00:00:10 Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Col's Week in Review with Ryan cal Calahan. Here's cal After much fanfare, the scientists who created what they call dire wolves now appear to be walking back their claims. Colossal Biosciences launched a media campaign in April claiming that the company had successfully de extincted three dire wolves, but other scientists, including our pal Jim Heffelfinger, disagreed. They pointed out that the three puppies, dubbed Romulus, Remus, and Kalisi, aren't real dire wolves genetically speaking. Now, Colossal's chief scientist, Beth Shapiro appears to be howling from the same songbook. She said in a late May interview with The New Scientist quote, it's not possible to bring something back that is identical to a species that used to be alive. Our animals are gray wolves with twenty edits that are cloned, and we've said that from the very beginning. Colloquially, they're calling them dire wolves, and that makes people angry. That word colloquially is doing a lot of work in that statement. Basically, Colossal is saying that they never really hid what these wolves are. They claimed how they created them for mostly gray wolf genes, and they just called them dire wolves as a kind of fun and informal publicity stunt. It worked. It reminds me a bit of a story from the last year when a zoo in China got caught painting chow chow dogs black and white and pretending they were pandas it's not exactly the same thing. Colossal scientists are the real deal, and they did in fact copy some genetic material from dire wolves and put it into these puppies, but in the public rollout of this project still strikes me as somewhat deceptive, even if it wasn't totally false. Anyway, this is hopefully the last Game of Thrones reference I'll make for a while on this podcast, But if you want to learn more, Steve and the crew spoke with Colossal Chief Animal Officer Matt James in a recent episode of the Media podcast. They dive into all of these issues and it's worth listen. This week we've got the crime Desk, public Lands, Fisheries, and the Bear Desk. But first I'm going to tell you about my week, and my week was great, hot footed it over to sue Fall, South Dakota to hang out with all the good folks at Shields. If you don't know what the heck Shiels is, it's a I would say it's a growing chain, like box store chain. You know. It's kind of got everything from soccer balls to firearms, and a hell of a fishing section, archery, all the good stuff. On top of all that, they do a heck of a good job, very impressive job finding into retaining nice, knowledgeable people to work there. Spent a bunch of time in the fishing department and the archery department. I shot a compound bow for the first time and close to a decade, and it was the first ever Matthews bow. I think I've shot just a loner. Not traveling back over to the wheel assistant side of hunting anytime soon. All Jeff from the man Cato Shiels got me set up and slinging arrows at sixty yards in under an hour, which to me is pretty damn crazy, brand spanking new bow all assembled. Shot at like five yards, then at twenty and then apparently if you shoot at three yards with the bottom pin, that's kind of close to where you're gonna be at sixty yards. And then sure enough we went out and shot at sixty yards. I would say I was hitting something the size of like my old yetty backpack in a five shot group at sixty yards, which is you know, it's deep. Another special thing happened on this trip. While I was away, my next door neighbor walked across the street, jumped in my truck, drove my truck to his shop, which is called Freedom four Wheel out in Four Corners, Montana, and put new tires and wheels on my twenty year old pickup. It's a long time coming. The rubber was getting thin. I paid for it, don't worry. I got to bring up the fact that it's just so freaking nice to have something done that you didn't have to do yourself because we're busy. Big thank you to Joe and the crew at Freedom four Wheel. I appreciate you. I'm gearing up for Independence Day activities, mostly trying to cook for a bunch of folks and kids. So I'm in beta testing on what I want to make, and I'm thinking of a couple of big plates of turkey thigh enchiladas. I got a big store of wild turkey thighs from this season and just recently. I want to do smash burgers for everybody, because everybody's got those big flat top grills these days. I mixed up a big batch at Burger and test rove a couple of variations of smash burgers, and it's fun like fresh mixing burger because you just drop the onions and garlic and stuff that you want in your burger. Adding the g an onion does a pretty good job of cleaning out the barrel of your grinder too, just like Celery does. Just you know, a hot tip for you. Anyway, I was solicited in the local Town and Country grocery store due to my buns. I was walking by the deli counter with a bag of hamburger buns and the gal, who I would guess is you know, not to be rude, but older than me just by a scoche, says, hey, I see you got nice buns there. Probably need some cheese, and I thought, yeah, I do. So I picked out smoked Gouda which was sitting there, and I got a taste test of it was real good, but it man alive. Doubled up on a smash burger way too overpowering, and that is why you test things out, no matter how nice your buns are. Lastly, I'll see everybody at backcountry Hunters and Anglers Rendezvous and Missoula, Montana looking forward to it. Lots to celebrate and lots to discuss, learn and laugh about. Can't wait to get to everybody together and talk public lands. Moving on to the crime desk, a fishing captain in Florida has been sentenced to thirty days in prison and will be forced to pay a fifty thousand dollars fine for poisoning and shooting dolphins. The story comes just a few weeks after officials in North Cakilac He found it decapitate a dolphin washed up on a beach. These incidents are unlikely to be related, but it goes to show not everyone loves the playful, squeaky ocean animals. Thirty one year old Zachary Brandon Barfield is a charter and commercial fishing captain operating out of Panama City, Florida. The US Department of Justice says Barfield got frustrated with dolphins eating red snapper from the lines of his charter fishing clients, so he started placing metha mill inside bait fish to poison the dolphins that surface near his boat. Metha mill is a highly toxic pesticide that can cause paralysis and respiratory failure on at least two occasions in twenty twenty two. In twenty twenty three, Barfield also shot and killed doll dolphins with a twelve gage shotgun as the animals were eating fish from his client's lines. He did this in front of two elementary school aged children in one instance and in another while there were over a dozen anglers on board. Hot tip for you, if you charter a fishing trip and the captain whips out a twelve gauge for anything other than the shark from Jaws, leave a bad review when you get back to shore. If you make it back to shore anyway. These actions did not go unnoticed, and the FEDS launched a prosecution. That prosecution was successful, and Barfield was convicted of three counts in violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Federal Insecticide, Funguside and Rodenticide Act. He'll serve one year of supervised release after he gets out of the Slammer and Bada man was hit with a five thousand dollars fine for killing a trophy class bull elk in the Great Basin National Park. Members of the public alerted game wardens that someone had killed the animal a half mile inside the National Park boundaries. A quick look on on Act shows me that these seventy seven thousand acre park is bordered all the way around by state game units. Sounds like this fella, who was not named in the press release, wandered into the National Park from the property and shot his elk. There's a really no excuse for that these days, which is probably why he was hit with twelve months of probation along with his fine. Listener Grant Ben sent me a story about a Virginia man who was fined at nearly ten thousand dollars for killing at least twenty birds of prey, including a bald eagle. William Custa Smith is a big waterfowl hunter, and he had built a small pond on his property to attract ducks. But he wasn't the only critter eager for a duck. Dinner hawks and eagles were killing the waterfowl he wanted to hunt, so he hit up a brilliant solution. He poisoned dead fish with a band insecticide called carbo furin and set those fish out for the birds. Not satisfied with that, he also set out traps to catch whatever birds didn't succumb to poison, and then bludging them to death with a pole. It is against federal law to kill hawks and eagles in the United States, so once Virginia was Wildlife Agency got wind of Smith's actions, they brought in the US Fish and Wildlife Service. They collected evidence of the Virginia man's wrongdoing, including video of the bird killing and the carcass of a poisoned eagle, and successfully prosecuted the case. Along with a ten thousand dollars fine. Smith will serve one day in jail, fifty hours of community service, and beyond probation for two years. Moving on to the Neanderthal finger painting desk. Speaking of collecting evidence, the forensics team of the Spanish Police Force recently made an impressive pull of an old fingerprint off a challenging surface. This wasn't a clue on a doorknob from a couple months ago. We're talking about a fingerprint that is forty three thousand years old. In the San Lazaro Rock shelter in Segovia, Spain, archaeologists had uncovered an unusual oval rock about the size of a big butternut squash, with a dot of red pigment right in the center. The rock has natural creases at the top and the bottom that look a bit like eyes in a mouth, and the dot sits right where the nose would be. Neanderthals occupied this particular shelter for thousands of years, and so the archaeologist speculated that maybe the dot was made intentionally to create a human image, possibly one of the earliest works of art ever discovered, But they couldn't be sure, so scientists brought the rock to the Spanish National Forensics Lab, where the police scanned the dot of pigment using multi spectrum analysis. The scan revealed the distinctive ridge pattern of a human fingerprint, what's known in the BIZ as a quote unquote dermatoglyphic image. Hey you're dermatoglyphic. Not too long ago, scientists believed there wasn't really that much happening inside a Neanderthal's head, just grunting and ripping meat off of bones. But the Sand Lazaro Rock means that one of these ancient people was able to imagine a human face in the random shapes of a particular stone. They mixed up red ochre pigment for mineral deposits in the environment and added the mark of a nose to make the object even more human, and then carry it back to the shelter to show their buddies. Add that to the impressive list of Neanderthal abilities like catching birds with their bare hands and killing reindeer and hand to hand combat. The fossil evidence that suggests that they dove for food in the ocean. And you know, he got some pretty cool critters to hang out with. All of you who did your twenty three and meteris and came back with Neanderthal ancestry, you got another little flagged way. Congrats. Moving on to the public land desk, Utah Senator Mike Lee doesn't seem to be able to take a hint. The anti public land senator told The E and E News last week that he plans champion of public land sale amendment in President Trump's quote big beautiful budget bill. If this sounds like deja vu all over again, join the club. Just a few weeks ago, public land advocates defeated a measure that would have disposed over five hundred thousand acres of federal land in Utah and Nevada. That provision was inserted by two House members from those states, but Republican House leadership, led by Montana Rep. Ryan Zinky, removed it before he got to the House floor. Now, Senator Lee has vowed to reinsert public land sale provision into the Senate version of the bill. The Utah Senator was asked by a reporter whether he planned to bring back the public land provision that were cut from the House package. He was on his way to another committee meeting, but he said, quote, I got to go vote, but yes, So it's unclear right now exactly what those sales will look like. Maybe they won't be as broad as the House amendment, and maybe they'll allow the funds to be used for conservation. But given Senator Lee's long and storied history of advocating against federal public lands, I'm not holding my breath. Rather than fight this fight after it gets reinserted into this bill, I'd rather convince Senator Lee that new public land sales are dead on arrival. To do that, we need to contact other members of the Senate, especially members of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where Senator Lee is the chair. The Republicans on that committee need to tell Lee that they won't vote for the package if he shoe horns public land sales back in another great opportunity for our Republican representatives and senators to be heroes. A little more than a year ago, we reported on a rule issued by the Department of the Interior maximizing protections for thirteen million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, also known as the NPR. That rule limited future oil and gas leasing and industrial development on the largest single area of public lands in the United States. This week, the Trump administration reversed that rule, opening all of the NPRA to oil and gas drilling and mineral extraction, as well as allowing the roads and other infrastructure necessary to get those resources and transport them out. Yes, a lot of people's livelihoods in this area depend on oil and gas, but there aren't many places like the NPRA left on Earth, and the critters we want to have around, like Cariboo and Rock term again depend on those undeveloped places to live. The consequences of encroaching on public lands. This week, Thai billionaire pre yued Mahagad Siri was sentenced to twenty four years in prison for expanding his golf course into seventy four acres of protected conservation land. The Metals in Coffee tycoon colluded with government officials to obtain deeds for his Mountain Creek golf resort, which, according to its marketing materials, promises and I quote, a sensory multiplex for those with lofty desires. I think I understand what this guy means, though, Like if you go lay down in mid September when the elker buglin and just kind of chill out on a mountain side, that's a sensory multiplex for those with lofty desires. Thankfully, law enforcement noticed that the Mountain Creek Resort contained actual mountain creeks belonging to the people of Thailand. The case is, of course being appealed, but it's good to know that we hear in the United States aren't the only ones fighting the good fight. I'm protecting wildlife habitat. But it does lead to you to imagine what the golf course encroaching on the NPRA in Alaska would look like there would it certainly be some wicked water traps up there as well as one hole that's a par ten million. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources recently proposed lifting a ban on stripe bass fishing during spring spawning season in the Chesapeake Bay. This opening would be balanced by closing fishing entirely during August, when heat related fishing deaths have been on the rise. We've covered Atlantic stripe bass before, and we always highlighted the tough trade offs involved here. Allowing spring fishing will of course benefit recreational anglers and the tackle shops and guides who depend on them. The Maryland dn R hopes to get more people engaged with stripers and out on the water year after year. This change would also bring Maryland's regulations more in line with rules in nearby areas, reducing the kind of confusion that causes a lot of people to throw up their hands with fishing altogether and try pickleball instead. We know that when more people are invested in going after a particular species, the resulting money and advocacy helps that species thrive, and by protecting fish later in the summer, Maryland hopes that overall fish populations will start growing as a result of the change. On the other hand, stressing fish populations when females are carrying their eggs back to rivers to spawn is an extra risky thing to do. Even though policy makers are working to find a more precise measure of how many fish die as a result of being caught and released back into the water, the generally accepted number is a nine percent death rate, or around two and a half million fish a year. Unfortunately, there's no way to control the sex of the fish you catch, and so losing that many reproducing females could be disastrous for population numbers. Female fish who do survive catch and release often have a harder time land eggs, and the resulting larvae often have a harder time reaching reproductive age. Strip bass as a species already facing uphill battle when it comes to making more little fish, as females have to reach six years of age before they produce significant numbers of eggs. Speak Bay is also the most important spawning area for this entire species, so the stakes here are pretty high. This fall, there will be a public comment period before the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, so you got to show up and make your voices heard. Moving on to the bear desk. Florida is likely to get a bear season this fall, and Connecticut might follow suit. Connecticut bear hunters assumed that possibility was off the table after a state Senate committee removed it from Senate Bill one five three two, but a bipartisan group of legislators proposed an amendment to the bill that would allow, but not require, the governor to propose a bear hunting season in coordination with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Specifically, the amendment allows the governor to call a hunt only if the agency has found that bear conflicts with people, pets, and livestock in the state have reached a level that poses a public safety threat. In doing the assessment, the Wildlife agency must consider factors like bear entries into occupied buildings and bear attacks on people and livestock. This really is the motivation for allowing a bear hunt in the first place, as in many states in the Northeast, the black bear populations have grown so large that they're getting into people's homes, hurting their dogs, and just generally causing mischief. Residents have been calling on their elected officials to do something about it, and a bear hunt is one of several management tools that can be used. Would also help if people stopped leaving out trash and dangling bird feeders in places where bears can get them. But I'll never complain about a new hunting opportunity. The bill passed the Connecticut State Senate by a huge margin and now heads to the House. If you live in the land of Steady Habits, which is no kidding one of Connecticut's nicknames, get on the horn with your state reps and tell them how you feel about Senate Bill one five three to two. You can bet that the anti hunting crowd will be doing the same. Speaking of problem bears, the Eastern European country of Slovakia is maintaining its aggressive posture towards its brown bear population. A few weeks ago, I told you about Slovakia's plan to call about a quarter of its thirteen hundred brown bears. They made the decision after several fatal attacks in the last few years, which is understandable in a country smaller than West Virginia that hosts over one thousand of the large, sometimes aggressive ruins. Now the country's government is trying to make that move more palatable by allowing the meat from those cold bears to be sold after this week. According to the BBC, organizations under the Environment Ministry can offer the meat for sale provided that all legal and hygiene conditions are met to put things that will more perspective. Slovakia has seen on average ten bear attacks per year over the last few years. That might not sound like a lot, but the country's population is only about five point four million people. If you take that ratio and apply it to the three hundred and forty million people in the United States, we'd be seeing six hundred and thirty grizzly bear attacks every single year. As it is, we only hear about twenty or so each summer and fall. If you ask me, I'd say the Slovakians have shown a remarkable level of restraint to have weighted the this long to harvest some of these bears. Bear meat isn't commonly eaten in Slovakia, but we know it tastes good. Oddly enough, here in the US, if you are killing animals in the name of depredation, as in getting rid of them because they're destroying crops or property, typically you cannot eat that animal, which is of course a waste, so I applaud the Slovakians here. That's all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write into askcl that's Ascal at the meat eater dot com. Let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods. We appreciate it.