest far,
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: they normally fall. We went far and they normally make it,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: but succumb to the same thing. Yeah, yeah, And the
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: problem is they go into the highly developed real Grand
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: Valley and there's a tense road network there, so it's
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: just a gauntlet once they leave the population. They're going
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: through a gauntlet that often is on the road. Do
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: they head when you got a collar on one? Do
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: they head in a direction that makes sense? You know,
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: I've always thought about that doesn't have a map? He
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: has no. We don't really understand the stuff though, because
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: like you look at, I don't know all kinds of
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: stuff man, like humpback whales, bowhead whales. See these very
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: seed turtle species that do insane stuff. My brother had
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: a bunch of pigeons that were born in his yard.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: One day, he drove the pigeons an hour and a
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: half away and they beat him home. Yeah, well we left.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: We use homing pigeons, So I don't know that he
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: in his head head and those examples are different and
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of those birds may use magnetic fields of
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: the stars, isn't not cats? My point being, there could
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: be some thing we don't yet understand the cat boogiesy
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: boogies in a way that at least kind of makes sense. Sure, Yeah,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: I'm always we by no means know everything, And I
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: always in as a scientist, you have to be open
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: that you don't know everything. And but but I think
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: about it a lot, and and and the oslots world
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: is in the dark, and it can only see two
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: ft above the ground, and it's it's immediate world is
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: surrounded by brush. It's in a very enclosed world. So
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: when it boogie somewhere you know it's you kind of
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: wonder what kind of cues it's it's it's homing into
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: some natural drainages. I think maybe a rough factor, uh,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: or maybe at a distance they can't see that far
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: in the distance because of those factors, it's really in it,
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: and so they don't have a map and they usually
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: get in trouble. One more, I guess the same question
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: different way. Do the ones that take off take off
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: in the same direction or is it really nilly? I
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: think there may be some generality for that and again
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: it probably related to the drainages, whatever cues that they
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: see and that I don't. I don't know. If there's
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: a big open grass sand, most of them won't go
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: that way. But if there's some cover, some level of
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: coverlet even if it's brush or something else, they prefer
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: that over agricultural filled. So there may be some roughness,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: but it's a I think for for a lot of
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: the cats, it's almost a random thing. I'll tell you why.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: I asked, Uh. I had one time in my mom's
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: storage shed, I attend live snap and turtles in there.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: She have the door open, and um, they all went
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: the right direction, and I later thought, it has to
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: be downhill, Yeah, down the pitch, I would I would
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: guess that, you know, for terms like they had to
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: have gotten the yard and because I was following a
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: bunch up and down the beach, they were all going
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: and it hadn't been that they just following the contour. Yeah,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: Like why why would Snap turns like I need to
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: get to the water. I'm not gonna go uphill. Yeah,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: I bet there are some cues like that that different taxons,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: you know, we spawn different ways. That's interesting, Like anytime
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: I have a head of the water has always been downhill.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: So if you're playing crashes in the mountains, you follow
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: the creeks down. Uh. Yeah, when we're laying out some
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: when you were working with Krenda put down some some
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: things that we wanted to discuss. You had three motivations
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: that drive awesole lots. And then parenthetically, it says and
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: most small cats is uh, sex, hunger, and fear. I've
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: learned that from my my my two outdoor cats that
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: are pretty walled, and I just sit around and watch them,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: and they watch out because Cali hunt them down and
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: kill them. Cal's down an anti cat crease, not farrel cats. Well, no,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: I I appreciate them more than most. A soft man
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: with a dog a hard man with a cat. Yeah,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: I like dogs. I like dogs more cal. I like
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: dogs more than cats. But I I keep a few
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: around for behavioral observations. Any animal, it helps you out tremendously.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: There there's so many cues that help hunters, and it's
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: well worth your time to have an animal in your
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: life and and be an anti cat. It isn't entirely correct.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: I am shocked at the duality of UH. People's morals
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: when it comes to domestic cat. Yeah that you don't
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: like the guy that haunts two pheasants a year, But
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: meanwhile your cat, uh that that that ferrell in free
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: wandering house cats kill more birds than there are Americans
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: every year. Yes, yeah, um, and I did on this subject,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: like what what is the is there overlap between a
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: domestic cat population and is there a concern for UH
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: disease transmission that toxoplasmosis I believe is what it is
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: a good question. Yeah, there there's right near the Old
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: South Ranch is this small community of a hundred people
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: called Port Mansfield. And there've been some studies that have
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: shown feline leuchemia or some disease. Hundred people, two thousand
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: cats go ahead, well you probably yeah, And and and
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: what I worry about them is a bobcats probably coming
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: into town or the edge of town, which they frequently do,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: getting that disease to bobcat and then into the OSLA
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: population only about four or five miles away. So and
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: and that's one thing where we worry about. Maine is
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: another thing. Coyotes will get mange, usually a different kind
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: of mange. UH cast will getting go to Edric Maine
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: and they get sarcoptic mange. But we worry about house cats.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: But usually cats won't live too long. Coyotes will kill them. Uh,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: great horned owls will kill them in the wild all
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: the surprisingly. Some places you can find some house cats,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: but most of the time they won't live too long
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: in the world. How did they arrange themselves? Like, when
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: you have a little population, you have to imagine that
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: they're structured somehow, right, I mean they're interacting with each other.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: You're talking about all sorts of housecat Okay, yeah, oslots, Yeah,
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's kind of a typical system social organization.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: See for the thirty three species of small cats. Most
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: people realize that, but I'm just amazed that thirty three
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: species of small cats, and many of them show the
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: same system. Where the strategy of the female is to
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: breed and find a home range that's big enough that
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: will support her young, raising her young over a year
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: or two, even with variations of drought wet periods. But
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: the male's strategy is to try to and she so
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: the female wants to make sure her young survived to
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: breeding age. And uh, the male strategy is not does
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: not take part of care taking for the young, but
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: it wants to breed with as many females as it can,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: so that male is monitoring the territory of one female
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: to females or sometimes three, and that means it spends
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of his time traveling and checking to find
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: out when the female is inestius are reproductively active. And
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: if it wants to add overlap two home ranges two females,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: it's moving a lot getting hit by cars. Well, yeah,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: I f if the roads in betweening there will be
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: and and there. But on the ranches where there are roads,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: they're they're moving a lot and um, and they try
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: so they're so they're they're optimizing their ability to spread
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: the genes that way the female wants. She knows that
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: the males aren't gonna help with with raising the young geting,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: so it's really interesting strategy. And and uh and the
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: males I think for many small cats, well they'll monitor
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: the females and probably they'll fight with other males, and
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: they definitely defended territories. We've had three instances of one
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: male killing another male. All cats will kill other cats,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: different species, same species, um and the bigger cats killed
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: the smaller cats pretty easy. But I've got a photo
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: of this one outslot and the jaguar in Mexico, and
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: you can tell it's out a watering hole and they're
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: they're the jaguar is about to kill that osla so
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: so cat, and you caught him in a photo at
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: that moment. Well another person that Mexicans. It's it's one photo, uh,
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: and they're both responding to the flash of the camera.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: But that afla that first, there are two photos, and
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: that first photo that all the hair standing out on
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: the tail of that aflot and it's one hind leg
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: is already looks unusual, like it's already broken. I think
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: they already had a bite. That and the three seconds
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: later the next camera they're both looking back intensely to
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: each other and I benefit had another three seconds that
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: ostler would be dead. So so so that's that's a problem.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: But they display a lot and they try not to fight.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: They sent marked their home ranges and territories. They don't
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: want to fight because if you break a canine or
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: you lose one eye, your chances just surviving much longer.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: It was not good if you had to crystal ball
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: it right. How long You've been messing with os lots
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: for thirty eight years? So what year will be in
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: thirty eight years, it will be two thousand and No,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: I'm a wildlife siside. I didn't take years in uh
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: our oslts is gone in Texas are still around? Yes, yea, yeah, yes,
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: I do because you have the East Foundation who's going
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: to work with some other landowners and do what it
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: takes to maintain those into the future. I'm convinced and
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: hopefully get the translocation. Read about bad stuff, man, I'm
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: glad to hear this. Well. You know, I probably changed
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: my attitude five or teen years. I spent the first
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: thirty years pretty pessimistic and giving presentations that people come
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: with at the ends. I wish you weren't so pessimistic
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: and a little more. Are you just being strategic by
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: being optimistic? No, I really believe that you're not trying
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: to play the long game a little bit with me. No, No,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: I really I really believe that. I think it's a
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: dumb and dumber approach. I mean, there's there's there's a
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: chance that awful lots are gonna make it, and well,
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: if we do the things we need to do, and
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: I think we will really yeah, tell people, uh, give
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: people a little rundown on what they can do to
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: find out more about oz lots and more about the
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: work to save AWF lots. But you know how people
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: might be involved. Yeah, Well one is check out our website,
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: the Caesar Clayburg while if Research Instant and then the
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: East Foundation. I'm sure that you can get some information
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: from both of those, Yeah, East East Foundation dot net. Also,
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: we've got a feature film coming out that you've seen
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: produced by by Ben Masters and finn Fur and Feather
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: and Caesar Clayburg and and East Foundation collaborated on that
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: along with Fish and Wildlife Service. It's a thirty minute
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: feature on the plight of ocelots in South Texas. And
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: that's part of a bigger uh set of productions that
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: um that Texan by Nature, a nonprofit that was formed
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: by Laura Bush is helping sponsor through Finn Fur and
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: Feather Films. Yeah he did that. Yeah, he did that. Uh,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: and they did that Wild Horse film brand Brandon ben
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: Masters that fact, in fact, he spent some time here
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: in Bozeman every year. But that is coming out and
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: that will be out in December. And uh, that's a
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: that's a good just basic synopsis of the issue from
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: both the biological person. Well you've seen it from both
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: biological perspective and and it lays out the two sides
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: of the issue in a little bit of an abbreviated form,
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: but it does. He got some incredible footage for that
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: as well. And real quick I mentioned Karen Hickson also
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: was one of the founders of funders of that that film,
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: But he got incredible five hours worth of film on
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: the oslots a lot of it based on this one
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: mother and who are too young and and and the
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: too young are only seen together in the very first image.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: The male dies shortly thereafter. And but from there on
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: does what I total guess, but I could see easily
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: see a dozen things. It's stumbling into a big five
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: foot rattle snake on that ranch. Could he easily do it,
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: a cayoity stumble, a baucat, a variety of things that
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: could do it, and and uh um, but and and
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: he I think he has a like a one segment
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: of also drinking water for six minutes. Uh, he has
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: another of it regurgitating It takes like two minutes for
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: this hostl regurgitate. It's a fascinating film. Yeah, it's a
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: little quirky, and it's really good. It's a it's all
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: a piece and and um and and throughout that film
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: you see the mother training her young. It's constantly calling it,
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: of getting it to follow and making small vocalizations. It's
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: nursing it while coyotes are howling off in the distance.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: You know. It's almost like a calming effect on that,
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: on that kit and nursing, and they're both sitting there
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: calming and calming behavior and it's leading it from one
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: cover patch to another cover. So the the sex, hunger
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: and fear I think of pure and I get that
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: from my my backyard cats. You know, the males from
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: the neighboring houses come in for the sex. Uh. They're
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: constantly hunting the birds. Uh. Then the fear is if
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: I just make a noise, they're running for cover. So
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: so you and and that's uh, that's throughout the catting
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: the small cats. At least we drop something hopeful on you.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: So we've we've worked hard with the Fishing Wildlife Service
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: over the last four or five years just to basically
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: help them, help them understand the rancher's side of the situation.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: And we have some uh, some strong and influential people
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: within the Fishing Wildlife Service that have got it. They've
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: got it figured out, and there they are working on
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: the inside to try to figure out how we can
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: do this, separate aside from any reforming the Endangered Species
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: Act or anything like us just what can we do
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: with what we have and how can we make this work?
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: And we've got some really dedicated people in there that
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: shann't share the same objectives that that we share, understand
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: that we are serious about it. We sink more uh
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: funding into research on that species than anyone else, and
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: we're there for the long run and this is not
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: just a flash in the pan. And at least for me,
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: I don't want that cat blinking out on my watch. Well,
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, I wish your best luck in that move,
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: because I think if someone's out there and and they
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: would be willing to have some and willing to take
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: some steps, we don't want to get steamrolled. I sure
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: hope that there's a sure seems to me they we
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: would uh collectively find a path forward for that individual man,
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, and not have a and not
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: have a difficult to navigate bureaucratic bureaucratic entanglement laid out
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: in front of them. It's supposed to be part of
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: how the North American model works too. I mean, it
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: really does come back and apply to Look, this is
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: how we are supposed to handle our our public trust. Yeah,
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: that we've that we have in this country. It's supposed
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: to work that way. We've got a lot of things
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: working that way that are run through the state game
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: and fish agencies. Of course they have commissions where they
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: can turn on a dime. Many of them do Fish
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: and Wildlife service. The responsibilities that they have over endangered
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: species a little bit different, But we've got to make
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: it work within that public trust doctrine of of the
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: North American model. We gotta figure it out, call I
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: gotta final wrap ups. Cal's gonna go vigilantia on them cats.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: Wildlife management is hard, you know, I mean, it's I'm
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: sure there are a lot of folks trying to manage
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: species on the public land side of the fence that
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: are staring into the private land saying how easy it
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: would be if only and I think one of the
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean as far as like land specifically
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: managed for wildlife in the US that is privately held,
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: I think you're still a larger amount of land and
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: privately held acres than all all the national parks in
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: the lower forty eight combined. Um, I mean land owned
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: for wildlife owned, Yeah, with the stated purpose of of wildlife. Um,
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: most of that, most of that's for hunting, right. And
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: you know the thing that those pieces of land uh
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: miss that are on the public landside of things, and
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, not all cases, is um
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: the public has a voice like as as a nation
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: sometimes in how invested we're going to be in a species,
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: and that kind of lacks on the awful lot side
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: of things, Right. It's like you're gonna be doing advocacy
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: work on awesol lots every every day. Yeah, I know,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: And you're like, yeah, and I'll and with the public
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: perspective is and I'll never see the damn thing because
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: I can't go there. Cal made me think of something
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: that I think that's fundamental is that these vast ranches
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: and then even small ranches, they'll generate often more income
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: from their hunting operation of deer and quell than they
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: do from the cattle operation. So they have incentives to
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: hire a lot of our students, undergraduate graduates come and
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: work on the ranches of biologists to keep the habitat there.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: And that fundamental incentive is also providing indirectly habitat for rosslots,
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: so that the hunting and and and uh that that
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: that's there's really indirectly also benefiting oslots. Yeah, good quail habitat.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: And if you're a ranella type of fella, it's good.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: Cotton habitat is good, awful lot habitat from the sounds
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: of it. All right, guys, thank you for coming. Enjoy it.
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. It was great. Yeah, and tell
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: you one one more time how to how to find
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: you East Foundation at east Foundation dot net. You guys
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: are based out of based out of San Antonio, Texas,
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: but spend our time driving throughout South Texas and then
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: Caesar Clayburg Wildlife Research Institute and it's based in Kingsville, Texas,
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: Texas A and M University Kingsville. All Right, thank you
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: very much, guys, thank you, thank you.