00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediators World News Headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's We Can Review with Ryan kel Kell in now Here's Kel. Longtime listeners to the podcast are likely aware of my opinions about cats. For all you new listeners, it's pretty simple. I don't much care for them. This isn't really a dog person versus cat person debate, but I would certainly put myself into the dog person camp on that one. My beef with cats has more to do with their demonstrated negative impact on wildlife, especially birds and small mammals. According to a study published back in two thousand thirteen in the journal Nature, free ranging domestic cats killing estimated four billion birds each year in twenty two billion mammals worldwide. That's billion with b Additionally, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature directly links outdoor cats to the extinction of thirty three species worldwide. Not trying to fuel the fire of paranoia here, but aside from the common knowledge that cats carry diseases like toxoplasmosis to humans, they also carry rabies into Disney World, the Happiest place on Earth shocks. Okay, remember that part of EPCOT was on rabies alert. For sixty days in two thousand nineteen after a cat that scratched two employees tested positive for the fatal disease. There's a documentary on one person that survived. I mean, it's considered fatal. Now. I know I've already covered all this, but a newer study published last November in the Journal of Forensic Science suggests another aspect of cat behavior that's even more disturbing than those numbers I just read. Turns out cats will eat something far creepier than songbirds and bunnies. People as in you and me, assuming that is that we're already dead and a cat happens upon our corpses. Colorado Masy University's Forensic Investigation Research Station is what's more commonly known as a body farm, meaning they do experiments to better understand what happens to corpses as they decompose. Dark as this may sound, these studies help law enforcement, coroners, and medical examiners understand what happens to the body as it decomposes, if it's natural or not natural, which is valuable information anyway. Some researchers going over security camera footage at the facility found that two feral cats likely residents of a nearby landfill. We're slipping through holes in the fence and help eating people. Once the researchers noted this, they began to intentionally observe the animals and record their behavior interestingly, again in a macab kind of way, the cats seemed choosy about who they During the period of the study. Each cat selected only one body out of the forty at the facility at the time, both of which were recently deceased, and returned to them night after night, one kittie for thirty five nights straight. They seem to lose interest in the bodies once they reached a stage called moist decomposition. Doesn't that sound nice? Cats are not known as scavengers their predators, which is why they take such a toll on small wildlife, But apparently they're willing to break from their natural inclinations when it comes to the right human remains. Just one more in the many reasons that I ask all you cat owners out there to keep your cats indoors. Not only will they kill native fauna, they might also be eating something far more disgusting then coming home and you know, delivering unto you through a thorough licking with their creepy sand paper tongues something that you know you just could never have guessed. Tongues which are covered in tiny barbs called papa That's what produces that sand papery feeling. Here are some cat tongue facts while you get that cadaver eating image out of your head. The papal are actually made of keratin, just like a rhinos horn or your fingernails. In fact, they're shaped very similarly to a cat's claws, with the point of the claw facing towards the throat. A cat spends almost half of its waking hours grooming itself with this specialized tongue. The keratin barbs detangle any knots in its fur. Oils are redistributed around the body, which keeps the fur relatively waterproof. Continual grooming keeps this tiny ambush predator relatively older free, and researchers believe that the cats can benefit from an evaporative cooling effect, which can create up to a thirty degree difference for a cat on a hot day. According to the Smithsonian, each papal a on a domestic cat tongue can wick a fraction of a droplet or four point one micro leaders at a time, but through the course of a day, that adds up to about a fifth of a cup of water. Neat stuff, But please remember cats will eat you, and so well domestic dogs. And there is even one recorded case of a pet hamster, which if you've ever watched a hamster is it stares at you gnawing on a carrot. You can see it anyway. This week we've got coronavirus, changes to the Migratory Bird Act, shooting the antlers off deer, and so much more. But first, let me tell you about my week. My week keeps getting busier and busier. One fun thing. If anyone has potential public lands project that could use some help from some Steel power equipment, let me know the good folks I work with at Steel and myself. We're going to knock out a couple of trail days when we identify a few projects. I already have one in the works back in the Catch the Ranger district because I know a lot of those folks and it was easier. That's how that stuff works. So anything outside of that area right in to ask Cal at the Meat Eater dot Com. Give me some details of what you have going on, and I will see what we can do. Last week I talked about eatism, and a bunch of folks wrote in just to keep this conversation going as I think it's a good one, I'll touch back on my tarpan trip in Mexico. The tarpan is a symbol of elitism in the fly fishing world. It's called the silver king. For God's sakes, guided trips are expensive. Anglers get really serious, untold amounts of cash or spent on rods, guides, tackles, flies, boats, plane tickets, etcetera. Now it doesn't have to be this way, but I'm making a point here, so stick with me. Prior to the sport fishing obsession of the tarp and this giant sardine was commonly seen as a nuisance fish. Tarpan numbers were prolific and they ate your bait that you had flung out there hoping for, you know, a taste your fish to eat. Being as people have long thought that animals and fishes only exist in order to make some sort of profit off of Eventually people started netting tarpan for using dog food and fertilizer. This practice effectively removed tarpen from many parts of the Gulf and elsewhere. In short, things were not looking good for the silver king until that is, someone found great sport in hooking one in the lip, watching it jump, and letting it go. The letting it go apart was slow to come around, but the practice is almost synonymous with tarpin fishing. These days. The scarcity of the fish, the difficulty of hooking it, and the commercialization of the practice rose this only fit for fertilizer bait, stealing sardine into the ranks of a conservation success story. My question to you is did elitism save this fish? One fun fact and common misconception I'm gonna leave you with. The turpan is an obligate air breather, meaning that it has to breathe air. Yes, the tarpan can take oxygen in through its gills, but it cannot survive if it does not get a sip of air. Often you hear people explain that this is a choice. Yes, it is a heck of a survival adaptation letting this incredible fish live in hot, low oxygen places where little else can. But it is not a choice. Moving on. By now, everyone is well aware of the coronavirus outbreak that spread to seventeen thousand people at the time of this writing, and certainly much higher than that. By the time you hear this. Most of you are likely also aware that this new strain of infectious diseases zoonotic, meaning it started in animals before jumping to humans. The disease has been traced back to bats and is believed to have made the leap from animal to human and open air market in Wuhan, China, though no one can say for sure which animal actually gave the virus to a person. China has now enacted a temporary ban on the sale of wildlife to contain the spread and prevent further transmission, similar to what they did in two thousand three in the wake of the Stars outbreak, which was also a zonautic virus. In China, wildlife trade for consumption is still relatively common, at least in certain parts of the country, and though the government has worked to put some regulations in place both to protect and species and control outbreaks like this one, a great deal of wildlife are still captured and sold for consumption, both legally and on the black market. Some of you might be wondering Hey, cal, isn't this kind of a problem for you in the lifestyle you promote. I mean, if eating wild animals can lead to massive global pandemics, shouldn't you reconsider this whole deal of getting people into harvesting and cooking their own wild meat. Well, good questions, and the answer is no. But let me explain. First, I don't advocate for eating all wildlife. I advocate for the outdoors and being in it. I advocate for understanding those of us who choose to partake in hunting as both a funding mechanism and management tool. What is happening in these markets is not management, It is not thought out. It is wholesale resource destruction. Second, I'm a big fan of people harvesting their own wild meat, processing it, cooking it, and enjoying the hell out of it. But he do not support selling wildlife market. Hunting nearly wiped out some of my favorite game species here in North America at the end of the nineteenth century, especially waterfowl, but also deer, elk, and moose, which I also think are quite tasty. The point is we should not have wildlife markets like this one, where coronavirus initially made the spread to humans. According to some reporting National Geographic those markets are cauldrons of contagion. They might have forty different species of birds, reptiles, and mammals, and tiny cages stacked on top of each other, mixing air and bodily secretions. These animals often sustain injuries during capture, get stuffed into tiny boxes, and are then abused and neglected en route to the markets where they're sold. They're not exactly in prime health by the time they're slaughtered and butchered, and the conditions are perfect for spreading around a bunch of bacteria. My point is there's a huge difference between going out and killing a wild animal and its natural habitat for food not profit, and buying one from a market that's been subjected to who knows what kind of treatment and viral exposure. Not all wild meat is equal, and I wouldn't eat a cow, pigger, chicken that came from a squalid meat market either. Big part of hunting for me is knowing exactly where my meat comes from, how the population is doing, as well as how the population is expected to do. That said, if we start finding any evidence of the wild animals we hunt and eat transmitting diseases to humans. I'll be the first one to let you know right here on the weekend Review. Moving on to the law enforcement desk a Florida man, uh boy, that's a little played out. Let's try this. A guy in Florida was sentenced to eighty hours of community service in two years probation. He was also fine two thousand dollars after pleading guilty to killing an endangered species. The thirty eight year old Jacksonville resident used a power saw to cut off the rostrum of a twelve to fourteen foot small tooth sawfish. This news is disturbing on a number of levels. Sawfish are incredibly cool creatures. They kind of look like sharks with chainsaws for noses. There actually in the ray family, though, and those long, flat noses lined with teeth are called the rostrums. They can grow up to eighteen feet long and are critically endangered. Apparently the perpetrator here accidentally caught the sawfish in his trawling net and thought that the fishes rostrum looks so cool he just had to have it for himself, so he sought it off and then set the sawfish free. I'm not sure how much this guy knew about sawfish biology or cared for that matter. But sawfish cannot survive without their rostrums. They're not like lizards, who just grow new tails if they lose them. These toothy protuberances are essential parts of the sawfish anatomy. They're covered in sensory organs that sawfish used to create a three D sonar picture around themselves to detect bait and predators. They're also tools for capturing prey and self defense. Sawing the rostrum off a live sawfish is cruel and totally unnecessary. Luckily, in this case, another vessel witnessed the incident and immediately he reported it. The fish mangler was caught before he even made it back to shore. Sticking with the theme here, a woman in Florida was ordered by a judge to stop feeding wildlife at her home and also ordered to pay fifty three thousand dollars as part of a lawsuit brought against her by her homeowners association. The woman has allegedly been setting twenty pound bags of dog food, whole raw chickens, and white bread finger sand which is out in her backyard for years, which is adjacent to the Grassy Waters Preserve. The free buffet attracted all kinds of animals, including raccoons, alligators, and even a bobcat, but the worst, according to the neighbors, were the huge flocks of vultures. One neighbor was quoted in an article from the Palm Beach Post saying the vultures just vomit everywhere. Defecating and vomiting is just gross, like the smell of a thousand rotting corpses. Another neighbor claims to have seen her waiting out into the marsh at night to hand feed alligators, which, in case you're wondering, is a very bad idea. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Folks don't feed wild animals. Nothing good will come of it. Now, when you compare this lady's lawsuit potentially being sued for fifty three tho dollars versus the guy who cut off the face of a live sawfish being fined two thousand dollars, well I may switch that one around anyway. Heading north. To round out our law enforcement reporting here, I want to give a big shout out to Sergeant Scott call Wait of Calgaries, Fish and Wildlife District Sergeant call Wait got a call about two white tail bucks that got their antlers locked and couldn't get separated. As I've reported previously, this can be a lethal situation for bucks that get stuck together and can't free themselves. Sergeant call Wait considered using tranquilizers, but feared that incapacitating one deer while the other was still fighting could end badly, so instead, he grabbed his twelve games shotgun loaded with slugs, walked up on the deer, and shot off one of the tangled antlers on the first try, immediately freeing the animals. You can find a video of this quick thinking and marksmanship on the internet. It's pretty great, though I don't recommend trying this at home. Shooting at deer out of season, even if your intention is to save them, is still illegal. Leave this particular move to the professionals, folks that you might call a crack shot. Okay. To wrap this up, we gotta get serious about two things, migratory birds and clean water. Coming back to waterfowl, we had some rough news come out of the Interior Department last week. On January thirty, if the Trump administration announced new regulations that would remove penalties for construction, oil, gas, and other industries that incidentally kill birds listed under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of If approved, the new set of rules would only punish companies that deliberately kill birds, making many in the conservation community wonder what purpose the century old conservation law now so. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in two thousand ten, for example, killed hundreds of thousands of birds they came into contact with the millions of gallons of crude oil loose in the Gulf of Mexico. BP was fined one million under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Under the new proposed regulations, however, there would have been no such criminal penalty at all, because the oil giant didn't kill those birds intentionally. Even illegal acts like spraying band pesticide that happened to kill birds could not be prosecuted under the Treaty Act if birds were not the intended target. According to The New York Times, US Fish and Wildlife Service Director Aurelia skip With said the administration chose to amend the enforcement of the law so that companies can operate without the fear and uncertainty that the unintentional consequences of their actions may be prosecuted. Skip With maintains that our department is committed to conserving birds and that the rolled back regulations are simply an attempt to make the rules more clear. The administration stopped enforcing the previous regulations in two thousands seventeen after a legal opinion found that previous administrations had interpreted the law too broadly. Officials insist that businesses will still try to avoid killing birds on a purely voluntary basis. I hope so. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act was enacted in nineteen eighteen, following a convention with Canada, making it one of America's first conservation laws. Mexico, Japan, and Russia later joined the accord. The law makes it illegal to kill, capture, or sell without a waiver migratory birds on the official list, which now includes more than eight hundred species. Among those listed are nearly every species of waterfowl popular with hunters, from mallards to kings. The treaty was followed by the nineteen thirty four Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act, which has provided funds to conserve millions of acres of wetland habitat through the sale of the Federal duck stamp, the stamp that hunters place on their licenses each fall. Eight states and six conservation groups have already sued the administration over the two thousand seventeen legal opinion, and they were joined in an amicus brief last week by numerous former Interior Department officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations. The new rules were posted on the Federal Register on Monday, February three. The public will have forty five days to voice their support or disapproval. In my opinion, these proposed changes remove any teeth that could be used to prevent our ducks and geese from becoming collateral damage to industry. If we let these changes go through, it will be like issuing a get out of jail free card license to steal. I think everyone should go comment on the Federal Register posting this week, as well as call your congressional representatives now. If you feel like there's a lot of negative news coming out right now regarding environmental protections, you're right to be fair. The Trump administration has done some goodbye hunters and anglers when it comes to access and representation but they made a lot of promises to industry about deregulation. To be clear, I'm not condemning capitalism, industry or self determination here. I'm a huge fan of personal liberty and believe that generally you should be able to do what you want in your own home and on your own property, so long as you're not hurting anyone else. But we all have to respect the law, especially the law of gravity. Water, along with everything else, flows downhill sometimes even if you can't see it. You may remember back in September when we talked about the e p A proposing changes to how the Clean Water Act is enforced. Well, those rules that we talked about went into effect last week. One story comes to mind. I was attending the t RCP Western Media Summit and Fort Collins, Colorado about this time three and a half four years ago, Donald Trump Jr. Was stumping for his dad, our president, and on this subject at clean Water he told a story about how they have a family friend with a cabin and Colorado, and because of the Clean Water Act, their family friend couldn't even build a new road through wetlands that aren't even wet on their own property. That was something they would like to see change. Well, here we are, as other so called developed nations increasingly speak of clean water as the next big commodity. We're making changes to the Clean Water Act in two and Act many argue as among the most famous and important environmental laws in our nation's history, to fix somebody's road issue. These changes aren't about clean water, they aren't about wildlife. Please call your congressional representative on this one. And remember what that big fella Doug during always says something particularly true when it comes to water, that again, even when it's not visible, tends to flow. It's not ours, It's just our turn. Thanks a bunch, I'll talk to you next week. If you are loving the weekend review, tell a friend where too, and leave me a review by hitting that furthest right hand star. Tell me what I've got right, what I've got wrong, or what I've been missing by writing in to a s K C. A L. At the meat Eater dot come. Let's ask cal at the meat eater dot com.