Ep. 458: Tipsy Hawks, Crime, and Grizzlies in California?

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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 Calahan. Here’s cap there is a Cooper’s Hawk flying around the Los Angeles area that might have an untreated alcohol problem. In June of last year, a twenty five year old LA resident named Caesar Gustavo Diaz captured a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk at a park between La and Anaheim. All hawks are protected in America and it’s illegal to capture any species without the proper permits. But it’s what Diaz did next that had the media buzzing. In a recently surfaced video posted to YouTube, Diaz records himself pouring a buzzball down the bird’s throat. If you’re familiar with this modern marvel, a buzzball is a ready to drink cocktail that comes in a small plastic ball. It’s that thing that you look at in a gas station and you go, please, nobody put this in your body. They have fun and fruity names, like a lot of Colada and Grapes gone Wild. The flavor Diaz had selected was lime rita, and the average alcohol by volume is a solid thirteen and a half percent the average juvenile. Cooper’s Hawk only weighs about a pound, so I suspect that bird was in no condition to fly, But his wild afternoon in the park was about to get even crazier. In another screen grab from the video, the bird appears to be served marijuana unwillingly as well. Now it’s easy to joke about a boozy bird, but this was no laughing matter for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. They launched an investigation after viewing the video and served five search warrants to get to the bottom of it. Diaz was already in prison, no big surprise, on unrelated charges, but that didn’t stop the La County DA’s office from prosecuting. In February of this year, Diaz entered a no contest plea to misdemeanor animal cruelty. He was sentenced to twelve months of summary probation, forty five days in the La County Jail, twenty days of community labor. He has to complete a twenty four hour session of animal cruelty counseling. He’ll be given a five year probation on possessing animals, tenure, firearm prohibition, and pay two hundred and twenty dollars in fines and fees. As for the hawk, Diaz claims he released it before being taken into custody. Nobody knows whether the birds survived his run in with Hooch, but if it did, it didn’t have a pleasant morning. Why does this matter, you ask, well, hawks are still an effective modern tool for the control of pigeons, starling’s, rats, and even crows in our big cities. For whatever reason, even in the quote liberal city centers in places like Portland, let’s say, hunting often comes under attack, but when used to mitigate nuisance animals, one of the oldest forms of hunting, falconry appears to be socially acceptable as long as the public at large sees less crow and pigeon poop on their vehicles and soff sidewalks. This week, we’ve got bears, crime, and high fences. But first I’m going to tell you about my week. We wrapped up the Old Black Bear Banansa and Bentonville, Arkansas. Had some good quality time with Old Bear Nukem and Brent Reeves. Mister Reeves was on the microphone all weekend and I did not realize until the end of Saturday. How at home that man is entertaining and keeping people engaged. We gave away a ton of starter guns from Daisy and Umraks. Lots of very happy kids left with a new BB gun or an air rifle from the old Black Bear Bonanza. I’ll tell you personally, having that Daisy Red Rider BB gun was absolutely essential to my firearms skill development. Two hundred bbs in a lever action provide a lot of repetition, site acquisition, hand eye coordination outside time. What could be better? Parents, Well, you also need a place to use those guns of any kind, any caliber, which is why we need open space and public lands. By the time you are hearing this, I’ll be back in DC making the rounds at the Senate to talk HJR. One point. That’s the use of the Congressional Review Act to ascend the mineral withdrawal in the Rainy River Watershed. Downstream of where this mineral withdrawal currently is is, of course, the Boundary waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Voyagers National Park. I’ll be honest, there are a lot of people who have said for a long time that we cannot win this one. The paint is nearly dry, but this is a fight worth fighting. Often when people come out of the woodwork tell you can’t win, those are the ones that you should really dig in on. In my experience, this is our nation’s clean water. This is national security, the health of a nation at stake, Not to mention a robust outdoor recreation economy that ranges from church camps and outfitters to hotels, restaurants, tackle shops, and gas stations. I’m gonna tell you the question I’m gonna ask, and all I want out of today’s podcast is that you consider this question and ask a question of your own to your senators right now on this subject. My question is this, explain the return on investment for the American people. Why is it in our best interest to jeopardize twenty percent of all the fresh water in the United States Forest Service system in order to allow the development of a Chilean owned copper mine. That copper Mind cannot be operated without environmental risk due to runoff most typically sulfuric acid from their proposal to dry stack copper or on the site. You mix the oxidation of copper and water, you get sulfuric acid. It runs off downstream. We’re not talking about a magical watershed where water doesn’t follow the flow graph. The current annual economic impact of visitation of boundary Waters, Wilderness Area and Voyagers National Park averages one billion dollars annually. Should Twin Medals proceed, we are looking at some positive GDP level bump. At best. The mine has a forecasted run of twenty years and will provide an average of twenty jobs per year. If the federal government, as represented by you, Senator, should take this position, Can you please explain why globally private industry is rapidly taking the opposite position of investing in clean water as a community across the globe. For example, the Investment Fund Water Asset Management has invested three hundred million in farmland across Colorado, California, Arizona, and Nevada, specifically to secure senior water rights. Greenstone Resource Partners purchase land in Sibela, Arizona, and later sold the associated Colorado River water rights to the town of Queen Creek for a fourteen million dollar gross profit. Crown Columbia has spent at least four point seven million dollars acquiring smaller farms in Washington to secure water rights for future redistribution to municipalities and large scale farming. Harvard Management Company acquired California vineyards and associated water rights to capitalize on the region’s substantial groundwater reserves. Bill Gates paid one hundred and seventy one million dollars for fourteen thousand, five hundred acres in the Columbia River basin for its ten thousand, five hundred irrigated acres and associated water value. Global asset managers have assembled portfolios worth hundreds of billions of dollars by acquiring water utilities, treatment plants, and desalination facilities. Blackstone holds a water infrastructure portfolio valued at fifteen plus billion dollars. Brookfield Asset Management manages over twelve billion dollars in water related infrastructure. KKR has invested eight plus billion in water treatment plants and solutions. American Water Works, the largest US private water utility, continually invest billions in water infrastructure upgrades and system acquisitions across forty six states. Northwest Natural Water, a subsidiary of Northwest Natural Holding Company, has invested more than one hundred and ten million since twenty twenty one to acquire private water. Total private equity deals have doubled since twenty fifteen, and it’s estimated that globally there has been twenty two trillion dollars invested in securing water. Slap a Google in the old Google machine, and you’re not going to have to look long before you come across a litany of headlines that sound a lot like this. Wall Street investment firms buy uprights to scarce water throughout the West. So again, I ax you, if it’s so good for us, why can’t you explain it. We’re not here to talk about the political machinations of who’s going to lead what committee after the who’s been lobby by who? Just tell us why is it so beneficial for the American people to jeopardize our clean water and a robust economy that is one hundred percent renewable in order to allow the development of copper in an extremely sensitive watershed. The development of that copper, which by the way, is not going anywhere, it does not rot underground, When that copper cannot be developed without dangerous and deleterious effects on that water and that economy should be a pretty simple answer. If that’s what they’re voting on. If you disagree with me, that’s totally fine. I invite you to become a member of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. As a member, you get to keep me accountable. That’s part of what you get for your thirty five bucks. And through pulling across our membership, that’s how we come across these good questions to ask. As a self avowed public lands zelot, somebody who first hand has benefited from the outdoors and countless ways. I am still on Capitol Hill representing the membership Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. So if you don’t weigh in, you can’t wrestle. Ideally, we’re gonna stuff this one back down the hole it came from, and all these folks who said it can’t be done are going to be like, oh geez, we backed the wrong pony there, and maybe we’ll have a few more buddies on the next one. Remember the point of this whole darn podcast and all of these efforts right is to get you involved, writing, in calling, in testifying. We’re going to do a big fly in in April with a bunch of BHA members. Get people connected with their lawmakers in person, tell those personal stories, your end user connection to the ground. This is grassroots from the ground up to the ears and eyes of the lawmakers, who, because of those jobs which are tough, got a lot of empathy for you. Are very disconnected from our natural resources and the opportunities that they provide. Is that simple. If you’re not willing to represent yourself, that’s no big deal. Just remember somebody else will be there doing it for you, and you may not like how they do it. Moving on to that old bear desk, it would hardly be a new week without a new development in the fight over the reintroduction of grizzly bears in California. This time around, State Assembly Member Heather Hadwick is protesting Senate Bill ten thirty five, which would require the California Department of Fishing Wildlife to develop plans for reintroduction of Ursus arctos horribilis, the good old grizzer. Hadwick is urging that the state already has its hands plentiful with its other apex predators, and she is right. Mountain lions, black bears, and wolves are all making a life in the Golden State and they’re making it real interesting for others. But it is very notable that none one of these species were physically reintroduced to California. Neither mountain lions nor Ursus americanus were in fact ever absent from the state. Their numbers were just severely reduced by the beginning of the twentieth century, and wolves have repopulated California simply by walking there over a number of generations from the population of Yellowstone wolves reintroduced in the nineteen nineties. However, unlike those other species, grizzlies wouldn’t be able to return to the state unless they were brought in by people. Assembly Member Hadwick is also the author of a twenty twenty five bill that would have reinstated black bear hunting with hounds, which would be a very good idea, but that bill has not gone anywhere, even though public acceptance of bear hunting is likely swinging our way, with California’s population of black bear soaring and showing no signs of slowing down. I don’t think Hadwick is going to single handedly shut down the movement to reintroduce grizzlies to California, but her black bear bill points to part of the problem. No one involved in the push for reintroduction is going to talk about management through hunting if there’s a similar population boom with grizzlies, and mixing together apex predators is never as simple as people might predict. For example, a twenty twenty one study in the Mendocino National Forests found that as black bear populations increased there, mounta lions lost their deer kills to scavenging black bears more frequently. Very few mountain lions fought back against the bears to save their kills, preferring instead to just take another deer. This led to even more bear scavenging and then more lion predation on deer. In bear dense areas, lions shortened the time between deer kills by one point three days. That’s two hundred and eighty one more deer killed per lion per year. Would grizzlies have a similar effect on the other predators around them? I’ve watched old Mister Griz and Mama Griz put a lot of effort into trying to eat black bears so they could help reduce black bear numbers. Grizzlies did historically dominate California’s Central Coast region, the area between what’s now San fran and Los Angeles, and kept black bears out entirely. But when brown bears were extirpated from California nineteen twenty four, black bears moved right in, eventually cooling off in swimming pools and denning under bungalows. So would reintroducing grizzlies actually help control the state’s black bears. I’m giving these examples just to say, if either side of the reintroduction debate tells you that they know what’s going to happen once grizzlies return, they’re wrong. I love grizzly bears, love black bears too, love living in that country. But I can tell you I had an epiphany when I had started living in Idaho for a stint working there for First Light, and Man, I did all the all the normal things I was doing. I was running around, I was doing lots and lots of camping by myself, or as the hip kids say, solo camping, sleeping out of my backpack, hunting elk and deer and bears, and picking mushrooms and sheds and all the fun things. And eventually I did notice that I was sleeping just fantastic in the state Idaho, and it got me wondering. Yeah, it was just the fact that part of my brain wasn’t engaged all night long in staying somewhat aware of twigs snapping in the night, and those twigs could have been old mister Gris. Here’s some fun trivia for you. Ursus arctose. Ursus means bear, probably knew that, and arctos means arctic. Probably knew that, So you’d think like Ursus arctos would be like a polar bear. But way back in ancient Greece, astronomers looked up and identified the constellation of the Great Bear, which we also see as the Big Dipper. From where they were standing there in Greece, the Great Bear constellation was always in the northern part of the sky, and their name for bear was arctose, so they called all of the world to the north of them arcticos, or land under the Great Bear. That means that, literally speaking, the term arctic circle means bear land circle, and similarly the terms ursus arctos just means bear bear. So maybe next time I bring up grizzly bears, maybe I’ll say I’m reporting from the bear bear desk. An arcdose would be a pretty sick nickname for old bear. Newcom if you think about it. Moving on to the crime desk, I’d like to tell you that our opening story was the only instance of people mistreating wild birds this week, but if I did, I’d be lying. A listener named Anna from Auburn University wrote in to tell me about two students who were cited for picking up at Canada goose by the neck. Twenty year old Carter Allen McCullough and Jacob Daniel diaz As Dyas Junior were golfing at a local club when they decided to have some fun with the geese. They allegedly threw objects at the birds, and one of them even picked up a bird by the neck while the other filmed it. The incident was caught on camera by another golfer, who posted the photos on Facebook in an effort to find the offenders. That caught the attention to game wardens, who issued the pair with three citations following their investigation. The men that are being charged with hunting without a license, hunting during a close season, and hunting without permission. It’s unclear whether any birds were killed during the incident, but we do know that, ironically enough, one of these yahoos had a special license plate promoting saltwater fishing, while the other had a plate supporting the National Wild Turkey Federation Canada. Geese can be aggressive this time of year as they protect their nests, so it wouldn’t surprise me if these guys were responding to some of that aggression. But ringing the neck of a wild bird is not the right move unless you’re gonna eat it. Don’t play with your food, fellas moving up to knuck Cland and Albernaman was hit with fines and penalties and Beautiful birda claiming that his uncle was actually his brother. Thanks to Nick Kretzweiser for sending us this story. Chance Ryland Pollock pled guilty on charges under the Wildlife Act for falsifying information in an application for a white tailed deer hunt in Saskatchewan. This hunt is open to all Canadian residents, but priority is given to applicants with immediate family members living in the province for six hunting seasons between two thousand fifty teen of twenty twenty four. Pollack tried to gain the system by claiming that his uncle, who lived in Saskatchewan, was his brother. I guess a brother will give you a better shot than an uncle at drawn tags. He also applied on behalf of his girlfriend, but claimed that she was his brother’s daughter. In other words, he claimed to be dating his own niece for a better shot at drawn tags. I appreciate the dedication. It’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, but being more comfortable with incest than losing a deer tag is definitely up there. Anyway, the scheme worked until it didn’t. Pollack harvested a buck every year he lied on his application, but now he’ll be forced to surrender those six sets of antlers. He also agreed to pay eighty four hundred dollars in fines and will be prohibited from hunting in Saskatchewan for two years. The Oregon State Police Fish and Wildlife Division is asking for the public’s help finding the people responsible for poaching two bowl elk earlier this week. The de boned legs and heads of the animals were found where they’d been dumped off Mill Creek Road east of Prime. It’s unclear whether the animals were processed in that location or if they’d been moved, but the antlers had been removed from both. It’s also long past elk hunting season and Oregon, so game wardens are treating this as a clear instance of poaching. If you know anything about this incident, you can claim a cash or preference point reward if your tip leads to a conviction. Just email tip That’s tip at osp dot Oregon dot gov to submit your information anonymously. Text messages have implicated four Kansas men in a deer poaching scheme that game wardens say span many years. Prosecutors alleged that Spencer Harshman, Brody Harrison, Tyler Dickerson, and Michael Bachman used spotlights to kill deer at night. All four are also being charged with the commercialization of wildlife, which suggests they sold the meat or parts for profit. Harshman and Harrison are also being charged with animal cruelty for chasing coyotes with an ATV, and Dickerson is being charged with recklessly firing a gun across a roadway, among other violations. Court documents also reprinted text messages between the group that indicate a conspiracy to commit these crimes. On November one, twenty twenty four, for example, Harshman texts the group, I need you bring quiet guns big enough to kill deer. Dickerson replies copy that. In another exchange, Bachman texts the group one down, seven hundred and thirty six to go. Is it a murder spree? That same day, Harshman says, better, hurry. Stuff is dying left and right. I am cooking many steaks. We have guns and spotlights. The deer hunting will continue. All four have been charged, but are innocent until proven guilty. Their first court appearance is scheduled for later this month. Moving on to the sturgeon desk, Lake sturgeon have been swimming around North America for one hundred and fifty million years, making them the most ancient freshwater species on our continent. There are also some of the oldest and large just individual fish. The US Fish and Wildlife Service reports that these incredible critters can grow seven feet long, weigh three hundred pounds, and live one hundred and fifty years. It’s amazing that these fish are still around, and it’s even more amazing that we get to hunt them. The Lake Winnebagos system in Wisconsin is one of the only places in the US where it is legal to spear sturgeon. The population there is strong enough to support a season, and this year’s was one of the best. A grand total of one thousand, five hundred and forty fish were harvested this year, which is up from just five hundred the previous two years, but an increased harvest isn’t caused for concern. The season is closely monitored, and once the quota is met, the season is ended. One of the reasons Wisconsinites can enjoy this yearly tradition is because the fish are so well protected. At all other times of the year. Sturgeon are prized by poachers for their caveat which can sell for up to two hundred dollars per ounce. Game Warden’s patrol well known spawning sites each year, but they can’t be everywhere at once. That’s where the Sturgeon Guard comes in. The Sturgeon Guard is a volunteer group of citizens who commit to patrolling these spawning areas. Like most fish, sturgeon spawn near the bank when the water temperature reaches a certain range that makes them vulnerable to poachers, especially because it’s easy to identify the large fish as they thrash around in shallow water. Sturgeon Guard volunteers don reflective vess and walk along the shorelines on these popular spots to make sure there’s no funny business going on. Margaret Static, a DNR sturgeon biologist, told Fox eleven News that these volunteers are a huge help in conserving this amazing fish for generations to come.

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Speaker 2: When it comes to the sturgeon management, I mean, it really is a collaborative effort. And it is because of all the collaborative efforts from Sturgeon Guard and all the conservation groups and the DNR that we have such a great population out here.

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Speaker 1: If you’d like to become an official sturgeon guard, get in touch with the Wisconsin DNR at Wisconsin Sturgeon Guard at gmail dot com. That’s one word. If you’ve participated in this effort, we want to know about it. You to sne email askcl that’s Ascal at meteater dot com or leave me a voicemail four oh six two two zero six four four one. Moving on to one of our Panhandle states, Idaho, we’re seeing the aftermath of relaxed restrictions on high fence servid breeding and hunting operations after a series of public records requests by a conservation organization. In March twenty twenty four, House Bill five ninety one became law, allowing captive ear and elk facilities to maintain only single fence perimeters instead of a double fencing as previously required. Authored by Representative Gerald Raymond, the bill also allowed servid breeders whose herds had tested positive for CWD to transport animals to other hunting facilities, which completely ignores the primary vector for CWD spread to new areas. According to reporting by Outdoor Life, the consequences have been serious and completely predictable. In late twenty twenty five and early twenty twenty six, Idel Fishing Game had to call eighty two wild mule deer that had hopped over or crawled under the fence at the Juniper Mountain Ranch near Rexburg. Although there have been no documented cases of CWD at the Juniper Mountain Ranch in particular, several other nearby operations have had several recent positive cases. In a statement, IDFG said quote, there is no reliable way to test live animals for CWD, and wild deer cannot legally be kept in captivity. This difficult decision was made out of an abundance of caution to prevent any possible spread of CWD, and in September of last year, a hunter on public land killed an elk that had escaped from the same ranch. In October, an elk that had escaped from the Broadmouthed Canyon ranch, which is a high fence operation, was killed on public land, which means it likely had contact with public land animals, this time at Broadmouth Canyon. A moose that had been similarly crossing fences in both directions, in which was well documented for years, tested positive for CWD in twenty twenty four. Once CWD is active on the landscape, it’s almost impossible to get rid of prevalence rates we’re finding can be controlled with proper management. New York is the only state ever to have eradicated CWD successfully when it called hundreds of animals after a two thousand and five captive deer outbreak in Oneida County. But in October twenty twenty four, another outbreak was discovered at a captive operation in Herkimer County. Also coming down the pike in Idahoa Senate Bill thirteen hundred, which would change how the director of the state’s Fishing Game Agency would get that job right now. The Idaho Fishing Game Director is appointed by the State Fish and Game Commission, and SB thirteen hundred would make it so that the director was directly appointed by the governor. Right now, the governor signs off on all the new members of the Fishing Game Commission, So you may wonder what the big deal is. First, no more than four of the seven commission members can be from the same political party. Second, there has to be one member from each of the seven regions of the state. These guidelines make sure that no particular interests can drown out all the others. And third, commissioners are appointed for staggered terms of four years, which means these certain members will still be serving even after the governor who appointed them is no longer in office. All of these overlapping protections give the Commission the independence to make decisions that are good for wildlife, no matter which way the political winds are blowing. This system was devised all the way back in nineteen thirty eight. Some say it was a founding principle of the state of Idaho. It was ratified by the voters of the state with a majority of seventy six percent. That’s probably a number we’ll just not see in politics anymore. It’s one of the reasons Idaho has so many thriving populations of the animals we love. Scrapping that system would be very shortsighted, especially at a time when there are so many contentious and important issues facing states. Just imagine how easy it would be for governor up for election in a close race to install a phishing game director who would be sympathetic to the interests of an important donor. We’ve got to keep that type of influence out of our wildlife management. A detail of the CWD story we covered before underlines just how important it is to insulate the director of fishing game from politics. The owner of Juniper Mountain Ranch, where all those animals cross the fences both in and out, is former state Senator Jeff Sidaway, who spoke in favor of the law relaxing captive servi to operation rules. Policy and politics are mixing all the time, and so having a fish and game director who can stay above the fray is more important than ever. Idahoans, call your reps and tell them to vote against SB thirteen hundred if you want to keep politics out of your policy. Additionally, as we talked about last week, open fields doctrine under attack in Idaho, private property rights are sacred, but that wildlife is public. If you remove state lands, which sometimes can be private. In the state of Idaho from the equation, thirty percent of the state is private land, which means in a highly highly migratory environment like Idaho is the tops of those mountains are very rarely private, But that’s where those creators are hanging out in the summer. In the winter they may be on private point is two out of three chance those creators spend a heck of a lot of time on public ground in comparison to their private ground. Time doesn’t matter which side of the fence they’re standing on. Those are public animals and they need to be managed by our public wildlife agencies. If you don’t think the open Fields doctrine is the way to do that, what is the proper substitute for effective wildlife management that doesn’t become a handout and a step into the privatization of our public resource by those with large properties and bad ideas. That’s all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write in ask c Al that’s Ascal at themeateater dot com. Let me know what’s going on. In your neck of the woods. You know we appreciate you one last time. His Boundary waters deal is not dead. Please run on over to backcuntry hunters dot org user action alerts. Call right in. If it’s not an economic and resource question like I posed earlier, ask your senator appointed question as to why the rescinding of a twenty year mineral withdrawal and the Rainy River watershed benefits us more than cold clean water for the citizens of the United States and a one billion dollar renewable economy. Thank you so much for listening. I’ll talk to you again next week. M