00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening. Don't either podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther, stay longer, moving out. We're gonna talk about a a controversial subject and that is um, the Mexican gray wolf, and I'll explain why it's kind of it's it's controversial from from the ground up. Uh, for a bunch of different reasons which we'll get into. But first I want to go around and have our guests and reduce themselves. We've got someone from the US Fishing Wildlife Service, Yeah, Steve. I'm John oakleyf with the Fishing Wildlife Service on the field programs coordinator, so out in the field working with various folks and been on the project since two thousand two, no project being the Mexican Wolf Project and then Forest Service USDA four Service be centers. I am the four Service liaison to the Mexican Wolf Project. They have me embedded with the biologists on the wolf program to try to help with the communication process. It's a complex, controversial, a lot of moving parts going on with this project, so they have me in place to try to help smooth those parts and keep them working smooth with communications with our forest users and try to reduce some of that conflict that's going on. And it matters to you, guys, because a lot of this is occurring on land administered by the Forest Service. Yeah, almost exclusively on Force Service land. The Force Services a land management management agency. We manage the habitat and fish and Wildlife Service does on the groundwork on dealing with the wolves. And then again, uh, becoming a frequent guest, doctor Carl Malcolm. That's accurate. Yea Carl Malcolm, Southwestern Regional Wildlife ecologist with the U. S d A for Service. How long have you been, Dr Carl Malcolm Fork. I finished my PhD. I defended my thesis in uh late two thousand eleven, so I'll be coming up on six years old timey doctor man, I don't know about that. Um here's the first question. So everybody knows gray wolves, right, gray wolves are gray wolves are gray wolves. They had an enormous range at the time of European contact. Is it like, is it legit because you know what tax on and you've got lumpers and splitters, right, Okay, as My brother said, you got lumpers and splitters and they know who they are. Um, how legit is it to say that that that that it's a subspecies when there was no when there was no break in the populations, they just like bled into each other. Yeah, so what they what they think going back in time is there was in terms of the gray wolf, it came over from Old World Europe across across the Baring Sea and there was several evasions. So there was three invasions of gray wolves that came over. The first wave basically was a Mexican wolf, so it comes over establishes on North America everywhere, Yeah, basically every time. The second wave then is Kenas Lupus nubilis, so that's basically Great Plains wolves, the wolves that are up in Minnesota, Wisconsin, those areas. And then the last wave is Kenas Lupus occidentalis, which is up in um Alaska, Canada now kind of coming down from that area right up to the United States border. So it's pretty widely recognized that that those three are subspecies of the gray wolf. And you say, like, so so distinct. These are distinct waves of distinct species coming down I mean, they were all subspecies in Europe at the time. They just represent different genetics, and then once they're isolated from each other, they start representing different genetics and you can really determine between them. And so you feel that a dude riding around on a horse and in if he if he started in, if you started at the Arizona Mexico border and rode due north, that he would have thought like man like as he got up into the Northern Rockies, he would have said, man, these wolves seem different than the ones that I was running into when I started my ride. Well, yeah, I mean Mexican wolves down here at eighty pounds for a big male for instance, Uh, big female would be sixty pounds somewhere in there. When you go north, uh, and get up into the ones in Yellowstone and some of those areas that are there are now hundred forty pounds is a big male with about twenty pounds of meat and it's got so you'd say hundred and twenty pounds even, And then females are in the pound range, so even something like that. Northern Rockies wolves all the other subspecies are have black phases, white phases. Mexican wolves only gray, yeah only, So that's a distinguishing feature. So someone anybody can see the difference, the big differences that occur. So what what's up? Because it's one more, what's up with the red wolf? So the red wolf is a separate species, is what they So it's kenis rufous, So it's not even it's not a sub species, it's a whole separate species, right. And then there's an Eastern wolf that's out there that some people are debating whether it's associated with the red wolf or it's associated with gray wolves, and so there's a fair better debate about that Eastern did the did the red wolf come out of some kind of hybridization with with wolves and coyotes? Or It's interesting. Science isn't perfect, right, so there's a lot of disagreements among scientists. And so there's two different hypothesis right now going on. In ones that it's a hybrid between gray wolves and coyotes, and the second is is that it's a North American just developed a bigger type of canaid and so this is a bigger type of canaid represented by the Eastern wolves and the red wolves. And then they subsequently read with some coyotes through time and so, but in terms of how they evolved, they evolved in North America as a big canus. So if you again going back in time, if you what would have been the pre contact like the pre European contact range of what of what we now describe as the Mexican gray wolf. So it'd be uh in Arizona and New Mexico south into into um Mexico and at that So if at that same time you were in the Texas Panhandle, what would you have said that wolf was, you would probably call it it would be a Mexican wolf as well. On over in Texas As primarily Mexican wolves. But there's bleed over right, subspecies breed with each other still, and so there's gradations that go on through it. It wasn't a sharp define line. You'll see maps that have here's a line, but in reality it was some big, fuzzy area transition zone. Yeah, it's similar to now when we look at um if you look at mule deer in black tail deer in California, we've conveniently decided that I five right, Yeah, that a deer can go from being a black tailed muled or just by hopping the highway because you have that, like I remember that an intercline of some there's some way to put it, like a steady intercline of grades or something like that. So so people like the clean line, right, So I like a good clean line. Yeah. It's a lot better than saying, hey, it's great Asians all over the place and stuff like that. I mean, if you go back in time, there are twenty four subspecies in North America of gray wolf, and so saying that there's three right now that you'd recognize consistently is right. That's that's the lumpers kind of going in there. And so review for me the three that are here, the three that are in North America. Now, so it's the northern Great Lakes. Yeah, so you have the Great Lakes, which is Canas lupus um. I'm getting goofed up here, but Kenas Lupus nucleus. So that's the Great Legs and it's stretched all the way across the Central Plains and all the way over into California and just big, big broad swath. And then Occidentalis was up north and it kind of was the last invading wave. And so when you see the common line depicted for Occidentalis, which is a big Alaska kind of wolves. It comes down into Montana just a little bit, and it's kind of this odd shape, right, so it kind of cuts out of shape of where a New Bliss was. So that's kind of evidence of this evasion happening that they're the last. They would have continued to take over range because they're bigger, tougher, stronger kind of thing. And then down south is cance Lupus BAILEYI, which is the Mexican wolf. So that's all the way down to Mexico City and kind of coming up into the mogi on Rim here in Arizona and kind of that's where the transition zone really was where wolves started getting bigger and and stuff. So if you go from the deserts all Phoenix and kind of that area where it's kind of desert e, there certainly was less dispersal as you got up into the mogi on Rim. Some people called those Bailey I and some people call them New Bliss. So somewhere in that range. So what was the last year? Um, they came damn near to dine out right, but not. But there was a point. There was a point in time right when the only ones that existed existed in captivity? What what year was at well? We so the Fish and Wildlife Service, right, they listed him Gray Walls overall and then um, we went to a trapper by the name of Roy McBride, and so that was seventy seventy nine eight time frame right in there. And he went down to Mexico and caught some Mexican wolves brought up to start the so there were none in the US. There was none in the US. So he goes down not even in captivity, not even in captivity yet, so they were so there was a moment when they're gone from the like what year? Okay, so that kind of now that I know that, that kind of change my question. What year were they gone in what's now the US? And so well, so a few kept on coming up in the seventies and stuff like that, but then they they were coming up from Mexico. So they're falling kind of trails and stuff across the border and coming up. Are you familiar with McCarthy's Border trilogy. I'm not you ever read that? How could you? I don't, Well, I told you I was impressed by your radian need to read, you need to read Cormett McCarthy's The Border, the Border trilogy, The Crossing, All the Pretty Horses. Okay. The Crossing is a kid who grows up on the New Mexico Mexico border. He there's some they're losing some cattle to a wolf. His dad says, catch the wolf and kill it. And he studies up and through trials and tribulations, catches the wolf and can't kill it, and he decides what he needs to do is bring it down New Mexico and let it go where, um, they won't be bothering anything anymore except for all the cattle in Mexico. Wolf. The wolf dies anyways, but but it goes it but uh, oh my god. Yeah, So anyhow there are Mexican grave You need to read The Crossing. Yeah, when you when you retire or something, well before that probably, So what was the year they were gone? So we're kind of gone. Well, let's just say McBride goes down there and he captures some wolves to start up the captive captive brading. So where where was he going to catch him? Oh, Duraning. He was going all over Mexico, but Durango kind of the Sierra Madre Occidental, which is all that kind of stretches all the way down the mountains ranges in the west, and they had good populations down there or not not really. There's about fifty left at the time when he was down yeah, and so so what was Mexico's relations what was their thought on this, Well, we signed an agreement to go get him down there, and they thought even though we got fifty, well, well, well, we're willing to cut a few for you, because the figuring was that they were going to be gone. Oh they were gonna lose those two. Yeah. Yeah, so pretty widely dispersed and probably gonna lose their populations as well. And and and uh so by about I mean Roy McBride was a guy who removed a bunch of wolves, killed a bunch of wolves before this, and then he was hired to go down and capture these wolves because he knew how to do it. He knew how to do it, and so he literally started up the recovery programmed by going down and doing this. Is what was his relationship to it to what do you feel that he just was interested in the money or do you feel that he was there was he like, uh, you know, was there something bigger going on or was it just like he liked to catch wolves? And if that's what catching wolves was like, now that's what he would do. He's more of a lion hunter. He's still alive. He's an interesting guy to talk to. Builds, traps and stuff like that. And so talk to him on the phone every so often, and he's a neat guy. Is he rooting for the wolves or not rooting for wolves? He but he's probably just he just recognizes him as a animal out there on the landscape. Doesn't hold him in this giant special regard. Right, He's been through both sides of it, and I want I want to step back, just to just to make sure all the context, Like um so, I keep trying to find ways of phrases. What year was it when when it would have been fair to say that they were like what was the last point at which they were still plentiful in Arizona, New Mexico their historic range in the lower forty eighth man the fifties, maybe the fifties sixties, there was some that were brought out fair number, but again most of those were still kind of coming up from Mexico. But that would be the time frame when there's still some and then by the seventies it was dismal, there's nothing. And then by the oh when we wrote up in n there was some surveys down in Mexico and there was no more Mexican wolves in Mexico. They did lose them down there. Yeah, so they were gone as well. And so what we got left with was, um, this captive population and uh, through genetics and stuff, we found a couple other animals that were pure Mexican wolves in captivity that have been long standing captive populations at different places. Just some hobbyist head. Yeah, so it was ghost French was one lineage that we refer to it now there and um and they proved to be that they were still genetically intact. Ye bread with dogs or whatever. Yeah. So so how many were there at this point in captivity, Well, so there was that that's the start of the captivity was seven animals. So that's what started our captive population. By the whole population bottlenecked down to seven. And they can they can withstand that kind of thing. Well, wolves are because they disperse a long ways. They do pretty good with genetics so if you can raise them up and so you can deal with the bottleneck like grizzly bears and Yellowstone bottle neck pretty severely when they shut down like the dumps. But then the population goes back up broadens back out pretty quickly, and then you get that they can deal with that. You don't lose as much genetic diversity. So once you start producing them in captivity and you do a fair better that, then it works out. Okay, it's less than ideal though, yeah, but it's better than none. Right, Blackfoot of Ferret's down to sixteen at the time, so that's when they came out of that. Yeah, they brought him in captivity and they're putting them mount in various areas, so Wyoming, Arizona, um all over the place. So when they were down to seven UM in the late seventies, um, what number did they hit in captivity? Well before we did, I mean eight two. I remember we did a recovery plan and it was they were saying it was around twenty or something. In captivity, they just go to Zoo Zoological Institute. So they kind of starts scattering them around all over the place just so like one bolt lightning couldn't kill them all one day. Yeah, that's a good idea, right, spread them out and then uh, when we started doing releases, there was about hundred and fifty. So we started doing releases up here and there was somewhere two hundred fifty. Now there's two fifty to three in captivity, all right, but that's okay, that's a huge jump. Yeah, when you say that when we started doing releases, so how like, how did that all come? Like, lay that story out, how we started doing releases? No, like where who wanted to do it, who didn't want to do it? Where was it gonna happen? Oh yeah, I mean I wasn't here at the time. I'm not that old anyways. I think in general, when you look at releases and going to do reintroductions, a lot of people who are local in the area, who are raising livestock, who are hunters out there, are generally opposed to wolf reintroductions because it's another predator that's competing on the environment. And so when you when you lay it out like that, those were the folks who didn't want to do it at the time. New Mexico Game and Fish didn't want to uh do it. And so it's similar with the gray wolf reintroduction in the North where the States states, I mean, in a very general sense, the states were uneasy. Yeah, because it is or beyond uneasy, you bet, you bet. So it affects, right. Game populations are part of that equation. So if you're impacting game populations and stuff like that as a state agency, and where you can stituents are, which are broadly hunters and fishermen. Um, they when you're talking about retroducing a predator, right, that's not the most popular position for those guys to be. It wasn't gone that long from the landscape, right, So it was like for many adults, it was probably still in their memory that these wolves have been around. And I'm guessing that if you guys were breeding them, the plan was always to reintroduce them. It wasn't like you bread them up and then all of a sudden said, oh what about this thing? Yeah, so in two they said, well, we only got twenty animals in captivity. So all we can imagine is finding an area that's uh ten thousand square miles that we can get a hundred wolves to exist in the wild. And that's not recovery. But that's all that we can imagine. And so these guys that were writing it up, that was the extent of their imagination for the Mexican wolf. But that's what they envisioned. Rap. But that's what we'll get into this. But that's still kind of the plan. Now. Well, no, we've we've we've envisioned a little bit more, envisioned more. We've grown a little bit since. But but you're operating. So the agency that you work for is operating under, is operating under a sort of mandate for the legal framework of the Endangered Species Act, which signing the law by Nixon and seventy two. Right, So, I mean it's not real, it's not real gray about what that means for I mean, when a species gets listed, it means that we have a national priority two like work toward delisting to recover the species. Absolutely, and that so it's like in a in a way, it's it's not it's not so much like a guy decides to go out and do a reintroduction. Like it's a little more complicated than that. Sure, it's like a federal mandate. Well, right, and so you write and an environmental impact statement is what it's called, and so it's hundreds of pages. You put it out to the public, they have comments on it, and then you write a rule that says, here's a non essential experimental rule that kind of loosens up the restrictions over all the place from the Endangered Species Act. Well, because you did it as they did as an experimental herd here or experimental population, right, and they didn't do that. They didn't do that in the North. Well they did. They did it in um Yellowstone and Idaho with experimental status experimental status, no essential, experimental. But in uh, Montana they were endangered because they were naturally coming down from Canada into Montana. So there was already a population in Montana before those reintroductions ever occurred. So they kind of segmented out zones and most of it was experimental too. Yeah, it's tobacco. I just want to and correct me where I go around, and so I just want to explain it to people that uh trying to think of a good a good case scenario. So, um, I take the Bitterroot Mountain range. What when when grizzly bears were listed in the seventies listening under Dangered Species Act, protection of the seventies. Uh, they were focused on recovering some Mary's that had remnant populations of bears, and there was mountain ranges nearby the historically had them but didn't anymore. And the animals are treated differently if they naturally went into a mountain range than if they were put into a mountain range. So if they if they walked over there, they carried with them full e ESA protections. And if they let them go in there, there's so much like political pushback to letting them go that they would make compromises and declare them um an experimental status, which gives you a lot more leeway on lethal control of problem animals and other stuff. So I remember this debate raging among grizzly advocates being like, do we go with the sure thing and put grizzlies into the bitter roots right where they're gonna have only marginal protection, or do we play the long game and wait from the walk in. And I think that was part of the government even proposed that for grizzly barrass in terms of the Central Idaho Wilderness, doing a reintroduction from they're under non essential experimental because it gives you a lot of leeways. It gives you a lot of leeways for that leeway, it gives you a lot of leeway for controlling conflict. Sure for right so for right now, UM, people out there at they see wall's attacking cattle on their private land, they can shoot the wolf. And that's completely legal. It's within our rule that we put in place, UH, that they see on private land, UM wolves and the active attacking a dog right now, they can shoot the wolf. So they have certain measures that they can take in place, and then UH to mitigate cattle conflict. We can control wolves as well, either by removing them with traps or shooting them. And so all this is flexibility that isn't allowed understandard and endangered species stuff. The other thing is you have a Section seven consultations on any land management action and so that's where the like the four service comes into play. We don't have to do Section seven consultation with the wolf in the non essential experimental. So we're not restricting any land use activities out there because of the presence of wolves. So someone that wants to do, like if someone wants to do some mineral development on their land, they're not faced with that it's that it's gray wolf recovery area and that their permit process gets hung up. Right, Yeah, so now back up again. Early on it was like, okay, we need how many acres? It was ten thousand square miles ten thousand square miles and who how did how was that selected? Well, so it's the I S process. Um. They spent uh some time selecting between different areas. Arizona Game of Fish did a study in terms of different areas. One area was the White Sands missile range that fell out all that another area was a blue range area get rejected. Well, it was included in the final rules, so White Sands was there. We never did reintroductions. There was a backup spot, but really there's not a lot of prey in that area. It's not high by at the time hit. Most of the mule deer pretty low in terms of population sizes, and and so we did never choose to put wolves out in the area um in the HeLa and for fear that they would starve or for fear that they would just split. Yes, both they split or starve. The ones that survive would split and the ones that stayed would stark. So they couldn't live off Ibex on the that's a tough living man. Those orics out there or yeah, those are I wouldn't want to take down an orex with my mouth. So that area was within the area, but wasn't like everything you need. I've haunted that I've haunted. I ran lions with a body mine and the Blue Range. Yeah, every trailheads got signs about wolves, you know, right, and then well there's lots of elk there, man, there's a pile of elk. So right now you're talking to Heila twenty two thousand elk in the Greater HeLa National Forest and over on the Arizona side. These are the two forests where we did it to start with. On the Arizona side eight to ten thousand on the two little chunks that we did it on. So you might you probably know this that you know that at the time, I'm sure you know this. At the time, New Mexico had no elk, right, yeah, talk about a bottleneck, right, and you know zero to seventy elk. Hunters and fishermen set the stage for wolf recovery by reintroducing elk, by caring about the land, caring about these ungulates that are out there and and re establishing big herds of ungulates. Yeah, but now we're like that anyway, we did it, well, that's not why they did it, right, They did it for a hunting right, Uh? No, did it for Yeah, hunting has a very large umbrella turn. Yeah, you know, because you know, if you go and look like in Kentucky, which is engaged in a reintroduction of elk, the guy like the odds of drawing LTAG Kentucky are like u per cent. Like the guys that work on that reintroduction are never gonna draw elk tag, right, you know what I mean, they're just doing it for doing it. That's the land between the lakes out there. Is that where they're doing it at No, No, they're doing it Southeast Kentucky. All that recovered coal mine, you know, the mountaintop removable coal mine when they when they did uh you know the mitigation propor Now the what what's that remedi is the remediate mediation the remediation plan for a lot of that mountaintop coal mining basically has created a little prairie patches on top of those mountains and create all these grasslands. So I said in New Mexico had zero elk. At one point there were zero elk east of the Mississippi, and now there's elk herds in eleven states. Kentucky's got ballpark. The recovery plan was ten thousand. Now it's kind of like the semi official numbers fourteen thousand elk. Some people think it might be twenty thousand elk. It's the biggest herd east of the Mississippi, and it lives on those things. But the point being that, um, yeah, you might be like, oh, you're just doing it because you want to shoot one, and people they're like, dude, I can tell you one thing that ain't gonna happen is me drawing out tag in Kentucky. But I still got involved in the process the same way. There's a lot of people involved in wolf recovery. They have no intention of shooting one. In fact, I'd ventured to say everyone involved in wolf recovery has no intention to shooting one. No, but I'd like to see you get there, right. You want to see it where it's a huntable species, where it's has populations robusting because of what that would mean. Yeah, because I mean you had a sustainable population. Yeah, so that's great then at that stage, and so it's a wonderful thing. I think if you go back to the thirties, so when they were doing the Elkare introduction or the forties, I wonder if there wasn't more focused on honey hunting and stuff. No making, Yeah, I think making a resource man, I know absolutely, And then he still had a cult. There was still a cultural memory of having hunted him too, you know. But yeah, No, it's it's when I say it's like a hunting as an umbrella idea, that that that pushes that kind of stuff. Cause I think it's not that someone goes down the path of doing that thinking like, oh, next year I'll be hunting them. You're playing a long game and it's not just like totally pragmatic. Now. A guy that goes and buys a truckload of bluegills to dump in his private pond is focused on a very near term future. You know. He's like a different fella than a guy who's like, let's go through all this hassle and catch a wolf down in Mexico and breed it up and then maybe in twenty years we'll have something. So when it came to be that that you were identifying land. When I say you, I'm using it loosely. It wasn't that you were going to find a ranch big enough to do this, oh now. And even so we set up on Forest service land and even that, uh, we had a rule where we would remove them if they if they straight outside of the HeLa and Apache National Forest. Yeah, so when they went outside of that, we removed him. But we just just brought him back into the middle, just brought him back in the middle. Or unless they're killing cows and stuff like that, and that's a death sense killing cows, well not I mean if you kill quite a few of them, yeah, that's a death sentence at that stage. But um so, anyways, even that size of an area, which is really big, was too small because wolves, you guys, really, I mean you realize that after the fact it was too small. Yeah, yeah, they were outside the boundary. We spent a lot of time chasing wolves outside the boundary and that's kind of inconsistent with recovery. So right now we have a broader area that we put out. So right now wolves can range anywhere south by forty in New Mexico and Arizona. And being okay, yeah, what was what was the is the e s A is the Endangered species eggs so powerful that the Four Service had to say, okay, well sure, I mean that's part of our mandate. Also is a recovery or dangerous species. So we're partnered up with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to implement the Endangered Species Act. But the fun kind of comes into um, the work is when you have multiple use objectives on the Four Service land. You know, you've got livestock grazing, you've got timber harvesting, you've got recreation, you've got all these activities going on in public land. Plus now you're trying to re establish and recover predator. That's where the heavy lifting and work comes in. Yeah, I mean balancing out those interests I imagine the most. So the two big not compromises, the two big conflict areas that be hunters in a general sense and then livestock producers absolutely who hold um, who hold private property on the borders of this and who hold grazing leases on the inside of it. Yeah, probably a lot of the heavy lifting comes with our livestock grazers and permitees trying to prevent the conflicts and reduce the conflicts, and providing the communications with those folks to let them better understand what's going on and what to expect. That's that's where all the real challenges lie. Yeah, how might those challenges manifest? I mean, like on on a ground person level, what's the what's a common sort of conflict that happens? Well, you know, the big conflicts obviously is the direct depredation of livestock by the wolves and trying to first of all, trying to find ways to prevent that, and then when it does happen, UM, working with the compensation programs to hi to try to compensate these permitees that have losses and and there's some good uh compensation programs in place to help help recover some of those losses that do occur. Uh. Those compensations programs are far from perfect, but they do provide a way to compensate the permitees for losses that they could take. Um. You know, and going into you guys like you had to have known right the minute, like how many did you let go the first time you let him go? I was three packs and in the in march, and how many were in a pack, you know, around five uh some uh, well there was year LANs in some an adult pair, so standard at that time, they were getting ready to breed bread up, so they're gonna have pups in April May. And they had no institutional memory of hunting within that pack. They've been five they've been captive. Yeah, yeah, they hadn't hunted at all. It's interesting because some of the walls that came right out of captivity less than months, some of their answers are saying, yeah, they kills an elk right out of here, right out of the right out of the gate. So it's kind of just they just knew what they were up to. It's just programmed into him. Right, So when they hit the ground, how long how much time went by for someone's like, hey, all sons of bitches killed my a cow. I think we got through without an actual depredation. Yeah, so ninety eight was a good year, but certainly every year since then, how many been depredations? Well, so you kind of say it on a per hundred wolf basis, right, because you want to compare to other places, and you want to compare year to year. So as a population grows, you get more and more, so somewhere between twenty two fifty cows on per one wolves. So it's a fairly significant depending on prices, they're killing two dollars worth of yeah, twenty thousand dollars with the property. So how many, Like, what's the elk per hundred wolves? Elk per hundred wolves, So it's it's four wolves per thousand elk in our area right now that we're that we're roughly shooting for. So when we did the world change? I mean, how many? How many? Okay, I got I got to think about that one. But how many? And I remember this reading is recently in the Northern Rockies a wolf how many elk a wolf kills per year? So it's it's basically around twelve to sixteen A wolf kills twelve to sixteen elk year, and that's that's commonly referred to as cow elk equivalents. So a lot of those that's not the right number because a lot of them are calves that are smaller that they kill and so you're just trying to base them are bulls that are bigger, So you're figuring a four pound animal right right, So you're trying to get at standardized across something so uh, twelve to sixteen out per year, so around like sixteen hundred, around six hundred elk annually, Yeah, killed by wolves right now with the population of dred bols, how many how many elk year hunters killing out of that same area? I don't know. You would be a question for New Mexico game of fish, but a lot more. Oh yeah, I mean way way order magnitude more probably or seven Mexico's got seventy. Well find it out. We find that out. Um. So sort of an ironic point on that front talking about elk too and the relationship between livestock production and these different wildlife species that I think is worth dropping in here is that we have we have places in the state, including some of the producers around this border country, who have direct conflict or at least perceived direct conflict between cattle production and competition with wild free ranging elk. So um. On the one hand, you have some folks voicing up that, you know, the hunters who don't want to compete with wolves for the elk they're trying to kill, and you have ranchers who don't want wolves killing their cattle. You also have ranchers who don't want elk competing with their cattle. There's multiple angles. That's interesting. Have you guys had of of permit holders, of people that hold grazing permits on federally managed lands. Have you ever had someone say, I lose more I'm losing more pounds of beef to grass competition from elk. Then I'm losing pounds of beef to direct consumption by wolves. Has anyone ever made that calculation? No, I don't think I've ever heard that argument. I've I've heard some ranchers say, you know, I don't tell anybody, but I'm just happy if they kill elk. That's great. I'm happy that the wolves are here killing elk, getting rid of them. But in New Mexico, right, they have a landowner tag things, so they get distributed elk tags based on how much land they own as well, and so that's kind of the the interchange. So lot of the livestock owners are also outfitters and guides or heavily dependent on the elk as well, And so I get into conversations with some of those guys in there, like I don't want the wolves eating anything. Wolves got to eat the same as worms. Right, all right, I gotta, I gotta. I'm getting to be questions in my head here? So does want to keep on ask? And that is behold, don't don't answer yet, because I want to do no one far. I forget. What all have they eaten that you know about to date? Okay? Like what are they eating? And while you sit on that one, what um? When the when the reintroduction occurred, how universal was disapproval among livestock producers who are running cattle on the recovery area or private lands surrounding the recovery area. You know, that was before my time. I've been in the program for about three years now, but I would imagine it's pretty consistent with what it is now. A general lack of support for the recovery of the general lack of support. Yeah, it's a it's a competition for them. It's perceived that this large predator was taken off the landscape because it was problematic for them, and then now the government wants to put it back in. So it's it's hard for them to come fully on board on supporting that. And what would you say the same thing on the hunting community, general lack of support or is it more mixed. It's got to be more mixed. I would say it's definitely more mixed. I said, on both sides. I'm not from here, but I was in a state that had it. I said, on both sides of it. One, I think it's immoral. And I don't throw that word around very often, but I think it's immoral to drive species to extinction. I think it's like playing God with God's stuff, right, I guess like a grievous sin to know wingly eliminate a species from Earth. Okay. On the other hand, I used to hunt it. We hunted the area through its We hunted an area that we started hunting in the Northern Rockies the year of the reintroduction, and we within a handful of years we were hunting one third as many elk as we were when we started hunting it. Now we got better all the time. So my brother he's still he still hunts it. He still kills elk every year, even though he's hunting the third as many as he was before. But he's just like his knowledge of the area has kept pace with the diminishment of the herds. And of course you wait and hope that the elk, get used to it and figure out how to deal with him. Well, I think I think you can point to different management units, different areas, and the whole gamut of prey responses occurred with wolves being present there. So it's not universally all of a sudden will show up and you're driving out. That's different. That's the funny thing always bring out with people, man, is like the funny always bring out the people's like why does everybody Okay, dudes like me are always uh dudes, I merror eyes, like, ah, the wolves are killing everything, but every wants to go hunt in Alaska? Right, Alaska all the time? Alaska. Wolves in Alaska occupied the ninety five or ninety six percent of the historic range. So I'm like, if that's true, why does everybody want to go hunt Alaska? You guys should steer clear because it's full of damn wolves. Right. So so there is like it's a little more complicated than what people would have because everyone's waiting in line to go up there, right, and they hope they see a wolf, right, And so the area I mean, I'm not sure the area of the year, but I worked up there on on wolves shortly after the reintroduction in Montana and then wyoming in those areas and kicked around and um, you know, there was an incredibly hard winter. There's wolves reintroduced, and they're harvesting the crap out of cows in certain areas because they want to reduce the number about so outside of Yellowstone. All three of those things happened simultaneously. So people look at it through these wolf colored glasses, right, So they're just, well, the only thing that's changed is there's wolves. Well, there's a lot of things that changed in that particular their thing. In some areas wolves are there, elk are still high, same hunting stuff, and in other areas that's not the case. So the more predators, so grizzly bears, wolves, lions, coyotes. When you have the in humans, when you have the complete suite of predators, right, you have more chance of driving down populations of ungulets than you do. Uh, stay down here where you don't have grizzly bears as one thing, and you don't have heavy winter mortality is another thing. You have lions, you do have lions. We looked at some stuff they did out of Idaho where they figured they were losing pre wolves, they were losing thirty calves per hundred two lions, and when wolves came in, it was they were losing a total of probably forty calves perred. So they're losing ten calves per hundred for well, I mean, it's like ballpark figures. But the way this is explained to me is people were very accustomed to thirty calves per It has always been that way, and they knew what that looked like and what it felt like and what it meant for harvest rates. But then when that little extra chunk got carved out of there, it was felt very acutely, and people then sort of blamed all forty calves per hundred on this new thing rather than looking at it as a little addition, right, And it's harder to recover, So it's you're a hunting If you're a manager out there, right, you're used to saying, Okay, I'm harvesting cows because I want to drive down the olt population. I'm gonna drive it down. I'm gonna harvest cows. And then okay, I'm gonna stop my heart cow harvest because I wanted to go back up wolves predation. Predation in general can slow that increase, right, So it's harder to have this rapid rebound, rapid control kind of stuff that you're used to having. We're just working at valve and like right, right, So it's it's a different thing that people have to get used to as well, because the one thing you can control is is human harvest out there and so open the Northern Rockies are still shooting shiploads a cow out. Yeah, I like, I love hunting. I have conversations all the time with people and I'm like, if I if I thought reintroducing wolves was going to permit me from hunting, I would have been against it a long time ago. I love to hunt elk. I love to hunt dare. I love being out there and doing that stuff. So that's that's important part of who I am. But a thing that frustrates hunters, I think is that you have some people you gotta get your way that the extremes. Right. You got the guy who is like they they're gonna will every last elk and will be an elk left right, and then they're hand. You've got people who, I swear it, they're trying to tell us that wolves eat nuts and berries, right, you know, and I feel like I hear in each of my ears, I'm hearing from like these two people. Wolves eat elk cows. So I mean that's what wolves a little bit of deer, but the deer is a little bit a lot less taken at least down here and in the Northern Rockies where there's an elk deer. Why do they like elks so much? They're just a perfect package. Man, It's just they're in a good herd. You get to chase them, and there's something falls behind, something's weak in that group. So they they get them and they know where they are. They like being in flat areas where wolves like to be and hunt. They like hunting that flat train. Wolves like hunting flat train, sure, because it's you gotta run, you're chasing them down, you know, So, um, flat trains better. Lions like the steep stuff, right, because it's more of a of an ambush hunt. Yeah, you know. I think the one trend I have seen has the at the wolf population increases, the hunter community is becoming more involved in the issue and more concerned. Um, but more concerned about the increase of wolves. Are more concerned about help of wolves out well, No, more concerned about how the wolf population is impacting their choice of of of prey, the elk. So the one thing the program is doing is um studies to help really understand what what it's doing to the population and the impacts. And I don't know what what is it? What do you guys feel that it is doing? Well, look, John, kind of speak to that little bit more. Well right now, I mean so far we haven't. There's no detectable impact. So that's what the state agencies say all the time, there's no detectable impact. Well, that's that's a pretty significant change, right to detect when you're talking two acre ten alc. If you're talking Arizona or New Mexico. So you have you found it yet? No? Not unless I start going like by unit by unit, it's gonna be tough. I just haven't found it. You can't tell you tell me. You can't type in how many elk are killed in New Mexico and come up with a number. Well, and it's not all in New Mexico. It's just the greater HeLa right, a unit by units. So, Carl, you don't just know this in the like in your mind. I don't know that in my mind, and I think it's pretty hard to come up with an answer because and this this gets back to what you're saying about the mountaintop removal and remediation work happening and kind of painting a picture of what the landscape looks like. And for folks who aren't familiar with this chunk of ground that our experts here are referring to in southwest New Mexico and eastern Arizona, you're talking about some of the most remote, rugged country in the lower forty eight. And it begins from the east. You've got all the Leopold Wilderness, which is about a quarter million acres, into the HeLa proper, which is somewhere five seventies some thousand acres, and you've got the Blue Range Wilderness west of that, and that butts up against the state line. But then the wild land continues because you have the Blue Range primitive area that I know, Steve, you're familiar with west of the New Mexico Arizona state line, which is kind of de facto wilderness um. And then that's surrounded by some of the still most remote and undeveloped National Forest System land. So you're talking about two different states. You're talking about a large number of game management units for each of those states, UM, And right off the top of my head, I don't have a number, but I think for folks to kind of get this vision, this image of how remote and wild the landscape is, and a little anecdote to that. To that end, UM, there's a place there at the western side of the HeLa wilderness. You guys maybe can help me fill in the details, But it's known for having the best night sky anywhere in the lower forty eight because you are as far as you can be from an anthropogenic light source, and the sky viewing is is deemed to be the best anywhere in the lower forty eight because you're so remote. So this is a chunk of country that UM is massive, you know, ten thousand square miles. It includes these different wilderness areas, UM. And it's a place where wolves have been hot and elk for a lot longer than uh, white dudes have been on the landscape. Yeah, they only missed, they missed, like what they missed thirty years of the action. And even then you still had these stragglers coming up, you know, like you were referring to, and that great Cormick McCarthy book. So, I guess the a good way to settle on it is so you're saying that the new Mexico fishing game, who and to generalize that as a as A as A as a state agency with the state that was generally uneasy with the introduction. They have said that they haven't they haven't noticed. Uh, certainly the Arizona game of fish has been they do, They've had a little bit more look at this, and they say they haven't noticed an impact from molds. But the wolves are a low number right now, so a hundred and ten. So they fluctuate around and it dips, it dips up and down with it. Johnny hovers around a hundred. Yeah, yeah, and so well for the last three three years, three or four years, it's been around a hundred and you guys don't feel you do do not feel that that's sustainable. That's that's there can be more than that, And no know what I'm saying, like like minimum sustainability. Like for instance, we we we spoke with a guy um with the USGS who was working on grizzly bear recovery in a tri state area in the northern Rockies, and you know, there's a lot of debate about how many of there are. You know, I think the official number is six forty two. Everyone agrees that there's more because they their counting system is flawed and they all know it. So they're like, sixty two probably more, or whatever the hell the number is. And he says, in his opinion, he's like, you could have that number living in that patch of ground for a hundred years. He's like, that area and that number is a sustainable number in a sustainable area. Right, do you feel that? Do you guys feel that one where they are now that they're too vulnerable or do you feel that you could have that for a hundred years? Well, so are our rule that we just put out. We said that our goal was three five in that big area south of but they sold it in on. Our goal is to get to right now. Initially our goal was to get to a hundred, which was the initial thing that folks said wasn't recovery, and we were nice recovery. Well, I'm mixing up two different We can just throw out whatever random number three three is recovery. Uh, we haven't defined recovery yet. We're just we're redoing the role and literally the draft should come out in a couple of weeks, three or four weeks, and so you know, I can't talk about that right now, but you are some of the definitions we're talking about, because I guess what I'm referring to is well, in the case in the case of grizzly bears, um, when when looking at that number is you're you're sort of saying, like, have you achieved a sustainable population on a piece of habitat that seems stable where it's reasonable to assume that if we engage in business as usual, we would into the foreseeable future not running new problem. No, I think if you have, like with the Florida Panther, for a long time, we were in a position where someone said, can this continue? Can you have a population of twenty five lions in South Florida? And the people said, no, right, this will not like there's no reason to think that in one years will have twenty five lions in South Florida, or however bad it got in South Florida before they supplemented the population. So there's I mean, for recovery purposes, there's what we referred to as a three arts, which is a resilient population, which means there's enough of them out there too, you know, have Jeanette and to represent a population that's good and stable and all those kind of statings is gonna survive. And then there's um redundancy, which is there's multiple populations, so not all your eggs in one basket. So there's right now we have there's a reintroduction going on in Mexico the south of the border that just started, and so that's h that's the redundancy that you would see. One it's less controversial there right, no, so equally, I mean they still kill and stuff like that. Um. And then there's the representation is the third are which is genetically robust and um. You know it's across spread across the landscape to represent a fair amount of that historic landscape it's out there. So those are the things. So when you look at is that recovery, um, you would say that that population probably is pretty resilient. It's enough of them to live on that landscape, and so it maybe one population in the future that that works towards recovery. But there's more things that go into it. Right, So let me throw in a couple of additional details here, because you hear John using some of the qualifiers like probably and we think, and what we're talking about here, you know, the term for this is we run what's called the population viability assessment. And essentially you never can say with certainty that at any point in time in the future you will still have that species in that place. But you can be increasingly confident in the persistence of a species when you have more individuals and when you're talking about a shorter time frame. So it would be, for example, easier to say we are highly confident that we have a hundred wolves now, and if we keep a hundred wolves in three years, we'll still have a hundred wolves, as opposed to saying if we kept a hundred wolves on a landscape a hundred years from now, we're less confident. So the two things that really play into this risk number to throw out one hundred years because yeah, and a lot can change. I mean, a meteor, you know, you could hit something catastrophic could happen that would eliminate the animal. So there's never this certainty. So it's really a risk assessment and the degree of risk associated with extinction of a population. Um, you have more confidence in your assessment of security in the near future er than in the long future. And when you have more animals than less animals. Those are kind of some common basics. And then another point in this whole discussion of population ecology, Um, you're familiar with the Allee effect. All you ever hear about them? Heard the word but no, I'm not okay. So just for the benefit of listeners who take an interest in wildlife ecology and science, it's a good place to throw this in. There's a gentleman by the name of Warder Clyde Ali who came up with this notion that kind of flies in the face of one of the factors that we often take for granted and wildlife ecology, and that is the notion that as competition decreases, as the number of animals on the landscape of your species decreases, you do better. So we talk about density dependence, right. The higher the higher density gets, the tougher competition is, so the less well in individual animal will do. So the Allie effect, essentially is the inverse of that, the notion that if you drive a population Asian down far enough, and it's a social species or a species that benefits from the existence of con specifics, you can push that species towards extinction, like like what you see with past exactly you're gonna have a billion or none. It's a classic example. So with passenger pigeons, they think one of the key drivers was the fact that you needed these huge flocks in order to elicit normal reproductive behavior. And you had that last lonely passenger pigeon, Martha, dying in the Cincinnati Zoo I think it was September nine, um, and they tried, you know, they tried like hell to get that bird to breed when there were still other males around, but they lacked those massive flocks that elicited the breeding behavior. So that's a classic example of Alie effect. And this guy Ward or Clyde Alie, he did a lot of research looking at uh species that are a little less sexy than wolves or passenger pigeons. He did a lot of work with like goldfish, for example, where the regurgitation of food from one goldfish in the tank can be beneficial to the other gold fish and goldfish rooting up around the bottom like like carp are churning up food that's available. So if you think about wolves in their predatory behavior, there are another species where if you push them to the point where they're no longer able to locate pack members and function as that superorganism and find and kill prey through that social structure, you may have the potential to pushing beyond that point. In contrast to grizzly bears as we've been talking about, where you know, you need obviously two to tango in terms of reproduction. But the predatory behavior has nothing to do with depending on pack mads. In fact, they seem to kind of like a little loneliness the breeding age females. Yeah, they're interesting. Part for wolves is they're good at finding each other, long long distance dispersals and that kind of stuff. And most of the packs just start out as two animals and then you have pops. It's just a family group in their offspring and so that's how the packs establish. That's what are Do you have any sense um? I guess we should finish this part of it up before we get I want to talk about what they eat and why they eat it, how they find it. Can I slip in a question that that's relevant here is that we and I figured we would hit on it, But that number jumping around or not jumping around, but being moved or reevaluated from a hundred and three, that's got I think that's probably one of the most contentious topics of of all with wools, isn't it. Well, at least I hear it a lot where they're like, well, at first it was gonna be fifty, yeah, moving to goal. But that's serious stuff, man, the gold poles moving is a real thing, right right, right, right, So I'd just like to hear like one especially, you've probably been sent how you guys handle that, Well, that's actually more of a Fish and Wildlife Service number that but yeah, okay, so let me ask this like, like to what to what you're under staying when the first time when one hundred, Yeah, that wasn't like that they would d list at one, right, that was just a number, like an objective. That was just an interim goal. It was the wildest imagination. They said, that's not recovery, and so that's what we're trying to define right now. So that's the difference. You're trying to set the goal post for the first time, right for what d when d listing will occur. People misconstrued then well, yeah, because they that's one of the areas in which not not the agency, but it's one of the areas in which the public becomes obstructionist. Is when recovering populations reach what we all agree recovery was supposed to look like. Where all the you know that I was here this term so much, we're all the stakeholders have said, okay, we agree that that one hundred or you know, one thousand of X species. At that point, everyone here now agrees that they will be delisted and could go act the state management and they could be open to hunting whatever the states decided to do. And then it starts getting up to where there's a thousand of said animals, and people start filing shiploads of lawsuits and then prevent any dream of ever conducting the delisting. It's not the agency's fault because the agency could be petitioning for the delisting. Well, the agency very much wanted to de list wolves in the Northern Rockies, for instance, the fishing wildlife, So they wind up taking the blame for actions of people who are going to use who wind up using the e s A not for its intended purpose, but use it as the way to protect animals that they like to look at pictures of our natural geographic from any possible chance of human exploitation. But it's our job Fish and Wildlife Services to do a better job in the process so we don't lose on the biology. It's the process where we lose in court. So we didn't check some boxes there or something nick They nip pick horribly, and so that's where the agency can do better. But they're not. And oftentimes the lawsuits aren't even challenging. The lawsuits aren't challenging the the under the like the key principles. They're not saying like, oh, in fact, one thousand of these isn't enough. They'll go after like procedural things exactly exactly. That's where like oh, no, you need to file the you filed A, uh everyone, or you filed B first and you didn't file A and you're supposed to file A four B. So therefore we're gonna block this whole thing for a decade. Yeah. The big thing in the Northern Rockies was significant portion of range. So when they we first tried to do it, we tried to delist Washington and Oregon together with Idaho and Wyoming in Montana, and they said, well, you didn't analyze the wolves cover a significant portion of their range in that area and so their habitat range and so it went down on that among other things. And I don't know, no, but but I feel for you because that's one of the ways in which I feel that public um public blame. Right when when when again, like dudes like me, like hunting guys or whatever, when they look and they get pissed about how something's not going the way they want, they're not, they don't usually blame like obstructionist groups who are what I know this is you know, I'm not. This is not these guys in the room talking. This is me talking one obstructionist groups who are manipulating the law. Like, that's not who gets the blame. The blame often falls. I feel like in the wrong place. The government is good to blame. No, no usually questions, but but the uh SO is all right. Just to get back on track, is if the or whatever the hell number they're gonna come up with the number, is that gonna be the number that is regarded as an acceptable recovery objective? At which point it would be reasonable for people to expect the delisting process to occur very much. So, so that's the number that we're going through going through a p v A like what Garl talked about earlier, and it's it's reasonable to think it would fall somewhere in the range of around yeah, somewhere in that. I mean for one population, and there's consideration on where other populations are, and there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into that. How well the populations are connected, how well dispersal happens between those populations is a genetic component that you've got to think about. And so there's a whole bunch of things that go into that. And so me sitting here talking it would be a poor representation of the overall the overall plan. Yeah, that will come out and so it'd be much better to read it and really digest it. So down here, I know in other areas, um with other species that are going through e S A recovery. And we should point out that, uh, when something makes the list, when someone gets S, something gets e S A listing, that does not generally mean that they're like they got it. Made two of this two percent of species that get listed under the s A listing, only two percent get delisted because they recovered right now, I mean it's a long process. It's a long process to get them to that stage, for sure. I'm just I'm just saying, it's like there's been a handful. Like no, there's been some notable cases, and it's not even the fault of the people commissioned, but sometimes they've been uh, things have been listed and then it turned out that they were gone. Right, You've had things listed and then they find other populations or definition change and they get de listed that way. But it's only like a handful of things, only some normable examples, being like bald eagle, gray wolf, paragan falcon, American alligator. But if you look, there are I think over two thousand species they've gotten es A listing and a handful. What I'm getting at is my feeling is that when the e s A works real well and we get recovery, I would think people would be dancing in the streets I went to, but they generally, they generally don't. They generally want to say like, no, it's not you know, I went to a paragan falcon recovery party. So for the the listing of the Parragan Falcon, which my father was involved in that recovery, and yeah, yeah, that was we were excited. Oh yeah, it was a great thing. So as biologists, as you celebrate that, you want nothing more in your career. I didn't get to go to a Northern Rockies recovery party because it took so many legal everyone was that was It was so sad the way that just everyone. It seems like everyone got burned. Yeah, it was. It was a tough deal going back and forth like that. And then I mean, but the good part was that Montana and Idaho were ready to manage wolves and their plans were acceptable. And so even though it went through Congress and it's not the standard way of delisting a group, as we were allowed to celebrate that and turn it over to the states earlier than uh some of the stuff that was holding back, so some the Wyoming Planet in particular, was just got to prave through courts this year. Yeah that's great. So now they're delisted up there, and that's your problem, no, buddy. Yeah, all the folks, all the folks that worked on it, though they're all retired moved away and stuff like that. So no, no party. So what like what let's say, um, let's say someone draw. Someone comes up this idea that oh god, there's no question do you guys use distinct population segments down here? So are you treating the current recovery area as a distinct population segment or isn't it far enough along because we don't have two segments. Wow, So we just listed the subspecies. So you can list a species, a subspecies, or a distinct population segment. So what we did is we listed the Mexican gray wolf as a subspecies. But you might later need to carve off a distinct population segment if this population hits recovery and then you have another population in infancy somewhere. You need to draw the distinction between the two. Well you could, you could, but the idea is to um recognize that in different ways. So part of the problem in the Northern Rockies says when they went to delist things, then they're drawing the DPS, so they're designating a species to be delisted. Right. The idea is that you designate a species, you go through recovery planning, and then you delist that species after it's recovered, so you want to designate it early on. You don't want to designate a DPS two D list. Well, I know that's a big that's a problem that's happening with the grizzly bear situation is they listed the species and then that's kind of where it will get hung up in court. Probably do list of the species and then later they said, man, we've achieved way above recovery in this chunk of ground the size of Indiana. Let's delist this chunk right And it's like that, you know, I got you on a technicality because you can't. So yeah, that's a problem with it. Right. So you want to have the foresight to create population to units are alternatives on how you can reduce it to threaten, So make it a threatened species and reduce some of the restrictions over range wide over a bigger area. And um, so that's you know, you want to plan and have that foresight into your plan on how you think you should d less area too and you avoid problems going forward. So how much suitable habitat? Um? How much suitable habitat is there? Like, because it's it's I think it's helpful on these kind of things to think about, where could they be? And so again, just to keep returning to the grizzly bear situation because I know it well and it sort of provides a parameter to think about. This is um. There are there are some people, well meaning, knowledgeable people who look at the grizzly bear situation and they and they feel pretty confident that as far as suitable habitat goes, we've filled it up in the great in the in in Idaho, well like areas of the g y E. They and some people argue like, well, no, because there's any more mountain ranges. But there's some people who say, like, um, anywhere else, conflict is going to be so high that this really is the suitable patch of ground. And we've filled the suitable patch of ground as full as it can fill. Right. If you look at the Mexican gray wolf, how much and I'm sure there's varying definitions of it, how much suitable ground could there be? Oh a lot? So there's enough to where it's not gonna limit recovery in terms of numbers to get to a viable population. So that between Mexico and and and the US keep forgetting Mexico. So between those two there's gonna be enough. And the other thing is wolves are pretty habitat generalists, so they're not as specific as grizzly bears are and they don't kill people. So yeah, that's that's a flaw. That's a flaw on the grizzly bear of pheno type. So uh so, I mean they can they can be closer to put there and kind of wiggle in and out of some of these areas and still be okay. So outskirts of Realm Italy, for instance, there's wolves. Um So, so the suitable habitat doesn't become as big of an issue. It's not because when you draw a suitable habitat for kyle's pretty much to draw a big circle around the whole country. Call like just follow the coastlines with your pencil and you kind of have drawn it. Wow, we don't want to go that far. But it's not it's not as much. Yeah, they're not. They're not as like prone to immediate trouble. Yeah when they fall outside of it. Yeah, because suitable habitat for the bears isn't a matter of where they'll find enough food, just where they'll have a reasonable chance to go through their lives without winding up in a in in in a direct, possibly catastrophic interaction with the human being. I worked on grizzly bears up in Wyoming outside of Jackson, and uh, you know, bears of the true denizens of wilderness. So a lot of times it's tied to wolves. I would argue it's more bears because they need to be uh, you know, pretty limited in terms of people for that interaction with grizzly bears specifically, not black bears, but grizzly bears specifically. And so I always have a saucepart my spot for grizzly bears. I'll go up to Yellowstone and I'll see some wolves and it'll be like, well, yeah, but I like watching that grizzly bears on top of stuff watching them. Yeah. Um, so you can't really it's impossible to say step will habitet. But when you draw the line, there's gonna be like a no go zone that'll probably always exist. Yeah, that's I mean, when you do a non essential experimental population, right you set up your rules in that area and it's actually area specific. So right now, are areas everywhere south of iforty. You have these things that you can do that you can you're out there. So north of I forty right now we say we'll go at those wolves because we don't want the wolves from the reintroduction being in this area or causing more not having those relaxed restrictions. But it wouldn't be okay for anyone just to run into one and shoot it. North to I forty. Now it's a fully protected and it's a fully endangered species north to I forty if it shows up there, it's based on where they carries full ees A protections. But you also have the ability to go round it up and bring it backward blocks. Yeah, through fish and Wildlife Service permits, but only really only we have that ability at that stage. Uh do you ever hang out with the trappers? I am a trapper? Where do you guys use padded padded like double long springs or yeah, we use uh number four's is a primary thing? Or fourteens? And what's your typical set that you make? Uh? Dirt hole flat? Any of them scotton yarn? Hey, it doesn't. It's more about where than than what. They're smart about it. The other hand, they on onto it yet. No, there's wolves are tougher than you catch a lot of coyotes and kyotes are generally considered the tougher ones to catch by trappers out there, and uh, wolves are tougher just because they're fewer of them, less dance. Right, So two square miles for a pack, and so you're trapping over a big broad area and trying to get them to step in one square inch. So what's your general like, what's your general approach on getting on one? Like you start out where you get a sighting. Yeah, so you just I mean, I mean howling looking on the ground, looking for tracks, looking for scat, just looking trails roads, just like you would with a coyote kind of thing, and and looking for those travel pass and eventually you do some sets you see where they're coming and going, both directional travel, and then that's that's where I'm gonna set a trap sets If you're trying to catch one, how many sets are you putting out? Just doesn't So it's not longlining because you care about each one. You want it to be. You're you're worried about your things. So we do a lot of things to make sure that that animals Okay, you're checking every morning. You're you're kinda you have drags on them, so and you have springs in line in the chain and so all those things. If it's too cold overnight, will monitor every hour with trap monitors. Yeah, so they don't freeze a foot or anything like that. So we're very careful with that because each one there's an endangered species. So what's your preferred bait when you go to do the dirt hole set? The dirt hole set like skunk kind of stuff, but there's also a bobcat kind of glandler round up ground up. Bobcat works really good. So yeah, there's a reason why wolfers and all the stories, right, they come back and they stunk, Right, It's because I got bait all over yourself back, dude. We used to make some crazy concoctions for bait, you know. We call it tainted bait. Where you take jar cubaut meat and put in a jar and leave it out in the sun and just at the right minute, like it's starting to smell a certain way and get like a coat of oil, and then you bury it in the ground, put glycerin in it to slow the decomposition, and bury it in the ground. Dig it back up. I hope there weren't any maggots in it. Yeah, crazy bait stuff man kind of an art form, but kind of a an early art form. So a quick anecdote here on the wolves north of I forty deal and this relates back to this blurry distinction among subspecies. Um, we had a we had a wolf killed in southern Utah that du yeah, by a hunter who mistook it for a coyote. And this was in early well about a year prior to that, that same wolf had been collared in Wyoming and it had been seen on several occasions in northern Arizona close to the Grand Canyon. And it's notable this is a female wolf in mind, covering hundreds of miles between Wyoming and the Rim. Yeah, I was trapping for that animal, trying to catch it, So trying for aware north rim of the Grand Canyon. So that was the first wolf known to be in northern Arizona and something like seventy years And maybe you could share some more of the details on that account. But I remember when that was kind of circulating and we were having meetings like at Arizona and people are like no, no, that that's probably just like a domestic wolf that got out somebody. Probably there's a wolf breeder up here who has him in captivity on lo and behold it was. That's the thing is. It's like we went up there and there's a single wolf. So a single wolf, you're trapping for one in a big wide area and you're like, oh, gosh, I got no shot. You got to get a step in tin square inches in somewhere between Wyoming and the North m So there was a pile of buffalo that we're run over by a UPS driver right on the entrance to the North Rim. They have an honorable buffalo population up there on the North Rim of also a little bit controversial, yeah, because they have cows in them and they have some cow DNA and and there it's the there is the park that doesn't like them, right, the park wants to get rid of They don't want them in the in the park because they aren't part of the natural system there, or maybe they are and all that. So anyways, say the UPS driver tried to do the park's work, it ran over about it, and this wolf landed in this area and so it'd come down and they walked by people, and he walked down the road, eat on this pile, giant pile of buffalo carcasses, and then walk back up to its betting area. And so people got photos of it. People were calling in and you're like, this just doesn't sound like a wild wolf that came all the way down from Wyoming through Utah and now landed in Arizona. Why didn't get shot somewhere along the way where it's this observed ruble. But we went up there because some of the photos were really convincing. In one of the photos actually showed a radio collar. We were pretty pretty clearly a radio collar from our stuff, and so, um, we went up there and we we saw the wolf. So you go up there and set up a camp. Yeah, well we went and stayed with the park Service, and and uh we were. We went up there and the first thing, we went out, like the first morning, really early in the morning, just to follow the pattern of people seeing it. And sure enough, there it was. And so we had two things. We wanted to get DNA from the wolf one way or another, either capture it or whatever. And so that first day it pooped and we went out there and scooped up a little bit of the from the outside of the intestinal cell walls. Sintestinal cells slough off on the Yeah, so we had the DNA right off the get go, and then we set traps right along the path that it kind of walked around, and we scattered out some traps. So we had a dark gun that if you get close to a wolf, you can shoot a dart at it, but wasn't the case that day. And so, I mean, it came close to our traps a couple of different times, but it's just a single wolf wandering. Yeah, so we we came really close. I remember one time I saw it in early in the morning. I saw it in exactly the same spot. So this is just after we had scattered out the track. So I was like, well, I'm just gonna do exactly what I did the other day, and that wolf will wander right into our sets. So I turned around on the road and I'm just kind of watching it ways behind it and instead of just wandering that because that's what I did the day before. It turned around the offosite directions from all the sets, and I'm like, so, anyways, we never ended up catching it. So went up to Utah got shot and uh, but we did. It was the same wolf and stuff like that. What it helped us to catch it? Did you get the car because after the guys shot, Uh, our law enforcement does You didn't need it for anything? Nah, we didn't get it. So we we figured out what wolf it was and everything else from the DNA. Why do you think, like, why does the wolf start doing that? You know, it's just it's individuals, right. Some some people like to wander and see new ground. I think some wolves just kind of set out in the direction and keep going. This wolf got down all the way down to the Grand Canyon, went I'm not going across the Grand Canyon. So that is turned around, went the other direction right and went back up. And so you got a little window to catch the wolf. And while it's hanging out in a spot, and we just weren't able to some wels. Most of the time, wolves just you get to be two years old and you leave your pack. So you're leaving a big way. Well you don't have to. They just leave until they find an area where they can make a living or made mating opportunity and all that kind of stuff. So most of dispersal is close, so it's pretty close range dispersal. And then a few of them are these abnormal, a really long range movement. Sit here out there ice and know a girl who I wanted to go out with real bad never did, but she was working on a project. Um, someone's looking at like the how the Grand Canyon did affect movement of animals, And they were setting hair traps for mountain lions on each side, and whoever was running this thing was was testing the idea whether there was no genetic exchange. But they don't care. Yeah, and lions, you know that they'd catch the same, they'd catch the same, like offspring of the same. Like the things that you perceive as being boundaries sometimes aren't. I was recently looking at some stuff with links in Alaska that, um, big swollen rivers every day, not that they used to be that they like, they wouldn't do it. And then they realized, well, not not only will they do if they'll do it without even thinking twice about it. Right, So the thought was a Snake river, some of the big rivers there in Idaho that wolves wouldn't cross very frequently to get to Washington across the Snake River canyon and that stuff. But every time you say something you're wrong, the wolves won't show up in northern California. Wolves are now in northern California. So wolf biologists pretty well even wolf biologists underestimate wolves pretty consistently. Is there a feeling in your in your community. Is there a feeling that instead of doing all this, it just would be that if you just wait, the map is going to fill in anyways? Well, I think I think that's the case in some places. Yeah, And then but not with Mexican wolves, because you're done the captive thing. There was none laugh, so you have to and then you have petic constraints because they started from seven animals. That's all you have. So captive represents that genetic diversity that's out there, and so there's some maintenance of that genetic diversity that you want to do out in the wild and do releases continuing through time. Have you guys ever looked at is it necessary to bring in even though you'd be like sacrificing the you'd be sacrificing the genetic integrity. Do you ever look at bringing in a northern gray wolf just to just to be like it will get deluded, but it will bring some diversity. So the that's one of those debates that goes on out there fair bed so like the Florida panther with the lions from Texas that came in and help rescue the Florida panther. Right now, we don't see the evidence where the genetic diversity is restricted, where it's limiting the wolves population growth and that kind of stuff. So as long as the population dynamics are, okay, you wouldn't you don't, you probably wouldn't do that. But they don't. They're they don't. They're genes like they're not going through like genetic mutation on such a short span of time that they're increasing their genetic differentiation like they're they're like, genetic diversity isn't increasing. I mean, that's something that happens over tens of thousands of years, right right, But the Northern wolf, for instances, big hundred and twenty pounds, has black coat and has stuff in it that the Mexican wolves don't know. Yeah, but I'm saying, but that's the result of enormous amounts of time passing saying you don't get like once you get down to a population that had seven animals. Even if you grow that into three D, you still have like you're still feeling that very limited bottleneck of genetic diversity that you had when you had seven. Right, right, so we have we have frozen zoos, we keep frozen sperm and places and so artificial insemination, um, all those kind of things are still an impact. And wolves because they dispersed so far and travel so widely, genetic diversity is high among wolves and wild populations and everything else. So they're an animal that so even when you're down to seven, it still represents a fair bet of diversity. But uh, every year goes every generation that goes by, you lose some genetic diversity. So that's just a consistence of population size and how much is out there. It's just kind of a standard thing. So right now, the captive population that we have represents of the genetic diversity that was in those seven founding animals. So and then our wild population represents a percentage of our captive population. So you want to get that as high as possible to at least have all the genes that represented out there that we can. Is there any chance left? Is there any mystery left? Like might at all of a sudden, be that someone in Mexico. Oh, it's gonna be like, hey, we found a couple we didn't know about. Yeah, there's we've had um. There was one that was in a zoo. It ended up being having a large part of dogs in it, so they would add us it looked enough from the Mexico colleagues, and we had it tested genetically. I was referring more in the wild. Yeah, they brought it in from the wild, though, they captured it in the wild and brought it and held it, held some dogs and tangled up with some dogs. Yeah. And so most of the ones that are left, because it's such a remnant population, I would guess you'd get into them and they'd have some dogs in them. Even if you found a pocket isolated somewhere that was but there's always that possibility, and in Mexico that there might be something down south and Durango or you know, some different places. But the best thing it find another wolves is wolves. So when you're doing a release, there's people who believe there'll be wolves. There are still wolves left out here. They would pop out of the woodwork. Yeah, but you release the wolves out there and you don't find any other wolves, and so there's nothing that doesn't track back to our wolves. So you know, there wasn't wild wolves that were out there in this junk of country here in the New Mexico and Arizona. And so they're doing a release now in Mexico, uh, since two thousand eleven. So as these wolves dispersed out and go to different places, if they find other wolves, and you say, yeah, well there's probably other wolves, but they'll find them. How many uh, how many are guys poaching every year? Oh, that's a hard question, but I mean ten that we document, but there's other ones that are undocumented. They get shot and so some of them are So people are shooting ten percent of the population every year. Yeah, I would say in that in that range tend to t percent in a given year. What And I know we're getting into things that are hard to quantify. What percent or case is a mistake and identity and what percenter? Like dudes that are pissed, Uh boy, I think a lot of them are mistaken identity. Personally, I think you're down here and they're shooting kyote. Yeah. I mean we've solved some cases where people say that and they think it's a coyote that they shot and turned themselves in. And I always tell people, as long as you're honest with me, you'll get it. It's like if you shoot, you're out there, you're hunting, and you shoot a cow because you thought it you have a bull tag and you thought I had antlers that were massive there and it turned out it was a tree or whatever. You know, you won't get a ticket for that. But as long as you're honest about it and turn yourself in, then you get less of a fine than you would if you tried to hide it. By Yeah, I've never heard anything to contradict that from any game word I've ever spoken where they put a high premium on the guy that comes and says, hey man that I mess up and taken where you were having. Yeah. So if it's an honest mistake, I expect people to be honest about it, and so if it's nefarious, then I expect them to be secretive about it. So so some number of are are do you ever get people that are poaching them because they want them the hides or they usually poach them just because they want them dead. Everybody always does. Nobody wants the hides. So they're they're poaching them because because they're well the ones that are that are killing them nefariously. Yeah, they're just they're killing them. And then how do you guys? Uh? When I say you guys, has anyone ever who prosecutes it? So it's a fish and wildlife fed Yeah, and then it goes uh they make the case our special agents too, so they do all the investigation and stuff like that with assistance from states sometimes in the whole wide network for service law enforcement. Everybody's involved in that. They have a network. But then it goes to district attorneys and federal kind of cases on have you even been prosecuted, Yeah, there's been a couple here or there, they've been prosecuted. I mean there they come down on them hard or know well they can, but I don't think it depends on the circumstances. So in the one case that I'm aware of, I think they came down pretty arc as a person uh picked up the carcass and moved it from Arizona to New Mexico and so at that stage that's a Lacey Act violation because you crossed state lines as well, which is a felony, and so why do you move it just trying to hide evidence? You know it doesn't want it where it laid down and moved it away. And so I think that person that came down it was early on and I think he got a little bit of jail time associated with that. Other people that are really honest about it and call and say, hey, look, I thought it was a coyote. I shot it. Here's evidence. Here's the thing they you know, small civil Fine, so it's a range is all that level. Um, but we'll see how it goes on that stuff. Law enforcement is pretty you know how they say, uh, you have a case, any case. They don't like to talk about it too much until it's long past. Yeah, I got you. Ye. So do you think, um, like you know, if you guys look at this as like sociologists, do you think that, uh, there's a way in in the future that it might be a conversation where someone saying, hey, do you remember when everyone was all piste off about these wolves? Now? Ah, that was stupid because look they're here and everybody's so happy. Now, how's that working out? In Montana? For that hasn't happened there, But the blood still drying in Montana. Man, I don't. I think people will normalize it eventually, but it's a long ways down the road, and it's different from areas where they came down naturally. In areas where you do a reintroduction, because it's the government, it's kind of the government going against your values. So back when we were shooting all the wolves, I think there's probably people who are going, I don't agree with that this is wrong or whatever. They're absolutely yeah, all theough Leopold and various other things. And so the government is doing a program that's not favoring your personal beliefs, and so it's no different with reinroduction. In this case. There's people who are out there ranchers, hunters, There's people who this doesn't match with what their core beliefs are in terms of things, and it impacts them. So yeah, but I think that like nationally, um, nationally, the reintroductions have pretty enormous support, particularly among people who aren't affected by this. Well, you know, I think I've I've observed like in the areas where we've had the recovery effort going on for quite a while, there's more of acceptance there. People are understanding that, Okay, this is something we're gonna have to live with, so let's just start working together a little bit better. The challenges also comes where we start looking at new areas to expand, because then we start that whole process over of people getting used to wolves in new areas, and then that's gets tough again. So you have to build those relationships again in the whole new area and start building trust. But it turns it takes time. Do you personally, um, do you have to do you personally going and deal with people who are having a problem with wolves? Well, yeah, that's one of the things the program does is as the forest Service representative, I do a lot of communication with the permitees to try to help resolve the issues. But people have grazing permits, Yeah, grazing perm it's but the biologist on the ground from the Fish and Wildlife Service in the Arizona Gameing Fish do also quite a bit of contact with the permites and actually do the work with the wolves to minimize those impacts, and they do a pretty good job at trying to resolve those issues. What what's the process like when when a guy gets it he's got a cow gets killed. Um, what's his process, like, Like, what's he gotta do? So he calls us, calls us up, either US or Wildlife Services which is another agency under the Department of Agriculture as well, Um, and they get an investigation on it. So you skin it out and so what you're looking for underneath the hide is bruising. So when a wolf bites, it bruises underneath the hide, so it's like subcutaneous hemorrhagee. So it's the same as you or I. And then you're looking for attacks in the hind quarters and the armpad areas. That's kind of prototypical of wolves will tracks in the area. And then it gets confirmed and they send that in and get compensation. So they send in the confirmation from Wildlife Services and then they send that in. But and then and then then their conversation is some kind of fair market value for the animal. Yeah, it's set by right now. We have a Mexican Wolf Livestock Council that's working on on that and it's composed of ranchers and if you conservationists and so yeah, they do. They based it on the market value at the time, an average for the area. They also do a pay for a presence thing, which is um, when you're out in these big allotments, ranchers can't possibly find all the dead cows that happened from anything. Oh yeah, that's what I was going to bring up, is that's the thing you here is they don't know they round them up and they got less than they had, and they can't go and find skeletal remains and make a claim on it, right right. So that's that's a hard things. So there is actually financial impacts two ranchers, real financial impacts and so um. So there's this pay for presence a thing which is based on a formula based on wolves being there and how many cows you have, and so that that's also part of the Mexican wolf live stock payouts. And then there that you're compensating someone without them needing to go and prove specific cases they lost animals, right right, so they Yeah, it's just based on wolves and pups, how many pups are raised with the wolves, so things that are good for recovery, and then how many livestock they have in an area, and then whether or not they implemented proactive things. So that stuff like proactive is like range writers being out there, extra range writers looking for dads, are moving cows away from wolves or different things that you can implement out there on the ground to try to avoid predation as well. And those things aren't of they aren't the golden they aren't the silver bullet, right, So there's still depredations that can occur despite those things happening out there, and some of them aren't found. How many individual animal payments get paid out in a typical year, Uh, it's pretty consistent that you know the number that are depredated to get paid out most years, So I I not most people put in for the twenty to fifty animals that are killed in terms of the livestock loss. And then there's some components that are missing and you never find. And now there are cases where um, I'm sure, I mean like isolated. Was it a common problem where you're not able to come to consensus that the livestock owner and the investigator aren't able to get down the same page about the cause of death. Yeah, some of that happens with the investigator, but the investigators trained been through a lot of different ones and and so that's why they're professionals. And what they do, and so that's where we go with is what the investigator does and it makes a call in the end. So um, so that's kind of the way it goes out there. There was one permittee a long time ago who decided that he didn't want to have Wildlife Services out there, who works on him with you know, coyote control all this kind of stuff, works with the ranchers, and decided instead to have the Fish and Wildlife Service out there doing its investigations. And what I would tell them all the time is like, look, this is this would be the same exact call. Wildlife Services would make the same call that I'm making here. Wildlife Services would make the same call. There's no differences. So over and over and eventually he went back to Wildlife Services doing it. And so I that the evidence is evidence. Do you do do you make? Do you go on a lot of those calls? I do on some, but and I've been out there trapping for with for removals, with depredations and stuff like that with wolves that are out there, and so yeah, when there's big problems, then I get hauled out of my office. Occasionally I get I get to go out in the field when it's not fun like one, there is conflict. Yeah, So I don't get the sense that you haven't, that you're like losing a ton of sleep at night about this whole thing. It's it's funny. I've had people come up to me and say, you're such a nice young man, John, Why did you choose to do this? Why did you doing something productive with your life? And so you know, and and how can you sleep at night? And I think what I try to do out there is relate with people. So I relate with the livestock producers out there fairly well. I have a lot of common out common values, uh land being out open land that they provide out there, the waters that are out there and maintained by them, that's good for hunting and and fishing. So all those common values are there. Now I'm choosing a lifestyle where you don't make a lot of money, but you enjoy being outside. So there's a lot of commonalities that are all over the place, and so you try to establish those commonalities with those guys. Aren't like, I know how I'll get rich on a candle in the day, right, There's no, that's not They do it because it's their family thing, and they love it and they love the land that they're on. So that's that's why they're they're in the business, most of them, yea. And you find common grown on that sure. And so the point is it's like if someone else is here who doesn't have those same values, are those same kind of working together goals, then it doesn't work out as well. So I think both can be there. Livestock can be on the landscape and a multiple use hunters. I'll still hunt. Wolves aren't gonna drive me out of hunting, and so U and wolves as well. There's there's enough room for all of it to be there out on the landscape. Would I guess probably not. But let's say let's say all of a sudden whatever have delisting occurred. Um, you'd probably never be like, hey, I'm gonna go on a wolf hunt. I probably wouldn't. I haven't hunted bears. I've been tangled up with wolves. Yeah, you've already caught a whole bunch of them. I haven't hunted bears or lions either, And that's just the person. I have nothing wrong with it. I have zero and zero problems with any hunting. But when you map out your year, you're like thinking about elk elk dear. Yeah, just I was kind of. It's just what I like to hunt turkeys. I really like calling things too. I like that interaction getting in close with things. So wolves too, hauling up bulls. Like if you go out and you're looking for a pack of wolves, Like early on, I remember looking for a pack of wolves in Montana and I got the tip from this ferrier guy shooting another guy's horses. He says, if you want to find wolves, you should go over here. So I go over there and I'm driving along and doing just howling at night, and then they all want to do how just straight out? Yeah? Can you let one rip right now? You don't want to as long as you do it right after me. No, I bet you got a good one. So but you need the moon up in the sky and you need to tip your head back right. That'll do it right there. Uh yeah, something like what's that? What's that call? Saying I don't know they had into that. They haven't told me anything. I got a buddy that he thinks like I got a buddy that when he's doing wolf calling, he's it's like he's like, oh, yeah, I'm saying this, and he's saying that he's I'm answering him back this question. Do you think he's right? I don't know. I don't know either. So you don't have like you're not like I'm gonna throw the old roundup call at him. Well, no, I don't have non challenge caller. I just try to like hell to get him to respond, and I'm thankful when they do. So you haven't found like you're not. You haven't found that there's different. Well, I'm doing a break. How so when you hear my voice break from hill, that's a kind of a break how that? So would that be called like a locator call? Calls that? Right? Yeah, I mean wolves are always looking for other wolves, so they're always it's just a just a hell you can do a flat how and you just you don't really do that break kind of in your if you can avoid it. I can't. But you don't feel that that sends a different message. I don't know. They just they just they respond. Well, So if you get them at the right time of year, pups love to talk. So if you get them in about August September time frame, the pups will all start yakking, and the adults will break in and you get although wolves howling out there, but anyways, just howling along in a new area and you get that response and you say, oh god, I just found a pack of wolves that's oncollared unmarked. Um, that's pretty cool. Yeah, you like the uncollared ones better. You like the wild ones. Oh yeah, that's that's near because that's a collar group. You go, bee bee beep on there it is, and now I'm gonna howl and sometimes they respond and sometimes they don't, and I'm piste off when they don't, and I'm kind of like, well I did what I should have got done if they do. Yeah, So yeah, I mean I like the real wild ones Alaska. Yeah, I just I mean not that I'm down on the other ones, but want something, um, and it's important work. But once something gets caught, something and it changes. Man. You know. But I was pointing out one day and I was like, but then like, it's sweet when you catch when you shoot a bird, it's got a band on it, right, So it's it's like very inconsistent. Uh uh. They're all interesting. I mean catching them is interesting. You walk up to them, handle them, with nothing but a y stick, you know, so you're just kind of why stick them down and then you hand inject the drugs. I wouldn't do that with the lion Darta lion darta bear grizzly bears back in the day when I was handling them. You can why stick one of those things? Right? You have to make sure you're out of the path of the snare where it's destroyed around the tree. And so, I mean wolves are, but some of them are aggressive. Some of them will bark and howl and growl at you until you get them pinned down. Mainly the alpha's so, but it's it's tricking a getting them draft is hard. So every time I trap them, I handle them with a lot of respect and then uh, because it's I it's my responsibility at that stage, and I'm happy with myself because it's hard. Yeah, you can't be out killing them on accident nine. So wildlife work in general, you have some mortality that occurs with handling animals. That's a reality, so you don't you want to minimize that to an absolute smallest amount possible. So we take training every year with vets. Let go through stuff and try to minimize that to the greatest degree possible. So I can only think of a few instances where we've killed bowlves out there. Yeah, I'm sure to some degree inevitable that once you handle a certain number of them, Yeah, you get enough, you have it and so um big horn, cheap captures. Some will die from that and so all the captures. That's a part of it. So you have to evaluate whether your goals of your project and whether your goals of handling that animal is worth taking that risk. And so that's that's always what you do out there with with these kind of projects. It's not just cool you just go catch one to see, just have some fun catching them, right right, there's a purpose behind everything. So al right, be honest, that was great. That was fantastic. Oh, I did find the number of New Mexico hunters killed last year fourteen and a half thousand, and wolves are and and know it's different because they're in New Mexico and Arizona and all that, but wolves kill how many in the in the chunk land they got right now? I think we put the estimate around sixteen twelve to six hunter So basically in order what percent of New Mexico is the wolf recovery area. Percent of the carry I don't know. There's a lot of elk up north um in New Mexico, so maybe the elk population probably is in wolf country. So you fellas that hun elk you Yeah, you are right, what's that there's some elk to get one. It's true. It is a tradeoff you're dealing with. Yeah, you're dealing with some elk that would wind up in your freezer, will wind up in the belly of a wolf. Right, it's competition. Right. But on the other hand, uh, do we have the right to dust off species off the face of the earth forever? That's a theological It's like it's a spiritual almost theological question. You get to say, now that one doesn't get to live anymore, it will be gone for eternity because it inconveniences me. Um and and I don't know, when you're out there hunting, you're in grizzly bear country, or you hear wolves, holland or any of that stuff. To me, it's just it makes it a little more interesting. Yeah, everybody. That's the thing. That's one of the weird things about it is people um when talking about wolves. People in the naturally are like it gets their hackles up because of they don't want to see their deer and elk resources diminished, and they're hard on moose in the north too, seriously hard. So, um, you don't want to see it diminished. But then there's you're almost not a human if there's some party that doesn't get a little tickled when you hear one of those things rip out of how sure? And some people, I mean ranchers, like they're out there there are a lot how means I could possibly having an impact on my wallet? Yeah, right tonight? And some of their answers get you know, at first I hated that sound, but then I was like, man, that's amazing. That's a neat sound to hear. So I gotta give him. I gotta give him that much, you know. And so I think, yeah, I think the real key and this is easy to say, it very hard to do, but I think, like kind of the key from from my conversations and my exposure to a wide variety of people across the wide variety of landscapes, is that, um, a lot of people who are upset about projects like this, they're kind of what they're afraid of is being told half the story or to have the story change later. And I think that if there was um not that there's a lack of transparity, but there's it's difficult to project how these projects are gonna go and then what the legal processes are gonna be like down the road, and it leaves people feeling burned when someone told him recovery will look like this, but then it doesn't. And then it doesn't and you're like waiting for some kind of relief from maybe some of the sacrifices you're making, and the relief doesn't come, and it leads people with the real bad tasting their mouth. And what I hate to see is anyone who's old enough to remember like the spotted owl situation the Pacific Northwest, where an animal loses its like essence and just becomes a symbol for conflict. You know, It's like someday people will be able to hear spot of the owl again and visualize a burden. But for many people, when you hear spot it all, you don't visualize a bird. You visualize distrust and conflict and right and it's and I hate it when uh and I hate to see like other animals that I love a lot. I hate to see them become symbols for um uh, symbols for something besides just their their essence as a wild animal. But wolves have been symbol for something beside their essence of a lot more for a long time. You know what, it's very hard to find the animal. It's very hard for people to find the animal within the animal. Yeah, they are just giant walking metaphors. I mean, it's been forever, right, Europeans coming over here, the whole thing. Yeah, No, you're right, they are. The owl did enjoy owlness about the wolf. It's been a long time since the wolf was able to enjoy his wolfness. I don't know what the caveman we're thinking about. It may go back that far. They felt something, they heard that when they heard that howl ripping h sitting by the fire, they weren't I bet they weren't passive about it. Why fire was invented? You need some comfort? Well, I appreciate you guys talking about this man. It's like, um, you know, I feel vested in it. And also it's just fascinating, right, and it's like, what a luxury that we're that that Uh, what a luxury that as a nation we're in a position where we could be talking about whether or not how many wolves we want. Right, there's a lot of nations trying to figure out if they're going to be a nation tomorrow, you know, and like it's like a real uh, it's a luxurious problem man, to be like how much wildlife do we want? First world problem? First world problem. And when you look at it in Mexico, they're reinducing them and so they have problems with they can't access particular areas because the drugs, right, they have people that are hungry. The wolves are competing with subsistent food right for people. So this is it's a bigger issue. The fact that they're trying to recover wolves down there too is is a fascinating thing. More social issues that are far more important. I'm gonna brush up by my Spanish and go talk to those boys. And it's all private land down there, right, So it's entirely private. You have some national designations on top of private lande. So ranchers where they're doing the reroduction, they have to get ranches to agree to reinduce wolves on their ranch. Those ranches, we me and Yanni have been fortunate to spend some time chasing around down there, and uh, those ranches are like wilderness area equivalents. Sure, there's you be talking to ranch. He's like, well, I haven't been over there in three years. I mean, just like you spend days up hunting maybe now and then you glass up some dude riding the mule, you know, off in the distance. But it's some wild country, man, it's some real wild country. Carl. You got anything, I've got a theme, and it's the theme of one way streets, all right. Things that are hard to take back. So the notion that, for example, preventing an extinction versus trying in the aftermath to respond to an extinction, we've talked about a bit um, the notion that this particular species and others have been so close to the brink. And your point about the the small percentage of species that have been listed and then delisted is de listed because of recovery, right, Well, your point is well taken. But this species, the grizzlies another example, are in far better straits now than they were when they popped onto that list. And I think it's important to remember this, this piece of legislation's only about forty four years old, um, And if you contemplate the amount of time it takes for a species to evolve and the amount of successful work from a conservation perspective that's been achieved during that short period of time, there's a lot to feel really good about. But some other one way streets that are relevant here. One is the loss of a way of life and the changing approach in rural communities to interacting with the land, and the challenges that some of these communities face just in terms of keeping these traditional uses on the landscape. And I love the way John talks about the the approach he takes interacting with those folks. And I know the Center has got a phenomenal skill set as well in terms of relating to these people. And it's not a phony thing. I mean, these guys understand the value of relating to people who are losing cattle, relating to people who are who are on you know, lifestyle occupation. Yes, And I know both of these gentlemen, and I very much value the fact that there are people out there contributing to the retention and of undeveloped land. And that's the last one way street that I'll leave you with is this notion that, uh, once you lose open be at public or private land to development. That's another one way street that is rarely undone. So I see, No, that's a very good point to bring up. I see these these concepts being in the same vein the notion that once something is committed, be at development, be at the loss of a species, be at the urbanization of a culture. It's a heck of a lot harder to bring that back than it is to preserve it. Yeah, point taken. It's good. It's better to yell at your kids when they're little than bail them out of jail when they get older. All right, YEA, Honestly, you didn't have anything. Oh, I gotta do you do you have you any final thoughts? I don't just thank you for bringing up this topic and allowing it to be discussed. Appreciate it. I got a final thought. Um a correction. We're talking sometime ago about um Custer Custer's last stand, and a lot of military guys wrote in that we were using brigadier general the wrong way. Custer, Uh, a breeder general has nothing to do with what we're talking about. I was talking about when during the Civil War, when they had a lot of attrition of officers, they were promoting other officers into into general ships or into the general position on a temporary basis to make up for how quickly they were losing officers. That term, it's not brigadier is a breveted general like Custer when he was when he was a general, Custer was a breveted general, not a brigadier general. And when he died, he was. He died as I believe, lieutenant colonel. So a lot of dudes from the military wrote in um, not in a mean way, just wrote it into be like, dude, you're way off on what a brigadier general is a breveted general. Did they define the brigadier Yeah, I can't remember now what it has to do with like man, omn, just bear with me a minute. I'm just gonna give it right from the We're just gonna get right into it here. Oh you know this, give give this guy your headset Johnnie. No, No, we're gonna let's do We're gonna do it. Ah, you can say stuff from the background. Okay, all right, So if you're not collortable, here we go. Uh. This this feller Alan is saying, uh f y, I just a point of clarification on the subject of bridgie brigadier gener gerals. Brigadier generals are not he's quoting me fake or quote temporary generals. Yeah, the term I called Custer fake general. Um, there are in fact full generals, but the brigadier is a reference to the type of unit they have traditionally commanded, brigades. I think the correct term you're looking for is brevet. Breveted generals were officers of a lower rank who are temporarily or honorarily given the rank of general Brevit's usually occurred during times of war. In this case, Brigadier General Brevett Custer was a regular Army lieutenant colonel who has temporarily promoted to brigadier general during the Civil War and later again to major general. He was actually a lieutenant colonel at the time of his death. So my apologies to uh all you find folks of service who uh who took offense to be talking about fake generals. Oh, that's it, right, that's it. Hey, thank you, Steve, appreciate the time. Yeah, thank you, thanks for listening to everyone.