00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediator's World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Kel's we Can Review with Ryan kel Kelly and now here's Kel. Fires rage on the West Coast. Currently, there are forty one thousand, fifty one active fires in the US. About four point seven million acres have burned, including more than thirty five hundred structures. Hurricanes have slammed the Gulf Coast states Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. But don't go thinking the so called flyover states are safe from the forces of nature. This next display of nature, courtesy of the Argus Leader may give you a jolt. Recently, thirty hundred residents in Aberdeen, South Dakota, lost power to an unidentified word dropping a garter snake on a Northwestern Energy substation. Northwestern Energy had the power restored shortly thereafter. You know, positive turn of events. The garter snake, although singed, survived, which is shocking. The bird or suspect in this case is not expected to be charged. If that one sizzles you, maybe you feel like the lack of justice in this scenario leads to something fishy. This isn't a totally uncommon occurrence. In fact, about a year ago as of this recording. Anyway, a walleye was dropped on a transformer in North Bay, Ontario, cutting off power to the town. According to Global News Canada, North Bay Hydro didn't have to fish long for the cause of the outage. If you think that raptors dropping stuff and causing power outages as cool, please go back and listen to Col's wee can Review episode eleven, fire Hawks, ancient worms, and old Yeller. According to a two thousand fifteen article found in Granite Geek looking at power outages specifically involving animals, they cite a new Hampshire Rural Electric co op that averaged fifty six animal related outages a month nationwide. Squirrels are the top animal for power outages. Pigeons and pigeon poop are high on the list. According to the BBC, a vervet monkey once knocked out power to Kenya. That's an entire country, fifty one point three million people out of power and the vervet monkey lived. My personal favorite when it comes to animals and power outages involves the large Hadron collider in Geneva, Switzerland, and a weasel. The weasel didn't make it. This week, we've got the pebble tapes, cave paintings, and not so permafrost. But first I'm gonna tell you my week. And my week is sponsored as is this podcast by Steel Power Equipment, makers of the finest backyard the lumber Yard, tree trunk, tomato, vine cutting and trimming equipment, and you can find I'm packing my bags after this podcast and heading for Louisiana. I won't have my steel chainsaws with me, but I will have my steel pruning shears for duck blind maintenance and hopefully fish decoloring. That's bang for your buck or duck for that matter, of folks. Big announcement, our Meat ear Land Access initiative is officially a success. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who purchased Ranella Patellas campaign merchandise as well has bought auction items as well as donated directly to the High Peaks Alliance. Shiloh Pond, the once private but publicly loved and utilized property in western Maine, is now publicly held. At least it's been approved to be publicly held. We're just gonna say it's a done deal. So thank you. Through the Meat eater Land Access initiative, which included the merch In the auction, we raised a little more than sixty thou dollars, which went directly to the High Peaks Alliance for the purchase of the property. That's one thing to remember as we all get frustrated and depressed, maybe oppressed by election ads and calls and texts. Bobby Newports never had a real job in his life. Bobby Newport, Bobby Newport, Bobby Newport, Bobby Newport, Bobby Newport, Bobby Bobby part right now, we're just wasted time, Jerry. The Ronella Patelas campaign, even though they're unelected, is following through with its campaign promises better hunting and fishing for America, more access. That's what you'd call a couple of go getters, right there, folks. The reason why I'm heading Louisiana it's for another episode of Col's we can review a visual one Field Reports, trying to get that fully immersive conservation experience for everyone. We'll be looking at coastal erosion, saltwater intrusion, and hopefully eating a lot. Lastly, what folks really care about the snort report? Thank you for offering that up I apologize. I cannot remember who wrote that in You'll have to write me back and remind me who you are so I can give you due credit. It's cute anyway. My almost five month old yellow lab Snort came down with a severely swollen lymph node. She's been on some antibiotics and I try to make her relax in the evenings with a warm compress. I am a huge, huge softy. I said it, so you don't have to. The little dog is starting to figure out birds. We've been finding and flushing, but the shots have been hard to come by. She is a terror on the songbirds that are hanging out on the ground. Every time she flushes one, she looks back, engages my level of interest. It's a lot of fun. Moving on to the anthropology desk, recent analysis of fingerprints and cave paintings in Spain and France made between thirteen thousand and seven thousand years ago have revealed the likely age and sex of the painters, or at least whoever was around when the paint was still wet. According to a study in the journal Antiquity, researchers believe that they have identified the fingerprints of a thirty six year old male and a ten to sixteen year old female. Our fingerprints grow and the ridges within them spread out at a measurable pace. Cross referencing fingerprints from a current sample as in like you or I, allow for a reasonable guess at both age and sex. This study provides some insight into who these ancient people's were and possibly the reasons behind the need to paint. For instance, having both a thirty six year old male and a young female working on the same wall would shake the belief that painting was a hierarchical practice or reserve for a particular gender. In fact, analysis of many of the painted figures suggest that seventy of the paintings in French and Spanish rock art were created by female artists, which is interesting. Think about it. Way back them thirteen thousand years ago, women and men hunted together, They gathered mollus, They even painted cave walls. Sounds pretty well rounded to me. Currently, female licensed hunters in the US are only about ten percent of all license sales now. To go back to the cave walls, if you were to consider the fact that seventy of the paintings were done by women, you could come to the conclusion that the men were out hunting so they only had time to contribute to the painting, or you could come to the conclusion that the women were so much better at hunting that they had more time to paint. Anyway, I think this study, outside of the age and gender conclusions, is at least the proof that anything posted socially, be at a cave wall or instagram never truly goes away, and you're likely revealing more than you think you are moving on but actually backwards in time to our first ever perma frost gritter round up, round up, maybe misleading. These critters aren't moving fast, they're frozen after all. Recent discovery from the Siberian perma frost is a rare one. Actually that's an understatement. It's the only one. A mummified or perhaps perma frost bitten yet fully intact cave bear, a lost relative to the modern brown bear, was just discovered. Cave bears are so named because the partial remains of bears that have been discovered are commonly found in caves. One cave in Romania had the remains of over a hundred and forty different cave bears, and of course cave bear is exactly what people want to hear. The bulk of the human population isn't gonna walk through museum door to see the daisy bear or the savannah bear exhibit. No they're not. They're gonna step right up, folks. The giant cave bear is on display. That gets butts through the door, and then they'll learn that the cave bear was indeed a big bear, but not all that much bigger than some of our biggest bears still roaming the earth. Cave bears are estimated to have been about eleven and a half feet in length, which is a big darn bear. Don't get me wrong, but you're not exactly gonna think ten foot tall Alaskan brown bear is a pushover right now. What makes the cave bear really scary is a hypothesis published in the Journal of Quaternary Science which suggests that they may have been vegan, as in, they had a plant based diet. If you have ever been around a vegan at a social function, you know what I mean. Of course, I may just be too sensitive. After all, I work at a company called meat Eater. This pickiness when it comes to food is called specialization. The necessity of a large animal to fuel itself solely on plants may have been why the cave bear only lived for relatively short time between forty and twenty thousand years ago. In the study evidence for herbivorous cave bears, the research team searched for isotopes within the bones of cave bear samples and came up with zero evidence of meat consumption. This was a small sample size, and I'm willing to bet we'll know a lot more about cave bear diet when this whole frozen bear that was recently discovered gives up its stomach contents for the record. To my vegan audience, I think you're great, and I truly do not care if you consume animal products or not. Just you know, don't judge me on my diet. Moving on to credit number two in our Permit Frost Critter round up, we have already covered the nearly intact wolf pup some call a possible missing link in the path to the domestication of dogs. This was taken from the Permit Frost earlier last year. Here's an update for you. Recent stomach analysis of the pub revealed the last meal of this fourteen thousand year old possible domestic dog, and I bet you just can't guess it. It's a piece of hide complete with hair from a wooly rhinoceros. Imagine a modern day rhinoceros with a little bit better fashion sense. It's interesting to think that this missing link pup was chewing on wooly rhino while our upright female ancestors used red ochre to paint on cave walls after a quick successful hunt. Lord knows what the men were doing. These perma frost related findings are truly incredible, and yes they will solve riddles that have recently come up. Couldn't end to some level of speculation while we come up with more questions surrounding what came before us, which is great, it's cool, and to touch back on our possibly vegan cave bear, it does sell tickets or get clicks, but let's not move too quickly. The fact that these specimens, these treasure troves of answers and more questions are being found in not so perma frost, as in the perma frost is melting. As in, as the perma frost melts, greenhouse gases that exacerbate climate change are released Human cause. Climate change is rapidly changing our world, and as with all things human caused, we need to look harder and take more responsibility for finding ways, changing our ways to help mitigate climate change and the effects thereof. According to NASA, at the end of the last Ice Age, the Earth's average temperature was only five to nine degrees cooler than now. Doesn't sound like a lot, but during that ice age, when the temperature was just five to nine degrees cooler on average, a sheet of ice covered much of North America three thousand feet thick. That ice age ended only about twelve thousand years ago. Twelve thousand years is nothing in geologic time, but listen to this spread. The Earth's average temperature will rise two and a half to ten degrees in the next one years. We had a five to nine degree change in a span of about twelve thousand years. I'm no accountant, but even I can tell that ratio is out of whack. If you're familiar with the absolutely fantastic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall, there is a famous singer character All the Snow, played by Russell Brand. He's got this hit song called We've Got to Do Something. It's funny. It's I would call it pointless. The refrain is we've got to do something over and over again. Outside of the refrain, there is, of course, not even a vague idea as to how to do something. I don't want to be that person. The simplest way to be involved in issues like this one and a but jillion others is to vote, and after you do that, continue to be an active citizen. Meaning if you vote red, green, or blue, these folks need to be reminded of how to act. Unfortunately constantly. If your vote didn't result in your pick winning, then you need to be even more active in telling whoever did win what matters to you. It's very simple, it's a very light lift. I pestor are elected officials to no end, and the actual writing and phone calls and petition signing maybe takes up to thirty minutes a month. If we don't tell and continue to tell our elected officials what is important, somebody else will. As we move into these inevitably contentious election months, the real nitty gritty and results are delivered, the great bang and the bitching will commence in full swing. Calmly, ask did you vote? You have the right to participate, you have the right to not participate, but if your choice is to not participate, you also waive the right to complain. Moving on to the Alaska Desk, audio and video released yesterday by the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agencies, or the ei A show chief executives of the Canadian Pebble Partnership and its parent Northern Dynasty minerals bragging about their back door connections to high ranking politicians, directly contradicting public statements and official permit applications in regard to the size and duration of the proposed Pebble mine in southwest Alaska. While the developers have constantly promised a small mine operating for no more than twenty years, including on their Clean Water Act permit application, to ei A investigators posing as potential investors painted a wildly different picture. What they captured were comments that directly contradict the testimony submitted to Congress, summed up as Pebble has no current plans in this application or in any other way for expansion, for example. These Pebble tapes also revealed the Pebble Partnerships previously undisclosed aspirations to use the roads and infrastructure built for the Pebble Mine to establish a massive mining district throughout the Bristol Bay region and across western Alaska. The Donlin Mine, an approved and permitted large scale gold mine to be located on the cuska Quim River near Bethel, hundred seventy five miles north of the Pebble deposit, could immediately become viable if they built the road connecting the two mines. Most of that land currently exists as untrammeled wilderness, a veritable paradise for hunters, anglers, and the folks that just plane live off the land. This development and associated pollution could crush the flourishing commercial, recreational, and tribal subsistence salmon fishing economy in the region, valued at one point five billion per year. Pebble execs were caught bragging to the undercover investigators of their cozy relationships with the White House, Alaska Governor Might Dunleavy, Alaska Senators Murkowski and Sullivan, the Army Corps engineers, and EPA regulators, as well as other political appoint he's in the Trump administration. Many of these relationships appear to have been bought with intensive lobbying efforts and massive campaign contributions. It was implied that the shaky economic ground that Alaska's government is built on is in need of the Pebble mind. The Pebble executives made it clear that they also feel in control of Alaska's Senate delegates, including Senator Lisa Murkowski, chairwoman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee. Despite the confidence in their political position and connections to insiders at the e p A and Army Corps, they seemed a bit baffled by the inner workings of the Trump administration, especially their recent dismissal of Pebble's Clean Water Act permit. They are, however, confident that the current administration's e p A will not veto their project. The Pebble Partnership did not reply to a request for comment, but spokesperson Might heat Will called into question the legality of these surreptitious recordings to the Anchorage Daily News. He says, unquote, I do not think that any time an interview from a made up investigative agency misrepresents who they are when they schedule an interview, then secretly tapes the interview without the knowledge of their subject, and then goes on to obscure their identity after the interview is broadcast. You have to know there are some pretty questionable ethics at play. I certainly agree with Pebbles spokesperson Mike heat Will. It is much better when people, even entities that are made up of groups of people, are just straightforward. They can look you in the eye and tell you who they are, what they're up to, what their intentions are. I think that's a great point, Mike. Mike goes on to say, we don't know who has paid them or who they work for. We certainly intend to find out, though, and to determine if any laws were broken by this despicable and abusive tactic. I gotta say, I like Mike, back door healings, misrepresentation, who is paying for who are despicable and abusive? You said it, ma'am. We should go after people like this, especially the groups of people that make up huge entities. I'm all four larger repercussions. We gotta follow this guy's lead executive director of the Environmental Investigations Agency, Alexander von Bismarck, claims that his organization didn't break any laws when they captured the videos in August. In September, Northern Dynasty Pebble Partnership CEO Tom Collier submitted a letter of resignation, which I gotta tell you is a bigger deal than you think it is. Anyone on Pebble Partnership's team that could stick around long enough to see this mind happen stood to gain financially in a major, major way. So if one of the largest food resources in the US, clean wall and sustainable jobs are something you are into, it is time to contact your congressional representatives and tell them to get on the E p. A. S case and veto the Pebble mind proposal. Get ahold of Senators Sullivan and Murkowski and let them know that the reason you spend money in Alaska is for the hunting and fishing. Remember, you can be pro mine and anti pebble mine. In fact, if you are pro mine, you should be anti pebble mine, as all my buddies working in minds that operate conscientiously will tell you their jobs and their reputations are put at risk with every bad example of mining. Moving on to the seldom visited is that a squirrel in your pants desk to check in on wildlife smuggling. This story comes out of Florida, whose chief exports or aircraft engines, modems and crazy clickbait crime headlines a k a. The Florida Man just continues to dominate. What kind of wildlife smuggling ring might come out of Florida. You ask gators, turtles, pythons, to lapia, well sometimes, but in this case not close. It's that great fur ball of the skies, the flying squirrel Southern flying squirrels are abundant throughout the Eastern US and have gained popularity as exotic pets in recent years. In the wild, they're important to the ecosystem in which they thrive, as they help renew forests by dispersing seeds in their feces. So it stands to reason that removing a large number of them would never be a good thing, especially for the raptors and other animals that count on them as prey. But that's exactly what happened in Bushnell, Florida. Seized financial documents and maps indicate that Rodney Krendal Knox, the sixties six year old owner of Knox Farms, set as many as ten thousand squirrel traps across the state during the past five years in Florida, where again it's illegal to these animals from the wild. Knox Farm is a licensed breeding business for alligators, turtles, and flying squirrels, but he clearly got greedy and is now charged with wreck tearing, scheming to defraud, dealing and stolen property and more. He is in jail awaiting trial and could face up to thirty years in prison. Five other men, including three who admitted to trapping squirrels and two alleged couriers, were also arrested under awaiting trial. Seized financial records suggest that in recent years, Knox had one primary buyer, a company called high Am Creative based in South Korea. Between November twenty two seventeen and April one, High Am Creative paid Knox two hundred and thirteen thousand, eight hundred dollars for more than two thousand flying squirrels. I know what you're thinking here, two hundred thirteen thousand, eight hundred dollars for flying squirrels. That's nuts. How did this operation work? It was a seven up journey from Florida to South Korea. Trappers would catch Southern flying squirrels in the woods of Central Florida. Knox Farm would buy the squirrels, alert South Korean buyers that they're available. The buyer would wire pay send courier to pick them up. A courier would drive the squirrels to Georgia. A new driver would then take over. That driver would bring the squirrels to Illinois, hand them over to international pet shipping company. That shipping company would export squirrels allegedly falsifying paperwork at the buyer's request. The buyer would receive the animals and allegedly sell them as exotic pets. For more on this story, please check out nat geo's in depth coverage of this illegal wildlife ran. It's an amazing squirrel tale that highlights just how crazy the world of animal breeding can get. I don't know if we'll ever get a Flying squirrel King documentary on Netflix, but I'm officially calling for someone to look into moving on to the National Parks Desk. This update all the way from Thailand. I'm assuming you all don't follow Thailand's Natural Resources and Environmental Minister Followood sopa arch on Facebook, but if you do, you were in for a treat. Last week, Sopa Arches shared an image of a box of trash left at a national park, and in one of the best turnabout is fair play stories of all time, the box was prepared to send back to its original owners along with a note that said you forgot something at cow Yai National Park. The box was filled with empty plastic water bottles, potato chip bags, energy drink cans, and a variety of other treasures available at your local gas station borrow What later cited two recent examples of bad behavior, including the offending group of tourists who left garbage in their rented tent at cow Yi and a group of allegedly drunken tourists who amped at Namtalk sam Lan National Park. The park will be very strict going forward with these lawbreakers, including blacklisting anyone who causes damage or disruption. The Bangkok Post reports that the actual punishment for littering in Thailand can be fines of up to five hundred thousand bots which is about sixteen thousand US, and or be held in jail for up to five years. Besides these harsh punishments, the other good news is that cow Yuys animal population has been thriving thanks to the sharp decline of tourists during the pandemic, the park has been able to restore itself. A National Park Department veterinarian told The New York Times, we are excited to see the animals are coming out, more animals, less trash. I like that balance, as I'm sure you've figured out if you're a regular listener. Anyway, this story is near and dear to my heart. I've spent years trying to think of creative ways to not only pick up all the trash left and or outdoor public spaces, but to tell all the lazy culprits just how much I dislike this stuff. I thought about buying a bullhorn and lurking around campgrounds, getting a hot air balloon to stock unsuspecting litterers, or even creating a cartoon featuring Fuzzy to anti trash Grizzly, who, unlike Yogi, would leave your food alone, but kick your ass if you left behind its plastic rapper. I have had it all that aside. Would the US ever consider a sixteen thousand dollar fine for littering? And would it hell? We need to practice common sense and understand that in these shared places there can be no room for selfish behavior. That might threaten the fragile relationship between us and the land on which we recreate. Anyway, until we get this fuzzy project off the ground, we'll have to make do with stories like this one. Good on your Thailand. That's all I've got for you this week. Thanks for listening. As per usual, you can always get a whole with me at a s k C a L. That's asked cal at the meat eater dot com. I want to hear what I'm getting right, what I'm getting wrong, and most importantly, what the heck is going on. And you're next to the woods. If you're loving what you're hearing, tell a friend or two. I'll talk to you next week.

Save this episode