00:00:02 Speaker 1: Hey you everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective. I'm Ben O'Brien, and today we are continuing our conversation with conservationist, author and speaker Shane Mahoney. Now, if you haven't listened to the first part of this UH two part conversation, go back to last week's episode and listen to it. If you need the crypt notes from that, I'll give them to you here real quick. Shane and I basically talked about the creation of the North American Wildlife Model, and we talked about his part in it, and one of the main characters in that story is Dr Valerius Geist, a mentor of Shane's who came up with and codified the idea. Shane took the idea around five years later on what he calls a road show around two different state agencies different conferences to start speaking about the model. As he spoke about the model, and it became UH an exciting principle set of principles for wildlife and wildlife managers. It started to grow when it was officially articulated in two thousand one and and has since become part of our hunting and Fishing conversation We also started going over what are the seven core principles of the model that are articulated by Geiston, later promoted by Mahoney. We got through three of them. There are seven of them. They're all intertwined, they all worked together, but they are listed out in seven statements. The first three statements we discussed were the first one is wildlife as a public trust resource. Number two is the elimination of game markets. Number three is allocation of wildlife by law. And where you're gonna start this conversation, we'll be talking about the fourth tenant of the North American model of wildlife conservation. Wild life should only be killed for a legitimate purpose. Of course, this one is a little bit controversial, so it's good to start with this one. In this episode we will cover the rest of the tenants and the principles of the model and go back and look at some of its criticisms in some of the ways it will go forward. So hopefully this helps you um as crib notes from the last conversation, But please listen to both um and explore with us this model and its importance. Enjoy because you break down this model, I think these first three you're kind of like, yeah, pretty much it. I would have I always would have been like we could stop here, simplifies it. But you guys kept going, and I think once you get to the end, you start to start to realize kind of why the next one is wildlife should only be killed for a legitimate purpose. Um. And again this starts to to get into um, fair chase and different things like that. So take take us through this particular idea well again, you know, uh, and we have to realize too that as those discussions and debates were going on, I mean, we didn't have all of the institutions and infrastructures for dialogue that we have today. We couldn't go to you know, a huge number of academics that were were knowledgeable in this particular domain. We didn't have any who were. It didn't exist, The programs didn't even exist. So it was really left to a group of well intentioned, relentless citizens and the people who were as open minded and most thinking about the country in Congress, you know, to to really bring forward these these rules and these laws legitimate legitimate purpose. You know, hearkened back to the idea of no frivolous killing. For example, Um, you know, so it embedded certain principles of fair chase and all of that. You didn't just uselessly kill an animal and leave it to waste and so on and so forth. Um. And it also got at the purpose this excluded, of course, market hunting. That was not a legitimate purpose any longer. Right, it is more of a like a policy of it just exclusivity, it is. It's more or less inclusive, like you can bait and come over here, but it's more like, this is what we don't this is what we don't want, this is what we don't want. And ultimately what the legitimate purpose was, of course was for food and defensive property. Uh, and defense of personal safety obviously, so if you were attacked by a mountain lion or you know, those things were obviously viewed. Now, one of the great uh, you know, hairs in the soup with regard to the model that keeps getting raised is of course uh. And we had to deal with this in the book, but I've had to deal with it in many debates, was the fur trade. While these principles were would ideally have applied to all wildlife, it is clear that this particular one legitimate purpo has not always been as easy to corral and define. The fur trade was never really captured within any of the more restrictive aspects of the model, because you could kill an animal, you did not necessarily eat the animal. It wasn't in defense of property or life or anything of this nature. And then of course you you did it for commercial reasons, you sold the pelt right. And many people critics of the model have pointed this out, and it is an accurate statement to make. The reason why in my this is my view because it was never articulated by Geist and never articulated in the writings of the model. But but it's a reality, and my explanation of it is this. The fur trade, first of all, was something of very very long standing historical activity that, by virtue of its longevity with the Native Americans initially, and then by the fur trade in the fur trappers, the Hudson Bay Company in the Northwest companies and so on and so forth in both countries, clearly was sustainable. There was no real indication that, with the exception of a few species such as beaver that became a craze for beaver hats in Europe, uh there were relatively few other classic examples of where wildlife continentally was being denuded as a result of the trapping. Trapping also had a this difference from rifle shooting, which of course was the main way in which animals were being taken, rifles of all kinds, punt guns all the way to you know, car beans and so on. These these um uh, these um instruments were deadly effective. You could sit on a knoll and kill eighty bison, you know, at once. But when you had to set individual traps in rivers or along runways or things of this nature, there was a natural, if you will break, there was a natural restriction on overkill because there was only the methodology itself mistake. So I think it was for those reasons, and the fact of course that people still were relying heavily on furs in many cases, particularly indigenous people such as Innuit and so on and so forth, for basic necessity, that I think, Uh, it wasn't that the fur trade, I believe was considered and deliberately accepted. I just don't think that the fur trade ever came in under the frenzied review that was taking place, because it was about the bison that was about the water, follows about the deer, you know, that kind of thing. And as a result of that, rightfully, so people can say this basic principle of of legitimate take did not apply directly to the fur trade, and that remains to this case to this very day. So is it is it is accepted? Yes? Was it deliberately accepted? No? Was there reasons why it might have been accepted? I think so? And there they are. What's also interesting, however, about this sort of you know, this whole idea of of commercial use and legitimate take, where that has also fallen down. And again it is for reasons that one can discover and perhaps understand, depending on one's position. Has to do with reptiles and amphibians. Now, we all know that it is quite common to go into pet stores and buy a small lizard or a small frog or something of this nature, or to capture yourself in the wild and bring it home and create a little home for it or a cage and keep that animal. Under those circumstances, when you think about it, there is just absolutely no way that anyone will be able to go and purchas a caribou and have them in their backyard and have them as their pet or right. People don't think about this, right, but I think about it. Uh, and uh I think it now. But you see what I mean, it's completely different and in today's world and with our broadened view of the importance of all of nature and how the pieces work together. Uh, we are confronted by this difference. We referenced this in the book too. I have an article that I wrote that deals with this issue in the book. We are confronted by this difference, and we must accept that the model principles may in the main be correct and good and maybe totally beyond reproach in a sense. Uh, it doesn't mean that there aren't other issues occurring in North American conservation that we shouldn't look at. I don't necessarily really accept the argument of that as a failure of the model so much as I say, we can look to the model to improve that circumstance as well. Sure, sure, yeah, I think this is a huge part. I think as we get going through these tenants, I mean, it's kind of a cascading effect of they're almost less universal with each step down. And you have to remember that when these principles were first articulated by by Valerious Geist. I was three years old, there was yeah, and there was no way to find them. Yeah. Right, So this architecture that he drew out of the history is pretty remarkable when you think about it, when you're starting from nothing. This is Yes, I think there's you know, the way that they are intertwined, in the way that they play against each other, in the way that they kind of the question the questions are raised by number four are answered by number two, and so masterful in the way that those are integrated and not And there's no way that ideas this broader, this complicated could go without challenge. I mean, that's just I'm sure you've over the years been challenged on many of these ideas, but I think this one is where it gets the harriest. I mean legitimate purposes, you know, a very interesting idea of exactly what do you include inside of that legitimate purpose bubble? And I think we yeah, you know, in my experience in the hunting community, we uh, we shift that around all the time. We move it around all the time. Um. I can think of Farrell Hawgs being an example of one way that we've shifted it about you know, we've said, we've kind of uh, we've declared them to be an issue a while, what's they are? But when you transfer that to the hunting community, it's like the gloves are off. Now this is there's depredation involved here. The gloves are off. We can kill him anyway we want because the legitimate purpose is there. So now we can shoot him with grenade launchers or whatever, you know, whatever we want. So then that goes back to fair chase, and you start to get tangled in this fairly messy ethical conundrum, um, with the killing of an animal. Well, and from the opposite side of you, if someone is philosophically opposed to hunting, they have every right, of course and and would be expected to question that adjective legitimate. You know, I don't think legitimacy includes, for example, hunting, or I don't think that legitimacy includes this kind of hunting or whatever it might be. Um. In other words, um, and this is playing out of course in the debates because it's not necessarily framed as Okay, I'm now referring to principle for the North American model, But this whole debate that is ongoing in society about what kinds of hunting people support. So meat hunting is way up there, sort yeah, when we get down the sport and trophy and so on and so forth, and all of a sudden, the the value proposition changes and people are less and less and less supportive. So but again, as a principle, to say that wildlife must be taken can only be taken for legitimate purpose, that is an incredible principle to have. It's an infallible beginning, Like it's invalible place to begin. Imagine didn't right, it could be taking for any purpose. Imagine just said, ah, fuck it, yeah, number five. All this so it's too complicated, but it does go down to I think maybe where it begins or ends. I don't know where, whether this book, where this book ends. To me, it's kind of like, what is the animals value? Is it value for its own sake or is it valuable for the sake of us? Right? So I think that's I think that's where a lot of folks are challenging. You know, I've been challenged recently by some vegans and some folks about that, like, is an animal valuable for your sake or for its in its own individu dsual you know, being and cannot be both? Can it be both? Yes? Can it be both? And in this case it is both. It is at the same time, which I think is where a lot of people get. You get a little bit confused. You you still run into that a good bit. I mean you're oh yeah, I mean you know people, you know I I speak to audiences that include a lot of people who don't hunt. And I also have spoken to audiences and have colleagues who are you know, quite you know, quite purposefully and quite seriously opposed to the hunting of wildlife. And um, you know, my worldview has never made it difficult for difficult for me to understand them, and as a consequence, it has never made it difficult for me to discuss with them. Um. And you know, we only have about four and a half percent of people in this country who hunt. So there's a lot of people who may not be unsupportive, but are certainly not doing in it. And they're not doing it for reasons. They may not be doing it. In some cases it maybe all these impediments we talk about, you know, the difficulty, the cost, the access, But that's not what's stopping a lot of people from hunting. Even the people who are not opposed to it, they don't want to do it. And a big part of the reason why they don't want to do it is they don't want to take the life of a living animal. They and they're not all, you know, silly people who don't know where meat comes from, or any of those kinds of silly. And I would challenge anyone listening to this the people that don't you're silly. Then most of people in your life are silly well, of course, and the last vast majority of the nation is silly, you know. So, I mean, I think that this question of whether the animal has value in and of itself and or value to us, my answer to that question is, of course has both. And it has both value in and of itself because it has beauty, because it has inspiration, because it has life, because it is capable of reproduction. I mean, I can go through a long list of why I think it has value in and of itself. Um, but I can also come up with a long list of things that's why it has value to me, and many of those values are not embedded with its death. It has values to me is something that inspires me, that enriches my life, that I want to look at and examine and talk about and wonder about um. And yes, there are points at which it can be a part of the very food chain that I am involved in as an omnivore and often is. But that doesn't mean that that last one that I mentioned. The actual food value is necessarily on the scale of things so important that all those other values are minimal by any means. You know, as I was telling combody in a long conversation two nights ago, we got talking about this idea and relationships with animals, which is something of course, which has been a profound part of my thinking in life forever. You know. We just think about your pets, and I think in particular about cats. Dogs we known a little bit more predictable fashion because we train them essentially to be and and bred them to be essentially, and theotonized their puppies forever. I mean, that's what we did in the breeding of the wolf. We created the puppy forever. In the domestic dog. That's not normal, but it's a beautiful thing. But our cats are different. Our cats are basically kind of you know, largely indifferent to us. Um. And yet as I was explaining, you know, you sit in a room in your home, you like the fire in the fireplace, and you sit down in an evening, and um, we have two cats and and Butler, and inevitably one of us is going to say, where's Butler, where's Anna? And of course if you don't find them right away, or they don't come into the room, then you go looking for them. You know, you find them in the closet, you find them on the you know, wherever they're sleeping and on a radiator or whatever they're doing. And then you're kind of satisfied you go back again. It's like I told a group of people at a table the other night, no one ever asks where Shane if I'm not in the room. You know, we we live with these animals for fourteen, fifteen, twenty years. Every time they come into a room, we have to look at them. We watched them get up on a table. We watched them groom themselves. They don't look at us. They just go come into the room and they choose their spot and they get up and they rest there. We watched them constantly whatever they're doing, and even when we're having a conversation, we're over looking at you know, the animal with his paw over the table, you know, relaxing in the firelights and so on. I mean, they just write so that value in wild things. And it's like I said at the at the bear uh discussion, the group discussion of the grizzly bear last night, some of them have even greater power to enthrall. You can be on the land in a boreal or subarctic system, and in this landscape here and see elk, and see mule ear, and see eagles or ospreys flying, and see jay's and you know, you might see grouse, but see a grizzly bear and something different happens. See a black bear, even something different happens. But see a grizzly bear, something different happens. So those animals have these kinds of elevators of fascination and elevators of relevance to So, yes, they do have values in and of themselves. Absolutely they do. And they do have values for human beings at many levels, one of the most basic and profound of which, of course is as a source of food. Yeah, and I think as we get down into these ten it's UM. Some of them, this one in particular, UM is more purposeful. Well, I guess maybe not that more valuable for the questions that it raises than than possibly like it's prescription. It's you know, it's it's tangible prescription, right, I mean, it's more like we were saying before, it's more valuable for that reason, I think, UM, because it raises this very important question that we can continue to refine as as time goes on, as the basis of the model, and it's a living thing, the model. It's never meant I was gonna say. And I feel like some of the criticism that I've read in the past is like, well, it doesn't address this, Well, okay, how can one model address hundreds of years and generations of complex issues? It can't it, But at some level it exists to raise a very important question. Allow us to hammer away at it. I mean, it has to and and people need to understand. Which is the value of my translating this history because out of side a side of myself and Velgeist, no one knows this history. I uve you, no one, Yeah, I I know that, UM. And that makes a difference because when he when he first articulated it, and when we first scrutinized it, to think about it. It was not done to say this is the BNN and all and you can't touch anything here. It was said in in in defense of our system that was being threatened seriously by something which we now know is seriously threatened and has seriously threatened it so longer conjectural that he had to throw up and show that there was something real, and he did an amazing job. Now, some of the criticisms therefore sort of for some reason sense that this is it and it can't be discussed and it can't be challenged. That was never ever the thought. And secondly, he used the word principles to describe these things. Now, he could have chosen many words, and I don't know if he went through hours of angst over what word to use, but he chose principles. Many of the things that people say are not in there, Like, for example, people have often said to me, there's nothing in there about the funding. That's a principle. No, not, in my opinion, that is a mechanism. Oh there's nothing in there about habitat. Well, that's not really a principle. That is a mechanism that you know, I mean, we don't have something in there about population either. So in some cases people too don't look at these things. I guess in the way that I did when I first met them, and in the way that geist has meant them. We wanted these things to be kind of like ideals really, you know, like you know, and you can debate them and you can touch them. But in the main we're probably mostly going to fall back into agreement. We don't want commercial use of while we do want public ownership, you know those you want them to be a legitimate take. We just do we we can. You can beat me up all day one about what faith or whether should run dogs or whether you should you know. That's that's the beauty of what fair chase. That opens up right, It's kind of like we want fair chase. Let's then go to another area and discuss that, like we don't. We're not going to discuss that in this context, whether we want it, whether we do want we do want it, but whether whether how it takes shape exactly um is going to all I would say always be an odds as we change as humans, and some people have said to in criticisms I remember this very well from a particularly aggressive individual in more audience. One time he just was relentless. He wouldn't let go, you know, was that, you know, these these ideas didn't have like a pile of sub bullets that you know, spelled out everything. And I said, it's exactly why. I mean, no, that was deliberately not done, because first of all, that's meant to be a societal I lock um. And secondly, nobody can really write it down and and do justice to it without this broader discussion of what's taking place, right just not that's huge. And I think this, you know, as we go through this one every time I come to him like this is the one, you know, being kind of in the middle. Um. The next one is wildlife is considered an international resource. Pheel like, we can go that pretty quickly. But give us a rundown of that. Well, it's interesting some people, uh you know, a recent criticism of the of the model, which I and a group of authors responded to, actually had a comment that, well, I could agree with this if the words some was in there, you know, I mean right so here it is here it is. We could do it if you said maybe, yeah, so anyway. I mean, the point was, obviously and what was being most thought about here were the big migratories species of marine mammals, and the big migratory species on land, of course were fundamentally the waterfowl and the shorebirds. And of course we could hunt certain shorebirds like snipe and you know, carlos and other things, and so it was these species posed a particular challenge because often their breeding season or their breeding location was not in the country, right, and yet where they were hunted was in the country. And it was very clear that you couldn't simply have a blind eye to where they were breeding and a close eye on them just being killed or vice versa. You had to be watching both ends of this spectrum where they fed in the winter, where they bred, and so on. And so the waterfowl really became and the migratory, the couradu reforms as we call them, the shorebirds, they really drove you know, this kind of principle. But of course it also helped interject the idea of transboundary species. You know, animals living in northern Montana can cross over into the Canadian side and vice versa, for example. But it was fundamentally about those really migratory groups, and that principle, almost more than any other, launched the most remarkable cooperative efforts and did so between nations Canada and the United States with the Migratory Gainberg Convention and Treaty and then the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, a hundred years before virtually any other part of the world ever thought about doing this, which is now being picked up in Europe and in Europe and African migrations and so on more in Europe, given the proximity of these small countries. Absolutely, but this was done and has led to of course an extraordinary system of science and management and funding, and a funding mechanism, by the way, which is also almost unbelievable, which sees significant amounts of American dollars raised by Americans hunters and sportsmen fundamentally sent north to Canada to be used for the protection, management and improvement of the breeding sites for these species up there. And we still have this unbroken continuous engagement of Canadian and American scientists and policy makers and managements involved in this for this huge array of species that fly along different flyways, different main corridors, which it took decades and decades to to discover that are managed independently by species by fly away in both countries. It is probably it is unquestionably one of the most remarkable efforts in wildlife conservation that the world has ever seen. And it comes out of this idea, this principle that guys mentions that while life is an international resource, and the birds that may nest in our country become the ones that feed you know, in another and vice versa. It could be just said wildlife knows no boundaries. Yeah, they don't know your political, geopolitical, but by saying it's an international resource, it meant we had to take an active role. Yes, it wasn't just a statement of the reality. Does this this go to I cringe to ever bring these kinds of things up. Does this go to, you know, we build a wall around the southern border in this country. That does fly in the face of this consummation principle, or this principle in general. There's no question that building a wall of any kind, such as being is contemplated, will impact the movement of trans boundary and transnational species. In this particular case, when we're dealing with the wall with Mexico, so there's no question about that. Most of the species affected, of course, will be Um. It won't affect bird life, of course because for previous reasons. But it's ctainly will affect all those things that are terrestrial. And what the scale of that is and how many species are involved, and what the ecological implications are for them, I'm not sure, but there are experts, I'm sure who know it very well. But there can be no doubt that any time that we impair the natural movements of wildlife populations, we often discover that there were very good reasons why those movements were made, and that the sustainability and viability of the populations, once interrupted is often re creating some reactions we weren't anticipated. They're unintentional, of course. Yeah, um, all right, I think that's a good one to just We talk here a lot about the health of flyways, and and we don't even as we talk about the health of fly we don't even consider this type of idea. We believe it's a flyway, and you know, ducks passed. Ducks and geese and other other foul pass from Canada and the United States, and in this flyway, we don't ever consider that they've crossed this international boundary or subject could could possibly be without this idea, subject too different to completely different laws and regulations. I mean, just imagine the absolute chaos that would have occurred if that was the case. Yeah. No, it's something you know, if you're a major well, I know guys that chase the migration. They start in Saskatchewan and go all the way down through um, Missouri and go all the way to Texas, and they don't even you know, it's not thought of in that way I think a lot of times. But this is an important one to kind of bring that home to people that if this this international resource isn't an idea. Uh, there's a lot of species we we truly care a lot about that would be you know, um under under different types of scrutinies in different places. It's there's another really interesting thing um about this that's kind of a just kind of a cute or interesting story. You know those flyways. Of course, now we have such amazing technologies with GPS colors and you know, we can figure out one of bird poops you know, and when it pecks and you know, so um, but those flyways were essentially delineated and accurately so as more advanced technologies had proven by the use of these bands. Yeah, everyone is familiar with these little metal bands that you would put on birds. Yeah, And it's it's incredible to think that you could take a simple technology like that and over time, with massive efforts, you know, to to just band as many birds as you could from different places and then ask hunters, you know, please send your band back to you know, sides and side uh. And then people could take all of those and over time determine where those birds were moving based on where they were banded when they were breeding versus where they were harvested or vice versa, where they were banded on their wintering grounds and where they were harvested. I mean, it's always seemed to me you look at the size of this continent and the number of birds that are moving, and yet we figured those things out and there are flyways like it's not like it's just everywhere, right uh. And that was discovered by the people who launched that incredibly simple thing and then just asked hunters and others if they found it dead, doctor Goose, please send this back, you know to what Washington d C. Office of such and such, And of course there's all the funny stories that I've seen them myself, like some waterfowl hunters would gather them up, they wear them on. The next is I mean you'd go into some Newfoundland houses and you know, up on the kitchen window there. I mean, if you should have banded bird that is. I mean there's whole waterfowl brands that are just banded this and banded that, jewelry this trough that, and it's interesting that it all came from that. But I think that just goes back to our curiosity. Yeah, I think it's driven by curiosity if I had to guess and are willingness to try to, um, you know, solve incredible problems with limited resources. Yeah, you know, and that's a great case of doing it around their legs. And can you imagine the first time Yeah, first time that was thought up in a in a boardroom, told that gentleman or lady that some guys be wearing it around their neck. That would never happen. Um. Here's another one that I read some papers that was recently challenged. Not the idea, but the the way that's being carried out is science is the proper tool for discharge of wildlife policy. I think this one in terms of the defense of this model to someone who doesn't hunt or who would challenge it, I think this one probably is the one that comes up the most often in my mind. Yeah. I think the principle here, of course, is that you cannot simply rely on anecdotal evidence and personal opinion as the best way to move forward. Not because personal opinion and experiential local knowledge may not be good, but simply because wildlife being such vigile creatures by that mean, they move so much, and they travel under such circumstances where they are hard to scrutinize, and we often for years and decades didn't know where breeding locations were or wintering locations were, and so on. And because the resource was going to be continued to be utilized, that there had to be an independent, not just a knowledge base science, remember, an independent way of bringing information to bear on the conservation of wildlife. A lot of the criticism that you that are focuses on this principle. It seems to me, really, if you peel the layers of the onion back, it's because people have a reluctance about science itself. Or feel it's not accurate, or feel it doesn't agree with what their own experiences have been, or things of this nature. But the principle that you would have an objective body of information to apply that would override the potential for other information to influence decisions that might be motivated by personal desire or political interest or whatever. That's really what was being talked about here. I think the more legitimate problem for this principle, but in fairness, is only one that has really come to the fore of discussion and conservation policy in the last three or four decades and is rising a great deal more is the recognition that we need to have more than what we call classic, orthodox Western kind of science. In other words, I don't think too many people would disagree that we need science, but there are many people, including myself, who would argue that what we need is science as well as local knowledge as well as experiential knowledge. In other words, there's many different kinds of knowledges that need to be integrated, none of which should be the exclusive arbiter of decision. Made you feel like science would be the culmination of those things, or just one of the one of the features, because you know I think it's probably important here to define science like how it relates here, and to me, it's this population studies like population dynamics, health of habitats um another thing. I mean, there are other things. I'm sure I'm missing there, But you know, how would you define science within within this context? Well, I mean, I think what's really important for people who are non scientists to understand about science and what it's really important for science scientists to express much more closely and not forget themselves. And this came up in our discussions last night over the Grizzly Bear. Science is not um. Science is not simply you know, a different or better kind of knowledge. Science is a way of seeing the world. Science is a way of formulating information that can that is essentially objective. It is it is tested within itself by metrics and statistics and so on and so forth, and those outcomes become what make it believable or not believable or somewhat believable. Science is also something that you have as a replicatble, a replicable kind of knowledge base. That Okay, if I say to Ben Ben, I believe there are a thousand black ducks nesting in that particular area, and I know that because I looked at them through this way. I did these transacts, or I did photo surveys or whatever. This is exactly how I did it. Ben should be able to take those approaches, and he should be able to independently of me, with no knowledge of me at all. I could be fishing for sail fishing Florida while he's doing this. Uh, he should be able to come up with essentially something very very close. So what has happened is, of course that over time science, initially as natural history, which was a big thing in this country at the time the North American Model's ideas were founded. Everybody was getting really interested in that gradually got you know, changed and modified and refined, perhaps or rigorized into what we know as the scientific approaches of today that we use. I mean, they have provided and any frmous amount of information that extends across regions and distances that no human being living in a local circumstance could ever hope to know. Having said that, we also over time have seen a number of glaring circumstances where science, classic science as we are talking about here, and classic scientific information has proven itself to be wrong, inaccurate, and that the policies based upon it were therefore in error. And more more importantly and more relevantly to our discussion, there have also been examples where not only has that happened, that science has been inaccurate and it has failed, etcetera, etcetera, but at the same time, experiential knowledge was being offered by knowledgeable people that was ignored that proved to be accurate. The one of the best known cases in the world, and what I am intimately familiar with, is the collapse of the massive aggregation of fish known as the Northern cod off the east and northeast coast of the island of Newfoundland, which was fished for five centuries by virtually every nation in the world that had sea going fisheries fleets, and which eventually collapsed in nine and which despite any active fishing, is now still only at a less than five percent of its of its original biomass um In that particular circumstance, the small boat inshore fishermen had for decades warned with deep conviction and extraordinary frustration, that the science that was being provided through research, vessel surveys and catch efforts from the commercial fleets for whatever reason was wrong. They knew it was wrong. They had generations of experience of catching these fish, the sizes of fish, the amount of fish they would catch, the influence of weather and tied and so on and so forth. In the graveyards of their homes were buried their grandfathers and their fathers and their great grandfathers, and they're great great failds and they're great great great grandfathers, etcetera. And they had all of this knowledge. And ultimately what happened even after the last scientific assesspect of the stocks said there could still be a commercial fishery. Essentially, the commercial fleets were called back by the owners of the companies because they could not pay for the very gas that it was taking to mobilize these ships out to to hunt these fish down. And so that too is a reason why we should be cautious about the principle. So I would say that, really, what would be, you know, a more awesome articulation of that is that knowledge scholarship and classic science, should you know, the best of it should be applied to the decision. Yeah, yeah, I was reading. I had to pull this paper up. I was reading it. Uh, it's the hallmarks of science missing from North American wildlife management. It was a study done UM by the American Association of the Evansful Science, and they were challenging a little bit of this UM obviously by the title, and they did some surveys to to look at UM, state game agencies and federal agencies to see exactly how they were doing it. And they said, they said, UM, their framework had four fundamental hallmarks of science, right, measurable objectives, evidence, transparency, and independent review UM. And this study it seems like it might have had a predetermined outcome, but nonetheless they found it to be less than you know, less than acceptable what was actually going on on the ground as as as far as applied science and wildlife management. UM, how do you feel about that? I mean, you know, it's got to be true at some levels because of the varying I mean, you know, the varying agencies and the varying places that this is happening. There's no way that we've perfected it. It means impossible. We did respond to that paper, a group of us. We we we wrote a written response and the authors wrote a written response back to us, which is the normal kind of process. Um. First of all, Um, and somewhat to your point, if you really want to examine the full role and influence that science has had on the conservation of North American wildlife, you're going to have to do a lot more than examine the kinds of records that these people did, that these authors did know just the number of graduate students, masters and PhD students. Yeah, just referred that they said they tested those things and hunt management plans created by sixty two U S state and Canadian provincial territory as across six D sixty seven management systems, so that we're talking about, you know, expressed plans. Yeah. So, so just let me finish the first thought. Um, there is this massive escalation of science which has been borne out of a dedication to making conservation the most professional and the most um, the most objective as it can possibly be measured under not only the growth of those graduate students, but the institutions of learning and the multiplication of programs and plans for the U S Geological Survey, Cooperative Wildlife research units and academics working at hundreds and hundreds of universities across Canada the United States. UM, we have seen the application of science in brilliant format in things such as the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, and in aspects dealing with many many other recovery of wildlife species such as eagles and various other species that at one time were listed and recovered, in dealing with catastrophic events that emerge that we did not predict, such as the d DT crisis and the loss of species. So there have been many large scale phenomenon that are lost in this particular review, this specific issue dealing with hunted species and the use of science in the development of management plans and their application. Certainly, it is true and will always remain true in my view that you will never be able to have up to date current ongoing science, which they do not define. But let's assume that means population surveys. Let's assume that means radio coloring, efforts to tract home ranges and range use and so on, habitat inventories in terms of its quality and its abundance, and so on and so forth. There was not enough money in the universe to be able to do this on an ongoing basis. For every single species that's hunted in every single circumstance. However, that does not mean that science is not being used. It may be a five year old survey which is the best they have of that kind, but the agency supports that information by examining current license sales or success rates or something of this nature. So it would be an ideal and wonderful world where for every species that's ever hunted in every province and in every state that you know, we had this total, in depth prescription. But I would also say that while it is not possible, perhaps even though desirable, if it could be done, the hunted species on this continent have for a hundred years come through a pattern of deep loss to one of recovery, escalation and continued sustainable use for a hundred years in most cases. Of all the things we've said in this at almost two hours, that is the thing anybody's listening to take away. That take that away, and and any challenge just not that anything any of these things are infallible, but that is infallible, that idea that you just put out, Yes, this is true. I mean the species that are on the endangered species listing in the main, in the vast majority of cases, our species that are not actually targeted by you know, millions of people who hunt and who fish in this country. It's just the opposite. But those species that are hunted and fished were and would have been on an Endangered Species Act if we'd had one, And yet they were rescued in fact, out of that abyss to the point where we have you know, four to six million wild turkey when we only had a couple of hundred thousand, to where we have you know, thirty million white tailed deer. Right, you know, that doesn't mean we don't have now approaching some real challenges. Caribou in particular are in deep trouble, and we have on the southern distribution of their range amazing problems developing for moose that may well be linked to climate change and tick infestations and warming temperatures and so on and so forth. But so it's not free and it's not separate. But I think that the I think that it is possible in something as big as North American conservation for hunted and non hunted species, my goodness, the numbers of them, and to go into any states, provinces or countries and find that we're lacking what we might want look at the amount of money it takes to closely monitor the greater Yellowstone ecosystem grizzly bear population just one species, and imagine and ask yourself where would the money come from if we were trying to do or needed to do or could do that with every species. Yeah, we wouldn't know. These animals are valued with us, but they're not that valuable. I mean, they are of importance, but not not to that level. And this argument, by the way, you know, it's relatives of this argument that was positive by the authors there does show up in other debates and some of the listing and delisting of grizzly bearris is again relevant of course, because in many cases that were there were questions of science that lead to a real listing of species and so on, like there might have been inadequate science and genetic connectivity or you know, recovery of satellite populations or whatever. Right, So this this notion crea in and it's important for society to realize that, um, you know, we cannot always await effective solutions, um until we get the perfect knowledge base. We had no perfect knowledge base. We virtually had no knowledge base at all, except we had a disastrous loss. That's about our only database we had at the turn of the twentieth century. But we launched a recovery for those wildlife species that is absolutely phenomenal. So you know, sometimes we can do good things even when our knowledge is imperfect if we have the right motivations and clear thinking. Yeah, do you feel like the last point around this, I'd like to coverage do you feel like our ability to And it's a huge point to say that we have the we have the innate ability to recover and sustain populations that we value in a sense that we like to kill them and eat them, or you know, we value for that reason. Right to go back to the value system like that we have. It's an ability to to take care of animals that we have value for rather than they're just their value on its own. And I feel like the beauty of all this is that, you know, the moose, for example, has value to a lot of people that don't hunt it, but it has increased value to people that do, and those are the people that take I feel like the most handsled approach with keeping them around and keeping them sustainable. Um, But I think the question here is how do we how does this and I'm not sure if this has ever been I'm sure this has been challenged, but I've never read it. Um, the like the non consumptive species, how do they play into into this? And I know I know your opinion this because we've talked about it, But can you just articulate, you know, how you feel about, um, the songbird or the not you know, just any particular non consumptive species, if that's the right term to use, how that that falls into this whole process us and how we've done and including it in it. Well, I think there's, um, there's probably two, as I view it, two major legitimate weaknesses in the North American model as it has been articulated and described and as we're discussing it today. Um. With regard to the principles that have been articulated, I think it's more a matter of discussing particular aspects or the stretch, you know that the resilience and expansiveness that they have, and how we should apply them, and but their value in their own sense. In other words, all of those principles should have been there. But there are two that I think are more fundamental and I and I know why this really we're not articulated at the time, because again the model's initial construct was in reaction to the circumstance we covered earlier in the podcast. But it is impossible to talk about I think, principles and hopes and visions for North American conservation and have such an overwhelming emphasis on hunted species, which, as we talked about with regard to owning reptiles or amphibians, freights with at certain real differences that play out. Um. I think you know, we have all come to recognize that concern for the natural world to be effective, must see it as all those moving parts. And as Leopold said, um, you know, the the first lesson in tinkering is you you keep all the parts right. You know that they all matter, the tiny washer, the tiny nut, the little screw, the spring. And uh. I think that we need to do a much better job of speaking for those species than we have. And I have extolled the hunting community for twenty five years to do this, not so much in the light of it being a weakness of the model, but just because I happen to personally believe that this is right and correct, and that because the hunting movement was so well organized and relatively well funded and has so many NGOs and raises so much money that we were in a position to do far more for the rest of nature than we did. And I also thought that it was of a practical nature that, you know, some of the criticisms we got for being so biased in our our efforts and our focus was entirely legitimate and would eventually be part of the thing that would undermine hunting in Canada in the United States. And I remain convinced to this day that, along with our marriage with television, that the failure of the hunting community to speak out about any creature except those that are hunted has created a subtle, lasting, very difficult to expunge impression in the broad conscience of society, and it is going to take us along time to address this. One of the things I have recommended for decades to hunting based NGOs is that there a lot a significant percentage of or budgets to non hunted species conservation efforts. I suggest it could be ten, it could be thirty. You know, I think the more important issue is not the number of The more important issue is a deliberate decision to do it. I don't know why they won't do it, but I know none of them will. Um. And imagine you could just file the money there, couldn't you? You could, but they but I know that. I mean, I'm close enough to most of them to know at least the ones I've asked for haven't done it. Um. And that doesn't mean no one is doing it, of course, but even if they are, it's very small scale. Yeah, it's it's almost no. I mean, I've never found any evidence of it other than like, oh, well, when we do the turkey habitat, it's good for the like you weren't doing it. That wasn't the purpose of action. So that's and and some of the species, like even if people wanted to think about this strategically to invest money, for example, in sea turtle rescue, to invest money in efforts to safeguard mountain gorillas or chimpanzees, um, dolphins, what I mean, penguins. You know, there are some really high profile, iconic species that children in particular love, and if you just wanted to even be smart about your own future, you might want to think about doing this. But they don't get that. They really don't get that. Believe me. Man, they don't get that, and that is a source of enormous frustration to me. And um, so it's in line with that kind of weakness in the model. I think, yes, we did a great job with the hunted species. There is no question, the evidence is there. But we have hundreds of species Encounada in the United States that are listed as threatened and endangered. We even allowed iconic species like the osprey and like the peregrine and like the bald eagle. I mean we sat by and watched this. What hunting organization ever raised its head in these And if they're really going to pat ourselves in the back over and over and over again for the things we have done, like what about the things we will do or could do that in this case? And I think this is where I'm coming through. I will predict that if the hunting community does not soon begin to do a number of really significant things, one of which is this, I think we're going to be shocked by the future declines in this activity. And we have already We're going down fast. We had almost forty million hunters in this country in We've got twelve million today. The next survey will show we've got about ten maybe eleven. However, so that's one of the bios one of the things that I think is vacant from the model that I think is a serious issue. The other one that I feel really strongly about and which is something that preoccupies me a great deal. I also, you know, spent a lot of time in this literature, and as a matter of fact, even with me on this trip, I've just finished an other book, keep saying I won't read any more of them. But it has to do with Native Americans. Um at the broadest scale, we know the injustices that took place, and we need not be labored here. But the truth of the matter was that there was a North American model of sustainable use and conservation to some extent, ongoing in on this continent by a huge diversity of people's who had capacities and knowledge of the natural world that I would suggest far surpasses probably that of almost anyone living today, and they actively shape the continent. They were not passive engagers in it. In other words, it wasn't as though they didn't have management interventions prescribed fire being about amongst the most important that they used on a traditional basis in various parts of the country. They strongly influenced the dynamic of species, both good and bad. They may have played a major role initially in the decline of the megafauna on this continent. They were responsible in many ways through habitat manipulation and through hunting in terms of, you know, the local abundances of certain species, as we know from the Lewis and Clark journals and so on and so forth, how effective the native communities, the native people's communities could be in that regard. They had created enormous you know, appreciation for those resources and looked upon them as things they constantly needed to give thanks for through their dances and their tribal feasts and so on and so forth. Um, they had, in other words, and an intimate connection with nature that transcended not just the hunting and of species for food and other materials, but their ideas of you know, medicinal plants, how essentially to live off the land under extraordinary circumstances. And I have always felt that, um, you know, we needed to not so much say that the model as we are using it today it was borrowed from, or influenced by and all of that, because probably it was not, but much of our early knowledge of how to capture these animals, how to kill these animals, how to hunt these animals, where they were, how they distributed them themselves, and so on, were actually learned by frontier movers from those indigenous and those native peoples. And it seems to me that to talk about a North American model of wildlife conservation and to have a total silence on, you know, the fourteen or fifteen and maybe longer thousand year history of people's who were here and lived with, depended upon and utilized and managed and did not destroy, but sustainably utilized for that period, that longer period of time, the living resources of the continent. That does seem to me to be something that we need to address. I don't mean as a principle of the model or anything of necessarily at least to inform but as a context and as an informant those I think are the really larger issues. Yeah, I mean, if we would take this, I mean, how far would you take this model back as far as how it is informed, I mean to the eighteen sixties is as far as you might go back. I mean, you can go further than that. I mean, could you call it, you know, two hundred years would be stretching it, you know, I mean, so I think you're right about that. I mean, I think the real you know, some of the some of the thinking started to emerge in the early part of the nineteenth century, but of course, like most other things, a lot was set back with the Civil War in the country and even those kinds of thought patterns. I mean, after all, Catlin, the famous ethnographer of Native Americans and you know, painter and so on. I mean, he had recommended in the eighteen thirties that America designate what he called a Nation's Park, not a national nation, Nations Park, that's what he called it, which would be set aside in the American Central Plains in west where there were no European settlers anyway at that time. Uh, for the benefit of nature and for the Red Men, for the Native Americans that were there. So there, you know, this thinking was going on, um and you know, you leap fifty years, forty years ahead of that, and you know, you come to all of a sudden there's a Yellowstone idea, and then ten years after that there's a Boon and crocod idea and so and so. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, if if you're if you're gonna look at roughly, you know, if you're being kind here two hundred years of our history, why would you not look at the preceding fifteen hundred uh and and and again. And from the time when these people's crossed the land bridge to the time that we found them, you would say that they're the wildlife was from every report I've ever read, I'm sure you're the saying wildlife was plentiful in all kinds. Yeah, there were some exceptions where you had high densities of native people's in the local environments, as you know always happens. And it's not to say, oh, they were the perfect conservationists, you know, that's kind of neo Colonius attitude, you know, you know, revisionist colonials that No, it's not to say that, but I say one of the things that people will find in the new book is an amazing opening chapter led by Dr Geist and myself and Paul Craftsman, where he really examines the ecological history of the continent since the arrival of humans, not since the arrival of Europeans. There's probably not another three men on the continent who could have written that. Um. And so there is that and in the in the closing chapter and in the chapter on challenges, both of which I either co wrote, wrote or wrote. Um. This issue is also addressed, as is the issue of the invertebrates, the non game species. But this will be the first time I am aware of that in a significant publication, you know, a book Johns Hopkins Press, I mean, a highly respected academic publisher. This will be the first time that these ideas will really be brought to fruition. Um. It's a good you know, unless actually it's a want to miss a tenant here principle. The last principle was democracy of hunting. And take us through that quickly. I think we've discussed it already a lot in a lot of ways. So very briefly, the idea was that wildlife belongs to everyone, number one, and therefore access to it in any form should be by democratic right. In other ways, no one should be excluded because of race, class, financial circumstance, gender, you know, religion, whatever. And when it came to hunting, of course, this was given a prominence. Uh. And it's rightfully. So I think that in this articulation of the principles guys articulation, that hunting is mentioned because, as we talked about just earlier, the decision could have been to end all hunting because it was animal death that was causing the decimation of the animal populations. But the genius was to actually make hunting, the taking of the animal, the incentivized basis for the recovery of species, and that eventually became the NGOs and the agencies and so on. You know, without that activity, we wouldn't agencies wouldn't look like they do today and so forth, obviously, and there'd be a lot of institutions that we would not require. Some might say that would be a good thing, but let's leave that there for the moment um. And so the other factor here, of course, was that hunting in certain parts of Europe, not all parts of Europe, but certain parts of Europe was very much a class oriented and exclusionary and in some cases exclusive privilege. And America would have none of that, And of course that's why it was very clearly articulated that if you were a citizen and you were identified as you know that you could legally participate in this activity, which eventually involved testing stuff that that came much months later. UH, than you should have access to that. You should never be turned away because of your race, religion, color, or status. And that's what happened there. And may I just say too, in talking about that last one, that um it's really interesting that Canada, which at the time of this great fement in the eighteen sixties to nineteen five period was a loyal part of the dominion of Britain UH, did not adopt the British approach to conservation but joined with the United States of America. And that was a prescient, wise decision made by Prime Minister s Wilford Laurier and a group of equally aggressive visionary individuals working on the Canadian side. And the fact that Theodore Roosevelt UM UH invited Canadians to participate in the big discussion, said he had around this issue. Well, I think this is I mean, I might have We're just split up this into two episodes. We're gonna have to because it's because I think I want people to really I want even for myself to really be able to focus on this entire story, right, this entire seven tenants and principles and stop calling them tenants after this conversation the principles and what they truly mean, because you could read them in in their brief and then kind of get it. But to hear him in this his historical context and the context of your personal experiences is is huge. And UM, I read it. I want to end with I read a story recently only because I went down this rabbit hole of like trying to find challenges to my own beliefs, right. I wanted to find these these you know what I thought, were you know, well articulated challenges with things I believe. And there's this UM story I read called the Cult of Hunting and it's timely demise, right, kind of it kind of gave the counterpoints to the story that we're going through, right, So it gave rise to market hunting is the problem as as a problem that was was all about hunting, and it kind of just selectively cherry picked, um, some of the more negative components of hunting throughout history. UM. And I wanted to read a line from the end of it that I that it made me think, um, And I wanted to see what your reaction was to it. It says we need federal policies that empower everyone in this country, urban or rural, white, black, red or brown, female or male who cherished animals simply because they exist, or to enjoy watching them, or yes, to hunt them. When it comes to living with wild animals on this earth, they are sentient beings like us. They deserve rights, their welfare deserves our attention. Um. More to the first half of that sends it, how do we if if this model, you know, kind of talk so much about hunting, how do we allow this or this model to to give credence to what this person is saying. The writer here is saying, David Matson about the urban the folks that that maybe don't even understand this model. Um, how do we make it seem more inclusive? I guess would be the point maybe he's making, or what I would make overall, Well, I mean, I think we do need to make it more inclusive. And I think the efforts to to um, to get hunting organizations to step across the divide, if I could put it that way more is a very simple part of doing that which the hunting community deeply resists, effectively resists consistently resists UM. But the other way of doing this, which is also a front time working on, is to bring people who are not members of the hunting world into a a UM forum of realization that there are issues that both hunters and they themselves care about uh number one and number two that we can agree entirely, or some of us can, with the philosophies that are expressed here. That those animals have absolutely their own inherent value UM, and that our purpose must be fundamentally first and foremost to keep them, not to keep them. And this is where I would disagree, maybe a little bit, having only listened to the quote, or where I might refine it just a little bit, But to keep them, not just for any purpose, but to keep them. I firmly believe that we have a responsibility, but I don't really, for myself, consider it a responsibility in that ownerous sense. But I do believe humanity has a responsibility to keep wildlife with us. For me, it is just what I do. I don't view it as a mission, and I don't view it as a responsibility. I just view it as the air I breathe UM for me UM. Whether we hunt them or whether we don't and even to some extent, whether we view them or whether we don't, would never stop me from doing the work that I do. UM. And while I believe there is an only a single equation that we have yet seen in the ecological world, which means we are all tied together in some kind of trophic way, UM, I don't believe that we should always only be thinking about animals in some way in which we can can modify their value. I think this is a mistake that all sides in the debate make. You know, when I interact with an animal, and in my career, as I've told you many times, I have had such long and deep experiences, very often by myself with them. UM. I don't think about them as UM. I don't think about them as as something odd or unique or outside. Yes, they and thrall they interest me. I have to look at them, But once you reach a certain relationship with them, it is very much like they are companions. And the best way for me to explain this is I worked on the in the wilderness barren lands of Newfoundland for certainly solidly twenty five years, in which case, you know, caribou were amongst the most visible of animals. They're white, they're social, they stand out on the on the landscape. And we have a very white caribou, very arctic looking carribo. And I live with them through the rise and the peaking of the pop elation, and I lived with them through the drastic reductions that they and so many other caribou herds have now gone through. After a while, every day that I was on that land with just my pack on my back, just walking, you know, um, they were there. They were walking along the eskers, and they were they were crossing small streams, and they were coming out of small burns that took place on the patchwork land that we were on together. And they were walking across the bogs, you know, with the water on their hawks and so on. And after a while you just know they were there were There were three of them over there, and there was five of them over there. But you weren't classing them, you were you were just walking. Now the animals that I might have been studying for a specific reason, they were. They were of special interest to some extent. And even then I would have to leave them as darkness came to get back to my tent or to get back someplace to be picked up by aircraft or whatever the particular circumstance was, and they would just continue to walk across that land. And the most the only really sad, frustrating experience I have consistently had in the natural world is realizing that I had now reached my limits of natural nous with them. They just went on into the darkness. Man, they just went on into the night wind. But I had to get to something. I had to get to a tent, or I had to get to a cabin, or I had to get back to a float pane base, or I had to wait for a helicopter picked me up at a prescribed place, and they just went on. I would rejoin them or some others like them the next few next day, but again again that evening, I would have to leave them again. And you know, uh, it's in that context that I agree wholeheartedly with people who say they have just of value simply of being. Whether I believe they should have rights in any sense is not something I think a great deal about. Um Intellectually, I'm not one who advocates for that, but I have come to the absolute, firm conclusion that no one can dislodge from me now that we are no different from them, and they are no different from us, only in the sense that we're all unique species. But I don't believe anymore the poppycock about they don't feel this and they don't think that, you know, they don't have this intelligence and all those kinds of things, because all of those arguments are designed to show that we are somehow special. But you cannot take a human being and fly them, told them through the air from you know, young Gava Bay on the Arctic Ocean and bring them halfway down to the bottom of South America, and then the next spring tell them to find their way back. You know. I could give a list of a million incredible things that wildlife does that we are completely incapable of doing, just as I can list a million things were capable of doing that other species cannot. And the conundrum for me is not about, however, whether we should utilize them or would utilize them, which might be a logical place for me to end up, because that would be lie the rhythm that I came to understand living with them, which is that we are all connected. The bear will run down the caribou calf and consume it, and the cariboo will seek the young shoots of spring to feed itself and to produce milk to raise that calf, and the bull cariboo will segregate themselves to feed and fatten and fight in the fall, and some of them will die in the pursuit of that. But you know, we are all connected by an ecological equation that in one way or another, things live for a period, and things die for a period, and there is no other way for life to continue. But when I see people who somehow think animals are inferior to human beings, or should be treated in ways that we would not treat human beings, and so on and so forth, Man, I am out there with the animal advocates as far out as you can bloody well get, And I just think that if the make one final statement Visa VI the hunting world and where we're headed, if we don't dramatically clean up the imagery and the image of the hunter in modern society, this thing will be destroyed. Not by anti hunter advocates, It will be destroyed by the centrist change, the overwhelming force of value change in the societies in which we live. The animals now sell you your motorcycle insurance. Animals sell you fertilizer, animal book, your trips, animal book, your books, your hotels, animals send you your your things. You you take so because you can't sleep in the nighttime. As I said to a group of people the other night at a local restaurant here in Osman, do me a favor and tomorrow walk along the main street. I'm not sure it's call main street, but the main road where most of the mercantile uh shops are. And take a small notebook and go in and out of those stores and write down, just put a tick down. Every time you see animal imagery on a napkin, on a cushion, on a bedspread, on a glass, on a cooler, on a cup, on a piece of clothing, on a piece of furniture, you will be absolutely astounded. Yeah, my son is two years old and he lives in a world where animals talk to him, of course, and they're his friends. Yeah, it's strange box that he watches, But I mean that's his life. That's all he knows, it's all he'll ever know. His clothes have animals on him, his his his backpack is you know, his cap his toys. His whole life revolved around before they'll even learn how to connect dots there. His his life is is taken over by animals, and not in a way that it has any reality to them all. But but it says that it said it talks about our innate interest in them. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to to end it. UM. I think everybody should go out and do just what Shane um advised there, but also learn as much you can about the North American model. If you haven't learned it all here, Uh, there will be a book coming out this September that can can um put it all together for you. But I think as we as hunters, my opinion is these are things that we should be required to know. The thing that we go out and do is very serious undertaking. UM should be taking and we should be requiring of ourselves, UM you know, the intellectual and mental acuity to understand all of these things UM in detail. So hopefully this helps you out with that. And Shane, thanks as always for sitting down. You're welcome. It's most enjoyable. All right. That's it. That's all. Another episode of The Hunting Collective is done. Thank you to Shane Mahoney for coming through spending this much time with us. Hopefully you listen to part one and this part two kind of close a loop for you. There's obviously a million things that talked about within this conversation, but hopefully two and a half or so hours put it in better context for you, gave you more tools to go forward and have more educated conversations with non hunters and even other hunters about these concepts. Because because from one to seven, the principles put forth in this model are the things that govern what we do. They governed our ideas, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions around hunting and conservation. So there's no in my mind conversation more important than this one as foundational level of how we think about our interactions with wildlife. So thank you for for sticking in there, Thanks for listening to Shane and coming back for part two. We both appreciate it. Shane is is a good man. You can hear him in many places, but be sure to look him up at Conservation Visions on Facebook, and then you can watch a lot of his content on Army f dot org and you could see him speaking in almost every damn conference every Day and Wildlife conference in the country to dude is prolific and it gets around. So hopefully this helps you understand all about Shane and his ideas. What else, what else? What else? What else? What else? We go? Oh shit, Uh, I probably told you about the Media to Live podcast. Well we're still going. You can't stop us. We're gonna be in Austin on April second, I believe, and we're gonna be talking to you folks. There will be at Boise Idaho at the run Abou as well. We will just come back from Portland's and we have a Seattle stop which I won't be at, but folks like April Okey Slam Longer and more will be there on stage to hear the cheering crowd, and so come and show up because you'll hear me talk about on this podcast a bunch. But it's one of the more special experience I've had is my professional life. Um, sitting in on these panels, talking and laughing and meeting people and just being a part of us, this community that we've created, and I couldn't be happier to do it. I couldn't be happier to meet everyone and shake your hands man, it's it's it's it's fun and it never gets old and hopefully it never will. And so everything else is normal business. To the wrap up, Go subscribe to our newsletter. If you're not, you're missing out man. Every Wednesday. This thing is full of impertinent information. Go and um, go to the website, click around, man, go to the store. Find something you want to buy there. Hopefully it says Hunting collect upon it. If it doesn't, it should say media or run it or Wired to Hunt or some other thing. It doesn't really matter. What matters that you go there and you click around, and hopefully you enjoy your time. When we work hard, very hard on these stories and these products, hopefully you enjoy them and make your life a little bit better in whatever way that they can. So that's all that I have for this week and the Hunting Collective, thanks again for a wonderful conversation and let's all learn and celebrate and challenge the North American model wildlife conservation. Thank you, see you

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