00:00:00 Speaker 1: It's easy these days when discussing wildlife in America to fall into the trap of only focusing on the ways it's in decline. There's no shortage of that kind of story. But it's not the entire story. In many places, in many different ways, wildlife is tentatively. 00:00:19 Speaker 2: Staging a comeback. 00:00:21 Speaker 1: Take, for example, the eastern U.S., where elk have been returned to numerous states with great success, where black bears and mountain lions are showing up in more and more places, and where even bison are being restored to native prairie remnants. 00:00:36 Speaker 2: In the east, where so much. 00:00:38 Speaker 1: Wildlife and wildness was lost early in our nation's history, a comeback is underway. 00:00:45 Speaker 2: Wildness and wildlife is returning. 00:00:49 Speaker 1: Joining me today To discuss how this can be the case, what we can learn from these successes, and how we can build off of it, is Andrew Moore, the author of The Beasts of the East, The Fall and Rise of America's Eastern Wilderness. This is a fascinating book exploring how hunters and wildlife commissioners, prairie enthusiasts, wildlife biologists, and so many other types of individuals spearheaded real-world wildlife recoveries. In my conversation today with Andrew, I ask how we might be able to. 00:01:25 Speaker 2: Do the same ourselves. Thanks for being here. This is Future Wild. 00:01:30 Speaker 1: Brought to you by Conservation First Bank. Andrew Moore, thank you so much for being here. 00:01:46 Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Mark. 00:01:48 Speaker 2: So I want to throw you right in the deep end of, of self-reflection. I hope you'll forgive me for. 00:01:55 Speaker 3: That, but we can do that. 00:01:59 Speaker 2: Good. Good. 00:02:00 Speaker 1: So when I, uh, I've tackled a couple of book projects myself. And when I took those on, I remember in the early days when I was kind of deciding whether or not I wanted to do this, I made a decision and I kind of had a sense of awareness that even if I sold zero copies of my books, uh, they would still be a success to me because of what I would have to learn along the way, what I would wrestle with while studying and researching and trying to clarify my thinking about these topics. In my case, public lands and fish and wildlife. And so I'm curious for you, Andrew, even though I know this is not the case, even if you sold zero copies of this book, what have you learned along the way? that has made this book a success for you personally? 00:02:54 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. 00:02:55 Speaker 4: Um, and I'll also start by saying, I know my mom bought a handful of copies, so I know I've sold more than zero copies. 00:03:03 Speaker 2: So you've got, you've got a handful. 00:03:07 Speaker 4: Um, you know, I think I'm similar to you, Mark, when it comes to, um, the value of researching and writing a book. Um, at some point I think I had similar thoughts as you, uh, and I wanted to make sure I told a good story and I wanted to be happy with the book. And that's part of the reason it took me so many years to finish this project was because I was telling very complicated stories, um, and, and many stories. Um, the book is, the book is, uh, multiple stories really, um, braided in a way together. Um, And so that was the value for me and how I would judge it as success is if I was happy with the stories I told. But kind of getting back to what you were saying, I think, so I went on, you know, a journey, right, to write this book, both a physical journey. I went all over the eastern United States to report this story. But I also learned an incredible amount. Most of the things in this book, I didn't know before I started writing it, right? And so I'm just grateful for the knowledge I've gained and, and the person I've become through the process of writing this book. Um, I I've, I've come a long way, um, intellectually, but also as a, as a, as a person. And, um, I've, I've been inspired by the stories I researched and wrote. Um, and I hope I take that with me, you know, into the rest. 00:04:34 Speaker 2: Of my life. Yeah. 00:04:36 Speaker 1: Is there any perspective that you had about wildlife or the eastern United States and the potential there for wildlife that is dramatically different now than it was when you began this? 00:04:50 Speaker 4: I mean, everything is dramatically different about what I knew when I started the project to where I am today. Specifically, though, I think I have a much better understanding of just how unique every corner of the world is. And this understanding that, you know, we might have big public tracks of public land in the West or, you know, there's parts of Northern Canada that are as, you know, far wilder than anything we have here in the Eastern United States. But the life that occurs in the Eastern United States, the plant life, the animal life, isn't replicated other places. So as important as like a nature preserve or, tens of thousands of acres of public land are in a given area in the West, those places don't conserve the indigenous biodiversity of East Kentucky or Northern Pennsylvania because some of the species that occur here don't occur out there. So the value of conserving your corner of the world was really magnified for me through the process of writing this book. 00:06:04 Speaker 1: Yeah. And a really, you know, kind of tangential to that, a very interesting aspect of this focus on the East, at least that I found, and I think you talk about this a fair bit, is just this idea of how much shifting baseline syndrome impacts the whole story there in the East and how we view wildlife in the East and the potential for wildlife in the East, right? 00:06:28 Speaker 2: Could you speak to that a little bit? 00:06:29 Speaker 1: I guess for folks who aren't familiar with what that is, could you explain that? you know, kind of how that impacts what's going on there in the East and what we could see as the potential and how that might be impacting what is tackled as far as wildlife restoration or conservation in this region, you know, as you mentioned, uniquely maybe to the West? 00:06:48 Speaker 4: Yeah, shifting baseline is, I'm glad you used that phrase because that is the way to understand how we can continue to grow up and accept a diminished world as normal. So if you grow up in uh let's say south central pennsylvania for example and you're surrounded by cornfields and your woodlots are skinny trees that don't have much grandeur to them um they're maybe the understory of this woodlot is composed mostly of invasive exotic species um you probably if you live in by a cornfield you've got a lot of uh deer and turkey and other wildlife um But let's say that's your picture of nature. And if you grow up with that, you can kind of feel good about that. And there are great things about that part of the world and those kinds of natural areas, if you will. 00:07:40 Speaker 3: But if you don't know exactly how grand and. 00:07:45 Speaker 4: Wild our part of the world was prior to European settlement, prior to the clear-cutting that commenced across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, every state in the East— If you can't get a glimpse at the magnitude of that former world, then you accept that maybe it's always. 00:08:03 Speaker 3: Been this way in the East or elsewhere in the world. 00:08:06 Speaker 4: And if you don't grow up with an old growth forest near you or a highly diverse grassland with hundreds of species of plants in this grassland, you might accept that this diminished, depauperate view of the world is normal. And so that's why I think it's important for people to see some of the last old growth in the East. And then for me, that's why it was inspiring and instructive to go to some of these places where ecological restoration has occurred and to see the capacity for the land to heal, I guess you could say, but also just if you put the species back together, how those wild animals interactions can resume and, and you can get a glimpse at the former world. Um, and you can, in the case of some of the stories I profile, you know, you have to see the animals back on the landscape to truly understand, um, the, the, the magnitude of, of, of what the wild East had been before, before we, I think it's fair to say domesticated, um, the landscape. 00:09:18 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:09:18 Speaker 2: All right. 00:09:19 Speaker 1: Can you paint a little bit more of a picture of what that past used to look like? 00:09:23 Speaker 2: You did a wonderful job of that in. 00:09:25 Speaker 1: This book, really adding some detail. I think many of us know, like, oh, back in the day, it used to be better. But maybe the specifics are a little bit cloudy. Can you just share a little bit of that context so we can have a better sense of how grand and wild that East. 00:09:43 Speaker 2: Used to be? 00:09:44 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. 00:09:45 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:09:46 Speaker 4: And, you know, I think before I begin trying to describe it, I think it's also important to say that we kind of just have ideas of how wild it was. You know, I think it's important to say that we don't have a certain, you know, a certain and sure understanding of exactly what the landscape looked like before Europeans terraformed and transformed the landscape. 00:10:09 Speaker 3: But we do have great. 00:10:10 Speaker 4: Descriptions from explorers, from the settlers. We have great descriptions of what it looked like Um, we have the species themselves too in the fossil records. Um, so to begin to describe it a little bit, we, the Eastern United States had, you know, old growth trees towering over, you know, close to 200 feet tall in the South. We had Cypress trees that could grow up to 2000 years old, you know, um, sprawling live Oaks. Um, and all throughout the Eastern United States, um, Almost from the Atlantic to the west, we had elk. We had wild elk throughout the Appalachian Mountains, wild elk in the Piedmont and the foothills of the mountains. We had bison by the thousands in the Midwest, in the place that we call the Corn Belt today, Illinois, Indiana. We had bison in Ohio. And we had bison even in the southeast for some time. we had sprawling wetlands. There's a wetland in Ohio that's sprawled for most of northern Ohio. We had the Kankakee, the Grand Kankakee Marsh that sprawled through much of northern Indiana and Illinois. They called this place later the Everglades of the North, right? This just wild, wild landscape that was full of these massive animals that have I've described. 00:11:38 Speaker 3: And we had predators. 00:11:40 Speaker 4: We had the same apex carnivores in the east or similar than we do in the west. 00:11:46 Speaker 3: We had mountain lions. Easterners called these panthers. 00:11:50 Speaker 4: And you still hear the name panther in place names from West Virginia, of course, all the way down to Florida. 00:11:58 Speaker 3: So we had panthers in the east. We had wolves. 00:12:02 Speaker 4: We had the red wolf in the southeast and the gray wolf further north. So, you know, I could go on and on and on. We don't have everything we had. Certainly plants have gone extinct. Other smaller animals have gone extinct. We've lost some of our most colorful birds. We've lost the Carolina parakeet. We've lost the passenger pigeon and we've lost likely the ivory-billed woodpecker. So with our domestication of the landscape, we've lost the grandeur of the landscape. And in some cases, we've even lost species forever. 00:12:42 Speaker 1: So when we grow up in this world, in this diminished world, in which we now assume what we saw is how it's always been, how we've shifted this baseline, what's the what's the ramifications of that? You know, looking forward when, when someone like you or I grew up and we thought, Oh, Hey, corn and a. 00:13:03 Speaker 2: Lousy tree, a set of a forest with no understory. That's just normal. 00:13:07 Speaker 3: Um, yeah. 00:13:08 Speaker 2: What does that lead to? Why is that concerning? 00:13:13 Speaker 4: So that's concerning in, in many ways. And it depends on your personal worldview and interests. Um, you know, it's, it's concerning. Let, let, let's say from the perspective of the inherent worth of life on earth, right? The inherent value that a species that all of time took to produce, you know, that the history of evolution conspired to make this orchid in this wetland in Illinois, or this apex predator, the red wolf in the Southeast is the product of millennia. When we wipe that out, because we have simplified the landscape and destroyed the diversity of habitats that these species need, we simplify life on Earth. And I think if you value the diversity of life and the wonder of it all, you know, that something like this orchid or this wolf ever existed at all, to know that we are... the cause of its destruction. You know, it's not some mystery in, in wild nature that, uh, a plant or a woodpecker is going extinct. We, we, we largely know now in 2026, why, um, the landscape is simplifying. Um, and I, I think there's something, um, that's the, the danger of it. You know, the ramification of it is, is we're, is perhaps it is immoral to knowingly simplify life on earth and to, And to say that, you know, we know that our actions are going to cause extinction and to proceed with our human enterprise and business and just carry on knowing that our actions are doing that. So that's one worldview, but not everyone shares that worldview, right? Not everyone says, you know, some people will say, oh, well, if an orchid goes away, what's the big deal? But also, you know, if you want to just talk about selfishly or you know, about what you, a person, gets out of it, there's a lot more excitement when you live with this kind of diversity of wildlife and landscapes that are wild. There's a human experience, you know. So I write about in the book the reintroduction of elk to the east, right? And life for humans can go on like normal without elk in Kentucky. 00:15:44 Speaker 1: Life. 00:15:45 Speaker 4: We all seem to be doing fine, and we did fine for 150 years without elk in the central Appalachian Mountains. But when you go into a place like East Kentucky where the elk have been restored and where black bears have recolonized the landscape, there's a thrill to being on that landscape with those big, massive animals. And if you're a hunter, to have that opportunity in East Kentucky to harvest either elk or even bear in East Kentucky, that's an experience that connects you to, you know, thousands of years of human life in our part of the world. And it just gives you, I think it also gives you to be around those massive animals, or even if you're not around them, just to think you're near them, you know, or to see sign or to see scat of these animals. It reminds you of the capacity of this part of the world to support big life. And I think it opens doors to, you know, once you start caring about elk and black bear, you might start caring about a whole lot else that's. 00:16:48 Speaker 3: Out there on the landscape as well. 00:16:50 Speaker 1: Yeah, the big charismatic megafauna, they are a wonderful gateway. 00:16:54 Speaker 2: Drug to the rest of the wild world, right? 00:16:57 Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. 00:16:59 Speaker 1: They really are. 00:16:59 Speaker 4: And these animals require landscapes, right? Like unless you're doing like a farm for elk, or bison, or, you know, a zoo, if you're, if you're actually trying to conserve the evolutionary potential of these animals and their ecology, their true wild ecology, you need to preserve landscapes. 00:17:17 Speaker 3: You need to conserve landscapes. 00:17:19 Speaker 4: And so when you have things like elk and even bison in the East, if you want to do it right, you also, you also have to save the land. And, and I think that is, that's a big part. 00:17:30 Speaker 3: Of the story too. 00:17:31 Speaker 4: It's seeing these animals, not as not as isolated individual entities on the landscape, but as part of a land community, as part of an ecosystem. 00:17:40 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:17:43 Speaker 1: So one of the great dangers of tackling a project like you did, and I say this because I had to deal with the same danger, is when you look into the past of our wildlife here in America, it's a sad story. 00:17:59 Speaker 2: There's a lot of tragedy. There's a lot of loss. 00:18:02 Speaker 1: Even when you look at much of what's happening right now still in many parts of our wildlife world, right? 00:18:07 Speaker 2: It's a story of decline, of challenge. 00:18:10 Speaker 1: And so it's very easy to fall into a sense of discouragement, despair, all those kinds of negative things, right? I'm sure you have, in the process of learning about all this, been like, oh, geez, this is a downer, to put it simply. But what I really like about your book, And what I have found to be the only way to deal with that despair in my own work has been to focus on the positive, to focus on the solutions. And the great part of your book's subtitle here is that it's the fall and rise of America's eastern wilderness, right? It's not the typical rise and fall. It's the fall and then coming back. And I really appreciated that about this. And I noticed in an online interview you did with Mongabay, they asked you a question. They mentioned a number of the different solutions that you highlighted in this book, but one of them that really stood out to me when I saw the way they framed it was imagination, how important imagination is to the conservation of wildlife or the restoration of wildlife. Why is imagination important? 00:19:25 Speaker 3: Oh, that's a great question. Um, I'm glad you asked that. 00:19:28 Speaker 4: Um, You know, we were talking before the interview about how some of these projects that I write about, reintroducing elk, bison, and red wolves, and also the restoration of landscapes or other animals that I write about or other species, kind of happens sometimes because someone has this wild idea to do something. For example, Doug Hensley, he's the man from East Kentucky who was a volunteer commissioner for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. And he looked at mine scarred landscapes, mountaintop removal landscapes where thousands of acres have been blown apart by explosives and, and, um, you know, devastated ecologically. Um, and he looked at this landscape and he thought, you know, long story short, he thought what we could put elk out here. You know, he'd been hunting out West. Um, he knew what elk habitat looked like out in the West. And he looked at these artificial exotic grasslands that had been created on the tops of, uh, of these mountains. And, Doug Hensley was not responsible for that work. He looked at the landscape, though, and looked at what had been done to it and thought, we could put elk back here. 00:20:47 Speaker 3: We could bring back this species that had been. 00:20:50 Speaker 4: Hunted to extinction 150 years earlier, and we could do this. And people did not support the idea. People thought it was a bad idea. People could not imagine, to go back to the word imagination, people couldn't imagine elk on the landscape, sharing the landscape with elk because of how big these animals are. And it was not supported. 00:21:17 Speaker 3: By everyone. 00:21:20 Speaker 4: Adjacent states, like Virginia, for example, thought this idea was crazy, and they asked them not to do it. 00:21:28 Speaker 3: Some of the agency officials from that state. But Doug could see it. 00:21:32 Speaker 4: Doug could see this happening and the benefits it might bring to the people of East Kentucky and to the land of East Kentucky and push for it and eventually made it happen. It's not the only story of imagination. You know, the one I think that truly inspires me the most was the story of ecological restoration rising and being put into practice in the 1980s in northern Illinois, there was an idea that was really spearheaded by Illinois conservationist Steve Packard to take the Corn Belt. You know, we were talking about this earlier, Illinois and the cornfields and the Corn Belt. This was tallgrass prairie country. This is wetlands, sprawling wild landscapes. with native peoples and elk and bison. That was the true wild nature of Illinois. And this thinker, Steve Packard, had the idea, let's take cornfields, let's put it all back together, everything. Let's replant a highly diverse grassland community, hundreds of species of plants. 00:22:46 Speaker 3: Let's put them back. 00:22:47 Speaker 4: Let's do it for the birds and the butterflies and But then let's also take it to the logical conclusion. Let's put the biggest grazer back on the landscape. Let's bring it back to Illinois, the American bison. And this too was a work of imagination and challenged conservationists in Northern Illinois. 00:23:05 Speaker 3: People thought this was a bad idea. 00:23:07 Speaker 4: People thought it was a waste of resources, you know, because it took time and money to assemble the landscape and to assemble the species. Um, but now, you know, 46 some years later, um, we take for granted that it can be done. It's like, of course we can replant tall grass prairie. Um, and we can point to places like, um, this, this, this preserved Nachusa grasslands that Steve Packard, um, envisioned and, and we can see the success, but all of that was a gamble and, um, a work of imagination, uh, you know, 50 years ago. 00:23:40 Speaker 2: So, so yeah. 00:23:42 Speaker 1: And I think this ties in so well to the whole shifting baseline thing, because, um, I think what happens is when you become used to this new normal, you can never imagine it being otherwise, and you could not imagine it being better. 00:23:56 Speaker 2: And so it just limits the possibilities. Right. 00:23:59 Speaker 1: And, and what I have appreciated about these stories, especially a couple of you shared there, especially Doug's story. It just showed, you know, one person with a big imagination can change the world. 00:24:13 Speaker 3: Right. 00:24:14 Speaker 1: I mean, I think in many ways, if you have a big idea and a belief in it and some ambition, you can make things better. Even today, even in this world, even in the East where it seems like things are so developed and some of these things seem outside of the realm of possibility, you've highlighted numerous examples of how still someone, anyone can make a difference. You don't have to be in the government. You don't have to be a billionaire. You don't have to be, you know, in some amazing position of influence. Um, what stood out, what else stood out to you about this impact of the individual? Um, cause I feel like that's, that's a major takeaway for me from this book was just the, the immense potential for any one person to actually change things. I think it's so easy these days to, to, to lose our sense of agency, to feel like these challenges are beyond us. And I think your stories here refute that in a very convincing way. 00:25:25 Speaker 3: Yeah, well, thanks for saying that. 00:25:27 Speaker 4: I'd love to talk a bit about that because I think about that stuff as well. And to bring it back to shifting baseline, we can reverse the shifting baseline. 00:25:39 Speaker 3: The baseline shifts, but it doesn't always have to go down. You know, we can. 00:25:43 Speaker 4: Raise the bar and thinking about, you know, the diminished world that we had talked about, folks in East Kentucky grow up thinking elk are part of the landscape. Like a kid born today will always know that elk were in East Kentucky and won't know an East Kentucky without those animals running around. And, you know, the man who had that idea, one of a few friends that worked together on the project, like for example, Doug Hensley, he was influential in his fear, but he wasn't Teddy Roosevelt, you know, he wasn't the president of the United States. Um, and, and he was a volunteer in his capacity as a commissioner, uh, on the Kentucky department of fish and wildlife resources. And, and so again, he, you know, he's not at the highest level of government making this happen. He, he just was believed in it so strongly and, and, and his idea had merit too, right? Um, the, the, once the scientists started looking into this, uh, they said, Oh wait, maybe the things we've thought about up in the East weren't true. Maybe the disease pressures won't be so bad. Maybe we can do this. Um, so even the scientific community had sort of accepted the shifting baseline and, and it wasn't until they, um, you know, were challenged by a volunteer commissioner to, to look into this that they realized it could be done. Um, you know, another story that I want to share is, uh, As it relates to the American red wolf, these animals were going extinct. And no one really knew anything about these animals, nor cared. Americans have not historically valued wolves. And, of course, the federal government for decades was hell-bent on killing every one of them out of the country. And There was one memologist who wrote an obscure paper about this, and a few people read it. That information made its way into one sentence in a book about wildlife in North America, and it was read by a young student in New Orleans named Ronald Nowak. And he thought it was terrible that this native species to Louisiana was vanishing, the red wolf. And so he And he was just a college student at the time. He started compiling all the information he could about this species, where it had been, the extent of its historic range, what people knew about it. And he sent files to the federal government, to the Fish and Wildlife Service. And the paperwork landed on the desk of the right person. And this mammologist went down to Texas and Louisiana and started looking for these rare animals. And it kicked off the program to try to save this species from extinction. And, and it, and it was because, you know, a college student thought it was worthy. Now this college student would go on to be one of the foremost experts on wolves in, in North America. But at the time he was just a college student and, and he rigorously did the work to, to, to explain the situation and, um, and spoke up, spoke to the federal government. 00:28:59 Speaker 3: And let them know what was going on. 00:29:01 Speaker 4: And, uh, and it led to, um, the work to preserve the species and, and, and we still have it today because of those efforts in the 1970s. 00:29:10 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. 00:29:11 Speaker 1: So, so you mentioned the, the wolf story and the elk story there. And within both of those explorations, uh, there is a significant role within each, uh, from the hunting community, right? Um, the hunting and angling community has this, has this, uh, tightly tethered, It's sometimes fraught. It's sometimes a positive relationship with fish and wildlife, right? 00:29:39 Speaker 2: When we talk about. 00:29:40 Speaker 1: the fall of wildlife in America, and in the East in particular, of course, a lot of that's due to over-harvest, market hunting, much of that. And then, of course, as you also document, then there's this new sense of obligations Once folks realized, oh, wow, these wildlife populations were not infinite, we need to start conserving them. We need to start establishing game laws and programs and management systems to bring them back and keep them here at sustainable levels. 00:30:12 Speaker 2: And much of that was driven by the hunting and fishing population. 00:30:16 Speaker 1: And so there's so much positivity there. The elk story, primarily driven by sportsmen and women, people who said, hey, we would love to have elk back here. And for many of those people, it was because they developed a love for elk through hunting, right? 00:30:31 Speaker 2: That's right. But also, like in the red wolf story, you highlight some challenges, right? 00:30:36 Speaker 1: And how the hunting of coyotes led to challenges with the red wolf restoration. And how, yeah, I mean, there is a tense relationship between hunters and predators even today. 00:30:48 Speaker 2: No one can deny that. So all that said. 00:30:52 Speaker 1: As you worked through this book and this history and these stories, how have you come to understand this interesting role that the hunting and fishing public has played in the history of wildlife and still does today? What's that look like for you as you've wrestled with this and as you look kind of forward on all that? 00:31:12 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. 00:31:13 Speaker 4: And I mean, those are the questions I think, you know, understanding that and answering that is how I think we come to the land ethic we need to have. if we're going to have these wild lands and wild species into the future, is making sure that the progress we've made as communities, whether it's the hunting communities or other biological communities of. 00:31:38 Speaker 3: Concern, moving forward, what do we do? 00:31:42 Speaker 4: So one of the things, I think I've always had this sense that hunting and fishing was part and parcel with conservation in modern America. Um, you know, I understood how game departments were funded and, and I understood a bit about, um, the, the direct roles that, you know, especially funding and monies from hunting and fishing contributed to conservation. Um, one thing that I, I hope to have emphasized in the book and, and, and one, something that I've definitely taken away is that when we say like hunters in, in the modern world, in, in North America, um, we have an understanding of what hunting is as a, as a sports, as a hobby, as a way of life, as a community. 00:32:27 Speaker 3: But prior to, you know, the 20th century, especially. 00:32:32 Speaker 4: In when these animals were being wiped out in the East, the hunting, the idea of the hunter, the modern hunter didn't exist, right? 00:32:39 Speaker 3: It was just these animals. 00:32:41 Speaker 4: Belong to whoever could kill them, kill them to eat, kill them to make money. And everyone was basically a hunter or ate the meat that was of wild game. So killing animals is just what you did as an American in the 1700s, in the 1800s. 00:32:57 Speaker 3: Take it back. 00:32:58 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:32:59 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:33:01 Speaker 4: And so once, you know, specifically looking at the East, once all these animals were gone, you know, people in Kentucky and parts of West Virginia and North Carolina, all across the East, they didn't have game animals anymore. The white-tailed deer were gone from much of the eastern United States. Not all of it, and not everywhere, but to see a white-tailed deer in the early 20th century was a cause for excitement. You'd gather your friends around and be like, look, there was a deer over here, I swear. 00:33:30 Speaker 3: It was thrilling. 00:33:33 Speaker 4: And it was these people, these game hunters, right, as you know, who did the work of restoring these animals. It started with white-tailed deer, wild turkey, You know, small game restoration. 00:33:47 Speaker 3: And in the East. 00:33:49 Speaker 4: Specifically in the East, this was the work of sportsmen, right? Sportsmen's groups that were responsible for restoration. establishing game lands, right? Establishing rules about how many animals to kill in what seasons, you know? And we'd eventually get biologists, right? As the science of wildlife management professionalized. And we would know for certain how many deer we could harvest and when so as not to wreck the population. So yeah, I think... there were other movements, you know, birding movements, for example, a lot of scientific movements that led to the modern sort of conservation or ecological movement. But for the common person, I think it was the sporting movements that led most common people to be involved in conservation. But as you kind of mentioned, that movement doesn't always extend to all life in the country. 00:35:03 Speaker 3: You know, I'm. 00:35:04 Speaker 4: Thinking about what habitats are good for white-tailed deer in the East. They're not always native plant community habitats. Of course, these animals evolve in those communities and they can do well there, but You know, food plots and cornfields and all of these modified landscapes, even our suburban manicured neighborhoods are great for white-tailed deer. So you can have game without having ecologically diverse communities. And so I think, and of course there's lots of people in the country, you know, who care about ecological diversity and biodiversity conservation issues. And I think that's kind of where we are at this moment of we've got multiple interest groups and people who want to see. 00:35:57 Speaker 3: Wolves on the landscape. 00:35:58 Speaker 4: People want diverse native plant communities and people who want wild game and an abundance of it. And I think in a lot of ways, all of these different diverse user groups, if you will, have the same or similar goals. 00:36:13 Speaker 2: So much in common, yeah. 00:36:15 Speaker 4: Yeah, the Venn diagram might not be complete, but there's enough overlap that there's that stuff in the middle that I think we can all, those different schools of thought or communities can agree on that, you know, a lot of it comes back. 00:36:29 Speaker 3: To saving landscapes, saving land. 00:36:33 Speaker 4: And so I think seeing people find that common ground is important. you know, the next phase of what conservation looks like in the country is bringing all the groups together. Especially now when we have, we're recognizing that, you know, the landscape is finite and there's a lot of pressures to develop as much of it as possible. 00:36:59 Speaker 3: So I hope that's where we go next. 00:37:00 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:37:01 Speaker 1: I've wrestled with this a lot myself and I feel that You know, you make this point in your book, and I have too, which is that we will only save what we love or care. 00:37:15 Speaker 2: For, right? 00:37:16 Speaker 1: And you can only care for something or love something if you have some deep connection to it, right? And I think that's why for so many hunters, this conservation ethic eventually grows, right? Because maybe it starts out as just this thing you did, and it was fun when you were a kid. And then as you mature, you start to understand what makes it possible. And you start to appreciate the bigger picture and you develop a sense of obligation. And I've always looked at hunting as, you know, back to gateway drugs. It's a wonderful gateway drug to caring about biodiversity and all these other things. And so I think that part of what we need is more and more people developing some connection to wildlife and wild places, right? And so that's what you have with birders, as you mentioned. That's what you have with hunters and anglers. That's what you have with people who are you know, prairie fanatics, whatever it might be, they found something that connected in their life and their life. And they, they developed that sense of a fascination or love or, or whatever you want to call it. 00:38:17 Speaker 2: And then that brings them to this action. 00:38:20 Speaker 1: But on the flip side of all that, um, you also have, I guess like a, like a, a floor. If the ceiling is where can we place our love or animals or a fascination with animals, um, at the floor is our tolerance for animals, right? And I think there's an interesting tension within both the broader story of wildlife in America and within your book here focusing on the East, right? There's like the ecological carrying capacity of a landscape. What can the habitat actually support? How many elk could actually live in this forest? How many wolves could actually live in this mountain range? 00:39:00 Speaker 2: And then you have social carrying capacity? What will people tolerate? 00:39:05 Speaker 1: And that seems to be just as much of a limiting factor as anything these days, especially in the East where there's so many people and so much development, uh, that almost is the harder thing in many cases. Um, can you speak to that a little bit and how you had to, or how you, uh, you know, explore that side of things within this book? Cause there's, a, there's a number of examples within your highlighted stories in which it's actually the people and the tolerance of people or lack thereof that impacted, you know, if these wildlife could come back or not. 00:39:38 Speaker 4: I mean, I think it's always the limiting factor, right? Like it is people that the animals, um, will, especially these big generalists like bison and elk and wolves, um, they're generalists. They can make a go of it just about everywhere. And I think you're right. I think it's, especially in the East, it's always about people. Elk were, elk, the story I write about, the elk that find, the project that brings elk back to the East in a way that had never happened on that scale is East Kentucky. And they find a home on Reclaim County, mountaintop removal sites. But those aren't the only places where elk would thrive in the East. Um, you know, they would thrive in West Kentucky, um, where all the agriculture is and people would not tolerate it. Um, and that's what they said and that's why they don't exist in, in, in West Kentucky. Um, and, and West Kentucky is not alone. Um, I think just about everywhere in the Eastern United States, um, at least the rural places, um, uh, where elk could, could make a living, you know, And I think one of the biggest examples of this is bison, not just in the east, also in the west. We've not restored bison to the vast majority of their historic range, and they only occur as free-roaming animals in a few token places. And again, it's imagination. We can't imagine what it would be like to have wild bison on the landscape, maybe interrupting our daily lives, maybe causing traffic jams. We also can't imagine the benefits of that. Maybe if we did have wild bison in more parts of the United States, maybe it would give us more benefits than heartache. Certainly if I had a cornfield and they ended up in there, or if they were in my alfalfa field, I might not be happy about it. But what would it look like to have these animals around in more places? What would it look like to have bison as truly a wild, huntable game species in more parts of the United States? And would it be worth whatever drawbacks that we might have? You know, I think the other thing is, with some of these species, is every once in a while you might be inconvenienced to have one of these species in your backyard or in your wild lands. And they don't always play by the rules. And maybe if you have a red wolf on your property in North Carolina, maybe the deer become a little bit more weary. But we know they're out there. We know there's plenty of deer. And at times, there's a lot of wolves on the landscape. So it's about... I think it's also about how much... comfort, um, are you willing to, to, to let go of, um, and, and how much imagine, imagination can you have for, for what you might gain by having, um, some of these species back on the landscape? Um, and, and I mean, it's really the age old, uh, conundrum of, of, of modern, modern society, right. 00:43:08 Speaker 3: Is coexisting with, with, with these animals and, and, um, And landscapes. How do we. 00:43:14 Speaker 4: Continue to have our comfortable lives without consuming all of the wild lands? You know, thinking about, you know, the size of our houses and how much acreage we consume, especially in the East, for houses and our big box stores and our Amazon warehouses and our data centers. 00:43:37 Speaker 3: You know, do we want these? What's more important, right? 00:43:40 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:43:41 Speaker 4: The technological advancements or comforts of our modern society or, you know, having wild lands exist at all. 00:43:53 Speaker 3: It's complicated. It's complicated. 00:43:55 Speaker 2: You know, sure is. What's your sense of the trajectory there? 00:43:59 Speaker 1: Like, I mean, in, in diving into these stories and looking at where we were and now where we are today, do you, do you have any sense of if tolerance or the social caring capacity is or wildlife in the East, is that on the rise or retreat? 00:44:17 Speaker 3: That's a really great question as well. 00:44:19 Speaker 4: Um, you know, I think if I were to look at this, you, you, you'd have to maybe see that it is on the rise. You know, more people are living with elk in central Appalachia than they ever have before. 00:44:30 Speaker 3: Um, people, whether they like it or not, are living with deer all. 00:44:34 Speaker 4: Over the Eastern United States and, and, and the tolerance for deer can be low. Um, when it comes to, you know, automobile accidents and crop depredation and suburban homeowners who have their gardens raided by deer. Um, so it can be low, but I think people, as, as people see the landscape and its capacity, um, you know, um, people want these animals around. People do want black bears. Um, it can be difficult for individuals to, to live with some of these animals, but I think people want them around. Um, I think it's also recognizing that these animals to live the lives that they evolved to live, you know, wildlife, whether it's black bears in the East or, or elk or, or even the red wolf, they need wild lands. They need natural land to live the kind of lives that they had evolved to live. 00:45:29 Speaker 3: And that's what we're running out of. 00:45:32 Speaker 4: And that's the one where I'm not, I guess I'm really not seeing a, a hopeful picture for wild lands. At the same time, you do see lots of land trusts conserving land. 00:45:45 Speaker 3: You do see, you know, in. 00:45:48 Speaker 4: East Kentucky, for example, the Nature Conservancy has bought over 200,000 acres of land. Much of it's timber and mine land. And, you know, recreational uses will continue on that landscape. There are opportunities for big landscape scale conservation. But it feels like this is a critical moment for, um, maybe writing the ship a little bit. Um, you know, and, and, and having folks recognize what's going on and how much land is being developed. Um, and because once we lose that, you know, um, I think it becomes less, it's less possible to, to shift that baseline in a, in a positive direction. 00:46:30 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:46:30 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:46:31 Speaker 1: So, so building off that, right. I mean, millions and millions and millions of acres of public land of, of relatively undeveloped land still in the American West, right? In the American East, as you just described, we are losing habitat. I don't know what the actual numbers are, but I've got, you know, I don't 80, 80% plus 90% plus of the landscape. There's probably privately owned, um, all the things you mentioned, data centers, subdivisions, big box stores, et cetera, but, you know, biting away at whatever space there's left. Um, Through this project, what have you learned about what's necessary for restoration to work in that kind of landscape? We've mentioned several things, but is there anything else required when trying to tackle this idea of restoring wildlife in this very different kind of landscape now that we have in the East? Anything else stand out to you from these stories and these people you've delved into their lives with? 00:47:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so much is necessary. 00:47:34 Speaker 4: And it's incredibly complex and difficult work. I think the thing I'll say is if people are going to save landscapes, it comes back to what you said earlier about people, they save what they love. And you're not going to save something you don't love. And so whether, you know, if you're hunting and fishing, if you're a rock climber who goes down to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky... Um, you learn to love the landscape. You learn to love these animals and these experiences that you share with others. Um, you know, we, you mentioned that the prairie people in the book and the people who are saving remnant prairie, they're going into, uh, old growth grasslands and harvesting seeds. 00:48:17 Speaker 3: They're, they're touching plants. Their, their boots are on the ground. 00:48:21 Speaker 4: You know, the sun is over their head and that is when they, they fall in love with plants. 00:48:26 Speaker 3: That is when they fall in love with ecosystems and. 00:48:29 Speaker 4: And it happens when you're out on the landscape, when you're having experiences, whatever appeals to you. But you've got to be out there to really fall in love with the landscapes and the species and the experiences. And then to be invested enough to make that a priority in terms of the people you elect to represent you in government and then who have a say in what happens to the landscapes. And then just in terms of building a kind of life and community where nature and outdoor recreation and conservation are part of your value system. 00:49:11 Speaker 2: Has this project changed your life in any way? By that I mean, are you doing things differently? Are you taking... different actions? 00:49:21 Speaker 1: Are you, in any way, has this, you know, led to you being on a different path because of this? 00:49:30 Speaker 4: You know, I think I was on, I was on this path, this path of a love for the natural world and and I've always spent time in the natural world, but I think everything has intensified as well for me. Um, and, uh, I've also, you know, I became a father, um, while, uh, I was working on this book. And so I have a young, uh, young boy that I want to, I want him to know wild America, right? I want him to, to, to love this landscape in the, in this country, uh, in the same way that I do. Um, so I take him to these places and I want him to have experiences there because you know, it's going to be his world to defend and his country to conserve before long. And at this time when there seems to be, you know, there's two sectors, there's like the, you know, political movement to divest of public land, to roll back environmental safeguards. And then there's just the American consumption of land, you know? So it's coming from political movements. And then it's also just coming from social demands and needs for landscapes for these consumer things that we talked about. So I'm, uh, you know, I wrote a work, my book is a work of history and journalism. Um, but I'm also just more involved in, in, um, how the decisions of conservation are made and, and hopefully speaking up in a way that, um, has results in terms of, uh, conserving, conserving these things that we value. 00:51:05 Speaker 1: Yeah. So I know that much of this book was focused on history, as you just mentioned. So I want to ask you to do something that historians don't typically like to do. 00:51:17 Speaker 2: But that is, I'm going to say you're more than a historian. 00:51:22 Speaker 1: And you are allowed to do this, which is look into the future. Prognosticate a little bit. If you could project out, you know, 20, let's say, 50 years from now, right? I have a six-year-old and an eight-year-old son. You've got a young son. So when our boys are, you know, mature adults in their prime, I would love to hear, based on what you have learned throughout this project, based on the trajectory that you see going forward, given these trends, what's, in your view, a realistic worst-case scenario and best case scenario? 00:52:05 Speaker 3: All right. 00:52:06 Speaker 4: Um, let me try to, let me just try to answer that in a way I'd rather not lay out the worst case scenario. Uh, I feel like that's bad vibes and I don't want to put it into the world. 00:52:17 Speaker 2: Um, that's a good call. I like that. 00:52:20 Speaker 4: Um, cause I think we can all imagine the worst case scenario. Um, and so I'd rather not do that. Um, I'd rather not call up visions of, uh, The movie Terminator. So let me say, you know, so I write about this nature preserve in Illinois, Nachusa Grasslands. It's 4,000 acres today. It started with a couple hundred acres. It's now 4,000 acres. They have bison on Illinois, in Illinois. Best case scenario, what if that nature preserve is 10,000 acres in 15 years? And there's more bison there. in more pristine natural areas throughout the East. There's more bison probably in the West, but maybe in the East that aren't confined behind fences that are making their own decisions as a member of the ecological community about where they go and when. 00:53:20 Speaker 3: There's more elk in the East. 00:53:24 Speaker 4: And they're occurring in tandem with restoration of mine lands, ecological restoration of mine lands. So not just exotic grasses on top of these reclaimed surface mines, but forestry reclamation is happening on. 00:53:39 Speaker 3: These mine lands. 00:53:41 Speaker 4: And we have less industrial solar installations and less AI data centers on these reclaimed mountaintops and more wild nature in central Appalachia. The red wolf today is only in a few counties in Eastern North Carolina. Realistically, it's only in a couple. My vision for the future is that wolf is in more places. Maybe it's in Pennsylvania where I live and where the mammologists tell us it occurred historically. Maybe the red wolf is there in East Kentucky where we have so many elk fawns every spring. and people are arguing about whether or not we should have red wolves in East Kentucky, but they're there, and we're working out the complicated stuff. 00:54:35 Speaker 3: If you'll allow me to keep going a little bit. Please. 00:54:37 Speaker 4: We have the Florida panther is marooned in southernmost Florida, and we know that for this species to be viable into the future, it has to get further north. So I have a vision where the Florida panther is– across the state line in the Okefenokee swamp in Georgia. And, and people are more accepting of this critter and its movements throughout the East. Um, our, our, we, I have a vision that, you know, our public lands, we keep them all and we expand our public lands. Um, and our, perhaps our kids are, they're older and, and, uh, you know, they're, they're hunting, they're fishing, they're boating on clean waters. 00:55:21 Speaker 3: Um, Um, and, uh, maybe they're working in. 00:55:26 Speaker 4: Ecological restoration and they've got their hands on plants and, and a vision of a future where our city parks, even in the East are not declining in native diversity, but growing in native diversity. Um, and we know that this stuff is possible. Um, and you know, I can look to just the stuff I wrote in my book. We know that this is stuff is possible. because it's happening now. These aren't fringe ideas. We know that we can coexist with these animals, and we know that they can do well, even in our domesticated East, if we want it. If we want to have those things, we know we can have them. We just have to work towards it. And that's the other thing I want to... I guess I can kind of wrap up. I've been going here for a minute, but... The work is good work. It is a good life to be out on the landscape, to work with animals, to work with plants, to not work with them, but just to do that on the weekends and evenings. And I think some people think of conservation as being insurmountable or work that will never be finished or, you know, it would just take too much to keep these species. 00:56:35 Speaker 2: In the world. 00:56:36 Speaker 4: But that work is good work and it brings value to our lives and the landscapes to do what it takes to keep these things around. And I guess the final thing I'll say about that is my vision is, my hope for a future, even just the near future, is that people recognize that these are worthwhile endeavors, this restoration work. 00:57:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, what a great point. 00:57:03 Speaker 1: And it's a cliche. It's one of those things that people always say, right? But they say it's the journey, not the destination, right? But it is so true. With this kind of work, there's just as much value and joy and just wonderful... I can't. 00:57:23 Speaker 2: Even find the right words for it. There's so much to be taken from that process. 00:57:27 Speaker 1: The in and of itself is worth trying, even if the outcomes can't be guaranteed. That said, though, for this much better future to exist in the future, what are two. 00:57:42 Speaker 1: That individuals can take? What are two things that we can attempt to make. 00:57:48 Speaker 2: A part of our lives, a part of our process, a part of our journey to make sure that that better future is someday a reality? 00:57:57 Speaker 4: Ask yourself, what is a wild landscape near me? And you get to decide what wild means. 00:58:04 Speaker 3: Go there. 00:58:05 Speaker 4: Learn from it, have a great time, enjoy yourself and go with friends, doing whatever recreational pursuit you enjoy to do, and then defend the right to do that and defend the existence of that wild land, whatever that is to you, near to you. 00:58:24 Speaker 3: And I think that's where it all starts. 00:58:27 Speaker 2: That connection, so important. 00:58:30 Speaker 1: All right, Andrew, my last question for you is a bit of a look, I guess, into the closet of sorts, into the machinations of how you became who you are and how this book came to be. If there are maybe two or three books out there that someone might turn to to explore this topic further or to learn more about this or to learn more about the way you came to view all this, what might you recommend? And it could be books or even just thinkers or speakers or films, anything that you. 00:58:59 Speaker 2: Would send folks to to dive into this further? 00:59:03 Speaker 4: So I write a lot of history, right? And I like to go way back. And so I think. 00:59:12 Speaker 4: If you have the tolerance for like old time writing and you want to learn what landscape was like, you know, thinking of our shifting baseline and what the East was really like. 00:59:25 Speaker 3: Before it was so developed and domesticated. Um, I would recommend checking out William Bartram's travels. 00:59:32 Speaker 4: I actually have, I think I have two copies of it here because whenever I see it, I buy it. 00:59:37 Speaker 3: Um, uh, so he's walking around, um, Florida, right. 00:59:41 Speaker 4: And describing, um, what it's like, um, in the late 1700s, um, when, when Florida was, um, still the home of many indigenous communities and wildlife and wild landscapes like we have a hard time imagining today. And if it's not William Barsham for you as a reader, maybe it's some other narrative of early America. But the descriptions are there. So I would encourage folks to check out some of that early work. And to get inspired and, you know, as you mentioned before, imagine, right? 01:00:21 Speaker 3: Imagine the landscape. 01:00:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one of the. 01:00:25 Speaker 1: Underappreciated but incredibly valuable factors in this whole challenge we face of how we can live alongside wildlife, how we can ensure they're here for the future. How do we tackle all this? I mean, imagination, it's got to be right at the very top. And your book brilliantly pointed that out. So I just want to thank you, Andrew, for taking the time to do this. I know what an enormous endeavor this kind of project is. So thank you for investing so much of your life into bringing this to life. 01:01:02 Speaker 2: And thank you for this conversation. 01:01:04 Speaker 3: Oh, you're more than welcome. 01:01:05 Speaker 4: Thanks for reading and taking an interest. And I really appreciate it.

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