00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me e your podcasting a shirtless severely bug bitten in my case, underwear lessening past. You can't predict anything, Okay, Jim Williams and your your book Path of the Puma. We gotta talk about that name. We will, but I think I'll tell you. The thing that surprising most about that book, like the singular fact that I would have never imagined, is that you're saying in here that, like at the end of the last ice Age, so the place of seeing Hollo scene transition, when we lost all the crazy animals everybody likes to think about, like ma'am as the massodons, that the North America lost mountain lions. Yes, well, so the genetic work that's been done is that um, mountain lions and and other species retracted south for a little while and then recolonized a second time. So if you show if you had shown up, um, if you had shown up on the Great Plains or the Rockies or anywhere in what we now consider like the lower forty eight, there was a period of time nine thousand years ago, ten thousand years ago, whatever, when you wouldn't have found a mountain lion. Potentially, yes, but there were other species of cats here too. There was an American lion, yeah, but they went extinct cheetah. Yes, at different times. I mean, we don't know exactly, but with the fossil record and now with some of the genetic work with the cats, yes, there was a big retraction where perhaps they weren't there depending upon where you were, and then refilled in, like filled back in from South America. Well, yeah, you got the Central American and bridge and the conditions that were there that were conducive to not only cats, they need something to eat, they have to prey. So there was probably some mix of you know, is there food in the grocery store or are their shoppers you know, or both? And and yes that that that's the current thought and right now, so they refilled in. And is it true that now or was it true at the time of European contact or is it both? I guess that mountain lions are enjoy the widest distribution of any land mammal in the Western hemisphere. Yes, yes, you're correct on on on both counts. And if you think about it, um, you know, there was all always native cultures present and and mountain lions, and and that there's a whole bunch of different names for mountain lions as humans, and depending upon on on tribal culture and ancestor stories, there's lots of different names, depend upon you're out in the United States and in which tribe they play a significant role in in pre Columbian civilization and in the Americas, and then of course, um, you know, as this country was settled by white Europeans for the most part. Yeah, the cats were here from coast to coast, and slowly but surely, you know, we were really effective at at reducing a whole host of species moving west. Yeah, I want to talk about that project of a limit, like are very successful but not totally successful efforts to eliminate them from the face of the earth. But what so they can extend from you talk about in your book. That's why I set the table here a little bit. You talk about in your book there's an area in Patagonia where they prey on penguins, and then they're all the way up into southern Yukon. Yes, so they're like they're like it's a continuous it's like a continuous strand of them extending that distance pretty much. So it's fascinating to me and as a wildlife biologist and particularly working in Montana or you know, in the Western United States, per se to find you know, my colleagues down there picking cats up with penguins in their mouth. And these aren't the ice penguins you think of. These are the magillantic penguins. But they're very similar. They're a penguin and they they nest in these colonies like a peri dog colony right on the coast. And what you have to remember with a cat with a puma and and by the way, a mountain lion, a cougar of puma, it's all the same thing. You know, we'll talk about sub subspecies if you know, I want the subspecies and popular names are things I want to get quick. Well, So the back to the penguins though, if you think about it, this animal, it's a very efficient um stock and ambush predator and they typically and most of the research that's been done take the most vulnerable and abundant prey. And Kenny logan researcher in New Mexico, worked on cats for a long time. Um that was actually his quote, and it's it's it bears out in every single project. So if penguins are there, it shouldn't surprise us. But to me it looked very awkward to see penguin in a puma's mouth on a camera trap photo. And then you go north. You mentioned the Yukon, so you know, unlike a Lynx or even they're more similar to a bobcat at puma is. But unlike a Lynx, which is built for the cold, deep snow, they're light, they got thick fur um you know, the whole hair Lynx relationship amount lines kind of the sports car of the cats there for shorter. They need a lot of meat. They're gonna sink in the snow, so there you know where they can get around and where they can be effective at finding food. It's going to be limited a little bit moving north, So historically about central b c. Alberta, there's kind of a line. But as we've explored and opened up habitat for um oil and gas, there are strips of land that produce all of a sudden deer and elk food, and deer and elk can move north while on the backs of deer and elk, these cats have punched the north into the pretty far north and in fact, the furthest North was a cat that was found frozen in the back of a of an old car. And uh, I read about that, but I don't even understand it. Yeah, it probably curled up in there, probably thought it was you know the cats like cover. We can talk about that too, But probably I thought it was a great place to rest and starved to death. Cattle starve to death. Mountain lions do. And you know every year, depending upon where they're at and and there their plane of health and winter condition and pray abundance, they can starve. I mean, if they don't eat, they die. Didn't one turn up? I remember reading this years ago, that one turned up in the Mackenzie Delta, but its the years have been frozen off. Yeah, that's pretty common. I've I've handled cats even here in Montana with you know, the tips of the tail, the tips of the years. Uh, you know, winters. We we we live a pretty cushy life. We're not out there nature. A friend of ours just how in Handler. I don't know if he killed her friend call, but they killed one that only had three toes And what do you think fight or do you think it could have been frost fighter? And lose it to that I'd be guessing. Yeah, yeah, all the above. Yeah, I found him. You know, I've had a cat. I talked about him in the book as a male. Yes, how Man named him, you know, and I call it cat number six or whatever. But it's just you know, as biologists, you're trying to name stuff. But you know, my Howman, they named every single animal because they know and they can relate to that. And he was missing an eyeball. I mean, probably lost it in a fight with another male, would be my guess. You know. Yeah, that was an interesting story reading about old Hoss. Another cool story. Yeah, an rcle story in the book? Is it this? I know this wasn't you, but there's an eyewitness account of a lion we got. Let's the next thing we talked. I was, let's talking about names, and let's settle on a name. A lion. Mountain lion is on a mule deer. Someone sees this. The mule deer bucks the lion off and then they getting a scuffle and he actually sticks the line when his antler. That happened right out. If you look at your window here in Bozeman, on the top of the bridgers there was some muel deer researchers flying radio meal deer and they were spending and got to watch that whole scenario unfold up on the divide here, and then you got to witness from a helicopter lion bust to move on a big horn but then lost the big horn. Yeah, it was kind of our fault. You messed on up. We were doing an annual sheep survey and I had a graduate student down there. That's the chapter on ontary ink and the work in the gates of the mountains there. But we were my pilot was about to retire and it was one of his last flights and we were flying sheep and I had it just so happened, the capture crew and the graduate student coming down the hill for the morning. When you fly, you have to go with the cracking on where it's less windy, it's safer and the animals are out right. And so we're kind of going up this mountain slowly looking at you know, different sheep and um. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a couple of hound boxes on trucks coming down along the baretooth gaming It's got long, muddy road but just you know, you just kind of see it, but you're back on the task at hand. We're looking at sheep and I see this flash going up below me, and I thought, and I took a look. And this is back before digital cameras. I had one of those thirty five milimeter pandas at my feet. It was a little more clunky, and I got that thing up and I yelled lyon and my pilot, you know, he was very good, and he was just on it in a second, and it was it looked like a big male just racing right up on a big horn ram. And of course the cat. The ram went one way and we're in the chopper, and the cat went to the other and stopped and turned around and he literally looked at us, almost in disgusted. But then then he you know, then it was like, what the heck is that? You know, we're in a chopper and noisy. The houndsman then treated the cat right. Well, it's kind of a funny story. So my my pilot was, you know, near retire. He was mature and uh and and I told him, I said, you know, the capture crews here, get back down to the headquarters where the old ranch buildings and the and the guys were just pulling in with the dogs and the tranquilizers and the gear, and so he took the helicopter and we just bombed down and landed and uh and I said, you know, I believe this is a cat right up there on the knoll. And they're like huh. And they get start yanking dogs and leashes out of boxes and um, and they got their gear and the grad students ready to go, and and off they go on foot up the drainage, you know, following the helmon. And we kept the dogs on leash or you just don't turn them loose until you get a track or they get a real good cent right kind of shortly leash them and uh, my pilot's like, let's just sit right here. He goes, We're I'm too old for this. He goes, We're gonna fly up there. So we you know, it was on the wildlife management area, so we waited, and sure enough, the cat um treat immediately. The dogs, you know, babe treat pretty quick. And it was kind of a grunt to get up there. And away they went. And as soon as we could hear those dogs barking tree. That's the term, the how man use the barking treede Um, we hopped in that top or I've never done this before. It almost felt guilty. And we flew up, landed on the top, turned it off, and I walked down and and uh, there's a cat in the tree. And we started to process and it was kind of a crazy day combination Big Horn Mountain lion day. Real quick, before we get into the names, um layout, how you spent your career, I mean, you spend your career immersed and wild boy, but just give us a quick sketch of that. Okay, so um, I guess what first, it's kind of it's kind of cheesy. But when I as a kid, you know when when color films and back in the early seventies and and no joke, my parents took me to an whole Disney movie called Charlie the Lonesome Cougar. I never knew then. Clearly they end up spending a career in and out of people and cats at that time. But to this day, it's still as cheesy as all get out. But I still love it. Those are inspirations that well, I mean, you know, I love like, that's a cool species, that's a cool animal. And I was born in the farm country of Iowa, and I always looked to the west, and I knew bears and moose and links were out there. And uh, but you know, we we're in Iowa. Pheasants and deer were not that common when I was sure. Man, I was born in sixty one, you know, and my dad was on the football team for the Hawkeyes and Ioa City and and but I get that for Fishing Game magazine as a kid, you know, random that was the greatest magazine. Remember, written a couple of stories and there years ago, and and but I get that, and I couldn't wait for it. And we had had a little muskrat trap line right got me out. But eventually, you know, farm country, you know, had some difficulties. My parents were a muskrat trapper. Oh yeah, yeah, I got a hat, little trooper hat. You know, some run around a bunch of Victor number one single long springs, no doubt, yes, and uh and and then you know, Connor bears weren't too popular until later. And actually had had a great time on a trap line. It freeze out here in Montana when I was a field biologist out a Great Falls um just thousands of muskrats there, and we had a just and I was lucky to get one one year and and although it was you know, minus zero, but yeah, it's it's you know, it's just another cool experience. But yeah. So I went from Iowa. I landed in San Diego with my mom and and I kind of everything I did and went a little too far south, but you know what, I loved it. I mean as four blocks from the beach and Pacific Beach, and I learned how to long board and and you know, kind of eventually a friend of mine give me a mask and I stuck that mask on and looked underwater, and wow, it was just the marine life inspired me. So that man, I got to get a biology degree. It was marine biology, was mindergrad. A lot of events, sea world and ocean world, a lot of different jobs I had, um eventually I was at I finished my undergrad at Florida. Stay started at San Diego State, finished at Florida State. My dad went there from Iowa, right and his wife Jedty, and so I got to Florida and I got my marine biology degree and I ended up working for another oceanarium called Ocean World. It was a very small nineteen sixties fifties looking really the kind of places they got like tanks with fish and tourists come look at them. Oh yeah, and and and I enjoyed people, and and I got hired. They knew I worked at Sea World, So I got hired to you know, do the dolphin show and a and a sea lion show. And they never had to wrestle alligators. Didn't tell me that when I got the job, but that was interesting. Um and and this was shan Oh yeah, I got friends. My nickname was Balona Jim and uh so, oh yeah. It was pretty funny. And in fact, in the alligator show they even had a had a little spiel that they'd say Jim was, you know, was abandoned as a child in the Everglades and raised by seminole. The terminal trial had to wrestle alligators, have blonde hair, blue wide right. It was kind of hockey, but nonetheless pay the bills. And that was in the mid eighties and right before Yellowstone Burn eighty eight. Um, I'll never forget. So I came back to my apartment in Fort Lauderdale, there's a bunch of bullet holes all over kind of the garage and had crack. This is that my m vice cigarette boat days and his apartments on Little Canal and some some kind of crime went bad and without enough and cable TV just came out, and I think it was out of Atlanta, the crash course in American history. Yeah, so I a TV came on and I saw that Nature I don't know what it was called Science Nature a Discovery. It was the first one. And they had the Craighead brothers working a bear in the park and the bear comes off the drug prematurely and both brothers, you know, they were putting a radio called they were experimenting with the first tranquilizers and radio callers. They jump in this old station wagon and Yellowstone and that bear just pile drives into it, charging it mad, and and I just remember thinking, wow, oh man, that's just really cool. I want to go out west. I still had that yearning to go out west. Right, and so I this is pretty Google pre compute. Well not the mainframe computers were around. We had punch cards. But so I got to the library to the card catalog, right, and I pulled out papers from schools around Yellowstone. Right away, I was inspired, and I landed on Bozeman. And that's how I found Huh who rode something on bears and big Game and Elk and Harold picked in Huh. Okay, So I went got home, called him and no, Joe, ok I just said, Hey, this is Jim. I want to go to graduate school. I want to work on you know, you know, bears, elk, deer sheep something. And he goes, where where are you calling from? And I said, well, Florida. What do you do? Mr Williams a gator wrestler. I say, I'm a dolphin trainers And I told him and there was this long, pregnant pause and he goes, do you know it's snows in Montana. I'm like, oh God. Anyway, he goes, you don't have a chance in hell unless you'd show up and get relationships. I got a line of students from here and all over the world. Bozeman's kind of the mecca for wildlife work here. You know, we're very lucky with the colleges here for wildlife and fisheries. So okay, I'd loaded everything into my jeep. Hung an old shark jaw on my mirror and drove out west and he eventually walked into his office and he fell out of his chair. And anyways, still a dear friend today. And he showed up at one of my book signings in Seattle, which was kind of heartwarming too. But that's how I got to Montana thirty years ago eight alright, when Yellowstone was burning, well, I came. He actually had me working on bighorn sheep, black bear moose, trying to create a funded study to get a master's degree. Right, it's got to be funded. You have have a stipend. And I had a lot of projects that were like really good, but then they stopped. And then one day I walked into his office. He called me in and he was sent out and he throws this Morris Horknock or he's kind of the patron saint of Pumas on the planet, did all the original work, and another dear friend. But he throws his monograph from Idaho, the first study ever done on on Puma's mountain lions, if you will, on my lap. And I looked at that, and I'll never forget. I looked at him. I said, oh yeah, and he goes well, you gotta pass the test. I had to go up and meet the biologist in Augusta, and you know, I'm Florida in California. I'm like, okay, this will be good, and I drove up. Then we hit it off right away, and so yeah, then from then on, whether it was working on cats directly, supporting students, working on cats, working on hunting seasons for cats, you know, working with South Americans and cats, and thirty years goes buying a blank. All right, okay quick, So yeah, I'll say a name for one, and then you say a name for one, and then you say a name from one. We'll see how if we can get around twice. Paint painter, catamount, panther, cougar, Puma, Panji, mountain, lion. I'm out. Yeah, he's tapping out what would be miss? I mean think he wrote, um, you did catamount right? Yeah, like in back in Boone's day, Daniel Boone's day, they said painter, yeah, painters yea. And there's some South American names too. That's what I'm drawing a blank. Uh Puma, panti oh cis quick? My my, my colleagues, and and say the s and coutiney tribes and I'm mispronouncing that and and but then it's the word for mountain line. Why are there's so many names? I personally think that as as humans, you know, when we you know, you know, we you know, we evolved in and came out of ray data of Africa, right and you had hunt your hunter gatherers originally. And and I think that as humans around the planet, we hold these both prey species and predators or large carnivores in very high regard. And uh and we as because we're humans and typically not the prey. Now we associate with the predators. And I think when you do that, whether it's native cultures or or or around the world or even today, people kind of associate. If you're a deer hunter, you know, you realize how clumsy you you are versus own mount line and how they are not you know. And I just think people create folklore and stories and camp fires stories because we can associate and relate to them a little bit. You know, as a deer hunter, when you're pursuing deer, you're kind of doing what a what a mountain lions doing? Right? And I imagine three time snow lepperds, tigers cats the same. These different cultures around the planet all have different um folklore stories on how they relate to that fellow carnivore. It's kind of surprising in the name thing. I don't want to be it's death, but it's interesting me because uh mule deer, right, not a hell of a lot of ways, you know, most things there's not. But then you have these kind of like examples like that this thing that that carried so many titles with it, so many names with it, you know, wolverines, right, besides indigenous languages, but like in our popular vernacular, there's no option. But you'll be sitting around talking to guys that like mountain lions and people be calling them lines, cats, cougars the same. People will use the same different words then you would describe at the time of European contact. Let's just use that like a baseline. We kind of touched on that that there might have been a dark age for mountain lions prior to the arrival of Man or contemporaneus with the rival Man where they got knocked back and still had some strongholds in South America. But like European contact, coast to coast right coast to coast and lower forty eight side to side, top to bottom. How was it what enabled us to damage them so bad? Well, I think two things. You gotta We had kind of a um collectively um the settlers, um. You know, the European settlers are referred to as white visitors and strangers. If um, we had a kind of a colonial um oh method to our madness. It was pretty much eliminate anything. There was good animals and bad animals, and the good animals provided food into bad animals will compete with us for that food. And I think, um, not only mountain lions, but all carnivores, wolves included with poisons and bounties. Um, you know, we were pretty effective and and frankly we're pretty effective with onulets of well contradiction there as we eliminated a lot of good ones too. But you know what, we limited the good ones on accident, and we eliminated the bad ones like very intentionally. Oh yeah, and today that's still pervasive today. I mean it's human nature in my mind, if it's if a fellow hunter, whether it's a person or an animal, competes with us for our our groceries or what we like to do. You know, it sets up conflict to some degree. And but we yeah, we were collective collectively as a society, very effective using poisons and bounties and most of those were eliminated in about nineteen sixty. But there was a period, especially on the wildlife restoration days. You gotta remember World War two. Right after or it ended, the g I Bill was created and that created a lot of graduate programs for fish and wildlie biologists. Right, it was a big turning point um once they got here. It was it was restore big horns, it was restore mountain goats, restore elk believe it or not, restore whitetail, deer and mildeer and antelope, which are pretty common. Now. That's that's interesting. I never heard that that idea about that. So many guys coming in and get an opportunity to go to college. Yeah, created like helped create wildlife program some states, believe it or not. Stephen they there was a directive to come home and create more meat on the landscape, wild meat for our boys when they got home from the war. And so and then you have out a leopol creating this initial game management programs and others, and you had this kind of almost magical nexus. I don't know if it happened today, of creating the academic program, but most important, creating the funding mechanism of the Pittman Robertson Act where it's a user pay system, right, and and the creating the actual wildlife and fisheries management kind of programs in the country and a funding mechanism together, then wildlife was able to take off state by state? Do you know? Do you understand how? You know? I've read about the wolfers, who would who would poison wolves and how and I don't know, you know, idot like fact check this that carefully, but it just seems like to be a thing, you um, it just seems to be like generally accepted that as the as the market hunters eliminated bison, some of them transitioned quite smoothly into being predator guys. Wolfers, and I had read about how they would take a animal, take an ungulate they're buffalo or whatever, and kill it, but very quickly inject stryct nine into its circulatory system so that while it's heart still pumping, it would lace the entire body and then they would the wolfers would let that sit and then go out and look around and collect up poison stuff. Is that your understanding about, because everybody likes to talk about poisoning grizzlies, poisoning mountain lions, but what does the like, what was the actual delivery mechanism. Well, that's that's good and I have not heard that although you know that makes sense, it's kind of makes sense. But poison lace bates. And again, we got to think about right now, we think about cattle on the landscape, and I'm talking the West primarily, but it was domestic sheep back in the day, right back when most of that and and domestic sheep can almost they're kind of fragile, especially when it comes to even small carnivores around coyotes, you know, bobcats, I mean domestic sheep, uh, And they all had herders. And protecting flocks of domestic sheep in mountainous areas is extremely difficult, more so than cattle even, And so poison was a common way to control predators. And again it was that whole concept of good animals and bad animals, lacing baits, lacing poison math. But what happened is it's indiscriminate killing. So not only do you kill the bear, but you kill the fisher at the martin, the wolverine, the eagle, you kill anything that comes around, depending upon the poison that was used at the time, So it's some it's it is indiscriminate, and even birds of prey and and so it was very effective. And then you throw a bounty on top of that. Yeah, explain how those systems were well, depending upon the state and depending upon the government at the time. Um, trappers, hunters were paid for pelts, you know, to turn them in and and and frankly, that's probably created an economic activity in that point in time in our country to you go out and learn how to kill cats, kill bears, coyotes. Um, I don't know. I assumes it probably was. I mean, look, there were some pretty tough times and some pretty rural remote places. I mean, Montana is still frankly remote now think about it. You know, Montana, Wyna, and Idaho, you know, a hundred fifty years ago, it probably was good money for them, or it was survival. Yeah, probably not a lot observed, but there were still bounty systems up through the nineteen sixties, right, correct, Well, yeah, and and I think yes, and there was kind of a staggered rate of eliminating those And and again I'm going to go back to the field of wildlife management was created, right and World War two ended, the biologists got here, and then this whole concept of not just pure game management, but the whole notion of ecology and systems kind of came on board, and that some of the bad animals, which are predators talking about cats want of Manny had a role to play in the ecosystem and out on Leopold, you know, talks about it in Sand County Almanact, the the mountain and the green screen fire dying in the woolf side. But it took him a long time to get there, right, And so that's the thing I think a lot of people, well anybody's read his book knows, but you know, he went out, like when he moved out west, he went out to kill predators. It was he that's his day was spent, has burned his time up try to eliminate predators from landscape. And it has some epiphanies around that. Oh yeah, well, once by I'll just started looking at the habitat and the landscape as as a baseline versus the species that changed a lot. Then then that whole notion of systems um ecosystems came about and landscape ecology and and and what role carnivores play and that you feel that that thinking help usher out the bounty face. Yeah, well that a little bit. But if you want to go there, I'll tell you my thoughts on what happened. And I think I'm right, but arga. But because it's it's let me stack a question in there before you do that, okay, because I feel like it's gonna segue. Uh how bad did it get? Like like how loaded line numbers get very low? They were? And um more. Dr Morris Hornocker, who I mentioned earlier, is kind of the patron saint of poem as that's what I call him in my book. But he's a dear friend of bird hunting fool and he's even still hunting elk and you know, he's long retired, but he had to work in Idaho, in the largest wilderness area left in the United States to get a large enough sample to make it statistically valid to say anything scientifically about cats. That was the first study in the sixties and he couldn't find him anywhere. He couldn't find a population large enough, or that was or he didn't lose the sample every time he put some marks out. This is the early radio colors, right, and your ear tags they're all getting shot still back in the sixties. But then he had to go into the frank Church or something way back to find to find a reasonable population. Yes, big, absolutely so they were really knocked back. You've got landowner tolerance, you've got bounties, you had poisons, and there was this, you know, generations of thought of these good animals and bad animals, and it's hard eliminated from the Eastern US except Florida, as I understand it. Correct. Yes, um, that's interesting too. Yes, there's some there's some pretty remote country in Florida even today in central Florida, on those large swampy ranches, between the insects and the plants, they're pretty harsh for humans. You can be pretty tough to get in there. And you can see why there is some impenetrable areas. But so so basically, like for any like for any practical purpose, there any ecological for ecological viability, okay, never mind like like genetic extinction like ecological viability. Basically everything from the Rockies east excluding a small portion of Florida or Texas down in the very bottom, a little bit in the middle, but still in West Texas eliminated. Correct, that's a yeah, that's that's as I understand now. That doesn't mean that every odd year and mountain lands just like well, it's dispersed a long ways. Yeah, take one shows up, but for all that's what that's what I want to talk about. Is another thing I'd like to get to eventually, if you have time, is the what used to be dismissed in the early two thousand's, even dismisses every lion that showed up in a weird spot. Okay, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan was always an escaped zoo animal, always an escape pet. But then I'd be like, man, it must be a hell of a lot of people letting full grown, clawed, seemingly very wild bellies, full of dear meat mouth lions loose. They show up in freak places. They just get up and go. So, so answer your question about what if you know, I was going to make sure that you hit this point. Yeah, because what you think, what I think but but I wanted people to know how bad it got in order to talk about what saved real bad. And so what I think happened. You had this tradition of it's very difficult to run cats, and that's a term where you turn a trailing hound loose, especially trained to smell the scent of a cat, which we're not capable as humans of doing that, right, But these dogs are their canets, right. They're like a bear. They see the world through their nose. And so they switched from bounties to some recreational chasing to train those and there became a culture of hound men and hound women, but hound men primarily. And as that culture and not occupation but recreational activity UM evolved and became more popular in each Western state. It's something to do in the winter, it's fun to go out. UM. You have all of a sudden people enjoying a mounta lion on the landscape, and the enjoying that relationship with the hound and the cat in the woods, because these hounds and cats will take you to places you've never been. And I think what happened that, well, I know what happened, and I know what happened in Montana is all of a sudden, with the with the science coming on in the biologists in the sixties and seventies were starting to study more things, right, But all of a sudden, you have a user group that is now not biologists. They're pretty earl in nature, they're pretty tough. It's extremely difficult to do advocating for a mountain lion, and that had never happened before outside of maybe someone just you know, thinking they're a cool animal. So now you have this culture and the culture of running cats with trailing hounds in Montana, particularly where I live in northwest Montana, goes back over a hundred years. We have a long winner and there are holman and families and hound women that have dogs and they'll tree and photograph cats all winter long for six months. I was hanging out with the houndsman yesterday morning. He's treated two hundred. Yeah, he's killed two in regrets that regrets the second one really and that that's what wishes he hadn't have done it. They they stephen and they you asked me the question. I think it was the helmand they carried the They punched above their weight politically, you know, with the regulators, whether it was state fish and wildlife commissions, household deep connection to the like, like their families had a long track record on the lands. I go in and make a common as a biologist, you know that. Yeah, Okay, I'm a biologist. Yeah, I'm you know, it's looking at science and papers and research. But if I go in there and I'm a how Man and I known and I I've known your family for three generations, and you're a legislator, and I'm a how Man and my family has been there, you know who they're gonna listen to more. Well, all of a sudden, you got these tough very in the woods all winter long to you everything everything. Their loggers, they're miners there there there, you name it, their ranchers even in some cases in some states. But all of a sudden, you have a user group that really treads theers the opportunity to have that dog cat relationship all winter long. Well, that's a game changer in my mind. Then they, along with the biologists in about nineteen seventy one together to work the state commissions in each state to make them game animals. So you got rid of bounties. In the early sixties, for the most part, but that as soon as cats became a legally classified game animal. And this is a big deal because once that happens in a state, now you have a game warden to protects them with the law that any state can and adopts. All of a sudden, they're treated like a deer and out of season. Take all of a sudden, it's illegal. That is a game changer. And it was the howman working with the Department biologists in these states that that was this wonderful relationship that that made that happen in my mind and to this day and in my country. You know, I write a little I have a whole chapter on season setting in there. It gets kind of wild, kind of western at times. But to this day, the hound men, the hound handlers, uh if you will, are the most stringent advocates for cats on the landscape. And they watch, they watch every move we make. If we think we're killing or prescribing too many females or too many cats in an area, it's the hound handlers that are front and center in Helen at the capitol or at a meeting and beating on the table saying, you know, listen to me. I'm in the woods all winner. This is important to me. That's why I think we have cats. You know, there there's a ceiling of natural density that they don't pretty much go above. But cats recovered because of its good science. It was done, you know, Morris Hornucker started a whole host of students and and we had advocates in the Helman that could influence the local legislators to not eliminate them. You probably get a lot of people that have a hard time believing that or understanding. So in my book tour, I was in Boston, New York, and Chicago, California, Vancouver, BC. I love telling that story. In fact, there's some dear friends that I would put them more in the mutualist their animal protection. They're not hunters, they'll never don't I won't say never, but they'll probably never ever hunt, you know, in a legal season, and they'd be more almost an animal rights kind of philosophy towards a cat. They just want to know they're they're you know, kind of almost a spiritual value. But when I telling that story and a couple of the friends have found out, you know, on their own, attending meetings and seeing it happen firsthand. They get it. And so it's this interesting conundrum of this user group that now and again we'll take the cat. They don't take a cat every year. I know. First people, the houndhandlers are the first people people the animal rights people go after when they want to attack the state's on and fision rights. Correct, So there's an easy cell. Yeah, shooting lines out of a tree? Yes, who would support such a thing? So as as biologists and and so you're pushing that button in me right now, we manage populations and habitat, not individuals as humans. It's so, I mean, it's natural. I I don't want to be if I was a white tail buck. I don't want to be the buck that's gonna get taken. We put human emotions on things, right, but science and data, you know, science, you know it is a method of investigation. Right, do you look at the data that's produced. It's heartless. It's population management. You can animals can die and the populations are fine and grow. But as soon as we put you know, then you get into fair chase and ethics and how do you find that a lot of personal values on it. That's when it gets wonky. And in the social realm that tends to be those fights. What always frustrates me is when those social values try to bleed into the rigorous data on a population management side and and can trumpet. And that's where you see sometimes in courts, and and that will never go away as long as there's people here, of course that's gonna happen. There was a quote from your book that I wanted to wedge in at an appropriate time, but I missed my chance. But I had to do with it. When we were deliberately trying to wipe them off the face of the Earth mountain lions, you had a quote where you said, uh, if we ranched worms, we declare war on robbins. And it kind of goes that that was a good line, man, because it really does like demonstrate um, it's like a thing about us, and it happens, and it happens in a broad, large scale way, like sort of a national agenda, right or you have codified, state sanctioned efforts that you talked about to eliminate them from the landscape. But it's also like really personal too. You go out and plant a garden and you see a rabbit getting that garden. It'll turn it turns any it will turn anyone into a killer. Yeah, well, look at it was like we like to you know, we have a sense of the things that are ours that we're cultivating, and it's we take it in a real bad way. One wildlife steps in and then complicates the process. Yeah, it's it's human. Look at Bozeman, Missoula cow spell with deer in town and trying to grow flowers. You know, of course, you know you invest in it. That's it's it's part of us as humans. Can you real quick talk about we kind of don't like how bad things got and how things started to get better? Um, what happened with Florida with the like how could the inbreeding? Yeah, so it gets complicated. And I'm less familiar with Florida because I've spent my career out here, although I had to live there. And yeah, you spend you I should point out the listeners you spent your career mostly here, but also you spend a ton of time now in Patagonia. Yeah, well and in Florida. When I do, MI integrat at Florida State and actually have some some dear friends. We get to the Mount lion biologist. World's pretty small. We get together every three years at these workshops, and and uh, Florida's kind of fascinating. You look at the footprint of mankind on that state. It's giant, right and and so what's left, what's left is a pretty wild place. Since the middle of Florida there's kind of a corridor. I've seen there's some um conservation groups working on a connectivity corridor up and down the middle and on the coast, the Gulf coast, and then that Everglades up. You know, there's some St. John's River, there's some wild stuff there. But you get any population down to where it's effective reading size, it's just too few females, too few males, you know, inbreeding can be an issue. And with the modern tools we have with genetics, you can you can monitor that. And that's what happened there. They got into a biologists called bottleneck, a genetic bottlenecks. Somewhat. Yeah, that well I wanted I was gonna say fifty. But the good news is now, um My, my two buddies that run the program down there, Um, they're actually you know, transportation is a big problem. They still get to get hit on the road. But they're dealing with panther Florida panther conflict. Do we use that word earlier? Yeah, I think we did. Yeah. Yeah, now that we're back east, I'm I'm referring to them as panthers. But my two friends, they're they're dealing with some agg conflicts. That's actually a good science. It's more work for them, but they've had they've gotten up enough where they're back. Yeah, and it's still nowhere near recovered. Um. It depends on you define recovery and distribution and population. But they're starting to have conflicts and so that's a good sign. UM. But it took a lot of work and a lot of intervention and a lot of TLC down there. But but think about the future. Look at the traffic and the highways and the and the and the highway mortalities. They're always going to have that issue. And they're doing a lot of work with with UM underpass overpass situations. But you talked about that when I went through that bottle, and they because they they developed some irregularities that you can see with the naked eye, kinks, tails and cowards. Yeah. Yeah, so different species are gonna exhibit. There's phenotypic traits, and you know, genotypically they're gonna how that how the genetics are expressed, you know on yourself. It's gonna vary with species. But yeah, they notice some um abnormalities that they attributed to the too few cats. And I remember in solving and I know this isn't your your area of expertise, but I remember trying to solve that problem, they brought in some lions from West Texas, and I remember that raised this question of okay, here, here's this distinct population has been genetically isolated, the Florida panther um. What makes the Florida panther the Florida panther when you truck some some cougars from West Texas and caught them loose? There is it? Now? Is a Florida panther just a pan there that lives in Florida or is it something else? I remember people were like, you know what, the debate at this point is silly, because if we don't do this, you're not gonna have are gone. Yeah, they're gone. So you're gonna have a corrupted population. You're gonna have no population. So there are some brilliant cat geneticist O'Brien and Melanie Culver and I talk about Melanie in the book, but uh, you know, we can the geneticist can look at the composition of these and she so a fun story. Again, this is rolling it back. When I started grad school in in in nine um, there was I think thirtyso subspecies of mountain lions, right, and these are the museum biologists that measure all the skulls and they're kind of called splitters, right, And there's lumpers, right, there's lumpers and splitters, and you know when when it came to museum biologists and my brother says, there's lumbers and splitters and they know who they are. Yeah, well that's all fine and dandy until uh, you know, DNA technology came on board. Right. So I remember Montana had Felis concolour missou lensis. In Colorado had Felis concolor hippolestis. I believe there's no barrier between. No, Well, that's where they split it until they put radios on them. And then when Montana Montana cat got shot in Colorado and vice versa. Wow. Yeah, so then Melanie Culver Collard, you put a collared cat in Montana gets killed by Colorado, and yet they take from Colorado. So they're not even they're not even moving in the same direction. Now. Now it's just there. They distribute their their their DNA, and the landscape through dispersal, both males and females, males to a larger degree, and they can flat out boogie. And but when that happened, it kind of threw everything out the window with the skull traits and others, you know, and they were very well intentioned, but with d NA, Melanie Culver and her team, you know, got down to roughly six and that's still evolving today, by the way. But you know, all of a sudden you have all these subspecies and all of a sudden, okay, you got a patagony one one up north, and you know for maybe less in the middle. That's going to evolve as as science changes, the genetic technology and tools change, but it really shrinks it down a little bit. This is this is way beyond the scope of this conversation. And I wish my brother. My brother is an ecologist, and I wish he was here to articulate his annoyance. But I'm gonna try to articulate his annoyance, which will be to his annoyance dragon. He's like, we're so in love with d n A right now, and we're so in love with genetics right now that we're we're taking this new thing. We used to have this like this Linnaean system. We used to name things on morphology or what it looked like to us or how it interacted with this environment, and that used to be suitable, and then we get this new shiny toy and we're and we're throwing away all of these ideas that made sense at the time in favor of this new shiny thing that we're like, this will be this is more important than all of that. And the a way that it kind of like, I guess the way that were it winds up having some teeth. Is this conversation around if you're from here in Alaska, they're trying to do a wood bison yes, reintroduction. There's a big debate about when they were there, where they went, and but it's like no, because there's planes bis in there that were brought in on a truck and they're thriving in four places. But they want to establish a new population of this other kind that kind of belong there. But geneticists look at it and they're like, it's it's all the same damn thing, Like they've gotten rid of that. There's bison, bison, bison, bison, bison, Athabaska bison, bison, pencyl venous whatever. And so you're using the splitting. You're using the splitting to sort of sell an idea to a population of people, where like, we need to do this because this is the right thing to do, because this is the right kind. We're gonna put the right kind in the right place and we'll get the bad kind out of the right place. I Meanwhile, these other people are whispering into other ear being like this is all mental masturbation. It's the same damn animal. Well, they can all breed. There's not enough genetic dissimilarity to even be engaging this conversation. But then it's also at the same time driving policy. It's kind of a mess. And I know this is beyond the scope conversation, but it's interesting. Yeah, and and no, it it actually relates to two cats and what we're talking about as well. But I think personally for me, and again, i'm kind of more you think where I came up, you know, thirty years ago almost and and where we're at now with these kids coming out of graduate school that are just top not not geneticist. I think we need both. I think you need the natural history, the relationships and the influence what what influenced this species and what drives its behaviors, And you also need to explain it, you know, look at the building blocks. You know, we we can look at DNA now, and we also have a traditional ecological knowledge, the tribal stories passed down from generation. I think we need to put all those in the vat personally. But I always try and do and look at it all as I try and make my own opinions, but to rely solely on on DNA, although you can kind of go to the bank with that science, but there is what does that mean in the environment, right, it's really easy to separate, you know, Alleles, it's not easy, but you can do it. But what's that mean in the environment? And and what should really what should be used more to in policy or court decisions or as biologists you know, so those questions are are kind of unanswered or you know, I mean that they're going to play out into the future as as we can um as as those tools are are improved. But what's exciting is it does answer some pretty paramount questions that we were making guesses at as as biologists years ago. But you're right, it's it's a balance. But you could go grab a line from the southern tip of Argentina and breed it with one from northern BC. Correct, they throw like viable offspring. My that would be my guess. Maybe wrong, but they probably happen. Yeah, but they're very similar. I mean phenotypically they look they're a little lighter in color down there, and they're a little larger, but they're a little more angular to me anyway. But they're very they're they look cats cats cat kind of even behaviorally, I want to I want to get into behavior a little bit. How does the line kill something? They're a stock ambush predator, you know, you think about a wolf or a coyote. Um. You know, they're gonna run their cursarial, they run their prey down, typical cursorial. They're gonna run. They're running cursorial they like like a courser. I don't know. We have to lick it up. Now you're gonna ask me something. I don't know, maybe I miss use the term. But they run their prey down. Now cats, they're they're bill to to you know, sneak in close a short rush of speed to ambush the animal and take it down typically by you know, uh, lethal bite to the trade of the windpipe area. And I know they'll approach front because I've seen video of it, but they prefer to come from the side or back right. Well, I think they'll do whatever they need to do so they don't their their avenue approach doesn't really matter to them. I think cover is really key. You know, there are many forms of stocking cover. You know, there's rocks and trees and grass, but also um light if it's dark, right, So the depending upon how when a prey species is vulnerable, you know, and in in different landscapes, what this habitat structure is. You know that they've evolved to figure out how to take down food. If they don't take them down their dead, you know, like mechanically, what are they doing when they kill something? Like what are they how do they how are they using their body to kill? So if you grab a mountain lion, the paw the front pond you press those digit pads, those claws, they detactable cloths are gonna come right out there. They're just hooks, right, and they're kind of like a mutch of little meat hooks, and so they'll make contact. And I've never witnessed it, and that's one thing I've always wanted to see. Very few people have. Frankly, you know now with cell phones you can see videos now and again. But um, there's tracks in the snow or even the even the decoys are I love the decoys when they have the the archery decoys of a buck and a lion comes in and smacks. I mean, it's pretty cool. But they're they're doing. You can see the tracks in the snow, um, and they typically make contact and either knock the animal over or even in South America you can watch on video and those open habitats in the parks where they're visible, they're gonna wrap around to the track in essentially close the limpipe until they stopped kicking. But they eat small mammals too. They've eaten birds, but primarily a deer sized animal up here, camel the wild camels down there. My friend Floyd Um, who's a houndsman, in Arizona. He's got quite a list of things when he's trailing lions, has seen where they go to get their food where they can and you talk about that they like to eat porcupines. Oh so yeah, actually, how do they? How do they do that? So it's porcupines are funny. You brought that up. So you know, we look at you know, grizzly bears. People are concerned about bears, loons, a lot of you could go through a list of species, right, caribou. But one that's flying under the radar, that is flat out disappeared west of the divide in Montana's porcupines. Yeah, there was campaigns by timber companies to limitate him, you know, for tree damage, and yeah, but you get them low enough. Cats also eat them too. And back when I started, you know, in almost every cat you handled had porcupine quills in its mouth or and its nose. Rarely now we see him a little bit. But something happened to porcupines, disease, predation, poison's habitat, or a combination. We don't know. That's research that needs to be done. Frankly, west of the divide, you go east of the divide, in the coolies, you can find them everywhere, but in the deep green um, you know something's going to diminishing. There's no advocate, there's no Rocky Mountain Porcupine Foundation, no, and and they're actually they kind of have the life history and they're more similar probably to a bear. You know, they have a slow reproducing life history, so they're a little more vulnerable that way. But your question about cats and porcupines, you know they can take a claw on on the on the belt on the underside and and open them up. But oh yeah, every almost every cat you handled a while back had quills and its snows, smaller strange things. I've seen trail camp photos of lions carrying sandhill cranes. Like, just rattle off a little bit of the things you've seen to me. The funniest things that were happened to me is I was cleaning sketch. You'd float their their poop in the water and you separate different samples, right, and you floated in some water and then all these teeny little hookie claws. They were house cats, you know, they leat house cats. And and it turns out then I looked at the remember looking at the data way back as a student and it was right near some cabins, so it was eating cats, you know. But they'll they'll take whatever they can get. If a dog barks, it's typically safe, typically not always, but um, they'll they'll eat um whatever the most abundant and vulnerable prey. But I've had them do marmots. I've had them do grouse, you know. Over the years. Um. Uh, they've taken mountain goats, They've taken big horn sheep. They've even taken moose, domestic horses, uh, big males with There's been damaged cattle at times, although less often up here, it feels I found were one killed turkey one time. It wouldn't surprise me. Um, how much do they need to eat? You talk about this a fair bit. Well, most of the research, most of the literature right now is a is a is a deer sized animal a week typically and for a female and if there's lactation demands, they have kittens. You know, they're trying to provide nutrition for um at least that um. And for a male, I've seen him go a couple of weeks. And in the literature it varies, and every now and again you see little surplus killing. But typically a deer sized animal a week, and you can stretch that the two weeks in some cases, but right in there, so each one is good for about a deer a week. Yeah, And and again they can be greater than a week as well. That could be two weeks, depends on the that nutritional plane of the cat as an a male or female as that kids are not. Yeah, but roughly if you had to pick a number, yes, yeah, you say, how they there's a variability between animals, Oh, yeah, their preferences. Talk about that. And also can you touch on something you explain the book about that they have that there's variability between animals, but then each individual animal has variability throughout the year. Yeah, so it's it's pretty pretty fascinating actually think of how um let's use the Sun River Wildlife Management Area out of Augusta as an example. In summer, there's not a lot of out there. There's a few, but they're all back in the Chinese Wall in the middle of the Bob Martial Wilderness. Right, so the meat with feet, if you will, are dispersed and it can actually be a tougher time. And then and again I didn't have a sample size on that project large enough to make any determinations, but they tended to take these other species like rabbits and grouse. And yeah, when things are spread out everywhere in the winter you have all two thousand head elk would be down on that wildlife management area. Well, all of a sudden, it's like salmon and bears in Alaska, right, all the foods concentrated one area, and cats aren't as social cats per se. Although we're learning more. There's researchers and wyoming UM with cameras that are learning some fascinating things about behavior, but for the most part they avoid each other spatially and temporarily are temporarily but not spatially. They're sharing the same area but at different times. They're still not like African cast just you know, all the casts just grouping up. But there are familial relationships that are being discovered now in some projects by some UM researchers as we as we sit here. But for the most part, the time of the year, the winter, their food is concentrated. In summer it's dispersed only where in white tail deer systems like western Montana, you have a little more abundance and a little more less concentration in many areas because white tails are a little different, you know, they're more continuous in their distribution even within their yards. It seems like from looking at what you talk about and here, it seems that if presented with them, they really like white tailed deer. Oh yeah, way, yeah, there's a lot of meat out there. Are those are the perfect cougar fruit unit if you will. It's the perfect size, just the right size. And I think that's why in northwest Montana with white tail deer, you know, you know, cats were never eliminated. You know, there were still roll this areas in wild country with deer that weren't eliminated either. The deer that was a big deal. If you eliminate prey, you know, you're not gonna have the predators, right, and there was always deer and the West Montana white tells in particular. How are you doing? You are all your needs being met over there? Yeah? You're comfortable? Yeah, definitely. Um. Interesting thing you you said in your book too, that you said a lot of cats can have four or five kids. But but but they'll narrow it down and just raise two. Um, do they kill them. Now typically the average letter sizes too. It can it can be a little more, a little less, but you know you have that. It's interesting. So if for any mammal, you know you're gonna have lactation and there's gonna be you know, how much of the resource do you get that's going to determine how many in the letters survive? Plus a whole host of other variables. You got temperature of the winner and and other other competitors. You know, mail comes around and you know who. There's a lot of things that can happen wolves, um, now with cats, and and that's an interesting dance. Um. But at least typically it's two to two point five in the litter, in the literature and in every project I've known about her been involved with. So it's not like they're having ten kittens. So well, you do talk about some having four. It's been documented, yeah, but common most common you know as a couple, and even those cases with multiples, you see them wind up only bringing to to maturity. Well, no, like I showed a video last night and a presentation of this really gets what generates phone calls. But you had mom and she had four adult size twelvemonth old kittens. They look like adults. You can tell they're a little different looking. But all of a sudden, you've got five lions walking on your security camera. They're high deaf. That generates phone call and and so she's pulled off. And talk about a good provider and the prey of availability in that area and the tolerance that's a family of five and and that's not normal, but but that it happens, yeaheah, for it's a little bit at random two in terms of what are the resources available to feed those cats and how effective of a of a teacher is that mother for those kids? They have to take down life pray, you know, once they're that size, you know, and I know that there are a bunch of exceptions, what I'm gonna say, and you explore the exceptions, but there's kind of you talk about there's sort of a self limiting aspect to lion population demographics where they're not comfortable with a lot of overlap. And there they will you you and you go to great like pains to show the cases when they do. Yeah, like they're also and there's six of them together whatever, But like generally speaking, they're very they have like a place they hang out, and particularly the males are not real comfortable generally speaking with other males being in their zone. And it makes it that you can kind of use that to extrapulate populations in general, and that it also sort of like sort of sets the ceiling on how sets a ceiling to how many lions can exist? Anyways? Exactly, boy, you're your biologists at art book. I read a good book called okay good well, so yeah, I hear. I've heard my whole career from deer in all counters. You know, again, we're competing with them for for fun and for food. Right that. You know there's cats everywhere? Okay, you know, you know, how did you come to that determination and where and in what areas? Because they animals leaf tracks. And it turns out in all of the telemetry studies virtually almost all of them from here, and the SAME's down in in Argentina and Chile, there's about two to four resident adults per hundred square kilometers. And now with DNA technology and camera zero, you can detect the fluid layer of transients moving around that don't stay and get a radio collar, but they're still in the landscape. Right, you can get up to about six. But that's the ceiling, used the perfect word. So they they're kind of to some degree behaviorally limited. So those fears about just having cat after Cat Africa, that that doesn't happen. It's never happened. They'll commit fratricide. Yeah, and well the males kill each other. Kittens can be killed, but particularly with males, and they starve, you know, if they get pushed into marginal habitats that don't have prey, or they'll get hit by a car. They're not tolerated and they get taken out. Um, you know, it's a tough world for a stock ambush prettor you think about what's really cool about Mount Alliance and I like this. They unlike a lot of the other big cats, they take down prey that are their sizes are bigger. You know, all right, that's pretty hard to do a day in and weekend and week out. And and you don't do that, you die, you know. And so but there you're right, Stephen, there is a ceiling. So in most states then it boils down to okay, whether you're in a park or wilderness where the maximum is going to be in that higher range. Most state biologists are gonna go, Okay, where are we with our illegal hunting legally sanction hunting program? Are we close to a natural density? Are kind of the middle? Are we low? And that's where you go out and work with your deer hunters in your helmet and it becomes a little more social. But you gather these people are in the woods right and and you get the data you can as a biologist combined with what people see, and then what is your objective? Do you want them close to a natural dancy? Well, and this is a nice quick example, but in western Montana, where we have fewer cattle and ranches, you know, where there are helmn and and pretty remote areas you can manage closer to a natural density. You get into eastern Montana by the Dakotas, it's all private land and and and agricultural depredation on cattle and sheep are a big deal. You're kind of managing whether you like it or not. You don't have a choice to landowner tolerance. Right those ranches are huge, but that's the driving managing. You've got landowner tolerance out there. And here it's a different system because it's corporate timberland and forest. And in the middle look at the high woods, the little belts and some of these island ranges. It's a little bit in between. You get to kind of hit your beat. And so the science is easy here um. And and our timing of our seasons don't start until December. So the whole um concept of vulnerabile a younger cats and kittens. That is in some states, you know, we were kind of ahead of the curve there um. You know, it depends on what you want how as society, as as humans, what do we want on the landscape. And that's different if you're a rancher, you're a deer hunter, you're an animal advocate or you know, or a helmet you know, per se, it's just becomes social almost. You don't annoys me, and it doesn't annoy me bad about you because you don't really do it that bad, but annoys me about what some people do lying, like like lying advocates. And I could I regard myself as a lion advocate because like generally for me earlier talking about like you know, subspecies and ways we think about management and repopulating animals, I generally look at my baseline is where was stuff at the time of European contact, and my generally would like to see it put back that way, where like the like an unachievable goal would be to recover wildlife to where the current distribution matches the historic distribution. This is like if I had to put my personal goals in a sentence, that's kind of my goal, and I realized it's unachievable, real complicated, all that, But it's just a distinct way of thinking about it. But people that are are the other kind of line advocate where they're in there it really interested. They're they're very protective of individual lines. They don't want they're not they don't think population level. They just think like that, I don't want anything to happen to that one. Therefore people shouldn't hunt or whatever. They're always talking about lions as like the ultimate predators. You know, everybody uses that term. But then they're also they also want to simultaneously tell you that they have no impact on game animals. But then they also want to point out all because we got rid of the predators, now we have too many deer. And the same person will tell you all of these contradictory things. Yes, I've heard it. I've heard all those two all those and the bottom line is whether it's it's it's you or I, you know, chasing a white tail around or a cat or a wolf for a bit, we all have an impact. We all leave a footprint, right, that's nonsense. We all leave a footprint. And the question is, you know, how does that affect what we like and want? And that's what it boils down to. Cats impact prey, they have to they eat them. And there are some you know there there there are some isolated populations of bighorn sheep or or caribou that are relict populations where you know, cats are a significant concerned because and wolves because you're you know, it's kind of it's kind of approximate ultimate thing. You know, Ultimately it was the hand of man in our footprint that kind of fragmented everything. But now that we want to save this little batch of caribou or bighorn sheep, you know, you gotta worry about the cats and the wolves that are there too, because every animal and a population of tan is a big deal. Right, But in the big picture, um, you just it's all relative. Uh, you know, deer herd or an elk herd, and and hunters and hunting cultures. You know, what do we want to tolerate out there in terms of a natural system. And I would argue to both of you that Montana can your baseline that you kind of go to Montana and and and and Montana fish wife parks way back in the authorities they're way at other time, is closer to that baseline you have than any other state than the forty eight distribution and everything and not by accident, habitat conservation, carnivore systems, and it was organic. And I think this is real important um for your listeners. I think that because because in Montana way back in the forties, access was such a big deal, and it was for people that had money and that didn't had the same opportunity to play outside. And today it's still the same. There's issues, but whether you're rich or poor, in Montana, you have opportunity to participate in some unbelievable Whether you're wildlife, you were a wildlife hunter, doesn't matter, whether you're an angler. We have stream access, you have access, So why not roll? Why why are you not rolling all the other Western states? In this all because you don't feel the I mean, you don't feel idahole to some degree. But I I would submit, and I have lots of friends in both states, so they would challenge me perhaps on this, but I would submit to you that in Montana, way back, we were the first state to require a graduate degree to create when while when they when we transitioned from purely enforcement, that happened across the west and added biologists right and we added fish while fish biologists as well. You have never graduate degree in Montana when unlike Jackson Hole, where you concentrate thousands of elk and diseases an issue up here now as well. But um in Montana for game damage, we didn't just feed elk. They bought wildlife management areas well. What that did? You know what that did not only to provide access in their special places, it anchored winter migrations. They weren't well, maybe they were thinking about it in the forties, but you know the sun River olccurred, the Judith River, uh, the bear Tooth all of a sudden, by you know, alleviating putting elk on on buying a property and all the neighboring ranchers you have to be a partner with fences and weeds and grazing, but giving those elka place to go. Or dear you anchored a forty mile migration, which that's a big deal. Now everyone's looking at migrations and Montana started doing that in the forties. Um, block management, the public hunting concept and perfect, but you know we're the first one of the first to do that as well. Stream access. Show me another state that's got our stream access law through private land. If you added all together, UM, my colleagues at ft AP kind of look at as a Montana model. The North American model, you know, was coined not too long ago. I'd submit to you that in Montana long before you know, you know, we were we were born. For whatever reason, Montana's pretty progressive when it comes to fish and wildlife conservation, and that's why we enjoyed the diversity we have today. Now the whole world has discovered that in this outdoor recreation A to me we're gonna face challenges is more and more people want to enjoy what we have here, they'll destroy At least we have Colorado to look at an example. Yeah, yes, absolutely, And if you look at Colorado's Rocky Mountain Front. You look at even Alberta's Rocky mount Front some degree they're pretty developed, whether it's energy or homes. Look at Montana's Rocky mount in front. These ranchers have held these ranches and it's not easy and and these ranchers have made sacrifices to recover things like grizzly bears and tolerated out. So we have three quarters two thirds of Montana's private land, and there I found in my career they're very proud of the wildlife they have on it, you know. And that's different. In South America, it's all about cheap and so they tend to eliminate everything down there. Right, So Montana, we're live in a unique place. In my mind, we're very fortunate. So how far will how far? Will? Uh? We'll lie and travel? Okay, and I know some just probably hanging tight, right, but now you talk about some really striking out and doing some weird trips. Yes, So like how much room does he need to survive? He? She? And then what will they do to find their spot? So for females kind of in a fifty two eighty different projects kind of zone in on different home range sides and they move in a year, and and males have had them up to hundred fifty square miles. But you know it's very too but and it can be smaller. But but there's male home ranges are typically larger than females. And if you can picture, typically and most of the studies, the female home ranges are stacked in there with some overlap, right you have daughter, mother, granddaughter in different tolerance if they're hunted or not, all sorts of variables. But males have a larger polygon overlaid over the top, and they typically don't overlap as much. Typically. Now there are we're learning more with cameras on on group associations that are surprising people in some of the work in Wyoming right now. But males typically don't overlap. They're not that social. They're a little tallerant, but not that social. And they fight. So you have a layer of males on the landscape and a layer of female. So when a kitten is born, and if it's a male and you've got a resident mail there and you leave, you're gonna have to leave because that territory, that that area is claimed, You're gonna strike out on your own. And most of the radio collar work we've done the department didn't work in the garnets. It was fascinating. Virtually every cat dispersed male and female if I remember correctly, males further. But I for instance, one time I marked a cat at the benchmark airstrip that had a crooked tail like electrical circuit symbol. It was damaged, probably frost bitten somehow, and so it was real identifiable. I put a radio on it. Never found it again. And and after the project was done, and I was working as a biologist in Great Falls, I got a call from the wildlife manager of Missoula and you got, you're missing a cat, you know, in one of his helmet had treated this cat, you know, near Missoula in the Blackfoot And that was a female. And but I mean she she went through the wilderness over the scapegoat. But the males there, how many miles did you travel? Oh, they can't go thirty miles. But typically they don't go as far as the males. We've had males go from bottom of the front to the north end of the front, from the Baretooth game range across the little belts Um. They one of the first ear mark before radio callers were available. We had howman marking and the eartagging cats up in the flathead and one would be marked in the flathead and would be taking leave. You get point of mark and point of death. That's all you get with an ear tag, right, and it would be shot in the Clark Fork by Thompson Falls, you know, and that was Those are males and so there's constantly hundred miles hundred mile John's perhaps, yes, what do you think triggers that? And maybe you guys have done science to show it, but I mean, I mean, we're just guessing that it's a young male and that somehow he knows that he can't survive because it's the territories taken. The kittens typically stay with their mother in that twelve to eighteen entranged typically and there's exceptions. So they'll stay with them for a year, year to year and a half. Yeah, because they have to learned how to kill and take down life prey. Right. It's not like a fawn where you know, you hop out and they're grazing right away. They got you know, it's a learning curve to be with mom and and if they're orphaned. At too young of an age, they're not gonna make it right. They don't know how to take deer down. But at about that twelve eighteen month age, sometimes longer, they take off and disperse and it's just you know why, that's what science knows. It's just that at that age, they just they go, they travel. The science that's in my brain. That's what I know. Yeah, they're probably there might be others to be able to answer that for you better, but that's to my knowledge. Yeah, that's that's the dispersal age. And they move and they crossed. They're crossing highways, going through towns, linear riparian highways. That's what I call like the sun River, the Titon, you know, the Mariahs or even the Yellowstone or the Missouri. That's how they get into the Midwest. And then you look at the Black Hill. So you've got these island ranges that have cats now and then you have the Black Hill that's pumping them out. That's a finite area. Every cat almost dispersed. That's kind of a jumping off point for some of these repairing areas. To get the Missouri in Iowa and some random numbers square east. Yeah, and and they they are only gonna exist if we tolerate them. There a lot more roads, not a lot of wild country like here a little bit, but the further east you go, they're doing it on the backs of white tail deer typically, But you know, as soon as we know they're there, they tend to be eliminated. But he talked about in the book about how that is a key to their success, is how they can hide, they can be there. And we always heard stories of like how, oh, yeah, the game biologist knew that in some city park there's been a mountain lion for ten years, but nobody said anything. And I don't know if those stories. But a way to think about it is like you have, Okay, Idaho whelming Montana. You got eighteen hundred grizzlies. How many of those suns bitches? You see? Ye're not many? No, you see a boatload of them. You mean we saw seven and three days. But then you got you got exponentially, You've got exponentially more mountainins out there, and it takes you a lifetime to rack up seeing seven of them, right, just saying they're secretive, Yes, they're the ghost of the forest. They always have been. Now there's an exception down in Patagonia and those open parks you can watch them in the middle of the day. I'm not ready anyway that I just had to point that out, but for sure. So the other thing i'd say, when you're dispersal, if you you got to think from a species survival, how do you distribute your your DNA across the landscape? Dispersal for many species is a common mechanism, and cats, wolves go even further. Heck, here we have wolf biologists. You know, they show up in Alberta. We have by bamp from that originated Montana vice versa, two fifty miles. It's crazy, but that moves the DNA around the landscape, right, But then it has Florida's shown they are susceptible to not having good genetic exchange because some things can hack it. Seek a deer, damn sure came. We're just talking about how six of old spawned a population of fifteen thousand. I have the wild Horse Island in Sheepe. I mean it's you know, it's a pretty small founder population there, but it's fun fun to go out and see him. But what what does that say about us. This is a question for you too. What does that say about us as humanity if the only reason lions are expanding when all the other large cats are declining is because we don't know they're there. Yeah. Yeah, when people like you said, well, you know what I heard recently, Um, where I grew up. I grew up in a town called Twin Lake, Michigan. Was it was a lot different when I grew up there than it is, not like a lot of places in the country. But man, you did when I was a kid, you had to go a long way to find a black bear. And now a black bear just spend his whole summer around where I grew up. And I's talking to my mother about this, and I thought for sure the story was gonna be how right away the neighbor killed it, But everyone just loved it. They're real excited to have him run around, Like some people weren't, like scared and shooting at it all the time. She's like, no, it just became a thing. It was kind of cool if you were the one whose yard it was in. So it's like just a different change, Like there is some change in perception. You know that, and that you imagine at a time. I hate to say it, but I feel like even in my dad, I don't know. I don't want to say it, what would have happened in my time, but people would have been I think people as much as people freak out about lions and bears still and they have like irrational fears of them, I think there's also the the irrational fears of some individuals seems to go up. But then there's also this thing that's happening where people's like tolerance seems have been going up. These two things that there they they fight with one another, but they sort of happened in tandem. It scenes. Television and social media have played a huge role in bringing a lot of species into people's living rooms where they weren't before and you just had family culture. You know, in your book you talked about speaking of dispersal, you talked about putting a collar. I can't remember, as you were someone put a collar on a female and then right away she drowned in the river. Oh yeah, well that happens to They do swim um, but they have accidents. Yeah, oh yeah. There are a lot more in drowning where there's predation. Drowning following to a lesser degree, you've had um you know, starving life stuff in the wild. You lose collared animals to predation. Collared lions will get Yeah, I had had a male kill another male actually um and a couple of times. That's pretty common in some studies with um colored animals taking males primarily. You know. One of the funniest things about your that's that the right word. An interesting thing that came to my mind about your book was right now, for the future of mountain lions in North America, there's like some good news and bad news where they don't do well, like as we increase the number of wolves and increase the number of grizzlies, lions don't do well with those things. But then lions seem to do well with climate change. So they have like a pro and a con right now, right more habitats opening up to them. They're sort of like rooting for their like rooting for global warming because it opens up more habitat for him. But increased like presence as we grow the presence of wolves and grizzlies is tough. You can take on either of those ideas and whatever or do you want, well, I think, first off, climate change. So it's a good and perhaps perhaps good and and definitely a bad news story depending on how you look at it. But some animals are winners, and carp are gonna do well typically here locally. The exotic species, you know, just by nature of their exotic and not native tend to be are adaptable because I mean they persisted here when they're not they didn't involve their right. But for climate change, it's a it's a big deal if their prey, you know, lions are driven by their prey. You know, if there are climate change impacts on mile deer and white tailed deer and elk, well then that's bad. But in terms of distribution, yeah, it warms up up north and temperature and and deer and elk can punch into the boreal fourth which is kind of a caribou wolf a moose system up there. After a certain point, the white tail deer elk system upcome the cats can come up on the back. So that's their frontier south. They've already got south taken care of. Their frontier is to the north correct and to the east, yeah, especially a lot of room. And then as there was the other question that was the climate change, talking about how they don't do well with wolves and grizzlies or it hurts them. Um. Yeah, that just came up in a bunch of meetings where we have a new Mountlon management plan out. It's really good, by the way, talk about that later if you want. But behaviorally, let's use the North Fork of the Flathead Tony Ruth I talked about her in the book. Um, it's incredible biologists, credible field biologist. The North Fork is off the charts, North Fork. It's a western side of Glacier Park. It's off the charts, one of the wildest places in the lower forty eight. It has a natural density of grizzly bears, it has a natural density of black bears, as a natural density of wolves, and it has a natural density of mountain lions. Right, so after you read Jim's chapter about it, you will want to go there and check it out. When you want to get a hucklelar bear clot that in Polbers. I did see that, and that's I still to this day when I have a biologist wants to go up there, I'm thinking below. If that's open. We used to hunt, We used to chase black bears upon that neck of the woods there and always be swinging into Polberg on our way back home, the best bakery around I mean hands. But anyway, be that as it may. Yeah, so you have what I call it. I referred to it as a predator party. But it's quite fascinating in terms of relationships that we're still going to learn more about. But take for instance, one of the biologists, I think she was a graduate student. Um, what was able to observe a grizzly bear that didn't DAN? Actually perhaps a couple because they were usurping mountain lion and wolf kills on the landscape. You know, it's a cost benefit analysis do you go into DAN? Is it worth it or is it not worth it? You know, as long as you can put fuel in the tank and you're in the black, you know you don't have to DAN. But bears typically evolved in the most of meat vegetation primarily. You know, when that disappears, they go in the hole right for six months and live off their fat. Right. Well, all of a sudden you have all these carnivores that are recovered in the North Fork and there's meat out there where they had a bear that didn't Dan and and Diane Boyd was is my wolf is our wolfile? Just still today? And Tony Ruth was working on the cats, and I love that chapter because you can you imagine, as a mountain lion, you take down a deer. You gotta It's like, and I used the phrase, you're in a grocery store shopping looking for criminals over your shoulder. You take a deer down, and you've got to look over your head because wolves will kill a lion, a pack of wolves, and so they got meat down, and then you throw on grizzly bear on top of that. Then the poor cat's got to go make another killer starve. And indeed she had photos up there she shared with me and and I've seen it, but I have not seen the grizzlies out in winter. But you can have a wolf track and a lion track and a grizzly beery track in the snow in the same slide back in the Quota Chrome sixty four days, you know. And but that's crazy. I mean, imagine cross country skiing and middle of winter and there's a big mail grizzly you're not thinking about that, right, but you have wolves coursing the landscape looking for their food. They can use syrup a lion off their kill, and then you throw bears in the mix, and in summer they're all out. And then that relationship plays out in a different way, you know, because you've got kittens and cubs and vegetation. And but it's those those relationships. It's a are are fascinating, it's a there's no wilder place. Yeah. And then that and I think if you put that to a lot of hunters they would look and say, oh, so now the lions are killing even more dear no, yes, yeah, and in fact, which is obviously true, because they're losing their they kill it and they're losing. They kill no one, they lose it. They kill no one. Yeah. And and so you got up in the Northwark. What's interesting is half it's in the park, so that's not an issue, you know, And they get millions of dollars come to you know, to the park for people to watch wilife. That's a different economy. And you have the economy of hunting that frankly pays pays. If you hunt, you pay my salary. In Montana, I work for a state agency, right and not taxes, hunting licenses. So when I have hunters come up and say, boy, there's just too much being taken and in some areas, yeah, they have a point, and what can you do about it legally? And what can you do about it? Really? And because there's other variables too, you know, with hunting, you've got weather, you've got winter severity, you have forage conditions, summer drought. It's just this whole host of variables. But where they are right is yes, you know, if you have animals that are taking deer and elk that we want to take. Yet you know that's competition now is at a population driver? What is the level of impact? That's where the that's where the debate usually starts. You know, speaking of the you mentioned the park. You talk about Glacier as the park. You had an interesting statistic around Glacier that only one in forty two thousand visitors to Glacier National Park will have a lion encounter. Yeah, so that's seeing one one, which is amazing actually, And and we'll talk about some secretive critters man. Yeah, And the rangers have this lion information system they track and we looked at almost fifteen years of data. They're just kind of because you hear the rumors and they had done that another park, so we are curious and and we we looked at him and and the number one thing they do is just see it. The incidents and and and conflicts and attacks. It's it's off the charts slow point, oh one chance. But yeah, very few people even see them. Bears are a lot more. Oh yeah, man, they just care a lot less about your seeing them. It seeing you don't see them, but they see you. I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure. Um. You explained your book and we you don't need to explain how it came to happen, but you explain your book that through uh, through your career and in different projects and programs you were involved in, you had an opportunity to do some exchange work where you were going down to look at this animal that you know very well, pumas. You're going down to look at pumas in Patagonia and talk about lessons that we've learned around management and likewise, biologists from Chile and Argentina we're coming up to to work up here. Uh. And you talk about a lot of the differences down there, different challenges they face keep sketch that out a little bit because it's because no student would read your book. And then I read this article about the kind of mind boggling amount of predation on domestic sheep that happens in Chile and Argentina. And we're really fortunate in the United States to have that public land component that is for service BLM and school trust. We have national parks and we have private but we have that middle area of public land, and that's where a lot of us recreating hunt on in addition to private land. You go to South America, particularly Patagonia, it's either private or it's a park, right, so there's no in between. They don't have that culture of public hunting. They don't have that model of hunters paying for wildlife recovery that happened here conservation, and and that's the envy our system, Frankly's envy. You know, this North American model in Canada and the United States, it's the envy of many other countries around the world because it's it's a stable funding model. They don't have that down there. So parks are a big deal, and you go off the park, you're on giant ranches and most of them are domestic sheep. Right, it's like New Zealand big sheep ranches. There are cat populations down there that live on almost entirely on non native prey. That's that's That's why I couldn't believe is that it wasn't like here we view when a lion or some wolves. I got a question. I'm gonna interrupting foxes, so I want to ask, I forgot about have you do you encounter often where a lion will begin feeding on an animal before the animals dead or do they like them to be stone dead for the etam You know, I've never seen that act. And my assumption is and is that theyre that they you know, close that windpipe until they stopped kicking and they start eating. I mean, you never know. And then how do they enter a car? Because when it's dead, you know, it's interesting. So I always look at lions are pluckers. So if you know, we always with you have lots of carniverse. People want to know it's like forensic work, right, and most of our biologists go out there. Well, lions tend to just like a housecat. They kind of they grab some hair and spit had some hair in space. You'll see a big hair pile around where a lions on the bottom. So they start right in the caveat the heart the lung some of those little tasty things they'll get first. Sometimes they'll open up a hunch, but um, they'll open a chest cavity up right away. Um, and bears can peel hide back right and they screw around with a little more. Cats are gonna pluck around and then when they're done, they're gonna cover it up typically and and they'll use anything snow vegetation, um, and patagonia rocks. If there's no vegetation, they tend to and then you're gonna minimize all the other species that are come in and utilize that meat. Right, and you can stay unmolested and eat for a couple of days, or you'll drag it into a bush. But um, yeah, they I My guess is just just a guess that you know, because I've never seen him kill him as looking at the tracks and reading all the literature and friends that they're closing the track ya until they until they stop wiggling and then they can eat right Okay, back to while staying here, when one one will bearer line. Whatever kills livestock, it's generally considered like a typical you know, for the for the particular animal, like they don't just subsist on it. Correct. But that's really surprising that you talk about that. It seems like you have like there's lines. That's what they do for a living and that's their day in, day out food is livestock. Yeah. So there's these huge domestic sheep ranches. They're the size of national parks up here or larger. And that's millions of Yeah, they're huge, yes, and you and and that's and you'll see you know some of the park stories the creation in the book as well. That's the good news is you know, you make it. You make a change down there with a ranch, it's gonna be a landscape change with one landowner. But um domestic sheep out there, and and they're very they eliminate the native winaco. And then wanaco is like a like a llama. It's a camel camel it and if you hybridizing domestic and you can kind of end up with a llama and a crickets it away. But the wild version is called a wan aco and it looks like a llama, right, yeah, it was. It was like an a llama wild olama and a wild version, and there's like an alpaca while Vicuna is the alpaca wild version. So those it's all camels and cats in Patagonia, right, that's and vicunas are the north end. Yeah, it's different than here. For when it comes to puma's right, it's same. You know, we're talking mountalin up here, puma, they're the same thing, subspecies, right, So these pumas down there, and and I call him puma the second half of the book. I would call him mountain lions the first half because you know, we're here, and then I wanted readers to feel, you know, feel it. We switched to pumas for the second half. I thought that was yeah, I like that, and uh and I had to convince my editors that and and and they got it. But I think it adds a little here in South America. So yes, they eat non atid prey, European hairs and domestic sheet down there in some cases, and that's a problem. So there's generations of cowboys called gauchos. The gaucho culture that very tough, just like our cowboys. Are ranch hands, and they have been raised to kill every lion or puma they find, and other species as well, anything that can be a threat to sheep. And they run hounds down there too, right, Yeah, they do now, but even I mean they they'll walk them down down there, they'll ride them down on a horse. It's crazy. They're very tough and they're very good at what they do. Um, So that's a problem. Tolerance isn't there on agricultural ranches for the most part. That's why, you know, I tell the story of Chris and Doug Tompkins buying these ranches, turning him into parks, giving him back to the government. Then all of a sudden, that's interest tolerated. Yeah, you're saying that because these ranches being so big that a single purchase can create what we would imagine to be a national park or larger, larger than Yosemite. One purchase and you do a few of them. Um, it's interesting. I just saw a statistic now because Doug passed away in a kayaking accent about five years ago, and Chris is carrying it on the legs his legacy and he Doug is now being celebrated in Chile and Argentina. They're accepting him. It's amazing the governments are accepting him when they didn't trust the process to begin with. But they have now donated to be public land that all of us native Chileans Argentinos can enjoy. U larger than the size of Switzerland. They took their personal wealth and put it all in the park. So where that's important is now you have you can rewild it. You know, it doesn't have domestic sheep anymore. The one acos can recover, the pumas can recover. When mul dear they have an e they have a really interesting deer that looks like our mule deer with smaller antlers, a little more of a bulbous face. Yeah, when moul is how they pronounce it, and it's like a carib we just kind of stands there. They're very not afraid of anything. Domestic dogs can take them down and it's an issue, but they can recover, and so it has to be a park. There's no in between down there right now, although that could change someday with you know the concept of conservation easements like we of here in tax laws, but right now it's my understanding. You know, it's almost got to be a protected area or it's a ranch, So you work a lot. My friends that have been you mentioned that I've had twenty five years of exchange has been very fortunate from Argentina, scientists in Chilean going back and forth and get to share these stories, what works, what doesn't, and they invest in private land work like we do now down there, and you get landscape level change. With one family if they decide to, for instance, only kill the offending puma, so that happens up here, right, they will historically go out and kill every cat in the ranch. But if you tell them, you know, just kill the offending cat. The others are being good and eating the few winaco that are on the hill, you know, And and that's all of a sudden a landscape level change. But it's messy conservation. It's like drinking coffee and fixing fence up here. Down there, it's drinking mate and and talking to a sheep rancher in the gauchos. And but they're doing it. But what I couldn't gather from your book is the why or pumas aren't hurting down there, right? I mean, are they? Are? They not? Because it seemed like, on one hand you're talking about social tolerance and preservation, but on the other hand, you're painting a picture that seems like there's a puma behind every rock. You know, they were they were hurting kind of ad to that too, because it seems like if for hundreds of years the gouches have been trained and brought up to kill every line, how are there any left in protected areas? And that's yeah, you look at some of those government established parks before, you know, not talking to the Tompkins Parks that are now government parks. But it either had to be a European landowner that didn't you know, or a Chilean or Argentine landowner that didn't believe in that. But most of them was sheep. We're going to control the cats. They had to be protected areas. So what's happened here since the sixties has also happened down there, but on the backs of domestic sheep, and that in the protected area. They were even persecuted in protected areas to some degree. H there was differences in laws in Chilean Argentina still are today and they've becomes more of a conflict, a permanent conflict where the gauchos are constantly taken out the cats at the edge of these parks, you know, for fear of predation on their domestic sheet. And but they seem to be increasing in distribution down there. Based on my colleagues and and and and my experience listening to them, it's which is causing increased conflict, correct, correct, And therein lies either job security if you're a conflict biologist, or a big problem. You know, if you're a gaucho and a rancher and it's messy conservation, you know, how how do you how do you recover a native carnivore if that's your goal when there's no native prey and all the economic value, right, that's where that's where gets interested. It's awkward. And then European hairs are larger than our hairs. There are cats that almost exclusively exist on European hairs. They're a little more of a meat packet. And but it's a Patagonia unwrap raveled with these huge domestic biologically unraveled with these huge domestic sheep ranches. But slowly those biologists down there have these visions of rewilding, you know, ranch at a time, community at a time. That so my biggest thing my whole career. My my, I haven't been a research biologists my whole career. You know, I've I've done a little bit what I call both um. I was a management biologist. That's messy. That's where you set seasons and go to communities down there, same as up here. If conservation isn't accepted locally, it's not durable, flat out, it won't last. And so what they're doing down there is trying to make you know, how do you get a ranch to tolerate one acos when they think they're going to compete and eat the grass their sheep eat. But if they have oneacos, perhaps the pumas are gonna predate less on their sheep and do the oneacos. That's where they're going right now. And indeed, you know they're going to try and tease that out. But that that's how messy it is. It involves people and and and economic value. Do you regard yourself as an inflict biologists? No, Now, I'm kind of support staff at this point in my career. But my I, like you know, my Stephen might, I'm the way what I probably my my entire career on is I really like people. I enjoy people loud biologist, don't you know? Depends on what floats your boat, right. I like people I have like landowners, I have like how when I have like hunters, I like animal rights peole, I like them all. I love the relationshipship of people to conservation. And my bias is it's got to be very local, and when it's local, it's conflicts. So yeah, I've been involved in a lot of my staff. Bear conflicts in northwest Montana is a big deal. Right, we have phenomenal staff, but it will never go away. Lion conflicts actually are much um oh pretty much winter. Well, as soon as I say that, I can think of summer events. But where the residential footprint has been allowed to expand in western Montana into former dearnel cabitat, into the tree everyone wants a postcard, those conflicts are gonna be there forever. You would have to go scorch stirth on bears and lions and wolves to eliminate the conflict because the homes are in the wrong place, there where the deer are, there where they all are. So given that the homes aren't going to move. We have to constantly and my mind it will be multiple generations work with people the turn of turnover. How to live with these wild likee species that's here, it's all livestock down there, and we have more nationally Yea. In your book you kind of paint this picture of that it's going to require tolerance. You know when you talk about a lot of places that tolerance is growing, and you talk about, you know, the idea that um increasing populations of other predators. You know what put this as a negative just a matter of fact that you know, expanding populations of wolves, expanding populations of grizzlies, um can have a negative impact on lines that issues around you know, issues around climate can affect populations. But with all these areas of concern and that you point out, we have more now in more places than at any time in hundred plus years. Yeah, I mean they're like something clicked, well and they're just they're just showing up everywhere. Well, I'll get on my soapbox again. For hunters, legal hunters, UM hunters paid this country created a mechanism whereby hunters could pay for the recovery of the prey. And you recovery the grocery store, the cats are going to be whether we whether we like it or not, those shoppers are there because we can't see them. But it was Darnell hunters that put their money and still do, whether it's working with game damage or buying winter ranges as wildife management areas, or funding surveys. Once the prey were recovered in this country, then Carnivort. Do you feel that. That's what's huge, That's what's going on. It's huge. It's unique in the world. Um, you know in Canada. United States has that model of funding for conservation. You know, I've told the story of thousand times. I hesitate even tell again, but it's quick enough where I get away of it is. And even my friend Doug during and in Wisconsin, right, he talks abou. When he was a little kid, if you saw a deer track, you told your dad about it. And now they've got like in in a in an almost alarming way, they have the opposite problem. You know, they're talking seventy five deer for square mile, a habitat disease issues. But yeah, you'd go home there that's dear track dad and this guy, this isn't some old cadre. I mean, this guy is still kicking right along. I haven't got a daughter in college and he remembers that right. This isn't like some hundred and twenty year old dude telling your story. What worries me most is you get look at Canada geese, white tail deer to some degree, when they get to become almost a nuisance level, we take for granted, We take for granted what it took to recovery this incredible valued wild commodity that we enjoy in deer and elk and all the other species with them. That all happened by design, not by accident, and and and when they become nuisance levels, it's easy to kind of brush off what it took to get him here. So lions, bears, wolves, whatever, that all started because people funded the habitat work that supported the prey for these species. And we I don't think we can ever forget that. And it's not it's not common around the world. Yeah, what do you got? I'm done tapped? Oh man, I got a bunch. If we got time, rip a couple out, give me your best one. I don't know where to start. I'm gonna rate. I'm gonna rate your questions. I've been looking for for that. Well, we'll start off with the tolerance thing. I try to slip it in earlier but didn't get the opportunity. Um but do you feel like the tolerance We have some friends that are handlers in biology is and they feel like with the increased tolerance that we're having a little bit more um hard encounters as they call it, and being like the two that have happened recently in Washington in Oregon right where people are dying at the jaws of the line. Is that just coincidence or do you think they there there's something there? Personally? I think it's it's random. I think there are more people, and you look at where where there are more humans, and there are more humans playing outdoors, and we're encouraging people to play outdoors. It's a great thing. You're gonna get random stochastic encounters like that. I don't think there's personally that there's a relationship there. I think there's just more people playing outside. But it was uncanny for Washington to have its first ever or first the ninety four years person killed by the line, and then then it's neighboring state to have the first and state history within a couple of months of each other, and when it was quiet for like ten years in the country. It invites people to be like, oh, what's going on here? Well, it makes ways the recesses of our monkey brains fire off with great white sharks, lions, bears. When you know, I just saw a thing on TV. Beastings cause more deaths than you know. We're not afraid of bees. Really, the real killers domestic dogs, Oh my god. And and well I like to run it lunch and jog, and I'm terrified when the wrong dog is coming after me. But but drive around, Yeah, you drive around. You know, anyone who's out on the road Friday night around midnight, you know you wanna talk about sketchy time, sketchy encounters. And a lot of my journalist friends, you know, they write a story about grizzly bears or lions, it'll go a b because people love it. People love it. They write it about white tail deer. It's not but people in the different cultures and and with carnivores and our relationship to them. Um, it's always gonna be a big deal. Like a white shark, you know, Although that's that terrifies me. I used to longboards, you know, and not have a thirty foot missile below you with the brain that big. Yeah, listen, there are there are um when it comes to that, there's a lot of your rational fear, but there are high exposure activities, correct. I am not annoyed when surfers or abalone divers talk about great white sharks. When some person that like now and then we'll go take a swim on the coast and then talk about sharks. When a archery elk hunter talks about grizzlies, that doesn't annoy me. When someone who you know, drives a mile out of town and takes a little walk in the woods every few weeks and they talk about them, then I get a little annoyed. There are high exposure groups. Yeah, you're absolutely correct, So like a northern California surfer from all years if you want to talk about sharks. But but yeah, your point is, I think it was I think it was random. Other than what isn't random is the human populations growing and that outdoor recreation economy. We're gonna that's how we market it in our communit He's here. It's big business more than agg even now the latest statistics that are being passed around, So you're gonna probably have more of these random events, you know. Good question is another one you're on a roll. Um, you can't get on a roll with just one. I appreciate the praise for the and how many times just in the last ninety minutes you've given praise to hunters for like helping this whole thing along to get to where we are. That's great to hear, right. We often hear that in now in the upcoming classes of young biologists. There aren't as many hunters in those classes. So one is that true? And then two do is that a perceived problem? By Yeah? I you know, you know I was a while after I left the field as a wildfe bologist. It was a wildife program manager for seventeen years up in northwest Montana. So I had to hire right, and I'd always go to wildlife stiding meetings like a coach doing a draft, you know, And yeah, you know the field is much more diverse. It was all white. It was all white males, you know, for the most Barton, Montana was the exception. We had a handful of professional women now in Montana are management biologist. And while it's probably almost fifty fifty men and women and and as whether they hunt or not um isn't as important as their relationship with people and working with them. I think, yes, perhaps I don't know, I don't don't know the data. I'll be making it up. But um, when we when I used to hire, you know, what you're getting at is, you know, I want someone that can build relationships with everyone and translate that science into the communities for local conservations, so at lasts, whether it's seasons or habitat or research, you name it. You have to be willing to work with those groups. And if you can't work with hunters, you're gonna have a problem because that's paying your salary. But that doesn't really translate into whether your hunt or not. You know, how okay are you? With population management? And working with people is more important? Um? But perhaps yeah, you see, nationally, I think Montana's holding our own a little more with hunting recruitment than some of the areas where it's declining, and that whole farm to table movement has actually caused a spike and in our hunter red classes, more women are wanting to take their own meat, cut it up themselves, and serve it to their friends with only them having touched it. That's kind of cool. That's been a recent thing in the last five ten years. But but the but the national trips, I think you're right there, they're declining. And you see it in young biologists too. Then less less hunters coming through the well, not necessarily here. I think people come here because they in part because they know the the hunting is is pretty affordable and pretty the opportunities are here, and in the graduate school cultures that are there, most of them. I learned how to hunt in grad school. Big game. You know, I ran a muskrat trapline, but we didn't have deer when I was born and San Diego, and we're gonna hunt there, right you fish? But you know they're gonna they pick it up in grad school if they haven't already. Typically, and that's what I found. Hit them another one. Okay, still on a roll? Did you like that one? Well, you pointed out that you couldn't be on one or earlier. But like the first, um, the first one, eight, back to back to five, back to the sport of chasing cats with with dogs. Um, do you feel like there's any negative effect to the cats? Most? Yeah, yeah, most of the researchers is no. You may be you know, whether it's stress or behavior or affecting life history traits by pursuing them with a dog. And actually, if you think about it, you know those hound handlers have to raise those puppies, they have to follow them. But what it does allow you to do and it does it with the researchers, do we use the same dogs, same helman In most cases, it allows you to be discriminate the animals up there is at a male or female? How old is it, whether it's a legally sanctioned take where they can read. You know, when you kill an animal legal ease as you reduce it to your possession right that allows you to tell if it's a male season or a female season. To being up on the science are using, you know, to manage that population. You can actually see the animal and do that and as a biologist, you know, do you know? Do you you know the researcher, do you need a radio and a female or mail you can do that. You need hounds to see them. They're like ghosts. They magically appear with these dogs. Sometimes it's ten minutes, sometimes it's ten hours, and they say in there they take you to places you will never go. Ye experienced that on just a few catalants that we've been on. But yeah, for somehow, when you're out chasing looking for Alcolm, you'll dear you don't end up where you chase those dogs. Just never never. Um, what else did I have for you? Does that move one more? Um? Let's you're tapped out. No, I'm not tapped out. There was a line there where you said that killing um lions, this strupts the field, the field social order, killing lions, and then it may lead to more human cat conflict. So that's a concept that's come about with researchers UM relatively recently in the last ten years. UM. And it's that and I've seen it referred to as juvenile delinquent hypothesis. But it's a little more complicated than that. But picture a large male. You pull him out right, let's say, right out of Bozeman, and you have a large male that's very mature and he's he's king of his world right over here, and then you take him out. Whether it's a conflict you know, he killed a goat or whatever. All of a sudden, you've got two, three, four males temporarily until it sorts out in there. All of a sudden you have four miles instead of one. So you have this there's it's disruptive because they're trying to sort out whose territory it's going to be. You might actually have more teeth on the landscape temporarily by taking an old guy out. Now, I mean this is a very heavily haunted area. Yeah, everything around here gets pounded. Yeah, there's no way that you have a situation where you're able to You're gonna have some mail. It's gonna set up shop and rule the rules for five six years. Well, and again, i'd have to look at the data because I'm a data guy to see. But one of the one of the chapters in in my book that I'm frankly i'm very proud of. It's called locals Only, and it's how a season is set if you're a student, it is the I've rarely seen in any book, in any article, how biologists set seasons working with commissions and communities. Interesting and it's it could be a textbook in a class because we moved to limited entry on cats and there was a lot of issues because there was money involved with some of the We called a December dash for cash, you know, and that was happening, you know. So they're very valuable for non residents. But we couldn't shut the seasons down, you know, we couldn't do it. It was a supply and demand problem. So we went to limited entry. And we even have male female sub quotas to address tag dress. And that's random to the point of being cruel. You know, some people drop three years in a row, another won't draw one in three years. Right, it's just random. But what it allows us as biologists to do, as an agency to do is you can take the best science in the world. We've got this brand new mountain lion management plan that's out there. You've finly seen it circulating this two weeks. Best science, frankly on the planet doesn't get to what you want. But we can take that science on a density. Once you decide in an area what you want, and you can give a prescription of males and females that you think, depending upon your objectives, can be taken off the landscape to address that problem. That you mentioned, Steven, and that that took and it's unique where we're at. We could do it because they're mostly public land or corporate timberland, but that took a limited entry draw to to manage that. And now some areas with landowner tallerance clearly that wouldn't work right you you need Holman in there. But incidentally, that lion the management plan, guy named Jake Coolby wrote it. You got to meet him. He's a wonderful guy. He's a biologist now and white sulfur. He volunteered for me almost thirty years ago. Ben around there. He is this tall, skinny kid bandana but he had legs twice as long as mine and got he'd take off and go do anything we needed him to do. And here at this point in my career, he just wrote the line plan. I think it's kind of cool. And he's from I think he might be from Michigan somewhere back east. But anyway, we have this plan out now, very sharp brains whatever, whatever. But but here we know Montana again is at the forefront for mountain lion management. It's there's more science in that plan. We worked with the University of Montana than any other state, I'd argue or province in in in the country and North or North and South America. It's very good. Doesn't get to what you want. That's community, that's messy. That's what still has to be fought out at a local level. But it's got the science there so you can try. It's a privilege, you know. I always take hunting as a privilege. We have to have the best science to do it. And uh and this does that in terms of people, you know, being concerned. On the other side, I feel like they need to send that send some of that plan down and I don't want wanted to comment on this point. They need to send that plan down to Arizona. I feel like they're kind of approached it the wrong way down there. Man Um and I talked and that that's coming from hounds. Mean yeah, I hear that from hounds. Mean it. It's from what I understand, and I'm jumping into areas I know very little about, thank you. The cattle component is huge, and for whatever, there's a lot more cattle depredation down there and and historically in New Mexico. Yeah, and a whole bunch of it's a different systems, you know, and and that's when I'm very unfamiliar with so but yeah, interesting, I although you know, I did think this plan is something every state could look at because UM it's got some really cool UM population models in there that takes the data we can collect on cats. Again, they're like ghosts, You're limited on the data you can collect on them. And then and then UM uses the best scientific techniques to kind of chug out, you know, where your different scenarios could be depending on what you want on the landscape. Have you ever heard the word, oh, no, keep going? Have you ever heard the word concluder? O you too early? Because check out this double segue? I got a double segue. Might might be the first time ever UM because speak of them being uh ghosts, not only do you don't see them, but you can't smell them. And as first Steve, the most interesting thing in the book was that he couldn't understand or he didn't know that they had completely left, you know, the North American continent for a time period. To me, the most interesting thing UM in the book was that I didn't know how actually little they smelled, and like why it would be avantageous and multiple um spaces, you know in their world. That's a double segue. Yeah, because I included you're like the most interesting thing about the book, and then as in the ghost likeness doubled up, you made an extra smooth I don't know about that, but I guess the question is, was there like an aha moment for you where I'm sure you learned about the fact that they didn't have scent, but did you ever just like have one in your train lines and stuck your nose in it and go, wow, Literally, you can't smell this thing. The only time I could smell him really is if you're climbing a tree and they you're you know, they're tranquilized and their stress, but it's a you know, it's a dissociated tranquilizer. They they kind of their muscles tightened, so they don't follow the tree, right. You have got to climb up in the ear and they you you can smell that. But the cats are really clean, if they're pretty clean, even bears are pretty clean, un less been rolling around in a coulvert trap full of of fit. But do you feel like they're so clean that they could be coming in up wind of prey? Yeah? I don't know, dear wind, how likely our dear to wind line. Yeah, I would probably say unlikely our lions would have went extinct, But I don't know. Yeah that you know, that's you know what you ought to do when you retire, to do a study or do a starty to see if they play the wind. Yeah, that before I want to be a technician when I retire, I want to roll back into the field, right, good idea. Yeah, anything gets you outside too. That would be a tough study to do. I know you think about that one. So concluders. A concluder is an opportunity where you get you I don't even have one right now, but I'm still gonna invite you to. A concluder is an opportunity where like you come in and you're like, man, I hope these guys ask you about X, and then we never do. So a concluder gives you the opportunity to bring up something totally without prompt or it could be that you developed a concluder throughout the course of the conversation and you keep trying to wedge it in, but you can't find a good place to wedge it in. Okay, So now without even needing a segue, you can just bring up some random thought. Yeah, I think I think you know, for for both of you, I think you know we all and you hit on it real well. Is is how fortunate we are two in Montana to have the habitats primarily to support to even have the discussion about all these species and and uh, you know bison are still on the horizon. Is you know where we're going to tolerate them in Montana or not? But from the most part, Montana has been pretty amazing. Um. The one thing I think that and you you two are have covered pretty much everything in North America in particular that people realize it was Helmand that had such a role in protecting and bringing back and and and being watch dogs from Mountline Conservation. That's not intuitive for most folks, and they do and they still do today. And uh, and I guess I would add in the South American component, what Chris Tompkins is doing down there is off the charts different than anyone else on planet Earth. With her own personal wealth. She's doing, in my mind, equivalent to what Teddy Roosevelt did when he rated the Forest Service and the parks. She's doing it almost to that scale and still going strong, with local countries, local governments now celebrating and accepting those public lands, because that's huge because then people down there, rich or poor, those parks are going to be the great equalizers. People get married near him, the businesses and the economies are gonna thrive around the parks, and you're gonna have South American native species come back. And so we tend to be We're lucky here in Montana. But some amazing stuff is going on in South America with Christian Salcedos and all those chapter he's their conservation director, and I really liked profiling Christian. So it's if you read the book, I hope you enjoy uh some of the challenges they're facing there because their landscape is very similar to Montana. I kind of call Patagonia Montana on steroids. Yeah, just Dandy's are ments. But and the species are goofy from my perspective because they're so different from flamingos and flying by glaciers and camels, and it's just easy mix of biology down there. But that's what makes it kind of magical in my mind. And and and the food, the wine, everything's good down there, and I can't wait to go back there too. But you two have covered I'm impressed you've covered most all the real especially the complicated topics. So hit us with the name of your book one more time. In your name, So, Jim Williams, I'm the I'm I've been a while at biologist, my entire career. I'm the regional supervisor now for Montana, Fishwife and Parks kind of and a career, had a wonderful career. It's a unique state. My books called Path of the Puma and it half the books Montana Stories and the Northern Rockies and the other half Patagonia, Argentina and Chile. And puma is another wildlife and parks down there, alright. Where should they go buy it? Um? Yeah, of course it's available. No, it's available in all bookstores online. You can just go to Patagonia the So what's really cool too? Patagonia the clothing company actually uh published that and I know they be getting involved with backcountry hunters and anglers recently. You can get it on their website too, But they didn't cut any corners. What I'm so, I'm glad you have. Here's my concluder. So and double concluded, Yeah, thank you. Is that you know, if you're going to write a book. And I've written a lot of science articles and popular magazine articles, but you know, I wanted to write one good book. Had been very fortunate they Patagonia said, what do you need as I want color photos, I want maps to geo reference readers. The photographs that book are stunning and and if you just read the photos and the captions from front the back, you'll learn something for those of that don't have any attention to the photos of like my kind of my favorite type class of photo is like predators eating dead stuff. It's a great it's a great flip through on predators eating dead stuff. They did it amazing. The same two women that did the Patagonia catalogs for twenty years did the thirty years, did the photos in the book and worked with me and and I and you and the ability to geo reference as you read in a map was very important. Um and so they had a young couple of maps for could create the six maps and it's it's I was really proud of it, and they surprised me. And I'll show you too here and of course I'm not a detailed person. I didn't pick up on it for about three weeks. But they embossed a puma print in the cover and that cool to scale, yeah, and that neat they spread. So it's a real quality book. And I'm I'm old fashioned. I like to hold a book in my hand still, and it's just feels good. You know. I'm pretty proud of it, so I appreciate YouTube, you know, allowing me on today to talk about it. Congratulations, no small feet, Uh okay, Jim Williams Path of the Puma, thank you very much.