Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 042: Seattle, Washington. Steven Rinella talks with wildlife biologist Bart George along with Ryan Callaghan, Land Tawney, and MeatEater's Janis Putelis

Transcript

Ep. 042: Seattle, Washington. Steven Rinella talks with wildlife biologist Bart George along with Ryan Callaghan, Land Tawney, and MeatEater's Janis Putelis · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: You can't predict anything, all right, I'm not gonna say
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: what kind of bar this is? Maybe I will. We're
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: sampling a bar at what do you call it? I mean, well,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: how would you describe the bar? It's it's category No no, no,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I mean it's like in the category of energy bars
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: or what granola bars like super protein. And we were
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: little kids it was granola bars. But then people start
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: putting other stuff in them. These here the number one
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: ingredients ground beef, then dried prunes, almonds, sweet potatoes, oats,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: brown flax seed, tomato, paste on on, anchovies. Yanni thinks
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: it tastes like dog food. It's got a dog food hint.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I first listen. When I was first sent these, I
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: open one up and ate it, and I had a box,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: a box of boxes. Al it was so bad. I
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: gave the people at the post office two boxes. I'm like,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know what you guys all do for lunch,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: but here and um. Then that went in there later
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: and they're like, man, those things were awful, um, but
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: now they're kind of growing on me. What I do
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: is I put a bunch of my glove box of
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: the car. My kids won't go near him. But when
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: I meant to be like, I'll just feed into the kids.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: And they started complaining in the car and now and
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: then I'll be like just out of like, you know,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: driving along, I'll just kind of have a hankering, and
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: they're kind of a little bit growing on me. These
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: things expired last June two thousand, fifteen June. Is that
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: right better? You can want to take a look at that.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: My friend met a guy and he described him as
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: my body met a guy, and his body described the
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: guy as being the kind of guy that girls off
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: of you, Um, which I always liked, but you like
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: him at first and slowly stopped liking him. But these
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: are the kind of thing to grow on you. First
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: thing I want to talk about. Yeah, and you explain
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: this what we did? Oh? Nice? Yeah? So did they
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: send you your hat? Yeah? Oh yeah. So we're hunting
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: squirrels in Kentucky and we filled out a form a
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: squirrel hunting Cooperator Survey Report or yeah, and you like
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: log your squirrel hunting activities, and we sent our squirrel
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: hunting thing in They sent me a sweet Blaze orange
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: squirrel hunting baseball hat, and they sent a summation of
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: squirrel hunting in Kentuck. You so, dudes, last year hunting
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: in Kentucky would see two point five squirrels per hour
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: in August, which slowly dropped two. Okay in August. The
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: dude Kentucky, your average Kentucky squirrel hunter, who's probably your
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: better squirrel hunters? Because those the kind of guys that
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: would turn a log in. I don't think I'm going out.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: You're a trained biologist, right, would you agree that more
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: tuned in dudes are gonna turn in a voluntary log
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: or would you think that even shitty bad hunters are
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: gonna turn into voluntary log I think the guys that
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: are experienced some success. And also, who's noting in August?
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Probably people are pretty serious about turkey, So this is
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: probably like a tuned in hunt. So this, yeah, these
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: are the guys that are dialed in, biased or tuned in.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: So in August, your average Kentucky in it's seeing two
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: point five squirrels per hour and killing about one per hour.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: By February, here's the weird thing By February. He's seeing
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: one squirrel about one squirrel per hour and killing point
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: five per hour. You know what the moral of that
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: story is, your honest hunting August Um, they're seeing a
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: lot more foxes and grays. When I was open to
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: my mail, I ripped the salment used to like regular
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: old male anymore. I ripped my thing all to pieces. Anyhow,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about caribou. Uh Land Tony. I'm sitting
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: in with us Land b H A bad country hunters
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: and anglers. Uh Ryan Callahan general guy Hunter Fisher works
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: at the hunting apparel company First Light. Janice tell us
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the man who will not maybe my perch flies. We
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: work closer together, talk every day on the phone. Still
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: won't do it. And introduce yourself. Bart Bart George Bart George.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: I'm a b H, a board member for Washington State
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  Speaker 1: and a wildlife biologist for the Calispell tribe up in
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: northeast Washington. Explain Anthony, they have a wildlife biologist right. Well,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: we have a big natural resource department. Um, so we
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: have about fifteen fish biologists. I'm the only wildlife biologist,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: but um, we have so many fish and and so
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: you work for the tribe, right, because they're just fisheries reliant,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: not necessarily fisheries reliant, but um fish where the money
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: is at right is right? Yeah, I didn't know that
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: for sure. And where do you do where? Where are you?
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Where do you do your where are you based out
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: of northeast Washington Pondrea County it's the most northeast corner
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: of the state, and then also over into North Idaho
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: up around Priest Lake mostly, But explain that why is
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: it that the money's in the fish, because I wouldn't
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: necessarily guess that um. Well, certainly in the northwest with
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: all the salmon runs in our um the anadromous fish,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: but then also in our area it's the add fluvial fish,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: the bull trout and stuff like that. Okay, explain unadromus
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: coach adrenus and a fluvial well. Most of us are
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: familiar with salmon making the run out of the ocean
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: and coming back into freshwater to spawn in their natal streams.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: That'd be in anadromous fish. Add fluvial fish like a
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: bull trout that we have in northeast Washington. Um they're
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: also an endangered run of fish. But they use big
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: lakes basically as their ocean. So instead of making it
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: all the way out of saltwater, um, they used Lake
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Ponderre or one of the big lakes there, and so
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Nadermus refers to salt water like like in the Great
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Lakes the salmon. They took Pacific salmon and caught them
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: an established him and caught him loosen the Great Lakes.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: So they treat the Lake Michigan, for instance, Lake Superior,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: like Michigan Lake here on. They treat it as their ocean,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: which is freshwater still and they run up to spawn.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: You would say that those are add fluvial fish. Well, like, yeah,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: maybe I'm talking out of turn though I'm a caribou.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I don't need to before you into an area you're
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: not familiar with. But that's what's going on there, okay.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And then uh so a cattagimus fish would be like
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: the American eel lives in the river, goes out to
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: the ocean to spawn. I thought we covered this before.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: We certainly might have, and I can't say it's been
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: on a podcast. Yeah, So like eel spends his life
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: in the river, goes out, actually goes down to the
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Sargasso Sea. Um. So if you're standing in like New
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: York and you see eel swim by, that he's gonna
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: wind up going to the Sargasso Sea to reproduce. Um. Okay,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with what you work on. Um.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: But when you say that, so, so you to explain
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: again where you work. Um So Northeast Washington, in the
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Selkirk Mountains, in the British Columbia, in the North Idaho,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: A lot across a variety of land owners like a
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: lot of a variety of and ownership areas or no
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: for sure? Um. Yeah, A lot of state land, A
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: lot of federal land, mostly for service. We don't have
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of BLM or any other management. Um. A
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: lot of private timber company um. Idaho state land, Washington
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: state land, provincial land in British Columbia. So what's your like?
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: I don't understand what what's your mandate like? If you
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: work for you work for a tribal organization. Right, so
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the tribe, we're a small reservation. We only have about
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: five thousand acres on the reservation. So caribou were never
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: going to be on the reservation. But um, they're an
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: important species to the tribe historically there in the neighborhood.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: I guess twenty miles up the hill. Um So, the tribe,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: we don't have land ownership responsibility, but we have some
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: management responsibility through cooperative agreements. I got you, I got you,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: and then layout for me how you became to be
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: a biologist? Real quick? Like, what was sort of education
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: path does a fellow take. We're kids, we all were saying,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: we all would say we're gonna be wildlife biologists right
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: to my brothers. Did it? We just said, because it
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: seemed like a way you could spend a lot of
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: time outdoors. It is. It's a good job that way.
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  Speaker 1: Um So, I got a bachelor's degree back and I
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: grew up in Iowa, small town, kind of farm kid.
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  Speaker 1: Um went to Simpson College, got my bachelor's degree there,
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  Speaker 1: and moved west immediately after college. Moved to Washington State
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  Speaker 1: and started working on hydro power projects along the Columbia River,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and then eventually moved up into northeast Washington with the tribe.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Um again, the rivers in the Northwest are definitely where
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the jobs are at. Everything sort of tied to wildlife
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: mitigation or restoration projects that way. Uh, my brother who
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: is a fisheries guy, when he first came out west,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: it was hydro electric stuff on the Columbia Counting salmon. Yeah,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: that's pretty common sturgeon issues. Yeah, and then went on
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: to do all kinds of things he didn't know about
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: at the time. When you're growing up in Iowa, there's
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: no way you knew that there were caribou in the
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: lower forty eight, right, No way. You probably walk around
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood. I bet most people in Seattle wouldn't know
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: there's I live in Montana for years, Western Montana for
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: years before I would before I had the opportunity to
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: call bullshit on someone who's saying that caribo used to
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: come down in Idaho and Washington. I'm like, no, they
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: did not, idiot, I definitely did. People. Yeah, how is
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: it not known? Growing up in Montana, it was like
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: this Montana history fact, Like get caribou and Montana. Yeah,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: that's the only way I in Idaho. Now that I
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: live in Idaho, and I think we need to like
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: reiterate this Western or Eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana caribou. Do
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: we exist there? Nobody knows? Nobody knows and I the
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: wolf thing is so giant and nobody knows about cariboo
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: like it just drives me crazy. Sorry, go ahead, that's true,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: dries everybody crazy? How okay? This year, let me ask
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: you a handful questions to get people, just to get
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: people into what we're doing here, to know what's going on.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: One years the oh, I, let's do this at the
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: place of scene HOLI, scene transition ten tho years ago,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: pre human contact? How many caribou were running around possibly?
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: And what is now the lower forty eight? What was
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: like a hundred years ago? What's it like right now?
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: I can't I don't know anything about the place of
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: scene erea or anything like that during you know whatever,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: pre contact um a hundred years ago, there were hundreds
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: of caribou south of the border, there were enough. Teddy
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Roosevelt went on a guided hunt out of Priests Lake.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Did you get one? No? But he spent ten days
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: hiking around the Selkirk Mountains looking for him. So there
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: must have been a handful around to make him think
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: that he could experience some success. And what was their
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: range of hundred years ago? There are reports all the
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: way down to the St. Joe Um then in the
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: quarter lanes, but mostly um in the south. Selkirk sent
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: over into the cabinet area. And were these caribou a
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: hundred years ago just spending some other time in the
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Lower forty eight or is there a cariboo that would
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: be born and die and live their whole lives in Washington, Idaho?
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: They definitely um live their lives. There's enough habitat up
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: there to support a herd of cariboo for sure, throughout
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the year, throughout their life. Um. Right now, right now,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: they're still caribou that kind of flirt with the border
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: of both the States and Canada, and they kind of
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: bounce around all three areas. So right now, at this moment,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: is there a caribou and Lower forty eight? Uh, we
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: don't know, I guess when we have two collars out
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: right now, But it's possible. I bet there's a cariboo
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: within ten miles of the border. If there's not, what
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: kind of caribou we talk about a mountain cariboo? Do
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: you believe in all the distinctions they drove carib because
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: because you know how you have in taxonomy, you have
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: your lumpers and your splitters. There are people who look
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: at animals and they see this amazing uh tapestry of subspecies.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: And there's like the you know, the Aaron ground grizzly,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: the mountain grizzly, the coastal brown bear. And then you
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: have other people in taxonomy who say it's all one species.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: They just have They just look a little bit different
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: depending on where you go, but it's just one species.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I recently read that a guy arguing that that all caribou,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: even the ones in Eurasia, are just a species and
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: there's no reason to say that it's subspecies. Well, I
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: don't agree with that. Um. He acknowledged that he was
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: going out on a limb. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't agree
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: with that. I think there's you know again, there's lumpers
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: and their splitters. The caribou that we have in the
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: South Selkirk's um. What makes them unique to other mountain
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: caribou UM is their use of the high elevation country
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: during the wintertime, so they're eating lichens rbo lichens out
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: of trees is the old man's beard, the stuff you
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: see growing in the trees to get above the snow. Right,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: so they're standing on whatever eight foot of snow and
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: they're eating lichens that are out of reach the rest
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: of the year. And they're pretty much the only species
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: that can do that. Um. The only you know, deer
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: and moose and elk aren't up there, so they have
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: sort of a niche market because those animals all leave
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: right um. And historically moose and elk didn't really share
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: that habitat anyway, sort of a new thing, um due
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: to habitat change and other things. So the cariboo we have.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: If we took caribou from the north, you know, they're
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: still mountain Cariboo whatever, say we get them from Newfoundland
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: or something and we dropped them, Uh, they would not
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: know how to use that habitat. There's a possibility we
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: could train them though with um, you know, pen them
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: together and let them sort of co mingle long enough
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: and do kind of a soft release or something like that.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: But augmentations where you just take an animal from a
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: different ecotype and throw them down, it's been a failure.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Can you I'm gonna keep having you stopped to explain
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: thing that people might not know what you mean? Can
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: you just play in a hot release and or a
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: hard release and a soft release which is this is
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: some fascinating stuff. Yeah. Well, um, a hard release is
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: pretty basic. You're taking an animal, you're moving it from
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: one spot, and you're just wishing it luck and kicking
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: it loose into a new area, new habitat, type, new whatever,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: mountain range. Um. Some species you can do that with
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: pretty well. Big horn sheep you can't. You can't store
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: big horn sheep for very long. They'll kill themselves in
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: the pen. So you're pretty much stuck with doing hard
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: release with that kind of animal. Um Wolves, and they're
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: really easy. They're gonna they're gonna make a life for
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: themselves wherever you drop them hot or cold. Yeah, you
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: don't have to like sort of do a soft release.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: You don't have to do anything to temper them into
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: a new piece of habitat Caribou it seems that you do.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: You do got to do soft. What we're gonna do,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: you know, what we would like to do is build
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: sort of a pen or an enclosure and have a
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: few of our resident animals and then bring some other
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: animals out of one of these other herds and put
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: them all together and leave them to calve together in
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: the spring, and then you know, July or so opened
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: the gates and let them kind of come and go
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: at their leisure until they sort of figure out how
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: to use that landscape and hopefully they'll mother up to
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: that resident group of animals. I was first introduced to
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: those terms when I was researching a book I wrote
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: about buffalo or bison, and uh I did a hunt
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: for a group of introduced buffalo up on the Copper
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: River in Alaska, and it was a classic, like hot
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: released story where they took thirteen of them and put
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: them in the back of a truck and caught them
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: loose by a mine. And for decades everyone thought they
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: just all died, But then the herd turns up thriving
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: und fifty miles away. And then later people learned that
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: when you're dealing with those, you build a you know,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: an enclosure, let him just be in there and taken
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: care of him. One day, you just kind of leave
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the door open, right, But because you kick him out
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: the back of the truck, they don't know what happened,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: and they start and they just started moving trying to
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: find where they were coming from or whatever. Yeah, we
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: had um augmentation. Animals end up in Montana and end
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: up um down in Bonner's Ferry and the River Valley
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: in the wintertime, where you know, lots of predators, lions
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: were eating them, getting hit by cars and stuff like
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: that because they had no idea how to where they
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: were and what to do. They didn't know how to
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: use that landscape at all. Now, can I assume that? Uh?
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: And we got got questions. I just love this topic.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna be quiet and lets you and me
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: have run in the mountain Caribou. Yes, a little way,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: a little ways up into BC and Yanni a number
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: of times. Gorgeous, Oh my godgeous. Amazing. Actually, that one
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: we saw last year, we had to listen to him
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: rutting and grunting and wow. Nice. Yeah, it looked like
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: fabio man. Just like where was that at? It was
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: outside of Prince George. Okay, yeah, non migrantor they just live.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: They probably have some some amount of migration. They just
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: like are like glued to these mountain ranges. You know,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: they get up like in the north slope and you're
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: looking when you hunt cariboo as I like to do
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: open the north slope, you're looking at animals that probably
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: there's a very strong chance they've never been where they
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: are right now, right'd be like that might be his
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: first you think of animals, that's that was such a
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: defined sense of place, but you really care, like as
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: far as there's a very good chance that that thing
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: has never been in this valley before, just roaming, you know,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: hundreds of miles. I do have a question, why only
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: two collars? And is their ratio of collars? Ted? Don't
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: don't answer Cale's questions. We haven't established something. Hold it,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: we haven't established like what it is? Like what is it? Okay,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: lay off me the situation we used to have them.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Why don't we now is someone trying to do something
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: about it? Okay, well that we can. Then then we'll
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: do Cale's questions. Actually, they go pretty nicely. We had
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: six collars. No, no, not that not collars caribou. Well
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: that's the same story. Um So we had six collars
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: out and a pretty good cross section of the population,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: and we've seen all these sources of mortality sort of
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: pop up. Now that we have information on the caribou.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Um so we have to use our collar data to
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: sort of extrapolate any information that we get from this
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: or I'm trying to I'm trying to go way deeper
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: than that. Okay, Well we've lost animals too. Um. The
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: highway Highway three cuts right through their middle of their
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: habitat up in British Columbia. So we lose animals on
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: the highway. Um, we have significant habitat change. We've got
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of habitat protected up there. Um, a lot
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: of good intact old growth, a lot of good high
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: country for them to use. Um. So uh, what is
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: the like? Can you give me a sense of the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: the overall picture of caribou and caribou conservation in the
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: lower forty eight. Um, yeah, I can the We have
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: cariboo in the lower forty eight. They're in tough shape though. Um,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: there's been significant habitat changes, although we have lots of
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: places still protected. Um. There's like twelve cariboo left in
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: that South South Kirk herd twelve. Um, and they all
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: spend some of their they're all they all crossed back
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: and forth. Yeah, they're all right along the border. Um
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: a dozen, we're down to a dozen. Yeah, we had
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: where's like the next chunk of like their buddies or
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: cousins or the next herd to the north. Um. There
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: are fifteen suburbs in the in the south Selkirks, so
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: there are other herds around, um, but they're not connected anymore.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: There's development in the river bottom stuff like that. They
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: just so there's there's effectively a population of animals it
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: is not getting that is not breeding with another pot.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Relation to animals is only fifteen left twelve I'm sorry,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: twelve left right. Um. And that population was doing quite
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: well actually in the early two thousand's, like we were
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: on an increasing trend. We added up to like forty
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: six animals in two thousand, um, eight or nine. It's
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: such hard to have a numbers today. So they were increasing, increasing, increasing,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: they were doing pretty well. Um. And like I said,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: we have we have a lot of habitat protections in place. Um.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: You know, we have road closures, we have different things
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: happening to keep caribou safe. Um that the old growth
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: forest is chopped up a little bit, but there are
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: still places for them to find winter food, which is
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: a problem for some herds. UM. So kind of what's happened,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: I guess is we have all this habitat change and
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: we have all these fragmented habitats and um as we've
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: logged these things over the last whatever hundred years, we've
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: created this huge moose population. Okay, so they love that
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: second girl stuff. They love it. You have thirty year
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: old cuts are perfect for moose, and we have a
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: lot of those um so as. Moose have sort of
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: rolled into this country. They've bridged the gap between the
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: river bottoms which were white tailed deer and the caribou elevationally,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't a big deal until wolf recovery because
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: now we have this prey species from the river bottoms
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: to the moose up in the mid elevation to the
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: cariboo in the high country. So where before moose were
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: on the landscape, wolves and caribou coexisted because they didn't
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: really run into each other. Now they are encountering each
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: other more often, and we're getting um secondary predation, I
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: guess you'd call it because white tails have traditionally lived
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: along the right white areas, where you had white tails
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: in the riparian zones along the rivers, and they would
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: support the wolf population. Wolves knew about a new about
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: would hunt them right, and you had caribow up in
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the high country. And then moose came in, and now
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: a wolf would find good hunting at all these various
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: elevations and now finds cause to be drifting around up
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: in Cariboo Country. That's right. And the high moose population
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: as a it's a totally a result of the um
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: you know, wildfires and habitat change, I guess to logging. Um,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: as the moose population has grown pretty high, it maintained
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: sort of a I don't want to say an artificially
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: high level of wolves, but higher than what would have
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: been here historically. The hammer moves pretty hard there. Uh. Yeah,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: they support you know, moose and elk are certainly supporting
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the wolf population. UM. So since two thousand and nine,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: we you know, we documented our first wolf back in
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: northeast Washington in two thousand and nine, and we've seen
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: this precipitous decline in the caribou population from forty six
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: now to twelve over the course of just a few years.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: How uh, how contentious is that statement you just made?
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Not that contentious, you'd be surprised. Um. I think people
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: pretty much recognize that that's the problem. They do, Yeah,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: because you get a lot of people who one wolves
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: can do no harm, and you get a lot of
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: people who wolves do all harm well, and you've met
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: them both. Sure, Oh yeah, yeah, we see them both
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: for sure. The wolves are the it's it's additional. Um. Predation. No,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Lions were a big problem in the nineties for predation.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: And when a lion, you know, their specialists. So they
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: key in on our small subgroup of caribou and they
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: would kill all of them if you let them. We
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: had callers out then, and if that started happening, we
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: respond with dogs and chase the lion, kill it and
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the caribou. We're doing all right, like you could pinpoint
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: a specific line. Oh yeah, now, they're definitely specialist. I
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: remember reading a story and trapp rom Creditor call our
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: magazine when I was a kid in the eighties, and
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: it was about like a line they called like the
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollar lion because they had done a big
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: horn sheep reintroduction down in Arizona. The price tag on
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the sheep introduction was a hundred thousand and uh some
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: time moved in there and killed every single one of them.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: And they will, they will, they will key in on
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: a group and they're pretty effective. Um. Yeah, they had
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: one then whatever. They don't usually name animals or whatever,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: but they called this one Mr. Nasty and it was
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a big tom and he lived in the high country
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: and he was really tough on the Cariboo. Yeah, when
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: they got rid of him, the herd started coming back up.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: It made a difference in the population. Over how many
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: years was that line and they're doing it, I think
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: it was two or three years. And then you know,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: I started off kind of once one here and there,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: and then people started putting together like this thing is
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: causing a bunch of trouble, and we started accrediting a
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: lot of the kills to that one circumstances. It's so acute,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to say, no, that's not what's
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: going on, right, I mean, that's an easy that's an
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: easy fix. That's certainly easier than um the wolf problem.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: You know, we have there's other options. There's a place
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: in Canada in the Peace River area they went in
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: and wiped out most of the moose to help. Yeah,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: you know, you removed the moose, you removed the primary
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: prayer for the wolves and um over this wildly unpopular,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Like can you imagine trying to explain that to people
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: in the know British Columbia and North Idaho and Northeast Washington,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: that we're going to kill all the moose to say
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the cariboo. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't go. No, I I can't.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine. I don't like imagining having that conversation.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: My kids were watching one day an animated, uh like
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: cartoon movie and they call it, I don't know what
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: it's called. They call it Trapper Wolves. It's like the
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: plot because there's a wolf family, you gather, it's you know,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: brit BC. I gather and the bad guys are out
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: trying to live trap the wolves and try and come
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: out of helicopter. It's like the baby story, but the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: bad guys are biologists out trying to trank and relocate
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: wolves to save the caribou. Really yeah, I'm not kidding you.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: And then the wolves leave to get away, so it's
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: like but the end result is the same because it
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: wasn't the whole thing that you didn't want to get relocated.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: But then they go find a new place lift, which
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: is kind of what's gonna happen. It's a very confused plot.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Children's right, Yeah, but it's like at what point. Yeah,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: but it was just a lot easier when they're just
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: gonna go bad. I was gonna kill. It was like
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: the bad guys are like oddly Southern hillbillies, Southern hillbilly
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: biologists who are out trying to trank wolves to save cariboo.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: But they were bad. It's the weirdest program teaching kids
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: that ballogists are bad, Like, don't believe those ballotis. They're bad.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Not only bad, but from the South Caribou. Did they
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: have a set of tee ends every year they single cavers,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: single cavers. Yeah, reproducers and then they don't reproduce. Still
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: there two and a half, which is you know, also
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: cost you a year. Now. So when you guys got
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: rid of Mr Nasty the specialist Tom Mountain Lion, that
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: that next season, did you guys see a couple extra
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: calves or Yeah? It was pretty immediate. And obviously the
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: lines taking adult animals and subadults, it doesn't matter, um
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: they it was a pretty immediate difference when you got
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: rid of him. So a mountain cariboo waits those two
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: and a half to have a calf, Yeah, and then
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: it'll kick one out every year pretty much yeah, I
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: mean ideally our caribou um have all been in pretty
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: good condition. When when they're captured and um handled, they're
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: in good condition. They're almost always pregnant. So we have
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: you know, it tells you that their nutritional needs are
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: probably being met. So break down the college situation. Calhan,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: they asked you ask your collar question. You have my permission,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: so you said before you only have two collars? Out
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: is why? I mean, why only two colors? Is there
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: like a prime ratio between how many collars you would
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: have for your herd size? And as part of that,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: can you explain what you gain by why, what coloring
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: means and what what you gained by a collar or something? Sure? Um,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: well there's a you certainly gain a lot of information
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: by coloring the animals. Um. We figure out how they're
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: using the habitat where they're crossing the highway, which is
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: a big deal. Um. And then also you're figuring out
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: sources of mortality. So you put a GPS locator on. Yeah,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: their GPS colors and they have VHF during the daylight hour.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: So if we go up in an airplane, we can
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: go fly and find them that way. Um, So we
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: get one point a day um electronically on our computer
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: and then also with the VHF we can find them whenever. Um.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: So with the collar data, we're figuring out sources of mortality,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: which is really important. We're also figuring out calving areas,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: which is nice to know. Um, all this stuff you
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: didn't know before where they were. We had an idea. Um,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: you know, we know the type of habitat. But when
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: you're down to twelve animals, you start kind of pinpointing
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: like individual animals, right yeah, um, instead of thinking about
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: like that herd that heard, you're like that animal, right right. Um.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: So the reason we're down we started with six out
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: of I think we had seventeen animals in the herd
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: when we call heared, Um, we're down to two collars.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: One collar is on an animal but dead and so
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: we don't count that we have. And you shoot it
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: at it, You shoot a dart at it. These are
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: net gunned yet and you jump down. Yeah, and they
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: mug them, caller them. U take whatever samples we need
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: and they just call them loose? So where do you
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: steal from them? When you mug them? They're taking uh,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: everything we can. We're taking uh, you know, hair samples,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: genetic samples, a fecal um, getting weight, body weight, and
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: all the normal sort of majors um, and then also
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: fitting them with your tags and collars. UM. So once
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: we have these callers out, we can start figuring out
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: source of mortality. And since two thousand nine, like you said,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: this sort of precipitous decline that coincides almost perfectly with
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: wolf recovery, so we kind of all had an idea.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: But um, once we had the you know, the smoking
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: gun so to speak, with the wolves, UM, we were
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: able to move forward with actually a wolf call. And
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: in British Columbia they're using helicopters to kill wolves in
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: the recovery area. So I want to get to that
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: real bad But I'm gonna back up a couple of sticks.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: How do you know when it died, we get a
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: mortality signal of animals. UM doesn't move for I think
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: it's twenty four hours or maybe twelve hours. So if
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: a caller quits moving, UM it comes through in an
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: email you know, get whatever. Your smartphone goes off and
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: you know that you have a dead animal, and you know,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: um GPS coordinates and you hike in there. Yeah, yeah,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: are how far do you? How far? What's the kind
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: of extremes or is it just easy because the helicopters
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: to go find the thing. Once you get the mortality signal,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: we hike in. Um, we don't have the funding, just
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: just top in a helicopter whenever we want, so we
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: take off and walk in. It hasn't been too bad.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Most of We had one that was actually a vehicle
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: strike up on Highway three, so that was pretty easy
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: four yards down the hill. Um. We had a wolf
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: mortality that was a bit of a hike. Um, you know,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: and sort of that mid to high elevation stuff in
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: the summertime. Um, but a couple of miles. I mean,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: these things, it's it's pretty good backcountry area. But there's
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: still a lot of roads around, a lot of trails. Um,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: it's pretty accessible. You get the mortality signal and you
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: always want to go look. Oh yeah, now you're definitely
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: gonna go look. And what do you when you find
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: the animal? What kind of how how obvious is it? Like?
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: What it? Does? It have to be a trained I
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: or can can most anybody walk on and be like,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: oh I can tell what happened to this thing? Well,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: I mean it doesn't have to be that my training,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: I guess, but you shouldn't have an idea what to
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: look for. Can you tell a lion from a wolf? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: you would tell a line from wolf. The problem up
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: there is the bear population is so high. Um, they're
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: almost always scavenged um, which is a concern. That's a
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: grizzly bear recovery area also, so you know, you have
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: to kind of go in cautiously. You want to be
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: there's sort of a I don't know the last one
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: we walked in. Um, there was wolves in the area,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: there's bears in the areas, all this other stuff. So
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: you want to sneak in quietly enough that if there's
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: a wolf eating it, you can kill the wolf. Um.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: But if there's a bear on it, you want to
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: be making enough noise to spook the thing away and
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: don't get rushed if you, you know, show up ten
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: yards from it all of a sudden. Um. So what
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: are you looking at when you look at the carcass
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: to tell if it was a predation. Well, lion kills
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: are easy. They're generally buried, squirreled away up underneath the
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: tree or something like that. Um, we'll talk it up
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: against the tree and yeah, up against the rock bluff
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: or tree or whatever root wad something like that, and
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: they'll be covered with debris. Um, so what Um, they
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: usually go in behind the frenhhoulder and start starting the
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: lungs and stuff like that. If it's a lactating cow,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: they'll eat the utter in those areas. But um, you know,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: it just depends how long it's been there. They're gonna
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: eat it until like it's scavenged. Generally a soft tissue. Yeah.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: I heard a guy explain that, or his theory on
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: that is that when they get on, they don't know
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: how long they're going to have it before something gets it,
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: and like they generally go for that stuff that you
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: can just gobble down in a hurry, like longs liver,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: you know, and then work outward from the from the
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: easy stuff. Work, you know, work outward. Right, Yeah, that's
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: probably true. I don't know, I haven't really heard that
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: theory or read anything on it, but makes sense, and
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: it's just a guy making a guess about it. Sure,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: you know, liver and stuff like that's pretty high nutritional value. Yeah, Um,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: with twelve animals. Is it insanely hard to net gun
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: these things? Like do they just know the game inside
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: and out? They've got the game pretty well figured out.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: So we net gun the heard last when it was
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: and I wasn't on the aircraft that day. Um So
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: I was flying a fixed wing and we mark their
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: location and then we call the locate, a helicopter comes
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: in and netguns them. Um it's another reason, you know,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: he asked about why we put six colors out instead
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: of the whole herd or whatever else. There's um there's
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: a risk when you capture the animals that you'll kill them.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Right there's you could experience the capture my operate if
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: you have mug this thing and it just doesn't get
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: back to its feet, and then you have some explaining
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: to do. Um. So we kind of figured we'd heard
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: we'd do about a third of the herd if we could,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: and we tried to focus on cows because that's where
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: the best dad is going to come from. Why is that, Well,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: cows are certainly more important to the population. They're the
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: reproducers obviously, so and we're a little I don't know
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: if you can call the herb bowl heavy. Necessarily, when
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: there's like twelve animals, you're not really heavy and anything,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: you're light. Um. But we have probably a disproportionate number
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: of bowls, so we really needed to know more about
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the cows. Um, how do you tell I don't mean
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: to keep harping on this, which is of interest to me.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: How do you tell? Uh, so you know a lion?
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: How do you tell from a bear kill? Or do it? Doll?
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Bears hit them hard? Bears don't really hit them hard. Um.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Bears could be a source of calf mortality, but we
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: don't really know that. You know, if a calf dies,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: there's no way for us to know unless the cow
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: goes with it. Um. So bears may or may not
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: kill a few of the calves, but as far as
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: a dark adult mortality, they're not really a primary source.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Wolf kills are pretty spectacular. Um. The last wolf kill
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: we went into, it was just like a thirty hours
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: old maybe, so we got the more signal. Um. You know,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: I keep my passport in my work truck and I've
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: headed towards the border as soon as it came in,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: and so it's probably actually about twenty hours old. It's
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: fairly recent um and a group of what we think
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: maybe five or six wolves had killed this small bowl,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: and three or four of us went in. Um the
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: animals were gone, and we found the caller with a
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: pretty good scrap of the hide, maybe six ft of
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: the hide, but um, not much meat attach to that
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: from three of the legs and one of the antlers,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: and skull was all crushed apart of course. Um. But
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: we put I mean I put all of the caribou
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: remains in my backpack and walked out. And this thing
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: was fresh like it didn't it didn't smell bad. It
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: was like it was fresh. So they when wolves kill it,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: you know, it's they don't leave a lot. And then
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: they're eating the ribs, they're eating most of the bones.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Wo man um. And the head's crushed kind of I
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: want to he said, of course, because they're they're Yeah,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: you said, of course, so they're going after the brain
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: matter and yeahs and yeah, I don't chew on the head.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: I've left. I've come back to where we've killed elk
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: after grizzlies got on what you what we left, and
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: you'll find some balls of hair and then the back
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: of the skull. Yeah, it's pretty tough back there. Everything
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: like the frame and the area around the hole that
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: your spinal cord goes in. You'll find like a soft
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: ball sized hunk of that or not to eat the
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: entire face off that thing. Yep ye pass bone fragments
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: all over the place, right and you know you find
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: the room and content with the guts are gone, and
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: you find a big one like someone empty out a
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: bag of lawnmowre clippings. They ate the stomach but left
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: the yep. Um, So if we found a you know,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: a more complete carcass. The one we found that was
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: struck on the highway was fed on by wolves and
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: also had a black bear on it when we showed up. Um,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: so we're throwing sticks at that thing, trying to scare
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: him away, and so I got hit by a car. Yeah,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: wolves came, found it, ate some, a bear came, started
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: eating some more. And how much time had passed? Um
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: one day? I mean this is a predator rich environment.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: So it's like four d yards off the main highway. Um,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: you know, we found as much scrap as we can.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: We only found one premortal bite mark, so probably killed
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: by some you know, finished off, I guess so you
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: can analyze the hide and tell what bites that were
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: alive and bites that were not. Sure. Yeah, you know,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: if there's bruising on bite mark, you generally can kind
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: of guess that it was alive when it was you know,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: chewed on. Yeah, I heard that because I remember this
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: guy up in Alaska gold miner I think it's a
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: plast or miner found a uh a step bison, I
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: think bison ladder frons he used to call it. I
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: can't remember which one, but like a longhorn bison, and
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: it had been preyed on by an American lion, like
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: a lion species that used to live in the Great
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Plains and up into Alaska. And they could tell by
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: the this thing was so well preserved in the perma frost.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: They could tell where it had been bit before it died.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: Bruising was still hit it on the base of the neck, yeah,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: because they had like bled there and the rest of
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: the body where the chewed hadn't bled through. So when
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: you can only pack out a six foot chunka hide,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: you can tell that you can tell that kind of
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: stuff from it. Well, we're looking at it in the
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: field and trying to make a decision out there. But yeah,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: we're gonna pack it out anyway we get if it's
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: not a colored animal. You know, we found two dead
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: caribou or earlier this month. Um a hiker reported him
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: and one of the tribal biologist from the Kouteney tribe
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: hiked up and gathered those kill those. We have no
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: idea people, No, probably not. Is poaching a big problem
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: with those caribous. It hasn't been in a long time.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Most people that hunt up there, no, and their signs
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: and you know, educational materials scattered out in the woods. Um, now,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: it wasn't poached. It was a really nice bowl, actually
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: a big set antlers still laying up there intact um.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: But no saying what happened to it? No, no idea.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: There's two of them near one another, which maybe makes
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: you think there's a predator work in that area, but
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: it's anybody's guess. And then tell me you get the
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: number you had collared at one time. We had six
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: at one time, and there was how many alive at
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: that time? I think they were seventeen and they herd
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: then and so the four that died with have you
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: continuously collared throughout that period, or you just had six
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: and now you have to write, Yeah, we set we
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: put six out at one time, like two years ago.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: One of those callers has died and three of those
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: cariboo have died, So we have two callers still working
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: for us, and then the three that died won't get
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: hit by a car. One got hit by a car
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: and UM to re wolf mortalities and is the risk
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: just too high at this point with the twelve animal
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: group to try to call her anything else? Um, We've
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: talked about callering some more. UM, we're trying to put
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: together a program. We're trying to come up with a
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: plan to you know, augment the herd and do some
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: other stuff. And we want to do everything kind of
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: at once, so we're not handling his animals more than
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: we have to. I got you. You don't wanna be
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: out her asked them all the time, right, and you know,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: like you asked. They do get smart about the helicopter
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: when they you know, animals that have been captured by
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: helicopter figure that out pretty quickly. And they're in tough
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: enough country that UM, if they really put their mind
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: to it, they could get away. From helicopter easily. Um.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: I got a buddy who is a waterfowl researcher, and
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: he did a lot of capture netting for birds, and
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: he was very uh always very free of killing the
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: birds and his count he wasn't getting enough birds, he
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: wasn't getting data on enough birds. And he was telling
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: me how his advisor at the time said, if you're
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: not killing birds, you're not working hard enough. I mean,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: like get out there and get data. But with this,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: with the population, the size you're talking about, it's one
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: thing if you're doing mallards right, if you kill you know,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: eight percent of the population with one bad shot, you've
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: got some explaining. Yeah. I imagine if you guys, if
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: you guys had a mortality would make it would make
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: the news probably, Yeah. Yeah. So is it growing right
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: now or shrinking? It's pretty steady right now. Well, I
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: mean whatever, we were at fifteen a few years ago
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: and we're at twelve now. So, um, we have some
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: documented reproduction this year. We've got some calves on trail camera,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: so that's good. Um. The only real complete census we
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: gets to during the wintertime, like March will fly and
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: count the animals again. But right now you know that
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: twelve don't stay together, They sprinkle out across the landscape
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: in ones and twos. Yeah, so any real sense this
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: this time of years impossible? What's explained augmentation? How that
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: would work? Well? Hopefully, UM, it'll be, like I said,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: a soft release. We'll bring some animals in from one
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: of the British Columbia herds that's nearby. Um, hopefully we'll
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: get animals that kind of know how to use that
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: landscape they stay high in the wintertime. Um. If we don't,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: we I would still want to augument augment. Even if
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: we had animals that maybe didn't know that routine, we'd
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: hope that we could train them. Um. You know this
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: are the people who who the source heard, the people
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: whose jurisdiction at is. Are they open to the idea
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: of you taking of some animals coming from their herds
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: to augment. They're not too excited about it. We've made
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: a formal request. We're working on working out details on
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But herds all across that southern
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: part of the Selkirks are in a decline. That's what
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I can imagine. So someone's like, just because I got
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: a hunter doesn't mean I feel like I got animals
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: to spare right. Um, that herd has declined, you know,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: the main herd of whatever we call this a suburb,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: the main herd has declined pretty significantly. There's efforts going on. Um,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: there's maternal penning efforts going on in two different places
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: in Canada where they're capturing cows that are pregnant and
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: putting them in a pen and trying to rear them,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: rear the calves to like three months four months old
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: before they turn them loose, because to give them an
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: enhanced chance that they'll survive, because their highest chance of
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: getting killed is early in life. And um, those wolves
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: cows uh up there, Well, they've done a pretty serious
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: wolf removal in those areas. So where they're turning those
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: animals loose, they've done it's serious wolf removal. And um
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: that has helped. Uh. A lion actually killed like four
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: animals at one time up there, right after the lease.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: So you look at this weird spike in the data
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: and it's like you got to kind of put an
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: asterisk next to that. That's something that maybe we didn't
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: know we could have avoided, but now we know it's
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: probably not gonna happen again. Do you get involved in
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: the predator control? Uh? Not really. UM, I have hounds
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: if if a if a lion killed a caribou, I
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: would be up there with the dogs. That hasn't happened
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: since we put the callers out, but I would obviously
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: drop what I was doing to get the dogs up
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: there and take care of that. So you're a lion hunter, right,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Can I come with you lion hunt? Yeah? You had
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: some of my lion last year in Missoula. That was
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: your lion. Yeah, Nick Clara. When I joined the little contest,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: I didn't even get a participation award, so I remember that.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: So when um, so you hunt lions, but you haven't
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: personally gone after the lions that were after the caribou, Well,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: um like, whose job is that? Nobody has that job necessarily? UM.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I work for the outfit orup at Priest Lake um
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Selkirk Guiding Outfitting as the area that goes all the
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: way to the Canadian border, and we target those animals
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: early in the season, but as the snow gets too deep,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: it ends up being a thirty mile snowmobile ride just
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: to get to the you know, any good areas. So
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: early in the season we try to take out some
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: animals UM that are in the that are potential caribou
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: predator in the caribou cover recoveryswn right. But that's completely
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: just your own legal over to counter lion hunting have
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with with government sanctioned predator control. Now
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: there's none of that. There has been some you know,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: there's no female quota up in the Panhandle, there's no UM.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: You know, anybody can buy a tag over the counter
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff that you can run hounds in Idaho.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: You you can't do that in Washington. UM. In British
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Columbia they've I think they've allowed hound under to take
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: two cats per winter or whatever. But it's just this
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: remote it's about country stuff. It's tough to access UM.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: You know, in the wintertime, you the cats moved down low,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: the caribou stay a pie. You could kill a cat
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: that may or may not ever travel to that high country.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: So you really don't know if you're getting the right
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: cat or not. And is the wolf control in the
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Let me get this straight first, in the US, so
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: I know that these animals are on the boarder moving
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: back and forth. But in the US portion of the
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: range or in like what we'd call immediately potential range,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: like a place that could very well maybe next month,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: might have a care we want it is the US
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: doing in a like in a government way, are they
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: doing predator control? No, to assist cariboo? But Canada is
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Canada is and what what is the argument against doing
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: it to facilitate the come back a caribou in the
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: US like predator protectionists or what is it? Remember you're
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: dealing with um. Wildlife is managed by the states now,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: So we have these we have two different jurisdictions. There
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: are actually three if you can't Canada. Right. So you've
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: got North Idaho where wolf finding is liberalized. UM. But
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: it's hard, it's thick, it's steep. Um. There's a couple
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: of trappers up there that are finding some success. But
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: there's no government effort. There's no bounty, there's no anything
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: like that. UM. Washington, the wolves are still a protected species.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: We can't trap them, we can't hunt them. UM. So
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: those wolves on that side of the border safe. Um.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: There's no real government UM control effort. There's no like
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: I said, bounties anything else. Idaho has done what it
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: could with um liberalizing the seasons. But yeah, I don't
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: think we're going to see any kind of government effort
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: to kill wolves in the States. It's it's just too
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: contentious of an issue with big groups. Yeah, but you
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: feel that there is a convincing case to make beer,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: there is a case to make that that would be
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: one of the steps. I'm not saying an advocators that
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: would be one of the steps towards recovering caribou. It's
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: it is a very important step. And it's been interesting,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: um watching people kind of come around as they learn
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: more about this, the caribou situation. And we've had, you know,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: conservation groups even not come out with like raving support
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: of the wolf call, but like saying, we've recognize that
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: it has to happen. We don't like it, but to
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: save this species, we know that that's part of the deal. Um.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: So if we can get groups even to come on
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: with that kind of support, that's fine. Um, we're not
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: asking for their money. We don't expect him to pay
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: for the wolf removal, but they need to recognize that
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: if we're going to save cariboo, it's gonna have to
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: be sort of a predator free zone for a little while. Now,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: let me ask you a questions will probably make you uncomfortable,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: maybe not. Let's say God came down from outer space
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: and said, you have ab flute authority. You are the
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: cariboos are okay, and I'm tasking you with recovering cariboun
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: and lower forty eight. If you fail, I will kill
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: every human on Earth. What are the things that you
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: would do? And you have three things? You can do
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: three things? Okay? Well, or everyone on Earth dies. Well,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: they're they're they're multiprogued. It's like a dream. They're a
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: nightmare there. It's a multi pronged approach. So we would
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: have to supplement the herd. We absolutely have to bring
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: new animals in or we're gonna start seeing genetic drift
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: and issues. Genetically, it's where you get this small isolated population.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: They basically become so inbred that their productivity falls. So
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: we would start saying that we have to bring animals in.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: And if I could just snap my fingers and like
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: get animals, I'd get all of them. And the complications
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: there are you want to draw animals who are coming
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: from a similar habitat type and know how to utilize
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: the environment. However, all of those animals are coming from
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: herds that themselves are in questionable condition, right, that's right? Um,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: so I guess if I could, let's let's get rid
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: of your situation and just make a more perfect situation,
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: like if I had unlimited money and like support from
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: and everyone doesn't have to die. That's right, I've got
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: got on my side. But but nobody has to die
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: in this Okay. So yeah, you're just like you have
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: like unlimited you have unlimited fund right, So in a
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: perfect world, um, we could get our hands on a
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: handful of cariboo from all of these groups for a
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: couple of years, how many you know, if we put
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: I think if we put probably ten a year for
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: a few years out there. Oh, did you say that
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: you're essentially willing to borrow them? We would we would
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: be willing to borrow them once we recover. If we
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: could get if we could make that herd into a
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: source population, that would be fantastic. Obviously that's going to
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: be down the road a little ways. But we were,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: like I said, we were on a pretty strong upward trajectory.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: We were going from you know, twenty six animals to
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: forty six animals in the course of you know, half
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: a decade or something. So we were doing really well.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: Kentucky can sucky. You look at their elk population. They
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: got elk from other states and now they will lead
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: source heard for eastern elk population. And look at isn't
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: the same case with the now Nevak muskox. Yeah, but
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: that's kind of confused because that's yeah, but yes, yes, right,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: so we've experimental population turn lois and and it later
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: becomes a source for for re stocking. Or we've got yeah,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: we've got big horn cheap and the same area as
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: the as the caribou that are a source population and
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: have been for years. Um so you can so you
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: can borrow. Just letting everybody know he can borrow the
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: animals and give them back later. Yeah, it's a high
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: interest loan, we get that. But um so if we
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: take these animals, we could then do our maternal pen
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: We'd capture some of our resident animals, um let them
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: cav with the and you know, let all the cows
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: have together all of our augmentation animals are our resident animals,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: and give them three or four months in the pen
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: to sort of commingle no one another whatever and kick
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: him loose. And um, recognizing that the augmentation animals are
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: going to have probably higher mortality. Um, but we'd have
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: collars on all of them. Once you're handling them, you
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: may as well put a collar higher mortalities that they
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: don't know the ins and out. Yeah, yeah, you're just
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: gonna have that. And that's we recognize that's probably going
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: to be part of the deal. But um, even if
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: you had you know, se mortality, that'd be fantastic survival,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: that'd be fantastic. Um. So if we could do that
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: for several years, we could get this trajectory back. And
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: you know, like I said, the habitat protections are in place.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: If we continued with the wolf control, and you know,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we need to ramp up the
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: cougar control or anything else. Bears aren't really a big problem,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: but um, you know, keep kind of doing what we're doing.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: We just need animals, all right. Do you remember do
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: you remember long ago when they we're trying to really
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: they're trying to recover the Florida panther. Okay, and there
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: was a period time when people thought the Florida panther
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: was gone and some lion hunter down No, a guy
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: down there kept saying, no, there's some still here. This
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: is interesting story. H a guy down there and says, no,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: there's still some around. People like, oh, bullshit, they're all gone.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: He goes and find some lion hunter from Arizona, has
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: him come out to Florida and they start pounding lions
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: and people are like, jeez stop. He goes, just stop
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: telling me there's none here, because here's a pile of
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: dead ones. You know later. Um, they wanted to recover,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: and they tried all this kind of stuff, and there
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: was a lot of and some people came up with
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: this idea like, okay, what is the Florida panther? Like, sure,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: we're gonna lose the Florida panther, but let's try to
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: least save the idea of panthers in Florida. And what
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: they wanted to do was let's just go get some
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: from the Rocky Mountains. It's like it's the same species.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: They they are like there their offspringers sexually viable, right right.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: But some you are so fixated on saving the Florida
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: panther that they were willing to let panthers in Florida
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: go away. If they couldn't save like that population, why
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: not go get a whole shipload of him from Alaska
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: and just cross your fingers, like you're down to fifteen
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: twelve embarrassing, it's embarrassing you're down to twelve. Like, how
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: let's say five years from now, you're out. Not just
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: I'm not just saying like you with like it's your fault,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: but five years from now, people involved in this effort
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: are still going. Please, how about a few carib you
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: over here? Like what is the argument being, Like, Okay,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: let's do Plan B. It's not as good, but it's
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: viable that we could go get two hundred of the things. Well,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: like I said, I don't know if we can train
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: other you know, like if we could go back to whatever,
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: Newfoundland or someplace and get a bunch of mountain Cariboo
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: that kind of know the steep landscape that aren't huge migrators.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I mean that would be the big problem. Right, you
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: drop a bunch of these and they're just gonna split,
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: They're gonna cruise someplace. Um, so then your money's gone. Yeah,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: your money's gone to carry who who knows what right
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: down an idole and you've burned a ton of like
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: social capital to right you just like you played your hand. Yeah, yeah,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: So you want to try to do something that's gonna work. Um,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: I mean I knew there was a good answer for it,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: but it's just something that you know, Yeah, that's a
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: that's a tough one. Um. If we got animals, like
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: I said, there are other Mountain Cariboo that that dropped
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: to lower elevation in the winter, there's a possible possibility
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: that we could sort of change that behavior. But that's
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: that's a pretty strong instinct for some of them. Like
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: I said, we're just going to experience mortality if we
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: do that, and people just need to recognize that, Like
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: if we get mortality, that's still fift percent survival. That's
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: something that's you know, additive to the herd. So it
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: really seems like the best thing to do is try
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: to get some of these ones from a bit north, right,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: we should go and get some of those ones we
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: know about. Cal got a horse trailer. I like, like,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: I'm down horse trailer a biology. Yeah, they used to
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: be do you remember never mind it's such a weird digression. Um, okay,
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: what else? You still have powers? Ultimate power? That's it.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: It's a short list. Yeah, I don't We don't need magic.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: We just need some animals. Said, with habitat protections are
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: pretty much in place, I would do a highway like
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: a wildlife overpass on Highway three because animals like they
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: flip with that highway all the time. There's actually I've
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: got a fantastic photo somebody emailed me of an awesome
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: bowl caribou and two cows and a calf and they're
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: standing on the shoulder of the road. They're lick. They
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: still use salt on the highway. I would change that. Yeah.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: So they're down there looking and there's the cariboo warning
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: sign and in the background like there's a semi bearing
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: down on him. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: just a fantastic photo. Shows all these problems. Um. So yeah,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: if we had a wild life wild life over I
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: know you mentioned over I was reading the piece about
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: overpasses and underpasses, and when I've done the underpasses, they
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: found a correlation between animals willingness to use it. Uh
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: with the steepness of the walls. They found that when
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: walls got to a certain pitch and they couldn't see,
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: they did not want to go through that thing. The
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: ones where they pitched the walls out enough where he
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: didn't feel like he was going beneath a ledge, there
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: were more willing to use it, and they preferred overpasses
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: to underpasses. Really interesting visibility. It's a tough sell to
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: be like, hey man, go into this here box canyon right,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: especially for it on the genetic side of things, UM, like,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: what do you think you're timeline is with your You
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: got twelve incredibly valuable careby right now twelve? Like, what's
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: your time frame? When are you like, we need new
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: genetics in this herd by this time or you know else,
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: everybody's going to be the slow cousin. We I don't
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: think anybody's really Um came up with a definite timeline
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: that way. Obviously, we're trying to just stop the bleeding
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: from this herd, right like genetics or because it was
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: sixty one, it was forty six, maybe up to fifty,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: I can't remember for sure. In two thousand nine, Um,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: when did you come on? I started working on the
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: Cariboo project don't half a decade ago, five years or so. Yeah,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: so you've seen a lot of this playout. Yeah, yeah,
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: from the basic wolf recovery onward. It seemed like the
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: bad years. So you wouldn't in this and playing god.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: You want more animals and he wasn't playing God's giving
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: him the power. Sorry sorry, extension of um, but you
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: have uh, you have more credits. You have trying to
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: fix some of like to have that fragmentation which is
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: that highway right doing an overpass, but not any kind
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: of predator control. No, I would still have predator control going. Yeah,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: those are the kind of those are the three big
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: ones you know that would be aggressive like it's going
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: on up in British Columbia. Yeah, it would be you know,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: targeted wolf removal. We're not we're not anti wolf, and
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: I don't want to come off that way. Um. We
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: don't mind having wolves on landscape, that's just part of
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: the deal. Um, we don't. We don't want them cohabitating
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: with the cariboo right now because there's population for sure
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: right now, if we had we had a thousand caribou,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't make any difference if a one got picked
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: off every once in a while. This is pretty incidental.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: You know, obviously wolves aren't making a living on the Cariboo,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't last long. Um, but any incidental take when
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: you have just a handful of animals is pretty critical.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: So yeah, we would can tenue with the predator control.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: Um hm, what percent chances it that they'll all die?
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know, likely or not likely? Um, well, at
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: least you know from thecaun once there's four, they're done, right,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a point at which they're done. There's
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: a point and I don't think anybody wants to think
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: about that. I don't know what that number would be. Um,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: the Couspell tribe, you know that, my boss. We're not
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: gonna quit working on the Caribou until they're gone all
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: the way. But it won't. And if they're gone though, right,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: because then you can still there's still a recovery area,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: there's still all of such stuff. But um, I mean,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: if we can't get animals dogment the population when there's
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: animals there, imagine imagine trying to put those political strings
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: and get it'd be impossible. Are you married? I am? Okay?
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: You come home and you're like I don't know what
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: the point is. There's uh my, I feel like I
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: went I have the wrong career. Why do I bother?
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: And your wife wants to cheer you up? She says, well,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: I've been. Stacy's super supportive of the cariboo stuff. She
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: cares about the cariboo. And why why does anybody care
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: about the cariboo? Well, I think because it's the right
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: thing to do. Yeah, I mean I was listening to
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: a thing where, uh, Donald Trump was talking about how
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: they should they there's no reason to let water out
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: of the Sacramento River because it's just a stupid three
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: inch fish, and he was kind of ridiculing the fish,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: the delta smelt. He's like teasing the delta smelt. I
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: imagine a lot of people who kind of tease the cariboo.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: Right there's a petition right now to get them delisted,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: like it's the most imperiled species in the lower forty
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: eight And there's a petition in front of the US
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife Service to take them off of the
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: dangered Species list and remove the recovery area. Um motivated
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: by that's by the snowmobile closure. You know they've closed
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: winter recreate up there, um in a big portion of
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: north Idaho and northeast Washington and Canada and um, those
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: groups are upset and they whatever, maybe they have something
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: of a point that cariboo haven't been in some of
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: that area for a long time. There's maybe an opportunity
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: to have that talk with them. But you know, to
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: pull the animal off the list and remove the recovery
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: areas ridiculous. Yeah, so it's not the most to animal.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: They just want to remove the recovery area right, recovery restrictions. Sure,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: and there are people that you know, they see the
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: cost of what this stuff, you know, is gonna and
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: in total, I hate to even guess what it might
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: cost to recover cariboo. Like in your perfect world, I
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: have unlimited but funding. Right, But why do people not
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: even know about the cariboo? I mean that's only a right. Yeah,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know, or you know, I don't know, but
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: you know, they're having so much crazy emphasis on the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: last big reintroduction success story and protecting that big success
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: story to crazy extent. Like, but here's this twelve animal
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: her grizzlies in Montana, and people act like they know
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: them all by name and like if they're gonna deal
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: delist grizzlies in the Greater Yelstone ecosystem everything, But what
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: if Old Snaggle scar Face gets killed? What happens? Then
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: people don't even know here? You got where you could
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: actually know all their names, and people don't know or
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: care that they're there. How do they not make the
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: charismatic megafonal list? You? Yeah, you just took the words
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: out of my mouth. They're not charismatic enough. I don't
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: know they're They don't pay the bills right. There are
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: no conservation groups getting on board with Cariboo recovery because
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: you're not gonna get, um, some crazy cat lady in
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: New York City to send you forty bucks to save
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: the Cariboo. She doesn't care about the save someone with
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: closet teeth she will absolutely care about um. So people
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: maybe they just don't relate to care. But I don't know.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: Have you spent much have you got to spend much
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: time up in the areas open good Cariboo country? Yeah?
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: Just amazing, It's fantastic, it's beautiful. You know, we've hunted
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: up there where be there for a few days and
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: every day hundreds come through. Yeah, you can never not
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: see them. I haven't spent time in that Cariboo country.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: I've also hiked my ass off trying to find one.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: But I'm saying I did have the experience of like
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: whatever he dreams about, right, and they're just like coming
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: and coming and coming and coming coming. Then you wake
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: up the next day and they're coming and coming coming.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: It's not even hunting. It's like you sort of event
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: should be like, Okay, we should probably go get one.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: I guess it's just like it's like observation. The places
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: that these Cariboo live are fantastic. In this helkirks, dude,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: there's you know, there's links, there's wolverine, there's fishers, um.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: You know, this whole suite of rare and cool species
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: um that a lot of people don't really realize we
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: have up there. It's pretty fantastic country. Really well. I
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: look at things, I always trying to like draw to
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: make definitions, you know, or try to struggle to find
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: um ways to qualify stuff. And one way, when I
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: think of wilderness right a way to define it, and
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: it's a very difficult term to deal with. But I
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: always think a barometer of wilderness would be that the
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: species are intact, right that, like, all the pieces are there.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: I realized that's tricky because that means you're kind of
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: that definition is bad, not bad, but that definition isn't
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: great because you're sort of ruling out the possibility of
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: wilderness in the eastern US, right. And that's the same degree,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: you know with the delisting the group that wants to
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: or whatever. If cariboo, let's say cariboo did go away,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: the recovery area would exist still, um okay, it would
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: take an effort to get that recovery area removed because
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: you know that's still potentially caribou habitat um. So people
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: don't really recognize that. Um you know with the wilderness thing. Yeah,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: I'm sort of represented to say that the species have
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: to be there, but certainly, like you said, the pieces
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: have to be there. The the the habitat to meet
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: the life needs of that species should be there. What
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: was the last legally killed cariboo by a hunter in
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: the US? I feel like it's in the twenties, wasn't it. No,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: it was later than that. I want to think it
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: was like ninety nine or something, but I could be wrong,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: Like I legally killed one. Do you know where it was?
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: I don't remember reading the thing about it. I can't
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: remember what it was. I know that there was a
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: couple of poached and maybe the nineties even pretty late,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: poached by dudes who wanted the heads or poached by
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: dudes were piste off about caribou and piste off about
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act issues. Well, we don't know. Um, we
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: wouldn't we were, We wouldn't know either of those cases,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: right because somebody that's piste off about the cariboo is
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: probably not going to poach one and then go down
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: and turn it in. These were mistaken identities. These are
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: people that killed a cariboo and thought it was something
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: else and they self reported or whatever. Dude, people shoot
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: llamas thinking their elk to hang that up, and he
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: was a Native Montana. I remember going to a fishing
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: game check station and seeing the thing they had the
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: thing up says, this is a lama, this is this
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: is an elk, This is a llama. This is the
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: dolly lava. What I thought was funny about that. Okay,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: he makes the mistake, right, he makes mistakes, which is bad.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, you shouldn't do that. Anyways, but then he
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: brings it to the check station like his an actual
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: cow elk packed it out, probably got it in. One
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: question I have for you is that like hunters have
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: been you know this this they've been part of this
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: great restoration across the country, right and so, um, you know,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: white tailed deer, elk, antelope, turkeys, they've all come back
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: because of hunters. And so you have this caribou population,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: which it would take. It sounds like a long long
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: time before would ever have a hunting population of cariba.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: You you probably remove that from your life goals. Cariboan.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: It's a species. We've done it before. Like I just
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: I guess that question is so like when you talk
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: about like the snow billers, they don't like like them
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: because of the area got show on. I get that piece,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: But why aren't hunters more engaged in trying to like
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: establish this population And is that part of the whole
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: conversation that you guys are having. Um, well, I don't
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: know that it's really part of the conversation. It's certainly
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: frustrating though, Um there's such a cool species in there. Whatever.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: You know, you talk about what hunters want different things,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: and some hunters want cariboo back because it's the right
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: thing to do, and they recognize they're probably never gonna
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: get the opportunity to hunt one. Um. But you know,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: they're they're antler to body size ratio is like the
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: highest in the deer family. They have huge antlers for
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: their body size. They're very you know, they're cool animal
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: of heavier horns than the barren ground animals. They're they're
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: beautiful animal. It would be fantastic to hunt one someday,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: or for our grandkids to hunt one someday. Um. I'm
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: sort of surprised the hunting community hasn't jumped on board more. Um.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: There was a group the in the Northwest Wildlife Council
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: was a big partner in the original augmentation and they
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: had people helping and they put up money and stuff
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: like that. So that's kind of the last sort of
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: hunting group that coughed anything up. Did they walk away
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: because it just wasn't working the way they wanted? Um, No,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: they walked it. They walked away because the project was
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: over and it was working, he said, and they the
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: cariboo were coming back. That's what people. You know, this
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: hasn't been like the slow decline. This has happened quickly,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: and we have a pretty good idea why we're not. Yeah,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: I'm guilty. This is coming from a guy who's guilty
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: of not having not done diddly squat towards helping Cariboan
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: you know, in lower forty eight. Like, I haven't done anything.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: I'm just learning about it right now. Um. But I
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: do think that people I should care about this kind
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: of thing and be involved in it, because I don't
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: think it's right to have animals vanish from the face
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: of the earth because of things as we've screwed up.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: And I don't care if you need to draw the
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: inspiration to adhere by that from religion or just as
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: a humanist or wherever it comes from. It's just like
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: it just seems to me categorically wrong. Two two eliminate
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: species from Earth, you know, Yeah, I totally agree. It's
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: like just a sin um in all things. It's like
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: whether you feel that we have been given domain or
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: the earth, or whether we just happen to need to
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: feel that way, you know what, we got it from
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: a celestial being or not. Uh, we just can't let
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: things go, let things vanish. I think The reason that
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: kind of falls under hunters per view is because hunters
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: have done recovery of all of big game animals, and
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: it's like, just because I think we have to take
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: responsibility for big game animals, even if they're not going
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: to be our game, you know. And uh, I think
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: that the guys who first got involved in recovering big
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: horn sheep, we're not We're hardly motivated by the idea
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: of somebody, I'm gonna get to hunt one. I met
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of guys who worked down the Kentucky Elk
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: reintroduction who have given their entire volunteer lives and what
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: are the odds of them ever drawn a tank? They'll
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: never do it. The guys who know most about those
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: animals and work hardest on behalf of those animals never
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: hunt them. You know. It's not always it's not always
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: about like what can I hunt one? You know this
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: people don't look at it that way. Um, they're sort
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: of a it's a weird thing, and it's this intrinsic
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: reward or whatever that we get from the recovery effort.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: But it's the same feeling probably that the cat lady
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: in New York gets sent in forty bucks to save
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: a wolf. Right, She's probably never gonna see a wolf,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: she's never gonna hear a wolf howl, but it means
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: something to her that they're there, So yeah, I likely
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: to similar kind of thing I argue in favor quite
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: often lately of of delisting grizzlies in the Greater Elstone ecosystem,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: and people are often like, oh, yeah, because you want
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: to hunt with's like one, I don't. It would take
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: me a long time to explain what I why I don't.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: But I don't. I will never if I could put
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: it in for a tag, right, I want to put
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: it for It's just I'm not interested in that population
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: in that way. Um. Two, if I did want to,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: I would have probably, you know, somewhere well less than
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: point to five or a quarter of a percent or
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: so odds of ever drawing the tag, particularly as a
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: non resident. It's gonna be a lottery draw. If they
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: do do a hunt, they're gonna be giving out a
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: handful of tags. They're gonna have hundreds of thousands of applicants.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: You're not gonna do it, but people can't help. But
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: just make that jump that like you must be in
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: this for something some dark motivation. It would be a
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: good a way to prove them wrong for hunters to
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: get involved in this and look at a it's a
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: depleted game species. It's not like putting turkeys on the
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: ground where in five years you're gonna be hunting for
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: the things. It's just you're not. But we should almost
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: I feel like hunters should, especially people who live around
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: that area, get involved in the same way that we've
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: always gotten involved in recovering wildlife. It's just a long,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: slow process. Yeah, maybe some time in two hundred years
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: or a hundred years it's gonna be hunting season form.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: Who knows. I tend to doubt it. Well, right right now,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: there's a group and it's pretty much all agency folks
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: putting together a plan. But um, you know, when there's
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: a decision made, there will be an opportunity for people
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: to step forward. And we've talked about actually I've volunteered
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: backgount trainers and anglers. Is um working on the maternal pen.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: If we ever have a this maternal pen, it's gonna
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: be rad It's gonna be way up in the mountains.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: It's gonna be like you know, ten acre pen with
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: a wall tent in a cabin that we have to
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: maintain throughout the whole winter, and it's gonna be probably
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: a volunteer effort. So I mean, there are going to
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: be opportunities for people to step to the plate um
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: Right now, there's not unless you want to go you know,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: cougar hunting in north Idaho or northeast Washington, or go
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: wolf funding or something like that. You can you know,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: play that kind of role. But um, there's not a
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: lot of things for people to do right now. You know. No,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: hopefully people you know, it gets to be more of
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: a mainstream conversation and people recognize that the carib are
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: still there and there are people trying to do things
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: and support them whatever when the time comes through, you know,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: sending letters of support and different things like that. But yeah,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: so you need like you need some agency to say, okay,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: here are some animals. If they do that, do you
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: get the money? We would find the money there, We
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: would we would find the money. What would be a
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: price per animal that would not be surprising, that would
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: be not surprising how cheap or how expensive it was. Um,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: it doesn't work that way, you know, I don't even
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: know I have. Like I said, saving this species is
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: more important to me, probably than the budget would be.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: I would or could it potentially be actually like Okay,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: we'll sell them to you or is it not work
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: that way. I don't know. I don't know if it
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: works that way because we're not. If we're not, yeah,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: we're not getting these from the United States. This is
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: coming from British Columbia. UM. British Columbia is a strong
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: partner for us. They want the herd to exist UM
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: for a number of reasons. One, it's their southernmost heard,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: it's the only herd that extends into the United States.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: And if they want the United States to remain a
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: strong partner, UM, they need to keep this herd around.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: And we are a strong partner in both the tribes
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: are strong partners in the States and everything else. So
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: UM can't I'm not I'm not trying to like paint
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: Canada in a negative light. They want the herd to
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: be there, UM, but they have there's a cost to
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: them to move those animals down with potential failure, and
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: there's also a potential reward. That's what we're trying to
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: sell them. So does does the decision rest like some
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: individuals desk ors a more complex than that. I hope
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: it's more complex than that. I'm not really sure. I
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: don't I don't know who's making that decision at there.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: It's a high level in Canada. You know. It's not
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: some field biologists that's gonna go do this. It's it's
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: high level y interesting stuff. Any thoughts on all that,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: can you just real quick explain, just because I'm still
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: like lost and like very early on Caribou Land. There's
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: we've got mountain that we've been talking about. We've got
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: the baring ground, which is pretty much all of Alaska.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: Are the ones on the Kenai of those mountain or
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: bearing ground? I don't know. I don't know either. But
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: what are the other car mountain bear care? Then there's
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: the labrador or there's one they call that. Then you
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: have reindeer in Eurasia, right, but in North America we
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: just it's all but it's it's they all have the
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: same the same Lenaean name down to the third word. Right.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: I think they can reproduce too, Yeah? Um, I think no,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: they can. Yeah, reindeer and cariboo. That was one of
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: the deals, right, So there's like five or there's I
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: think there's five kinds woodland, mountain, barren, ground lea hybridor
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: and then there's another one. Yeah, so we're dealing with
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: range for trandous um, woodland, mountain, cariboo, whatever. It's sort
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: of you can use either name to describe the South.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: Selkirk's we go by mountain cariboo because I don't know
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: why we just do. But if somebody called them a
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: wood and cariboo, I probably wouldn't jump up and correct them. Um,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: they're definitely different than the stuff we have in Alaska
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: in the Northwest territories. Up. When I saw those ones
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: that I saw and we were hunting bears and we
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: ran into some, it was like, you're looking at you're
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: very different. Yeah, now you look at me like, that's
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: not the kind I know about badass looking things though. Yeah,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: they're cool. They're you know, heavier, thick, obviously thick for
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: big giant feet for snow shoeing, heavier antler you know,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: their antlers don't do the wobble when they j hug. Yeah,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: that was cool. G Any more things you want to say? Honest,
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: I like that red T shirt? Uh got any concluding thoughts.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: You gotta talk the whole time, but you still have
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: a concluding thought that has It can be anything that
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: has nothing to do with us. No, No, it's just great.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: I like, I like, um, you know, hopefully more people
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: just become aware that we have those caribou. Like I said,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not what's this? This isn't an ask, This isn't like,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: you know, broadcasting out trying to get people to send
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: checks or anything, but just letting people know that they're
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: still around and when the time comes, they might become
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: an ask and send a letter of sport, do whatever. Yeah,
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: I would ask that they take some of the energy
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: they're spending towards saving recovered things and put it into
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: things that are absolutely not recovered. Oh yeah, because you
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: talked to really about social capital. We are burning a
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: tremendous amount of social and political capital by arguing over
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: things that, by any scientific definition I recovered and ignoring
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: things that are on the are an absolute peril because
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: of a print of mine. Point out, no one has
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: calendars anymore because of instagram worthiness. It drives me nuts,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: Kay Collars. I keep thinking about two things. There's this
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: old movie called The Rare breed. Did you ever see that?
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: I'd like rare breed, Jimmy Stewart, it's about getting Herford
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: cattle out here out in Texas. Supposed to be like
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: to start a Herford cattle. But they know, man, this
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: is giant ranch in Texas with these wild ass long
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: horns that are just you know, free ranging it out there.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: And then they go round up these things every year
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: and and that's how they run those that beef operation. Well,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: they the only way this rancher is gonna give this
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: Herford ball is shot at cole mingling out there, is
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: to just do it like everybody else. Just turn them
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: loose on the range and wish him good luck and
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: we'll see you in the spring. And that was supposedly
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: like the start of the Herford thing. I keep thinking
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: about that, like okay, hard release, here we go. But
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: the other part of this is the like public knowledge
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: just kills me, like it would it be more beneficial
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: to destroy part of this caribou range by building like
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: a spur road off a highway three, so you could
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: take bus loads of tourists in there and be like, look,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: caribou only twelve left, all twelve, and people be like,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: holy ship, I need to get involved, right. Well, certain
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: if we had a maternal pen, we'd have some opportunity
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: to you know, let people peek through the fence or whatever,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: or going and feed him or whatever. You know, we'd
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: be looking for volunteers together liking. That's gonna be a
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: huge job. I mentioned trying to get enough moss to
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: feed ten caribou for a winner. Yeah, that might create
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: awareness and generate suppressed. Get some school kids out there
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: collecting moss, certainly locally, which is important. They eat the moss,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: they love it. Oh yeah. I knew a gal that
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: worked at the Large Animal Research Station there in Fairbanks,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: and she was working on the cariboo and she did that.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: They went up to the north slope and collected with
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: like a group of twenty people just filled up like
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: they forget they were recycled, not launched like grain sacks,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: or maybe just stuffed them full of liking. And she said,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: I think for most of the they didn't get it
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: every day. And she said, when that sack would come
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: out though, I mean, because the pen's pretty big, but
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: those sockers are just running. But you know the stuff
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: you saw out like the grows up on the trees.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, don't They weren't collecting that,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: But do they that one that looks kind of seaweedy too,
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: you know, the green stuff nasty looking, looks almost like
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: something you'd find under the water, right like that. Yeah,
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: they'll hit that. Um what is this? I've always wanted
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: what that species is? Man Like, I don't know. I
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: used to get hiking into the hot springs and you always, like,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: see so much of that stuff. I should look that up.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: You know, if you cut a tree down though, the
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: deer now they eat that stuff out of the tops
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: of trees. My buddy used to be a surveyor in
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Michigan's Up Peninsula and uh, he says, you'd be out
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: there cutting the line through all that bottland. You know,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm just the sound of the chainsaw, she said.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: You'd cut your lines to everything up. You had to
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: hurry up to shoot the lines because deer would come
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: toward the chainsaw sound and you couldn't even look down
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: to your thing, Like when you're shooting the lines, you
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: can look dow anything, be all deer. You have to
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: run down, scaring all the deer away, and then try
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: to shoot the line real quick because they just know
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: the chainsaw noise really yeah, they yeah, they know someone's
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: knocking down cedars or whatever. They were just yeah, it's
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: like a siren song. Man, it's like deer the sound
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: of a deer feeder motor in Texas chainsaw on Northern Chainsaw,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: northernn You know, you're talking about the last of the breed,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: the rare breed. Uh My brother was worked at works
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: at this research facility where they were doing, um they're
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: they're working on a project or we're working on a
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: project where they're trying to breed wagu and limousine cattle.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: So limousine the carcass attribute would be like it's this
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: huge animal, okay, but very lean, and wagu is a small,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: squat animal with very high fat content. So they're trying
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: to do the thing you breathe the two and make
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: a giant high fat content like to make waygu, which
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: is where you get cold baby beef, to get wagu
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: from a large animal. And uh they would every year,
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: the people that are working on this project would do
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: these uh t bone tests where they're being a laugh.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: They all these little grill tables set up and they
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: grill t bones to a certain temperature on a electric
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: grill and then do a thing called a Warner Bruntler
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: shear force test where they just punched three holes in
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: the t bone and see how tender it is and
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: just discard him. And you'd go to my brother's house
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: when they were doing that, and his was like bars
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: of gold stacked up in his fridge. Man, he just
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: bring all those brea T bones home with whole every
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: So whenever you open one up and I have like
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: three holes in it, drop an egg and punches about
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: a quarter inch hole. Man do it. He always called
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: him his t bone testers. It was like an annual feed,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: you think, like the way grizzlies a hammer elt gut
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: piles in the fall. It was like his, like it
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: was like his time of year man when they were
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: doing the Warrener Bruntler shear force test on way Goo
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: beef Land. Concluding thoughts, I'm with Kyle, like I I
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: just this is such a cool thing that's out there.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know, getting have Bart on this
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: podcast and letting people know that there's actual caribout in
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: the lower forty A is a pretty awesome thing. And
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: I think more people know about it than where they're
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: gonna want to do something about it when we have
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: the opportunity. So, um, I think that's just I mean
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: when I think about all the species have been recovered
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: in the United States and how like, you know, I
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: haven't been able to be a part of much of that, right, Like,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: this is still something like this and bison are still
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: something we can do, which is pretty uncol They get
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: a lot of attention. I mean, I wrote a whole
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: damn book about him, and I think and and that's
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: and that's it's you know, it's that's a much longer
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: public conversation about that recovery. But with this population as
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: small as it is, as unique it is, and it's
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: only a localized area in the Lower forty, if they
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: can even live, like that's pretty cool. Yeah, I think
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: that's cool. The last thing I would say is that
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: one of the things that makes b H a and
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: even though that we are a small organization, is we
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: have badasses that are members and badasses that are in
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: our leadership. And Bart hopefully uh not hopefully, but did
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: get that. Across the days he spends a ton of
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: time out in the woods, um and and so he
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: knows the place really well, he knows what it needs,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: and so, um, that's who we are as an organization.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: I think that's pretty Uncle. Here's my concluding thought. It's
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: it's two part three part one. I agree with you too.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: I'm just getting old enough for I'm just starting to
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: get like, I just don't always have a lot of
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: faith in people, curmudgeon. I'm growing up. There's a friend
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: of mine who told me, a Vietnam veteran, he said, Stevie,
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: people never change. They say they're gonna, but they never change.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: And I just some things I'm like, as much as
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: I'd like to say, I just it's just hard for
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: me to picture. Uh. I hope I'm wrong. It's just
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: it just haired for me to picture, um, a situation
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: this die or is I wasn't that aware of till
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: the day. I mean, I knew a little bit about it.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: It's just hard for me to picture that. Uh. Turning
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: it around, what kind of person would you want to change?
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: I don't understand what you mean. That it would be
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: that it would be something that all of a sudden
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: it would like get momentum. But how did it get
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: this band and still no one knows about it. At
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: what point did someone go, hey, these dodos are getting
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: mighty thin. Do you know what I mean? Was it one?
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: If there's one caribou, would people come with like you know,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: would NPR go out and do a story? Twelve is
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: not good enough for you? That's what I'm saying. It's
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: like that people are gonna also be like, damn, we
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: need to fix this problem. It's like if if that's
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: gonna happen, it seems like it's gonna have to happen
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: pretty quick. That's frustrating the polar bears, or if it
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: was wolves or grizzly bears or something like charismatic Like
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: you said earlier, you need to hire now you people
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: need to hire whatever PR agency it is, or maybe
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: there isn't one, but someone's to start one that can
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: sell the American public on um loving a critter. They
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: did it very effectively with wolves, it was done very
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: effectively with grizzly bears, very effectively with fur seals, which
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: are the farthest thing from endangered. They need to go
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: and be like, let's take some of that attention away
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: and put it in a couple of places where it
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: really is needed right now? Talk to people at cours.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: I look at my refrigerator. I'm like, okay, twelve beers. Dude,
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: a beer can with a beer can with a mountain
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: cariboo on it. Mountains already there, they're blue cariboos. Come on, Pete,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: step up if you're listening. Was that part one of
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: my things I had? Part Part wolves I agree with land?
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: Part two is I'm like, come on, yeah, how did
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: I not like, like I like try to stay hip
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: to this stuff? I didn't know, So I'm a little
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: bit mad at myself. Part three this lion hunting we
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: were talking about. Um, I am pretty I've I've chased
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: a couple of lines down and dry ground out of
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: the snow. Um, I'd be real eager to go out
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: and look around chase lion tracks in the snow with you.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: Come on over. What's your What time of year you
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: like to hit it? December fifteenth? We start in Idaho.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: How long is it wrong? Um? We can kill cats
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: until about Valentine's Day mid February, and then we chase
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: until March one, and then we go to Montana until
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: April fift usually. But well, part uh, what part of
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: the state you're hunting. You're the hunting the Panhandle Panhandle yep,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: yea up north and you're hunting lins that are mostly
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: eating white tails, mostly white tails, um, some elk killers
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: also elk fat and line. Yeah, yeah, the big ones.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: You know, they get big when they start eating elk
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: that right, Well, yeah, it's so much food. They don't
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: have to hunt us hard. They can stay put and
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: just sit around and eat and get big. But yeah,
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: it's good. A lot of the lions in that in
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: kind of the Caribou potential area though, well, we, like
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: I said earlier in the season, we try to target
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: those lions up in the Cariboo Recovery area and then
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: you just get snowed out and it just gets too
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: hard to get up there. Um, you know, you're talking
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: about eight ten ft snow up there, and the lions
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: find little pockets the habitat that they can live in.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: They don't they don't travel much. It's hard to cut
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: tracks because it's just kind of hold up somewhere. But
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: early in the season we catched a lot of big
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: Tom's coming out of that high country. They kind of
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: migrate seasonally. Yeah, they move around, you know, not all
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: of them. But what's a big time? Um, you know,
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty pound cat is a big cat.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: Anything over that is really a nice one. Everybody talks
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: about hundred sent five pound two hundred found lions. Saw
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: a new biologist in Oregon, and throughout his career he'd
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: worked up three hundreds. I can remember three hundred sixties
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: some lions. That's a side like, I don't care how
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: hard you hunt lions. It's hard to get to handle
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: three hundred sixty of them. Okay. Because he ran the
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: predator program in Oregon, he worked up three hundred sixties
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: some and wait them okay, works him up like scientific scales.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: I think the biggest one he had was one six four. Yeah, lions,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: and that's hundreds like bears. You know, it's people get
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: exaggerated weights. Um, you never run into somebody who's like,
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: I saw a lion, little female, big old time come
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: around the corner. Everyone, So you're good with lions, dude,
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: Not only did you know it was big, you could
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: you gender that in the dark, big old time quota
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: up there though. She can take any cat. Yeah, we
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: you know, we don't really pick on the females too, much. Um,
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: just because we're guiding up there. We don't want to
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: put ourselves out of business, so um, we try to
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: take Tom's Uh. There are hunters that kill females out
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: of there though. Do you guys treat females or pull
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: the dogs off when it's a female. If there's young,
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: we'll pull the dogs, but we treat them. Um, it's
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: good for the dogs. We we you know, we maybe
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: kill the cats that we treat. We have a lot
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: of clients that that just like to go out and
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: take pictures and do that kind of stuff. And a
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: lot of hunters, you know, I want to come out
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: and just see a cat or hunt for a week,
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: and we might treat three or four before they find
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: one that they want. It's probably good for the females
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: that you treat them because it wises them up. Sure,
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: it wise them up. Um, they're less likely climate tree
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: when they hear a dog bark and probably want to
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: keep running. I don't know. I don't know about that.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: I think they might be more likely. I think they
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: might well if you let them go. Oh yeah, no,
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: I got you. So maybe it doesn't wise them more.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: Like the thing to do is climate tree, right, well,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: maybe just get up a tree and we're gonna get
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: your picture taken and i'm gonna get her asked for
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: a little bit by the dogs. But yeah, you're right,
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: you're right. It doesn't wise them up. That's a good point,
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: all right, me your podcast, Thanks tuning in.