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, a Nebraska angler, found what he called the catch of a lifetime last month when he stumbled upon a ninety million year old fish fossil in the Missouri River. Andy Moore was participating in a fishing competition when he spied what he thought was a skeleton sitting on a rock. He took a quick picture before casting his next jig, but he posted all the photos from that day on Facebook. His friend contacted him after seeing the image and told him what he'd found was much much older than he thought. More called the Army Corps of Engineers and they sent out a geologist who had permission to excavate the site. More soon learned that what he thought was a skeleton from quote like a year ago, was actually a ninety million year old specimen known as a bulldog fish. More should be thankful the fish wasn't swimming around in the Missouri River on the day of his tournament. Bulldog fish were large predatory fish of an extinct genus called the fact in us. They could grow over sixteen feet in length and are known for their large, sharp teeth that protrude outward from their upper jaw and lower jaws. Their lower jaw jets forward, making them look like the fish version of a much larger and more terrifying bulldog. A bulldog fish specimen sold for over one hundred thousand dollars in two thousand twenty. But more won't have any such luck. The fossil will be dried and preserved at the Lewis and Clark Visitors Center in Crofton, Nebraska, for according to More everybody in the world to enjoy and to look at for educational purposes. Maybe that will be some karma for more and uh knock out a hundred k and uh walleye fishing competition prizes over the next year. This week, we've got Turkey troubles, the Klamath Tasmanian tigers, and so much more. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. In My Week, as you know, is sponsored by Steel Power Equipment. I am packing the schedule as tight as possible. Just got back from the first Light store opening in Haley Idaho. Really cool space, great turnout, fun folks, and it's admittedly very nice to see all that gear in one place. Got around a sporting plays in with Casey Hawks, who you may know as your head of customer service. At this point, Old Seahawk only shoots a twenty eight gauge. Needless to say that around was humbling. After the event, I drugged the camper up out of the catch them over Trail Creek, down the Lost, up the Divide into the Salmon Country, up the Lamb High and over the Pass into Horse Prairie. Did some really fine camping along the way. Yes, the Black Series camper is making me soft. We had mesical margharita's and tempera battered triple Tale for dinner. For scientific purposes. I also battered spicy haban hero pickles, carrots and string cheese. I'll tell you you've got to keep that one in mind for the kids. Not the hobby hero pickles, but the string cheese. It's a winner. I felt like I was sitting in a Wisconsin bar. One thing I really need your help with, though, is when you're camping, it's very convenient to bring a pre made margharite a mix. I have found even the expensive quote natural mixes you know that you get like co op hippie dippie type of place, are disgustingly sweet. I blame Triple SEC. Please right in and tell me if I'm wrong. Most of the time I just like a whole line squeezed into my tequila or mescal, drink a little bit of you know, Topo Chico or something in there. That's if I'm in the mood to mix things up at all. Anyway, obviously a problem need a solution. Please write in let me know if you have a good recommendation for pre mix or if Triple SEC is not the devil. Gorgeous Montana night attempts to drop down into the fifties. We're up around seven thousand feet. Shot the bow in the morning, felt like fall, and then we had to head back into Bos Angeles. This week I had to New Mexico with Jason Phelps. It's the first week of archery ELK in New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment. Jason and I have never hunted together before. I'm really looking forward to talking elk calling strategy with that guy. I've used Phelps calls for a really long time. Now. I've known Jason a long time. I've called in a bunch of elk, but all for myself. This way, it'll be way more educational to be there with a real elk talking partner. I'll fill you in on that one. But enough about me. I know you're all heading out or thinking about it. Let me know if I can help in any way. We can do a dedicated gear tips tactics podcast if that's helpful for you. But don't worry, I won't skip out on the conservation either. Good luck, have fun, and be safe and be courteous too. We're all out in the big Elk woods for the same reason. Moving on to the hog desk, We've known for a long time that wild hogs eat turkey eggs, but a new study from Auburn University suggests that removing hogs from the landscape can have a significant immediate impact on the wild turkey population in the area. The study was conducted by Matt mcdonnaugh of the Auburn University Deer Lab and presented at last month's International Wild Pig Conference. The National Deer Association has a great right up on mcdonna's presentation, which you should check out. Mcdonnaugh and his team set up four study sites in southeast Alabama to determine how turkey populations respond to hog removal. The sites ranched from acres to thousand, five hundred acres, and they had a camera trap for every two hundred and fifty acres. One study site acted as the control which is, you know, the spot that you leave alone to compare your you know, messing around with on other places against and mcdonnah's team worked with the USDA to trap as many hogs they could from three other study sites. They used camera survey as to estimate the hog population at each site, and they ended up trapping more hogs in each area than they had estimated. After trapping all those porkers, they went back to the camera traps and started estimating turkey populations. Over three years from two thousand eighteen to two thousand twenty one, they found that at two of the three pig removal sites, turkey populations increased significantly beyond the control area. When researchers removed one of the estimated hog population, turkey numbers jumped by about seventy When they removed twice the initial hog population, they saw a staggering one turkey population increase. One pig removal site did not see a significant increase over the control site, but this area also had the worst hog problem of the four study locations. Mcdonna's uddy is among the first to measure the real world benefit of hog removal on turkey populations. The study suggests that a concerted hog removal program can benefit a local turkey population, but it requires a large scale trapping operation. Recreational hog shooting here and there isn't nearly enough to have an effect. This study doesn't explain why eliminating hogs helps turkeys, but previous research points towards a few likely causes. A two thousand seventeen study from the U s d A found that hogs are responsible for about twenty five percent of depredation events on turkey eggs. Both hogs and turkey zed acorns, so fewer hogs means more acorns for the gobblers. Mcdonnaugh also pointed out that turkey numbers increase almost immediately after hogs are removed, which suggests that turkeys just don't like being in close proximity to swineherds. When the pigs move out, the turkeys move back in. This is no silver bullet, and state game agencies in the South have to balance the competing interests of hog and turkey hunters when setting policy. It's also worth noting that the turkey numbers are declining all across the country, not just in areas with large established hog populations. But mcdonna's study does offer an important piece of information that should inform some policy decisions. At the very least, if you're a landowner looking to boost your turkey numbers, setting some hog traps seems like a great place to start. Then you know, finish with the barbecue, moving on to the conservation desk. The best way to conserve wild places and species will always be to make conservation minded decisions as individuals and as a society. But modern technology can help make that possible, and I'm always interested in creative ways people are engaging in the conservation movement. Last month, for example, Smithsonian magazine ran a story about a seventeen year old named Annaka Poori, who had developed a clever, low cost way to spot elephant poachers. Poor is from New York, but when she visited India four years go, she was shocked and how much ivory jewelry and statues were for sale in Bombay. She learned that even though the ivory trade is prohibited and elephant hunting has been illegal in India since the nineteen seventies, elephant poaching is still quite common. So Anaka spent the last two years developing software that can differentiate between humans and elephants using a cheap thermal camera attached to a drone. Drones are often used by anti poaching units, but it can be difficult to identify human poachers among the other animals on the ground. High resolution thermal cameras are expensive, but Poori's design uses a two fleer one pro thermal camera that plugs into an iPhone. Both camera and iPhone are attached to a drone, and her machine learning software identifies humans and elephants in real time based on their movements, which may seem, you know, like an easy thing to do if you like I watch a lot of bad TV and the c I A can zoom in on anything that they want, and seems pretty reasonable to know the difference between an elephant and a person. But that's why you got to donate to conservation minded organizations. They don't have the scratch to play with the you know, cia, et cetera. Anyway, Pouri's system is called the Elephant Savior, shortened to ELSA. Did I mentioned poory is nineteen years old. Elsa is still in the prototype phase, but it demonstrates how little creativity can take low cost gear and turn it into a powerful tool to help conserve endangered species. Another high school student, if you're not feeling bad enough about the direction of your life as a forty year old man not talking about myself, is hoping his technology can help drivers avoid animal collisions on the road. Ve Doant Srinavas is a student in some Amish, Washington, and he developed a system called Equis. Equis uses custom optical and thermal sensors, which, when paired with artificial intelligence, detect animals when they are moving towards a road. When the system detects an animal, it sends a signal to a lighted sign which warns drivers to keep an eye out for critters, which is great news for those of you who drive while still looking at the road and not at your iPhone. There are an estimated two million collisions between large animals and cars every year in the United States. According to the Federal Highway Administration, that's two million animals needlessly killed, two million drivers with wrecked cars, and hundreds of millions of pounds of wasted meat. Now here's another little bit of tech we learned about from listener a j Ritter. Fences are great for controlling livestock, but they're bad for migrating animals. Many species can't get over or under a barbed wire fence. Birds who hunt at night don't see them, and as we frequently cover on the Mediator podcast, sometimes animals get caught as they're trying to jump over. It's sort of like if someone put a bunch of those track and field hurdles between you and the refrigerator. Yeah, you could jump over them, but it's a real pain in the butt anyway. Some ranchers are hoping to remove these hurdles by using a technology called virtual fencing. Virtual fencing is kind of like a scaled up version of the invisible fence you keep your dog in your yard with if you're in you know, an h o A style neighborhood. The system uses a series of solar powered towers that transmit signals to shock collars fitted to livestock. A rancher can use the system software to set up virtual fences that keep livestock within certain areas. Depending on the topography. Each tower can read collars across ten thousand to thirty tho acres. The system is cool for a few reasons. Ranchers can see where all their livestock are in real time, and they can instantaneously change the location of the virtual fence. In theory, they could reduce the amount of cowboys out on the range by digitally herding cattle from pasture to pasture. Best of all, why wildlife moving through the area are totally unaffected. If you're a rancher, I can imagine a few objections. You might not be comfortable trusting your heard to this kind of tech. If your pastures are already fenced, it's you know, easier in the foreseeable future to mend those fences instead of ponying up twelve thou dollars per tower to set up a virtual fence. But on the other hoof, no fences, no bird collisions, no altered migration corridors, no trying to scrounge up some skinny kid to ride shotgun to open up all the gates for you, and think of the inflated sense of value your cattle would have if you were to give each one a collar of its own. Moving on to the Tasmanian tiger resurrection, not all conservation technology is created equal. Some believe that advances in genetic engineering will enable scientists to bring extinct animals back from the debt, so to speak. You've probably heard this disgust relation to Willie Mamma's but a new multimillion dollar project aims to recreate another famous critic, the Tasmanian tiger. Thanks to listener Granger Way for sending this one in, A team of Australian scientists from the University of Melbourne have joined forces with a self proclaimed de extinction company called Colossal. They hope to take genetic material from a living marsupial species with similar DNA and use gene editing technology to recreate the Tasmanian tiger, or, according to the BBC quote, an extremely close approximation of it. They believe they'll have their first baby tiger within the next ten years. That might sound well and good, but de extinction technology has its critics. Another Australian scientists working for the Australian Center for Ancient DNA described the technology as quote fairy tale science. He said, this project is more about media attention for the scientists and less about doing serious science. But there are other concerns even if we had meant that the idea is theoretically possible. Dr Stewart Pim is a professor of conservation ecology at Duke University. He's been an outspoken critic of de extinction technology because he says it creates what he calls a moral hazard. Dr Pim has testified before Congress and he's heard from politicians who think it's okay to drive a species to extinction because we can just resurrect them later. In other words, we don't need to worry about destroying habitat or losing species if we can kick the can down the road and recreate the critters in theory later on now. The Thila scene or Tasmanian tiger, was the largest carnivorous marsupial of recent time. Marsupials are mammals who's young are born immature and are carried and suckled in a pouch on their mother's belly. Tasmanian tigers had a slender face that looks sort of like a fox, and distinctive black stripes on the back half of their bodies. They hunted at night for wallabies and birds, and sometimes killed domestic sheep, which is why they were hunted to extinction in Tasmania. Aside from their taste for sheep, these were extremely cool critters and they died relatively recently ago. So here's the question. Is it more responsible to bring back a species that is extinct or less responsible? Right now, we have the ability to change our practices in a way to prevent the need to genetically resurrect a species. If we established that beachhead, however, would we still be willing to alter our current habits to give these animals a chance? Let me know your thoughts a s k cl that's I asked Cal at the Meat eater dot Com, moving on to the duck desk. On Friday August, the conservation and hunting group California Waterfowl announced that, for the first time in history, the Klamath River basin in Oregon in California is dry. The Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge was established by President Theodore Roosevelt in nineteen O eight as a nation's first waterfowl refuge. It's one of the most important areas on the Pacific Flyway, but it's been struggling with a severe lack of water over the last ten years. Waterfowl counts in both two thousand twenty and two thousand twenty one at the Clamath Refuges were among the lowest ever recorded. In two thousand twenty, sixty thousand waterfowl and other water birds also died from an avian bosulism outbreak, which was exacerbated by low water conditions. Since the Klamath Basin is located in the middle of the Pacific Flyway, it will affect bird numbers both to the north and to the south. The immediate solution, of course, is to get regular water into the refuge, but water is a touchy subject in California, especially in recent years of drought. Farmers, ranchers, and let's not forget the giant. Thirsty cities need water too, and regulators are also constrained by laws requiring water in areas protecting endangered species. But California Waterfowl isn't asking for handouts. They've launched a campaign to purchase water from surrounding farmers and ranchers. Those water rights agreements will be structured to secure water in the refuge for perpetuity, which will hopefully stop the refuge from being subject to the highs and lows of yearly rainfall. If you'd like to contribute to this effort, check out cal waterfowl dot org that c a l Waterfowl dot Org. California Waterfowl isn't the only group working on this issue. The US Fish and Wildlife Service just announced that nearly twenty six million dollars from the recent bipartisan infrastructure law has been allocated for Klamath Basin restoration projects, including nearly sixteen million dollars for ecosystem restoration. Some of that money is going to groups like Ducks Unlimited, which is being given two point six million dollars to address waterfowl needs. Specifically, they plan to use the money to improve wetland habitats through irrigation efficiencies on Lower Klamath and Tool Lake National Wildlife Refuges. These improvements will include installing pumping stations to increase the capacity to reuse and circulate water within the refuges. This is all great news, but unfortunately The problem is much bigger than just the Klamath meat eater. Sean Weaver told me that we're in this situation because we've failed to prioritize wintering waterfowl habitat throughout the West, not just in California. We're gonna displace a shipload of birds with stuff like this, you know, if we don't rectify the situation. Lower Klamath and Totally Lake is just the start. You know, Great Salt Lake is well on its way to going dry, and no one's doing a damn thing about it. You know, everything that's getting done is small potatoes and not going to fix the larger issue at hand. We've acknowledged that people who have built their lives in the West need water too, but we'll need to figure out a solution if we don't want Western waterfowl numbers to decline. We just can't keep letting water go. Can't just keep draining vital waterfowl habitat. Moving on to the public land Desk, we're staying out west for this next story. The state of Utah's filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming that President Joe Biden's expansion of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircases Kolana National Monuments is unlawful. President Obama created the original boundaries of the Bears Ears National Monument at one point three six million acres. In two thousand seventeen, President Trump reduced the size of Bears Ears by eight percent and Grand Staircases Kalante by forty Since taking office, President Biden has restored both monuments to their original sizes, which combined stretched about three point two million acres. Now, Utah Attorney General shawand Rays is arguing that these monuments are too big to be protected under the national monument status. All of Utah's Republican elected leaders, including several names you'll recognize who are not friendly to public lands, signed their names to the suit. The lawsuit argues that the nineteen o six Antiquities Act, which gives presidents the authority to create national monuments, does not allow those monuments to be as large as Bears Ears in Grand Staircase Escalante. The lawsuit points out that the Antiquities Act restricts presidents to monuments that are quote confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected. Critics of the lawsuit, which include conservation and environmental groups like Earth Justice, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and the Natural Resources Defense Counsel, point out that presidents have used the Antiquities Actor designate large monuments many times before. In for example, the Supreme Court upheld President Teddy Roosevelt's use of the Antiquities Act to protect eight hundred thousand acres in Arizona when he declared the Grand Canyon a national monument. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership hasn't weighed in on Utah's lawsuit, but in two thousands seventeen, they published an article criticizing President Trump's decision to reduce the size of both the monuments. According to TRC President with Fosberg, quote, there is a right and wrong way to go about this in the administration's decision to skirt Congress in these decisions threatens to up end one hundred and eleven years of conservation in America, putting at risk the future of any monument created under the Antiquities Act. What's interesting is that Utah's lawsuit also suggests that the solution lies with the U. S. Congress. The suit argues that an appropriate congressional solution would collaborate with the state and federal agencies, tribal nations, and local governments to figure out the best way to conserve the habitat and cultural sites that make these monuments necessary in the first place. I'm no lawyer, but I always come down on the side of more public land, not less. Thousands of hunters and anglers use both monuments every year, and the areas protect important habitat for the species we love to pursue, even those they're really hurting, like big desert mule deer and big desert sheep. While Bears Ears and Grand Staircases Kalante are large monuments, their size isn't unprecedented in our nation's history. It's also difficult for public land agencies to efficiently manage these areas if their sizes change every four or eight years. President Obama established these monuments under the authority of the Antiquities Act, and despite the additional recreational pressures a monument designation can put on areas, we at least know that they're safe from development. That's all I've got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. As per usual right in and let me know how I'm doing and how you're doing in your neck of the woods by sending me an email to a s K C. A L. That's ask Cal at the Meat Eater dot com. And again, it's hunting season. Don't let your favorite road or trail get waylaid by a tipped over tree. Hustle down to your local knowledgeable steel dealer, which you can find by going to www dot steel dealers dot com. They're gonna get set up with what you need and not try to send you home with what you don't. Thanks again and I'll talk to you next week. A smer Po Da Boke of the d As cover

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