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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 cal I. Here’s Cow. Regular listeners know that right now I’m up in Alaska on a bucket list hunt for grizzly bear. Very excited, but also apprehensive, not just because I hope the hunt goes well, but also because, as I’ve mentioned, if you kill a bear that has been feeding on fish, especially scavenging dead fish, the meat of that bear can be tough to take, smelling wise and tasting wise, just like those rotten fish. Of course, I really want to find a bear that’s been gorging itself on blueberries, but that’s not always possible, and no matter how bad it tastes, you got to eat that meat. Often people will use fishy bear meat and heavily spiced sausage or similar, but it can still be quite slog well. Listener Dominic Simpson wrote in recently with a scorching hot tip for this problem. Apparently, there is a Filipino fruit called the tabon tabon used in the traditional raw fish dish kinilaw. Similar to savice, the tab on tab on tenderizes and controls bacteria, but Also, crucially, it removes any fishy taste or smell from the kinilaw. You scrape the fruit out of its shell, mix it with vinegar, and cure the fish in the mixture, and just like that, your meal just got a whole lot more appetizing. So why couldn’t you do the same thing with the fishy bear? Brilliant? A quick Google search tells me that it’s pretty hard to find tab On tab On in the US, even through mail order. But if I’m lucky enough to get a bear and unlucky enough to open that bear up and smell rotten salmon, I’m going to be very, very motivated to get my hands on some tab On tab On. Big thanks to Dominic for sending that one. In jumping right over to the money desk, the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency is in a bit of a pickle. Agency officials say they’re facing a twelve million dollar deficit this year, which could lead to staffing reductions in wildlife law enforcement and fewer public land acquisitions. Normally, a wildlife agency in this situation would raise license fees, but that plan stalled before we get off the ground. The TWRA announced earlier this year that they would increase hunting and fishing license costs by thirty percent, but they abandoned that plan after facing backlash from hunters and legislators. Now they’re asking the Tennessee state legislature to come up with a plan to increase revenue. Local media reports that agency leaders went to the state capitol last month to plead their case. They say that higher salary expectations, increased land management costs, and declining revenue from license sales are behind the deficit and they need some way to make up the difference. Some lawmakers have suggested that the state can sell public land to address the funding shortfall, but fortunately for volunteer state hunters, that won’t work. Tennessee date law requires the TWRA to replace every acre of public land it sales, which would increase the deficit rather than decrease it. Others have floated the idea of putting sales tax revenue towards wildlife management and conservation. The idea has been successfully deployed in other states, but famously in Missouri, there are one tenth of one percent of sales tax revenue, which is just the crown jewel of wildlife funding. In regards to state agency envy that one tenth of one percent sales tax goes to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to fund state parson historic sites along with soil and water conservation efforts. The fund was first approved all the way back in nineteen eighty four by a constitutional amendment and has been reapproved about every ten years since then. It has also been fought damn near every year. Some warrant that divorcing game management from hunting license sales gives anti hunters an opportunity to throw their weight around. After all, if all Missourians can tree to the DNR, shouldn’t we listen to the taxpayers who want to ban hunting. Ah No is the answer. I get the argument, but it’s disapproved by the facts on the ground. Missouri hasn’t become a hotbed of anti hunting sentiment, and I don’t see the state trending in that direction. If Tennessee adopts a similar policy, I would expect a similar result. Plus, the volunteer state passed a right to hunt fish amendment in twenty ten, which will make it even more difficult for anti hunting groups to dictate policy. Whatever the solution, the TWRA is not alone. State wildlife agencies across the country are struggling to generate enough revenue to accomplish all the work that needs to be done, so we’ll have to come up with some creative solutions to address this issue. Moving on to a fishing addition of the legislative desk, fishing seasons are wrapping up in northern states, but our friends over at the American Sport Fishing Association are highlighting a potential threat to anglers in all fifty states. A citizen’s was recently proposed to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission that would ban the importation of live bait into the state. The petition was led by an outfit called Upstream Policies, but it was also signed by Living Rivers and Colorado Riverkeeper, and six or seven individual fishing guides. Notably absent from this list are any of the organizations I look to to help me understand the issues that impact anglers, such as TU That’s Trout, Unlimited PHA, or the TRCP. The petition claims that imported baitfish threatened native species by potentially escaping into the waterways and introducing pathogens that harm native fish. They call on the Commission to ban the importation, sale, and purchase of any aquatic wildlife used as bait. This would mostly impact minnos used to target walleye, lake trout, and bass across Colorado’s front range. Now, I’m not sure about the pathoge inside of things, but it is true that when you move live fish from one body of water to another body of water and those fish escape and propagate, it can cause serious damage to systems. However, there is a wrinkle in this group’s argument. They are associated with groups that have called using live bait a borrent and archaic. There’s an animal rights twist. Their website is, however, suspiciously free of specific policy proposals. Banning live baitfish would obviously be a big hit to Colorado anglers in the economy that generates two and a half billion dollars in the state every year, and it would be almost totally unnecessary. I haven’t seen any state biologists connecting live bait fish with disease outbreaks yet, and Colorado already has safeguards in place to protect the health and safety of its native species. Current law prohibits the importation of live wildlife into the state without a valid license, and a health certificate from the source facility. Anglers purchasing live bait are required to purchase baitfish from a licensed dealer, and anglers are required to keep proof of purchase with them, ensuring transparency to mitigate aquatic invasive species risks throughout the supply chain. This you might say, is a solution in search of a problem, but that hasn’t stopped upstream policies from proposing similar legislation and rules in other states. Earlier this year, legislation proposing to ban the importation of baitfish was introduced and defeated in New Hampshire and New York. I have no doubt they’ll continue to push these proposals as long as they can find donors willing to fund their efforts. Moving on to the public land desk, a Florida representative to the United States Congress has proposed a build to consider whether a national forest should be turned into a national park in the ideas, sparking backlash from an interesting coalition. Back in August, Representative Randy Fine introduced a build dubbed the Path to Florida Springs National Park Act. It wouldn’t create a national park by itself, but, as its name implies, would start that process. It directs the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a special resource study to determine the suitability and feasibility of establishing Florida Springs National Park in Central and North Florida. Why does the congressman want to turn an area already under federal protections into a national park? Here he is speaking at a press conference announcing the bill.
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Speaker 2: So having visited Yellowstone in Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon and so many of these amazing sites. As I ran for Congress just a few months ago and I visited the Springs, I thought, why are these not protected?
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Speaker 1: Fine argues that the springs in the National Forest don’t enjoy high enough level of protection to keep them pristine in the face of increasing development. Thousands are moving to Florida every year, and he worries that influx will result in a degradation of these areas. His idea might be well intentioned, but he’s facing stiff opposition. Locals worry that, rather than protecting these areas, creating a national park will increase the human footprint, namely the footprint of tourists. As find himself admits, national parks are tourist magnets. They attract far more visitors than national forests do, and even though they’re strictly managed to protect wildlife habitat, they also generate development in areas around the parks. A petition outlining these concerns has garnered nearly ten thousand signatures as of this recording, and I have yet to see Representative Fine respond directly to these concerns. I also heard from some of you who worry that a national park designation will limit hunting opportunities. Listener Carter Ulman wrote in and said quote, this would block out one of the largest, possibly the largest accessible track for hunters and general outdoor recreationists in the state. The O’calla National Forest is also one of the last places where hound hunting is allowed on public land in Florida, largely due to the size and logging road networks. Still the early days of this process, we don’t know how large this national park would be, what rules would govern access and recreation, or whether scientists will find that a park designation would to actually help preserve the springs. Representative Fine love so much, but there’s no doubt that creating a national park would have major local impacts. So if you live, hunt, or fish in central Florida, this is a story you’ll want to keep an eye on if you want a good, hard fought story of hunters and anglers standing up for traditional access and representing themselves extremely well. During the National Park setting process, turn two, West Virginia BHA, West Virginia BHA did a great job in making sure hunting and fishing was well represented and managed to maintain hunting and fishing rights in that state despite having a brand new National park. Over in Wyoming, a landowner opposing a wind farm development is appealing on behalf of one of the humblest affective parties, the earthworm. At a Laramie County Planning Commission hearing last month, community member Ryan Schneider contended that the Laramie Range wind project that was planned for the Horse Creek area would cause significant round vibration that would damage the functioning of nearby worms. The Laramie Range project plan included one hundred and seventy turbines, which would cover an area three times the size of Cheyenne and produce six hundred and fifty megawatts of energy, about as much as a mid sized nuclear reactor and enough to power two hundred thousand homes in the state. Schneider’s advocacy on behalf of the worms might sound far fetched, but he had the science to back it up. In a twenty twenty one studied, Dutch scientists at Vreia University did in fact find that wind turbine vibrations reduced earthworm numbers. The author’s right quote, Larger soil animals such as earthworms are particularly likely to be impacted by the low frequency turbine waves that can travel through soils over large distances. As an aside, I think he’d do a lot worse for a band name than the soil Animals or large soil Animals LSA, But I digress anyway. The authors go on quote when comparing the nearest sampling points in proximity of the wind energy turbines with the points furthest away abundance dropped on average by forty percent. Translation. Although there are still worms near wind turbines, they do tend to move away from them. This could of course affect soil health and all the other biological processes that depend on good soil. As Charles Darwin said about worms, and may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organized creatures. Charlie Farthing, the owner of the land where the wind farm was planned, argued that the income from the project would allow his fifth generation ranch to continue to operate through the region’s continuing drought. Apparently the worms won out, because on September sixteen, the Laramie County Board of Commissioners voted three to one against allowing their project to go forward. Although the Spanish power company sponsoring the project, REPSOL, can appeal the decision, it looks like this project, at least in this form, is cooked. In voting for the project, Commissioner Troy Thompson told Wyoming News quote, if we have rules and a private property owner wants to do something on their property and does it within our rules, then we are obligated to allow them to do that. And these folks went through our land using regulations and did everything that our regulations require. Commissioner Linda Heath, who voted against the plan, said quote, I just don’t want to sacrifice our natural Wyoming beauty that we have here in the state of Wyoming for wind towers and solar fields. One of the problems in situations like this is that renewable energy projects are sometimes sold as being not just preferable to fossil fuel projects but virtually problem free. Then the public examines them and feels betrayed when they discover drawbacks. But of course, all building projects have down sides and detrimental effects on wildlife. For example, if you’re doing a Google scholar search for studies on the impact of energy development vibrations on animals, you will find that twenty twenty one Dutch study on worms. But you’ll also come across a twenty twenty one study by scientists at the University of Manitoba studying the effects of oil well drilling vibrations on birds. The study finds that the drilling vibrations significantly affected the abundance, nesting success, nesting body condition, and clutch size of the ecosystem songbirds. But knowing that everything has downsides lets you compare your options more clearly. For example, we’ve all heard that collisions with wind energy turbines kills birds, and that’s true, hundreds of thousands of birds die this way in the US every year. But according to scientists at Airhouse University in Denmark. Fossil fuel plants kill seventeen times as many birds as windmills do. In fact, if you look at birds killed per yuar unit of energy, wind and nuclear power plants each kill about zero point three birds per gigawatt hour of electricity, while fossil fueled power stations kill about five point two birds per gigawatt hour. Per scale, a gigawatt hour is about the amount of electricity you’d use to power a million US homes per one hour. And let’s not forget how many birds glass windows and housecats kill every year. And we’re not talking about getting rid of them. I mean I could hear of the cats though, you know what I’m saying. These local fights over wind farms and other energy developments are happening against the backdrop of the current administration absolutely going to war with the renewable energy industry. One interesting front of that war is the EPA clawing back funds that were allocated by the previous administration, including seven billion dollars for the Solar four All program, which aim to bring solar power to about nine hundred thousand low income households across the US. An issue like that might seem far away from US hunters who just want to think about the Boundary waters or the Brooks Range. But the more that cities and towns can generate their own electricity, the easier it is to cover every parking lot in this great country with solar panels. The fewer wind farms and natural gas turbines there need to be out there on the landscape. Last thing on this for me. In twenty twenty four, as US Congress Rep. Mike Levin of California introduced Hr. Nine zero one to two the Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act aka Plarretta. This bill would prioritize hunting, fishing, and conservation in sighting wind, solar, and geothermal development on public lands, making sure that infrastructure would go into places with high energy potential and low impact on wildlife and habitat, usually areas that have already been disturbed by previous uses. PLARDRA would also establish a fund that would take a portion of the revenue generated from renewable development and dedicated to fish and wildlife conservation and public land access, exactly the way the LWCF uses offshore drilling revenues. One of the real blind spots of renewables has been not dedicating money in this way like fossil extraction has done. In the current political climate, it’s not very likely that Hr nine zero one to two will be signed into law. But call your reps anyway and tell them about PLREDA will throw a link up on the CALT action page. It’s something to examine. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it is an example of something different out there. Sticking with a large soil animal’s desk, entomologists at the University of Montana recently discovering an incredible adaptation in a beetle native t Yellowstone National Park. These scientists had noticed that the wet salts tiger beetle was able to withstand the intense heat of mammoth hot springs and other geologically heated water features in the park. Being able to hang out in these places allows the tiger beetle to be the only predator of other insects lower down on the food chain that can also survive there. However, Yellowstone tiger beetles were able to survive the high temperatures without many of the heat shedding behaviors that similar tiger beetles display elsewhere in the world. One of the authors of the study, Neon Higley, told the news outlet Cowboy State Daily quote, many tiger beetles will run into the shade, dip their abdomens in water, or use their legs to raise their bodies above the ground, called stilting to regulate their temperature. But yellowstones tiger beetles don’t do that. Looking closer, these scientists noticed that despite not displaying these behaviors, the yellowstone beetles were still able to hold droplets of water on the underside of their abdomens, which conducted heat away from their bodies. It almost appeared that the water was soaking through the exoskeletons of the beetles, but that would be impossible, as tiger beetles are in fact covered in the same waterproof wax that protects many other insects. Next time your waterproof in your boots like I just did with wax, remember that you’re borrowing the technique from our hard shelled friends, tiger beetles. So how were the yellowstone beetles holding the water against their bodies. Putting them under a microscope, the scientists noticed a network of shallow grooves on their undersides studded with tiny spikes. These structures significantly increase the surface area of the beetles abdomens and the surface tension of the water. Then it hears moisture to that structure, even though the exoskeleton is still waterproof. When air moves across that water, it conducts heat away like the world’s tiniest air conditioner. This is a completely novel discovery, meaning that no other animal, soil or otherwise has ever been observed with this similar adaptation. It also means that the University of Montana team were able to patent the discovery for use as a quote micro grooving that allows wetting of otherwise water repellent surfaces. The team isn’t quite sure what the technology would be used for, but maybe someday all of our homes, cars, and beach chairs will be cooled with microgroove technology micro groops technology. Maybe it will also become a new kind of music which people really really dig but only dance to using extremely small movements. That’s all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write into a sk c a l let’s ask out Themeeeater dot com let us know what’s going on in your neck of the woods. You know we appreciate it. Thanks again, we’ll talk to you next week.
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