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. A new transcontinental NonStop flight speed record has been broken, according to the Global Flyaway Network. To be clear, the g f M doesn't track people. They track shorebird migrations by following individual shorebirds fitted with a five gram satellite tracker. Five grams, for those of you who want to know, is about a US nickel in wade, which oddly enough is kind of a rarity these days. So two dimes, Well, there is this coin shortage going on. Uh So remove an average sized human eyeball and scoop out about three tenths the eyeball, and you'll be left with about five grams of eyeball. I had to throw that disgusting one in there because we're getting close to Halloween. I guess I should throw in another disclaimer in regards to taking an average human eyeball. Just trust me on the five gram way, and don't try to prove me right or wrong. I ate his liver with some father beans and a nice candy. Anyway, the g FM, the Global Flyway Network, tracks birds and they happen to recently track a real speed demon. A bar tailed godwit recently hit speeds of fifty five miles per hour over the course of its eleven days, seven thousand, five hundred and eighty one mile trip. The bar tailed godwit is a long legged shore bird part of the sand piper family. Individuals will typically weigh in between a hundred and ninety grams and four nine grams. Oddly enough, four hundred and ninety grams would be about half as heavy as your average hamster who doesn't know that. They preferred to nest on hummocktops on the tundra, and according to the Auto Bonnd Society, they're big, noisy, and cinnamon colored, which kind of reminds me of my older sister. A particular bar tailed godwit, a male referenced as four B b RW, left southwest Alaska in late September and seven days later touched back down on land for the first time, just outside of Auckland, New Zealand, a distance again of seven thousand, five hundred and eighty one miles that's roughly sixty three hundred miles of open ocean. Then a left turn at New Caledonia, where the mail. Godwitch chose not to stop, then proceeded another twelve hundred plus miles of open ocean to New Zealand. How come amfortable would you feel with directions like that? Yeah, just head on out over the open ocean. Keep going. You know you'll be getting close when you start to realize you haven't seen land in six days. Then when you do see land, don't stop, turn left and fly for another twelve miles. I know exactly where we are. We're in the middle of No wait, how do you please? Well, you'll likely never be in that position, so it doesn't matter. What does is these little obese, hamster sized, noisy cinnamon colored birds do. Another interesting fact to digest is that the godwit will double in size prior to migration. As you may know, heavy things don't fly so well. I mean, look at the turkey, so the godwit can shrink its internal organs to accommodate the fat without putting on the pounds. Sounds kind of like the new fab diet and we are approaching Thanksgiving. To bring this one home theme to the hunting side of things, the fact that migratory bird hunting seasons have started in most of the US you cannot hunt bartailed godwit, so don't ruffle those tail feathers anyway. The big migrators you can hunt, such as sandhill cranes tundra swanse, for instance, are big birds, but they have a disappointing amount of meat. I've found that meat is heavy and big birds still have a weight limit for long distance migrations, whereas a non migrator like a wild turkey or even a sharp tailed grouse seems to be all meat. In fact, if you really want to get birdie. A recent study published in the journal Experimental Biology takes a look at the birds that make the biggest weight gains prior to migration across the three types of bird flight. The three types of bird flight are of course, you're continuous flappers like the bar tailed godwit, you're flap and sores like the hawks, and you're flapping gliders like the sparrow. The more you flap, the more weight you need to put on. In fact, but an increased fuel load has increased cost. Eating more to put that fat on exposes the birds more to predation. Have your fuel loads mean increased drag and more wing beats? One would think that are really big birds. The ones like the lasing albatross, for instance, that will cover over a million miles a year would be the hard workers. But remember the Arctic turn, who is a fraction of the size of the albatross, has a yearly migration of fifty six thousand miles. I just want to throw that out there. Something interesting we discuss, you know, idle chit chat. One more fun fact for you. That migratory bird stamp you can buy helps the bar tailed god with a bird you cannot legally kill an eat just as much as those birds you can kill an eat. Buy your darned duck stamp. People. A marsh is a place full of life, not all of it edible, but hut in life just the same. This week we've got kiddies, Squalen and the mail bag. But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. And my week, as you know, is sponsored by Steel Power equipment makers, the world's finest chainsaws. We are back, in fact, bouncing around in the truck and pursuit of birds and antalope time year. And as you already know, I like to have my steel Battery power chainsaw on the truck because it is clean and stink free. It can ride in the back of the truck with the dog and my hunting gear, no gas vapors invading the last of the puppy smell or my hunting clothes. I throw in steel limb loppers, which are fantastic for cutting through antelope ribs and shanks. Even I always bring all the bones home from an antelope hunt, the lightest big game bones you can carry, and one of the tastiest animals. Antalope bone browth or demiglaze is a real treat for those of you fall going along. Here is a quick quote snort report snort. Now five and a half month old yellow lab has been moving up ever so slowly on the game bird size scale. We've moved from hungarian partridge up to sharp tail grouse. She's working hard and seems to love it. I cooked up a last minute paea, which, as you know, is no way to make PIEA used a couple of huns and a couple of sharp tails, and my goodness, it was pretty and delicious in what a way to break up all that red meat consumption. Alright, moving onto the mail bag, A couple of real thinkers in here. First from Huguenot, New York A listener, right, Sam, I'd like to get your input on private lands that blue collar workers like myself and friends hunting for years and recently lost permissions due to the owners getting serious bucks to lease the ground. I used to deliver frozen turkey and bottles of wine as a friendly offering to hunt. Now quote, rich people are offering cash that I can't even comprehend. They're cutting down trees and making food plots, just like every hunting show I see. Do you see a way around this? First fun fact, Huguenot in New York was named after Huguenots that settled there. Huguenots fled France due to religious persecution. A couple of Huguenot families landed in what is now Huguenot, New York. Back in now, onto the question at hand, the white Tail industrial complex is a beast, and yes, I would like to think there would be some ways a nice group of hunters without deep pockets can play the game, but you'll have to knock on a lot of doors and make a compelling case. Fortunately, New York does have a lot of public land, so it does neighboring Pennsylvania. The public ground has its own challenges, but at least it's more stable than a single landowner's decision. This is not for the record of discussion. I really enjoy because I really don't like mixing economics and hunting. But if you had to, you and your buddies could try and barter hours of labor to offset the property taxes and provide upkeep and improvements. A lot of landowners I know see very beneficial to the whole leasing for hunting rights game. The other factor that big money typically does not provide is the ability for the landowner and their family to also hunt the land. So this may be a question of how many concessions you're willing to make, how much time you're willing to put in, and what you can offer that others cannot. Perhaps, you know you could try a holistic approach and lieu of cash, like building and putting up bird boxes, documenting all the other wildlife on a place, removing old singing, pay to have the soil sampled or the ground properly surveyed and documented, etcetera. You know, you can bring a lot of joy landowners by showing them what you see out there's neighbor retail. It's a tough one. This probably isn't the answer you want, but I'd love to hear the rest of the story and here out it turns out for your good luck out there. This next one is from Hawaii and it is a hot topic. House Bill eighteen sixty two, which would prohibit the Hawaii Department of Land of Natural Resources from implementing bag limits for game animals on all public lands sounds crazy, right. Hawaii is in some cases overrun by invasive non native species goats, pigs, sheep, hybrid sheep, chickens, cattle, access dear, just to name a few for those species that the state considers a game animal. House Bill eighteen sixty two, at face value, is saying we want to a limit these animals from the landscape. This will now be a free for all hunters. Please take as many as you want. Help us remove these animals a pro native wildlife move now. After looking through the house bill, which can be found at leges scan dot com, forward slash, wife forward slash comments HB one six to forward slash, there are no provisions for reinstating the Hawaii Department of Land Natural Resources ability to implement big limits in the future. Nor are there any accompanying bills that would prohibit landowners for monetizing these same animals, which we know would be necessary if eradication is actually the goal. In fact, making legal public hunting illegal would likely be necessary to eradicate these species, if eradication is actually the goal. To be clear, I'm not saying you can't hunt in Hawaii. That's not what I'm advocating for. As my friend Mark Healey over there likes to point out, of what is eaten on Hawaii is brought in by ship. Wouldn't we be eliminating our food security? Now? The reason that I think folks should pay attention to HB one eight six two is simply this. It's not a holistic plan. It's not a whole island plan. This deal specifically with public lands, and for those folks who aren't keen on jumping the neighbor's fens to go hunt, that's what you got. And this kind of piecemeal thing of trying to put the smack down on mammals on public land when the mammals don't recognize boundaries such as three strand barbed wire fence, is only going to hurt the folks hunting that public land. As animals are removed off that public land, that void will likely consistently be filled by the animals moving off of private land. I just don't see this as a long term solution. Here's another interesting thing to think about, a topic I hope to keep exploring. When do these destructive non native animals become accepted as native? The Polynesians brought pigs to Hawaii roughly one thousand, six hundred and twenty years ago in canoes across the ocean, and just as they did then, pork chops taste good still Hawaiians love eating and hunting. Access Dear, Access Dear were introduced to Molokai in the eighteen sixties, Lanai shortly after, and Maui after that. Goats, cats, chickens, mongoose, and an even more staggering amount of vegetation have all been introduced, and thus lee compete with hawise native flora and fauna. It has always been interesting to me to see which of these exotics we embrace and for what reason. Now, in completely non related news, happy pheasant opener everybody, or more accurately, happy Chinese ringneck pheasant opener next up. This one's for two folks. One the listener that was compelled to send me a review that another listener left telling me that, uh, I shouldn't talk about climate change unless I have a solution to climate change, and I should quit talking about feral cats because of feral cats were bad? When't people get rid of them? Uh? Inside the time span of a week, I got two emails, one from Florida and one from Utah, stating that their local animal shelters had instructed these listeners to release cats or, in the case of the Utah Animal shelter, come pick up cats at the shelter to release. In both instances, the group Friends of Animals had been working to turn both states into quote no kill states, which I had to laugh at. I got a hold of a spokesperson for Friends of Animals in Utah. Their statement was, Friends of Animals is limited to cats and that is the only animal that really matters. They feel that releasing cats to kill wildlife is more humane than killing the cats. Now, it has been well established on this show that free arranging domestic cats are the top human caused threat to wildlife in the United States. Outdoor cats kill an estimated one point three to three point seven billion birds and twenty two point three billion non bird lives, including small mammals and reptiles. The point is, if you are so kind to take cats to a shelter, make sure they are not just re releasing the cats that you already picked up from outside. And of course, if you do want a cat, keep your cat inside. And if you don't want to keep your cat inside, well listen up, because we're gonna jump right head over to the cat desk, and this next one we'll leave you purring, I promise. A new study confirms that cat owners can bond with your pets, how you might say, with slow and probably creepy blinking. I added the probably creepy regardless, maybe we can blink our way to peace. Probably not, but let's give her a try. This study, published in a journal called Scientific Reports, posits that by narrowing your eyes, you can generate the equivalent of a smile for a cat, which might make you more attractive to the pet. Researchers and animal experts at the University of Sussex did two experiments to study what they call the cat smile theory. First, they studied twenty one cats from fort ten different households to see how they responded when their humans shot a slow blink in their direction from about three feet away. I just have to briefly pause here to highlight the totally absurd mental picture of some researcher with a clipboard taking notes as some guys stares at his cat from across the room. Man that cat must be thinking what the heck is wrong with humans these days? But I digress. Next, they looked at an additional group of twenty four cats from eight different households to see how they responded when the researcher, who was unfamiliar to them, sent a slow blink. These incredibly strange and non scientific findings seemed to show that cats are more likely to send their owners a slow blink when their owners give them the slow blank. They also showed that the researchers who sent cats a slow blink before offering them their hand were more likely to be approached. These quote smiles, researchers concluded, could be described as a positive communication between cats and humans, whether you are a stranger or an owner. It's unclear whether these behaviors are learned or innate, meaning that it's anyone's guests to whether these cats are just copying or if they have been communicating this way long before we domesticated them. Domesticated cats all come from wildcats called Felis sylvestrous liboca. These cats originated in the Fertile Crescent in the Near East Neolithic period and in ancient Egypt in the Classical period. The idea that ancient Egyptians worshiped cats gets thrown around, but it isn't all that accurate. Cats weren't literally worshiped, but the ancient Egyptians did associate many of their cats characteristics with aspects of the divine. Egyptian depictions of cats seem to be full of personality and even the occasional smile. What does this all mean? Well, for one thing, you might be able to slowly blink your way into a friendship with one of these murderous feelines living in the wild and convince them to stop killing so many birds. Please just don't post any video of you doing this socially, It's not a good look for you and you'll just be embarrassing them too. Moving on and back to Utah, a trail runner had a run in with a mountain lion mama who pursued him up the trail for a total of six minutes. Utah Department of Natural Resources is not going to kill the cap and has suggested the jogger learn how to slowly blink. Moving on to the U. S d A desk where we're gonna talk numbers. U s d A released last week recent totals of animals that were either killed, euthanized, freed, and relocated by wildlife services in the US in the year two thousand nineteen. This included over sixty two thousand coyotes, twenty four thousand, five hundred beavers. Is it's eight hundred bobcats, thirteen hundred gray foxes, twelve hundred red foxes, four hundred black bears, three hundred gray wolves, three hundred cougars, eighteen thousand brown tree snakes, thirty one bald eagles, ten thousand black vultures, three hundred, sixty thousand red wing blackbirds, it's twenty five thousand Canadian geese, and a single grizzly bear. I'm not real great at math, but I think that adds up to around one point two million wild animals killed last year. That might seem like a crazy amount of death at the hands of our government. But when you think of the number of human wildlife conflicts that needs solved around our country or on any given day, you can start to see how we might top the one million mark here. According to U s d A APHIS Wildlife Services, their mission is to provide federal leadership and expertise to resolve wildlife conflicts to allow people and wildlife to coexist. That's a sticky job at best, though APHIS employees operate under a strict code of ethics in the field and are dedicated to data and common sense driven wildlife management methods. There's a long list of duties that you wouldn't probably consider to be in the purview of the U s d A, but they're relevant to all of us. Nonetheless. Take urban rodent management programs or feral free ranging and hybrid dog damage management, for example, and you can even throw in a little double crested cormorant damage management for good measure. Some are surely not happy with the death toll reported here, arguing that North America's iconic wildlife is being needlessly killed using taxpayers money. But look deeper and you'll often find it's those taxpayers making phone calls instead of closing their garage doors and bringing in their garbage that end in the death of a black bear. So in lieu of us folks being responsible picking up after ourselves and keeping animals out of these quote conflict situations, somebody has to come in and deal with it. One thing US Americans seem to need is to have somebody pick up the phone. So the next time you leave the dog food out on the porch, or you're going out to fill up yet another bird feeder that's been knocked over, please consider bringing the bird feeder in for a while or just feeding the dog inside. Because there is a phone number you can call, and as the reality TV hero of The Working Man Micro once said, somebody's got to do it. Moving onto the shark desk, where some are protesting a new proposed COVID nineteen vaccine because it would kill too many sharks. Oddly enough, has been the deadliest year in regards to shark attacks on humans. Maybe they saw this vaccine coming. If only the writers of Shark Nado one, two, three, four, and five and the last Shark Nado would have gotten their hands on a storyline like this one, we would all have been highly entertained. A group of great white sharks targets humans in response to humans targeting great white sharks. All jokes aside, this debate is very real. It all started with a substance known as shark squaling, a natural organic compound found in shark liver oil. This compound is a common moisturizing ingredient in cosmetics, and it's used in malaria and flu vaccines as an agent that boost the immune system's response. They call it an adjuvant, a chemical that kick starts the immune system into action, driving stronger, longer lasting protection against disease. Katherine McDonald, a shark biologist in Florida, told NPR that between sixty three million and two hundred and seventy three million sharks die at the hands of humans each year, and liver oil is harvested from at least a couple million of them. Two companies, Glaxo Smith Klein and Sequarists manufacture adjuvants that contain about ten milligrams of squaling per dose in a number of coronavirus vaccines currently being tested in humans. So we're already using this stuff seems only natural to apply it to a desperately needed vaccine for COVID. As you might imagine, it ain't that simple. A group called Shark Allies recently created waves on social media and beyond as they mounted a campaign calling on the Food and Drug Administration to stop companies from sourcing the compound from sharks. The group says that a mass distribution of the COVID vaccine would mean extracting tissue from more than five hundred thousand sharks. The group started hashtag free Vaccines an initiative in an online petition which has over sixty thousand signatures. Their hope is for companies to transition from shark derived squaling to alternatively derived squaling as it is sustainable and environmentally friendly. Evan Berland, director of US corporate communications for g s K, said the company is committed to environmental stewardship and is actively exploring the potential for alternative sources of its raw materials when possible. The company also told NPR and others that the squaling they provide comes from sharks typically caught for other purposes. As of this recording, this debate rages on, and Shark Allies continue their pr campaign on behalf of Sharks Everywhere. Fact is there were one hundred and ninety three coronavirus vaccines and clinical and pre clinical evaluation, and only five of those vaccines contain shark squaling. Shark Allies Executive director Stephanie Brendel says is that when it comes to a potentially life saving vaccine, she isn't saying that shark populations are worthier of protection than humans. But here's what she did say about sharks. They keep our fish stock healthy, they keep the food chain intact, they keep diseases out of other animal populations. Good luck trying to replace that when we lose them. We'll keep a close eye on this one as it rages on, with hopes that we can have the best of both worlds an effective vaccine that doesn't kill sharks. That's all I've got for you this week. Thanks for listening. As always, let me know what's happening in your neck of the woods by writing in to a s k C. A. L Let's asked cal at the Meat Theater dot com. Thanks again, I'll talk to you next week.