[00:00:00] Speaker A: New protected areas, lawsuits, migrating jaguars, and insect population explosions.
Conservation can be full of drama, excitement, and crazy natural phenomena.
What better way to discuss top conservation headlines than with a close friend over tasty drinks?
Welcome to Rewildology, the nature pop podcast that explores the human side of conservation.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Travel, and rewilding the planet.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: I am your host, Brooke Mitchell, conservation biologist and adventure traveler.
Today's episode is the second conversation in the nature Happy Hour miniseries where I sit down with my good friend and fellow conservation scientist Charles von Reese, PhD, for Happy Hour drinks, updates from our sides of the conservation world, and explorations of a preselected topic.
For this conversation, Charles and I chose to discuss top conservation stories as a spin on my into the headlines solo episodes. In true Happy Hour fashion, Charles and I begin the conversation by catching up on everything that's happened since we last sat down in October, including Rewildology's third birthday, volunteer opportunities. With the show, and news from Charles, work and nature based solutions. Following, we dive into three conservation headlines, the saga of jaguars in the US, the first indigenous marine stewardship area in.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: America, and the upcoming cicada population explosion.
If you'd like to skip our opening.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Banter and head straight to the top headlines, fast forward to around the 30 ish minute mark. And don't worry, we won't be offended if you do. Also, if you're interested in applying for one of Rewildology's open volunteer positions, please.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Check out the link in the episode.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Description or navigate to the website and click on volunteer opportunities under the about tab. Before I let you go, please remember to rate and review the show wherever you are listening to this episode, following the show on your favorite social media platform, subscribing to Rewrotology's YouTube channel, purchasing a piece of swag, and or signing up for the newsletter.
All Right, rewildologists, please enjoy this laid back nature happy hour with me and Charles.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: What's wrong with my t shirt, though?
[00:02:46] Speaker C: I'm just saying I wish I had a branded t shirt. I'm jealous.
Especially that's a whole new design, right?
[00:02:56] Speaker B: This is a secret one that I have on. I guess it's not very secret if I'm wearing it.
[00:03:02] Speaker C: So that was my next question. Are you just going for it? You're just going to wear your secret stuff to your podcast now?
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I probably should have thought that through.
What they are is okay, so do you remember my rhino campaign that I did World Rhino Day? God, that was two world rhino days ago.
[00:03:25] Speaker C: Is that how you measure your time.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Time is elapsed.
And I had these really cool design shirts, and it was a wonderful campaign, and so I would love to do more of those and have them themed. And I got the first t shirt sample of the first one that I'll more than likely do, which is this amazing lion.
[00:03:45] Speaker C: Okay, am I correct that the lion is wearing glasses?
[00:03:49] Speaker B: It is. Do you see? We're so branded.
[00:03:53] Speaker C: Okay, well, so that was always my question about the.
It's a lynx, right? Or a bobcat.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: It's a lynx.
[00:04:01] Speaker C: Close.
Yeah. The lynx is you. Right?
With the glasses into me. I see. Okay, so the glasses were really just always, like, a vague brook tag, but now that's become a Persona. But then the lion.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So all of the ones that I will be eventually launching when I have time for all the things.
Okay, I guess I'm just going to do some spoilers.
[00:04:34] Speaker C: Oh, man.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: There's a polar bear one.
[00:04:36] Speaker C: You're welcome, everybody.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: There is a wolf.
[00:04:38] Speaker C: I walked her right into it.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: You did? There's a wolf. There's another rhino. There's this lion.
[00:04:46] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Oh, my God. A koala. I did a koala. I designed, like, literally ten different designs and then decide when and how to launch them. And I love this lion one so much, I went ahead and got it printed.
[00:05:02] Speaker C: I don't know. It's super impressive.
The comment that started all this, if I had a shirt that was that cool with my logo on it, I would be wearing it right now.
I think that gulo in nature swag is a long way out at this.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Point, but someday, well, the beautiful thing is you can get it printed on anytime and be swagged out at any time.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: You are right. You are right.
[00:05:29] Speaker B: No excuses, Charles.
[00:05:31] Speaker C: I've got so many. I've got so many excuses. You have no idea.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: I'm the ultimate, like, no bullshit person, though.
[00:05:40] Speaker C: I respect it.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: Try giving me your excuses, and I will rebuttal.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: Okay, then I'll just divert you to some other topic.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: I'd be like, Charles, I know what you're doing.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: Yeah. There's a really good word for it that I'm forgetting at the moment. But you need the art of distraction when it's getting untenable. And none of your excuses are working.
Pocket sand.
Something quick.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: You look so spiffy.
[00:06:15] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you. I wish my logo was on everything.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Your button up and your shark.
I can't tell what's behind are. Is those different types of bass or.
[00:06:26] Speaker C: Freshwater fresh Montana fish species. Sorry, Montana fish species of special concern.
I picked it up when I was working in Montana. It's just a bunch of cool endangered fish.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: It is cool.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: Yeah. I have a really nice one here of southeastern crayfish. Like all sorts of crayfish species because this is one of the epicenters for crayfish fish diversity down here. I just haven't put it up yet. But I figure maybe just right underneath.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Yeah. That looks super freaking.
[00:07:01] Speaker C: I just love those kind of posters. Just straight up biodiversity posters. It's like here's all the species of such and such. Some connection between them. I'm a huge sucker for those. You can't really see it. I have a hawaiian waterbird one over in the corner and it makes me.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Very happy to your heart.
[00:07:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Those guys, really.
[00:07:21] Speaker C: They have a special place for me.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: So this is a happy hour chat. Do you have a happy hour drink or. I know you just had to literally drive across town furiously to record since your neighbor had their tv up.
So does that mean I am partaking alone?
[00:07:37] Speaker C: No.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Or were you?
[00:07:38] Speaker C: No, you are not. I went and picked up a couple cold ones on the way in.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:44] Speaker C: What do you a. It's called los bravos. It's another terrapin. I promise I'm not like getting sponsored by in. I live in Georgia, so they're everywhere. But this one I tried over the summer and really liked it, but it's a sort of mexican style lager thing. I'm sure you've run into that before, but a lot of central american countries have these really excellent, just very light, easy lager beers that are so good in that sort of weather.
I always think of the one in Costa Rica. There's a really famous one in Costa Rica called.
It's not, it's not fancy, it's not hoppy or whatever, but it's just a nice, stay cool, hot weather easy thing. So I'm a fan of those.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Yeah. After being in the field all day and everyone just wants to take a load.
[00:08:37] Speaker C: Right? That's right. I got to start getting ready for that.
I don't remember if we talked about that in the last happy hour, but yeah. I'm pretty locked in to be co teaching a study abroad course here at UgA.
Yeah. So that's going to be my.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: What's the topic?
[00:08:59] Speaker C: It is tropical ecology and natural history.
So we have kind of a lot of different kinds of students on the trip, which is, I think, intentional. But it's not just ecology and biology students. There's folks from other majors as well. So for some people it's going to be a bit of a crash course in how do you study nature?
And for the more ecology people, I think for them it's going to be learning what's different about tropical environments, maybe what's different about field work and tropical environments.
And then I would say for everybody there's going to be a lot of, you just got to learn your species. Right.
I think people dwell so much on theory and concepts nowadays, which are really valuable. But it's also like there's something to be said for just being able to go somewhere and being like, yeah, I know. Whatever the four monkeys are that live here. I know that, whatever. So we also just want to give people a taste for the variety that's out there.
Not only of habitats but of the bajillions of things that live in them in the tropics.
So that'll be that. And that'll be, I don't know, maybe my 7th or 8th time in the country. So be really excited to go back there. Hopefully see a couple of friends too.
Good time.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: Oh, that'll be so fun.
[00:10:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: When will you be there?
[00:10:23] Speaker C: That is going to be the lion's share of May and maybe the first week of June, something like that. It's almost a month course. So it's maybe mid, early mid May that we leave. Yeah. So it's very intensive because it's essentially like taking a class for a semester. Except you take one class and it's for three and a half weeks. Super intense.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: In the field.
[00:10:47] Speaker C: Oh yeah. It's big time in the field. It seems a little bit more cushy than some of the ones that I did as a graduate student.
We had places where we would be.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Funny how that works.
[00:10:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
I can remember camping in the tropics and stuff. Which is a very different experience.
And cold showers. If there are showers and things like that where it seems like we're going to be going to some fancier, more modern field stations.
Which I think that those sort of more brutal experiences, those are only for the people who are signing up for that. And I wouldn't want to put these students through that.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: I got it.
Yeah. I have today a BlackBerry gin and tonic man was my trick of choice.
[00:11:42] Speaker C: So fancy every time.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: I don't even remember what happened. Did I even have wine last time? I don't remember.
[00:11:51] Speaker C: Wow, that's terrible. I don't remember. No. I think there was something maybe involving seltzer.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Terrible that you don't remember.
[00:12:00] Speaker C: It's so fancy that I figured I would. There was something interesting anyway, it's fine. Although. Although you should maybe make a log.
You could have, like, a rewild ology.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Mix menu recipe book.
[00:12:15] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you. That's what I'm looking for. Just like a mixology book. Yeah, a calendar of. Yeah, I'm trying to think of some nice portmanteau of the two ologies now, but that's too much for me.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: That's like a mouthful.
Remix. Wild ology. I don't know.
[00:12:40] Speaker C: Oh, I see what you did there, though. That was nice.
Okay, we'll come back to that. We'll let that one stew, and we'll get back to it. Okay, so it sounds like we are spontaneously covering some news and updates now. What else is going on on your end?
[00:13:01] Speaker B: So exciting things. Rewildology is officially three years old.
[00:13:05] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: Which is mind blowing that this show has been on the airwaves now for three years. I started this thing in. I started the process of building what is now the show in October ish of 2020 and then officially launched on January 26, 2021.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: Jeez.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: And today is January 30 of 2024.
[00:13:33] Speaker C: Crazy.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: This will be the 150 eigth episode.
[00:13:39] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness. That's nothing to sneeze at.
Your productivity astounds me. It is so impressive. And then being able to stick with it at that pace, too, because I really wonder, and I'm sure there are statistics somewhere. I really want to know what the. I don't know if this is the right word, the sort of attrition rate has been of pandemic podcasts, because you know that everybody and their mom was starting a podcast at that time, but how many people actually stuck with it, right. And are still around today?
I would guess under 10%, maybe less, probably.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Because one of the statistics I heard when I started the show, that if a show makes it to ten episodes, that's like the big cut off ten. It's very rare that if the show makes it past ten episodes, then it'll probably do a little further. But that seems to be the big cut off for people when they're like, okay, no, never mind, can't do this.
[00:14:45] Speaker C: Interesting. Wow.
Ten.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: But you're right. I wonder what the statistics are now. Post Covid, when we were all home, had nothing better to do. This was my outlet for creating impact since I lost so much at that time, and it's still going. And even significantly more big and exciting things to come. Even more exciting than swag shirts and campaigns.
[00:15:12] Speaker C: That's a tough one to top, honestly.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Yeah, this one is going to be a top.
[00:15:17] Speaker C: Okay, but are you going to tell me this one, or is this announce it yet?
[00:15:21] Speaker B: I can't announce this one yet.
[00:15:23] Speaker C: Listeners, I'm sorry, I tried. I should have asked the question, like, two drinks from now, but that's my fault. Yeah, that's actually bad strategy.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: But then I would probably just have to cut it.
[00:15:33] Speaker C: Oh, shoot. That's right.
I'd have to do that and then offer to edit the episode.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: But the other exciting thing is, speaking of the show being on the airwaves for three years, I am recruiting a team to start helping with the show. So I officially yesterday posted volunteer positions if anybody wants to come be a part of rewildology. So obviously there's no money or anything that I can offer yet to come along with it. But a ton of one on one coaching, I want to build a whole team around this amazing thing. Like anybody who's in science communication or conservation communication for social media type stuff, or media relations.
And I was reflecting on it a lot more because I was so against it for a while, even though I was drowning in work. It's like I decided to do this because it was out of my passion. And now that I've posted the position and gotten an overwhelmingly positive response.
[00:16:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: I've been blown away, honestly, by the response I've gotten of how many people just want to help and be a part of this movement. That is rewatology. It's, like, moving me a lot.
And a lot of the people that are applying so far, they're like, we believe in this. We want to offer our talents to this movement. That's huge, what's going on? And I'm just like, but the deadline isn't for another two weeks. So February 19 is when I'm going to cut it off and start doing interviews and all that stuff. So we're recording this a couple of days before it'll drop. So, people, you still have time. Please put your name in the hat if you want to be part of social media or if you love audio engineering or anything like that. There's four different areas and that I'm looking for, but we'll see who eventually comes on the team and then maybe shape what they do accordingly. So, like a social media team, media relations team, a podcast editing team, and then a science research person and or team, all of these will either be a person or a couple.
So all of us coming together to essentially just do this show in a way that's super impactful and reaches the most amount of people possible. Because at the end of the day, it's these amazing guests that come on and are spreading their amazing knowledge and these organizations that are coming on, like, how far can we get their message out?
So, yeah, that's really exciting.
[00:18:12] Speaker C: That's huge.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: Believe I finally did it.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, as someone who's very much kind of day to day in the conservation process and action world a lot, there's so much need for what you're doing, what the mission of rewildology is. It's such a big missing component.
I'm really grateful to see it, and I'm grateful for what you and your future team are going to be doing. And it's exciting to see that grow. And it doesn't surprise me that there are people who are that interested and sold on the concept.
First of all, the podcast is great, and you do such a good job of making it have a brand and bringing this really quality content. And the people, okay, present company, obviously not part of this statement, but you bring on these amazing frontline conservation people and tell these stories, and it covers so many important and real topics in such a relatable way. And I don't think I've come across any conservation themed podcasts that really do that effectively. In my mind, working on the nature guys, which I absolutely love, is a very different thing. It's not a conservation podcast, and I value that mission a lot. It's similar to the mission of my blog, and I think those are both very important things, but they're different things. And I think that communicating about conservation the way that you do is really hard.
And so, I don't know. Sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into like a whole promo for rue Wild algae, but I think that what you do is extremely difficult. And as a conservation scientist, working at multiple sides of this field all the time, sometimes very much up at the front, helping people make big decisions and things.
The stuff you're doing, I think, makes a gigantic difference. And I'm so excited to see it grow. Okay, I'm done. I'm done. That's it.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: Thanks, Charles.
[00:20:46] Speaker C: That was going to go on for too long, but I think it's great. And everybody should send in applications. That's super exciting.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And everybody, please, it's open.
And like I said, maybe one day it'll turn into a paid thing.
As this grows and as my timeline fulfills, we'll see. I mean, whoever the team is that is along for the ride, we'll see what it turns into.
I am so disciplined and I do have this bigger vision, but I will be completely honest that I'm, like, half winging it every single day. So I'm working on these really big things, but at the same time, I don't know.
[00:21:28] Speaker C: We'll see what happens.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: We'll see what happens.
[00:21:31] Speaker C: I think that's typical.
I think a lot of times, having it together is always somewhat of an illusion. It's just different degrees.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
I'm so skeptical. Not in a bad way of just, like every time I see these amazing presentations or all this stuff where all these people have it sewed together, and I'm like, I know better. I know better.
It's an incredible facade that we're all putting out. We know what we're talking about. We have our shit together. And I was like, no, you don't. I know you don't, because I don't. And I'm proud of what I've done so far.
[00:22:08] Speaker C: But you're fooling all of us.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: But I'm not afraid to say it.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: I know. I respect that. I respect that. Yeah.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: I'm not trying to create an illusion. I want people to feel invited and welcome as we're, like, going through this journey together. Because if we had the solutions and the answer, well, all of our problems would be gone and we would be doing something else. Who knows what else would I be doing?
[00:22:33] Speaker C: You'd probably be enjoying nature without worrying about saving it.
Right. You'd be going and looking at stuff and being like, isn't it great that we have so many rhinos?
[00:22:48] Speaker B: That's true. I guess I would just be, like, a full time guide or something like that.
[00:22:52] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's what I would be doing 100%.
But somebody's got to do some of this work. So for me, it ended up being a full time career, and that's that. Okay, that's big news. I'm not asking you to top that, but was there anything else that you had for.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Let me look at my list, because I have lists.
[00:23:13] Speaker C: When did we do this last episode? Was that October?
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Colors in nature?
[00:23:19] Speaker C: Yeah, but when was it?
[00:23:20] Speaker B: And you told me not to make a list.
[00:23:22] Speaker C: List of what?
[00:23:23] Speaker B: And I made a list.
[00:23:24] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, you're right.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Agreed to not make a list, not prep, and I did.
[00:23:30] Speaker C: Well, that's all a foreshadowing for tonight, right?
Just saying.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: That is foreshadowing for the rest of the episode when we get into the meat and potatoes today. Hey, but that was accidental because I got so interested in the topic. Okay, wait. I digress. Okay. Anyways, back to you. We need updates from Charles. So when did we record I had my Halloween nails?
[00:23:55] Speaker C: Okay, maybe November then. Like early November?
[00:24:00] Speaker B: Yeah, like late October, early November. For context.
[00:24:03] Speaker C: Yeah. So these were these costume nails or were these in the spirit of Halloween?
[00:24:08] Speaker B: No, you commented on them black and purple.
[00:24:11] Speaker C: Okay. Oh, yeah. It does sound really cool. Okay.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: And I had a black cat shirt on.
[00:24:15] Speaker C: Nice.
Okay, so this could have been anytime in October then, right. Because you strike me as someone who just kind of gets in the Halloween spirit and then rolls with it.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.
[00:24:25] Speaker C: Okay. Respect.
Since October.
Yeah.
On kind of the boring academic side, a lot of expansion and growth in the sphere that I've been working in. Right. So there's this kind of big hubbub around nature based solutions right now. It's becoming this big conservation frontier, and it's growing so fast, and a lot of countries and governments are kind of really subscribing to it now. And I've been working with a lot of my colleagues here for the last couple of years trying to talk about how to really put the nature in nature based solutions and make sure that when we are doing things like restoring and creating artificial ecosystems to protect people, which is what nature based solutions do, that those things are also going to provide habitat for wildlife and provide conservation benefits, ideally kind of strategic moves we can make right. To protect things that we think are especially important.
And, yeah, we had a couple of our sort of major flagship papers come out from a nerdy academic perspective.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: Congrats.
[00:25:42] Speaker C: Thank you. Yeah, really exciting. And those are sort of setting the tone for what we hope the community will be doing into the future. And, of course, what we're trying to do with our more in depth research. So then, since then, I've just been kind of starting to spin up a lot of individual projects. So we had all these papers saying, know, this is what we need to do, and we can always talk about that some other time.
And now we're trying to actually go do that stuff. So I applied for a big grant from NASA to do research using satellites and field observations of biodiversity, as well as recordings, audio recordings. And we're kind of spinning all that together into developing ways of predicting what species will benefit from different restorations of floodplains out in the Missouri river. Because the army corps of engineers is trying to restore floodplains to protect people from future major floods, from climate change, which is becoming a bigger and bigger issue over there. And so we're trying to help them also see, okay, if we're going to do this in these places. Can we also use that to provide bat habitat, bird habitat, vegetative communities that are valuable or declining, like wet prairie and things like that?
A lot of nerd babble, but a lot of exciting things, I think, happening on that front for me, in terms of research.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: That grant from freaking NASA.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Are you hiring for a PhD?
[00:27:11] Speaker C: Yeah, we are hiring a postdoc. Yeah. So that's a PhD level scientist who would help us with fancy technical analyses of satellite data and stuff like that. Yeah.
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Incredible.
[00:27:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm excited.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: Congrats, dude. I know I already said that, but seriously, pat yourself on the back. I've known you now for years, which is crazy to say, and to watch your career grow. I mean, we met, you were still in Montana, right?
That has now been two states ago and just like a whole different place in your career. And to see how far you've come as well.
[00:27:52] Speaker C: This is totally cool.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Are you becoming the nature based solutions guy? Is that your reputation that you're growing?
[00:28:00] Speaker C: Which is cool? Yeah, I think so.
People have already started to kind of reach out in ways that make me think, like, they must have thought of my name when that came up. So it is starting to happen a little bit and we'll see how that changes over time. But it's exciting.
I was always told by academic mentors of mine that you have to figure out what you have to be the guy or the gal or the person for something.
You have to have something that they associate your name with.
That's always like a sign that you're starting to develop a good kind of momentum academically. And seeing that happen, I'm sort of like, oh, wow. Yeah, no, I think I'm becoming the guy for that particular thing.
So it's cool.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: There you go, everybody. You are watching expert scientists like blossom. How cool is this?
[00:28:57] Speaker C: That was fun.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: As we get into the topic of today, some of the scientific papers that I was reading, I recognize those names.
And one of the big things about rheology and the show is like, there is a story behind every single person that is on a scientific paper. Who is that person and what is their story? And then some of these know have incredible careers and they've become like this known for.
And for example, I've had on Stuart Breck, who is like one of the top conflict management with bears guys.
[00:29:34] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: On so many different papers, and he's just a normal guy.
So just to watch your career and knowing that as people come along the journey with you and as we still have more and more of these fun chats, they'll also get to see as you become the nature based solutions guy.
The MBS guy.
[00:29:55] Speaker C: That's right. I know we've got all of our cool acronyms and everything. I had a real brain twister of a moment. Was it last week or the week before? I was talking to some folks from the UN who work in Central and South America about how they use nature based solutions for climate adaptation in places like Honduras and Argentina and Chile and things like that. It was a really fun conversation. It was all in Spanish, which is, know I speak pretty good Spanish, but this was starting to push my have a. They. They call it SBN. And so I kept saying, like, NBs in Spanish. And they were like, what? And I had to keep remembering to flip it. But anyway, yeah, people love their acronyms. There's a lot of that.
So I want to get into the topic that you couldn't stop researching.
Actually, no. We should talk about what we're doing tonight. Right. Because we're trying to be a little bit more organized than the sort of ridiculous chatting that we're already doing right now. But we're trying to have a theme every time we do one of these happy hours. No, I think we're doing great. We're one and a half episodes in, and we've had.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So the theme of today, I don't text with Charles. I was like, I would love to do another episode. And one of the things I haven't done one in a while, and it was called into the, like, they were solo episodes at the time. And what I did is I would bookmark these headlines that really piqued my interest for one form or another, whatever.
[00:31:38] Speaker C: It would be.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: Like, one of my last ones, I actually phoned an expert, and it was when Utah overrode the mountain lion laws, hunting laws in the state. So I phoned a friend immediately and had somebody on the show to talk about this.
All of the cop conferences, all of them. And the big cat safety act. So, like, these headlines that are really important in our world, I would do deep dives in, do solo episodes. Well, solo episodes are fun, but they're not near as fun unless you do.
[00:32:10] Speaker C: It with a friend.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Like, doing these episodes with a friend is a million times more fun. And so I was like, charles, go through the news and pick just some of your favorite headlines, like, what is it that's going on that really piqued your interest? And luckily, hopefully, everyone listening can tell that we are in slightly different areas of the field. So I knew the headlines you would find would be way different than the ones that I would find. And you would teach me something. And I would teach you something.
[00:32:41] Speaker C: Totally.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Yeah, that was my idea for the day. So, like, top headlines that we found interesting.
[00:32:48] Speaker C: Wait, what did you call it, though? That was such a cool title. I love that. Totally.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: Into the headlines.
[00:32:53] Speaker C: Into the headlines. Nice. Yeah, nice.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: So that's what I called them. I think I did, like, three or four of those episodes.
And this is kind of based on that same concept as what I was going for. I love those episodes. They did well, and they were just interesting because I didn't know what I would be researching, but it would be really important stuff. And I would always try to take a double sided view because we're always going to have biases and everything like that. But I would always try to find what is the opposite view of whatever is happening right now and not try to frame it from one perspective.
[00:33:29] Speaker C: Totally.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: And so that's how I approach this episode. And so that is the topic or the theme.
[00:33:35] Speaker C: Right. Well, and now you've already got two perspectives right here. So we're already starting with two different people. Yeah, it'll be interesting. Cool.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: So my topic today was originally, I got to pull all my notes. I have.
[00:33:51] Speaker C: Oh, my gosh, Charles.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: I have 123456. 710. 1112.
[00:33:57] Speaker C: No, 1415.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: 1617. I have 17 tabs up.
[00:34:02] Speaker C: You got to calm it down. This is just like all of our conversations. Keep it spontaneous. We'll be so chill about it. Brooks, like, well, I have three outlines, and I ordered them by priority. Okay, 17 tabs.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Okay.
How this happened is there was a news piece that I had saved that I really wanted to talk about because it was just really good, heartfelt news. And I love good, heartfelt news because we don't get it that often.
And I don't know if you saw, but last September, the Center for Biological Diversity announced that two new jaguars have been spotted in the United States. And I'm like, oh, that's so exciting. I want to talk about, like, everybody, if you didn't know. Last March and May, 2 male jaguars were found on camera traps placed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Arizona. I think it was Arizona.
[00:35:02] Speaker C: Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:35:04] Speaker B: And so this is fantastic.
They're. They're coming up. Like, you know, I would love to know, like, hey, Charles, did you see that?
And then I started to go down the rabbit hole.
[00:35:19] Speaker C: Yeah. I assume there's a lot going on.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to pull up my notes here because it required that, because, like, the dates and the years and the times and all that stuff. So, before I start, Charles, do you have any background knowledge of jaguars in the United States?
[00:35:41] Speaker C: Kind of, and I'm really glad you asked that, because I was just about to ask if we could cover a few basics for listeners and for me. But my vague understanding is that the southwestern United States, what is now the United States, essentially used to be the northernmost portion of the jaguars range. And then their range has been, which, like any species does when their populations decline, their range has been contracting, and so they're no longer found in the contiguous us the way they used to be. But now we occasionally get these kind of. These little exploratory, probably usually males. Right. Because they're the ones wandering around.
But. So we get the occasional one kind of coming up from Mexico every now and then. Right.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: Dispersing mail, as it's called in the cat world.
[00:36:35] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:36:37] Speaker B: So you're spot on. So the Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico and Louisiana used to be the northernmost range of jaguar habitat. They were originally across 21 countries, and they're now found in 19.
And what happened is it's the same story as happened in all.
They used to. Like I said, they used to freely roam in pristine habitat. If you think of, like, Mexico, that's some similar ecosystem to what's in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. That used to be their hotspot.
[00:37:16] Speaker C: They were in arid environments, because I always picture them as, like, a rainforest guy. Interesting. Oh, cool.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. But there's, like, some mountainous jungle pockets ish, too. I wouldn't quite say jungle or anything like that forest, but these forested areas that they inhabit.
But, yeah, if you think of, like, Texas and Arizona and more, the mountainous regions, that is where they used to be found. And in the 18 hundreds, there's actually confirmed sightings of a jaguar as far as longs peak, Colorado. I know exactly where that is, having lived in longs.
[00:37:49] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: I lived at the base of longs. Yeah. And also Monterey, California.
And these were confirmed sightings. So who knows? They might have been dispersing males as well. We don't know why they were there. That was outside of the normal realm. But those were confirmed sightings. Jeez. And they used to be pretty abundant from all of the, like I said, confirmed sightings by european settlers and also american ancestors and then in native american cultures. So, like the southern indigenous communities, they have a ton of stories and art and literature, all of a spotted cat of the jaguar. So clearly they were here for a very long time. However, as all predators, like I said, in the United states in the 18 hundreds, 19 hundreds, they were the unfortunate victims of the US government and ranchers rampage against predators. Mexican wolves, pumas.
[00:38:50] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:38:50] Speaker B: Pretty much all predators and jaguars, they were all fully extirpated. And for anyone who doesn't know what that means, they were completely removed from their american habitat. So the last, by the 1960s, all of them were removed.
So the last confirmed female was shot in either 1963 or 1964.
I saw two different articles quoting both of those years. So somewhere in that time window, and obviously this has huge consequences if a species is going to repopulate on its own, because if you don't have females, you obviously ain't making babies. So that was the last time a female was seen in the United States. But in 1969, jaguar hunting was banned in important range states like Arizona. And then the Endangered Species act passed in 1972. And the jaguars were put on. Oh, they were the ESA.
[00:39:50] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: As an endangered species.
[00:39:53] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: However, again, however, in 1980, the US Fish and Wildlife Service delisted jaguars due to public objections. And obviously this blatantly went against the Endangered Species act.
So this went on for about a couple of decades. And then in 1996, Warren Glenn, he was a rancher and a hunting guide from Douglas, Arizona, spotted the first male in the. Oh, God. Paloncio Mountains. Peloncillo.
[00:40:33] Speaker C: Yeah. Paloncio.
[00:40:34] Speaker B: Spanish.
[00:40:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: Okay.
And he was a houndsman. So he actually pulled back his hounds, which is pretty cool. This Warner guy, he snapped some photos and he just let the cat go away. So ever since that, and then that started this, like, oh, my God, like, jaguars are here. And actually right after that, there was more cats that had been spotted in these very remote places where they were just not touched, but these cats were able to get into. And then that resparked the interest in jaguars. So then in 1997, the center for Biological Diversity started a campaign to have jaguars relisted under the ESA, and they won.
And so jaguars were put back on the ESA as endangered, but then there was no plan put in place to recover them. So after that, the CBD took legal action and sued the US Fish and Wildlife Service three times to finally establish a recovery plan and denote critical jaguar habitat. And that all went down in 2018.
[00:41:41] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[00:41:41] Speaker B: So they sued multiple times across the years. And finally, in 2018, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced a recovery plan with denotions of some habitat. So during all of this, I don't know, did you ever hear of the famous jaguar named El Hefe that does sound familiar.
[00:42:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:04] Speaker B: Did you hear about him?
[00:42:05] Speaker C: I think I did.
[00:42:07] Speaker B: So during all of this. So the CBD, they were, like, watching all of this. I also found this really cool map that I'll definitely have in the show notes. So there's an actual map that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has of the spots where jaguars have been spot on their cameras. And so I'll definitely have that map in the show notes because it's really cool to look through and you can see the details from the sightings and stuff. Anyways, so in 2011, el Hefe was first spotted in Arizona and he was tracked and followed by, this is all observational data until 2015. So he became very famous.
[00:42:43] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: And he proved that jaguars could migrate here and live harmoniously on their own, not create any trouble and just be a beautiful, magnificent cat as they are. He randomly disappeared in 2015 and was presumed dead because big cats. He disappeared, but he magically reappeared in 2022 on a camera trap.
[00:43:10] Speaker C: No way.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: And so I read all kinds of different reports. They're like, what happened to La Jefe? How did he come back? And it was actually, a lot of articles speculated that it was the border wall that got him stuck in Mexico and then he couldn't come up. I mean, I don't know. He is an independent cat.
[00:43:29] Speaker C: Who knows?
[00:43:29] Speaker B: Maybe it had something to do with that, maybe it didn't. But as of now, he's still alive and he was born in 2010 and from all reports, he's still a beautiful looking cat.
[00:43:40] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:43:40] Speaker B: So that is actually a really old Jag.
[00:43:42] Speaker C: I was going to ask. So they identify him by his spot pattern? That's how they could tell it was him?
[00:43:47] Speaker B: Oh, yes. Thank you for asking that. Yeah. So all cats similar to our fingerprints, their spot patterns are individual to each cat. So I actually am in my professional job as the director of conservation. I'm working with my biology team in Tanzania at our camps to run an AI database of the cats that are around our camps that are in the Serengeti. And then we'll branch to some of our other cats where we're using AI. And that's how AI works. It uses machine learning and all these magic guru stuff behind the scenes that, I don't know what it does, but it learns the spot patterns of individual cats and with insane accuracy, can tell who a cat is. So that is how they've been able to tell that the two cats spotted last year were brand new males never before seen in the database.
[00:44:38] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: Because it didn't match anything that had previously been seen. So that's super exciting. Two new cats. And that's also how they were able to show that El Jefe was El hefe.
[00:44:48] Speaker C: Got it.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: Because it was the same cat with this paw pattern.
[00:44:51] Speaker C: Yeah. He's a good looking dude. I'm looking up some pictures of.
[00:44:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:54] Speaker C: Isn't he beautiful, big guy?
[00:44:55] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah, he's huge. Not near as big as the ones I saw in the pants and Al. But those are the biggest jaguars in the world.
[00:45:01] Speaker C: That checks out. That's a lot of food in the world's biggest wetland. I mean, that'll do it. It looks like he had a predecessor named Macho B. Did you see that?
[00:45:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:14] Speaker C: That's awesome.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: Macho B was the last known jaguar before El Jefe.
[00:45:20] Speaker C: Right. Okay.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: So these jaguars became really famous. There was Macho A, who was, from what I read, and I do need to do more research, just make sure, like, the timeline of this. I'm pretty sure macho a was the first one that was spotted, and there was macho B and then El Jefe. So these three famous, they were all male? Not, unfortunately, there was no female. So again, a population can't reestablish.
So then after that, that is when my notes end and have to go to all of my tabs here.
[00:45:52] Speaker C: Well, I have a question, if you don't mind, before we get. I don't want to distract you too long, but I do have some questions here. I'm thinking, just from a conservation standpoint, what does a conservation plan look like when you are in a country that is just the tiniest, tiniest tail end of a species range and no one's reported them breeding here since, ever since, or whatever. And all we have is the occasional bachelor moving through. How do we define what a conservation goal is for them in the US?
[00:46:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And so from what I was able to read. So this kind of goes on the next point. So I haven't been able to fully read the paper, but in what year was this?
2021.
This group of very famous, knowledgeable researchers came Together and they published this paper called a systematic review of potential habitat suitability for the jaguar in central Arizona and New Mexico.
[00:47:04] Speaker C: Oh, cool.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: So they took the jaguar plan because it isn't a reintroduction plan. I want to clarify that this jaguar coming back to plan.
And they pretty much actually, upon review, because from that plan, from what I read, it denoted this amount of space that was suitable for six jaguars.
That's it.
[00:47:36] Speaker C: Got it.
[00:47:37] Speaker B: That is not a sustainable population.
[00:47:38] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:47:40] Speaker B: And so these scientists, they were like, actually, if we look at. And again, I have not had a chance to read the paper because the next part of this conversation that got me so deep into this literally dropped yesterday, like less than 24 hours ago.
And that is how I got so deep in.
[00:47:57] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: And I have not had a chance to read everything.
[00:47:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:48:01] Speaker B: So with that science in mind, the CBD did 116 page petition to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
And from what I understand, they actually petitioned. I don't know if it's from the scientists or I have to read all these things, like around 2 million acres of suitable habitat for the jaguars as it currently stands. I don't think that that's including.
I don't know. I don't want to say anything without being 100% certain, but I didn't see any specific remarks about private lands. I didn't see in addition to that might be in there, but I didn't see that right off the bat that they were specifically talking about private lands. They use the public lands and they denoted at least 2 million acres, which would house 90 to 150 jaguars, which would then be a sustainable population.
[00:49:02] Speaker C: Yeah. And I'm assuming they don't. Like, I imagine that our goal is not to have our own independent breeding population of jaguars. Right. We probably want them to be connected to all the other populations going further south.
[00:49:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's one of the big things. And that's one of the big things that you're talking about because the population in Mexico is apparently getting pretty isolated. And so some of the big initiatives is like this jaguar corridor to connect all of the home ranges together so that there can be more mixing.
So that is like one of the big. And also too, they used to be here. This used to be their for sure. And we killed them. We pushed them out. So I don't know more from that perspective other than they used to be here and we should bring them back. If there's anything more than that. I don't really know because me working in conservation tourism and my mind immediately goes to like, can you imagine if you could go to Arizona and through a scope so you freaking jaguar, you wouldn't have to hop on a plane with me to now we could go to freaking Arizona. Imagine just like the opportunities for ranchers that have all of these massive ranches and if they knew that they had a famous jaguar, that this was their home range and they had plenty of food and all that kind of stuff, just how amazing would that be? And to bring the apex predator back, like, holy shit.
There is nothing more apex in the Americas than a goddamn. Like, there is nothing more apex than.
[00:50:54] Speaker C: Nothing more apex in the warm parts. How about that? In the warm habitats, I always just think of grizzly.
Uh, you know, Chris, I've hiked in enough places.
[00:51:07] Speaker B: Habitats don't overlap.
[00:51:08] Speaker C: Yeah, but I mean, in the areas they inhabit. Yeah, I mean, they're the big guys. That's a serious animal.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: They king.
[00:51:18] Speaker C: So what? They are king in this incredible drama of the extirpation and potential reestablishment of this totally, I think, to american eyes, very exotic tropical animal. What happened yesterday that is making you.
[00:51:40] Speaker B: Even more fired up than usual yesterday. So this amazing, insanely detailed petition that was written by the, sorry, gin and tonic, that was written by the CBD and submitted, and I mean, this thing is detailed and submitted to. Let me pull up the press release and submitted to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This very detailed explaining how, why, where, when, all the whatever about reintroducing jaguars. So I think taking more of a proactive wow. Approach.
[00:52:18] Speaker C: Moving cats.
[00:52:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm assuming he does. I have it. I've fully read it to be 100% off.
I don't want to say things that I don't quite know in it, but this petition that I said is 116 pages that is insanely in depth talking about how and why jaguars should be placed where they say, with hard science and everything was rejected by the US fish and.
Nope. And let me pull up the press release here.
Let me see if there's something that I should. This is heartbreaking example of fish and wildlife Service continued failure to take proactive steps to bring jaguars back to the native range, says Lake and Jordal, southwest conservation advocate at the center for.
[00:53:11] Speaker C: Yeah, not mincing words, these guys.
[00:53:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're just like, f you. They're like federal officials. This is, quote, federal officials should be aiding jaguar recovery, not making excuses that justify their continued inaction. Jaguars belong in the United States, and we won't stop fighting to protect and recover these magnificent cats. In the letter to the center received this week, the Fish and Wildlife Service said, quote, recovery of the species could be achieved without the presence of jaguars in the Gila National Forest.
[00:53:45] Speaker C: Oh, so there's one particular place that they're.
[00:53:48] Speaker B: Yeah, apparently so. This rationale ignores numerous jaguar experts who authored a ground baking paper that I just told you what it was declaring. 20 million acres in Arizona and New Mexico, including the Gila National Forest, suitable habitat for a breeding population of jaguars.
[00:54:07] Speaker C: Okay, those. Those habitat suitability analyses, as we call them in the nerd business.
Those are typically based around.
They can pick what their criteria are to select areas and I'd be interested to see what it was they picked.
If I were in their position, I'd probably also want to pick like, people don't keep cattle in this place. Right. Because even if the habitat is great, I guarantee you if one sheep or cow gets killed, then suddenly you're going to be dealing with the whole rancher population.
That's the really tragic.
[00:54:51] Speaker B: And that's like the biggest.
[00:54:52] Speaker C: Yeah. If there's one slip up by one individual animal, suddenly they're all demonized to the nth degree.
So I wonder how they treated that.
It would be really interesting.
[00:55:07] Speaker B: Obviously, all 18, 1920. Whatever things I read I'll definitely have in the show notes, but I'll specifically send you this because the methods, it's way too long for me to even think about reading this and giving you a summary in like a. Oh, sure, yeah, of course. Manner.
Yeah. But considering the names that were on this paper, I'm sure they did their due diligence, but I didn't have a chance to fully read it because again, it's just crazy that I picked this topic. And then yesterday night, like evening, that's.
[00:55:42] Speaker C: When it went down.
[00:55:43] Speaker B: The rejection press release dropped. And then in that press release quoted this paper that it was based off of. And I found the petition that they originally submitted to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. So I was like, holy. Yeah, this is happening right now. So, yeah, apparently jaguars in the United States is filled with controversy and lawsuits and massive public outcry both ways.
We need to be bringing them back and then strong opposition against them.
Yeah, I didn't expect to uncover so much drama into the headlines idea.
[00:56:23] Speaker C: It sounds like you got yourself a whole miniseries there. That's a saga. And we've scratched the surface.
[00:56:33] Speaker B: Yeah. I was just so happy because I was in Brazil and got to see all the jaguars there. And I interviewed a lot of people there and getting ready to produce a podcast series about conservation of that area since the jaguar is pretty much the keystone species there in that whole area. That's like the center theme of the whole thing. And so I have a piqued interest, of course, of anything big cat related. And then just to go into this, like, whoa, I did not.
I learned a lot.
[00:57:08] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, I just did too.
[00:57:12] Speaker B: So that is the saga. I think there's no other way to call it about jaguars in the United States. And as I get more updates, I'll definitely share them throughout the show and anything that I see or hear. But, yeah, again, like I said, I'll have all of the links to this in the show notes. If anybody else wants to nerd out and see what details I missed or read on or read the petition or read this beautiful scientific paper, by all means, it'll be all there. But that is what I've been able to uncover in, like, 72.
[00:57:54] Speaker C: You didn't sleep during that time either, right? You were just.
[00:58:01] Speaker B: Lots of coffee.
Okay, so that was my time.
[00:58:07] Speaker C: Okay, well, I will readily admit that I did not do nearly as much.
[00:58:15] Speaker B: You weren't supposed.
[00:58:16] Speaker C: No, I was.
[00:58:17] Speaker B: This was accidental.
Did you see this? No. Then I just was, like, 1963, the last female shot.
[00:58:28] Speaker C: Brooke, one does not stumble into 17 tabs or whatever.
Listen, you've got the Sherlock Holmes vibe going on right now, and I respect it. Oh, I feel like I see the game. I respect.
[00:58:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like I'm Sherlock Holmes. Doesn't he have, like, a cute english bulldog or something as my cat?
[00:58:55] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely. Your cat is delightful. I miss your cat. Okay.
She's asleep beside me. I've met her once, and I miss, like, what an amazing animal. Okay.
Yeah. That aside, I found two kind of newsy things, and I kind of picked them. Well, I picked them because they're both around topics that are close to my heart, but they're also on very different sides of what we talk about on this show. So one of them is a lot.
[00:59:30] Speaker B: I'm in shriek.
[00:59:30] Speaker C: Yeah. So one of them is a lot more people and conservation and stuff.
And then the other one is a lot more like nature nerd.
Just cool nature stuff. Right. So I'll go through them both.
Let me start with the people one. Yeah, I'll start with the people one. Okay. And I have not done enough research on it, and it seems like it's a recent enough thing that maybe no one, except for the people doing it, know much of what's going on yet.
But I was reading through just a bunch of conservation headlines at your recommendation, from our dumpster fire, of a text conversation, which is how good episodes start, is just, like, ridiculous conversation. And I found one that I really liked. I'm just going to read the headline itself.
First ever U. S. Indigenous marine stewardship area declared in California.
And I was immediately like. I was like, what is an indigenous marine stewardship area? I mean, I could put the pieces together.
Manga Bay.
[01:00:42] Speaker B: Like, who's this by? Oh, I love manga Bay. I read almost every one of their articles.
[01:00:47] Speaker C: Yeah. I've interacted with a few of their journalists before on conservation topics.
[01:00:53] Speaker B: Oh, really?
[01:00:54] Speaker C: Yeah. There was one on, like, what was it?
Maybe wetland conservation or something, that I provided some commentary for a couple articles with one really nice journalist there. I can't remember her name, but we're like friends on Twitter and stuff.
Basically, what kind of happened here is several different indigenous nations from the kind of Pacific Northwest. So we're talking like, North California coast up to most of the Oregon coast, I believe, the Taloa Denis nation, the Resiguini rancheria, and the chure heights indian community. So all of these nations kind of came together and know by their own right and authority, designated this ImsA, this indigenous marine stewardship area. The idea being like, the estuaries and coastal zones of this part of the country are not only their cultural heritage, but these are places that have really direct, not just spiritual relevance. Right. But, like, economic and personal health relevance to their society to be able to keep harvesting the species that they've been harvesting for thousands of years and continue with those traditions and manage their resources for themselves.
So, first of all, that's just totally sweet, frankly. That's awesome.
It's exciting to see something like that happen. Any new protected area, I am generally pretty excited about, but protected areas in that form of conservation have a bit of a checkered past. I know you've touched on it before on the podcast. Sometimes it's a bunch of white people showing up someplace and being like, you can't use this anymore. And then a bunch of people who live there being like, what the hell are you talking about?
In this case, we know that the local stakeholders, the local communities, the ones most invested in that land, who have been there for generations beyond memory, those are the people designated this time. So this is a very different mechanism for this going on. So that's cool as it is. The other thing that I thought was totally sweet about this was that was the way they're doing it. And I'm still making sense of that. Even just from reading this article. I have to find maybe some more detailed information. But basically they just did it.
It's not like they went to the US government and were like, oh, can you designate blah, blah, blah? They were like, no, it's designated now. And I don't mean that to imply that they're, like, flippant in any way. I mean, this is awesome. It's like they're literally exerting their sovereign nation.
And I'm not a lawyer, I don't know.
[01:03:48] Speaker B: They said f a red. Yeah.
[01:03:50] Speaker C: Literally, the article says, as sovereign nations, the tribes say that they are not seeking state or federal agencies permission to assert their tribally led stewardship rights and responsibilities. Rather, they want to establish cooperative relationships, recognizing their inherent indigenous governance authority, which is super sweet. Yeah. Among the kind of key cultural species that they're trying to keep track of. There was mention of a smelt called the surf smelt, which actually, they're really interesting little fish, the various smelts. But they have this whole plan, right, for catching them and keeping track of their numbers across time, which is really neat.
What I did notice also in the article is that when they were talking to experts from these tribes, they're wildlife scientists and things like that, they were really taking a lot of inspiration from indigenous people in other parts of the world. Like a lot of the folks in Hawaii who I actually interact with, a lot, not so much the sea turtle folks that they were referencing, but there are a lot of really strong indigenous conservation groups in Hawaii. And also Australia is another big one that they're bringing up again. When I was visiting there, our conservation conferences had really tremendous representation and participation of indigenous people, which I thought was amazing.
So, yeah, so they have declared this area. I really want to see what becomes of this. You know what I mean? I'm hoping that the federal agencies and state agencies will be able to see this as a call to collaborate and do something much bigger with this area.
There's increasing interest and kind of momentum in federal conservation agencies around finding out what the community wants. Right. Having stakeholder participation in conservation. And it can't get any more clear than this. You know what I mean? When the community is like, this is what we want to protect. Well, it's like, well, shoot, then you don't need to do a stakeholder analysis anymore. Maybe just listen to those people. Right.
So I would be really stoked to see this go well, I like the idea, and I think that these sort of sovereign actions by these indigenous nations is so important not only just for the justice, the historical justice, that these people deserve sovereignty over their lands and their lives, but also from a conservation point of view, it is rarely a bad thing when people from an area get more control. Usually a lot of these major conservation impacts are coming from outside. Right. It's other people who are standing to benefit, ruining a place because they don't have to live there. So I think this is huge.
A few more details.
The area that they're planning is about 700 sq. Mi.
There's also a map in the article that has something like 5000 sq mi of California state waters potentially included in the IMSA. So, I mean, we're talking about a big area with some super intense, valuable ecosystems which are no doubt under threat. A lot of coastal and sdrian systems are really getting hammered by climate change.
I think this is fantastic. For me, this is really excellent news. It's obviously a huge shame that this kind of pronouncement has to be made, right. That means that these resources are in peril. But to see folks doing something about it and not waiting necessarily for the slow bureaucracy of federal agencies to do something about it, I think is really great.
[01:07:28] Speaker B: That is so cool. And immediately just where my mind goes, since I'm on the application of conservation side of things, I just immediately hope. I'm like, I hope there is some outdoor, business savvy person in those tribes that sees the tourism opportunity and what they could do from a fish guiding business, a rafting business, a canoeing business, a guiding business, birding business. There's so many incredible ways they could essentially monetize the nature that they decided to protect and also help bring in the money to then further protect and just make it even more beautiful. Amazing. So that's where my mind immediately goes. So it'd be really cool to see how this develops. And I hope that they have that in mind, or somebody that they know and trust is giving them that advice too. Because I'll just imagine if you could go out with a tribe's member from one of these and they could take you fishing.
Can you imagine if somebody just. That is what they love more than anything. Can you imagine going out with an indigenous person here and learning about the fish from their perspective on a fishing trip? Could there be anything more moving than that? If you love fishing or birding or marine mammal watching, if you love seals or whatever, it might be migratory whale otters out there. I'm sure that goes up the coast. Oh my God, that'd be amazing. I really hope they're doing.
[01:08:58] Speaker C: It's a beautiful part.
[01:08:59] Speaker B: I would love to have a guide. I would love to have a native american guide and go out there. I would go out of my way to hire that person.
Way out of my way.
[01:09:10] Speaker C: Well, we'll keep an eye on it, but, yeah, I'm excited to see where this goes. I think this could represent the start of something really huge. It would be amazing to see other nations being empowered in this way to steward their resources and their special places on their own and in the process to push government actors to do a better job of it.
Yeah, I'm stoked on that.
[01:09:44] Speaker B: Stay tuned on that one.
[01:09:45] Speaker C: Yeah, seriously. I know.
[01:09:47] Speaker B: Fresh off the press.
[01:09:48] Speaker C: Yeah. This is also from yesterday, this headline. So I will be dying to learn more about this as it goes.
So, you know, to think about this in Monty Python terms. And now for something completely different.
My second headline was about cicadas.
[01:10:12] Speaker B: I'm back in Ohio. Tell me all about cicadas.
[01:10:15] Speaker C: I might have to come visit, honestly, depending on how the timing works.
I did not pick one headline on this because this is on a lot of people's minds all of a sudden, which is great, maybe, but there are a lot of headlines about how 2024 is going to be the year of the cicadas. People keep saying, and this is because there are going to be two simultaneous emergences of periodical cicadas. So two different broods are going to come out at once, and I think there will be some geographical overlap between the two broods as well. So for folks who don't know, just a really quick periodical cicada 101. So cicadas are these really neat plant sucking insects, and they live underground for some amount of time during their larval stages. And I think that the food that they eat is not super nutritious. So it takes them a very long time to grow.
Years. They will literally be living for years, like, plugged into a tree root, just drinking fluid.
We have what are called annual cicadas. And if you live in an area that has cicadas, which is like a lot of the planet, usually they come out in the summertime, the adults emerge from the ground, they metamorphose into their adult form, and then they fly around, and the males make loud noises in the trees and they fight each other and they make babies. And then the babies drop down and go underground, and it starts the cycle again. These annual species, the individuals that come out every year, are always, like three or four or six years old. It's just that because they come out every year, there's another generation every year of six year olds or five year olds or whatever it is that comes out. Right? So even though they come out every year, it's not like they complete their life cycle in a year.
These periodical ones have a slightly different life history, where they will spend a really long time underground, and they will spend prime number amounts of time underground, 17 years, 13 years, whatever it is.
But the big difference is, instead of, like, coming out every year, right, and there's that delay of six years, but there's always another generation, because they're all staggered. So they come out every year instead of that, these ones all go at once.
So every 13 years, they all come out, they all scream, they all breed, they all die, and then all the babies go into ground, and then 13 years later, they all come up again. Right.
There's a whole bunch of neat evolutionary ecology about it, but essentially their sort of strategy is there are so freaking many of us that the predators can't handle it. So enough of us survive every time to come back next time. But their whole biology is based around the fact that there are just bajillions of them.
And to get into the actual numbers, these broods can be billions of individuals coming out all at once over the course of, what, three to six weeks, something like that. They don't live super long.
So there are different broods within species, which are like these recurring intervals. If they come out every 17 years and a lot of them are offset from each other. So we don't get periodical cicadas every year, but every, like, three to four to seven years, some brood somewhere in the country is going off. And you can go there and see crazy cicada action. I mean, just everything covered in cicadas. I've seen one in my life, which was 2021. I went to go visit Bob from the nature guys in Cincinnati during the brood ten emergence, which I thought that was several different species of cicadas.
It was insane. Every tree, everything was just covered in cicadas. It was totally nuts. It was awesome.
This year, there are two different broods, brood 19 and brood 13.
Brood 19 has the nickname the great southern brood, which sounds very promising. The two of them are going to be coming out at once, probably. I'm guessing, like, may June or something like that.
And they're going to be all over a bunch of the central us. And in the places where the two broods overlap, it is going to be pandemonium. I mean, it is going to be so many bugs. So I'm just really stoked on that. I'm looking up right now where some of the locations are.
So brood 19, which is the great southern brood, it's going to be Nashville, Tennessee, Charlote, North Carolina. St. Louis, Missouri.
Brood 13 is going to be hitting eastern Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, southern Wisconsin.
Wow.
Yeah. So Chicago is the biggest city that it'll be happening near, and then both of them are going to be overlapped in areas in Illinois. It looks like that might be it. So Illinois might be the epicenter. I got to go make some more friends in that area.
[01:16:01] Speaker B: Go get some deep dish and go find some.
[01:16:04] Speaker C: Have heard. I have heard that you can put these cicadas on a pizza and that it's quite nice. And I don't think of eating animals when I first meet any kind of wildlife but that could be pretty neat. And if there are billions of them, what's sounds crunchy. Yeah, it does. Yeah. I mean bugs can be delicious. I really not hating on them.
[01:16:29] Speaker B: Can't say I've had too many voluntarily or willingly.
[01:16:32] Speaker C: Yeah, you should try some. I went to an entomophagey conference many years ago and it was really cool. Yeah, these are bugs.
A lot of them taste like bacon. It's weird, but they do crunchy, crunchy, crunchy bacon with legs.
[01:16:53] Speaker B: You do an entomophagy comfort.
[01:16:57] Speaker C: Entomophagy.
[01:16:59] Speaker B: Sorry, I am laughing at you.
[01:17:02] Speaker C: I have it coming. I usually do.
So that's all I got is this year is going to be crazy for cicadas and really hopeful, exciting stuff happening on the west coast that I hope happens.
[01:17:17] Speaker B: That's so, that's so freaking cool. Yeah. Because I guess the talk here is already happening about the cicadas. And I grew up in very rural place and surrounded by woods in a log cabin. And I remember when the cicadas would come out, they would have their exoskeletons all over our house and I remember playing with them as like a little girl and trying to bat them off the house and onto the ground and stuff and in the trees and all kinds of stuff.
[01:17:46] Speaker C: And those were periodical. Did you run into?
[01:17:50] Speaker B: Oh, I have no. There was one time we were actually just talking about this. How funny. There was like one particular bloom of them that I remember as a little girl that was out of this world. So I'm 32 now, so it must have been like a 17 or 13 or something like that. Like a massive one.
[01:18:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:18:14] Speaker B: Because like you said, they are annual. So there was cicadas every year, especially when it got really hot.
[01:18:18] Speaker C: Yeah, hot summers.
[01:18:21] Speaker B: There's one particular for sure.
[01:18:24] Speaker C: You'll see annual ones in great numbers.
It sounds like you were in a pretty countryside kind of place. If you're in a place with healthy forests, the annual ones are abundant enough. They will be all over.
[01:18:37] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:18:37] Speaker C: I mean even just like in Athens, Georgia, where, you know, we have like six or seven different species of annual and like they're freaking everywhere by late summer. And that is still nothing compared these, these mass emergence broods. I mean we're talking like the roads are paved with them.
[01:18:59] Speaker B: Oh my God.
[01:19:01] Speaker C: Oh, it's nuts. Brood x, I think, wasn't even that big. Even in Cincinnati. It was like, okay, yeah, it's a lot of cicadas, but this is like biblical stuff, like blotting out the sun and you can't hear anything over mean.
[01:19:16] Speaker B: Are they only reproducing? Do they actually consume anything? I mean, they're not acting like locusts. Right? Like the actual plague? Is it just for, like, that?
[01:19:24] Speaker C: Is their reproductive body mostly, yeah. So people, they do a lot more eating as babies. You are absolutely right. Which a lot of insects do. Not all, but a lot.
So this is where there's a lot of confusion. And I've been trying to clear this up on my blog. I have a post about cicada biology, and, yeah, people call them locusts, and that's because of how similar their numbers look to the biblical plagues and everything.
But, yeah, first of all, they don't have chompy mouth parts, so they don't chew on stuff and cause that kind of damage. They have a piercing mouth part for sucking plant juices.
Yeah. And what I've heard across the board from entomologists is that the damage they cause to any kind of trees is. Is really minimal from feeding. The biggest damage that they do is the way that females lay their eggs.
And the females, after they've mated, will go out to the very tips of a tree's branches, which is the growing part, really.
And they have these little saw blades in their butt, and they will saw into the wood with their butt blades.
Stay with me.
And then with the little hole they sawed into the branch, they'll put a couple of eggs in there, maybe one, maybe more, and then they'll move a couple of inches and they'll do it again. So it's probably one egg per little furrow, but they'll fill a twig? Not fill it, but they'll plant these little tiny eggs in there, and then that causes the end of the branch to die, and eventually it breaks off and it falls to the ground, and then the babies hatch, and then they crawl underground.
[01:21:34] Speaker B: That's crazy. Life cycle.
[01:21:35] Speaker C: It's insane. No. I mean, yeah, it's wild, but that can cause if you have a fruit orchard or something like that, and they happen to go after your apple trees and cut a bunch of the tips off of the branches, I could see that being harmful. I don't think they go after apples and stuff very often.
They do go for a lot of different trees.
I'm hearing a lot of people panicking about these bugs and saying that they're going to ruin crops and cause food shortages. They're not going to eat anybody's wheat. They're not going to touch soy or corn or oats or anything. Even the trees, it's going to be like, did they really do any damage?
Yeah, there's nothing to be afraid, know, but it is.
Know, if you're afraid of, you know, maybe you don't want to be.
[01:22:32] Speaker B: There's an actual phobia.
[01:22:35] Speaker C: A, you know, I love being around insects. And I was in the forests around Cincinnati and I was like, this is totally insane. I was just walking around like, this is a staggering number of insects just everywhere.
[01:22:49] Speaker B: That was just my summer growing up.
[01:22:52] Speaker C: Just everyday life.
[01:22:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And how you knew it was really hot by how well, one, how early the cicadas started their songs. That's how you knew it was going to be a brutal day.
And then how hot it got. You're just like, fuck brutal. Yeah. You're making 630. The cicadas are already going. You're like, oh, no, this is going to be a day.
[01:23:18] Speaker C: You're giving me visions of just like, steamy swamp Georgia summers that, like, I've had two and a half summers here now, and by August it's just so miserable.
It's just like, just cicadas screaming. And it cools down to 85 at night and you're just like, oh, wait, where was it that you grew up?
[01:23:46] Speaker B: Southern Ohio.
[01:23:47] Speaker C: Southern Ohio.
[01:23:48] Speaker B: Appalachians, where they start. Okay, where the.
[01:23:52] Speaker C: Is that so, like, close to Kentucky, right?
[01:23:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. Culturally speaking, it's very Kentucky.
[01:24:03] Speaker C: That's what heard. Yeah, okay.
[01:24:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
And when you think of the ecosystem, it's very similar, but actually, quite interestingly, I grew up right where the big ice sheets came through. So you can see where half of my county is flat. The other half is the Appalachians. So you can see, depending on which, my school had one of the worst cross country courses because it was all hills. And then it was amazing when we go to uniono or Edina or something like that, because it was all flat. It was all like, super, super flat.
[01:24:47] Speaker C: You guys are sprinting up and down hills all the time.
[01:24:50] Speaker B: Yeah, but us, the entire thing was hills. But we're all in the same conference, all in the same county. So just from a geological standpoint, that is pretty cool to grow up on.
[01:25:00] Speaker C: That is.
Then you guys were like, basically where the glaciers stopped.
[01:25:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:25:07] Speaker C: Cool.
[01:25:07] Speaker B: Right on the edge.
[01:25:08] Speaker C: Wow, that's really neat.
[01:25:09] Speaker B: Yeah, because a lot of people think of Ohio as just like Indiana or Illinois and it being super flat, but part of it is, but nobody knows about the other part because no one goes there.
[01:25:22] Speaker C: I am guilty of that. I have seen so little love.
[01:25:25] Speaker B: You have no reason.
You go to Cincinnati.
[01:25:29] Speaker C: I got a lot of friends in various parts of Ohio. I just haven't gone to hang. Got. I got to do that. I got a bunch of budies in Toledo. Like, I got to get out there. I'm overdue.
[01:25:38] Speaker B: Oh, that's flat. Speaking of the ice.
Yeah.
[01:25:44] Speaker C: Neat part.
[01:25:44] Speaker B: That's like the northwestern corner.
[01:25:46] Speaker C: Yeah, that sounds right. Okay.
[01:25:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
Pretty flat up there.
[01:25:54] Speaker C: All right, dude. Yeah. You got any more news for me or you feeling newsed out? We did pretty well over here.
[01:26:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. So we had a news headline that spanned, I mean, how many decades since the 1960s? Then we had a very recent one that launched yesterday. And then straight up, just nerdy awesome cicada natural history stuff. I feel like that covers a lot of bases.
[01:26:24] Speaker C: I think so we got a little something for everybody.
[01:26:34] Speaker B: Well, all right, Charles, thanks again for sitting down with me for a fantastic nature happy hour chat. Number two.
[01:26:41] Speaker C: Number two. We got through two. We made it. Everyone.
This is great and thank you. It's always a pleasure. But yeah, we'll help you work on your organic improv.
Untype a yourself a little bit. We'll see if we can keep it to, like 15 tabs next time.
[01:27:05] Speaker B: Good luck.
We'll see what I do.
[01:27:09] Speaker C: Progress was made. It's great.
[01:27:13] Speaker B: All right, Jess, take care. Thank you for joining me on this wild adventure today. I hope you've been inspired by the incredible stories, insights, and knowledge shared in this episode. To learn more about what you heard, be sure to check out the show
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