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The MeatEater Podcast
Ep. 243: Boggeying in the Brushworld
Play Episode
1h48m
Steven Rinella talks with Michael Tewes, Neal Wilkins, Ryan Callaghan, and Janis Putelis.
Topics discussed: the ocelot as an animal that's unknown to most folks; how it hurts like hell to get bitten by a cat; chicken-ocelot bonding; the ocelot population in the US being less than 100 individuals; how mammalogists have more fun than ornithologists; a mad obsession with cats; reproduction and the minimum birth rate to maintain a population; the effect of declines in genetic variation; all the different ways of losing an ocelot; how conservation is dependent on private landowners; maintaining the ocelot population on the East Foundation's Texas ranch holdings; is the ESA antiquated what it means to be pro-ESA reform; sex, hunger, and fear; the insane number of birds killed by feral and domestic cats; a hope that ocelots will stick around; how to incentivize conservation when you can't ever go to the place in need of conserving; and more.
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00:00:08
Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where you stand with on X. All right, guys, we're gonna start right out with the introductions, right off the bat. Okay, Michael to us, professor at Texas A and M University of Kingsville. So that's how you say that to us? To us? Yeah, got it? Yeah, my computer keeps calling me two weeks, but yeah, it's and Um. I serve as a Caesar Clayburg while if at the the Clever Wilife Research Institute. I've been there since nine is a professor doing cat biology and cat research. Uh cats worldwide. We've done some work in Southeast Asia, some cats, uh, clouded leopards, marbled cats, golden cats, cats you've probably never heard of, and uh and and leopard cats, some other cats. Okay, and you can patriot here. I'm Neil Wilkins. I'm the CEO of the East Foundation, and we're an outfit that's uh about two d seventeen thousand acres of private lands in Texas that has been set aside to serve as an area for research, education, and outreach, mainly for wildlife conservation. And how close because we we first connected, I feel around the fact, I can't remember how it lined up, or maybe it was coincidence that we were going down to the Eteria ranch, I think, so, yeah, you're just happened to be that. Um you guys were located around there. Yeah, we've got one of our ranches of the l Sous ranches, Uh, backs up real close to the ranch. Okay, so yeah, we tried to. I was hoping to range some kind of visit we were down there, but it never worked out. Now uh oh, and also Cal's here on a computer screen. He's gonna have an entirely diminished role as Yes, it's just you know how it goes, Cal. Yes, So I've got to send some bad news to one of the ladies that I worked with. She wanted me to get Cal's autograph, So I'm I'm gonna have to go back and tell her that she's not gonna get it. I think you just provide an address and he'll send it okay. Um, we're also used that E signature thing, Michael, Oh sorry, we also have a common um Jim hethelfinger. Yeah, I want to loser that guy is. I agree? Yeah, he was one of our. He barely got out of graduated from our university about years ago. No, he's still are. We're really proud of me. We used to do a thing. We used to do live shows back when people did things with each other, and we would have these trivia contests, like we had these pre shows we do, like these v I P pre shows, and we'd have trivia and one of our favorite trivia questions because it always like really stumped people is we would hit him with I can't remember if it was. I can't remember the numbers now, but it was like name five of the six or named the six wild cat species of the United States of America and a man guests which too, in descending order, were most likely to stump everybody of the cats. Yeah, guess which too, like no one ever got if they if they got one of those two, it was are you talking about North the real end or North America in the present day US. So you would hit people with like name I can't remember how we would phrase it. Let me just think in my head. Real actually Jaggeranni Noslo, Yes, yeah, well yeah, we would do North America. Yeah yeah. If you do North America includes Mexico, you gotta add jaguar and yeah, but you have to have jaguar inn if it's the U S and mar Ga Mark, yeah, Mark, And there was only one record of a mar gat in Texas, and there was in eighteen fifties. See, we're screwing the I feel like we gave people stuff that they didn't deserve. Did they include the house can No, we would, we would point out that. So let me just walk it through to hell with how we asked the question. Let's walk it through links. Everybody knows that not everybody, but a lot of people know there's a there's like one wild cat in Alaska, though I think it's rumored and maybe substantiated that a mountain lion or two has finacaled this way into southeast Alaska. One was found alway on the Mackenzie Delta with its ears frozen off or something like that, so they get around. But you have links mountain lion, bobcat, Yes, Jaguar, Jagger Rundi ocelot, but you're telling me there is another one I don't even know about. It's a it's a baby oslot. It's like half the size of an oslot. It looks almost the same. And we we did, I guess, one of the first studies on them in Mexico and published an article about five years ago in the Sierra tom APIs. It was a population of markets there that there we studied. So it's like a little ten pound wildcat, yeah, eight to ten pounds, bigger eyes than oslots. But everything else is is very similar. Talk walk us, like, what's up with an azl lot? Okay? And why is it no one knows about? No? Why does no one know you have oz lots? Right? And do you think most people understand know what an ass lo it is? Because I'm surprised that I've been working at this thirty five years and I feel like I'm still felling getting the message out. I remember when I was young, reading uh, how to trap books all the time, old how to trap books, and I remember I would always be like, what in the hell because you would see they'd have a section now and then I'm catching and it would have mentioned like an ocelot. Well, I we may have looked at the same trapping book. I had this one book in the early nineteen eighties and then had a chapter on trapping asots. And it's the only one I've ever seen. And I mentioned they're easy to trap, and sure enough they turned out to be pretty easy to trap for me. Just the problem is you have to find out where they are. Once you find out where they are, the easy to trap. Yeah, so it's our people through like what what it is and where it lives? Yea, where it used to live and where it lives. Okay, the asoughts of the forty species of cats the most beautiful. It's just a fact. It's uh, that's an objective realityjector reality. Um. It's about an own cat about two ft tall, and the at least the cats in Texas, the United States. The females are eighteen to twenty two pounds and the males of two to twenty five pounds. Um. And they're beautifully striped and and and spots and rosettes. It's really an interesting tangle of of of markings that provide the ultimate camouflage. I think for for a cat, it's like I mean, is it's is it's coat different than the jaguars besides just being a smaller version. Uh yeah, I think it's much more complex than the jaguar. Jaguar has the rosettes with a dot in the center of it. Oslots have have spots, uh, rosettes, all kinds of and then and some of the rosettes form chains to where it looks like chains going down the shoulder and down the back it's in. It's such a very difficult animal to try to describe. You can you can't do it. And from one side of the oslot to the other has a different spotting pattern, and each one's like a fingerprint. They're very unique. So it helps us when we use cameras to census of population. We can identify individual loss lots that way. So they how would you describe the general color scheme? Yellow yellowish background with a little bit of whitish underneath, and then um. Like many of the cats, they have two very distinct facial stripes um and then um and then these very distinct black and then the tail is about an eighteen inch tail with black rings around it. And then and that's all very similar to market as well. But the except smaller version for a market. Yeah. So, um they're an incredible cat. Their distribution goes all the way from northern Argentina to southern United States. They used to occur and there there have been a couple of males identified in Arizona. Never a breeding population Arizona, but they've always been a breeding population in Texas and the range. One of my hobbies is collecting uh reports of leopard cats is what they were called in the eighteen hundreds. So from eighteen thirty to eighteen eighty, you have leopard cats identified almoch every almost every river in Texas up to East Texas and and and they so they really like the dense brush cover that would be a longer ripe hearing area. So I can imagine distinct populations of oslots on every major river Brazas Trinity, Colorado River into East Texas and um. So so they did occurrently losing in Arkansas at least recorded to there. Now are they do they show up in the oral traditions in Native American oral traditions for the Mayans and Aztecs, they do. Yeah, you know the Mayans and Aztecs worshiped jaguars are very important in their in the religion, but the Aztecs, uh, they kind of recognize the the offside is a smaller God likes symbol or it was smaller in there in the symbolism back then the jaguars. If if you're ever eaten by a jaguar, you you went into the portal to hell. So you don't want to be eaten by a jaguar. That's that's It's really rich tradition all the way down to I think the Anchors even had had some of that jaguars worshiping. But deal or cause of cause of death that's not self inflicted is rewarded with hell. Yeah. I don't think anyone likes to get that, doesn't pop. Yeah, those uh it hurts to be bitten by a can. Yeah. When you say that they bumped into Arkansas perhaps or bumped into Louisiana perhaps, Um, those come from this very like small like single references or whatever. That's right there. The type specimen for the subspecies Alvessons comes from Louisiana. It does yeah, and and and sometimes I get a little mixed up in maybe in Arkansas, but back when it was shortly after being Louisiana purchased, so they called it maybe Louisiana. But the type specimens from there, and then how many at once pot the time, how many we're running around, it's anyone's guess. Now. Really, the records that you you have from the eighteen hundreds is one instance, one anecdote, I shot a leopard cat. I found a leopard cat. With a couple of exceptions, there's um one trapper who reports UM several leopard cats in his catch at the mouth of the San Bernard River. So whereas that's it south of Houston, about about thirty and and and so so that's kind of U is really believable to like he was log in his season's catch. Uh, at least that Yeah, I don't know if the whole season, but it was very probably a very large population in that area at that time. So yeah, it's uh. And and the spelling it was really funny how the anecdote there and the or the narrative was he misspelled everything you could misspell, but he got leopard cats and bears there. And then another one was, oh, the hunter that led the Roosevelt hunts uh and came out of Louisiana, went to Texas and then Um Lily Ben Ben Lily and the guy that ran the um is he the guy that was tangled up in the hole Teddy bearry thing. No, that wasn't now now Ben Lily is a character. And he would never sleep indoors. He already slept outdoors. It was a tremendous cat dog person. He did. Went from Bears in Louisiana, spent nineteen o six, collected a few offslots south of of Houston, Houston that went on and may became famous in Arizona and leading hunt with Teddy Roosevelt. But interestingly, a couple of samples that he collected southea Houston and sent off to the Smithsonian. We we got DNA from the bones of the skull from those cats. So we analyzed that a hundred years later. It's kind of interesting then, But Bill, really, if anyone ever, I mean, that's that's an interesting read just there. If if you do, if you can't get a good sense like how many oslots were ever running around? And what's now the US? We do now we have a good idea for the U S what was running around? Oh no, no, not previously. Now it was probably many hundreds at least maybe a few thousand. But can't you guys when you're doing genetic work, can't you guys find um, like if you got an old bone from a hundred years ago, isn't there some process by which you get the mitochondrial DNA from that and you can tell the effective breeding population size by like how many how many contributing mothers are in the population. Yes, we've done that. My student, Yanya netscha Um is now professor at Ducane University in Pittsburgh. But he published four really good Ostlar genetic papers, and one of them was looking at effective population size. Uh. And another one was just where he documented the genetic erosion that's been going on from to ninety five and then two thousand and five. And we've had a very steep decline in genetic variability in the Austal populations. The two populations that occur in Texas, they've lost saying it's called private a lials. Uh, it's where very few of lials are very specific to that population. We would find only one or two in the Texas populations and compared them with our research in Mexico where we'd find thirty private lials. Um, so it's just we've lost heaters. I got genetic heaters igacity. And then the effect their population size is very few, uh down to well we've only really sub sampled a subset of the population, so so but there was very few. And then I had another student, Jennifer Corne, look at the inbreeding and we found four or five inbreeding events in both of the populations. So they've got they've got problems. Can you walk through real quick image, Cause you've been in the cat business so long, you probably know this story about than anybody, or at least as well as anybody what happened with um different cat but has like the inbreeding, wasn't the Florida panther like severely in bread and that led to taking lions out of Texas and putting them in Florida. Yes, that that's that's the night of the of the case. And is that I want to at some point get to like why we can't why you can't just dump a bunch of in Texas now from Mexico and have the problem taking care of Yeah, that's a good story to having a second But one of my former students David Schindel is now the Florida panther lead for fishal Life Service and uh um so, so yeah, they the panthers. I think at one time we're estimated thirty five or fifty individuals. And then there's a discussion about bringing Texas and ended up moving eight or more lions from West Texas into Florida to help with the genetic erosion and increased variability, and that that has been very successful. My understanding is they've really the demography of the populations as really expanded, and I think it's been helpful by most assessments. Yeah, it was kind of a deal with the devil a little bit, because, yeah, there's one argument. One side said we want to keep the pure Florida panthers that Corey i with subspecies, and then the other said, we don't care, we just want Florida panthers to exist in Florida. And those are the two basic arguments there. Uh. I didn't realize that that you saw that AUSELT populations were still collapsing or continued to collapse like from as recently as five to present, but walked through what happened to what happened to this cat to get into trouble in the first place. Well, I think the first settlers came and settled on the rivers where they also populations were. And since we've already said, also so easy to trap they are and to kill right off the bat, he had that conflict between humans and people and so over the years. Uh, there was a pretty extensive poisoning going on in the nineteen fifties forties fifties for prindor to control they help benefit game species. Why were they pissed it? Azlots. It was just universal and everything strychnine to kill just about everything because asels they probably killed chickens and stuff. If they're not gonna take down cattle or and that's the worst thing about it also as it kills chickens and so if not a chicken fish on ato, who cares, you know. And i'd really have awf lots where they're very they're very uh um, a very peaceful cat, I mean, and that's probably one reason they easy to catch and a lot of people had him as pets. But they don't they don't hurt livestock, they don't hurt game species. Uh there there, And I think they're general demeanor they're very popular pet in the nineteen sixties. UM. I know some of your audience is probably too young to remember who Don Meredith was, but he was. He was one of the first commentator on on on Monday Night football, and he was the quarterback from Dallas Cowboys from n to sixty eight. I believe he had a pet awful lot. His name is Peppe and uh, and so he really enjoyed that cat. And he came home after losing to the Washington Redskins for a weekend and it got a concussion during that game, and I only to find out that the housekeeper let the cat out and it got ran over. So it's kind of double double loss that weekend for down Aria. But a lot of people had them as pets and then in the fifties and sixties and thought it was a glamorous thing to do if you kept them indoors, though you regretted it because they would spray urin all on everything, and then they have a very distinctive smell in the urine. Uh, And you don't want to live there for too long after that happens. Was that still legal in our country in the sixties, that you could just take an animal like that out of the wild and turn them into a pet. Yes, in the sixties. Yeah, they didn't become endangered internationally until nineteen seventy three and nationally until two. There was a overlook. They missed adding it to the list in seventy seventy three. But yeah, and people have had them pets even in the in the eighties and nineties. And you may still be able to do it if you have all the different permits that's required. It's it's very much difficult to do it. Now. Where do they sit on the Endangered Species Act List? Now? Are they listened A threatened or listed is endangered? The listed is endangered. Yeah, fewer than a hundred left in the United States? What at what year did you take note of something? And that little film you guys put together it mentions how when you first got interested and people told you that you wouldn't be able to catch one because there weren't any to be caught. Yeah, um uh. A professor that Neil and I share in common was Dr Jack English. He was one of my wilife professors and bet me a bottle of Jack Daniels that I'd never catch an awesol lot and um, and so likely I did on March two, which was awesol at day happens to be Texas Independence Day by the way. But so I caught the ouslet on that day. And a year later Jacking was bought me the bottle of Jack Daniels. Take him a whole year to do it? Well, we only met at a conference a year later and we drove around Austin. They bought that bollo of Jack Daniels. And every time my students and I caught a species a cat for research, we take a shot out of that bottle. So we've had over trail shots. We're studied over trail different kinds of cats, and so we and I hope to have a few more shots coming out of it. Walk through, uh, walk through sort of you know, like a career path of someone like your interesting career whatever to where you got to be like I'm gonna try to catch an oz lot. I'm gonna try to trap an oz lot, which supposed they aren't here anymore. Yeah, if you want to do it as student? Um, you know, is that? Is that what you mean? Kind of like how did you get in the situation to even care? I? Yeah, I think. Uh. I think serendipity and luck had to play a lot with it. But I think also hard work puts you in that position to to to be at least noticed by your the next level. The professors that were willing to take a chance on me. And uh, but I've been very lucky throughout my career. I think, very fortunate to do what I am able to do. But I was in the right place to my master's I did okay on on my master's projects, so they offered a PhD which involved awesol lots. And then I got with the old trappers the first few months and and the people that have trapped aff lots for forty years and kind of learned a lot of techniques from them, and and then I hit the right place and uh, and that's why I came down to it's just finding the right place. Did you grow up hunting trapping? Uh? Yeah, I did. I I hunted um and yeah, I can think of a little trapping possums and things when I was younger, and did some limited hunting. When I was a kid, I did some bird hunting, dove hunting and duck and but I I've gotten where I'm so obsessed now with cats. I don't do any I can't fish, I can't hunt. I can't do anything except read or study about cats. And that's a I probably need some psychoanalysis for that. But but uh, but I so that was yeah, and it was in the outdoors. I was a bird watcher. I don't tell I consider myself mamalogist. And I learned early on that people well that ornithologist didn't have as much fun as mamalogist had, and so I ended up becoming a mamologist instead of ornithologist, at least in my opinion. They may argue that with back in the so you caught your first one at eighty two, and what was it? What was the reason that you needed to go out and catch an oz lot? We got a contract from the Fish Wife Service to to study assorts as they were putting them on the dangerous species list that year. They wanted to have a little bit of information and found to find out even if they existed in the state. I had several gray hairs, and professors tell me they no longer occurred in Texas, that they've been extrapated, but people weren't just hitting them with cars and stuff. No, not. Well, if they were, they weren't being reported back then, because that's the weird thing about with Florida panthers, right, it'd be like, oh, there's only thirty left, but then every year three of them get hit by cars. Yeah, that's right, that's the picture you could hide. It's a parallel with oss loots there. But the refuge La gonna As goes to refuge where I began some of that work. The refuge staff didn't know they had them there. They knew they had them in the mid sixties when they did some prida to trapping they found something. They've gone ten years and didn't even realize they had them, And they probably have always had about seven to fourteen as lots even now. Are they just super secretive? They're secretive the nocturnal um, and they liked and they enjoy really dense brush brush that no one wants to walk into. So those three factors alone makes some A lot of ranchers will not A few ranchers have all slots, but they didn't know it because of those three factors. I would just think that with I mean, I guess it's testament to how few there maybe were. I would think that with guys out predator calling and Kyle and bobcat trappers that if there was one left, someone would have it. Well again, you're right, Um, I consider roads a very effective sampling technique. You know, if if a population is somewhere, they're gonna get ran nowhere. That's why Harry and the Henderson's would happen for real, if there were bigfoot. Now that's not I've used that same example, like if they were there, someone would run over them and it wouldn't be like a secrety thing now and they would just be a big dead one in the road. And then when I when I expressed my doubt about that, I started getting hate mail from Michigan, Wisconsin. So I don't talk about bigfoot anymore. Quit, No, yeah, you don't want to talk about bigfoot. They there's some serious people out there still convinced. Would that be in your like, as a mammalogist, that'd be right in your wheelhouse, right yeah? Yeah, But I'm going to a different direction. Okay, you don't even want to be implicating this conversation. I'm kind of figuring out how to get out of it. Actually. So anyways, I was saying with all these ways in which they could that awesl lots um. Yeah, I guess the point where I'm saying is this. I always struggle with um Lazarus speak, you know, this trying to if you guys use the term Lazarus species like species that rise from the dead, right, So like blackfooted ferret, um it's gone, and it's like, holy sh it, it's not gone. A guy's dog just dragged one. And then uh, the Tasmanian devil. What's that? What's that animal called cal I'm trying to engage with calm throwing them. I'm throwing him an easy one. What is the animal that is most similar to a Tasmanian devil? No, they have a better name than Tasmanian devil, Like the tiger. That's what I'm trying to say, Tasmanian tiger, theistee or something like that, right, that thing, Yeah, that is that's like the saddest pick of all is like the this cool looking strape dog cat combo that is in a jail and it's like the last one. But people have been every year feeling like they saw one. Yes, you know, well, that's the equivalent of Jagger Rundee's in Texas in the United States, throughout the South. I to this day, I have biologists and we were just talking about it. I've had five or six what I considered famous bologists argue with me about Jagger and news occurring throughout South, the South, Florida, Texas. In my opinion, Jagger news don't exist, haven't existed in Texas since Night in the Last Road killed in nineteen eighty six. But do you have a loan eight six? Someone ran over at Jagger Runde in Texas well in April nineteen eighty six to two miles of east of Brownsville. Also very close to not being in Texas. Yeah, there you go. Well they even never were never located north of Royal Grand Valley anyway, although people think they're cur throughout the South. So there you are. It's early eighties. Some people say there may be gone. I would have been They're definitely gone. If someone thinks there may be gone, I'd say they're gone. Oh you know what, here's another one. Everybody's still looking for the ivory build woodpecker. Yeah, well I saw when when I was back when I was a bird watcher. By the way, it would be early seventies. Oh yeah, I thought I saw one anyway, but I'm sure it was a poor But no one's laid eyes on one since I don't know, But every year people go looking for him. Yeah, and they see what we what we call where I'm from, pilliated woodpeckers. Yeah, affiliated woodpeckers. And it's the same phenomena. I think that the bigfoot of the locknest monster. Here's another thing. To have a viable population of any species, you need fifty more individuals to live for a hundred years. Huh, Well, okay, but who gets to make that? Who gets to say that that's the truth that came out Michaels Fule is like the beginning of m v PS minimum viable populations and discussions, and it has since became much more complicated since then. But he's so he's like here, you hear you, Yeah, if you have fifty of something, well, and that's a computer modeling will show that for a kind of species. And now it's called population viability analyses. We've done two different PhD projects on that. You put in all these life parameters and you can estimate how long a population of a certain size will persist over time. I guess I'm incredulous of it because I could see if you said, for large mammals, for instance, it would take a population of x right, for large marine mammals, it would require it. But if we're talking about a plant, you know what I'm saying, it's a chargian. Time is an important part of a mouse, which is an elephant. Yeah, And as part of this modeling, it's there are a lot of variables to go on this MA but there's there's been much research done on that. But the gist of it is is if you have a very small population, it's it's very unlikely to survive a long period of time. So so I kind of call it a viable population of a bigfoot or Lochness monster. You probably need at least fifty of them. If you're gonna have fifty Lochness monsters, you probably need several locks to have a population. I went to that lock one time and looked out upon it. I didn't see anything. Um, I wish you were more. I wish you'd like to talk about bigfoot because I could think and talking to you, I could get better at arguing with bigfoot people. Yeah, yeah, No, I I I'll just call you sometimes. You could give me a crash course on on what one might say in an argument with bigfoot people to make you seem more right for you to those strengding letters that I got. So viable population question is like so right now, you know, like when you're at wolf ree introduction, like the lowest folks are willing to go is a hundred animals. That's like the bare minimum. There's a lot of folks that are It would be like pulling teeth to get them to go below two fifty animals. And that's a pretty fast reproducing animal. You know. I was just doing a lot of research on Australian lyre birds, which are pretty dark and cool. That's a songbird, big songbird that doesn't even get around to thinking about reproduction on the male or female side until they're between five and seven years old. And it's like, think at all the stuff you gotta survive to get to five or seven years old, and you're a ground dwelling songbird. Six million feral cats whatever the cats, Yeah, mongoose is feral cats. Yeah. Uh, kids with sling shots bb guns, um, and so like how does that I understand? Like the model was set up to be manipulated, but it is something that seems like it is kind of an arbitrary number. Well, that's another variable that goes into the model is age the first reproduction and and what it turned out for oslots and and many of the cats is how many how long does a breeding female UM produce young? And and how many young do they produce? And oslots typically only have one to two young compared to bobcats at two to four and and then so and also it's reproduced well into the years. The Bill Swanson, who is an expert on ALLSTO reproduction Cincineti Zoo will have reproductively active males well beyond ten years, and same thing for for females they last reproductives. So they are all these variables kind of go under these models UM and I'm by no mean an expert on them. That's why why we have other people doing but and it's really and you really have to take it with a lot of grains of salt. It just kind of really gives you an ideal of of say I'd rather put into it, and fifty wolves in a hundred wolves because of these factors and for us. It helped us identify what what kind of information do we need most? And what it turned out to be was how many young does a female produce for how many years? And so it really kind of guide you into what kind of information to collect to get more fined refined estimates and and and things to worry about and not worry about. I want to keep moving with the chronology of of the like the story of the Awful Lot. But if at some point there's the way to weave this in, I'd like to understand this. We will often say that, um, if a female of whatever species let they were talking about ass lots like, if she can successfully produce use two, if she can have to offspring that make it to breeding age, she was successful, and you would hold the population like the population remains static? Is that like an acceptable thing to say to somebody? Well, what is it? The humans? You have to have at least two point three humans to maintain? Okay, well I learned that twenty years ago, maybe, because but I think about that with salmon and stuff, right, is they're dropping I don't know, thousands of eggs and being like, if two of those eggs makes it, the fish was successful Yeah, two of the eggs out of or with sturgeon, they're putting in producing in a lifetime millions of eggs. Two of those make it. That's a successful fish. Yeah, and there you know they're they're strategies just produce eggs and there's no parental care. And then you have the reverse where elephants might put in years for for making sure that young survived to breeding age. So you have everything in between. But yeah, two point three humans, I guess everyplace and in uh that that seems logical. Can you real quick explain those strategies where you have there's like they have letters applied to them, right, like the rabbit strategy or whatever. O K K selected species and are selected species? That's right? I mean like you have a ton of them and don't pay any attention to them. Yeah, that's our select a selected species were and help me know if I'm wrong. K. Selected species is where they invest a lot of energy and time in raising the young and making sure they reach breeding age. Like a black bear, Right, she's gonna spend she's gonna spend two years tutoring her offspring, caring for and tutoring her offspring. Yeah, and the rabbits like see you. Yeah, yeah, I want to live. You can get out of here. No, I know a lot of prayer like that, you know, the rodents and everything else. Um, what was it that you actually wanted the oz lot for when you went out to catch one? When you said I'm gonna study oslats, People like it's probably I need to study or whatever, But like, what, what really were you winding one? We had everything you could list that at the time we wanted to learn about it. It's home range, size, how many there were, Um, what kind of social organization did they have? Whatever? Their activity? Just the basic natural history, like enough to fill out an Audubon guide book. Yeah, and we've probably did. We probably did at the time we were That was the very first offlot study and another one starting Venezuela a few months later, but nothing was known at that time about oslats. It was the first off lot stuff. When you learned from the when you when you had to go ask around about how to go get one, Uh, layout, like what kind of sets you were making and how you were catching them because it's kind of weird. It's like, I think I haven't seen a strategy that I don't know why it's not more widely used. Well, we used birds, Yeah, we use box well, and they stay alive. By the way, this want to make that point, we we use box trap. I mean, okay, Tom, imagine the night. Imagine the night that pigeon spends separated by some quarter inch mesh from an azal. We started all for chickens for the first twenty thirty years, and it's amazing. It's not what you would think. I would walk up in the morning of the check traps and also be sound asleep, and the chicken was trying to pick fleas off the ears of aust more than multiple times. That happened. Several times. They attained relationship during the night. So it doesn't like destroy the chicken psyche. Not well, it's hard to tell the chicken psyche. But I couldn't. I don't. I didn't detect that. No, I'm not condemned. I mean it's like, plus, you have every justification when you're trying to like find out what's going on with something that's gonna be like wiped off the face of the earth. If it gives a chicken a little bit of a heart. Well, Ted was my favorite rooster, and and and he did. He lost one eye in a battle with the raccoon and things, but this is eighty three. But he persisted and he caught several aw slots big white rooster. I would place the roosters a certain distance apart, so in the early morning they'd be crowing to each other, and then it's like a natural predator to call that was I'm sure it helped ow slots. That's a great idea. Describe the trap now that like it's kind of like where you go to set it and how you figured out where to go. I want to know why we don't use chickens anymore. Pigeons now, Well, they crap too much and eat too much foods pigeons. It's cheaper where they do less of both. They they're less defecation problem less and less of food and uh and they're very happy. And the birds we take very good. I mean, you wouldn't believe the care we take care of the pigeons in the aviary and then treated treated very well and uh so, but it's very effective and so I so I use white pigeons to try to increase the light during the night, and and we'll catch as many bobcats and all slots. Uh, typically a hundred trap nights hundred fifty trap knights to catch one after one bobcat, that's ten traps out for fifteen nights to get a hundred fifty trap knights. One trap for one night is one trap night. So they're pretty easy. But jagger rundys in Mexico, there's over a thousand of trap knights that catch jag Undy. They're very, very difficult to catch, and that's why no one's published on them, I guess. So far explain the set like the set for an awesole lot, and I want to get back into the bait thing too. Okay, Well, first you find out where there's a road kill if you can, so there's probably a population nearby. Then you look for the densest brush near that road kill. Just one road kill pretty much. Yeah, they're they're not all, but it probably will reflect where population is. Yeah, it's a really pretty effective And you can't be telling me that every time you drive down the Southern Texas Highway you see a road kill, that there's a population of oslots nearby. Well, there've been very few locations of road kills. They have only been there. The two populations A sorry, sorry, yeah I was Oh I got you thought any old road, Yeah, I'm thinking, oh, there's a dead nil guy, let's set up no, So you find the recent Oslot road killed dead and then go from there. But there were but two. There weren't dead sts on the road. There there one, And I understand now the refuge only had so into fourteen and no one had reported a recent Oslit road kill there. The other larger population of the OSTs occur on on five to seven ranches, large ranches, and you were probably on one of them, the hassianit Eteria ranch just recently. We believe there's probably of some nearby there. But these are large ranches away from the two roads that are there. There are only two highways and so so the big populations away from roads. That that explains part of it. So when you went out to make the to catch one, you just went to the last place, like like, how do you know? I mean, how did you decide like, well, here's a place to try. Well, I had to go the last place. No one to have seen one or something. Couple of old trappers told me where they trapped them in the past, and Uh, and sure enough they it's really the same place they've been trapping them since nineteen forties and fifties. And then they're still there, Uh, in those few places. And talk about the set now the box trap. Uh. So we find the densest brush and the the largest patch of that dinsant brush that we can thorn shrub is their habitat. There'll be thirty five different species of thorny shrub species there. It's amazingly beautifully complex shrub community. Any place we can find a trail in that that we can get too easily, or where a trail intersects another trail you have, it increases your odds. So so we'd look for that and and so a history of cats, good habitat and then looking for trail sites a place to trap, and then uh and then pretty good chance you'll catch a cat if there's one there in a short period of time. Uh. You know what we didn't talk about. That meant to ask about what, um, what the hell are people doing with them when they're trapping like one like in the whatever in the forties, fifties, sixties, when they were getting knocked Yeah, yeah they were, they were They sell them as in the fur markets. Yeah, yeah, they were. There's a record I just sent Neil from the nineteen forties of these two off lots that were Chaptain in the Star County, which is right adjacent Real Grandy, and he sold them for two dollars and fifty cents perpelled. So they would sell them in the old days, and like a lot of the pelts, they sell them so you could go down and get like yourself, like an Awesolt jacket or something. Back then. Yeah, yeah, if you go back for enough in time, there was a very popular trading uh thing on the frontier. People didn't have cash, they didn't couldn't spend money. Stuff. You wanted to to get some milk or some eggs, you trade something and often a pelt awes up pelt was very valuable in trading, and the comanches would use them for saddles. They would just throw an afsup pelt on the horse and then ride on that. It's kind of yeah, and there the quivers for the arrows would be awest quick quivers as up pelts would be. Is really interesting, you know. It was important in the frontier just because they're so cool looking, probably exactly so when you caught the first one, what'd you catch down the a chicken or pigeon? The very first one of all the cats we've caught tun or fifty, we technically caught it on a padded leghold trap at two and a half. That was pre live trap. Yes, you were using live traps. Yeah, and we in our federal permit, we had in there the fact that we could use lagold traps, box traps or even hounds. And and um, John, my my buddy who's out of Maine, help me catch that first off alot on the on the Gallopy ranch. And then and he he was um working on so he had the padded lake holds and so so that all the other cats since then, since that very first cat had been with box chaps. Five days later we caught another I kind of know, the oslot with a box chap. So so yeah, it's it's and and the chicken thing has worked around the world again. We've we've trapped twelve different species of cats, all on chickens. So it's kind of amazing. He you got a box trap and in the back of the where you put the bait, there's a separate little cage exactly, and the bird hangs out in there and they're protected in their food and water. All they want to eat. But cats like chickens, and he comes in there and triggers a thing and kicks the treatle or whatever, and the door shuts exactly. Yeah. We used to put lures sometimes, or we'd hang some flagging. You hang a feather so it blows the wind, or some fur we've we found it. We don't even need to use lure. If you just have the bird there, that works as good as anything. No find that thing. Yeah, yeah, I like that crowing trick, putting them out so they crow back and forth. Yeah. Yeah, it made me feel good, maybe think that I actually had it figured out and stuff, But I don't know. I think it helped a little household. I was gonna say, your PhD PhD student in that video though I was doing a little like covering the floor of that trap. They are sensitive a little bit to the to the medal. Well. I tried to teach that to make sure that I teach the perfect set and the setting dirt along the medal and the travel and encase it in brush so there's only one entrance from the front and I get him the perfect scenario. But but I've put traps where they're even sitting almost in the air and sometimes and so I start off with the ideal trap. But you can at least for all thoughts, you can catch them in other ways. It's not a perfect trap set. Didn't make the news when you caught one, or was there, like, was there media around the fact that you started catching them? Now, I I always for the first two years, I thought that it was I would catch them and work him up all by myself, and and I always thought this was a very I felt like it should have more attention than it was getting. I was just there by myself, and and then the cat research and and a couple of years later there started to be some media things. Yeah. Well after a while there was a ton of media things. Yeah, there there's been a variety of There's been a lot of things over over the years. And then when you came into it, I would have thought that at that point they get ees a protection and two two for the U S. Yeah, Why did that not lead to why was that insufficient to like? Why were the numbers still going down? Like an eight five? They're still going down the numbers were probably very similar, but the genetic erosion of the same population. We were monitoring the clind of Hitteror's igocity or the genetic variation, so that's why I was going down. The numbers were probably about the same I think for the last since we started three to eight years ago, the numbers have always been about the same, but they increase in wet years and you have high prey. But when the droughts hit, you get a two or three year drought, it it affects that this astle survival. We've documented that through our research that um you get a severe drought six months into the vegetation is really pretty much gone. The rodents and rabbits that decline from that vegetation and then you see failure of also reproduction about about twelve twelve eighteen months later. And they can only go for so long when they have so few cats, and and the oslots disperse, A lot of the sub the subordinate or sub dominant individuals will disperse, and we found that the home ranges of the residents will expand so and they're the residents will survive because they've got it figured out. They know what the home range is they know where to hide, where to find food. Every night, they really intensively explore their home range, and they have an understanding of real time understanding of where the prey is, where the dangers are, where the coyotes, risks are, and things, and so they know when the prey starts to decline, the residents probably push off the dispersers, and the dispersers are the ones that died. They have much lower survival. They die from road kills. Yeah, by cars. Yeah, that's number one form of mortality now is road kills. What else you were mentioned? Kyle's kyles to kill them, We've never documented that. I'm I'm sure it wouldn't be it would happen for kittens at least, but the fact that they used really dense brush most of the time coyotes won't go into that brush. But if a pack of coyotes, UH found one in the open, and it probably would be a problem. But there's enough other things that woul kill him. We've had had him die from ral snake bites, uh ingesting a grasper into the lungs. Main do you lose them to just some people being like what the hell is that? And then shoot it? Um, which seems to be a real thing. Well there, it happened only once that I can think of, in the late nine You didn't, I wouldn't identifying myself. I was just that was that was not me, that was exactly well, that's how that's how he got interested in the subject. The story I heard was it was a hunter out of Houston shot one with a bow and arrow. Yeah, because because he thought it was a bobcat, okay, And and about went out of ten of bobcats and spots just like an awf lot. So so it's really hard to distinguish. Well, but yeah, the whole tale problem. Yeah, you know, and a bobcat has sometimes surprisingly long tail six inches, you know. So so someone who's not out there hunting all the time, you can fall into that. That happens all the time, even with people that know what they're looking at. I was a young biologist and I was about five, and I was working on a piece of ground and called Mike two us out in five and told him that he that a buddy of mine and myself had seen an awesol lot and it was close by jim Wells County, And sure enough, an awflot population hadn't been found there since Bob. Yeah it was Bobcat. We don't know what we were talking about. Uh, what if someone were to say, if the population just doesn't seem to have changed since that, maybe in fact they're not endangered. Maybe they just aren't that many of them never were and aren't. Well, we're just how do you handle like, how do how do you handle that question? Yeah, it's a good question. It's a they're definitely many more in their range of Mexico, Central and South America. There are thousands there where. So it's we're really talking about the US population, which is fewer than a and um and so it and probably the hardest question the answers why should we care? Why should we spend a lot of money? I don't struggle that one, but go on, Okay, so some people do and and and I just um um. For me, it's just that the people that are involved with saw conservation have already gone past that question. Regardless of what kind of argument you want to use, They're determined they want to keep them for whatever reason. And uh, and their variety of reasons, Well, I want you to get into that. Sell me on wanting to keep them. I mean, I'm on board because I don't like I don't like us playing god and deciding that we're gonna eliminate species from the planet. But uh, sell me on that idea. But but what about I mean like but also like talk about the one I'm talking about where how if if since the moment, the first time someone ever studied them, they found like, hey, it looks basically like this, and then that's that remains static for thirty forty years. Um, how do you demonstrate that there's a problem, because but there's no baseline, there's no real baseline idea, right, Like if you're going in an A T two to do like baseline data gathering and not like what are things supposed to look like? But what do they look like? And it looked like that and it still looks like that? How do you convince people that we're facing a problem? Well, I think that just the fact when that one what we call the refuge population only has seven to fourteen individuals. If you're lucky you have half of that, it's females seven. And there's a saying called demographic stocasticity. Sooner or later you're going to have you're gonna have fourteen males and no females just by chance over time. That's why I happened with the seaside dusky sparrow came down to six individuals. They're all ten uply males, and that was extinction. There's some real practical, practical reasons why we should think that they were more widely spread. Right now, if you were to look on the coast and the center of the population for oscelots, we had Hurricane Hannah come through what was it maybe five six weeks ago, maybe a little bit longer. Hurricane Hannah was Category one hurricane. The eye of that hurricane came right over top dead center the center of the universe for oscelots in Texas. If in fact, that would have been saying category for hurricane like Hurricane Laura that hit the southwest coast of Louisiana, we probably would have lost that population of ausselots. So if you've got you've got them geographically confined in an area right there and they all exist, you know of them got to be below twenty ft in elevation, and you get a storm surge, you get the you know, you get everything that comes along with a major hurricane. There's no way that they will last and will last for very much longer, just with that one particular source of you know, potential catastrophe to them. Yeah, I got you that. That's an interesting point. And also that idea that if you have like carrying capacity for such a small number. I never thought about the fact that you could wind up in a situation where they're all the same gender. Yeah, that's the demographic stocastasy. You've got the environmental and stocastasy saying you get a five year or tenure drought, that might do it. Every hundred years we get we get a five or teen year drought, and we've got habitat elsewhere, right, not not right next to it, but habitat elsewhere. That's perfectly good, awesome lot, habitat not occupied? What what is what is not? What is like? Not worked? Why has the ees A protection not been I guess if you look at the s A protection is being keep it from going extinct. We're here to keep it from going extinct. Um, I mean, that's not what it is. But if you look at that being success, you could argue, like, okay, it was successful because they're not extinct. But if you look at ees A protection as being a vehicle that would lead to recovery and it's not a one way road, and the expectation would be you know, I think it only happens two percent of the time. Um. I'm not saying that's the fault of the ESA, but has a very low success rate in terms of something going on the e s a list uh and getting off. There's two percent of things. I think a variety of this happens. That it goes on and then they realize that it shouldn't have gone on because they find other populations. It goes on and it's already gone. Um or it goes on and it becomes gone. Yeah. So not many things make it off. But what like what is preventing sinceo now? What has made it that? Now we're not like the same way we are about bald eagles where you aloneys get sick of looking at bald eagles? Yeah? Yeah. Well, and in Texas it's nineties seven per cent private land. It's probably unlike any other state, um uh, Texas retained its private lands. So any management conservation wilife is dependent on private landowners and um and and Neil can probably addresses as good as anyone. Um. This incentives that are built into the Danger Species Act, and the fear that many landowners have that they'll lose their ability to manage the lands they wanted in the way that they want to gives them no incentive to even I did fact that they have an endangered species on the property. In their view, for many of them, it's a distancentive. No, you think, yeah, so, I mean, if you look at awesol lots. For example, a hundred awesol lots, probably greater than sevent those awfl lots are on private lands in and these are large ranches. Um, there's against the tide, uh desired by those private landowners to somehow conserve awesol lots for reasons of their own. Some of those are stewardship reasons that it would be a shame, given that treasure that exists on those lands, to let that species go extinct. Now, if you look over at the Endangered Species Act, and let's say it's a realm of paper. You know, they just print the whole Act out and everything that has to do with it about a realm of paper. About two sheets of those papers say something about private lands. And basically it says thou shalt not kill and in dangered species intentionally absolute, except for some cases, and it's some nuanced exceptions with wolves and other things. And and thou shalt not take an endangered species incidental to any other land use practice. That's it. I want to say that last part again. Now, shalt not take an endangered species as an as it being incidental to an otherwise legal land use practice. An example of that, and the example of an AWCEL lot is if you've got a fence line that runs through ault habitat and you were to disturb the habitat by clearing out that fence line, that might be considered by US Fision Wildlife Service to be an action that alters the behavior or the breeding probabilities of AWCEL lots, and therefore it's a prohibited act under the FOLI. I think that they would lead to, like the direct death of not that it could lead to. That's that's what it originally was meant for in the Act, but it's interpreted now as deteriorating habitat type or whatever effecting the behavior take take just affect sure. Yeah, And of course that you know we came up with that in what nineteen seventy two, right, And so we're driving in nineteen seventy two Ford Galaxy five hundred policy, trying to work with two thousand and twenty conditions, trying to work with things like groups of landowners that are trying to work with the U. S. Fish and Wilife Service to figure out how to recover an endangered species, and the Fish and Wilife Service, sometimes through no fault of their own, can't figure out how to get out of the way and to let it happen. And you know, it's been called at least once vigilante conservation. You know, when that was first laid out there that way, I thought, well, it's kind of a pejorative term. But then when you really think about it, vigilante is a group of citizens that have taken up a cause because the officials that are supposed to be doing it have abandoned the cause. And so it will be an example of vigilante conservations. Vigilante conservation would be a a group of a group of landowners. For example, in in this particular situation, we have landowners that know they have awesol lots that would like to do three or four things. One is to survey for those awful lots to know where they are, where they are, and how many of them there are. Well, if you do that, then there's some confidentiality standards that those landowners would like. They'd like for that information not to be leaked to the US Fish and Wildlife Service simply because the Fish and Wildlife Service would then have to make that available to a lot of these organizations that would file lawsuits and force the Fish and Wildlife Service too do the two things at landowners like don't like to hear, and that's enforce and have the authority over and so if they don't, okay, if you want, like a rancher wants to know, or landowner wants to know, do I have them? I think they're they're like maybe they're like, I think they're totally cool. I wish I had more. I'd like to know if I have one, But I don't want the FEDS to know who are they trusting to sort of like keep track. That's the that's the problem. And part of the problem is you're you're inclined to not allow people like Mike Toois to put his graduate students and researchers on the ground to survey for awesol lots because it's trouble. You know, we think there's somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred awesol lots in Texas. There could be more. It's it's an unknown so that's an extrapolation, right. We don't know how many of there are. We don't know exactly where they are. We've got some known populations. One known population is on the East Foundations l Sal's Ranch, so we've got the largest population known. And we're not afraid of the Dangered Species Act or the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Uh, perhaps foolishly, but nevertheless, we're not afraid. We're you know, we're going to continue to to work the research management recovery system and we feel like it's a stewardship responsibility as do other ranchers to recover that species. There's for for whatever reason and and and it can be a religious reason, it can be a reason that look, we don't want this to go out on my watch, whatever that is. But but you've got to take into account in that at least in that part of the state, in the state that has DT two million acres of private lands. Those private landowners are buying large the best conservationists there are, I mean, they care about that land. They care, and they've got a stake in it, and they've got a stake in the future reputation for themselves as ranchers and caretakers of that of that ground. That's the scenario we're finding with awesol lots as we just simply are trying to figure out how to get rid of the disincentives and be able to assure private landowners in and around that awful lot population that they can allow monitoring research and then proactive measures for say translocation. Uh. We're doing things like collecting semen from Maile awesol lots so that we can perhaps and pregnate Zoo awesol lots and have offspring that we might be able to either from a wild population or from or from that cross At Zoo population create another translocated population elsewhere so that we don't have to worry about that next hurricane that comes through turning into a Category four. I mean, the clock is ticking on that type of catastrophe when you get a population confined to that small of a geographic area and they're that small. If you had to if you had to characterize the UM, if you had to characterize the sort of anti fed sentiment around. Let's say someone is they know their family knows they have oslots on their property. UM, they don't want to be rolled up into any kind of activities with the scientific community at a federal level for fear that someone's gonna come in and go like, oh my gosh, you do have awesl lots. I'm shotting this place down because you know you're not gonna be allowed to do X, Y and z. UM, maybe you're not gonna be able to do the very things that made it it was a good as loot habitat anyways, like sort of having economic viability on your property, which makes it that you don't need to develop it for instance exactly. But do you find it like the average sentiment that's like the anti fed sentiment is educated in precise meaning they're like, oh, I would love to tell them, but if I tell them, then this could happen to me and it would look like this. Or is it just generally I hate the fetes I gets across the board obviously, because I mean, you've got I mean, in our our state, we've got three fifty thousand decision makers, three fifty thousand landowners, So it's going to be across the board there. So and and there's experiences that they've seen with other species. So you take something like the golden cheek warbler that may have been used in some cases to halt development in and around the Austin area, and take something like the Dunes sagebrush lizard that in some cases was used to halt oil and gas development in the Permian Basin, like was used opportunistically. Sure was like if someone wanted a thing to happen and that was the way to make it, or something wanted something to not happen, and that bird or that lizard was a way to make it not happen. That gave you legal legal It gave you legal grounds to get your way. Now we've got the flip side of the coin with awesol lot Really interestingly, there's there's the organizations that use it as a mascot for fundraising that that then don't do much for the aucel lot um we've got. Uh. I think it's a this is a good thing. Our Texas Department of Transportation, You can get an AWESOL lot license plate. There's more AWESOL lot license plates in Texas than there are awesome lots in Texas. And you can see, in fact, you can see more driving between San Antonio and Austin. You can see more Awesol lot license plates then there are awesome lots in deep South Texas. So people love them. You'll see ranchers with US a lot license place, and you know, ranchers love them. They want to figure out how to recover awes lots without putting large ownerships that are depend on economic viability at at stake, and so they need assurances and so and I think it's I think it boils down to, you know, just raw trust and economics. And it's not just the and And it's not that there's bad people to the US Fishing Wildife Services, good people. Um, they're they're caught managing an act that in some cases is antiquated, and they're sophisticated organizations that have figured out how to soothe them. And they know. In every conversation you'll have with the Fishing Wildlife Service over anything, it'll all come down to, you know, Okay, what happens when you know group X, Group Y or group Z uh SUSA because we've worked out a deal with you as a private landowner. So Okay, here's how we're gonna here's how we're gonna make sure that we're uh fully solid on our conservation measures. Uh, we're legal on maintaining confidentiality, all of these hoops that you've got to jump through, and for some landowners, they just look, I'm suspicious when I have to apply for permits, when you're telling me you have enforcement authority over me and those types of things. We I think, in the spirit of antiquated and sophisticated, uh, we should probably h take a quick crack at defining vigilante again, I think, uh, I mean if that was, if I may slightly romanticized textan definition of vigilanti where uh oftentimes, especially if we look back through history at our vigilanti groups. Uh, some would characterize the Texas Rangers as one of them. That they aren't just folks stepping in and taking care of things that aren't getting done. Uh, Like it's implied that it's like justice being done, but oftentimes that's um some self serving justice as well. Right, So yeah, if you top it with the word conservation. Then you're sort of qualifying it from vigilanty. Uh asshole is um. Yeah, yeah, I'm fine with that. That's a fair that's a fair comment because if I vigilanti charity, vigilanty charity, you'd be like, I don't know what it is, but it sounds like a good thing. Yeah, it sounds like somebody throwing money out the window. That's great. So I was letting it ride because it's a vigilanti conservation, not vigilanti type. Take a push at it because I use that one all the time. So no, I think just revisiting that point is all that was needed. So the computer is spoken. Uh e s. A reform like Endangered Species Act reform is one of those things. I'm like, you hear it all the time, and I'm leary about it because I support it, but I probably don't support it in the way that other people support it. It's one of those things that's become to mean. It's become it's like it's happening to the word conservation, like I could say on pro conservation, like different politicians say on pro conservation. You're like, what exactly do you mean? And you realize that they're talking about something that you're not talking about, and a lot of people to talk about Endangered Species Act reform, A significant amount are saying what I mean by that is I would like the damn thing to go away. In a significant amount are saying I mean that it could be more effective if we change it and make it more flexible to account for like what you're talking about, UM, in the situation of the OUs lot. So for me to now say, if someone asked, like, do you support Endangered Species Act reform, I'd have to say, um, I'll have to ask you a series of questions before I answer, because I don't know what you're getting at. I agree with you, I'm when I say that, and I don't say reform often, I just say changes to the Endangered Species Act or how it's administered, and I don't care which. I'm looking for better performance on private lands? Why that? What's the what's the big deal there? When you look at more than one third of endangered species that are currently listed entirely depend on private lands, and somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy have a large portion of their range across private lands. So if we've got an endangered Species Act that's not performing as well as it could perform on private lands, then maybe it needs some reform. But I get it about being worried about cracking the Act open. You know, if we're driving that nineteen seventy two Galaxy five hundred, you know, we crack it open, and we want to reopolster the seats and put a new, more efficient engine in it so it's not getting three miles to the gallon. Somebody else might want to put some whole bunch of other stuff in there that you know, and oftentimes you'll hear people just lay out, you know, the one liner, well, the Act needs more teeth. Well, that's one of those things that means a different thing to different people. You know. Oftentimes when someone says that, they basically mean we want the Fishing Wilife Service to be more like policeman and enforcement officers rather than doing whatever it takes by any means possible to result in the recovery of endangered species across all lands, where there's public lands or private lands. I think it would be phenomenal if we could find ways to better if we could find ways to better work with private landowners on E s A issues, in a way that still allowed the ultimate goal to move forward. But I do think that the way we do it now and the way that we handle private interests leads to a thing where it's kind of like the spotted owl syndrome, where a spotted owl, after the whole debacle with logging and spoted awl a spot it all didn't mean that word didn't mean a bird anymore. Like when you hear the words spotted out, you don't think like, oh, it's a little owl that lives an old girl force. You think like, spotted owl is federal overreach, right, because there are things that we do that really there are things that we do in the service of prolonging or saving species that makes them have like this entirely negative connotation in people's heads who have to suffer with it most. And I think and around here in this neck of the woods, the most egregious examples are what's been done to people around es A listing for wolves and e s A listings for grizzlies, which they've been recovered by definition for decades. Yet you continue to make it hard on private landowners to go about their business because we like sure move they move the goal pulls all along, and then that creates this sort of like this anti wolf sentiment, this anti grizzly sentiment, that I don't think it's necessary to create the anti wolf, anti grizzly sentiment, Like I don't think that you have to make that in order to save those things. There has been a way to reduce the friction and still hit the ultimate outcome, and it would probably come around from some form of reform. Sure, And I know what you're talking about. I was a I was a wilife biologist for a timber company in the Pacific Northwest in the early nineteen nineties, and so I was hated from both sides, right because I was inside the timber company, so I was hated by our loggersogist, and I was a biologist, so I was hated by the you know the others. But learn learn to learn to work put habitat conservation plans together so that we could live with the spotted out There were huge financial reasons to do that, and so they're in the in the Pacific Northwest around spotted owl's, marble, murletts, Pacific salmon. There's huge financial interests at being able to put together some type of collaborative deal, a habitat conservation plan that worked for private lands and worked for endangered species. We don't necessarily have that with all species in all places. You know, when you've got a small salamander that shuts down, uh what you think is a housing development that ought to ought to go forward, you're likely to just shake your fist. If you're the housing developer at that salamander. Figure out how you can hide the fact that it's there. You know, we don't want it on our property. It be it, It in and of itself becomes the enemy. Right, We've got to figure out how to remove the distincentives and and this is the canned comment, right, remove the distancentives and create incentives. And that's easy to say, it's hard to do. It's a really hard thing to do to create those out of the box incentives that always work with private landowners. But it is dual. What's the thing that landowners are primarily worried about. If people know they have oss lines, is that that they're worried about being able to drill like oil extraction, Like, what's the thing that they're mostly worried about losing? They're mostly worried about losing their ability to make spot decisions on land use. So, for example, uh, the fence line situation I was telling about, I've you know, I've I've been worried on our own lands about road clearing and habitat that we might lose when we need to come in and clear an area so that we can increase increase the forage production capacity for the land, those types of decisions. But branches creating a pasture exactly exactly, we need to make sure that you know, we're not We're in a situation where we've got on staff scientists, biologists and managers that no one understand that so we can craft a solution. We've got our friend right next door with Mike Toois, who's the you know, a pre eminent, awesome lot ecologist. But not every e landowner fields that comfortable and they tend If you're a large ranch, you might have a family that you're responsible to and a board of directors that you're responsible to, and you've got a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that you don't lose your ability to manage that land, you don't lose your ability to graze a ten thousand acre pasture. Let's say, uh, we've got to figure out how to make sure that people don't lose that they gain the incentive or remove the disincentive for at least raising their hand and saying, you know, I've got awful lots here. They are working with Caesar Clayburg group over here. But the first way to do that is to make sure that there's some confidentiality so as they're stepping into the game, so to speak, there they can do it with some safety and do with them. Is it, Lee, I guess it's got to be. Is it legal for someone to know that they have something? Right? Okay, let's say it's an endangered species, right, and you got a ranch and you know what's on there. This it's not like illegal for you to keep that secret. Nothing wrong with keeping it secret and managing for it and increasing their numbers. But how many of these ranchers, all right, how many these ranchers are actually let's say, you know they're there? Yeah, I just want to poke at the motives here. You know they're there. You enjoy them being there. If you could shake a magic wand and have there be more, you would do it, and there would be more you don't want to have anybody coming and tell you can't do X, Y and z to keep your place solvent viable, to keep your property like you know in your family functioning cattle ranch, whatever you got. Um, what are they actually like what are they doing in exchange? It's like, what are they proposing that they would do to help us lots if they could somehow let the cat out of the bag. That's a good punt. Yeah, Like what are they gonna what would they do to make more of them or like what do they do to contribute rather than just that they're just looking for a way to not be interfered with, Like what gift are they giving to the people or what gift are they giving to the cat? So I'm gonna pitch some of that to to Mike, but just to just to comment straight out, they can be an example to other landowners where we might translocate a population so that those landowners would agree, Oh, I had thought about the translocation. You know, we've got to have another population, and you know what, Look what's happening to those guys? Like, hell, am I gonna let you let the cat loose? Here? I got you? So that's the ask that is one, there are some things that you can do and ask would be man, your place is has none, could have some? Why don't you get on board? He's like hello that the minute they let him go out here, I'm screwed. And plus plus we need to know from those landowners just I mean, there's some real conservation benefit just knowing exactly how many oslots there are where they are. Uh, there's some there's some long term habitat development that can be that can be done, and ranchers no better than anybody how to develop habitat and so that Uh, I don't know, Mike any Yeah, yeah. Frankie Terria he established one of the first conservation easements in in nineteen eighty eight where he set aside two different tracks, each of them was only about two hundred acres each, the best offlat habitat that is left in Texas and created a conservation easement with Fisher Wife Service. We've had eleven different territorial aslots at the same time, all these very small core habitats, and we consider that to be a source population, a source habitat, which I I really believe that that kind of serves like the heartbeat for that population in the ranch country. We've had several instances I think at least eight different oslots that moved from those very small patches onto uh the east ranch there. So it's a very source. So that so that and and over the years, he added two more conservation easements with the Nature Conservancy in two thousand and seven and two thousand and nine, and just about four or five years ago put the remaining ten thousand acres into some kind of an an agreement, uh, mostly range land, but some kind of agreement to protect the outslet into the future. So over time, although it's mostly grass and very little habitat and the rest of that ranch, it will eventually provide for oslots that little pocket of habitat well, and that rest of the ten thousand acres that's range land. When that starts to grow back, grab more more carbon in the atmosp fair and that's great for brush. Ultimately that the carbon and that the atmosphere will help the brush. I want to explain that, Well, no, you're more of arrange. Arrange how you threw that one out there. Now we're now we're gonna rabbit trail long. But you mean like carbon in the atmosphere, decreases grassland and increases brush, increases the opportunity for brush for brush growth. Yeah, so it leads a grassland loss, right, huh, Right, in what capacity because for precipitation changes or no, it's actually the now I'm not an expert on this. The biochemical changes that that result in the better competitive ability for woody species versus grass to actually capture the resources on the site. Yeah, water so here like juniper encroachment and stuff that could there's some factor there that could be linked to, like more carbon or less carbon in the atmosphere that could lead a juniper encroachment. Did you out that carbon thing? You shouldn't fill that car that we don't we don't need to hang on. I never heard that. Man, that's interesting. Slip one in what's still I'm I'm confused at why what's preventing if we have these core populations and you know that they are breeding right, and we're not trapping them and shooting them legally as much as we were a hundred years ago, and so how come we just don't have like a just a general increase in population. And this excellent question, excellent question. The couple of things. One is they all thought as a habitat specialist. It seeks a finery, It seeks the densest brush that you can find. Horizontal cover is ideal for that. And keep explaining that horizontal the shrub layer, the shrub layers fifteen feet or shorter, that's where the shrub layer occurs. And also throughout the range where use different vegetation communities, but a common factor is extremely dense cover near the ground where the operations. But what's the percentage? That mean? If you if you did a measuring line or transsect over over the brush, it's called line intercept or more, that would be solid brush. It would be just a wall of brush. And so they're very selective on that. And twice once in the eighties and the nineties we flew transac of low. I was so confused. Picture like a very nice lawn. Okay, huh, that would be zero percent in picture you're an aunt going through a very thick lawn. Would that aunt say this is one brush coverage as he finagles his way through a thick girl. Depends on your grass, I guess you know, if you have a solid standard grass, yeah, if it's botty, maybe not, but okay, so if you measured that's them saying like if you measure one d centimeters. So I take a thing that has a hundred centimeters and a stick, and I hold that stick up. Nine point five of those centimeter marks are going to have a piece of vegetation it. There are a few different ways to measure, but the one I've always liked it's called line intercept. You do a tape measure for say ten feet, and then you you identify what's called the drip line of each shrub individual shrub where the full edge canopy, and then you consider that continuous. And so if you measured over that, that that that's what I got you, because I would say that's thick as brush. Well yeah, And and what's interesting is those two small tracks have remained. Is what's left of that. They called it the l harding. Back in the early nineteen hundreds, before the real Grand Valley was cleared, there was a lot of of the l harding the garden Spanish just solid brush, and that was one of the last vestiges of the core population of oslots. What's kind of ironic is, prior to the Spanish explorations that occurred in the sixteen hundreds. There are a lot of accounts of South Texas being a grassland or primarily a grassland. So that probably wasn't really good alsodde habitat, except along the rivers where you had the really dense brush. Over time, because of the stopping the fire and overgrazing, you've had more encroachion the brush over time, and that's benefit of the oslots. So we've we've actually helped the oslots in some places in some ways. And there's some some places like the awesome population on the Attorney. So there's a there's a ranch there called the Punta del Monte, and that's just the point of brush, the point of the woodland. Yeah, and so that that was the old Spanish. Even as thick as we've seen it on the multiple South Texas ranches that we've gotten to hunt on, it's still not thick enough. Probably not because the rancher, if he has a rider horse through that says it's thick. But it's a very special kind of thick. And we've done surveys and we found that less than one percent, really less than one half of one percent of South Texas has that very special cover type less than one half of one. That they mean they called the brush country. Yeah, they used to be. They need to have an aster after kind of Yeah, the brushy kind of brushy country. Yeah, so that's that's. That's that, like answers his question, like, why are they not if we're not just out shooting Willy Nillion trapping him. Well, that's part of it. But important part is the very poor dispersers, because that's spotting pattern that they have. They stick out like a sore thumb in the open, so they need that dense brush to move from one air to the other. Those two populations are separated by less than thirty miles, and over thirty five years we've never documented one. I'll stop moving to the other. That's even that just that's what I wanted to ask, is what's the when you're throwing a collar on one of them? What's the farthest you've ever seen one of them go wearing a collar? Miles? Uh? And that went from the ranch of population down to what we call the port Haarle engine. Typically it's about ten miles and that usually ends unsuccessfully being killed on the road. Him. Well, well that he was killed on the road to that the longest one was there. That's how we find him. They killed the road. So this ideal of the disconnection, or they went the farthest far, they normally fall. We went far and they normally make it, but succumb to the same thing. Yeah, yeah, And the problem is they go into the highly developed real Grand Valley and there's a tense road network there, so it's just a gauntlet once they leave the population. They're going through a gauntlet that often is on the road. Do they head when you got a collar on one? Do they head in a direction that makes sense? You know, I've always thought about that doesn't have a map? He has no. We don't really understand the stuff though, because like you look at, I don't know all kinds of stuff man, like humpback whales, bowhead whales. See these very seed turtle species that do insane stuff. My brother had a bunch of pigeons that were born in his yard. One day, he drove the pigeons an hour and a half away and they beat him home. Yeah, well we left. We use homing pigeons, So I don't know that he in his head head and those examples are different and a lot of those birds may use magnetic fields of the stars, isn't not cats? My point being, there could be some thing we don't yet understand the cat boogiesy boogies in a way that at least kind of makes sense. Sure, Yeah, I'm always we by no means know everything, And I always in as a scientist, you have to be open that you don't know everything. And but but I think about it a lot, and and and the oslots world is in the dark, and it can only see two ft above the ground, and it's it's immediate world is surrounded by brush. It's in a very enclosed world. So when it boogie somewhere you know it's you kind of wonder what kind of cues it's it's it's homing into some natural drainages. I think maybe a rough factor, uh, or maybe at a distance they can't see that far in the distance because of those factors, it's really in it, and so they don't have a map and they usually get in trouble. One more, I guess the same question different way. Do the ones that take off take off in the same direction or is it really nilly? I think there may be some generality for that and again it probably related to the drainages, whatever cues that they see and that I don't. I don't know. If there's a big open grass sand, most of them won't go that way. But if there's some cover, some level of coverlet even if it's brush or something else, they prefer that over agricultural filled. So there may be some roughness, but it's a I think for for a lot of the cats, it's almost a random thing. I'll tell you why. I asked, Uh. I had one time in my mom's storage shed, I attend live snap and turtles in there. She have the door open, and um, they all went the right direction, and I later thought, it has to be downhill, Yeah, down the pitch, I would I would guess that, you know, for terms like they had to have gotten the yard and because I was following a bunch up and down the beach, they were all going and it hadn't been that they just following the contour. Yeah, Like why why would Snap turns like I need to get to the water. I'm not gonna go uphill. Yeah, I bet there are some cues like that that different taxons, you know, we spawn different ways. That's interesting, Like anytime I have a head of the water has always been downhill. So if you're playing crashes in the mountains, you follow the creeks down. Uh. Yeah, when we're laying out some when you were working with Krenda put down some some things that we wanted to discuss. You had three motivations that drive awesole lots. And then parenthetically, it says and most small cats is uh, sex, hunger, and fear. I've learned that from my my my two outdoor cats that are pretty walled, and I just sit around and watch them, and they watch out because Cali hunt them down and kill them. Cal's down an anti cat crease, not farrel cats. Well, no, I I appreciate them more than most. A soft man with a dog a hard man with a cat. Yeah, I like dogs. I like dogs more cal. I like dogs more than cats. But I I keep a few around for behavioral observations. Any animal, it helps you out tremendously. There there's so many cues that help hunters, and it's well worth your time to have an animal in your life and and be an anti cat. It isn't entirely correct. I am shocked at the duality of UH. People's morals when it comes to domestic cat. Yeah that you don't like the guy that haunts two pheasants a year, But meanwhile your cat, uh that that that ferrell in free wandering house cats kill more birds than there are Americans every year. Yes, yeah, um, and I did on this subject, like what what is the is there overlap between a domestic cat population and is there a concern for UH disease transmission that toxoplasmosis I believe is what it is a good question. Yeah, there there's right near the Old South Ranch is this small community of a hundred people called Port Mansfield. And there've been some studies that have shown feline leuchemia or some disease. Hundred people, two thousand cats go ahead, well you probably yeah, And and and what I worry about them is a bobcats probably coming into town or the edge of town, which they frequently do, getting that disease to bobcat and then into the OSLA population only about four or five miles away. So and and that's one thing where we worry about. Maine is another thing. Coyotes will get mange, usually a different kind of mange. UH cast will getting go to Edric Maine and they get sarcoptic mange. But we worry about house cats. But usually cats won't live too long. Coyotes will kill them. Uh, great horned owls will kill them in the wild all the surprisingly. Some places you can find some house cats, but most of the time they won't live too long in the world. How did they arrange themselves? Like, when you have a little population, you have to imagine that they're structured somehow, right, I mean they're interacting with each other. You're talking about all sorts of housecat Okay, yeah, oslots, Yeah, it's it's it's kind of a typical system social organization. See for the thirty three species of small cats. Most people realize that, but I'm just amazed that thirty three species of small cats, and many of them show the same system. Where the strategy of the female is to breed and find a home range that's big enough that will support her young, raising her young over a year or two, even with variations of drought wet periods. But the male's strategy is to try to and she so the female wants to make sure her young survived to breeding age. And uh, the male strategy is not does not take part of care taking for the young, but it wants to breed with as many females as it can, so that male is monitoring the territory of one female to females or sometimes three, and that means it spends a lot of his time traveling and checking to find out when the female is inestius are reproductively active. And if it wants to add overlap two home ranges two females, it's moving a lot getting hit by cars. Well, yeah, I f if the roads in betweening there will be and and there. But on the ranches where there are roads, they're they're moving a lot and um, and they try so they're so they're they're optimizing their ability to spread the genes that way the female wants. She knows that the males aren't gonna help with with raising the young geting, so it's really interesting strategy. And and uh and the males I think for many small cats, well they'll monitor the females and probably they'll fight with other males, and they definitely defended territories. We've had three instances of one male killing another male. All cats will kill other cats, different species, same species, um and the bigger cats killed the smaller cats pretty easy. But I've got a photo of this one outslot and the jaguar in Mexico, and you can tell it's out a watering hole and they're they're the jaguar is about to kill that osla so so cat, and you caught him in a photo at that moment. Well another person that Mexicans. It's it's one photo, uh, and they're both responding to the flash of the camera. But that afla that first, there are two photos, and that first photo that all the hair standing out on the tail of that aflot and it's one hind leg is already looks unusual, like it's already broken. I think they already had a bite. That and the three seconds later the next camera they're both looking back intensely to each other and I benefit had another three seconds that ostler would be dead. So so so that's that's a problem. But they display a lot and they try not to fight. They sent marked their home ranges and territories. They don't want to fight because if you break a canine or you lose one eye, your chances just surviving much longer. It was not good if you had to crystal ball it right. How long You've been messing with os lots for thirty eight years? So what year will be in thirty eight years, it will be two thousand and No, I'm a wildlife siside. I didn't take years in uh our oslts is gone in Texas are still around? Yes, yea, yeah, yes, I do because you have the East Foundation who's going to work with some other landowners and do what it takes to maintain those into the future. I'm convinced and hopefully get the translocation. Read about bad stuff, man, I'm glad to hear this. Well. You know, I probably changed my attitude five or teen years. I spent the first thirty years pretty pessimistic and giving presentations that people come with at the ends. I wish you weren't so pessimistic and a little more. Are you just being strategic by being optimistic? No, I really believe that you're not trying to play the long game a little bit with me. No, No, I really I really believe that. I think it's a dumb and dumber approach. I mean, there's there's there's a chance that awful lots are gonna make it, and well, if we do the things we need to do, and I think we will really yeah, tell people, uh, give people a little rundown on what they can do to find out more about oz lots and more about the work to save AWF lots. But you know how people might be involved. Yeah, Well one is check out our website, the Caesar Clayburg while if Research Instant and then the East Foundation. I'm sure that you can get some information from both of those, Yeah, East East Foundation dot net. Also, we've got a feature film coming out that you've seen produced by by Ben Masters and finn Fur and Feather and Caesar Clayburg and and East Foundation collaborated on that along with Fish and Wildlife Service. It's a thirty minute feature on the plight of ocelots in South Texas. And that's part of a bigger uh set of productions that um that Texan by Nature, a nonprofit that was formed by Laura Bush is helping sponsor through Finn Fur and Feather Films. Yeah he did that. Yeah, he did that. Uh, and they did that Wild Horse film brand Brandon ben Masters that fact, in fact, he spent some time here in Bozeman every year. But that is coming out and that will be out in December. And uh, that's a that's a good just basic synopsis of the issue from both the biological person. Well you've seen it from both biological perspective and and it lays out the two sides of the issue in a little bit of an abbreviated form, but it does. He got some incredible footage for that as well. And real quick I mentioned Karen Hickson also was one of the founders of funders of that that film, But he got incredible five hours worth of film on the oslots a lot of it based on this one mother and who are too young and and and the too young are only seen together in the very first image. The male dies shortly thereafter. And but from there on does what I total guess, but I could see easily see a dozen things. It's stumbling into a big five foot rattle snake on that ranch. Could he easily do it, a cayoity stumble, a baucat, a variety of things that could do it, and and uh um, but and and he I think he has a like a one segment of also drinking water for six minutes. Uh, he has another of it regurgitating It takes like two minutes for this hostl regurgitate. It's a fascinating film. Yeah, it's a little quirky, and it's really good. It's a it's all a piece and and um and and throughout that film you see the mother training her young. It's constantly calling it, of getting it to follow and making small vocalizations. It's nursing it while coyotes are howling off in the distance. You know. It's almost like a calming effect on that, on that kit and nursing, and they're both sitting there calming and calming behavior and it's leading it from one cover patch to another cover. So the the sex, hunger and fear I think of pure and I get that from my my backyard cats. You know, the males from the neighboring houses come in for the sex. Uh. They're constantly hunting the birds. Uh. Then the fear is if I just make a noise, they're running for cover. So so you and and that's uh, that's throughout the catting the small cats. At least we drop something hopeful on you. So we've we've worked hard with the Fishing Wildlife Service over the last four or five years just to basically help them, help them understand the rancher's side of the situation. And we have some uh, some strong and influential people within the Fishing Wildlife Service that have got it. They've got it figured out, and there they are working on the inside to try to figure out how we can do this, separate aside from any reforming the Endangered Species Act or anything like us just what can we do with what we have and how can we make this work? And we've got some really dedicated people in there that shann't share the same objectives that that we share, understand that we are serious about it. We sink more uh funding into research on that species than anyone else, and we're there for the long run and this is not just a flash in the pan. And at least for me, I don't want that cat blinking out on my watch. Well, I mean, I wish your best luck in that move, because I think if someone's out there and and they would be willing to have some and willing to take some steps, we don't want to get steamrolled. I sure hope that there's a sure seems to me they we would uh collectively find a path forward for that individual man, I mean, you know, and not have a and not have a difficult to navigate bureaucratic bureaucratic entanglement laid out in front of them. It's supposed to be part of how the North American model works too. I mean, it really does come back and apply to Look, this is how we are supposed to handle our our public trust. Yeah, that we've that we have in this country. It's supposed to work that way. We've got a lot of things working that way that are run through the state game and fish agencies. Of course they have commissions where they can turn on a dime. Many of them do Fish and Wildlife service. The responsibilities that they have over endangered species a little bit different, But we've got to make it work within that public trust doctrine of of the North American model. We gotta figure it out, call I gotta final wrap ups. Cal's gonna go vigilantia on them cats. Wildlife management is hard, you know, I mean, it's I'm sure there are a lot of folks trying to manage species on the public land side of the fence that are staring into the private land saying how easy it would be if only and I think one of the you know, I mean as far as like land specifically managed for wildlife in the US that is privately held, I think you're still a larger amount of land and privately held acres than all all the national parks in the lower forty eight combined. Um, I mean land owned for wildlife owned, Yeah, with the stated purpose of of wildlife. Um, most of that, most of that's for hunting, right. And you know the thing that those pieces of land uh miss that are on the public landside of things, and in a lot of cases, not all cases, is um the public has a voice like as as a nation sometimes in how invested we're going to be in a species, and that kind of lacks on the awful lot side of things, Right. It's like you're gonna be doing advocacy work on awesol lots every every day. Yeah, I know, And you're like, yeah, and I'll and with the public perspective is and I'll never see the damn thing because I can't go there. Cal made me think of something that I think that's fundamental is that these vast ranches and then even small ranches, they'll generate often more income from their hunting operation of deer and quell than they do from the cattle operation. So they have incentives to hire a lot of our students, undergraduate graduates come and work on the ranches of biologists to keep the habitat there. And that fundamental incentive is also providing indirectly habitat for rosslots, so that the hunting and and and uh that that that's there's really indirectly also benefiting oslots. Yeah, good quail habitat. And if you're a ranella type of fella, it's good. Cotton habitat is good, awful lot habitat from the sounds of it. All right, guys, thank you for coming. Enjoy it. Thank you, thank you. It was great. Yeah, and tell you one one more time how to how to find you East Foundation at east Foundation dot net. You guys are based out of based out of San Antonio, Texas, but spend our time driving throughout South Texas and then Caesar Clayburg Wildlife Research Institute and it's based in Kingsville, Texas, Texas A and M University Kingsville. All Right, thank you very much, guys, thank you, thank you.
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