00:00:02 Speaker 1: From Mediators World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cal's weekend review, presented by Steel Steel products are available only at authorized dealers. For more, go to Steel Dealers dot com. Now here's your host, Ryan cal Callahan. The Columbian Congressional Court declared on May second that sport fishing is now unconstitutional in the South American country. The court admitted that there is no consensus as to whether fish are sentient beings, but stated that even in the absence of scientific certainty, the precautionary principle and the risk of damage to the environment make the ban necessary. If this makes any sense to you, I'll sell you a bridge in Brooklyn, and I think you're gonna like it. Here's another mind numbing part of this ruling. The court only banned sport fishing, which is defined as catch and release. As Maggie Hudlow, a fantastic report and journalist here at Meat Eater points out in a great article at the meat eater dot com, this means that fishing with meshes, drag nets, and dynamite is all still legal. If the court wanted to protect fisheries, it would presumably target fishing practices that actually hurt those ecosystems. Blast fishing, for example, or fishing with dynamite, has been practiced in the country for decades and dreamed about by fourteen year old young men for twice as long. I love a good explosion, for example, but I don't need a PhD or a lot of greed to know that using dynamite to kill and harvest fish is far more damaging to the environment than catching release. The same goes for net fishing. Net fishing can be done sustainably, but it is more indiscriminate. Bycatch is unavoidable. Bycatch would be catching fish outside of your target species, and many fish are injured and ultimately wasted. These types of fishing are all still legal in Colombia. What's more, if recreational anglers want to continue pursuing their hobby, they're going to have to kill everything they catch. According to the Columbian courts, this will help protect the environment and keep fish from feeling pain. In this case, the court isn't apparently interested in protecting the environment. Instead, it appears to be convinced by the animal rights crowd. These folks argue that catch and release fishing is cruel and that catching release, angling and anglers are motivated by nothing other than a desire to inflict pain. The problem, of course, is that we don't actually know whether fish even feel pain. Numerous studies have been concluded, but none have inconclusive. Even if fish do feel pain over released fish live to swim another day when handled and released properly. Columbia isn't the only country to band catching release. Germany has had a similar band since the nineties. In Switzerland prohibits releasing non native fish and fish that are unlikely to survive. Costa Rica tried to ban sport fishing, but they backed off after politicians and judges realized that a recreational fishing industry brings in about two fifty million dollars every year. Money talks, I guess, or in this case, swims. Hopefully Columbian officials will have the same awakening. The sport fishing band won't be finalized for another year. Until then, pro fishing groups will be filing lawsuits arguing that the ruling harms the environment as well as the economy. Now, I have said before on this podcast that we anglers all may have a serious day of reckoning. When aliens in the form of earthworms come down to Earth looking for their relatives on this planet. Anyone who has ever corkscrewed a nightcrawler around a slow death hook knows exactly what I'm talking about. Semantics, formal or cognitive. Do we know if fish do or do not feel pain? Maybe not, But if you are into catching fish, you know for absolute certain they do not like being caught. They recognize on whatever level that whatever is happening to them is against their will and against their biological plan for instance, and possibly related. Just pay attention, Hang on there with me for a minute. My dog snort, well, snort a kiss. A pampered domestic animal has no worries in the world and goes through her day as if she owns the world. It's a fun thing to watch an animal with confidence. But she recently hurt her toe, and when she does something to aggravate that wound, she yelps and shivers and looks to me for support. Is she feeling pain? Who cares? That dog? I believe senses her frailty, recognizes that she is no longer invincible and that death is a real thing. She recognizes her own mortality. She conceives of the end, and that is a sad thing to witness. These are just fun things to think about, fish or tasty. I'm gonna continue to pursue them at times, even with worms on a corks grew barbed hook, but I will at the same time do my most to take care of the resource so it can feed me and others. Again, this week, we have a ton to talk about, so we're gonna get right into it. With the exception of this statement, I was in Boise last week attending part of the Idaho Fishing Game in Service Training school, and I quite embarrassingly forgot to thank everyone in that state agency for the work they do on behalf of wildlife, habitat, access and recreation. Keep up the good work. I know it can be thankless at times, but I sure appreciate you, and I hope to see you again. Thanks for having me this week. We've got the poaching desk. We've got you palm and a lawyer posed as a hunter. Moving on to the law enforcement desk. It's been a busy month over at the poaching desk. We're not even politicians and reality TV stars can escape the long arm of the law. One of those politicians is Utah State Rep. Travis Siegmiller. Sigmiller recently resigned his seat in the legislature after he was charged in April with the illegally taking protected wildlife wild Trust passing. The lawmaker allegedly killed a white tailed dough with a shotgun in a residential neighborhood back in August. According to Deserret News, he possessed a valid license and the hunting season was open, but he did not have permission to hunt on the property. It is also illegal to hunt within six d feet of a house or dwelling, which Sigmiller did When confronted by a resident of the neighborhood, He allegedly claimed he was out of work and needed the meat for his family. He also said he had secured permission from the property owner. By the time the police arrived, he had already dragged the dough into his car and left. He pleaded no contest at his hearing, but it looks like his political career like that dough won't survive the incident. D T. J. Donald Trump Jr. Has also gotten mixed up with an illegal bear baiting incident from a two thousand eighteen hunt in Utah. The former president's namesake hasn't been accused of wrongdoing. Instead, prosecutors are alleging that Trump Junior's guide, a fellon named Wade Lemon, instructed his scouts to bait a site with the black bear's favorite snacks, including grain, oil and pastries. The site was bated without Trump Junior's knowledge, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, but he did kill a bear at or near that spot during the hunt. For his part, Lemon has been charged with a felony and could face up to five years in prison. The Salt Lake Tribune also reports that Lemon has been investigated a total of eight times by the Utah d n R. This is the first time he's been charged with a felony. So why does Donald Trump Junior's name keep popping up, Well, I'll tell you it probably wouldn't make headlines if it didn't moving from politics to reality TV, which, as it happens, isn't much of a move these days. Celebrity hunter Blaine Anthony has been charged with violating the Lacy Act after he illegally killed the black bear in Alaska. Light about the incident and used footage of the hunt on his show. Anthony produces a program called The Bear Whisper and runs a production company creatively named Nature Productions. In May have seventeen, Anthony allegedly shout a black bear in Keyni Fjords National Park, where hunting is illegal. Then, according to a criminal complaint obtained by The Daily Beast, he claimed on his declaration papers that he killed the bear at a legal spot nineteen miles away. Footage of that hunt, along with another illegal kill, where aired on The Bear Whisperer. Anthony is facing up to one year in prison and a one hundred thousand dollar fine for the misdemeanor. As of this taping, he has not commented on the charges. Here's another violation of the Lacey accent in by listener Jason Maddox. A Georgia man is headed to prison after being convicted of illegally netting thousands of turtles in Georgia and shipping them to California. Nathan Horton made over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars between two thousand fifteen and two thousand seventeen. Prosecutors said the turtles were destined for Asia, where they can be sold for a substantial profit. Horton pleaded guilty to his charges in December of last year and was sentenced in May to one year and one day in prison three years of supervised release in order to pay a fine of ten thousand dollars. That poaching case is all wrapped up, but this one is just getting started. Wildlife officials in British Columbia are asking for the public's help and finding the person who killed two cougar kittens, dismembered them, and dumped them on a forest service road on Vancouver Island. It is illegal in British Columbia to kill cougar kittens or cougars in a family unit. The individual who violated this law shot both kittens and cut off their heads and paused before leaving them on the side of the road. Officials haven't speculated on what motivated the poacher or announced any suspects. If you live on Vancouver Island and here's someone bragging at the bar about his new cougar paw key chain, give the BC Conservation Office a call. I don't know why anyone would brag about having the pause of cougar kittens, but I also don't know why anyone would cut them off in the first place. In any case, keep your ears peeled, b s ears last one for you to Georgia men have been charged with poaching an alligator out of season near Augusta. The suspects were caught red handed when a concerned citizen contacted the Georgia d n R and said that two men had shot an alligator and we're attempting to load it into a truck. Only one of the men was still at the scene when the authorities arrived, but they found enough evidence to charge both of them. To add insult to injury, the poachers broke the back window of their truck in the hurry to load the ten foot gator into the bed. Quick side note on gators. The story of the American alligator is one of the coolest in conservation history. Animals don't often make it off the endangered species list, and those that do rarely develop a huntable population, but in the last fifty years, American alligators have done both. Gators were placed on the endangered species list in seven but thanks to the efforts of hunters and conservationists, the species became one of the first success stories of the Endangered Species Act. Today, gator populations have recovered to the point that states throughout the southeast, including Texas and North Carolina, offer hunting tags. So, if you ask me, those two gator poachers deserve whatever they have coming to them. Moving on, Utah Representative sieg Miller wasn't the only politician who found himself in hot water this week after a hunting related incident in Illinois, congressional candidate named Jesse Rising got called out by local media for faking a hunting scene in a recent campaign video. Recing holds degrees from both Yale and Harvard Law School and worked as a lawyer for a high powered corporate law firm. Now he's running for Congress in Illinois thirteenth District, and he's doing his very very best to appear to voters like anything but an Ivy League educated, hot shot lawyer. In his most recent campaign video, Recing can be seen decked out in camo and hunter's orange while holding a shotgun. Elsewhere on his campaign website, he proclaims his support for the Second Amendment using an image from the same photo shoot. And that's exactly what this hunt turned out to be. A photo shoot. In a stunning display of journalistic ingenuity. Local reporters sent a Freedom of Information Act request at the Illinois d n R. They wanted to know whether Reesing possessed a current hunting license in the state. The d n R said that Reesing doesn't have a hunting license, and when asked about his contradiction, Reesing admitted that he hadn't hunted since he was a kid. Reesing told the outlet, we were out doing some pheasant hunting with the crew. I didn't actually go out that day, but we got the photos and that's what they are. This is only making the Weekend Review because this is a fun trend to follow. Reesing isn't the first politician to pretend to be a dedicated hunter and a misguided attempt to appeal to rural voters. In two thousand four, then Massachusetts Senator John Kerry orchestrated a staged goose hunt in Ohio. Carry also happens to be a Yale graduate, but when he walked in to an Ohio grocery store to get a hunting license, he reportedly said, and I'm quoting here, can I get me a hunting license? I don't know if he tried a rural Ohio accent as well, But in any case, things went downhill from there. I guess it's good that carry at least had a hunting license. And who can forget Mitt Romney's claims of being a lifelong hunter. Romney made the claim during a campaign stop in oh seven. The next day, is campaign issued a statement clarifying that the former Massachusetts governor had in fact been hunting twice. The day after that, Romney contradicted his own campaign and claimed to have hunted rodents and rabbits since he was fifteen years old. But that didn't sit well with the intrepid journalists over the Associated Press. They asked wildlife officials whether they had records of Romney's hunting licenses in the states he had lived. Apparently, Romney had never owned a license in Michigan, Massachusetts, or New Hampshire, Utah. Officials said they were not permitted to release those records. Romney claimed he never hunted anywhere he needed a license, obviously, Um, what do they say? Mimicry is the closest form of flattery, something along those lines. So as a sportsman, you know, we kind of blush when these folks try to appeal to us. This hard. But at the same time, these sons of guns better be representing us when they make an into office. And often, even though they try to represent themselves as hunters in the public eye, what they need to do is represent hunters and hunting at the ballot box. To give you an idea of how important politicians think the hunting vote is. Recing the dude from Illinois that started this article injured his neck playing football for Yale. He recovered from that injury then founded a nonprofit to help veterans get through college. He said he grew up hunting, but his injury keeps him from raising a shotgun. Hunters, like most folks, appreciate authenticity. If politicians want to appeal to the in community, running out, buying some orange and holding up a shotgun isn't the way to do it. Again, be receptive when hunters pick up the phone or email you and ask you to represent hunters and hunting by doing your job at the legislature or state house or whatever level of government you're in. Moving on to the turtle desk, it seems politicians aren't the only clueless critters wandering aimlessly across the universe. According to a new study hawks bill sea turtles don't really know where they're going. A team of scientists use GPS technology to track twenty two of these turtles along their route from the nesting grounds in the Chagos Archipelago to foraging sites elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. The turtles eventually reached their final destination, but they didn't exactly take the shortest route. The team watched as turtles traveled along paths the study described as circuitous. According to the Old Thesaurus, synonyms for circuitous include roundabout, indirect winding, and meandering. The straight line distance to the foraging sites was about one hundred and seventy six kilometers. Most turtles traveled twice that distance, and one poor turtle traveled one thousand, three hundred and six kilometers, over seven times the distance, before winding up where it wanted to be. But don't judge these hawk bills too harshly. If I stuck you on a tiny archipelago in the Indian Ocean and ask you to find another group of tiny islands somewhere to the west, you'd have a hard time to Sea turtles famously travel thousands of miles in the open ocean from their nesting grounds to their feeding grounds and back. Scientists believe they do this by imprinting on the magnetic field of their birth area and navigating based on changes in the Earth's magnetic field. Green turtles, for example, have been tracked traveling from that same archipelago to the mainland of Africa, almost five thousand kilometers away. It's an amazing ability, but this study suggests that their GPS system isn't what you'd call precise. It's one thing to hit a continent the size of Africa, it's another thing to find a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. The researchers on this study believe that the turtles navigation system can tell them when they've gone way off course, but their margin of error can be several hundred kilometers. Once they finally get close enough to an island, they can smell it or look for landmarks they recognize. Hawksbill turtles can be found in the tropical and subtropical waters of all the world's major oceans, but in the US waters they were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in vent They face threats from fishing by catch and habitat degradation, but they're most threatened by illegal poaching. Their beautiful shell is prized by craftspeople to create jewelry and trinkets, and this poaching is largely what nearly drove the species to extinction. So the next time you feel a little lost in an unfamiliar part of the world, be glad you aren't wandering through millions of miles of open ocean trying to keep your species from going extinct. Little perspective for you. On top of that, if you know anyone who lives on an island and you've ever tried to, let's say, plan a trip with those people, this could be the same affliction the whole island time phenomenon. Perhaps human islanders run off of the Earth's magnetic field as well, and also have a giant margin of error those two things aside. Once again, if you find a beautiful exotic trinket on the Internet or in some hobby shop booth somewhere, maybe think twice about buying it. At the very least, inquire what type of turtle that fancy set of earrings came from. Moving on for the first time in over a century, river otters around the Detroit River. That's right, These furry semi aquatic mammals have moved back to Motown. The biologists say it's a great sign for the overall health of the ecosystem. River otters were extirpated from the Detroit River in the nineteen century thanks to development, the fur trade, and river pollution. Monroe County historian Gerald P. Wikes told Great Lakes Now that he can't find any record of otters in the area pass that early nineteen hundreds. Quick side note, Extinction is the term used when an animal no longer exists anywhere on Earth. Extirpation is what happens when an animal no longer exists in a particular area. For example, house mice may never be extinct, but with a cleverly laid trap line, you may be able to extirpate them from the walls of your apartment. River otters started making a comeback in the Detroit area in the nineteen eighties when the Ohio Department of Natural Resources reintroduced otters to rivers and streams in eastern Ohio. Those populations slowly moved west, and by the early two thousands they could be found near Toledo. If you're a little fuzzy on your Midwest geography. Toledo is only about sixty miles south of Detroit. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources fur bearer specialist Adam Bump told the Detroit News that otters are known for being playful because there's such damn good hunters with web feet and a sleek, streamlined body. Otters are tailor made to hunt fish, crayfish, and other aquatic critters. They're so good, in fact, that unlike many other wild animals, they have enough free time to mess around. It's kind of like tagging out on opening day of archery in Idaho. Tag less on August thirty one puts the in front of college football down at the bar. Get to see how the other half lives. Moving on. A few weeks ago, I mentioned a lawsuit being brought by a group of Montana landowners against the state's wildlife management officials. Today I have more assorted details. Trust me, this is going to be an ongoing segment. The suit is being brought by an outfit called United Property Owners of Montana or you Palm. They're calling on Montana's wildlife management bodies to kill or relocate fifty elk, mostly in the eastern portions of the state. This is a relatively small group of land owners, judging by their most recent tax filings, but the lawsuit has garnered lots of media attention. In the suit, you Palm argues that the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks are legally obligated to reduce elk herds to population objectives. While some elk management units have too few elk, you Palm claims that fifty nine of the nine units are overpopulated. They want these elk herds called because they claim that the elk are damaging property. You Palm doesn't describe this damage in detail, but that's sort of besides the point. They base their argument on a portion of Montana law passed in two thousand three that requires the Fish and Wildlife Commission to set population limits and then aim for those limits when setting harvest and permit regulations. They're asking the court to give the Commission and the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks ninety days to develop a plan to remove, harvest, or eliminate fifty elk as quickly as possible. For some perspective, the total elk herd in the state is about one forty animals. This isn't the first time that landowners have raised this issue. When they do the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is a pretty simple solution. Let public land hunters solve the problem. Rather than spend millions of taxpayer dollars killing or relocating elk, state wildlife officials encourage landowners to simply allow the public to hunt on their property. You Palm admits that this has been the advice of wildlife officials, but they make it sound like they're being held hostage. They accused the Commission and f w P of refusing to help them unless they allow public hunting. But in their own lawsuit, you Palm cites a portion of Montana code that says a landowner may only destroy elk causing property damage after the landowner allows unrestricted public hunting. Unsurprisingly, they argue that this law is unconstitutional. In case you needed any more evidence of u Palm's biases, here's how they characterize public land hunters. Quote. When defendants say public hunt, than they require landowners to throw their property wide open to strangers, including dangerous and reckless hunters or people with a reputation for damaging private property. End quote. Last I checked, there are a lot of laws on the books prohibiting reckless hunting, and if anyone damages property, landowners can call the police. Believe it or not, the lawsuit goes downhill from here. In addition to forcing Montana Wildlife officials to kill fifty elk, you Palm also asked the court to strike down to other laws they don't like. First, they want the court to revert all wildlife policy to the state legislature. Montana log gives the Fish and Game Commission the authority to manage wildlife, but you Palm believes that only the legislature may set policy for the state of Montana, and the statute represents an unconstitutional delegation of the legislative power to the Commission. In other words, rather than letting scientists and biologists manage wildlife populations, they want politicians in the legislature making those decisions. You Palm also doesn't like that the Fish and Game Commission is required to encourage sport hunting when crafting their policies. They argue that the legislature has never given the Commission permission to encourage sport hunting, and they want the court to declare that the Commission may no longer consider this factor when setting elk management regulations. If successful, this lawsuit would up end Montana's well established wildlife management model. As in most states, the legislature has given wildlife agencies and commissions the authority to manage game species. These biologists are supposed to make decisions based on science, and they have the flexibility to respond to complex and evolving ecosystems. If the elk herd is in trouble, we can't rely on political animals to make good decisions for the health of that resource in a timely manner. If you follow politics at all, I'm sure you know why. Unfortunately, Montana isn't the only state in this con stent tug of war between the legislature and wildlife departments. In Michigan, for example, HB five seven four zero would create a new seven day license option for seniors. HP five nine zero two would legalize the use of single bite bait for deer and elk hunting. You don't have to have an opinion on either of those proposals to know that these sorts of policy changes are best left to Michigan's Natural Resource Commission. I don't know what's motivating the sponsor of those two bills, but I'm skeptical that its sounds science. Thank you to listener Rafe Petty for sending that one in. In Pennsylvania, the legislature kept the States Game Commission from tweaking seasons and bag limits for two thousand twenty two and two thousand twenty three. The General Assembly passed a bill adding a ninth commissioner, but the Senate failed to fill enough vacancies on the commission to reach a quorum. Without a quorum, the Commission couldn't legally meet, so they had to adopt last year's seasons and bag limits for this year's hunting season. Thanks to listener Tracy Held for calling that to our attention. In two thousand twenty one, the Idaho legislature infamously passed a bill aimed at decreasing the wolf population. The bill allowed hunters to use any means of take to target wolves, including baiting, night vision scopes, snares, and poison, and also removed the limit on the number of wolf tags that could be purchased in the state. It was promoted by the Agriculture and Livestock Community, but opposed by the Idaho Department of Fishing, Game and Phishing Game Commission. They said that while they shared the legislature's desire to lower the wolf population, they objected to the legislature setting seasons and means of take. I could go on, but you get the idea. When legislatures start setting wildlife regulations, you start seeing policies aimed at pleasing special interest groups. Wildlife departments and commissions aren't perfect, but they're in the best position to manage the resources we all share. If you want to help fight this lawsuit, support one of the organizations in the coalition that is opposing it. These include the Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, hell Gate Hunters and Anglers, Helena Hunters and Anglers, Public Land Water Access Association, and the Montana Bow Hunters Association. Please stand up and support the proper management of wildlife. That's all I've got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. As per usual, I want to know what's going on in your neck the woods, so please right in to a s k C a L that's asked cal at the Meat Eater Dot com. And as we head into a rainy, snowy Memorial Day weekend here in Montana, you may think that you want to just stick around home and work on the old farm step. If so, go to www. Dot steel Dealers dot com and find a local, knowledgeable steel dealer near you. They're gonna get you set up with what you need and they won't send you home with what you don't. Thanks again, and I'll talk to you next week.