00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is the me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, all right, I'm not gonna say what kind of bar this is? Maybe I will. We're sampling a bar at what do you call it? I mean, well, how would you describe the bar? It's it's category No no, no, I mean it's like in the category of energy bars or what granola bars like super protein. And we were little kids it was granola bars. But then people start putting other stuff in them. These here the number one ingredients ground beef, then dried prunes, almonds, sweet potatoes, oats, brown flax seed, tomato, paste on on, anchovies. Yanni thinks it tastes like dog food. It's got a dog food hint. I first listen. When I was first sent these, I open one up and ate it, and I had a box, a box of boxes. Al it was so bad. I gave the people at the post office two boxes. I'm like, I don't know what you guys all do for lunch, but here and um. Then that went in there later and they're like, man, those things were awful, um, but now they're kind of growing on me. What I do is I put a bunch of my glove box of the car. My kids won't go near him. But when I meant to be like, I'll just feed into the kids. And they started complaining in the car and now and then I'll be like just out of like, you know, driving along, I'll just kind of have a hankering, and they're kind of a little bit growing on me. These things expired last June two thousand, fifteen June. Is that right better? You can want to take a look at that. My friend met a guy and he described him as my body met a guy, and his body described the guy as being the kind of guy that girls off of you, Um, which I always liked, but you like him at first and slowly stopped liking him. But these are the kind of thing to grow on you. First thing I want to talk about. Yeah, and you explain this what we did? Oh? Nice? Yeah? So did they send you your hat? Yeah? Oh yeah. So we're hunting squirrels in Kentucky and we filled out a form a squirrel hunting Cooperator Survey Report or yeah, and you like log your squirrel hunting activities, and we sent our squirrel hunting thing in They sent me a sweet Blaze orange squirrel hunting baseball hat, and they sent a summation of squirrel hunting in Kentuck. You so, dudes, last year hunting in Kentucky would see two point five squirrels per hour in August, which slowly dropped two. Okay in August. The dude Kentucky, your average Kentucky squirrel hunter, who's probably your better squirrel hunters? Because those the kind of guys that would turn a log in. I don't think I'm going out. You're a trained biologist, right, would you agree that more tuned in dudes are gonna turn in a voluntary log or would you think that even shitty bad hunters are gonna turn into voluntary log I think the guys that are experienced some success. And also, who's noting in August? Probably people are pretty serious about turkey, So this is probably like a tuned in hunt. So this, yeah, these are the guys that are dialed in, biased or tuned in. So in August, your average Kentucky in it's seeing two point five squirrels per hour and killing about one per hour. By February, here's the weird thing By February. He's seeing one squirrel about one squirrel per hour and killing point five per hour. You know what the moral of that story is, your honest hunting August Um, they're seeing a lot more foxes and grays. When I was open to my mail, I ripped the salment used to like regular old male anymore. I ripped my thing all to pieces. Anyhow, we're gonna talk about caribou. Uh Land Tony. I'm sitting in with us Land b H A bad country hunters and anglers. Uh Ryan Callahan general guy Hunter Fisher works at the hunting apparel company First Light. Janice tell us the man who will not maybe my perch flies. We work closer together, talk every day on the phone. Still won't do it. And introduce yourself. Bart Bart George Bart George. I'm a b H, a board member for Washington State and a wildlife biologist for the Calispell tribe up in northeast Washington. Explain Anthony, they have a wildlife biologist right. Well, we have a big natural resource department. Um, so we have about fifteen fish biologists. I'm the only wildlife biologist, but um, we have so many fish and and so you work for the tribe, right, because they're just fisheries reliant, not necessarily fisheries reliant, but um fish where the money is at right is right? Yeah, I didn't know that for sure. And where do you do where? Where are you? Where do you do your where are you based out of northeast Washington Pondrea County it's the most northeast corner of the state, and then also over into North Idaho up around Priest Lake mostly, But explain that why is it that the money's in the fish, because I wouldn't necessarily guess that um. Well, certainly in the northwest with all the salmon runs in our um the anadromous fish, but then also in our area it's the add fluvial fish, the bull trout and stuff like that. Okay, explain unadromus coach adrenus and a fluvial well. Most of us are familiar with salmon making the run out of the ocean and coming back into freshwater to spawn in their natal streams. That'd be in anadromous fish. Add fluvial fish like a bull trout that we have in northeast Washington. Um they're also an endangered run of fish. But they use big lakes basically as their ocean. So instead of making it all the way out of saltwater, um, they used Lake Ponderre or one of the big lakes there, and so Nadermus refers to salt water like like in the Great Lakes the salmon. They took Pacific salmon and caught them an established him and caught him loosen the Great Lakes. So they treat the Lake Michigan, for instance, Lake Superior, like Michigan Lake here on. They treat it as their ocean, which is freshwater still and they run up to spawn. You would say that those are add fluvial fish. Well, like, yeah, maybe I'm talking out of turn though I'm a caribou. I don't need to before you into an area you're not familiar with. But that's what's going on there, okay. And then uh so a cattagimus fish would be like the American eel lives in the river, goes out to the ocean to spawn. I thought we covered this before. We certainly might have, and I can't say it's been on a podcast. Yeah, So like eel spends his life in the river, goes out, actually goes down to the Sargasso Sea. Um. So if you're standing in like New York and you see eel swim by, that he's gonna wind up going to the Sargasso Sea to reproduce. Um. Okay, that has nothing to do with what you work on. Um. But when you say that, so, so you to explain again where you work. Um So Northeast Washington, in the Selkirk Mountains, in the British Columbia, in the North Idaho, A lot across a variety of land owners like a lot of a variety of and ownership areas or no for sure? Um. Yeah, A lot of state land, A lot of federal land, mostly for service. We don't have a lot of BLM or any other management. Um. A lot of private timber company um. Idaho state land, Washington state land, provincial land in British Columbia. So what's your like? I don't understand what what's your mandate like? If you work for you work for a tribal organization. Right, so the tribe, we're a small reservation. We only have about five thousand acres on the reservation. So caribou were never going to be on the reservation. But um, they're an important species to the tribe historically there in the neighborhood. I guess twenty miles up the hill. Um So, the tribe, we don't have land ownership responsibility, but we have some management responsibility through cooperative agreements. I got you, I got you, and then layout for me how you became to be a biologist? Real quick? Like, what was sort of education path does a fellow take. We're kids, we all were saying, we all would say we're gonna be wildlife biologists right to my brothers. Did it? We just said, because it seemed like a way you could spend a lot of time outdoors. It is. It's a good job that way. Um So, I got a bachelor's degree back and I grew up in Iowa, small town, kind of farm kid. Um went to Simpson College, got my bachelor's degree there, and moved west immediately after college. Moved to Washington State and started working on hydro power projects along the Columbia River, and then eventually moved up into northeast Washington with the tribe. Um again, the rivers in the Northwest are definitely where the jobs are at. Everything sort of tied to wildlife mitigation or restoration projects that way. Uh, my brother who is a fisheries guy, when he first came out west, it was hydro electric stuff on the Columbia Counting salmon. Yeah, that's pretty common sturgeon issues. Yeah, and then went on to do all kinds of things he didn't know about at the time. When you're growing up in Iowa, there's no way you knew that there were caribou in the lower forty eight, right, No way. You probably walk around the neighborhood. I bet most people in Seattle wouldn't know there's I live in Montana for years, Western Montana for years before I would before I had the opportunity to call bullshit on someone who's saying that caribo used to come down in Idaho and Washington. I'm like, no, they did not, idiot, I definitely did. People. Yeah, how is it not known? Growing up in Montana, it was like this Montana history fact, Like get caribou and Montana. Yeah, that's the only way I in Idaho. Now that I live in Idaho, and I think we need to like reiterate this Western or Eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana caribou. Do we exist there? Nobody knows? Nobody knows and I the wolf thing is so giant and nobody knows about cariboo like it just drives me crazy. Sorry, go ahead, that's true, dries everybody crazy? How okay? This year, let me ask you a handful questions to get people, just to get people into what we're doing here, to know what's going on. One years the oh, I, let's do this at the place of scene HOLI, scene transition ten tho years ago, pre human contact? How many caribou were running around possibly? And what is now the lower forty eight? What was like a hundred years ago? What's it like right now? I can't I don't know anything about the place of scene erea or anything like that during you know whatever, pre contact um a hundred years ago, there were hundreds of caribou south of the border, there were enough. Teddy Roosevelt went on a guided hunt out of Priests Lake. Did you get one? No? But he spent ten days hiking around the Selkirk Mountains looking for him. So there must have been a handful around to make him think that he could experience some success. And what was their range of hundred years ago? There are reports all the way down to the St. Joe Um then in the quarter lanes, but mostly um in the south. Selkirk sent over into the cabinet area. And were these caribou a hundred years ago just spending some other time in the Lower forty eight or is there a cariboo that would be born and die and live their whole lives in Washington, Idaho? They definitely um live their lives. There's enough habitat up there to support a herd of cariboo for sure, throughout the year, throughout their life. Um. Right now, right now, they're still caribou that kind of flirt with the border of both the States and Canada, and they kind of bounce around all three areas. So right now, at this moment, is there a caribou and Lower forty eight? Uh, we don't know, I guess when we have two collars out right now, But it's possible. I bet there's a cariboo within ten miles of the border. If there's not, what kind of caribou we talk about a mountain cariboo? Do you believe in all the distinctions they drove carib because because you know how you have in taxonomy, you have your lumpers and your splitters. There are people who look at animals and they see this amazing uh tapestry of subspecies. And there's like the you know, the Aaron ground grizzly, the mountain grizzly, the coastal brown bear. And then you have other people in taxonomy who say it's all one species. They just have They just look a little bit different depending on where you go, but it's just one species. I recently read that a guy arguing that that all caribou, even the ones in Eurasia, are just a species and there's no reason to say that it's subspecies. Well, I don't agree with that. Um. He acknowledged that he was going out on a limb. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't agree with that. I think there's you know again, there's lumpers and their splitters. The caribou that we have in the South Selkirk's um. What makes them unique to other mountain caribou UM is their use of the high elevation country during the wintertime, so they're eating lichens rbo lichens out of trees is the old man's beard, the stuff you see growing in the trees to get above the snow. Right, so they're standing on whatever eight foot of snow and they're eating lichens that are out of reach the rest of the year. And they're pretty much the only species that can do that. Um. The only you know, deer and moose and elk aren't up there, so they have sort of a niche market because those animals all leave right um. And historically moose and elk didn't really share that habitat anyway, sort of a new thing, um due to habitat change and other things. So the cariboo we have. If we took caribou from the north, you know, they're still mountain Cariboo whatever, say we get them from Newfoundland or something and we dropped them, Uh, they would not know how to use that habitat. There's a possibility we could train them though with um, you know, pen them together and let them sort of co mingle long enough and do kind of a soft release or something like that. But augmentations where you just take an animal from a different ecotype and throw them down, it's been a failure. Can you I'm gonna keep having you stopped to explain thing that people might not know what you mean? Can you just play in a hot release and or a hard release and a soft release which is this is some fascinating stuff. Yeah. Well, um, a hard release is pretty basic. You're taking an animal, you're moving it from one spot, and you're just wishing it luck and kicking it loose into a new area, new habitat, type, new whatever, mountain range. Um. Some species you can do that with pretty well. Big horn sheep you can't. You can't store big horn sheep for very long. They'll kill themselves in the pen. So you're pretty much stuck with doing hard release with that kind of animal. Um Wolves, and they're really easy. They're gonna they're gonna make a life for themselves wherever you drop them hot or cold. Yeah, you don't have to like sort of do a soft release. You don't have to do anything to temper them into a new piece of habitat Caribou it seems that you do. You do got to do soft. What we're gonna do, you know, what we would like to do is build sort of a pen or an enclosure and have a few of our resident animals and then bring some other animals out of one of these other herds and put them all together and leave them to calve together in the spring, and then you know, July or so opened the gates and let them kind of come and go at their leisure until they sort of figure out how to use that landscape and hopefully they'll mother up to that resident group of animals. I was first introduced to those terms when I was researching a book I wrote about buffalo or bison, and uh I did a hunt for a group of introduced buffalo up on the Copper River in Alaska, and it was a classic, like hot released story where they took thirteen of them and put them in the back of a truck and caught them loose by a mine. And for decades everyone thought they just all died, But then the herd turns up thriving und fifty miles away. And then later people learned that when you're dealing with those, you build a you know, an enclosure, let him just be in there and taken care of him. One day, you just kind of leave the door open, right, But because you kick him out the back of the truck, they don't know what happened, and they start and they just started moving trying to find where they were coming from or whatever. Yeah, we had um augmentation. Animals end up in Montana and end up um down in Bonner's Ferry and the River Valley in the wintertime, where you know, lots of predators, lions were eating them, getting hit by cars and stuff like that because they had no idea how to where they were and what to do. They didn't know how to use that landscape at all. Now, can I assume that? Uh? And we got got questions. I just love this topic. So I'm gonna be quiet and lets you and me have run in the mountain Caribou. Yes, a little way, a little ways up into BC and Yanni a number of times. Gorgeous, Oh my godgeous. Amazing. Actually, that one we saw last year, we had to listen to him rutting and grunting and wow. Nice. Yeah, it looked like fabio man. Just like where was that at? It was outside of Prince George. Okay, yeah, non migrantor they just live. They probably have some some amount of migration. They just like are like glued to these mountain ranges. You know, they get up like in the north slope and you're looking when you hunt cariboo as I like to do open the north slope, you're looking at animals that probably there's a very strong chance they've never been where they are right now, right'd be like that might be his first you think of animals, that's that was such a defined sense of place, but you really care, like as far as there's a very good chance that that thing has never been in this valley before, just roaming, you know, hundreds of miles. I do have a question, why only two collars? And is their ratio of collars? Ted? Don't don't answer Cale's questions. We haven't established something. Hold it, we haven't established like what it is? Like what is it? Okay, lay off me the situation we used to have them. Why don't we now is someone trying to do something about it? Okay, well that we can. Then then we'll do Cale's questions. Actually, they go pretty nicely. We had six collars. No, no, not that not collars caribou. Well that's the same story. Um So we had six collars out and a pretty good cross section of the population, and we've seen all these sources of mortality sort of pop up. Now that we have information on the caribou. Um so we have to use our collar data to sort of extrapolate any information that we get from this or I'm trying to I'm trying to go way deeper than that. Okay, Well we've lost animals too. Um. The highway Highway three cuts right through their middle of their habitat up in British Columbia. So we lose animals on the highway. Um, we have significant habitat change. We've got a lot of habitat protected up there. Um, a lot of good intact old growth, a lot of good high country for them to use. Um. So uh, what is the like? Can you give me a sense of the the overall picture of caribou and caribou conservation in the lower forty eight. Um, yeah, I can the We have cariboo in the lower forty eight. They're in tough shape though. Um, there's been significant habitat changes, although we have lots of places still protected. Um. There's like twelve cariboo left in that South South Kirk herd twelve. Um, and they all spend some of their they're all they all crossed back and forth. Yeah, they're all right along the border. Um a dozen, we're down to a dozen. Yeah, we had where's like the next chunk of like their buddies or cousins or the next herd to the north. Um. There are fifteen suburbs in the in the south Selkirks, so there are other herds around, um, but they're not connected anymore. There's development in the river bottom stuff like that. They just so there's there's effectively a population of animals it is not getting that is not breeding with another pot. Relation to animals is only fifteen left twelve I'm sorry, twelve left right. Um. And that population was doing quite well actually in the early two thousand's, like we were on an increasing trend. We added up to like forty six animals in two thousand, um, eight or nine. It's such hard to have a numbers today. So they were increasing, increasing, increasing, they were doing pretty well. Um. And like I said, we have we have a lot of habitat protections in place. Um. You know, we have road closures, we have different things happening to keep caribou safe. Um that the old growth forest is chopped up a little bit, but there are still places for them to find winter food, which is a problem for some herds. UM. So kind of what's happened, I guess is we have all this habitat change and we have all these fragmented habitats and um as we've logged these things over the last whatever hundred years, we've created this huge moose population. Okay, so they love that second girl stuff. They love it. You have thirty year old cuts are perfect for moose, and we have a lot of those um so as. Moose have sort of rolled into this country. They've bridged the gap between the river bottoms which were white tailed deer and the caribou elevationally, and it wasn't a big deal until wolf recovery because now we have this prey species from the river bottoms to the moose up in the mid elevation to the cariboo in the high country. So where before moose were on the landscape, wolves and caribou coexisted because they didn't really run into each other. Now they are encountering each other more often, and we're getting um secondary predation, I guess you'd call it because white tails have traditionally lived along the right white areas, where you had white tails in the riparian zones along the rivers, and they would support the wolf population. Wolves knew about a new about would hunt them right, and you had caribow up in the high country. And then moose came in, and now a wolf would find good hunting at all these various elevations and now finds cause to be drifting around up in Cariboo Country. That's right. And the high moose population as a it's a totally a result of the um you know, wildfires and habitat change, I guess to logging. Um, as the moose population has grown pretty high, it maintained sort of a I don't want to say an artificially high level of wolves, but higher than what would have been here historically. The hammer moves pretty hard there. Uh. Yeah, they support you know, moose and elk are certainly supporting the wolf population. UM. So since two thousand and nine, we you know, we documented our first wolf back in northeast Washington in two thousand and nine, and we've seen this precipitous decline in the caribou population from forty six now to twelve over the course of just a few years. How uh, how contentious is that statement you just made? Not that contentious, you'd be surprised. Um. I think people pretty much recognize that that's the problem. They do, Yeah, because you get a lot of people who one wolves can do no harm, and you get a lot of people who wolves do all harm well, and you've met them both. Sure, Oh yeah, yeah, we see them both for sure. The wolves are the it's it's additional. Um. Predation. No, Lions were a big problem in the nineties for predation. And when a lion, you know, their specialists. So they key in on our small subgroup of caribou and they would kill all of them if you let them. We had callers out then, and if that started happening, we respond with dogs and chase the lion, kill it and the caribou. We're doing all right, like you could pinpoint a specific line. Oh yeah, now, they're definitely specialist. I remember reading a story and trapp rom Creditor call our magazine when I was a kid in the eighties, and it was about like a line they called like the hundred thousand dollar lion because they had done a big horn sheep reintroduction down in Arizona. The price tag on the sheep introduction was a hundred thousand and uh some time moved in there and killed every single one of them. And they will, they will, they will key in on a group and they're pretty effective. Um. Yeah, they had one then whatever. They don't usually name animals or whatever, but they called this one Mr. Nasty and it was a big tom and he lived in the high country and he was really tough on the Cariboo. Yeah, when they got rid of him, the herd started coming back up. It made a difference in the population. Over how many years was that line and they're doing it, I think it was two or three years. And then you know, I started off kind of once one here and there, and then people started putting together like this thing is causing a bunch of trouble, and we started accrediting a lot of the kills to that one circumstances. It's so acute, it's kind of hard to say, no, that's not what's going on, right, I mean, that's an easy that's an easy fix. That's certainly easier than um the wolf problem. You know, we have there's other options. There's a place in Canada in the Peace River area they went in and wiped out most of the moose to help. Yeah, you know, you removed the moose, you removed the primary prayer for the wolves and um over this wildly unpopular, Like can you imagine trying to explain that to people in the know British Columbia and North Idaho and Northeast Washington, that we're going to kill all the moose to say the cariboo. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't go. No, I I can't. I can't imagine. I don't like imagining having that conversation. My kids were watching one day an animated, uh like cartoon movie and they call it, I don't know what it's called. They call it Trapper Wolves. It's like the plot because there's a wolf family, you gather, it's you know, brit BC. I gather and the bad guys are out trying to live trap the wolves and try and come out of helicopter. It's like the baby story, but the bad guys are biologists out trying to trank and relocate wolves to save the caribou. Really yeah, I'm not kidding you. And then the wolves leave to get away, so it's like but the end result is the same because it wasn't the whole thing that you didn't want to get relocated. But then they go find a new place lift, which is kind of what's gonna happen. It's a very confused plot. Children's right, Yeah, but it's like at what point. Yeah, but it was just a lot easier when they're just gonna go bad. I was gonna kill. It was like the bad guys are like oddly Southern hillbillies, Southern hillbilly biologists who are out trying to trank wolves to save cariboo. But they were bad. It's the weirdest program teaching kids that ballogists are bad, Like, don't believe those ballotis. They're bad. Not only bad, but from the South Caribou. Did they have a set of tee ends every year they single cavers, single cavers. Yeah, reproducers and then they don't reproduce. Still there two and a half, which is you know, also cost you a year. Now. So when you guys got rid of Mr Nasty the specialist Tom Mountain Lion, that that next season, did you guys see a couple extra calves or Yeah? It was pretty immediate. And obviously the lines taking adult animals and subadults, it doesn't matter, um they it was a pretty immediate difference when you got rid of him. So a mountain cariboo waits those two and a half to have a calf, Yeah, and then it'll kick one out every year pretty much yeah, I mean ideally our caribou um have all been in pretty good condition. When when they're captured and um handled, they're in good condition. They're almost always pregnant. So we have you know, it tells you that their nutritional needs are probably being met. So break down the college situation. Calhan, they asked you ask your collar question. You have my permission, so you said before you only have two collars? Out is why? I mean, why only two colors? Is there like a prime ratio between how many collars you would have for your herd size? And as part of that, can you explain what you gain by why, what coloring means and what what you gained by a collar or something? Sure? Um, well there's a you certainly gain a lot of information by coloring the animals. Um. We figure out how they're using the habitat where they're crossing the highway, which is a big deal. Um. And then also you're figuring out sources of mortality. So you put a GPS locator on. Yeah, their GPS colors and they have VHF during the daylight hour. So if we go up in an airplane, we can go fly and find them that way. Um, So we get one point a day um electronically on our computer and then also with the VHF we can find them whenever. Um. So with the collar data, we're figuring out sources of mortality, which is really important. We're also figuring out calving areas, which is nice to know. Um, all this stuff you didn't know before where they were. We had an idea. Um, you know, we know the type of habitat. But when you're down to twelve animals, you start kind of pinpointing like individual animals, right yeah, um, instead of thinking about like that herd that heard, you're like that animal, right right. Um. So the reason we're down we started with six out of I think we had seventeen animals in the herd when we call heared, Um, we're down to two collars. One collar is on an animal but dead and so we don't count that we have. And you shoot it at it, You shoot a dart at it. These are net gunned yet and you jump down. Yeah, and they mug them, caller them. U take whatever samples we need and they just call them loose? So where do you steal from them? When you mug them? They're taking uh, everything we can. We're taking uh, you know, hair samples, genetic samples, a fecal um, getting weight, body weight, and all the normal sort of majors um, and then also fitting them with your tags and collars. UM. So once we have these callers out, we can start figuring out source of mortality. And since two thousand nine, like you said, this sort of precipitous decline that coincides almost perfectly with wolf recovery, so we kind of all had an idea. But um, once we had the you know, the smoking gun so to speak, with the wolves, UM, we were able to move forward with actually a wolf call. And in British Columbia they're using helicopters to kill wolves in the recovery area. So I want to get to that real bad But I'm gonna back up a couple of sticks. How do you know when it died, we get a mortality signal of animals. UM doesn't move for I think it's twenty four hours or maybe twelve hours. So if a caller quits moving, UM it comes through in an email you know, get whatever. Your smartphone goes off and you know that you have a dead animal, and you know, um GPS coordinates and you hike in there. Yeah, yeah, are how far do you? How far? What's the kind of extremes or is it just easy because the helicopters to go find the thing. Once you get the mortality signal, we hike in. Um, we don't have the funding, just just top in a helicopter whenever we want, so we take off and walk in. It hasn't been too bad. Most of We had one that was actually a vehicle strike up on Highway three, so that was pretty easy four yards down the hill. Um. We had a wolf mortality that was a bit of a hike. Um, you know, and sort of that mid to high elevation stuff in the summertime. Um, but a couple of miles. I mean, these things, it's it's pretty good backcountry area. But there's still a lot of roads around, a lot of trails. Um, it's pretty accessible. You get the mortality signal and you always want to go look. Oh yeah, now you're definitely gonna go look. And what do you when you find the animal? What kind of how how obvious is it? Like? What it? Does? It have to be a trained I or can can most anybody walk on and be like, oh I can tell what happened to this thing? Well, I mean it doesn't have to be that my training, I guess, but you shouldn't have an idea what to look for. Can you tell a lion from a wolf? Oh? Yeah, yeah, you would tell a line from wolf. The problem up there is the bear population is so high. Um, they're almost always scavenged um, which is a concern. That's a grizzly bear recovery area also, so you know, you have to kind of go in cautiously. You want to be there's sort of a I don't know the last one we walked in. Um, there was wolves in the area, there's bears in the areas, all this other stuff. So you want to sneak in quietly enough that if there's a wolf eating it, you can kill the wolf. Um. But if there's a bear on it, you want to be making enough noise to spook the thing away and don't get rushed if you, you know, show up ten yards from it all of a sudden. Um. So what are you looking at when you look at the carcass to tell if it was a predation. Well, lion kills are easy. They're generally buried, squirreled away up underneath the tree or something like that. Um, we'll talk it up against the tree and yeah, up against the rock bluff or tree or whatever root wad something like that, and they'll be covered with debris. Um, so what Um, they usually go in behind the frenhhoulder and start starting the lungs and stuff like that. If it's a lactating cow, they'll eat the utter in those areas. But um, you know, it just depends how long it's been there. They're gonna eat it until like it's scavenged. Generally a soft tissue. Yeah. I heard a guy explain that, or his theory on that is that when they get on, they don't know how long they're going to have it before something gets it, and like they generally go for that stuff that you can just gobble down in a hurry, like longs liver, you know, and then work outward from the from the easy stuff. Work, you know, work outward. Right, Yeah, that's probably true. I don't know, I haven't really heard that theory or read anything on it, but makes sense, and it's just a guy making a guess about it. Sure, you know, liver and stuff like that's pretty high nutritional value. Yeah, Um, with twelve animals. Is it insanely hard to net gun these things? Like do they just know the game inside and out? They've got the game pretty well figured out. So we net gun the heard last when it was and I wasn't on the aircraft that day. Um So I was flying a fixed wing and we mark their location and then we call the locate, a helicopter comes in and netguns them. Um it's another reason, you know, he asked about why we put six colors out instead of the whole herd or whatever else. There's um there's a risk when you capture the animals that you'll kill them. Right there's you could experience the capture my operate if you have mug this thing and it just doesn't get back to its feet, and then you have some explaining to do. Um. So we kind of figured we'd heard we'd do about a third of the herd if we could, and we tried to focus on cows because that's where the best dad is going to come from. Why is that, Well, cows are certainly more important to the population. They're the reproducers obviously, so and we're a little I don't know if you can call the herb bowl heavy. Necessarily, when there's like twelve animals, you're not really heavy and anything, you're light. Um. But we have probably a disproportionate number of bowls, so we really needed to know more about the cows. Um, how do you tell I don't mean to keep harping on this, which is of interest to me. How do you tell? Uh, so you know a lion? How do you tell from a bear kill? Or do it? Doll? Bears hit them hard? Bears don't really hit them hard. Um. Bears could be a source of calf mortality, but we don't really know that. You know, if a calf dies, there's no way for us to know unless the cow goes with it. Um. So bears may or may not kill a few of the calves, but as far as a dark adult mortality, they're not really a primary source. Wolf kills are pretty spectacular. Um. The last wolf kill we went into, it was just like a thirty hours old maybe, so we got the more signal. Um. You know, I keep my passport in my work truck and I've headed towards the border as soon as it came in, and so it's probably actually about twenty hours old. It's fairly recent um and a group of what we think maybe five or six wolves had killed this small bowl, and three or four of us went in. Um the animals were gone, and we found the caller with a pretty good scrap of the hide, maybe six ft of the hide, but um, not much meat attach to that from three of the legs and one of the antlers, and skull was all crushed apart of course. Um. But we put I mean I put all of the caribou remains in my backpack and walked out. And this thing was fresh like it didn't it didn't smell bad. It was like it was fresh. So they when wolves kill it, you know, it's they don't leave a lot. And then they're eating the ribs, they're eating most of the bones. Wo man um. And the head's crushed kind of I want to he said, of course, because they're they're Yeah, you said, of course, so they're going after the brain matter and yeahs and yeah, I don't chew on the head. I've left. I've come back to where we've killed elk after grizzlies got on what you what we left, and you'll find some balls of hair and then the back of the skull. Yeah, it's pretty tough back there. Everything like the frame and the area around the hole that your spinal cord goes in. You'll find like a soft ball sized hunk of that or not to eat the entire face off that thing. Yep ye pass bone fragments all over the place, right and you know you find the room and content with the guts are gone, and you find a big one like someone empty out a bag of lawnmowre clippings. They ate the stomach but left the yep. Um, So if we found a you know, a more complete carcass. The one we found that was struck on the highway was fed on by wolves and also had a black bear on it when we showed up. Um, so we're throwing sticks at that thing, trying to scare him away, and so I got hit by a car. Yeah, wolves came, found it, ate some, a bear came, started eating some more. And how much time had passed? Um one day? I mean this is a predator rich environment. So it's like four d yards off the main highway. Um, you know, we found as much scrap as we can. We only found one premortal bite mark, so probably killed by some you know, finished off, I guess so you can analyze the hide and tell what bites that were alive and bites that were not. Sure. Yeah, you know, if there's bruising on bite mark, you generally can kind of guess that it was alive when it was you know, chewed on. Yeah, I heard that because I remember this guy up in Alaska gold miner I think it's a plast or miner found a uh a step bison, I think bison ladder frons he used to call it. I can't remember which one, but like a longhorn bison, and it had been preyed on by an American lion, like a lion species that used to live in the Great Plains and up into Alaska. And they could tell by the this thing was so well preserved in the perma frost. They could tell where it had been bit before it died. Bruising was still hit it on the base of the neck, yeah, because they had like bled there and the rest of the body where the chewed hadn't bled through. So when you can only pack out a six foot chunka hide, you can tell that you can tell that kind of stuff from it. Well, we're looking at it in the field and trying to make a decision out there. But yeah, we're gonna pack it out anyway we get if it's not a colored animal. You know, we found two dead caribou or earlier this month. Um a hiker reported him and one of the tribal biologist from the Kouteney tribe hiked up and gathered those kill those. We have no idea people, No, probably not. Is poaching a big problem with those caribous. It hasn't been in a long time. Most people that hunt up there, no, and their signs and you know, educational materials scattered out in the woods. Um, now, it wasn't poached. It was a really nice bowl, actually a big set antlers still laying up there intact um. But no saying what happened to it? No, no idea. There's two of them near one another, which maybe makes you think there's a predator work in that area, but it's anybody's guess. And then tell me you get the number you had collared at one time. We had six at one time, and there was how many alive at that time? I think they were seventeen and they herd then and so the four that died with have you continuously collared throughout that period, or you just had six and now you have to write, Yeah, we set we put six out at one time, like two years ago. One of those callers has died and three of those cariboo have died, So we have two callers still working for us, and then the three that died won't get hit by a car. One got hit by a car and UM to re wolf mortalities and is the risk just too high at this point with the twelve animal group to try to call her anything else? Um, We've talked about callering some more. UM, we're trying to put together a program. We're trying to come up with a plan to you know, augment the herd and do some other stuff. And we want to do everything kind of at once, so we're not handling his animals more than we have to. I got you. You don't wanna be out her asked them all the time, right, and you know, like you asked. They do get smart about the helicopter when they you know, animals that have been captured by helicopter figure that out pretty quickly. And they're in tough enough country that UM, if they really put their mind to it, they could get away. From helicopter easily. Um. I got a buddy who is a waterfowl researcher, and he did a lot of capture netting for birds, and he was very uh always very free of killing the birds and his count he wasn't getting enough birds, he wasn't getting data on enough birds. And he was telling me how his advisor at the time said, if you're not killing birds, you're not working hard enough. I mean, like get out there and get data. But with this, with the population, the size you're talking about, it's one thing if you're doing mallards right, if you kill you know, eight percent of the population with one bad shot, you've got some explaining. Yeah. I imagine if you guys, if you guys had a mortality would make it would make the news probably, Yeah. Yeah. So is it growing right now or shrinking? It's pretty steady right now. Well, I mean whatever, we were at fifteen a few years ago and we're at twelve now. So, um, we have some documented reproduction this year. We've got some calves on trail camera, so that's good. Um. The only real complete census we gets to during the wintertime, like March will fly and count the animals again. But right now you know that twelve don't stay together, They sprinkle out across the landscape in ones and twos. Yeah, so any real sense this this time of years impossible? What's explained augmentation? How that would work? Well? Hopefully, UM, it'll be, like I said, a soft release. We'll bring some animals in from one of the British Columbia herds that's nearby. Um, hopefully we'll get animals that kind of know how to use that landscape they stay high in the wintertime. Um. If we don't, we I would still want to augument augment. Even if we had animals that maybe didn't know that routine, we'd hope that we could train them. Um. You know this are the people who who the source heard, the people whose jurisdiction at is. Are they open to the idea of you taking of some animals coming from their herds to augment. They're not too excited about it. We've made a formal request. We're working on working out details on that kind of stuff. But herds all across that southern part of the Selkirks are in a decline. That's what I can imagine. So someone's like, just because I got a hunter doesn't mean I feel like I got animals to spare right. Um, that herd has declined, you know, the main herd of whatever we call this a suburb, the main herd has declined pretty significantly. There's efforts going on. Um, there's maternal penning efforts going on in two different places in Canada where they're capturing cows that are pregnant and putting them in a pen and trying to rear them, rear the calves to like three months four months old before they turn them loose, because to give them an enhanced chance that they'll survive, because their highest chance of getting killed is early in life. And um, those wolves cows uh up there, Well, they've done a pretty serious wolf removal in those areas. So where they're turning those animals loose, they've done it's serious wolf removal. And um that has helped. Uh. A lion actually killed like four animals at one time up there, right after the lease. So you look at this weird spike in the data and it's like you got to kind of put an asterisk next to that. That's something that maybe we didn't know we could have avoided, but now we know it's probably not gonna happen again. Do you get involved in the predator control? Uh? Not really. UM, I have hounds if if a if a lion killed a caribou, I would be up there with the dogs. That hasn't happened since we put the callers out, but I would obviously drop what I was doing to get the dogs up there and take care of that. So you're a lion hunter, right, Can I come with you lion hunt? Yeah? You had some of my lion last year in Missoula. That was your lion. Yeah, Nick Clara. When I joined the little contest, I didn't even get a participation award, so I remember that. So when um, so you hunt lions, but you haven't personally gone after the lions that were after the caribou, Well, um like, whose job is that? Nobody has that job necessarily? UM. I work for the outfit orup at Priest Lake um Selkirk Guiding Outfitting as the area that goes all the way to the Canadian border, and we target those animals early in the season, but as the snow gets too deep, it ends up being a thirty mile snowmobile ride just to get to the you know, any good areas. So early in the season we try to take out some animals UM that are in the that are potential caribou predator in the caribou cover recoveryswn right. But that's completely just your own legal over to counter lion hunting have nothing to do with with government sanctioned predator control. Now there's none of that. There has been some you know, there's no female quota up in the Panhandle, there's no UM. You know, anybody can buy a tag over the counter that kind of stuff that you can run hounds in Idaho. You you can't do that in Washington. UM. In British Columbia they've I think they've allowed hound under to take two cats per winter or whatever. But it's just this remote it's about country stuff. It's tough to access UM. You know, in the wintertime, you the cats moved down low, the caribou stay a pie. You could kill a cat that may or may not ever travel to that high country. So you really don't know if you're getting the right cat or not. And is the wolf control in the Let me get this straight first, in the US, so I know that these animals are on the boarder moving back and forth. But in the US portion of the range or in like what we'd call immediately potential range, like a place that could very well maybe next month, might have a care we want it is the US doing in a like in a government way, are they doing predator control? No, to assist cariboo? But Canada is Canada is and what what is the argument against doing it to facilitate the come back a caribou in the US like predator protectionists or what is it? Remember you're dealing with um. Wildlife is managed by the states now, So we have these we have two different jurisdictions. There are actually three if you can't Canada. Right. So you've got North Idaho where wolf finding is liberalized. UM. But it's hard, it's thick, it's steep. Um. There's a couple of trappers up there that are finding some success. But there's no government effort. There's no bounty, there's no anything like that. UM. Washington, the wolves are still a protected species. We can't trap them, we can't hunt them. UM. So those wolves on that side of the border safe. Um. There's no real government UM control effort. There's no like I said, bounties anything else. Idaho has done what it could with um liberalizing the seasons. But yeah, I don't think we're going to see any kind of government effort to kill wolves in the States. It's it's just too contentious of an issue with big groups. Yeah, but you feel that there is a convincing case to make beer, there is a case to make that that would be one of the steps. I'm not saying an advocators that would be one of the steps towards recovering caribou. It's it is a very important step. And it's been interesting, um watching people kind of come around as they learn more about this, the caribou situation. And we've had, you know, conservation groups even not come out with like raving support of the wolf call, but like saying, we've recognize that it has to happen. We don't like it, but to save this species, we know that that's part of the deal. Um. So if we can get groups even to come on with that kind of support, that's fine. Um, we're not asking for their money. We don't expect him to pay for the wolf removal, but they need to recognize that if we're going to save cariboo, it's gonna have to be sort of a predator free zone for a little while. Now, let me ask you a questions will probably make you uncomfortable, maybe not. Let's say God came down from outer space and said, you have ab flute authority. You are the cariboos are okay, and I'm tasking you with recovering cariboun and lower forty eight. If you fail, I will kill every human on Earth. What are the things that you would do? And you have three things? You can do three things? Okay? Well, or everyone on Earth dies. Well, they're they're they're multiprogued. It's like a dream. They're a nightmare there. It's a multi pronged approach. So we would have to supplement the herd. We absolutely have to bring new animals in or we're gonna start seeing genetic drift and issues. Genetically, it's where you get this small isolated population. They basically become so inbred that their productivity falls. So we would start saying that we have to bring animals in. And if I could just snap my fingers and like get animals, I'd get all of them. And the complications there are you want to draw animals who are coming from a similar habitat type and know how to utilize the environment. However, all of those animals are coming from herds that themselves are in questionable condition, right, that's right? Um, so I guess if I could, let's let's get rid of your situation and just make a more perfect situation, like if I had unlimited money and like support from and everyone doesn't have to die. That's right, I've got got on my side. But but nobody has to die in this Okay. So yeah, you're just like you have like unlimited you have unlimited fund right, So in a perfect world, um, we could get our hands on a handful of cariboo from all of these groups for a couple of years, how many you know, if we put I think if we put probably ten a year for a few years out there. Oh, did you say that you're essentially willing to borrow them? We would we would be willing to borrow them once we recover. If we could get if we could make that herd into a source population, that would be fantastic. Obviously that's going to be down the road a little ways. But we were, like I said, we were on a pretty strong upward trajectory. We were going from you know, twenty six animals to forty six animals in the course of you know, half a decade or something. So we were doing really well. Kentucky can sucky. You look at their elk population. They got elk from other states and now they will lead source heard for eastern elk population. And look at isn't the same case with the now Nevak muskox. Yeah, but that's kind of confused because that's yeah, but yes, yes, right, so we've experimental population turn lois and and it later becomes a source for for re stocking. Or we've got yeah, we've got big horn cheap and the same area as the as the caribou that are a source population and have been for years. Um so you can so you can borrow. Just letting everybody know he can borrow the animals and give them back later. Yeah, it's a high interest loan, we get that. But um so if we take these animals, we could then do our maternal pen We'd capture some of our resident animals, um let them cav with the and you know, let all the cows have together all of our augmentation animals are our resident animals, and give them three or four months in the pen to sort of commingle no one another whatever and kick him loose. And um, recognizing that the augmentation animals are going to have probably higher mortality. Um, but we'd have collars on all of them. Once you're handling them, you may as well put a collar higher mortalities that they don't know the ins and out. Yeah, yeah, you're just gonna have that. And that's we recognize that's probably going to be part of the deal. But um, even if you had you know, se mortality, that'd be fantastic survival, that'd be fantastic. Um. So if we could do that for several years, we could get this trajectory back. And you know, like I said, the habitat protections are in place. If we continued with the wolf control, and you know, I don't know if we need to ramp up the cougar control or anything else. Bears aren't really a big problem, but um, you know, keep kind of doing what we're doing. We just need animals, all right. Do you remember do you remember long ago when they we're trying to really they're trying to recover the Florida panther. Okay, and there was a period time when people thought the Florida panther was gone and some lion hunter down No, a guy down there kept saying, no, there's some still here. This is interesting story. H a guy down there and says, no, there's still some around. People like, oh, bullshit, they're all gone. He goes and find some lion hunter from Arizona, has him come out to Florida and they start pounding lions and people are like, jeez stop. He goes, just stop telling me there's none here, because here's a pile of dead ones. You know later. Um, they wanted to recover, and they tried all this kind of stuff, and there was a lot of and some people came up with this idea like, okay, what is the Florida panther? Like, sure, we're gonna lose the Florida panther, but let's try to least save the idea of panthers in Florida. And what they wanted to do was let's just go get some from the Rocky Mountains. It's like it's the same species. They they are like there their offspringers sexually viable, right right. But some you are so fixated on saving the Florida panther that they were willing to let panthers in Florida go away. If they couldn't save like that population, why not go get a whole shipload of him from Alaska and just cross your fingers, like you're down to fifteen twelve embarrassing, it's embarrassing you're down to twelve. Like, how let's say five years from now, you're out. Not just I'm not just saying like you with like it's your fault, but five years from now, people involved in this effort are still going. Please, how about a few carib you over here? Like what is the argument being, Like, Okay, let's do Plan B. It's not as good, but it's viable that we could go get two hundred of the things. Well, like I said, I don't know if we can train other you know, like if we could go back to whatever, Newfoundland or someplace and get a bunch of mountain Cariboo that kind of know the steep landscape that aren't huge migrators. I mean that would be the big problem. Right, you drop a bunch of these and they're just gonna split, They're gonna cruise someplace. Um, so then your money's gone. Yeah, your money's gone to carry who who knows what right down an idole and you've burned a ton of like social capital to right you just like you played your hand. Yeah, yeah, So you want to try to do something that's gonna work. Um, I mean I knew there was a good answer for it, but it's just something that you know, Yeah, that's a that's a tough one. Um. If we got animals, like I said, there are other Mountain Cariboo that that dropped to lower elevation in the winter, there's a possible possibility that we could sort of change that behavior. But that's that's a pretty strong instinct for some of them. Like I said, we're just going to experience mortality if we do that, and people just need to recognize that, Like if we get mortality, that's still fift percent survival. That's something that's you know, additive to the herd. So it really seems like the best thing to do is try to get some of these ones from a bit north, right, we should go and get some of those ones we know about. Cal got a horse trailer. I like, like, I'm down horse trailer a biology. Yeah, they used to be do you remember never mind it's such a weird digression. Um, okay, what else? You still have powers? Ultimate power? That's it. It's a short list. Yeah, I don't We don't need magic. We just need some animals. Said, with habitat protections are pretty much in place, I would do a highway like a wildlife overpass on Highway three because animals like they flip with that highway all the time. There's actually I've got a fantastic photo somebody emailed me of an awesome bowl caribou and two cows and a calf and they're standing on the shoulder of the road. They're lick. They still use salt on the highway. I would change that. Yeah. So they're down there looking and there's the cariboo warning sign and in the background like there's a semi bearing down on him. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is just a fantastic photo. Shows all these problems. Um. So yeah, if we had a wild life wild life over I know you mentioned over I was reading the piece about overpasses and underpasses, and when I've done the underpasses, they found a correlation between animals willingness to use it. Uh with the steepness of the walls. They found that when walls got to a certain pitch and they couldn't see, they did not want to go through that thing. The ones where they pitched the walls out enough where he didn't feel like he was going beneath a ledge, there were more willing to use it, and they preferred overpasses to underpasses. Really interesting visibility. It's a tough sell to be like, hey man, go into this here box canyon right, especially for it on the genetic side of things, UM, like, what do you think you're timeline is with your You got twelve incredibly valuable careby right now twelve? Like, what's your time frame? When are you like, we need new genetics in this herd by this time or you know else, everybody's going to be the slow cousin. We I don't think anybody's really Um came up with a definite timeline that way. Obviously, we're trying to just stop the bleeding from this herd, right like genetics or because it was sixty one, it was forty six, maybe up to fifty, I can't remember for sure. In two thousand nine, Um, when did you come on? I started working on the Cariboo project don't half a decade ago, five years or so. Yeah, so you've seen a lot of this playout. Yeah, yeah, from the basic wolf recovery onward. It seemed like the bad years. So you wouldn't in this and playing god. You want more animals and he wasn't playing God's giving him the power. Sorry sorry, extension of um, but you have uh, you have more credits. You have trying to fix some of like to have that fragmentation which is that highway right doing an overpass, but not any kind of predator control. No, I would still have predator control going. Yeah, those are the kind of those are the three big ones you know that would be aggressive like it's going on up in British Columbia. Yeah, it would be you know, targeted wolf removal. We're not we're not anti wolf, and I don't want to come off that way. Um. We don't mind having wolves on landscape, that's just part of the deal. Um, we don't. We don't want them cohabitating with the cariboo right now because there's population for sure right now, if we had we had a thousand caribou, it wouldn't make any difference if a one got picked off every once in a while. This is pretty incidental. You know, obviously wolves aren't making a living on the Cariboo, they wouldn't last long. Um, but any incidental take when you have just a handful of animals is pretty critical. So yeah, we would can tenue with the predator control. Um hm, what percent chances it that they'll all die? I don't know, likely or not likely? Um, well, at least you know from thecaun once there's four, they're done, right, I mean, there's a point at which they're done. There's a point and I don't think anybody wants to think about that. I don't know what that number would be. Um, the Couspell tribe, you know that, my boss. We're not gonna quit working on the Caribou until they're gone all the way. But it won't. And if they're gone though, right, because then you can still there's still a recovery area, there's still all of such stuff. But um, I mean, if we can't get animals dogment the population when there's animals there, imagine imagine trying to put those political strings and get it'd be impossible. Are you married? I am? Okay? You come home and you're like I don't know what the point is. There's uh my, I feel like I went I have the wrong career. Why do I bother? And your wife wants to cheer you up? She says, well, I've been. Stacy's super supportive of the cariboo stuff. She cares about the cariboo. And why why does anybody care about the cariboo? Well, I think because it's the right thing to do. Yeah, I mean I was listening to a thing where, uh, Donald Trump was talking about how they should they there's no reason to let water out of the Sacramento River because it's just a stupid three inch fish, and he was kind of ridiculing the fish, the delta smelt. He's like teasing the delta smelt. I imagine a lot of people who kind of tease the cariboo. Right there's a petition right now to get them delisted, like it's the most imperiled species in the lower forty eight And there's a petition in front of the US Fish and Wildlife Service to take them off of the dangered Species list and remove the recovery area. Um motivated by that's by the snowmobile closure. You know they've closed winter recreate up there, um in a big portion of north Idaho and northeast Washington and Canada and um, those groups are upset and they whatever, maybe they have something of a point that cariboo haven't been in some of that area for a long time. There's maybe an opportunity to have that talk with them. But you know, to pull the animal off the list and remove the recovery areas ridiculous. Yeah, so it's not the most to animal. They just want to remove the recovery area right, recovery restrictions. Sure, and there are people that you know, they see the cost of what this stuff, you know, is gonna and in total, I hate to even guess what it might cost to recover cariboo. Like in your perfect world, I have unlimited but funding. Right, But why do people not even know about the cariboo? I mean that's only a right. Yeah, I don't know, or you know, I don't know, but you know, they're having so much crazy emphasis on the last big reintroduction success story and protecting that big success story to crazy extent. Like, but here's this twelve animal her grizzlies in Montana, and people act like they know them all by name and like if they're gonna deal delist grizzlies in the Greater Yelstone ecosystem everything, But what if Old Snaggle scar Face gets killed? What happens? Then people don't even know here? You got where you could actually know all their names, and people don't know or care that they're there. How do they not make the charismatic megafonal list? You? Yeah, you just took the words out of my mouth. They're not charismatic enough. I don't know they're They don't pay the bills right. There are no conservation groups getting on board with Cariboo recovery because you're not gonna get, um, some crazy cat lady in New York City to send you forty bucks to save the Cariboo. She doesn't care about the save someone with closet teeth she will absolutely care about um. So people maybe they just don't relate to care. But I don't know. Have you spent much have you got to spend much time up in the areas open good Cariboo country? Yeah? Just amazing, It's fantastic, it's beautiful. You know, we've hunted up there where be there for a few days and every day hundreds come through. Yeah, you can never not see them. I haven't spent time in that Cariboo country. I've also hiked my ass off trying to find one. But I'm saying I did have the experience of like whatever he dreams about, right, and they're just like coming and coming and coming and coming coming. Then you wake up the next day and they're coming and coming coming. It's not even hunting. It's like you sort of event should be like, Okay, we should probably go get one. I guess it's just like it's like observation. The places that these Cariboo live are fantastic. In this helkirks, dude, there's you know, there's links, there's wolverine, there's fishers, um. You know, this whole suite of rare and cool species um that a lot of people don't really realize we have up there. It's pretty fantastic country. Really well. I look at things, I always trying to like draw to make definitions, you know, or try to struggle to find um ways to qualify stuff. And one way, when I think of wilderness right a way to define it, and it's a very difficult term to deal with. But I always think a barometer of wilderness would be that the species are intact, right that, like, all the pieces are there. I realized that's tricky because that means you're kind of that definition is bad, not bad, but that definition isn't great because you're sort of ruling out the possibility of wilderness in the eastern US, right. And that's the same degree, you know with the delisting the group that wants to or whatever. If cariboo, let's say cariboo did go away, the recovery area would exist still, um okay, it would take an effort to get that recovery area removed because you know that's still potentially caribou habitat um. So people don't really recognize that. Um you know with the wilderness thing. Yeah, I'm sort of represented to say that the species have to be there, but certainly, like you said, the pieces have to be there. The the the habitat to meet the life needs of that species should be there. What was the last legally killed cariboo by a hunter in the US? I feel like it's in the twenties, wasn't it. No, it was later than that. I want to think it was like ninety nine or something, but I could be wrong, Like I legally killed one. Do you know where it was? I don't remember reading the thing about it. I can't remember what it was. I know that there was a couple of poached and maybe the nineties even pretty late, poached by dudes who wanted the heads or poached by dudes were piste off about caribou and piste off about Endangered Species Act issues. Well, we don't know. Um, we wouldn't we were, We wouldn't know either of those cases, right because somebody that's piste off about the cariboo is probably not going to poach one and then go down and turn it in. These were mistaken identities. These are people that killed a cariboo and thought it was something else and they self reported or whatever. Dude, people shoot llamas thinking their elk to hang that up, and he was a Native Montana. I remember going to a fishing game check station and seeing the thing they had the thing up says, this is a lama, this is this is an elk, This is a llama. This is the dolly lava. What I thought was funny about that. Okay, he makes the mistake, right, he makes mistakes, which is bad. I mean, you shouldn't do that. Anyways, but then he brings it to the check station like his an actual cow elk packed it out, probably got it in. One question I have for you is that like hunters have been you know this this they've been part of this great restoration across the country, right and so, um, you know, white tailed deer, elk, antelope, turkeys, they've all come back because of hunters. And so you have this caribou population, which it would take. It sounds like a long long time before would ever have a hunting population of cariba. You you probably remove that from your life goals. Cariboan. It's a species. We've done it before. Like I just I guess that question is so like when you talk about like the snow billers, they don't like like them because of the area got show on. I get that piece, But why aren't hunters more engaged in trying to like establish this population And is that part of the whole conversation that you guys are having. Um, well, I don't know that it's really part of the conversation. It's certainly frustrating though, Um there's such a cool species in there. Whatever. You know, you talk about what hunters want different things, and some hunters want cariboo back because it's the right thing to do, and they recognize they're probably never gonna get the opportunity to hunt one. Um. But you know, they're they're antler to body size ratio is like the highest in the deer family. They have huge antlers for their body size. They're very you know, they're cool animal of heavier horns than the barren ground animals. They're they're beautiful animal. It would be fantastic to hunt one someday, or for our grandkids to hunt one someday. Um. I'm sort of surprised the hunting community hasn't jumped on board more. Um. There was a group the in the Northwest Wildlife Council was a big partner in the original augmentation and they had people helping and they put up money and stuff like that. So that's kind of the last sort of hunting group that coughed anything up. Did they walk away because it just wasn't working the way they wanted? Um, No, they walked it. They walked away because the project was over and it was working, he said, and they the cariboo were coming back. That's what people. You know, this hasn't been like the slow decline. This has happened quickly, and we have a pretty good idea why we're not. Yeah, I'm guilty. This is coming from a guy who's guilty of not having not done diddly squat towards helping Cariboan you know, in lower forty eight. Like, I haven't done anything. I'm just learning about it right now. Um. But I do think that people I should care about this kind of thing and be involved in it, because I don't think it's right to have animals vanish from the face of the earth because of things as we've screwed up. And I don't care if you need to draw the inspiration to adhere by that from religion or just as a humanist or wherever it comes from. It's just like it just seems to me categorically wrong. Two two eliminate species from Earth, you know, Yeah, I totally agree. It's like just a sin um in all things. It's like whether you feel that we have been given domain or the earth, or whether we just happen to need to feel that way, you know what, we got it from a celestial being or not. Uh, we just can't let things go, let things vanish. I think The reason that kind of falls under hunters per view is because hunters have done recovery of all of big game animals, and it's like, just because I think we have to take responsibility for big game animals, even if they're not going to be our game, you know. And uh, I think that the guys who first got involved in recovering big horn sheep, we're not We're hardly motivated by the idea of somebody, I'm gonna get to hunt one. I met a lot of guys who worked down the Kentucky Elk reintroduction who have given their entire volunteer lives and what are the odds of them ever drawn a tank? They'll never do it. The guys who know most about those animals and work hardest on behalf of those animals never hunt them. You know. It's not always it's not always about like what can I hunt one? You know this people don't look at it that way. Um, they're sort of a it's a weird thing, and it's this intrinsic reward or whatever that we get from the recovery effort. But it's the same feeling probably that the cat lady in New York gets sent in forty bucks to save a wolf. Right, She's probably never gonna see a wolf, she's never gonna hear a wolf howl, but it means something to her that they're there, So yeah, I likely to similar kind of thing I argue in favor quite often lately of of delisting grizzlies in the Greater Elstone ecosystem, and people are often like, oh, yeah, because you want to hunt with's like one, I don't. It would take me a long time to explain what I why I don't. But I don't. I will never if I could put it in for a tag, right, I want to put it for It's just I'm not interested in that population in that way. Um. Two, if I did want to, I would have probably, you know, somewhere well less than point to five or a quarter of a percent or so odds of ever drawing the tag, particularly as a non resident. It's gonna be a lottery draw. If they do do a hunt, they're gonna be giving out a handful of tags. They're gonna have hundreds of thousands of applicants. You're not gonna do it, but people can't help. But just make that jump that like you must be in this for something some dark motivation. It would be a good a way to prove them wrong for hunters to get involved in this and look at a it's a depleted game species. It's not like putting turkeys on the ground where in five years you're gonna be hunting for the things. It's just you're not. But we should almost I feel like hunters should, especially people who live around that area, get involved in the same way that we've always gotten involved in recovering wildlife. It's just a long, slow process. Yeah, maybe some time in two hundred years or a hundred years it's gonna be hunting season form. Who knows. I tend to doubt it. Well, right right now, there's a group and it's pretty much all agency folks putting together a plan. But um, you know, when there's a decision made, there will be an opportunity for people to step forward. And we've talked about actually I've volunteered backgount trainers and anglers. Is um working on the maternal pen. If we ever have a this maternal pen, it's gonna be rad It's gonna be way up in the mountains. It's gonna be like you know, ten acre pen with a wall tent in a cabin that we have to maintain throughout the whole winter, and it's gonna be probably a volunteer effort. So I mean, there are going to be opportunities for people to step to the plate um Right now, there's not unless you want to go you know, cougar hunting in north Idaho or northeast Washington, or go wolf funding or something like that. You can you know, play that kind of role. But um, there's not a lot of things for people to do right now. You know. No, hopefully people you know, it gets to be more of a mainstream conversation and people recognize that the carib are still there and there are people trying to do things and support them whatever when the time comes through, you know, sending letters of support and different things like that. But yeah, so you need like you need some agency to say, okay, here are some animals. If they do that, do you get the money? We would find the money there, We would we would find the money. What would be a price per animal that would not be surprising, that would be not surprising how cheap or how expensive it was. Um, it doesn't work that way, you know, I don't even know I have. Like I said, saving this species is more important to me, probably than the budget would be. I would or could it potentially be actually like Okay, we'll sell them to you or is it not work that way. I don't know. I don't know if it works that way because we're not. If we're not, yeah, we're not getting these from the United States. This is coming from British Columbia. UM. British Columbia is a strong partner for us. They want the herd to exist UM for a number of reasons. One, it's their southernmost heard, it's the only herd that extends into the United States. And if they want the United States to remain a strong partner, UM, they need to keep this herd around. And we are a strong partner in both the tribes are strong partners in the States and everything else. So UM can't I'm not I'm not trying to like paint Canada in a negative light. They want the herd to be there, UM, but they have there's a cost to them to move those animals down with potential failure, and there's also a potential reward. That's what we're trying to sell them. So does does the decision rest like some individuals desk ors a more complex than that. I hope it's more complex than that. I'm not really sure. I don't I don't know who's making that decision at there. It's a high level in Canada. You know. It's not some field biologists that's gonna go do this. It's it's high level y interesting stuff. Any thoughts on all that, can you just real quick explain, just because I'm still like lost and like very early on Caribou Land. There's we've got mountain that we've been talking about. We've got the baring ground, which is pretty much all of Alaska. Are the ones on the Kenai of those mountain or bearing ground? I don't know. I don't know either. But what are the other car mountain bear care? Then there's the labrador or there's one they call that. Then you have reindeer in Eurasia, right, but in North America we just it's all but it's it's they all have the same the same Lenaean name down to the third word. Right. I think they can reproduce too, Yeah? Um, I think no, they can. Yeah, reindeer and cariboo. That was one of the deals, right, So there's like five or there's I think there's five kinds woodland, mountain, barren, ground lea hybridor and then there's another one. Yeah, so we're dealing with range for trandous um, woodland, mountain, cariboo, whatever. It's sort of you can use either name to describe the South. Selkirk's we go by mountain cariboo because I don't know why we just do. But if somebody called them a wood and cariboo, I probably wouldn't jump up and correct them. Um, they're definitely different than the stuff we have in Alaska in the Northwest territories. Up. When I saw those ones that I saw and we were hunting bears and we ran into some, it was like, you're looking at you're very different. Yeah, now you look at me like, that's not the kind I know about badass looking things though. Yeah, they're cool. They're you know, heavier, thick, obviously thick for big giant feet for snow shoeing, heavier antler you know, their antlers don't do the wobble when they j hug. Yeah, that was cool. G Any more things you want to say? Honest, I like that red T shirt? Uh got any concluding thoughts. You gotta talk the whole time, but you still have a concluding thought that has It can be anything that has nothing to do with us. No, No, it's just great. I like, I like, um, you know, hopefully more people just become aware that we have those caribou. Like I said, I'm not what's this? This isn't an ask, This isn't like, you know, broadcasting out trying to get people to send checks or anything, but just letting people know that they're still around and when the time comes, they might become an ask and send a letter of sport, do whatever. Yeah, I would ask that they take some of the energy they're spending towards saving recovered things and put it into things that are absolutely not recovered. Oh yeah, because you talked to really about social capital. We are burning a tremendous amount of social and political capital by arguing over things that, by any scientific definition I recovered and ignoring things that are on the are an absolute peril because of a print of mine. Point out, no one has calendars anymore because of instagram worthiness. It drives me nuts, Kay Collars. I keep thinking about two things. There's this old movie called The Rare breed. Did you ever see that? I'd like rare breed, Jimmy Stewart, it's about getting Herford cattle out here out in Texas. Supposed to be like to start a Herford cattle. But they know, man, this is giant ranch in Texas with these wild ass long horns that are just you know, free ranging it out there. And then they go round up these things every year and and that's how they run those that beef operation. Well, they the only way this rancher is gonna give this Herford ball is shot at cole mingling out there, is to just do it like everybody else. Just turn them loose on the range and wish him good luck and we'll see you in the spring. And that was supposedly like the start of the Herford thing. I keep thinking about that, like okay, hard release, here we go. But the other part of this is the like public knowledge just kills me, like it would it be more beneficial to destroy part of this caribou range by building like a spur road off a highway three, so you could take bus loads of tourists in there and be like, look, caribou only twelve left, all twelve, and people be like, holy ship, I need to get involved, right. Well, certain if we had a maternal pen, we'd have some opportunity to you know, let people peek through the fence or whatever, or going and feed him or whatever. You know, we'd be looking for volunteers together liking. That's gonna be a huge job. I mentioned trying to get enough moss to feed ten caribou for a winner. Yeah, that might create awareness and generate suppressed. Get some school kids out there collecting moss, certainly locally, which is important. They eat the moss, they love it. Oh yeah. I knew a gal that worked at the Large Animal Research Station there in Fairbanks, and she was working on the cariboo and she did that. They went up to the north slope and collected with like a group of twenty people just filled up like they forget they were recycled, not launched like grain sacks, or maybe just stuffed them full of liking. And she said, I think for most of the they didn't get it every day. And she said, when that sack would come out though, I mean, because the pen's pretty big, but those sockers are just running. But you know the stuff you saw out like the grows up on the trees. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, don't They weren't collecting that, But do they that one that looks kind of seaweedy too, you know, the green stuff nasty looking, looks almost like something you'd find under the water, right like that. Yeah, they'll hit that. Um what is this? I've always wanted what that species is? Man Like, I don't know. I used to get hiking into the hot springs and you always, like, see so much of that stuff. I should look that up. You know, if you cut a tree down though, the deer now they eat that stuff out of the tops of trees. My buddy used to be a surveyor in Michigan's Up Peninsula and uh, he says, you'd be out there cutting the line through all that bottland. You know, you know, I'm just the sound of the chainsaw, she said. You'd cut your lines to everything up. You had to hurry up to shoot the lines because deer would come toward the chainsaw sound and you couldn't even look down to your thing, Like when you're shooting the lines, you can look dow anything, be all deer. You have to run down, scaring all the deer away, and then try to shoot the line real quick because they just know the chainsaw noise really yeah, they yeah, they know someone's knocking down cedars or whatever. They were just yeah, it's like a siren song. Man, it's like deer the sound of a deer feeder motor in Texas chainsaw on Northern Chainsaw, northernn You know, you're talking about the last of the breed, the rare breed. Uh My brother was worked at works at this research facility where they were doing, um they're they're working on a project or we're working on a project where they're trying to breed wagu and limousine cattle. So limousine the carcass attribute would be like it's this huge animal, okay, but very lean, and wagu is a small, squat animal with very high fat content. So they're trying to do the thing you breathe the two and make a giant high fat content like to make waygu, which is where you get cold baby beef, to get wagu from a large animal. And uh they would every year, the people that are working on this project would do these uh t bone tests where they're being a laugh. They all these little grill tables set up and they grill t bones to a certain temperature on a electric grill and then do a thing called a Warner Bruntler shear force test where they just punched three holes in the t bone and see how tender it is and just discard him. And you'd go to my brother's house when they were doing that, and his was like bars of gold stacked up in his fridge. Man, he just bring all those brea T bones home with whole every So whenever you open one up and I have like three holes in it, drop an egg and punches about a quarter inch hole. Man do it. He always called him his t bone testers. It was like an annual feed, you think, like the way grizzlies a hammer elt gut piles in the fall. It was like his, like it was like his time of year man when they were doing the Warrener Bruntler shear force test on way Goo beef Land. Concluding thoughts, I'm with Kyle, like I I just this is such a cool thing that's out there. And I think, you know, getting have Bart on this podcast and letting people know that there's actual caribout in the lower forty A is a pretty awesome thing. And I think more people know about it than where they're gonna want to do something about it when we have the opportunity. So, um, I think that's just I mean when I think about all the species have been recovered in the United States and how like, you know, I haven't been able to be a part of much of that, right, Like, this is still something like this and bison are still something we can do, which is pretty uncol They get a lot of attention. I mean, I wrote a whole damn book about him, and I think and and that's and that's it's you know, it's that's a much longer public conversation about that recovery. But with this population as small as it is, as unique it is, and it's only a localized area in the Lower forty, if they can even live, like that's pretty cool. Yeah, I think that's cool. The last thing I would say is that one of the things that makes b H a and even though that we are a small organization, is we have badasses that are members and badasses that are in our leadership. And Bart hopefully uh not hopefully, but did get that. Across the days he spends a ton of time out in the woods, um and and so he knows the place really well, he knows what it needs, and so, um, that's who we are as an organization. I think that's pretty Uncle. Here's my concluding thought. It's it's two part three part one. I agree with you too. I'm just getting old enough for I'm just starting to get like, I just don't always have a lot of faith in people, curmudgeon. I'm growing up. There's a friend of mine who told me, a Vietnam veteran, he said, Stevie, people never change. They say they're gonna, but they never change. And I just some things I'm like, as much as I'd like to say, I just it's just hard for me to picture. Uh. I hope I'm wrong. It's just it just haired for me to picture, um, a situation this die or is I wasn't that aware of till the day. I mean, I knew a little bit about it. It's just hard for me to picture that. Uh. Turning it around, what kind of person would you want to change? I don't understand what you mean. That it would be that it would be something that all of a sudden it would like get momentum. But how did it get this band and still no one knows about it. At what point did someone go, hey, these dodos are getting mighty thin. Do you know what I mean? Was it one? If there's one caribou, would people come with like you know, would NPR go out and do a story? Twelve is not good enough for you? That's what I'm saying. It's like that people are gonna also be like, damn, we need to fix this problem. It's like if if that's gonna happen, it seems like it's gonna have to happen pretty quick. That's frustrating the polar bears, or if it was wolves or grizzly bears or something like charismatic Like you said earlier, you need to hire now you people need to hire whatever PR agency it is, or maybe there isn't one, but someone's to start one that can sell the American public on um loving a critter. They did it very effectively with wolves, it was done very effectively with grizzly bears, very effectively with fur seals, which are the farthest thing from endangered. They need to go and be like, let's take some of that attention away and put it in a couple of places where it really is needed right now? Talk to people at cours. I look at my refrigerator. I'm like, okay, twelve beers. Dude, a beer can with a beer can with a mountain cariboo on it. Mountains already there, they're blue cariboos. Come on, Pete, step up if you're listening. Was that part one of my things I had? Part Part wolves I agree with land? Part two is I'm like, come on, yeah, how did I not like, like I like try to stay hip to this stuff? I didn't know, So I'm a little bit mad at myself. Part three this lion hunting we were talking about. Um, I am pretty I've I've chased a couple of lines down and dry ground out of the snow. Um, I'd be real eager to go out and look around chase lion tracks in the snow with you. Come on over. What's your What time of year you like to hit it? December fifteenth? We start in Idaho. How long is it wrong? Um? We can kill cats until about Valentine's Day mid February, and then we chase until March one, and then we go to Montana until April fift usually. But well, part uh, what part of the state you're hunting. You're the hunting the Panhandle Panhandle yep, yea up north and you're hunting lins that are mostly eating white tails, mostly white tails, um, some elk killers also elk fat and line. Yeah, yeah, the big ones. You know, they get big when they start eating elk that right, Well, yeah, it's so much food. They don't have to hunt us hard. They can stay put and just sit around and eat and get big. But yeah, it's good. A lot of the lions in that in kind of the Caribou potential area though, well, we, like I said earlier in the season, we try to target those lions up in the Cariboo Recovery area and then you just get snowed out and it just gets too hard to get up there. Um, you know, you're talking about eight ten ft snow up there, and the lions find little pockets the habitat that they can live in. They don't they don't travel much. It's hard to cut tracks because it's just kind of hold up somewhere. But early in the season we catched a lot of big Tom's coming out of that high country. They kind of migrate seasonally. Yeah, they move around, you know, not all of them. But what's a big time? Um, you know, a hundred and fifty pound cat is a big cat. Anything over that is really a nice one. Everybody talks about hundred sent five pound two hundred found lions. Saw a new biologist in Oregon, and throughout his career he'd worked up three hundreds. I can remember three hundred sixties some lions. That's a side like, I don't care how hard you hunt lions. It's hard to get to handle three hundred sixty of them. Okay. Because he ran the predator program in Oregon, he worked up three hundred sixties some and wait them okay, works him up like scientific scales. I think the biggest one he had was one six four. Yeah, lions, and that's hundreds like bears. You know, it's people get exaggerated weights. Um, you never run into somebody who's like, I saw a lion, little female, big old time come around the corner. Everyone, So you're good with lions, dude, Not only did you know it was big, you could you gender that in the dark, big old time quota up there though. She can take any cat. Yeah, we you know, we don't really pick on the females too, much. Um, just because we're guiding up there. We don't want to put ourselves out of business, so um, we try to take Tom's Uh. There are hunters that kill females out of there though. Do you guys treat females or pull the dogs off when it's a female. If there's young, we'll pull the dogs, but we treat them. Um, it's good for the dogs. We we you know, we maybe kill the cats that we treat. We have a lot of clients that that just like to go out and take pictures and do that kind of stuff. And a lot of hunters, you know, I want to come out and just see a cat or hunt for a week, and we might treat three or four before they find one that they want. It's probably good for the females that you treat them because it wises them up. Sure, it wise them up. Um, they're less likely climate tree when they hear a dog bark and probably want to keep running. I don't know. I don't know about that. I think they might be more likely. I think they might well if you let them go. Oh yeah, no, I got you. So maybe it doesn't wise them more. Like the thing to do is climate tree, right, well, maybe just get up a tree and we're gonna get your picture taken and i'm gonna get her asked for a little bit by the dogs. But yeah, you're right, you're right. It doesn't wise them up. That's a good point, all right, me your podcast, Thanks tuning in.

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