Ep. 440: Are They Wolves?, Jersey, and The Mailbag

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Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cow’s Week in Review with Ryan cow Calaan. Here’s cal California. Officials are telling people to stop foraging wild mushrooms after twenty one people were poisoned in the last three weeks. Many of the cases occurred in the Monterey and San Francisco Bay areas, and unfortunate foragers have experienced acute liver injury and failure. Several patients have required admission to an intensive care unit, and two may require liver transplants, including a young child. As of December five, there has been one confirmed adult death. The cause of the recent uptick is unclear. I assume at least some of the cases are from several members of the same household eating bad mushroom rooms, but officials are describing the quote outbreak using the same kind of language as when a virus or bacteria spreads. But mushroom poisoning doesn’t spread from person to person. It’s more than likely caused by the recent rains and cooler weather, which have provided ideal mushroom growing conditions. That’s great for foragers, but it also means there’s more opportunity for error. In this case, most of the poisonings are linked to the death cap mushroom. As its name implies, the death cap can be fatal to humans, but it looks like other delicious and non poisonous varieties, such as paddy straw mushrooms. Inexperienced foragers can easily mistake the two, which is likely what happened in many of these cases. Symptoms of mushroom poisoning can be similar to viral gastro enteritis or what most people call stomach bug. Those symptoms often improve within twenty four hours, but that improvement hides the fact that the patient’s liver might be damaged or failing. Obviously, if you ever have reason to believe you’ve eaten a poisonous mushroom, seek medical help immediately and tell the doctors what happened. But if you’re an experienced California forager, there isn’t any greater risk now than there was before. Public health officials are trying to protect people from being poisoned, but calling for an end to all foraging is, in my opinion, an overreaction. Get people good information, but don’t try to keep them out of the woods. This week, We’ve got are they Wolves, Jersey listener mail, atmospheric weather, and so much more. But first I’m going to tell you about my week and old Snort and I got back to reality. On the public land end of season, Upland bird Hunting Front did seven and a half miles of trudging through rotten snow and standing water in order to bring home one hungarian partridge. The little girl.

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Speaker 2: Worked her tail off and she flushed several hen pheasants, but the roosters were elusive. The one hunt was fantastic. Snort looked like a linebacker doing a scoop and score routine. She flushed and retrieved our bird, all on the same dead sprint. If you weren’t really paying attention, the bird would have appeared in her mouth by magic. Love does not capture how a bird dog man feels when watching his little yellow beast chest heaving mouthful of bird, but frozen in time, unable to move or complete the retrieve because she needs to watch where the rest of the covey lands be? Still my heart. Other than that, well, Mike Lee is still attempting to sell off our public lands its appropriations time of year, and he just threw in some revisions that would enable the sell off or transfer of National Park Service land, while also pushing for the giving away for free without public review of twenty or so acres of public land to the town of brian Head to Utah, just given away nothing in return for the American people. The chunk of public land has value, or else the town would not want it, and we the people, could facilitate its use by the town through a lease, through a sale, or we could even structure a deal in which the town gets control of the land but would have to pay us if they ever tried to sell it. But Olmike Lee just wants to get rid of what’s ours for nothing. On top of that, we have the nomination of Steve Pierce as lead steward of two hundred and forty million acres of public land BLM director is what his title would be. Seems crazy to me that we can’t get a person in this role who loves to hunt and fish and has a background and extractive use that’s not hard to find. So why is our only option a guy who says selling off our public lands is a good idea. Mister Pierce’s confirmation hearing should be coming up in the new year. That’s almost like a job interview. So I am curious to know and I would love everybody to write in and let me know what question you want your senator to ask this guy during his job interview. Please right in askcl Let me know it’s your land, you’re qualified to ask. What should your senator ask mister Pierce during this confirmation hearing? Now? Timing wise, you may be listening to this on a Christmas drive someplace. If so or not, Merry Christmas, Happy holidays. Please to know you, Thank you, Thank you for listening to this here podcast. It means a lot, and thank you to engineers Phil and Reva and fantastic writers such as Jordan Sillers and Alex Tilney. You guys are making the world go round. States are starting to get into session, got all sorts of action at the FED. So our real busy time of year on this podcast is just coming up. Keeping you informed on on legislation and policy that affects you. Get out there enjoy our rights as public landowners and public wildlife appreciators. You’re going to need to refill the bucket so you can go out and advocate on behalf of these incredibly special resources that we have access to. If you don’t, we may not have access to them for long. Moving on to the wolf Desk, Colorado has received more bad news about its wolf relocation program this week after the FEDS blocked the state from sourcing wolves from Canada. Almost all of the surrounding states also declined to help, and now the Confederated Tribes of the Callville Reservation in Washington have rescinded their recent offer to supply wolves as well, citing issues with Colorado’s recovery program. The Centennial State seems to be out of options. This is the kind of conflict we’re almost always covering over here at the Wolf Desk. Fights over reintroductions, depredation, the Endangered Species Act. Fights generally about wolves being where people don’t want them or not being where other people do want them. But we learned last week that once upon a time, on a small island in Sweden, everyone did seem to want wolves arout. European researchers recently discovered the bones of two wolves from between thirty one hundred and forty two hundred years ago in a cave on the very tiny Swedish island of Stora Karsla. Stora Karsla is only one square mile in area, and there are no mammals native to the island, meaning that all the cow, sheep, goats, pigs, and mice whose bones have been found there were brought to the island by humans, or at least stowed away along with them. That means that these wolves came along with humans as well. Why would humans have wanted wolves on this little limestone dot in the sea? Well, there are two theories for how domestic dogs evolve to be the incredibly useful animals I described earlier. Either wolves tamed themselves by adapting to the human settlements they hung around, or humans took young wolf pups while they were still trainable and kept breeding those wolves until they became dogs. No one knows exactly which story is the right one, but the Store of Karsla find gives support to the wolf cub kidnapping theory for a few reasons. First, the DNA of these canids is pure Eurasian wolf. That’s some high street value. Okay, kids, not pure Eurasian right there. These animals were not intermingling with the dogs of the era and drifting away from their wolf genetics. However, their DNA is fairly homogeneous, which happens with all domesticated animals. The more that humans control who animals mate with, the more similar their genetics get. Testing of the bone tissue also revealed that these wolves depended almost entirely on fish for their diet. If you’ve ever seen a dog trying to bite a trout out of the water, you know that the people almost certainly caught those fish and fed them to these wolves, which makes sense as this island was used as a base for fishing and seal hunting in the late Neolithic and Bronze ages. One of the wolf leg bones also showed signs of a chronic lesion that would have limited the animal’s ability to move, so human beings were likely taking care of this creaky dude. Ultimately, we still don’t know how the Big Bad Wolf turned into Old Snorticus, and it likely happened a few different times in a few different ways. But way back when, it seems that there were actually purebred wolves who someone treated like snort from day one and it stuck. I started this story by saying it showed a time when people weren’t fighting about wolves, But you know, I bet there was someone out there on Stora Karsla who four thousand years ago was hungry and cold and annoyed with their weird cousin who had brought those frickin’ wolves out and was given them so many fish to eat. Maybe wolf fights have actually been with us from the very beginning. Two. Jumping over to New Jersey call to action in the Garden State, an anti hunting legislator who we’ve covered before, Ray Lesniak, is attempting yet another strategy to end the bear hunt in New Jersey. Big thanks to Andrew for sending this one in. Back in October, a state appeals court throughout a lawsuit filed by Lesniak to stop the state’s bear hunt by challenging the authority of the New Jersey Fishing Game Council, the entity that oversees hunting and fishing regulation in the state. Lesniak argued that because six of the eleven Fishing Game Council members were nominated by the New Jersey State Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, a hunting in conservation advocacy group, the council was in effect controlled by that private organization. In denying the suit, the court countered that all members of the council had been lawfully appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate. Well, this time, Lesniak is trying to pass a law changing the makeup of the council itself. And by the way, he’s a former state senator. He retired in twenty eighteen and has just dedicated himself to ending the bear hunt since then. Anyway, the bills he’s sponsoring aims to replace three of the six sportsmen on the council with members recommended to the governor by the animal welfare organizations. Those members wouldn’t be here to weigh the pros and cons of shortening the state’s woodcock season or whatever. They would be there to end the bear hunt and probably all hunting at all costs. The timing here is important. The New Jersey bear hunt is currently authorized through twenty twenty seven, but the Fishing Game Council has to reauthorize the hunt before the twenty twenty eight season can go ahead by changing the makeup of the council. Now, anti hunters are hoping to just gum up the works until the current authorization expires, thereby ending the hunt. So New Jersey listeners, call your reps to shoot these bills down. In the state Assembly, it’s Bill six zero, five to five. In the Senate it’s Bill four eight nine to three. We’ll post these on the cal To Action website, but it’s really important to call in opposition to these bills, even if they might fail without your calls. This is a war of attrition, the antizer calling their reps two and the press isn’t very sympathetic to bear hunting, So if elected officials don’t hear from us in a few years, they might go along with this kind of nonsense. Get on those phones, send those emails. Quick hit from our friends north of the border, the Alberta government has declared feral pigs a quote unquote pest in all circumstances, taking a series of bold steps to reduce or eradicate them. Rooting pigs have devastated ecosystems in the province, and officials are also concerned that they are spreading diseases like African swine fever and foot in mouth that could devastate the livestock industry in Canada. Therefore, in an effort to remove pigs from the landscape, Alberta is declaring it a crime to keep, transport, buy, or sell wild boars without a permit. No new wild boar farms will be permitted, and the government is also planning to wind down existing farms while making their owners whole. Most relevant to our listeners, hunting and trapping pigs will now also be illegal in Alberta unless you’re a landowner on your own property. Although it’s counterintuitive, local biologists have observed that hunting pressure pushes and divides populations of feral pigs, leading them to multiply more quickly and spread more widely than they would otherwise. Professional population control agents will now be deployed using poison and other control measures. As we’ve covered before, hunting is often an excellent tool for managing numbers of a particular animal, but it also creates an incentive for hunters to keep that animal on the landscape, and in the case of feral pigs, that can be disastrous for ecosystems, as we’ve seen in Texas and California and elsewhere with hunters undermining hogs population control efforts. We’ll keep you up to date with other pig news as it comes in. Moving on to the public lands desk, Russ Fulture of Idaho made news this week when he issued a letter claiming that the transfer of public land from the federal government to the state and local entities is quote imminent. Fulture penned the missive to Idaho’s constitutional officers, state legislators, and county commissioners. He claims to be fighting to preserve and protect Idaho’s precious natural resources and believes the best way to do that is to give Idaho’s federal land to the state. The Feds control about sixty two percent of Idaho’s land mass, which totals about thirty four point five million acres. Fulcher says Washington is doing a poor job managing this land, which he blames for last year’s wildfires that burned one million acres. He also says the state is losing out on tax revenue by not controlling this property, and the rest of the country is forced to pay subsidies to make up the difference. He concludes, quote eventually, a transition of land management responsibility to state and local entities is imminent due to the aforementioned growing frustration. Now, Fulture claims he doesn’t want these lands to be sold and developed. He says he wants them to remain public but be controlled by state and local governments. If you’ve been following this debate, this is an argument that should sound familiar. The Feds are causing wildfires by mismanaging BLM and Forest Service land, so the states should take control. The problem is the states don’t have the money to manage these lands. State wildlife agencies are all strapped for cash. They can’t afford to do the work necessary to mitigate wildfires. Of course, that’s not what this is really about. If you read Culture’s letter carefully, you’ll notice that it’s mostly about the lost tax revenue. Western states see federal land as a potential source of income for the state. They claim they don’t want to develop it, but developed land is far more lucrative from a taxing perspective than undeveloped land. In most states, it’s much easier to sell state and local properties. So I have a hard time believing legislators will keep their public land promises when the budget gets tight. If you’re being criticized by your constituents because the public schools aren’t funded or your town needs a new hospital, that state controlled wildlife management area starts looking more like dollar signs than wildlife refuge and hunting opportunity. Moving on to a special edition of the mail Bag, several people got in touch with me this week following what turned out to be a contentious meeting of the Idaho Fish and Game Commission. The commissioners were there to discuss restricting the use of technology to hunt big game. These new proposed rules include prohibitions on cellular trail cameras, night vision technology for scouting and retrieval, and smart scopes for hunting. In making their decisions, the Commission solicited comments from hunters using several kinds of surveys and public input meetings. The problem was they appeared to ignore the results of some of these surveys. One survey indicated that seventy five percent of hunter’s oppose banning transmitting trail cams, while only twenty five percent would support such a ban. Despite this data, the Commission decided to move forward with the prohibition. Listener Marcus Lother wrote me an email echoing other comments I’ve seen. He said, quote watching the recent IDFG meeting, discussion and vote was honestly painful. I was born and raised in Idaho, and I’ve always supported IDFG and viewed the department in a generally positive light, even though I know many residents feel differently, but the actions in that meeting made me genuinely uncomfortable. The way some members openly stated that public comments don’t matter and that voted against the public survey results without any supporting data was really troubling. Regardless of how someone feels about the issue itself, it’s hard to ignore how quickly excuses were made to dismiss the survey and how the final vote went completely against the majority of public input. Here’s Commissioner Ron Davies with what I assume is one of the statements Marcus was referencing.

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Speaker 3: Commissioner Schurett and I have debated this quite extensively, and I appreciate his passion for this. I agree with some of the statements he’s made, and this twenty three hundred people that showed an overwhelming opposition to making the changes. I don’t think that’s indicative of the general hunting public. Of the one hundred and thirty thousand hunting license as sould. I don’t know if that’s the correct number or not, but I think if you went out and were able to specifically ask the each of those license holders their feelings on that that they would I don’t think you would see those kind of numbers. And to Amber’s point, I think she made a great point with the fact that the people that are going to be affected are the ones that are going to actually respond to this. Those those that are going to see that they are feel that they’re losing something are going to be the people that are going to respond to that. So, in my personal opinion, I believe that the overwhelmingly that the general public would be in support of this rule change. Thank you.

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Speaker 2: You can hear how Commissioner Davies cast some doubt on the survey results that opposed a trail cam ban. I can see how that would upset some Idaho hunters, So I reached out to Ian Malpi, the director of marketing for Idaho Fish and Game. Ian explained two big ideas. First, the Commission has a duty to consider more than just public input when making a decision. They have to determine whether policy will enhance or degrade the conservation of wild places and species. They have to consider how a policy will impact the economy, whether it’s enforceable, and how it will impact recreational opportunities. A majority of hunters might agree with a new regulation, but if that regulation has a negative impact on big game, the commission has an obligation to oppose it. I’m not saying that’s what is happening in this case, but it’s a principle that’s important to keep in mind when you’re looking at these proceedings. Second Ian pointed out that the survey indicating strong opposition to bans on technology wasn’t randomized or scientific. The respondents were what’s called self selected, meaning they chose on their own to take the survey. The IDFG didn’t reach out to an unbiased representative sample of hunters. As you heard Commissioner Davies explain, the people who responded to that survey were more likely to have skin in the game. They probably use that kind of technology already, and so we’re motivated to respond in the negative. But that wasn’t the only feedback IDFG got from the general hunting public. They conducted another randomized survey that yielded much different results. This survey was more representative of Idaho hunters and found that forty six percent of them believe trail cameras are not fair Chase while fifty four percent of hunters said the opposite. That still indicates opposition to a ban, but it’s not nearly as strong as the first survey. What’s more, while the non randomized survey found opposition to bans on other kinds of technology, the second survey found the opposite. According to that survey, sixty three percent opposed the use of smart optics to hunt big game, seventy seven opposed night vision and thermals, and ninety one percent opposed the use of drones. Now, you might argue that the wording of these two surveys impacted the results. The first specifically asked whether respondents would support a ban on these technologies, while the second asked a more general question about their use in hunting big game. Those are related but different questions. I might personally oppose using certain technologies in the field while still not wanting to see them ban, but the Commission believed that the question were related enough to justify moving forward with these proposed prohibitions on technology in the field. Marcus ended his note by wondering whether it’s even worth it to respond to surveys and submit comments if the Commission is willing to ignore those results. What’s the point of engaging in the process. I understand where the frustration comes from, but I want to encourage Marcus and everyone else who might feel the same. Don’t stay on the sidelines. Wildlife officials might implement policies you don’t like, But as Michael Scott once quoted Wayne Gretzky is saying, you miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take. You might lose some battles, but always take your shot. Never give your representative and regulators a free pass. If you become loud enough, they have to start listening. I have a lot of empathy for our fishing game agencies across the board. They’re in a tough spot. This is public wildlife that we’re dealing with, and they are attempting to balance long term ends with fast moving technology and social trends. It is a tough, tough spot. This is not a conversation that’s going away again. Technology application ethics right in. Let me know what you think. That’s all I got for you this week. Ask c Al. That’s Askcal at the meteater dot com. Merry Christmas, everybody. Whatever you celebrate, hopefully you work in some appreciation of our public lands, waters and wildlife. Like I said, get out there, soak it all up and get ready to advocate for our big opens places. Appreciate you. Thanks again, We’ll talk to you next week.