Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 919: The Parable of America’s Wildlife Past and Future with Dan Flores

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Ep. 919: The Parable of America’s Wildlife Past and Future with Dan Flores · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the show, I am joined by a renowned historian, a
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: best selling author, and now podcaster, Dan Flores, to discuss
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: the big picture history of wildlife and people in America
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: and what that past can teach us as we head
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  Speaker 2: into the future as hunters, anglers, and folks who simply
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: love wildlife and wild places. All right, Welcome back to
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Light and their Camo for Conservation Initiative. And today is
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: an episode I've wanted to do for a very long time.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: This is a guest who I have admired from Afar
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: for many years. I've read his books, I've listened to
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: his words. I have considered and pondered and and and
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: likely ingested a whole lot of his ideas about wildlife,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: about the history of our nation and our people, and
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  Speaker 2: our relationship with wildlife and wild places. All this kind
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: of stuff that that kind of forms the groundwork, the
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: foundation for who we are as hunters and anglers. Uh
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Dan has has spent his lifetime teaching about, and writing
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: about and speaking about. As I mentioned in the intro,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: he is a historian. He has been a best selling author,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: focusing and specializing in natural history. He's written a number
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: of books, most recently. Most recently be Wild New World,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: which is about the very topic we're discussing today, which
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: is this history of wildlife and people in America. Another book,
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: another favorite of mine, is American Serengetti, which it looks
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: to a similar topic but just kind of within the
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Great Plains landscape. Another great book is Coyote America and
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: has got a whole slew of others, but really terrific.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, Wild New World and American Serengetti are two
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: of my absolute top recommendations for anyone that's interested in
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: this kind of stuff. He is also now the newest
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: member of the Meat Eater podcast network. He's got a
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  Speaker 2: brand new podcast which just came out a few weeks ago,
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  Speaker 2: called The American West, in which he explores this kind
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: of deep history of people and culture and wildlife in
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: the American West. It's fascinating, it's really well done. It
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: involves a kind of a deep dive from Dan into
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: a specific topic and then a conversation between himself and
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Steve and Randall, Steve Arnella, Randa Williams there or mediator
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  Speaker 2: kind of rounding it out with some questions to kind
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: of better understand the topic. So great new show from Dan.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: We're really excited to have him on the team, which
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: is why you know, I'm super excited we can have
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: this conversation today, which is about some of the big
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: picture ideas that I mentioned kind of form the basis
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: of how we got to this point. Because if you
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: hunt and fish in America, if you want to make
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: sure we can keep hunting and fishing in America, if
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: you want to make sure we have wildlife and wild
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  Speaker 2: places well into the future in this place we call home,
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  Speaker 2: we need to understand how we got here. We need
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: to understand the past mistakes and the past successes, and
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: the stories and the lessons learned, and the foibles and
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: the speed bumps and everything that got us to this point.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: If you don't know where he came from, you can't
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: figure out where to go. And Dan today is going
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: to help us understand that we have a really interesting
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: conversation that explores everything from the Ice Age and the
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Pleistocene period and what was going on with people here
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  Speaker 2: in America and wildlife right on down through what happened
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: over the next ten thousand years with Native Americans and wildlife,
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  Speaker 2: how they managed a somewhat sustainable relationship with the wildlife
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  Speaker 2: while their predecessors nearly wiped out all the big critters
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  Speaker 2: here in America. And then we're going to fast forward
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  Speaker 2: to the last five hundred years or so and take
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: a look at how folks in somewhat more modern America
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  Speaker 2: nearly wiped everything out, and then in the early twentieth century,
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: how we stop that and saved the day at the
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: last moment. And that kind of sets the stage for
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: the second part of the conversation, which is, what can
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: we learn from that? What should we learn from that?
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  Speaker 2: What do we need to take from that past and
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  Speaker 2: bring forward into the future to make sure that we
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  Speaker 2: can keep doing this stuff, that we can keep having
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  Speaker 2: these wild critters out there and fish and clean rivers
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  Speaker 2: and healthy habitats and open spaces. What do we need
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  Speaker 2: to do to make sure that you and I aren't
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  Speaker 2: the last generation that gets to have incredible hunting and
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  Speaker 2: fishing experiences, but to ensure that our kids do, and
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  Speaker 2: their kids do, and many generations in the future. So, man,
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: this is what I'm very excited about. I'm very thankful
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  Speaker 2: that we were able to do it, and I can't
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: wait for you to listen. Now, I do have one
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: piece of bad news. The bad news is that we
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: had a technical issue in the recording of this conversation,
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: which is tragic given how much I enjoyed it. But
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: the audio and video quality on Dan's side are not
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: what we wish they could be, especially the video. The
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  Speaker 2: video is very poor, so if you are watching on YouTube,
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  Speaker 2: I apologize in advance. The first nine minutes or so
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: are good, I believe, but then after that it's going
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: to be very low resolution. Sorry, please bear with us
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: on it. The content that the audio, what we talk about,
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: is so important so good. I beg you to please
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: ignore the fuzziness, taking the sounds and the words and
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: the wisdom of Dan, because it's good stuff. But that
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: all said, without any further Ado, let's get to my
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  Speaker 2: chat with Dan about the parable of America's wildlife past
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  Speaker 2: and future. All right joining me now is Dan Flores. Dan,
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  Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining me.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, it's a great pleasure. Mark. Thanks for having me on.
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  Speaker 2: As I was just saying before we started recording, I
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: have been a big fan of your work for many years.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Steve has introduced me and so many other people to
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: what you do. And it's a pretty fun gig that
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: I have here, that I've had for more than a decade,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: getting to speak to a lot of interesting people. But
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: you are right at the very top of the list, Dan,
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: as far as writers who have influenced me and my
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: understanding of my place in this wild world and how
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: we got here and what all that means for the future.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Your books, in particular American Serengeti and then more recently
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  Speaker 2: A Wild New World are you know, maybe two of
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: the top ten books I recommend to people over and
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: over and over again. So just from the outset, thank
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: you for your contribution with those books and all of
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: your work today.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: Man, thanks for saying that. I appreciate it.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: It's well deserved, and all that being the case, I
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: apologize in advance. I'm going to run you through the
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: ringer talking about many of those topics because They're endlessly
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: fascinating to me and so many other people, And I
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: guess I want to start by setting the stage around
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: why this stuff is so important to you and maybe
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: for the rest of us. You wrote in one of
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: your books that, at least in the context of your
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: life and kind of your experience as an outdoor person,
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: you wrote that the prescription for you has been knowing
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: the heaven and earth that was, while experiencing the world
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  Speaker 2: that is. And I took that to kind of mean,
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  Speaker 2: you know, you want to deeply understand our past with
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: wildlife and wild places while also still you know, experiencing
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: them fully today. But I was hoping you could expand
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: on that for me a little bit and help me understanding,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: you know, why is that important for you in your
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: own life, and why might that idea of understanding our
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: past and our relationship with wildlife and wild places, why
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: is that important for many of us still today.
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  Speaker 3: That's a great question, obviously, like relevant question to all
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  Speaker 3: the things we're trying to accomplish in modern America and
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: figuring out how we go forward with a healthy world
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  Speaker 3: around us, one that we get to enjoy and experience
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  Speaker 3: and thrill to and not have to confront a kind
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: of a diminishing return in our lives. And the quote
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: you use, of course, that's how I end Wild New World,
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  Speaker 3: which is a book that spends three hundred and ninety
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: seven pages trying to get us up to the present moment,
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  Speaker 3: and that's pretty much how I come to the conclusion
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  Speaker 3: of it. I think it's important that we know the past,
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  Speaker 3: but we use that knowledge in order to experience what's
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: here now our own lives. I think the reason it's
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: struck me for a lot of my writing career that
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: that's a critical thing for us to do. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: not just personally myself, but really all of us.
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  Speaker 4: Is because it's fairly evident that we come out of
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  Speaker 4: a historical past and an evolutionary past, and even deeper
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  Speaker 4: evolutionary past that extends much much farther back in time.
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  Speaker 3: Than what we've recorded as history. I mean, I trained
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  Speaker 3: as a graduate school as an environmental historian, but what
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  Speaker 3: historians do generally focuses on documents and things that you
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  Speaker 3: can read and put together and as symbol kind of
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  Speaker 3: a functioning past. But I've always been interested in the
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  Speaker 3: past that extends beyond the documentary record, back into archaeological
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  Speaker 3: time and back really into evolutionary time. And when I
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  Speaker 3: look back at that big story, that deep time story
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  Speaker 3: of humans, I mean, it's sort of unavoidable to recognize
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  Speaker 3: that we come out of the same evolutionary river that
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  Speaker 3: all the rest of life does, and that we have
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  Speaker 3: been intricately involved with other creatures, all the life around
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  Speaker 3: us for millions of years. Really, for probably at least
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  Speaker 3: two and a half to three million years, humans have
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  Speaker 3: been an early human species, have been really involved with
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  Speaker 3: the other creatures around us, and so it's part of
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  Speaker 3: our To me, it's part of our legacy. It's one
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  Speaker 3: that I fear a lot of people have lost sight
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  Speaker 3: of in the modern world. I mean, we're so caught
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  Speaker 3: up in what's on our phones, what's on social media,
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  Speaker 3: that we tend to lose sight of this bigger picture
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  Speaker 3: of who we are. But I think in that big
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  Speaker 3: question of who we are, this is a way of
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  Speaker 3: getting at it, of looking at this deep time story.
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  Speaker 3: And when you look at it and you realize what
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: role humans have played in the world and what role
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  Speaker 3: other creatures that played for us, I think it brings
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: you to this present moment in time where obviously the
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  Speaker 3: thing to do if you want to honor that tradition
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  Speaker 3: in that history, is to spend as much time as
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: possible with the wild world and with other creatures that
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: are around us, and try to take advantage of the
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: possibilities that we still have. We don't have the possibilities
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: anymore of seeing mammoths, for example, or sabertoothed cats, or
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: indeed of more recent creatures like Carolina parakeets or passenger
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: pigeons are bisoned by the millions. We can't experience that,
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: but we can experience what's available to us, and that
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  Speaker 3: long story is so important. I think that that's the
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: reason why I and I think a lot of other
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: people just intuitively want to spend a lot of time
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: in that real world and natural world that's around us.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: I want to I want to kind of ask you
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: to walk us through a little bit of that story
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: that you spend a lot of time covering in your podcast,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: most recently in those books that we mentioned, but before that,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: I want to do I guess do this again because
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: I already asked you a skip to the ending on
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: your book, and I'm going to ask you a skip
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: to the end of this store too. You mentioned that
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: by understanding this past, it can tell us who we are.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: It can help us understand who we are when you
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: look at this past that that I know you understand
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: as well as almost anyone nowadays. What's the answer to
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: that question? Who are we?
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: Well? Where?
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: Uh?
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: The animal that's dominating the world that doesn't recognize that
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: it's an animal. I mean, that's one of the ironies
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: of our our situation. Uh, we have a or the
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: notion of human exceptionalism to such a degree that we
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: don't really think of ourselves as being kin and close
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: to the other life that's around us. We through various
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: sorts of training, really religious training is one of the
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: ways we've done it. But I think the humanities are
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: probably equally guilty and convincing us that we're something completely
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: different from everything else on earth. And I think that's
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: put us in something of a precarious situation really, And
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: to me, understanding this big story, this big picture that
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: I tried to sort of outline a couple of minutes ago,
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: is one of the keys to getting back to understanding
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  Speaker 3: that who we are is we're animals. We're another one
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  Speaker 3: one of the life forms that evolution created on this planet,
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: and evolution never particularly selected us out to be the
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: dominant life form of the planet. It just happened through
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: a series of contingencies that we've ended up in that situation.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: But there's no question that we have ended up as
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: the dominant species. And I think that's probably one of
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: the critical points in our story, is that we've reached
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: the stage and we have every ability, of course to
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: recognize who we are as animals out of the evolutionary river,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: because of course, Charles Darwin published on the Orizona species
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: in eighteen fifty nine, so we've had the evolutionary story
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  Speaker 3: available to us for at least that life. And one
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: of the things I discovered in doing Wild New World
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: in particular is that I think the understanding of who
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: we are has been a part of the insights of
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: previous cultures for a very long time. I think humans,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: for example, Native people here in America have seemed to
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: have long known, and it's philosophies and their religions and
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: their respect for other creatures that humans were a part
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: of the natural world, that we and other creatures were can.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, in many native cultures there's even a possibility
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: for humans to enter marry with animals like bisoner elker wolves,
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: and so there's that metaphorical probably certainly not necessarily literal,
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: but in a metaphorical and allegorical way. Native people understood
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: those connections. But I think in the Western world, and
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: I don't know how far back it goes, I tracked
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: it back at least to the Greeks. While the world
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: we've had this sense that we stand separate from everything else,
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: and we gave it a kind of a religious veneer
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: that we're the only creatures created in the image of God,
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: We're the only ones with everlasting souls and all that.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: So I think we kind of have to come to
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: an understanding of the reality of the human condition, and
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: that's one of the one of the issues we face
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: as we go forward.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess as you, as you alluded to earlier,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: this understanding of both who we are and what we
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: have done is important, not just because it's fascinating and
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: inherently intuitively interesting, but it's also important because of how
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: it informs our future right and how we might be
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: able to make better decisions. You know, I don't I
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: think this was a sign to Mark Twain I'm not
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: sure if he actually said it or not, but supposedly
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: he said that history doesn't always repeat itself, but it
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: usually rhymes, and uh, I think there's there's probably some
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: truth to that. But in the case of many of
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: the examples from our past with Wildlife, I don't think
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: we want to repeat or even rhyme with some of
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: these things. So it's important to understand where we came from, though,
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: to ensure we don't go there again in the In
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: the scope of what we can cover today, there's way, way, way,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: way too much of the history to cover. I would
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: ask everyone to go and listen to your new podcast
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: and to read your books, which, as I already mentioned,
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: are terrific. So so check out those other resources for
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: the full story of this history. But I do want
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: to provide a little bit of context for people, just
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: in case they haven't, you know, seen your previous work
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: and understand this larger story. But I'd like to spend
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: most of our time exploring how all this pertains to
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: our future. But all that said, we've had this roller
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: coaster ride with wildlife here in North America. There's maybe
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: been three big drops on that roller coaster ride. The
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: first of which being around the Pleistocene period the Ice Age.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: There was another big drop off again when European Americans
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: spread across the country. We're probably in the midst of
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: one of those dives right now. So could you lay
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: a kind of a cliff notes of that first drop
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: for us, just to set the stage a little bit more,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: What was that first act of the story when people's
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: first came to North America and they entered this incredible
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: swath of wilderness with wild dinosaur like creatures. Can you
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: can you just briefly set the stage there and what
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: happened to end that period before we move into the
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: next act of this kind of stage setting.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I and you know, there's certainly are a
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: rhyming element to the story that that we're about to
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: take on here. And I think the reason there there
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: is a rhyme is because of human nature, because of
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: who we are. I mean, we are compelled. We're a
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: social species. We evolved as a social social species. We're
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: much concerned with staffs within our groups. Uh. And of
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: course we have biological needs. Clearly, we have to exist,
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: we have to and our evolution with big brains and
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: very capable abilities physically produced an effect where we became
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: consumers of protein. That's how, of course we grew our
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: big brains, and that that protein that desire for status
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: and probably a desire for adventure. There's no question that
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: humans have something of that. You know, that kind of
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: genetic background propelled us out of our evolutionary homeland, which
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: was in Africa, and into first the Middle East and
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: finally into Europe on a northward movement, and then we
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: began moving eastward across the Eurasian land mass, ultimately into Siberia,
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: where humans confronted probably about twenty five to thirty thousand
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: years ago, maybe as far back as forty thousand years ago.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: In fact, humans confronted obstacles to our ability to continue
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: to move farther east. And those obstacles primarily consisted of
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: giant masses of ice beyond which we we could penetrate.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: And so it took a while to make this next
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: step into North America. And I should point out to
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: those who are following your podcasts here that North and
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: South America are the last big land masses on Earth
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: that humans are going to find. I mean, we have
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: spread across Africa, through the Middle East, through all of
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: Western Europe through Eurasia, and the only big land mass
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: is left, of course, other than islands like Australia, New
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: Zealand and the islands in the Pacific are North and
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: South America, and those are the last places we gin to.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: One of the things I argue in while in the
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: world is the reasons were propelled in these vast journeys
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: to populate the earth is that we're looking for places
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: that other humans haven't found yet. And one of the
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: reasons we're looking for places like that is because the
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: creatures there are unfamiliar with humans as predators. If animals
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: have emerged in a landscape or habitat where humans are
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: not present, they don't automatically react to us, since we
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: tend to kind of instinctively think, well, sure, any animals
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: sees humans and they're going to run because they know
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: who we are. Well, that's not, in fact what happened
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: when people got to North America, when finally we waited
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: out the melting of the Lend map, the ice masses
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: in Alaska and present day Canada and the called Mackenzie
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: Corridor open. To be sure, there have been some humans
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: who probably in boats, had gone along the coasts and
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: gone inland. In America, we have a pretty good site
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: in the presence state of New Mexico and southern New
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: Mexico of humans having arrived in North America by before
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: the last glacial, the height of the last Wisconsin Glacial
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: two to twenty three thousand years ago. Well, we don't
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: really get here in numbers until about fifteen thousand years ago,
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: when the ice sheets finally open. And when that happens,
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: the group that comes, who we now know as the
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Clovis people, are going to arrive in a continent and
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: two continents in fact, because they spread into South America
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: as well, where none of the creatures here has ever
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: confronted humans as predators before, and particularly those that have
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: evolved specifically in North America have had no exposure to humans,
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: and so this is called a biological first contact. By
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: the way, there's actually a paleum logical term of art
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: to describe this. And the result is that quite a
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: number of animals are going to be fairly easy for
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: these people, who also have come from forty five thousand
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: generations of hunting backgrounds and who are extremely good at
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: it and have an extremely effective toolkit in the form
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: of clothes points. So pretty much just some way the
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: wildlife of North and South America, and for several of
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: those species, the ones that are so called k species
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: that take a long time to produce young and to
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: repopulate their numbers, those animals are going to fairly quickly,
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: it seems, began to decrease of this new predator. And
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: so we know, for example, that probably the various mammoth
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: species in North America of which we have a pretty
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: strong record, pretty much faded away in the face of
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: this kind of predation. Some of the other species are
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: not so sure about. Horses were really numerous courses became
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: extinct in the American Pleistocene while surviving elsewhere in the world.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: We don't really have an answer to that yet. We
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: don't really have an answers to win. Camels, which were
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: also an animal that evolved in North America, somehow became
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: extinct here, survived in South America but not in North America,
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: and also survived in other parts of the world. But
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: it really looks as if quite a number of species
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: were pushed to extinction, or at least to a point
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: where their populations were so separated from one another, that
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: they couldn't exchange their genes, and they may have faded
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: as a result of a lack of genetic So that's
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: kind of the Pleistocene story. We lose thirty two genera,
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: not just species, but thirty two genera of our largest
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: and most charismatic animals in North America. All the ones
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: that may North America look like a version of Africa
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: pretty much are going to disappearls the same by about
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: nine thousand years ago.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: If you were writing the children's version of that story,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Let's say I've got a five year old and a
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: seven year old son, and let's say you had compiled
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: an elementary version of that story, just this segment. We'll
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: call it a story on its own. What would the
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: moral of that story be. What's the takeaway from this
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: first act of the larger story?
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: I think probably the takeaway of this first act. This
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: obviously requires so some speculation to understand it, but my
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: guess is that while these early Americans, the Clovis people,
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: and later the fulsome people who follow them who probably
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: eradicate our large species of Iso, those people, I think
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: probably didn't quite understand the consequences of their actions. I
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: think they too. In fact, I'm pretty certain of this
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: judging from their descendants, from all of us who have
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: interpreted the world until the advent of modern science, primarily
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: through religion, that they use religion as their cause effect
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: explanation for why things happen, and religion may not be
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: so good at understanding how ecology and environments work. And
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: I think the truth is they probably didn't quite understand
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: what the consequences of their actions were until it likely
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: was too late. I have also a sneaking suspicion, and
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: this would be I think a part of a sort
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: of a short version answer here is that in the
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: wake of the Pleistocene extinctions, because my research indicated that
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: we got a ten thousand year period following the Pleistiscene
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: where Native people seem to have learned the lesson of
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: what happened in the Pleistocene, applied it liberally in North America,
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: and ended up over that ten thousand year period that
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: followed down to the time Europeans come, I could find
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: evidence only one extinction in what is now North America
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: during that time period. At some point they understood what
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: had happened and what role they may have played in it,
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: but I think it was a realization too late, and
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: so that may be one of the takeaways is that
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: you have to figure out, you have to come up
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: with a good explanation of how the world works around you,
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: and you can't let things proceed too far to the
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: point where it gets away from it runs away and
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: you can't stop it. I mean, at the end of
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: the process of the Prices, I think people did understand, Wow,
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: you know, there's a reason why we don't have mammoths
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: and all these other creatures around us, and our own
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: role may have made us culpable. And so what followed
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: was a period of rather benevolent ten thousand years that
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: came after the pricescene.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask you what the moral of
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: the story of the next act would be, but maybe
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: you just told me what it was right there, because
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: I would I would describe that next act being this
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: ten thousand or so years of relative equilibrium, And at
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: least what stands out to me now when you frame
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: it that way, is maybe the greatest lesson of the
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: next ten thousand years with only one extinction and relative
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: equilibrium and sustainability, Maybe that at least The takeaway I
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: have when I think about that now is simply that
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: we can learn from our mistakes, We can recognize how
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: we have aired in the past and adjust course. Is
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: that a fair takeaway when looking at that ten thousand
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: year period before year Pear in contact? Is there anything
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: else when you look at that and try to put
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: a why behind it or how behind it that stands
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: out to you?
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: Well? It was. It was a bit daunting to take
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: on the task of writing that story, because, to be honest,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: when I started working on Walney World and knew I
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: was going to do that, I couldn't find anyone else.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: Really I attempted to take that on, and there were
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: plenty of people who had studied various specific groups, but
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: that big story I think no one had tried to
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: do before, because it is a pretty daunting thing to
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: answer that question of First of all, you've got to
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: look at an awful lot of different cultures in different
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: ways of seeing the world. I mean, native people. There
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: were at least a dozen great large language families akin
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: to like the Germanic family of languages the Latin family
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: of languages in Europe. There were twelve different ones in
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: North America, so these were very different people, but I
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: think they did come to some sort of understanding about
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: what had gone before and recognition of the kind of
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: change that was wire in order to make things work
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: in the future. And I found that in a couple
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: of other specific instances in the historic period as well,
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: among native people, among the people who abandoned an empire,
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: for example, a thousand years ago, they seem to have
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: learned from the experience of hang Choko collapsed. So the
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: task was to try to figure out how they did it,
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: and I came up with about two or three explanations
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: for how I think it worked. I mean, one of
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: them was the fact that because the Americas ended up
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: getting settled by humans a lot later than Eurasia did
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: the procession of history to the point of what we
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: call the Neolithic Revolution, which is the time and history
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: when humans have usually reduced the numbers of huntable animals
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: to the point where we start looking for other ways
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: other economic pro coaches and pros usually is to domesticate
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: some animals and domesticate plants. So the Neolithic Revolution is
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: through the advent of agriculture and domestication that had happened
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: in Europe a lot longer, a lot earlier, but you
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: aready been settled by humans a lot more distantly in
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: the past. So in the America is we don't start
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: doing that sort of thing until about four thousand years
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: ago in what is now the United States and Canada.
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: And the reason that's important is because when you do
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: proceed to the Neolithic revolution and agriculture and domestication of animals,
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: you began to grow the human population at a fairly
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: rapid grade. And I think the lower human population is
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: a second explanation for why Native people were able to
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: do so well over that ten thousand years after licensing,
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: the human population never gets above five million people north
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: of the Rio Grand by the time Europeans come, and
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: so a population that means that it's possible to keep
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: North America in a fairly healthy situation. But I also
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: think the religion and the philosophy that Native people bring
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: to the game is important, and as I mentioned earlier,
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: it centers around this idea that humans are a part
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: of the natural world, that other creatures are our kin,
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: They're the same as we are, and this is not
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: a story where humans are somehow exceptional and everything else
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: is just out there for us to use, and that
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: kind of philosophy and that respect which was expressed in ceremonies,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: annual ceremonies in order to renew the connections between humans
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: and other animals. I think that played a role in
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: this story too, and so it produces as we're describing,
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: a ten thousand year period, that's an extraordinarily long period
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: of time where native people are here fully occupying North America.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, there are instances where animal popular as are
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: drawing down to some extent as the population begins July
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: is after the at ent of agriculture. Nonetheless, the biological
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: diversity is still here with you repeated.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: It's interesting to me when you think about this, this
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: idea that there was this recalibrating or this adjusting of course,
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: or this this learning of the lessons from the past
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: that led to this ten thousand year period. And then
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: you look at what happened on the other side of
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: the ocean, and when Europeans came across and entered North
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: America for the first time, things changed drastically. They brought
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: a whole new set of values into different philosophy to
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: you know, resource extraction and relationship with the natural world,
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: and you would think, well, they experienced the same thing
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: that happened here many many years earlier, right They the
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: folks on the European continent and across Asia, they wiped
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: out their large mammals and large species too. You would
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: thought that they would have learned from that and recalibrated
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: and have found some sense of equilibrium themselves. But I
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: wonder if there was like a shifting baseline syndrome that
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: happened that after so many tens of thousands of years,
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: they lost track of that history, and by the time
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: we get to the fifteen hundred, sixteen hundred, seventeen hundreds,
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: you have a European philosophy of the natural world that
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: has lost that deeper connection that here in North America
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: was still fresh. Does anything that ring true?
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: Is that?
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: Is that track?
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: Yes? I think it does track, And I think maybe
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: the critical element of it is the small time frame
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: between the demise of large creatures of the Pleiscescene creatures
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: of Western Europe and the advent of the Neolithic Revolution
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: in the Old World in Eurasia. Those two events follow
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: one another in fairly rapid succession. So you have the
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: demise of the large creatures there by about twelve thousand
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: years ago, and the beginnings of the Neolithic Revolution by
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: ten thousand, nine thousand years ago, so it's a much
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: narrower window of time. And as I said, the critical
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: thing about the Neolithic Revolution is that when people begin
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: settling down and farming and depending on domesticated animals. In
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: the case of Europe, it's cattle, it's horses, it's camels,
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: it's hogs, its sheep, it's goats, chickens, I mean. And
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: of course Eurasia is a connected land mass, so everybody
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: who domesticates a creature like the chickens, for example, and
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: ducks and hogs are first domesticated in Asia. But because
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: Asia is connected to Europe, it's not very long before
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: those ideas are going to find their way into Western
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: Europe along with the animals. So you have this kind
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: of Neolithic Revolution that happens very much on the heels
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: of the demise of the Paleolithic hunt, and that puts
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: it really far back in time, so that I think
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: you're probably right mark any of the lessons perhaps that
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: were learned seem to have been learned in North America
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: had receded into the past for people from the Old World,
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: and they had depended on not only a larger human
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: population based around agriculture and domesticated animals for a much
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: longer period of time, but that period of time put
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: their stories farther back in the past, and so they
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: came out of a completely different sort of mindset as
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: a result of domesticating animals like sheet and goats. A
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: at they very early Old World is very aroun developed
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: the idea that predators were an enemy. I mean here
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: in America, the animals that got domesticated were essentially things
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: like wild turkeys and muscovie ducks and things like that,
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: and so native people never evolved the idea that wolves, cougars, bears,
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: coyotes are enemies that you make war on in the
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: natural world. In fact, they use those animals as teachers,
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: and when you went out and did a vision quest,
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: those were the animals who became your totem animals sometimes
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: because they were fellow hunters. And the Old World predators
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: very early on, probably by six seven thousand years ago,
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: had become the enemy of the agricultural world. So that's
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: one of the things that develops. The other thing, of course,
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: the other two things that developed that Europeans are going
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: to bring that I think changes the whole point of view.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: Is first of all, a religious tradition, the Judeo Christian
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: tradition that spreads over Europe in the last couple of
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: thousand years, that replaces many of the old pagan religions
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: like that of the Druids for instances in the British Isles,
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: and Judaeo Christianity is the religion that teaches Western Europeans
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: or all people in Europe, they are exceptional, the only
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: preachers made in the image of God, and all other
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: creatures are made for humans to use. And so that's
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: one element of a difference. And then the next element,
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: of course, comes about as a result of the colonial
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: age and the emergence of the global market economy, where
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: you take that philosophy of human exceptionalism and other things
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: are made for our use, and then you plug them
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: into a market capitalist system where new world animals like
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: beavers and vice and then otters and on and on
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: and on are just resources in the global market. And
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: suddenly the whole thing is set up for this extractive, exploitive,
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: kind of destructive approach to wild creatures.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: You know, one of the angles of this story that
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: I personally don't know as much about is how all
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: this translated to the east of Europe. We we kind
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: of oftentimes, or at least maybe I have in my understandings,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: have skipped over. We see, like the the initial migration
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: of humans out of Africa, and then we kind of
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: skipped to and then Europeans developed and industrialized, and then
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: there was this whole thing going on over in North America,
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: and then Europeans arrived in North America and it all
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: went to hell. But what happened in Asia or the
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: Far East? Did they? Did they? You know? What was
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: that story like for them over that ten thousand year
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: period after their first you know, moment of their own
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: version of the Plaistocene moment that we had twelve thousand
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: years ago. What was that like as it moved across
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Asia or Russia? Was it just the slow burn that
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: you were describing earlier, or it seems like it's a
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: little bit unique because like in India they held onto
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: some of these large creatures and whatnot.
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's yeah, it's a variable story as you
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: go eastward from say western Europe as far east as
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: the Caucasus Mountain Sewitch in the you know, seventeenth eighteen
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: nineteenth centuries. Sale today is often sort of regarded as
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: the most eastwardly reach of the Russian the Slavic peoples
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, Russia sort of mirrors the story of Western Europe.
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: Russia is it's Greek Orthodox in religion, but it's still
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: nonetheless a Christian religion with many of the same tenets
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: of belief, and so Russia well, and for the discovery
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: of North America, the primary fur bearing region of the
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: world that supplied this desire for furs and leather, and
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: fur and leather two different things from animals. Fur often
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: used to designate status I mean, just think of, for example,
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: in our own time, a mink coat, a particular kind
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: of fur, can be regarded as an emblem of high
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: status among humans. Leather, of course, serves another purpose, a
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: more practically utilitarian purpose, but animals provide both those things,
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: and Russia was the locust of much of the search
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: for fur and leather before the discovery of the Americas.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: When America's, particularly North America, came into the global market,
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: then the focus on fur and leather sort of squish.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: North America so the h story prep Orthodox still Christian
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: as far as the Caucasus Mountains is very similar. When
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: you get beyond the Caucasus Mountains and you get to Asia,
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: of course, what you enter the world with a variety
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: of different religious traditions, many of which don't have that
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: same kind of focus on tumas as exceptional to everything
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: else in the world. Well hasten to add, however, that
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: we don't have really great evidence that that, say, the
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: wild creatures of Asia to any great extent, and places
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: like India, for example, where cattle, for instance, are regarded
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: as gods and deities, you do get a difference, as
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: you mentioned. But I mean, there was a sort of
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: a famous book back I was in graduate school and
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: studying environmental history called Religion and environment in History, and
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: many of the scholars who worked on that book were
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: attempting to demonstrate that a different kind of religious tradition
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: in the Far East could produce a different outcome. Without
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: a great deal of success, there still was a lot
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: of exploitation of animal life, and a lot of it
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: based on kind of religious notions that we all still
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: realize today. Where people in Asia would regard, for example,
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: the horn of a particular animal, a particular analoge or
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: the rhino, if it came out of Africa as having
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: and all our special magical sort of uses. So there's
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: still exploitation of wildlife even with these other religions, but
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: it doesn't take the sort of form it does in
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: North America. In fact, I mean, I say, in Wild
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: New World, I said this also in America. Dren getting
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: working on those two books, I really could find an
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: example anywhere else in the world that rivaled the widespread
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: destruction of wild life that was the case in North America.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, we seem to have done it in a
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: way that nobody else was able to do. I mean,
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: the largest destruction of wild animals in the colonial age
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: anywhere on the planet took place in North America. And
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: that's a story that we need to understand and know about,
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: particularly as a result of the future.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: And that's a perfect segue to the next act of
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: the story here in North America at least, which is
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: after that ten thousand year period of relative equilibrium, we
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: have the settling of the continent, European Americans spreading across
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: America and across the North American continent, and as you
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: write in a recent article in Time magazine, you said,
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: here's an inconvenient truth. Our forebears use the unrestrained free
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: market to affect a staggering destruction of continental wildlife, an
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: unforgivable crime against evolution in America. And as you just described,
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: you know, the greatest example of such destruction in the
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: history of the world, possibly I think the biggest. Yeah,
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: I think most folks know the broad strokes of that story.
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: Maybe Buffalo stand out as the premier example, but at
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: least I hope most people in the hunting and fishing
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: world know the odd theme of that story, the fact
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: that we nearly wiped out our wildlife in this content,
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: but the last moment saved, saved the day to some degree.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: Could you, could you, I guess, very briefly flesh that
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: out just a little bit beyond what maybe the average
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: person understands, just enough so that we can speak about
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: a few specifics. Because what I am particularly interested in,
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: and that we'll get to here in a moment, is
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: is how we stopped it. Because we reached a n
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: a deer. We we nearly destroyed this heaven on earth
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: here in America, and then we didn't just barely. We
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: caught ourselves. And that's the part that intrigues and excites
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: me the most because I think there's a hope there's
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: something we can learn from that there. But but before
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: we get to that, I just want to make sure
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: that people who aren't fully familiar with this story that
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: they get just a little bit more context. Can you
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: can you just set the stage a little bit and
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: explain this massive crime against evolution in America, and then
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: we can get to what happened at the end of that.
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'll try to do it briefly because I
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: agree with you. I think quite a number of people,
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: particularly people who are interested in wildlife, from whatever background
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: they come from, no thing about this. They probably know
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: the Shorthand version, the cocktail party version of the short
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: course centers on the buffalo. I mean in the Shorthand
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: version is once there were many millions out of them,
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: and suddenly, within the space of a century there are
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: fewer that thousand of them left somehow. And another story,
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: of course that's out there that people I think know
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: the fundamental elements of, is the beaver story. The beaver
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: supplied one of the first targets for the global market
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: economy in North America as a result of richness of
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: its fur. And that animal has a really unique story
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: because it provides the first example. It's not the only one.
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: Bison provide this too, and some others do as well,
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: but it provides the first example of how it was
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: possible for the Old World, which had, as I've mentioned before,
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: sort of preceded by a few thousand years along in
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: its historical trajectory. The arc of the Americas arrived in
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: North America with a transformative technology of iron and steel products,
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: and the existence of that technology enabled them to seduce
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: the native people into participating in this market economy for animals.
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: It was a kind of transformative technology that gave native people,
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: for example, iron arrowheads instead of flat ones, and iron
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: blades for their spears, and other war and hunting implements,
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: and iron hoes and rakes for agriculture and firearms ultimately,
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: and what it meant was that if you were a
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: native group that didn't participate in this while your neighbors did,
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: do we disadvantage she probably going to disappear from the
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: story of history. So by incorporating many people into the
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: hunt for some of these animals. I mean, the beaver
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: story proceeds across the continent in an astonishingly rapid way
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: which transforms the whole continent because it destroys the ecologies,
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: this wetland ecology that beaver had established across North America.
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: We do the same thing with sea otters on the
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: west coast, which had this extensive coastal ecology that depended
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: on eating sea earthens that kept help forest down. And
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: when se otters were gone in the market economy of
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: beds began to really soak along the coastline. So that's
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: just an example of how it happened. There are many
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: other species that it happens with, but it proceeds like
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: this to sort of sum it up animals that had
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: been able to survive here in undiminished numbers for millions
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: of years. And one of the species I mentioned in
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: that time article you reference is the passenger pision. We
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: know now passenger pigeons had been here for fifteen million years,
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: and for the last fifty thousand years they were in
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: billions of numbers. The most numerous bird on Earth. Could
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: not survive this global market hunt for more than three
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: hundred years until they were completely wiped out. The last
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: passenger visions became extinct in nineteen four. We lost the
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: Northern Hemisphere version of the penguin by the eighteen forties.
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's just one species after another until we
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: reach the beginning of the twentieth century, and as people
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: look around us, we realize, those who were sensitive to say,
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: the George Bird Grenelles and the Teddy Roosevelts of the world,
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: that holy shit, we are going to destroy everything here
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: if we don't somehow get a grip on ourselves. And that,
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: of course, is the moment that you reference a minute ago,
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: when we finally start to wake up a little bit
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: and try to begin at least to protect in the
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: early stages, at least the animals we wanted to continue
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: to be able to hunt. And that's sort of what
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: Teddy Roosevelt, Barnelle, the Boon and Crocotbob and all these
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: new state agencies were folk folks on, We've got stop
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: the market hunt and let's at least protect the animals
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: out there that we want to continue to be able
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: to hunt.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: You know, after a big football game, oftentimes the coaches
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: and the team will review film from the game and
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: they'll walk through each quarter and talk about what they
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: did right, what they did wrong, what they can learn from,
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: what they need to do better next game to make
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: sure that they, you know, get better and have better results.
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: Or what did we do right in this moment that
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: won us the game? And if you would reply that
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: to this element, to this part of the story, and
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: you look at this moment where we reached the Nader
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: and there was this wake up moment with the Roosevelts
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: and the pin shows and the birds and horned days
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: and all these folks, if you were reviewing the film
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: of that game and trying to identify what won us
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: the game, or at least won us this battle this moment,
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: what are the key takeaways? What are the things that
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: led to us stopping the bleeding in that moment and
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: resetting the stage a little bit, because, as I mentioned earlier,
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: as we are now amidst this next wave of the
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: sixth extinction that folks talk about, many of us, I
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: think are are are searching for answers, searching for a
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: way forward. And you can look back and see one
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: moment where we did face a similar perilous moment and
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: we righted the ship. So what I'm trying to say,
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: Dan is how did they do it?
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: We did, Yeah, we we righted the ship part way.
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: And as I said, I mean and I remain, particularly
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: in a wild in the world, a bit critical of
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: the heroes of the conservation progress conservation back at the
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: beginning of the tenth century. You also have to be
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: sympathetic to them in a way, because evolution is still new.
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: Darwin had just published On the Origin of Species, as
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, in eighteen fifty nine, and this is
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: only about forty years thirty five or forty years later.
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: Some of these people horn to Day I think probably
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: is guilty of this. Tady Roosevelt, I think maybe is
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: guilty of this. They don't quite have a really good
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: understanding of evolution yet. I've guess some reasons that I
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: outline in the section in Wild the World out why
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: I think that. But what they did, and I think
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: how they did it remarkably enough, and using probably George
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: Bird Grunell as the primary example, they did it through
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: the written media. George Bird Grunelle was the editor of
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: a famous magazine of the day, Forrest and Strength, and
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: Bell also wrote for a wide variety of newspapers and
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: other magazines scriblers in particular, and what they were attempting
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: to do, of course, was to alert the public to
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: the dangers of what was happening, and they were using
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: the media. They were using the kinds of voices that
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: I think we're doing ay podcasts as an example, to
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: reach a larger and larger audience of people. The ready
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: group that they find that's willing to listen, of course,
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: are the people who are person hunters, who very readily
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: joined the conservation movement as laid out by the Boone
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: and Crockett Club and Teddy Roosevelt because they recognize that
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: we don't do now, we're going to lose me of
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: all animals, big tail deer. We're done to fewer then
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: twenty five individuals. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: we reduced prong horns from fifteen million to seven thousand,
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, And that story just goes on and on
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: and on. And so the sportsman led by Roosevelt and
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: George berg Grenelle and the Booney Crocket Club and Hornity
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: too understand that we've got to continue just kind of
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: engage with the world that we think is importa where
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: I think they didn't quite get the ship upright. And
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: in some ways it's not their fault because the science
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: of ecology doesn't begin meeting formally the American Ecological Society
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: doesn't begin meeting until nineteen fifteen, is that they didn't
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: understand that it's ecologies that you have to protect and
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: not just individual animals. And of course what they didn't recognize,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: primarily following this folklore tradition from the Old World, were
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: the role of predators in the world, especially in North America, where,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: for examples and various secies at present, for a billion years,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: all the prey animals had long since co evolved alongside
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: the predation of animals like that, And so without doing
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: any science at all, we just loved to this program
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: of we're going to say to elk and prong horns
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: and whitehails and mule deer and upland birds, and we're
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: going to introduce all kinds of new species from elsewhere
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: in the world to be able to hunt. But meanwhile,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: we're also going to wipe out mountain lions and gray wolves,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: and we're going to try to wipe coyotes off the continent,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: and we're i mean, so it's not until really about
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: nineteen fifty when the ecologists, led by Aldo Leopold are
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: able to show the world what we have to protect.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: Are these old American ecologies, not just select animals out
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: of the past that we want to continue to haunt
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: and exploit. And so by that point we start getting
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: into a period of history when we can finally get
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: to something like the endangered species deack of nineteen seventy three,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: where we began to realize that it's a whole set
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: of other creatures too that we have to be concerned with.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: So this story with that ending, and that leads us
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: into where we are now, which you know, as I've
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: talked about in previous podcasts, I know you've talked about
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: in other places we are and you speak on your book,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: we are now in the anthropist scene. We are in
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: this new epoch defined by the impact that humans have
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: on the world, and we are seeing this next wave
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: of wildlife declines I've described in the past as a
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: clear cutting of our wildlife populations, and you write about
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: that in this piece I mentioned earlier in the Time magazine,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: and I want to read one last excerpt because I
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: think it informs this final set of questions I have,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: And you say here in the piece, you said, is
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: this story ideological? I don't think so. It calls on
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: an undeniable history to point out how nature will fare
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: when governments are missing in action with respect to environmental regulation.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: It's an American story that urges us to be very
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: suspicious of a future of unregulated capitalism. The purpose of history,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: after all, is not to make some look good in
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: others bad. Its purpose is or should be, to let
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: us consult the past so we can create the future
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: we want. So, given this story of this past, that
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: we are trying to understand what are the very most
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: important morals, takeaways, key tenants of a philosophy that will
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: allow us to create a future that we want and
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: not a repeat of the past.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: Well, I wrote that piece for time.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 5: Because of of a current fear that I have, and
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 5: I'm certainly not the only I think many of us
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: who share avidity for nature and for wild places and
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 5: wild creatures.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: We share this fear that there is an inclination in
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: the American story, and it seems to be very prevalent
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: at the moment to economic growth, making money as the
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: ultimate value above every other kind of value out And
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: what I attempted to point out in that piece is
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: that when we do this, and there is a history
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: one that we've been talking about in this podcast of
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: when we've done this very thing, it really is almost
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: certain to produce a crisis for the natural world. Because
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: when you make money and the pursuit of economic growth
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: the sole value of your society, that the rest of
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: the world is going to suffer. And the idea of deregulation,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: of turning the environ Protection Agency, for example, into an
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: agency that's going to engage and the biggest deregulation in
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: the history of the United States, as Liezel and the
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: but the President director of the EPA has put it
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: here in the last couple of months. I mean, that's
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: pretty scary because the reason we've managed to turn the
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: story around is by regulating human nature. I think we
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: all understand from the history struggle, you let human nature
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: run up and you create that what we often referred
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: to as is just like a wild wet We mean
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: when we say this, it's a place where there are
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: no regulations whatsoever. I mean that sounds great, it's free. Well,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: when you do let every body be fielt is the
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: selfishness greed tends to overwhelm uh the natural world one
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: example after another. Is to call it, as I said
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: in that piece, this is not an ideological story. This
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: is it's just a story based on looking back at
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: the past and realizing what we did. So I think
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: we have to be smart about our brothers and our future,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: and we have to understand that we've got to have
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: some sort of regulation in order to bring the rest
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: of the world. And that regulation is based around a
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: whole other set of values. Some of us have the
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: value of appreciating wild creatures and getting to experience nature.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: Some of us have the value of appreciating literature or
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: art or film, and those are all things that create
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: to me a really rich experience of life. And it's
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: certainly I think it's one of the things we celebrat
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: in the American story, not the only thing. There are
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: a lot of things out there that are important, and
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: I think we have to keep it.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: As someone like you who has these values, who cares
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: deeply about the natural world and wildlife and wild places.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: I frequently find myself looking back again, looking back to
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: the Roosevelts or the Leopolds or the Rachel Carson's or
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: whoever it might be, looking for some kind of clue,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: looking for some kind of blueprint or a template for
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: how I can be that kind of person today. How
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: do I do what they did then to stop this bleeding?
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: How can we be that next great generation that can
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: somehow change the trajectory that we're on. So, as individuals,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: what takeaways have you found from the story of these
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: iconic people who did these things that change the world
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: that we now live in. What have you taken from
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: them that you've been able to apply as an individual yourself,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: and that we too might be able to put into
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: action in our own lives to try to create this
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: future that we want.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that most of the people that we
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: referred to in the course of this discussion conversation we've had,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: have been people who attempted to evangelize and spread the
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: word in one form or another. As I mentioned, George
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: burg Renelle was an editor of famous magazine at his day,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: but he also of course founded the Autuburn Society and
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: was prominent in the creation of an organization like a
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: Boon and Crocket Club. So it's not just evangelizing as
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: into itself. People we've referred to Rachel Carson for example.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: I mean again, what Rachel Carson did was she wrote
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: one of the most important books anyone has written about
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: American nature, and she was able to use that sort
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: of bullyhole pit in her voice in Silence Spring to
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: get Congress actually to pay attention to that. Many people,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: of course detrated her, people who call her a hysterical woman,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: and she was overreaching by attacking the chemical companies and
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: so forth. So chemistry was going to be the wave
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: of the future in providing us with the good life,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: and she was pointing out the malevolent effects of it.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: But I think it's probably in order to create this generation,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: one of the ways of doing it is to to
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: use the the pullpits that we have that have arek
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: you do and in the talks that you do that
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: I suppose I probably have in the books that I write,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: to try to take our insights to as many people
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: as possible. I mean, you know, one of the great
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: things about watching a terrific film or reading a really
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: good book is that those experiences have the ability to
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: kind of rearrange the furniture in your head. And that's
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: only important thing to do, I think, in confronting the
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: future that we're facing, and we've really got to rearrange
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: the furniture in as many heads as possible to make
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: us understand what the possibility if we don't act and
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: we're not smart, and what the possibilities are we are.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: And really it's about that, It's about being. I mean,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: we pride ourselves on being this intelligent species. Well let's demonstrate.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: Let's show how smart.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'm going to ask you to participate in
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: an exercise that might be uncomfortable given your history as
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: a nonfiction writer, But I'm going to ask you to
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: write for me a fictional story, an imagined story of
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: the future. You've specialized on telling the story of our
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: past with wildlife and wild places, but I'd love for
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: you to imagine a future with wildlife and wild places
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: that anticipates a new relationship between us and our wild neighbors.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: If there were to be a future, let's say, fifty
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: years from now or one hundred years from now, in
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: which we in America still have thriving populations of wildlife,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: that we have grizzly bears roaming the continent, that we
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: can hunt deer and elk, that buffalo are maybe even
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: more prevalent than they are now, That we still have
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: incredible wild places where we can seek solace, or fill
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: our freezers or just go for a hike. If all
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: that we're still present and possible fifty or one hundred
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: years from now, what would have to be true for
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: that to come into existence? What changes or actions would
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: need to be taken in those subsequent decades for that
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: story to come to life?
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: You know, maybe predictable In order of someone who thinks
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: that understanding the past is the key to the future,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: based on the idea that the truth is the past
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: doesn't stay in the past, its how we live in
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: the present, I think I would have to argue that
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: standing we are in for a way, understanding that we
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: are animals out of Earth's evolutionary river, and that we
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: and other creatures can coosist side by side as a
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: result of that, that's probably key step to this imagine
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: the future that you lay out. I mean, I can
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: certainly imagine a future like that. I think it would
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: center around, for example, a good bit of rewilding where
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: people living in for example, the rural parts of America
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: these days, actually, rather than trying to turn a piece
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: of ground that they're living on into a money making project,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: sort of subsistence project with pigs and cows and horses
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: and chickens, actually attempts to live on a piece of
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: ground that they try to restore to the way Europeans
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: found it, the way maybe people had for ten thousand years.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: That that might be a eap to actually living in
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: a work where you can coexist with features. I mean,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: that's kind of, in a way a far fetched trajectory
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: that we haven't really talked about, but I think it's
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: a possible future. And I think what that also means
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: is that people living in living lives in urban settings
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: going to have to probably consciously try to it's the
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: natural world, either through more urban parks, like a sort
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: of a wilder Central Park in Manhattan, for example, and
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: wilder urban parks in cities like Denver or San Diego,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: where you freely accept the fact that there may be
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: coyote packs roaming through the park, there may be an
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: occasional mountain lion coming through that's taking down a deer.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: I think getting back to something of the wild world
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: that we seem to have been so committed to escaping
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: is going to be the key to a future like that.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, I sort of railed a little bit in
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: a wild new world that America had this chance to
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: create a whole new kind of civilization based on living
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: in natural conditions, and instead what we did was we
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: tried to turn America, the United States into a clone
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: of England, un plants of the countries of Western Europe,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: which had long since destroyed most of its natural world.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: And here we had this wonderful opportunity to do it
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: all over again, and somehow we just tried to emulate
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: what was your Europe was. But I still think we
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: have have the opportunity to do in the future. So
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: that's the kind of ecotoy. Yeah, I think I would
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: imagine as a fictional, hopefully a non fiction future.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: Could you describe for me or hypothesize maybe two tangible
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: actions someone could take today that might lead us closer
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: to that future. If there were two things that maybe
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: you yourself are trying to do now, or that that
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: I could consider trying to add to my life in
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: some kind of way, because because so many of these things,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: when I think about them, can be abstract can seem
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: you know, these larger philosophical shifts. But then I wonder, okay,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: what does that look like in daily life? And you
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: described a few things that are like that I guess
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: could be applied. But could you give us a couple
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: examples of clear, tangible things that we could do in
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: our lives today or tomorrow that might send us if
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: even with these individual actions might collectively lead to what
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: we've been discussing.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: Well, for full disclosure, I should admit that what I
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: just said about rewilding personal spaces is the theme of
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: a book I just sold to my publisher in New
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: York a few months ago, where what I am going
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: to be writing about are three big places adult where
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: I attended, and one of them was in West Texas
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: back in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. The second
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: one was in the Bittery Valley in Montana in the
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: nineties through about twenty fifteen, and the thirdies here outside
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: Santa Fe, New Mexico. And all three of those that
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: I lived pieces of ground fifteen twenty miles outside town.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: The pieces weren't large, twelve to twenty five acres, but
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: what I did with them and what I describe in
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: the book, what I call it is reverse homesteading. I
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: mean when the homestead acts in America were designed to
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: take pieces of ground that native people had managed for
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: ten thousand years and turn them into any matcheck in
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: the global market economy. And so we transformed them into
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: with the technological infrastructure fences and plowing and so forth,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: into pieces of the ground they would produce money. And
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: what I've tried to do with these three places is
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: to turn them around and take them back the other direction,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: to remove and eradicate all the evidence that previous people
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: had done with respect to taking money off these pieces
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: of ground and trying to restore them to kind of
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: healthy original ecosystem, so rewild them. In effect. I think
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: that's you know, four picturely live out and on pieces
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: of ground. That's one of the things you can think
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: about about doing. Another thing that I'm kind of intrigued by.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: And again full disclosure, I'm doing. My Coyote America book
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: will be out ten years next summer, and its publisher
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: is having me do a tenth anniversary edition of it,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: so I'm providing a new preface to it, which I'm
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: working on in fact right now, And in that preface,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: I'm not only talking about some of the things that
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: have happened with the coyote story since, for example twenty
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: sixteen when that book came out, on which his coyotes
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: are now expanding in the South America. They're the first
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: animal to do this in three million years. But another
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: thing talking about it, and I think this answers to
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: your request about things people can do, is I'm talking
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: about something that I again have sort of done personally,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: where I have kind of adopted an individual animal that
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: I have, first of all located because of their physical characteristics.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: In the case of the coyotes. Three, there is a
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: little female coyote who I have been watching for about
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: six or seven years now, and she's distinctive enough to
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: identify because under most coyotes that have a black tip
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: on their tails, she has a white tip at the
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: end of her tail. And so I've been watching her
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: as an individual animal and trying to understand not just
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: coyotes in general around me, but this particular animal, especially
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: how she moves through the landscape, how she appears and
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: doesn't appear, what she hunts, what kind of pups she has,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: and what she does with them. And I've been doing this,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: as I said, for about six or seven years. And Yep,
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: another thing I've been doing. I talked about this on
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: Adill Rogan episode a couple of years ago. I have
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: a raven that has sort of become certainly not a pet,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: it's a wild raven, but it's a bird that I
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: cultivating kind of a personal relationship with the last about
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 3: three or four years. And this is a bird that
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: comes down. I mean I've never touched it or handled it,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: but it comes down and lands within about three feet
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: up me and waddles around while I talk to it,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: and it talks back. And it's the same kind of
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: thing where I've taken on sort of an individual animal,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 3: not just ravens in particular, but an individual and try
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: to establish some kind of report so or maybe getting
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: into a little bit of a kind of different short
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: of relationship to a wild world around us. It caused
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 3: all these individuals just like us. It's one of the
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: things that I think I can probably add Kate to
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: be borning.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: That's a really paradigm shifting way to look at our
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: relationship to wildlife for a lot of us, especially within
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: you know, the community here mutator, and in which we
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: we we have a relationship with wildlife, in which we
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: consume it, in which we pursue it, in which we
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: give a lot of credence to the biological and the
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: scientific management of species, and looking at things from a
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: species perspective. It's challenging to rethink that and to look
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: at wildlife as an individual a little bit. And I
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: think we've been We've been trained in a certain way
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: not to do that. I think because of maybe some
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: early some early tendencies to maybe overdo that sometimes with
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: like the Bambi effect or the nature fakers that Roosevelt
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: bemoaned in the early twentieth century. But I wonder if
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: there is a place in between those that that is
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: informative and useful for us to to kind of continue
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: to evolve that. As for lack of better term relationship.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is a different sort of approach than focusing
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: on species. And that's of course what game and fish
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: programs did from the very beginning, and it's what Roosevelt
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: and Giffer pincho and one Today and the others. They
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: focused on saving species and sort of really kind of
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: ignored that animals, after all, are also individuals. But I
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: noticed that, for example, in the last years of the
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: destruction of wolves in the American West, one of the
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: things that ranchers and those government wolf hunters were doing
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 3: is that they were individualizing particular animals. They were even
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: giving them names. I wrote it, several of them, I
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: wrote wild New World, because they were identifying these animals
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: as being very specific and very individualistic animals. And we
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: tend to do that to a certain extent today. For example,
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: in Yellowstone RK. Macnar, who has watt a whole series
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: of books about the Wolves of Yellowstone, he is very
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: definitely focusing on individual animals. And I think I probably
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 3: got into a habit of trying to do that when
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: I was working on Coyote America and I was talking
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: to the people at the Predator Research in Utah. I mean, now,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: how individualistic the animals were that they were doing these
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: experiments on, That the coyotes that they were working with
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 3: were all very individualistic, And that sort of started me thinking.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: And it's what I think has telled me Sion, where
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 3: I have been picking out individual wild animals around me
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: here outside Santa Fe, Like this particular coyote with a
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: white tipped tail, and this particular raven that I'm describing,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, so, okay, ravens tend to all look alike,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: to be sure, but this particular raven has a specific
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: perch that he lands on near the house, so I
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: think it's tempting to demonstrate his uniqueness from any other
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: raven that would happened by. And the other thing that
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: my wife and I have noticed it is the peculiar
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: brig of feathers neck come out from under his neck
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: that stick out sort of like a cow lick. And
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: so by trying to pay close enough attention that you
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: can identify something specific like that, you can begin to
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: locate individual animals and start to watch them and see
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: how they function in the world. And if you do that,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: you start noticing that these animals are different from the
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: other ravens and the other coyotes that are around us.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: And that's You're right, that's a stept for a lot
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: of people, but I think can be pretty valuable.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I guess for anyone listening to this podcast
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: at least, and anyone reading your books and listening to
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: your podcast or Steve's podcast, I think all of us
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: can agree that these wild animals, whether we look at
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: them from an individual capacity or at a species level,
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: or from a regional perspective, or as hunters or bird watchers,
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: whatever it might be, they bring great value to our lives.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: They color our lives. They in fact allow for us
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: to be alive through their services and being a part
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: of the ecosystem that we all depend on. So I,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: for one, am very thankful that you are taking the
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 2: time and and you know, giving your life to telling
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: these stories and teaching all of us about where we
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: came from and what that means to the future. It's
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: very important and very appreciated. So Dan, thank you for that.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: And then I would also ask you to please tell
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: our listeners where they can connect with you, where they
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: can listen to your podcast, how they can find your books,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: because we're just scratching the surface here today. There's so
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: much more that you've done that I would love for
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: people to be reading, to be consuming, to be aware.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 3: Of easy way for the books, particularly for the last
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: three that I've done a Wild New World, American, Serengeti
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: and Coyote America is to go first to your local bookstore.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm a champion of local bookstores. And these
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 3: are books that have a big enough presence that I
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 3: think most bookstores probably are carrying them. But if you
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: can't find those books at local bookstore, of course, they're
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: all available on Amazon and a whole host of different forms,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: kindle forms, digital forms, paperbacks for a couple of them.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: There's still cloth versions out there, and as I said,
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 3: and audio books too of all three of those. And
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 3: there's also going to be a new death anniversary edition
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: of Coyote America as well coming out there. And as
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: for the pod cast, I mean, obviously you can go
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 3: to meat Eater and you can find it, but it's
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 3: called the American West. Dan Flores uh uh, Steven and
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 3: Randall and I discussing these scripts that I produce primarily
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: from a work an Unbolished. They're going to be twenty
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 3: six episodes. I believe three of them have appeared so far.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: There are on Tuesdays every other week. Uh. And you
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 3: can find them as venues uh, their versions on YouTube,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 3: a couple of audio only versions. Basically, all you two
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 3: is either to meat Eater or google me Dan Flores
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: podcast and that will come out pretty readily.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I've listened to the first three that are
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: publicly available and thoroughly enjoyed them so far, so can't
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: wait for the next twenty three to come out to
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: the world for the rest of us. And and with that, Dan,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: I just want to echo what I said earlier. Thank
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: you for this conversation today and for everything you've been doing.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 3: That's my great pleasure to be with you. Mark, You're
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: dang great work.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: And that's a wrap. Thank you for joining me today.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: Please go and read Dan's books. Please go listen to
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: his new podcast on the Meat Eater Podcast Network the
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: American West. You won't regret it. You will enjoy it.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: You will learn so much so that I'll say thank
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: you for being here and stay wired to Hunt