Speaker 1: Oh fello, thats are.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the show. This is the Cult
Speaker 2: of Conspiracy. And my name's Jonathan, I'm Jacob and today
Speaker 2: is the first day that we are fully back in
Speaker 2: our home uh States from Florida, Bohemian Grove. It was
Speaker 2: a great time and and but you know what it's like,
Speaker 2: there's something about home that's just like, ah, I missed you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Let's give some shout outs real quick. Steph our homegirl.
Speaker 3: She was there, we met Oh shit. There was one
Speaker 3: guy that flew in from Ohio that was there for
Speaker 3: to see us. One group dude from I think he
Speaker 3: was from California. There was a couple from Vegas. But yeah,
Speaker 3: for anybody that did make it out to Brohemian Grove.
Speaker 4: Thank you. We love you all. We are thinking about
Speaker 4: things that we are going to do in the future.
Speaker 3: We've we've talked about and flirted with the idea of
Speaker 3: doing a cult meet up or some sort of a
Speaker 3: some sort of a con right, some sort of a
Speaker 3: convention put on by us where everybody could fly in
Speaker 3: and do stuff. I'm gonna be honest with you, Me
Speaker 3: and Jonathan have been brainstorming a good bit on this
Speaker 3: way home. I'm thinking sometime in the next year, and
Speaker 3: it may be very small scale, it may be nothing major,
Speaker 3: but just to get the ball rolling, I'm thinking that
Speaker 3: we are.
Speaker 4: We got some good ideas in the works right now. See,
Speaker 4: I'll stay tuned for that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. We're always trying to brainstorm about what's
Speaker 2: possibly in the future. And you know, as the cult grows,
Speaker 2: as the third eyes open, you know, people just need
Speaker 2: to meet up.
Speaker 4: They do, they do, and so all right, on the
Speaker 4: vibe of this trip.
Speaker 3: On the way back, I found a little video here
Speaker 3: and there that I was watching, and I had heard
Speaker 3: of a couple of these things. Right We have talked
Speaker 3: about the United States government, especially with our political system,
Speaker 3: doing the wild acrobats that it's doing right now. We've
Speaker 3: talked about examples of in the past where the government
Speaker 3: overstepped and had this really, really good idea that sounded
Speaker 3: like it was going to be great, and then once
Speaker 3: it was executed, it kind of backfired because the government,
Speaker 3: for some reason can't quit trying to fuck with mother nature.
Speaker 4: I feel like we've talked about that time or two.
Speaker 2: Right Well, the government is always trying to see what
Speaker 2: they can do to have more power and manipulate and
Speaker 2: all that shit. God forbid the people actually stood up
Speaker 2: and did it to them, because then we would all
Speaker 2: be in jail. But they get to do it and
Speaker 2: they get to go back home to their family. They
Speaker 2: make all the money, you know what I mean. So's
Speaker 2: it's rules for thee and not for me.
Speaker 4: Right, no doubt.
Speaker 3: And we just had an episode about the storm right,
Speaker 3: the hurricanes and how they potentially and in my opinion,
Speaker 3: definitely can control manufacture hurricanes and maybe even tornadoes, maybe
Speaker 3: a blizzard. Right, talking about some weather control shit. Okay,
Speaker 3: we've had that discussion.
Speaker 4: Have we talked.
Speaker 3: About really now the reintroduction of certain animal breeds too
Speaker 3: areas where they allegedly were indigenous at one point or
Speaker 3: were introduced for economic and commercial reasons, and how that
Speaker 3: backfired a million percent.
Speaker 2: Well, that's just people thinking that they know better than animals,
Speaker 2: I think, you know what I mean. Whenever it's so
Speaker 2: silly that you know, we say that we're at the
Speaker 2: top of the food chain, and I guess we are.
Speaker 2: We're the ones with the cars and the buildings and
Speaker 2: the roads, and you know, we can travel. We don't
Speaker 2: have to run everywhere it's pretty sweet.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: We get to pull up at McDonald's a burger king
Speaker 2: if you want to poison yourself. We have that free
Speaker 2: will kind of thing going on. But whenever we compare
Speaker 2: ourselves to certain animals, yeah they don't do what we do,
Speaker 2: but they're also a lot more in tune with nature,
Speaker 2: and so you're you're having a being us taking an
Speaker 2: animal from a different part of nature into another part
Speaker 2: of nature because we think that we know better than
Speaker 2: the fucking motherfuckers that are always in nature, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean?
Speaker 3: See, Okay, perfect, perfect, yes, and as there it's all
Speaker 3: that could be taken to a spiritual place absolutely into
Speaker 3: the physical place, the circle of life, if you will.
Speaker 3: For the desert is a different circle of life from
Speaker 3: the rainforest. That is a different circle of life than
Speaker 3: the ocean. Right when you try to mix and match
Speaker 3: things sometimes yes, you can in fact do this in.
Speaker 4: A good way, and it does meld well.
Speaker 3: Into the already existing circle of life, and then things,
Speaker 3: you know are okay, that's like almost never been done though,
Speaker 3: like realistically it's almost never been done. When you take
Speaker 3: a species from one continent and move it to a
Speaker 3: whole other continent. Typically things go really badly, really quickly,
Speaker 3: And that seems to be a recurring theme, right.
Speaker 2: Well you think that, like I don't know, I know
Speaker 2: that they were obviously breeding a bunch of different dogs
Speaker 2: throughout the years, and you know, messing with certain animals
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. But it does make you wonder
Speaker 2: and people will all go back and they'll think like, oh,
Speaker 2: it was all Pangaea anyway, all the animals were all
Speaker 2: living together, and they could roam from the hot to
Speaker 2: the cold and to the water, and you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. And so then then it starts getting a
Speaker 2: little bit obscure where you're trying to figure it out
Speaker 2: and it's kind of like, you know, my excuse where
Speaker 2: I'm always like, but what even Israel? Like that's really
Speaker 2: what it goes back to, you know.
Speaker 4: But I mean to your point.
Speaker 3: Also, yeah, all dogs allegedly come from an ancestral wolf, right,
Speaker 3: and everything broke down. So the theory quote unquote that
Speaker 3: wolves should be able to exist at all corners of
Speaker 3: the globe or the flat plane or the double tord
Speaker 3: or whatever. Wolves inherently arguably should be able to exist
Speaker 3: in most of that area, maybe not deserts, right. Maybe
Speaker 3: there's some exceptions to that, but it stands to reason
Speaker 3: that if there is a breed of dog that can
Speaker 3: exist there, there might be a wolf that could exist
Speaker 3: there if you go back in history far enough, right,
Speaker 3: And okay, okay, I get that, but people forget that
Speaker 3: the circle of life ten thousand years ago, even in
Speaker 3: a certain area of the world right now, was different
Speaker 3: then than it is now. Like we have different animals,
Speaker 3: we have different plant life. It's a completely different time.
Speaker 3: And I would argue a different world.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it couldn't be more different. I mean, just
Speaker 2: think about the fact that, like you know, we're we're
Speaker 2: building shit on top of land right like there's already
Speaker 2: that And I'm not gonna be one of those that, like,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we should protect our wildlife and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. But for the most part, like this
Speaker 2: world that they're living in is a completely different world
Speaker 2: than what they're used to, like over the span of
Speaker 2: millennia obviously, so they're gonna be pushed into certain areas
Speaker 2: that they're not maybe used to kind of deal. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 4: Have you. Here's what started all of this, y'all.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about this, thinking about these animals and
Speaker 3: just random shit. I found a clip and it got
Speaker 3: me pondering. So in Hawaii. Now, you think about Hawaii
Speaker 3: is an island in the middle of like bump fuck
Speaker 3: nowhere ocean.
Speaker 4: There's no mainland continent that it's connected to.
Speaker 3: So there wouldn't be roaming herds of animals on the
Speaker 3: island of or islands of Hawaii, right. The only kind
Speaker 3: of real animals that would exist there would be bird
Speaker 3: species and small, small little creatures, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 3: except things introduced by humans. They have a wild chicken
Speaker 3: population and a wild pig population, both of which were
Speaker 3: brought over from Polynesians exploring the Pacific Islands. None of
Speaker 3: those were indicatively native to the volcanic islands of Hawaii, right,
Speaker 3: But the things that are indicatively like from the islands.
Speaker 3: There was actually a wide variety of exotic birds, and
Speaker 3: I thought that was so crazy because the vast majority
Speaker 3: of them are extinct right now. And then I thought,
Speaker 3: what happened there?
Speaker 4: Humans?
Speaker 3: Humans just haunted them to extinction and some of that, yes,
Speaker 3: but I thought about this too. Hawaii being the place
Speaker 3: that it is, their bird population never had to set
Speaker 3: nests in trees because there was no predators on the island.
Speaker 3: There was no snakes, there's no you know, raccoons, there
Speaker 3: was none of these things that would eat the eggs
Speaker 3: on the ground. So ground nesting became a thing. And
Speaker 3: it got me thinking of what the fuck changed the
Speaker 3: ground nesting? And oh wait a minute, that time that
Speaker 3: they introduced mongooses to Hawaii to help fight the rat
Speaker 3: population that was eating up all of their crops. Problem is,
Speaker 3: mongooses and rats are ones nocturnal and one is turnal,
Speaker 3: meaning that they pretty much never see each other.
Speaker 2: Why would they think that the mongoose would does a
Speaker 2: mongoose traditionally eat rats?
Speaker 4: You know what? Let's talk about, Jonathan.
Speaker 3: At this time, I'm gonna go ahead and share the
Speaker 3: screen and if you would like to see what we
Speaker 3: were talking about, because I do have a few videos,
Speaker 3: a few aids today as we go down a wild,
Speaker 3: weird list of creatures that are not living where they're
Speaker 3: supposed to and how we are somehow the responsible parties
Speaker 3: for that and the only ones.
Speaker 4: That could fix it, because that's the way this shit works. Jonathan,
Speaker 4: tell them where they can go.
Speaker 2: You can go to Patreon dot com slash Cult of
Speaker 2: Conspiracy podcast or rockfan dot com slash Cult of Conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Both of those links are down in the show notes below.
Speaker 2: It is a great way to be able to support
Speaker 2: the show, and it's something that if you hate listening
Speaker 2: to all the commercials, it is absolutely commercial free. You
Speaker 2: get the days the show's a couple of days in advance,
Speaker 2: and you'll be able to join us every Tuesday night
Speaker 2: at nine pm Central for the Cult Member Live Show.
Speaker 2: And as a matter of fact, one more thing today,
Speaker 2: I am going to upload the full versions of both
Speaker 2: of my DMT trips if anybody is interested in checking
Speaker 2: that out. It was we talked about it on yesterday's show,
Speaker 2: but if you wanted to watch it for yourself, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna put it up there. So maybe it'll entice you,
Speaker 2: maybe it'll scare the fuck out of you. I'm not sure,
Speaker 2: but I mean I had a good experience and a
Speaker 2: horrible experience, so a little bit of heaven and hell
Speaker 2: if you will.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say you would like the video of
Speaker 3: you your response to it, or the entire video of
Speaker 3: the l down and all of that too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean all encompassing, because it's only you know,
Speaker 2: you're only tripping for like three to five minutes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was actually shocked at that.
Speaker 3: Now, everybody who didn't see that episode, I did not partake,
Speaker 3: but I was kind of the d D on this
Speaker 3: on this journey, and yeah, so I was actually shocked
Speaker 3: that I heard people say that it last on in
Speaker 3: like fifteen minutes. No, dude, like sub five minutes. You,
Speaker 3: I think were the only one that broke that line.
Speaker 2: I I And it just so happened that I break
Speaker 2: I broke that line on the Bad Trip. So you know,
Speaker 2: you don't want to be in a bad trip longer
Speaker 2: than you have to be. And it's not you know,
Speaker 2: I I don't.
Speaker 7: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't even really want to call it a bad
Speaker 2: trip because I got a lot out of it. And honestly,
Speaker 2: like I'm I'm looking at the world differently because of
Speaker 2: the bad trip, not the good trip. So I think
Speaker 2: that it's cause and effect kind of deal. That's how
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it.
Speaker 4: I'm with you, I'm with you.
Speaker 3: And yeah, Also, is there any like conversations in the
Speaker 3: background there are like a private information or something.
Speaker 2: Because I'm trying to think of the conversation I listened
Speaker 2: back to them and it was just basically people bullshitting
Speaker 2: and talking about trips and stuff.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's I thought.
Speaker 3: So I'm just like looking back, like shit, I I
Speaker 3: really don't remember everything that was said that night.
Speaker 4: I hope this doesn't I hope this doesn't ruin our
Speaker 4: lives or anything.
Speaker 3: But you tell you what, if you want to find
Speaker 3: out for yourselves what that was about, what was being said?
Speaker 4: The behind this the most behind the scenes I think
Speaker 4: we have ever released.
Speaker 3: Come to just check us out on patreon dot com
Speaker 3: slash cult conspiracy and it is the best way to
Speaker 3: directly support the show. And I cannot stress this enough, y'all.
Speaker 3: Commercial free, yes, completely commercial free. We know it's a bitch.
Speaker 3: Come help us out. Come get the commercial free listens.
Speaker 3: We love you all. Now let's do a little bit
Speaker 3: of digging into why the fuck were non indigenous mongeese?
Speaker 3: Mongoose is actually I looked it up. Mongoose is the
Speaker 3: plural and the singular. It's it's annoying, But why or
Speaker 3: all of these mongoos brought to Hawaii?
Speaker 4: And what the hell? Why are we still fighting this
Speaker 4: fight today?
Speaker 3: And you want me to read it today or you
Speaker 3: want to. I know you, your throat's kind of fucked.
Speaker 2: No, it's all right. I mean, my throat's not hurting.
Speaker 2: It's just that i'm like super congested because of the
Speaker 2: trip for some reason. Honestly, probably a lack of sleep.
Speaker 2: That'll do it too, But no, I read it. I
Speaker 2: don't have a problem reading.
Speaker 4: It all right.
Speaker 3: This weekend, I'm got to say, I think I got
Speaker 3: three to four hours of sleep a night per night,
Speaker 3: which is a solid amount for me, but it could
Speaker 3: have been longer.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it felt good sleeping in this morning, but I
Speaker 2: still got a lot to make up for.
Speaker 3: Ye Is it weird that waking up at six am
Speaker 3: this morning was sleeping in for me. That's sad because
Speaker 3: I got to sleep early, though, I'm be honest. I
Speaker 3: got home and I crashed early. It felt so nice.
Speaker 2: Oh I wish I still had to drive four and
Speaker 2: a half more hours to Louisiana after I dropped you off,
Speaker 2: and then I had to come pick the dogs up
Speaker 2: from the borders, and then I had to come home
Speaker 2: edit two shows. So it was just a lovely night.
Speaker 4: Dude, What time did you get down?
Speaker 2: I think I ended up going to sleep like three
Speaker 2: thirty or something like that.
Speaker 3: Fuck dude, Hey, okay, you got to sleep in this morning?
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, a little bit, A little bit. So the
Speaker 2: bizarre history of the mongoose in Hawaii and why colonial
Speaker 2: sugar barons are to blame for the havoc that it's caused. Okay,
Speaker 2: rich plantation odors in the eighteen eighties were so desperate
Speaker 2: to combat the rats eating their sugar cane that they
Speaker 2: brought the mongoose to Hawaii and the government still can't
Speaker 2: get rid of them to this day. Colonialism and white supremacy,
Speaker 2: Oh there we go.
Speaker 4: I mean, oh, you're gonna hear that a couple of
Speaker 4: times on this one.
Speaker 2: Oh, you just love to hear it. Anyway, Colonialism and
Speaker 2: white supremacy have caused many problems all over the world,
Speaker 2: and those problems even extend to the animal kingdom, like
Speaker 2: in the case of the mongoose in Hawaii, originally brought
Speaker 2: to the island nation and the hopes of controlling the
Speaker 2: rat population today's mongooses mongooses. That just doesn't seem right
Speaker 2: to say, though it doesn't. Today's mongooses have threatened their
Speaker 2: other flora and fauna on the Big Island, and despite
Speaker 2: officials' best efforts has become difficult, if not impossible, to
Speaker 2: control the population. Let's take a look at the efforts
Speaker 2: that are being made to get the mongoose population in
Speaker 2: Hawaii under control and why it hasn't been an easy
Speaker 2: task for anyone involved.
Speaker 4: Bro, look at that mongoose, though.
Speaker 2: That is not what I thought a mongoose looked like.
Speaker 4: What do you think they looked like?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Like I thought it was a bird.
Speaker 3: No, dude, mongoose are like tall, skinny rat. Think of
Speaker 3: a muscular ferret that fucks shit up.
Speaker 2: That's like fucking timone. Uh he was a meer cat
Speaker 2: looks just like it. It's like the distant cousin.
Speaker 3: Maybe kind of okay, but see, meer cats aren't predators,
Speaker 3: I don't think anyway. Mongoose are absolutely pretty. They're like
Speaker 3: they eat meat. They don't just like eat little bugs
Speaker 3: and subsist off that.
Speaker 4: Like, No, they eat eggs. They fuck up coke is
Speaker 4: all kinds of shit.
Speaker 2: On the surface, the mongoose is a cute and furry
Speaker 2: creature with its pointed face and bushy tail. It's even
Speaker 2: immortalized in Ricky Tiki Tavi, the classic children's Tale by
Speaker 2: Rudyard Kipling. However, for Hawaii, the mongoose has been nothing
Speaker 2: but trouble. Various mongoose species can be found in Africa,
Speaker 2: Southern Asia, and Southeast Europe. The Hawaiian Islands are inflicted
Speaker 2: with an infestation of the small Asian mongoose, a native
Speaker 2: of Java, which is considered one of the world's most
Speaker 2: invasive species. In addition to being introduced to Hawaii in
Speaker 2: the Bahamas, the small Asian mongoose has been introduced to Cuba, Croatia, Jamaica, Hispaniola,
Speaker 2: Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles, Belize, Honduras, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Suriname, Venezuela, Guyana,
Speaker 2: and Mafia Island. As for how these omnivorous critters, who
Speaker 2: are related to the meerkat more than the mouse, go
Speaker 2: to Ergata all these places, credit or blame goes to
Speaker 2: the colonial setters, who settlers who were hoping to capitalize
Speaker 2: on the burgeoning sugar trade.
Speaker 4: Basically, the sugar trade was starting to boom.
Speaker 3: They saw these farms in these areas and was like,
Speaker 3: all right, this could help us in some way.
Speaker 2: So why is the mangous in Hawaii. Before it became
Speaker 2: known as the island Paradise of the United States, Hawaii
Speaker 2: was best known for one important export, sugar cane. The
Speaker 2: popular crop grew especially well on the Hamuka Coast, which
Speaker 2: is located just north of High Low on the so
Speaker 2: called Big Island of Hawaii. In eighteen eighty three, the
Speaker 2: biggest sugar cane plantations on the island could be found
Speaker 2: on this beautiful coast. But there was just one problem.
Speaker 2: The sweet taste of sugar brought rats who loved to
Speaker 2: munch on sugar cane all day and who destroy all
Speaker 2: the crops in They're wake the plantation owners who were
Speaker 2: almost universally white colonialists. What does that even matter for
Speaker 2: this thing?
Speaker 3: Like you know what I Meanan was an American territory,
Speaker 3: so like, yeah, it stands to reason, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying, if it was a if it was an
Speaker 3: Indian territory, stands to reason, all the uh dudes in
Speaker 3: charge would have would have had red dots.
Speaker 4: That I mean that that stands you know.
Speaker 2: But all right, people just love to blame shit, you
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying. I think that's really what it is.
Speaker 3: The sort the source is the uh alt hissed? Uh
Speaker 3: what is this alt heads history? All that's interesting?
Speaker 4: Dot com? Excuse me? All that's interesting.
Speaker 3: So if I'm not mistaken into more liberal leaning uh
Speaker 3: you know media source. However, as far as the actual
Speaker 3: meat and potatoes of what happened, they did a pretty
Speaker 3: good job. And there's a video I had that actually
Speaker 3: does a pretty good, uh you know, humorous twist on it.
Speaker 3: But we'll get there in a minute.
Speaker 2: Then got the brilliant idea of introducing the mongoose to Hawaii,
Speaker 2: the uh white colonialist They expected that the mongoose would
Speaker 2: spot the rats and kill them on site, thus saving
Speaker 2: the sugarcane from certain destruction.
Speaker 4: This theory of mine.
Speaker 3: There was no record of them ever showing that mongeese
Speaker 3: mongoose is mongoose and whatever eat rats? Now one time
Speaker 3: was it ever seen like, oh, dude, mongoose are like
Speaker 3: a natural predator to rats. This will be great. They
Speaker 3: just thought, like, yo, this would work really well, because
Speaker 3: why wouldn't it. They had no backing whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they got this story from bad sources.
Speaker 3: I think, No, no, no, we're gonna show more here
Speaker 3: in a minute.
Speaker 4: This is actually true.
Speaker 3: They brought mongeese in to fight rats, knowing or not
Speaker 3: even knowing for sure that mongoose would eat rats.
Speaker 4: They just assumed they would.
Speaker 2: No, No, I'm not saying this story is fake. I'm
Speaker 2: saying the white colonialists that got the bright idea to
Speaker 2: bring the mongoose in it maybe they got a bad
Speaker 2: story saying that the mongese the mongoose would eat the rats.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe maybe they were reading some bad information.
Speaker 3: It's also possible they were that dumb, and there's been
Speaker 3: dumber shit. This whole episode is about dumb people doing
Speaker 3: dumb shit that sounds great on paper until you actually
Speaker 3: read it, you know.
Speaker 4: But we'll get to it.
Speaker 2: This theory, however, fell apart once they realized that the
Speaker 2: rats and the mongoose kept different schedules. The mongoose only
Speaker 2: came out during the day, while the rats foraged for
Speaker 2: their sugary treats at night.
Speaker 3: They literally passed each other going to and from the
Speaker 3: same fields. They never ate each other. If anything, they
Speaker 3: didn't fuck with each other.
Speaker 2: I see that. Yeah, it's it's a not a very
Speaker 2: good plan.
Speaker 8: No, it is not so.
Speaker 2: Not only was introducing the mongoose in Hawaii and epic
Speaker 2: fail and that it couldn't keep the burgeoning rat population
Speaker 2: at bay, but it resulted in the mongoose in Hawaii
Speaker 2: becoming an invasive species on the island Paradise. Look at
Speaker 2: that fucking thing. It kind of does look like a ferret.
Speaker 4: Kind of like an up armored ferret.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Speaker 2: You put a ferret in a mongoose in front of me,
Speaker 2: There's no way I'm telling a difference, Dude.
Speaker 3: A mongoose is bigger, I think to each other. You'd
Speaker 3: be able to tell, but like just without knowing. If
Speaker 3: you don't have like a pet ferret and you see
Speaker 3: one every day, you yeah, same, I wouldn't be able
Speaker 3: to tell the difference.
Speaker 2: In addition to having a presence on the Big Island,
Speaker 2: the mongoose in Hawaii can be found on the islands
Speaker 2: of Oahu, Maui, and Molokai, with a rare sighting on
Speaker 2: Kawhai from time to time.
Speaker 4: Kawaii even has them, dude, But.
Speaker 2: These opportunistic animals have disrupted the natural flora and fauna
Speaker 2: on any island that they touch. Their favorite treats are
Speaker 2: small birds and their eggs but they're also known to
Speaker 2: eat plants, fruits, and insects. The mongoose also eats sea
Speaker 2: turtle eggs, thus disrupting that population as well. No, not
Speaker 2: the sea.
Speaker 4: Turtles, I'm telling you, dude, walking with the sea turtles.
Speaker 2: Fuck dude. And worst of all, the mongoose is responsible
Speaker 2: for the deaths of at least eight species of birds
Speaker 2: that are native to Hawaii, birds that were on the
Speaker 2: federally endangered list and whose existence existence yeah, continues to
Speaker 2: be threatened by this cute but annoying creature. To combat
Speaker 2: the presence of the mongoose in Hawaii, locals have learned
Speaker 2: to set traps all around their properties and reports any
Speaker 2: sightings of the creature to six forty three pest. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's a phone number. I'm thinking, an organization endorsed by
Speaker 2: the Hawaii Invasions Invasive Species Council, whose sole purpose is
Speaker 2: to contain invasive species on the island. The council also
Speaker 2: tells residents not to worry about reporting any mongoose sightings
Speaker 2: to the government itself, as it has proven to be
Speaker 2: a bit of an issue that takes up most of
Speaker 2: their time. Oh damn wow.
Speaker 3: So the government is just like, yeah, we know how
Speaker 3: bad it is. There ain't shit we can do.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool, Yeah you fucking fend for yourself then really
Speaker 2: is what you need to do. But the Hawaii Invasive
Speaker 2: Species Council also warns its residents against mistaking cats and
Speaker 2: rats for mongooses, which also seems to be a pervasive
Speaker 2: problem on the Big Island. But with more than fifty
Speaker 2: million dollars in annual damages caused by the mongoose in Hawaii,
Speaker 2: it's safe to say that the council would love, no,
Speaker 2: nothing more than to be rid of the critter once
Speaker 2: and for all.
Speaker 3: Yes, indeed, So, like I said, that was a good
Speaker 3: little quick one. But now let's go into a little
Speaker 3: bit more of the details of the situation of the
Speaker 3: mongoose problem on Hawaii. Once again done by the United
Speaker 3: States government and the corporate pocracy, the big money. This
Speaker 3: was big sugar back in the day, and we're still
Speaker 3: dealing with these problems today.
Speaker 4: Here it is. This is an extra history. Shout out
Speaker 4: to them on YouTube.
Speaker 9: As for their beaches, surf breaks, and lush volcanic mountains,
Speaker 9: often it's been called a paradise, but among biologists it
Speaker 9: has a different more somber name the extinction capital of
Speaker 9: the world. Hawaii has more endangered and extinct species than
Speaker 9: any other comparably sized place on the planet, with its
Speaker 9: native bird populations especially impacted by human habitation. Like nearly
Speaker 9: every other part of the globe, habitat loss and urban
Speaker 9: encroachment have driven many species to the brink, Yet unusually
Speaker 9: in the case of Hawaii, much of that devastation can
Speaker 9: be tracked to the decision of a single man. But
Speaker 9: to understand how that was even possible, we first have
Speaker 9: to explain Hawaii's ecosystem a bit and why it was
Speaker 9: uniquely vulnerable to being upended. The Hawaiian Islands are a
Speaker 9: remote volcanic chain two thy five hundred miles from the
Speaker 9: nearest continent, meaning to establish a population on the island,
Speaker 9: animals had to either fly, swim, or float there. This
Speaker 9: made the island's ecosystem largely a kingdom of birds. They
Speaker 9: arrived in waves over the eons, many evolving specifically to
Speaker 9: feed on native plants that also evolutionarily adapted to their
Speaker 9: new home, and their physiology reflected that some had beautiful
Speaker 9: crimson plumage, others had dramatically hooked and needlelike beaks evolved
Speaker 9: to feed on specific flowers. Not to mention, certain birds
Speaker 9: only arose on specific islands, meaning the populations were relatively
Speaker 9: small and dependent on the plants they were adapted to.
Speaker 9: Hawaii was also a surprisingly gentle environment with no terrestrial
Speaker 9: ground mammals. Plants largely didn't need to evolve defenses such
Speaker 9: as poisons or thorns, and many birds even took to
Speaker 9: nesting on the ground. But then a major predator arrived humans.
Speaker 9: In roughly twelve hundred AD, Polynesian voyagers arrived from Tahiti
Speaker 9: to settle the islands, and like everywhere humans settled, they
Speaker 9: upended the environment. Humans have kind of always been a
Speaker 9: threat to ecosystems, but what makes us particularly dangerous are
Speaker 9: the domesticated and undomesticated species that we bring with us.
Speaker 9: The Polynesian voyagers brought chickens and small pigs, but perhaps
Speaker 9: their most consequential introduction was the pacific rat, which occasionally
Speaker 9: preyed on bird eggs. Just bookmark that one for later. Eventually,
Speaker 9: bird feathers also became a major component in Hawaiian culture,
Speaker 9: used to decorate musical instruments, god images, and battle standards,
Speaker 9: but their greatest use was actually in the feather cloaks
Speaker 9: worn by the chiefly class. However, it should be noted
Speaker 9: that the bird catchers who were gathering these feathers would
Speaker 9: not kill the birds. They'd catch them by smearing glue
Speaker 9: on branches, then pluck a few feathers before releasing them.
Speaker 9: As a result, both historians and biologists believe that the
Speaker 9: impact of Hawaiian featherwork on bird populations was ready relatively minor. Now,
Speaker 9: despite the initial shock of settlement, things in the islands
Speaker 9: did eventually reach equilibrium. Native Hawaiian practices emphasized sustainability and
Speaker 9: ethos that was partially a religious duty but also a
Speaker 9: social imperative since there was really nowhere left to expand to.
Speaker 9: But these principles crumbled when Western business interests and economic
Speaker 9: models started to remake how the Kingdom of Hawaii managed land. Now,
Speaker 9: that is a much longer story, but to summarize, in
Speaker 9: a bid to keep their kingdom's independence, the Hawaiian royal
Speaker 9: family westernized themselves, their society, and their economy, and a
Speaker 9: large part of that was allowing American and European investors
Speaker 9: to open large sugarcane plantations staffed largely by immigrant workers
Speaker 9: brought in from Japan, China, Korea, the Philippines, Portugal, and
Speaker 9: Puerto Rico. By the eighteen eighties, the sugar plantations were
Speaker 9: major economic drivers and miniature governments in and of themselves.
Speaker 9: But the sugarcane planters had a problem rats the Pacific
Speaker 9: rat who loved sugar cane, and it was starting to
Speaker 9: cause crop loss, so the plantation owners went looking for
Speaker 9: an answer. In an eighteen seventy two article, a sugar
Speaker 9: planter in Jamaica described how he'd significantly decreased the rat
Speaker 9: problem in his fields by importing mongoose from India and
Speaker 9: releasing them as a form of rodent control. Which is
Speaker 9: why William Herbert Purvis, an Englishman who'd invested in a
Speaker 9: cane plantation, thought this made eminent sense. After all, mongoose
Speaker 9: were famous for their ability to kill basically any opponent,
Speaker 9: even cobras, so he was sure they could raid his
Speaker 9: specific sugar mill of its rodent problem. Now keep in mind,
Speaker 9: Purvis was no amateur at introducing new species to the islands.
Speaker 9: The previous year, he'd imported macadamia trees from Australia as
Speaker 9: an ornamental plant though they gave good nuts too. Surely
Speaker 9: these mongooses would be just as much of a success.
Speaker 9: Right then, After Purvis released the beasts, other plantation owners
Speaker 9: followed suit on nearly every island, with the exception of Kauai,
Speaker 9: where a local man booted the crate off the dock,
Speaker 9: drowning the invasive animals. And invasive they were because mongoose
Speaker 9: don't just prey on rats, they prey on anything. In
Speaker 9: their naive India, they largely ate insects, rats, and snakes,
Speaker 9: but like any animal, it went for the easiest and
Speaker 9: most convenient prey. One Hawaiian article published the same year
Speaker 9: purpose introduced mongoose warned that the animal was a general destroyer. Sadly,
Speaker 9: they were exactly right. The mongoose killed rats, but not many,
Speaker 9: mainly due to the fact that rats are nocturnal while
Speaker 9: mongoose are diurnal, meaning they basically just passed each other
Speaker 9: while they were commuting to work. No, the easiest prey
Speaker 9: turned out to be eggs. Groups of mongoose ravaged the
Speaker 9: native bird population. It burgled eggs from nests, killed chicks
Speaker 9: that recently left the protection of trees, and even dug
Speaker 9: up and feasted on turtle eggs buried in the sand
Speaker 9: of the beaches. Particularly hard hit with the native ground
Speaker 9: nesting birds, who again had evolved in an environment with
Speaker 9: no terrestrial predators. And this was so obvious early on
Speaker 9: that an article in a local newspaper published in nineteen
Speaker 9: hundred already remarked on the population crash when we first
Speaker 9: took possession. A groundkeeper was quoted in the article, there
Speaker 9: were a good many pheasants and skins eyelarcs there. Now
Speaker 9: they're nearly extinct, and it's too bad. The mongoose is
Speaker 9: solely responsible for the passing of these desirable birds. It's
Speaker 9: particularly destructive on eggs. Birds cannot raise broods when it's
Speaker 9: about Yet, even as this became apparent, business interests published
Speaker 9: editorials touting the introduction as a success and denigrating reports
Speaker 9: of birds being killed. Articles often focused on humorous stories
Speaker 9: of mongoose raiding henhouses. Meanwhile, not particularly caring about any
Speaker 9: pr spin, the mongoose kept killing. Among its victims was
Speaker 9: the Nanae goose state bird of Hawaii, whose population fell
Speaker 9: from twenty five thousand in seventeen seventy eight to only
Speaker 9: thirty in nineteen fifty two. Though mongoose weren't the only factor.
Speaker 9: Feral cats also took their toll, and another large threat
Speaker 9: were invasive mosquitoes imported via Western ships that spread avian diseases,
Speaker 9: and as a result, Hawaii is the bird extinction capital
Speaker 9: of the world. When humans arrived, the islands had one
Speaker 9: hundred and forty two unique bird species. Since then, ninety
Speaker 9: five of them have been driven to extinction, and of
Speaker 9: the forty four endemic species remaining, thirty three are listed
Speaker 9: as endangered, and some who have not been sighted in
Speaker 9: decades are likely already gone. Some of those threatened include
Speaker 9: the Allalla or Hawaiian crow, which many native Hawaiians consider
Speaker 9: a family guardian spirit, and the evy, known in mythology
Speaker 9: to be the demigod Maui's favorite bird, and since many
Speaker 9: of these birds are also pollinators, their declining population have
Speaker 9: led to a collapse in native plant life that depended
Speaker 9: on them as part of their life cycle. When W. H.
Speaker 9: Purvis released his horde of mongoose into a field on
Speaker 9: the Big Island, he didn't expect to destroy an ecosystem,
Speaker 9: but he did a harsh reminder that ignorance and overconfidence
Speaker 9: can be just as devastating as malicious intent. Today, efforts
Speaker 9: to introduce species as a form of biocontrol are studied
Speaker 9: extensively for their impact before being tried. Thankfully, the lesson
Speaker 9: took root. In eighteen eighty eight, King Kalakawa decreed the
Speaker 9: kingdom's first plant quarantine, hoping to keep botanical diseases out
Speaker 9: of the islands. Two years later, in eighteen ninety in
Speaker 9: importation of non native insects were banned, and in nineteen
Speaker 9: oh five non native animals were added to the list
Speaker 9: not to mention. Today, a host of local organizations are
Speaker 9: attempting to preserve what native birds remain. Actually, one of
Speaker 9: Hawaii's success stories is the Nane goose, a breeding and
Speaker 9: reintroduction program begun in the nineteen fifties has moved to
Speaker 9: the Nane off the endangered species list and its population
Speaker 9: now sits around two thy five hundred.
Speaker 3: So all right, so that's about it for that episode.
Speaker 3: All right, for that video. Excuse me, what are your
Speaker 3: thoughts on this one? As of now?
Speaker 2: I think that if they had the Internet back then,
Speaker 2: that that wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 3: Okay, So there was one story of a dude from
Speaker 3: Jamaica who had some success one story which could have
Speaker 3: literally been the game of telephone through newspapers from Jamaica
Speaker 3: to Hawaii in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: But that's typically how you would have gotten that information
Speaker 2: unless you were reading it from a book or certain
Speaker 2: zas or which I don't even think they had a
Speaker 2: wallow just back then. But you know, certain people who
Speaker 2: are closer to the land, and and also like, how
Speaker 2: do we know that this that this other guy talking
Speaker 2: about the mongoose, you know, getting getting rid of the rats?
Speaker 2: How did how did he know that he was even
Speaker 2: being truthful? I mean, at a certain point you have
Speaker 2: to take people on trust, especially when you can't search
Speaker 2: their Facebook, you can't look up their Instagram, you can't find,
Speaker 2: you know, any kind of information on the internet. Like
Speaker 2: you kind of just had to take people at their word,
Speaker 2: and especially somebody you know who was kind of like
Speaker 2: working with these with these kind of animals and saw
Speaker 2: great results. I mean, why wouldn't you take that advice?
Speaker 2: That's the way I would look at it.
Speaker 3: And you know it's crazy. I used to work at
Speaker 3: a sugar refinery. I can tell you from first hand experience.
Speaker 3: Rats don't fuck with like milled sugar. They fuck with sugarcane. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but once it's milled and it's like raw state sugar,
Speaker 3: before it's even cooked and processed raw sugar itself, you'll
Speaker 3: have some but not a fucking epidemic like they were having.
Speaker 4: Just build a fucking mill higher locals.
Speaker 3: It's not a whole process refinery and it's gonna be
Speaker 3: some horrible thing. It's literally like a big grinder to
Speaker 3: do that. But well, I mean, were the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: they didn't know these things. They were trying to make
Speaker 3: it happen as best they could.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the mills, the mill were the slaves, bro, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, Like.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's true, true, Wow.
Speaker 2: If you really think about it, that's really what was
Speaker 2: going on with that. But yeah, dude, that's like a dick.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can only do so much. There wasn't
Speaker 2: really heavy machinery, you know back in the what was
Speaker 2: it eighteen eighties.
Speaker 3: Well no, that was after the Civil War, so the
Speaker 3: slaves were no longer a thing. However, they were really
Speaker 3: fucking cruel to the local indigenous population that they had
Speaker 3: hired for them. That's why they had to bring in
Speaker 3: workers from Japan and all these places, because the local Hawaiians.
Speaker 4: Quote unquote didn't make good workers.
Speaker 3: They were a proud people of long standing tribal traditions,
Speaker 3: and these new white dudes are coming in trying to
Speaker 3: work them like annabellum slaves, and they're like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: you understand, we have a king, like, you know, we
Speaker 3: are a proud people. Like what the fuck are you
Speaker 3: talking about this shit? So they had to bring in
Speaker 3: workers from other countries just to run these plantations, and
Speaker 3: that pissed off the Hawaiian's even worse. It's a horrible,
Speaker 3: horrible situation what happened to those islands. And then on
Speaker 3: top of that, their native indigenous bird and plant population
Speaker 3: fucked up because of the mongoose and they're still fighting it.
Speaker 3: There's they don't have a cure for that problem to
Speaker 3: this day.
Speaker 2: It's probably why till this day, any time you go
Speaker 2: out to Hawaii, the you know, the people that live there,
Speaker 2: they're like, yes, please come visit.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 2: That's kind of like how we're making our money is
Speaker 2: by people who are coming and visiting and touring and
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. But they're like, don't you
Speaker 2: dare fucking move here? Dude, don't don't do that, like
Speaker 2: cause they'll I've heard stories people moving out to Hawaii
Speaker 2: and the people that are like native there, that have
Speaker 2: lived there for generations, they don't want nothing to do
Speaker 2: with them.
Speaker 4: Right, No, bro, Because here's the thing.
Speaker 3: There's only so much square footage of an island, you
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying. It's not like, uh, when the
Speaker 3: city of Baton Rouge gets a little too overcrowded, a
Speaker 3: little too overpopulated, Oh you just moved to the next
Speaker 3: town over and you just kind of push out and whatever.
Speaker 4: There's only so much pushing that can.
Speaker 2: Happen, which is a funny durable of.
Speaker 4: A spot that push out. They can't afford to relocate.
Speaker 2: Right right, well, which is funny because we you know,
Speaker 2: well not we I wasn't there, but you know, uh,
Speaker 2: after Hurricane Katrina, a bunch of people moved from New
Speaker 2: Orleans and that whole area up to Baton Rouge and
Speaker 2: dispersed out to Texas and stuff like that. But dude,
Speaker 2: you hear so much about how Baton Rouge used to
Speaker 2: be so different, and then Katrina happened and it completely,
Speaker 2: like everybody was kind of all over the place and
Speaker 2: it was just so packed and crowded.
Speaker 4: Bat and Rouge. Bro how could I how can I
Speaker 4: even put that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, an exodus, a mass migration. People walked down I
Speaker 3: tend from New Orleans two Baton Rouge because they had
Speaker 3: no other options. Like, that's real shit, and that crisis
Speaker 3: that I wouldn't say epidemic, but the overpopulation basically in
Speaker 3: a matter of days that nobody was really ready or
Speaker 3: prepped for. You know, that led to so much problems,
Speaker 3: especially with criminal organizations that were fleeing as well. That
Speaker 3: brought their rivalries to wherever they relocated to, if it
Speaker 3: was even for a day or two, or if they
Speaker 3: set up shop and now ran there, they brought those
Speaker 3: old school rivalries with them. And all these people who
Speaker 3: were innocent that were just trying to get help, a
Speaker 3: lot of them were caught in the crossfire of all
Speaker 3: that and were grouped in the same grouping as the trash.
Speaker 4: And it was, oh my god, it was horrible.
Speaker 2: Was it before or after Katrina? That bat and Rouge
Speaker 2: at one point was the murder capital of the country.
Speaker 4: After that makes it after?
Speaker 3: So here's and we talked about that on other shows before.
Speaker 3: So New Orleans has something called a thirty day murdered trial.
Speaker 3: They've had a long standing time. Basically, if you get
Speaker 3: caught broad daylight shooting somebody, all right, you get arrested, cool,
Speaker 3: you're putting a holding cell for thirty days, and then
Speaker 3: you appear before a judge. If no one is there
Speaker 3: to testify against you, the case is dismissed and you're
Speaker 3: free to go. And in inner city New Orleans, the
Speaker 3: victim's family is gonna come and testify against you.
Speaker 4: No, dude, Okay, they'll put you away, but your cousin.
Speaker 3: Will come and gut them all down tonight and then
Speaker 3: he'll get released a month later.
Speaker 4: That's that's how it runs.
Speaker 3: So usually nobody is there to testify against you unless
Speaker 3: you fucked up and killed somebody important, and usually you
Speaker 3: just kind of do one month's since in jail and
Speaker 3: you become a killer. And it became so endemic to
Speaker 3: the culture that if you see anybody with the cross
Speaker 3: tattoo right between their eyebrows, like, yeah, that's supposed to
Speaker 3: be a green cross.
Speaker 4: Take that with what you want, but that's supposed to
Speaker 4: be five kills.
Speaker 2: Oh, shit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they became like a whole thing.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is crazy. Yeah, there's there's some Uh, there's
Speaker 2: definitely like a lot of gangshit going down in New Orleans.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, No, there are certain neighborhoods that like, you
Speaker 3: and I are not allowed to go in. We are white,
Speaker 3: we will be killed. We have no business down this street.
Speaker 3: They know that, we know that. And it's not a
Speaker 3: tourist spot. Like that's yeah, that's absolutely a place.
Speaker 2: You just stick to Bourbon. We'll just stick to Bourbon streets.
Speaker 3: But that's why I tell people when we're talking about
Speaker 3: coming to New Orleans for a cult meet up and
Speaker 3: some things like I want this, but like people need
Speaker 3: to be aware of the fact that like you'll you
Speaker 3: will hear gunshots. You're gonna hear that, right, It's very possible.
Speaker 3: You see somebody get stabbed to death. It's possible. It's
Speaker 3: not a guarantee. It's not a guarantee. Uh, you will
Speaker 3: see uh, homeless people shooting up and like just full
Speaker 3: fledged masturbating out there on the street.
Speaker 4: Like you're gonna see it's New Orleans.
Speaker 2: Oh you're gonna smell, You're gonna sell smell. Like all
Speaker 2: of the worst sewer and puke that you can possibly
Speaker 2: imagine walking down those streets, because for some reason it
Speaker 2: just gets worse. It never gets better.
Speaker 3: When you go down Bourbon Street. Assume you are walking
Speaker 3: in a living urinal. I think that's a pretty decent
Speaker 3: rule of thumb to follow.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, I mean think about it too. Even
Speaker 2: during Marti grass so you're having millions of people come
Speaker 2: from Marti Gras. There's not enough bathrooms most of those shops.
Speaker 2: Most of the restaurants, you either have to pay to
Speaker 2: use their restroom or you're just not allowed in, Like
Speaker 2: you have to buy. You have to buy something in
Speaker 2: the store and then maybe they'll let you use their bathroom.
Speaker 2: So people just whip it out. Some people like I, dude,
Speaker 2: I've gone with people like where the girls that I've
Speaker 2: gone with, they'll just pull their pants down and just
Speaker 2: find a corner somewhere alley and that's it.
Speaker 4: Oh bro, The Shei Wei is a game changer for girls.
Speaker 2: I'm not even just saying girls, I'm just saying like
Speaker 2: everybody too, like everybody. That's that's really how New Orleans
Speaker 2: is treated, because it's like, are you really worried about
Speaker 2: making something worse that already smells like sewage. It's that's
Speaker 2: kind of how a.
Speaker 3: Treater cans that the episs and old beer cans. And
Speaker 3: then we just continue on. That's me, you know, because
Speaker 3: I'm a gentleman like that. Hey, if you gotta drop
Speaker 3: a deuce and like, look, you just you gotta make
Speaker 3: the odds ever be in your favor, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying that that's on you.
Speaker 4: But then you know what the shei wi is though?
Speaker 3: That cup with a spout, Yeah, girl can standing up
Speaker 3: like camping trips and stuff.
Speaker 2: Cone looking thing, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is the move at Maudie girl. That the
Speaker 3: game changer for the ladies.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I've seen it. I've seen it in use
Speaker 2: before a couple of times.
Speaker 4: It's fucking hilarious.
Speaker 3: All right, So anyway back to the topic here about
Speaker 3: human intervention reintroducing animal populations to areas, and then you
Speaker 3: heard what he said. These days before this happens, a
Speaker 3: lot of research is done to make sure that it's
Speaker 3: a good fit.
Speaker 4: Except that's not exactly the case.
Speaker 3: We're gonna talk about some more recent examples of that
Speaker 3: here in a moment. But talking about Hawaii made me
Speaker 3: think of Louisiana, maybe think of the New Turette. And
Speaker 3: we're gonna get to that here in a minute. We've
Speaker 3: talked about it a few times, so this one's gonna
Speaker 3: be just a little quick, down and dirty of it.
Speaker 3: But did you know that Louisiana almost had a thriving
Speaker 3: hippo population. I didn't so once upon a time, because
Speaker 3: apparently hippo meat is eaten in like Australia and New
Speaker 3: Zealand and Africa, and it's very comparable to beef, very
Speaker 3: comparable to red meat, and it was seen as basically
Speaker 3: like water cow, like a one hundred percent And so
Speaker 3: the theory was in the eighteen hundreds, what if we
Speaker 3: were to introduce some hippos to the Bayous of Louisiana,
Speaker 3: maybe the Everglades of Florida, and we open up a
Speaker 3: whole new industry of water cow, and this would be great.
Speaker 3: There will be even more food, more production, more and
Speaker 3: more more, because America is doing that shit in the
Speaker 3: late eighteen hundred.
Speaker 2: Mainly, I would say it's more of a swamp cow
Speaker 2: because we already have a sea cow as the manatee.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Indeed, indeed, so I'm going to go and share the
Speaker 3: screen one on another gain, and let's learn a little
Speaker 3: bit about the crazy, ingenious plan to bring hippopotamus ranching
Speaker 3: to America.
Speaker 2: All Right, In the early years of the last century,
Speaker 2: the US Congress considered a bold and ingenious plan that
Speaker 2: would simultaneously solve two pressing problems, a national meat shortage
Speaker 2: and a growing ecological crisis. The plan was this hippopotamus ranching.
Speaker 2: Writer John Something talks with this article about his new article,
Speaker 2: and Okay, I don't even need to read that bullshit,
Speaker 2: all right, it says in the early years of the
Speaker 2: last century, the US Congress considered a bold and ingenious
Speaker 2: plan that would simultaneously solve the two problems. Hippos imported
Speaker 2: from Africa and raised in the Bayous of Louisiana, proponents argued,
Speaker 2: would provide a delicious new source of protein from meat
Speaker 2: hungry nation. In the process, the animals would gobble up
Speaker 2: the invasive water hyacinth with that was killing fish and
Speaker 2: choking off waterways. It would be an epic win. When
Speaker 2: a bill was introduced in Congress, and newspaper editorials extolled
Speaker 2: the culinary virtues of Lake Cow Bacon.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, like, let's go ahead and pause it real quick,
Speaker 3: because let's break.
Speaker 4: It all down here.
Speaker 3: The water hyacinth, Okay, that'd be the water lily. Anybody
Speaker 3: in Louisiana and a lot of the Southern States know
Speaker 3: this plant, which is it is a it's not it's evasive,
Speaker 3: but it's not a foreign evasis species.
Speaker 4: It's indigenous to this area.
Speaker 3: And if it's not taken care of and regulated and
Speaker 3: raked out of ponds, it will choke out the water
Speaker 3: oxygen level. Right, the fish will die, the other planets
Speaker 3: will die. It will literally choke out the life. So
Speaker 3: that water hippos, right, they eat all kinds of vegetation
Speaker 3: in the water, and they could just chomp this down. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: we harvest them, and again there's a lot of recipes
Speaker 3: and things, but they're more.
Speaker 4: Comparable to beef.
Speaker 3: But all of the newspaper editorials kept running cow bacon
Speaker 3: like water cow bacon. That became a whole synonymous thing
Speaker 3: because of we're gonna get to it in a minute.
Speaker 2: It's definitely click baity water cow bacon. I would try it.
Speaker 4: In the eighteen eighties, if somebody told you the government
Speaker 4: doesn't want you to know this. But they have water
Speaker 4: cow bacon and they're about to bring to Louisiana. It's
Speaker 4: gonna be the next big thing.
Speaker 2: You'd be like, bro, wait wait wait what Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I would definitely try it. I always think of Madagascar, though,
Speaker 2: every time I think of a hippo, it's like, uh,
Speaker 2: whenever the Loriah the girl, Yeah, Gloria, she met the
Speaker 2: she met the man, hippo, the boy, hippo whatever, and
Speaker 2: he was all, you're dunking, Yeah, you're so fat, I
Speaker 2: love it, or something along the slock.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that hippo was he knew what was up?
Speaker 2: Like, yes, anyway. It says that this guy he is.
Speaker 2: He describes the hippo ranching scheme and the story of
Speaker 2: two fascinating men behind it, A modest frontiersman and a
Speaker 2: soldier of fortune, the other a the other a self
Speaker 2: aggrandizing con man. Both were spies, each was sworn to
Speaker 2: kill each other, but the great cause of hippo ranching
Speaker 2: brought them together. Oh it's a lovely communion. It says
Speaker 2: what was going on in America at that time that
Speaker 2: made hippopotamus ranching seem like a good idea. This guy
Speaker 2: goes the dawn of hippopotamus ranching in America was nineteen ten.
Speaker 2: There was a very serious meat shortage. There were peak
Speaker 2: years of immigration, cities were exploding in The meat industry
Speaker 2: was getting bigger and uglier, but it could not keep up.
Speaker 2: America had always solved its problems by moving west, but
Speaker 2: now the frontier was closed. So it was a meat crisis,
Speaker 2: but it was also kind of an identity crisis. And
Speaker 2: they asked, so, how were the hippos supposed to fix it?
Speaker 2: This guy goes, well, the idea was that you could
Speaker 2: harness land that wasn't productive for grazing cattle, like swamps
Speaker 2: and bayous, So you'd transplant the hippos into these environments
Speaker 2: that aren't totally unlike where they live in Africa. You
Speaker 2: could suck up all the energy in what looks like
Speaker 2: a wasteland and turn it into meat. At the same time,
Speaker 2: there was a real problem with invasive water hyacinth plants.
Speaker 2: There still is in fact, so in a Louisiana congressman
Speaker 2: named Robert Brusard decided that he could solve the water
Speaker 2: hyacinth problem by bringing in hippos to suck suck up
Speaker 2: the plants. You were literally taking one problem and using
Speaker 2: it to solve another problem.
Speaker 3: Okay, real quick, say his last name again, Robert what Brusard? Okay,
Speaker 3: you said it differently the first time, and the guy
Speaker 3: in the video We're Gonna plan.
Speaker 4: A second pronounces it that way too.
Speaker 3: They're like, they're like Brusard, they put the emphasis on sard,
Speaker 3: the emphasis goes on brew Brusard.
Speaker 2: I mean tomato, fucking tomato, dude.
Speaker 3: I know, it's one of those things. It's like it's
Speaker 3: a Louisiana native that would pick up on that small thing.
Speaker 3: But it's like, wait, how'd you say it? I mean,
Speaker 3: you're not saying the words incorrectly at all. It's like
Speaker 3: the inflection makes it weird.
Speaker 2: You know what's weird is is that whenever I'm reading,
Speaker 2: I read as if like I'm I come from maybe,
Speaker 2: but I try and sound like I kind of know
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about, Like I try and give that idea,
Speaker 2: and so it's like I'm speaking a little bit more proper,
Speaker 2: and so it's Brusaude not Brusard.
Speaker 3: I agree, But like the guy in the video, I
Speaker 3: think did the same thing, and it's it's crazy to
Speaker 3: hear it. You know what I mean, I don't know
Speaker 3: it just maybe it maybe it just made my ears
Speaker 3: perk up, because not just you, others today i've heard him.
Speaker 4: I'm like, why are they saying it like that?
Speaker 2: But anyway, yeah, yeah, So anyway, the article is asking
Speaker 2: this guy, he goes who else was involved in promoting this? Well,
Speaker 2: Bruce has this congressional hearing and he needs expert witnesses.
Speaker 2: The first is this geeky apple researcher. The other two
Speaker 2: are Frederick Russell Burnham and Fritz Duquine. Fritz. We need
Speaker 2: to bring that name back, dude, Fritz Fritz such a
Speaker 2: solid name. Anyhow, Frederick Russell Burnham is this staggeringly impressive
Speaker 2: and totally forgotten figure in history. The Boy Scouts were
Speaker 2: founded in his image to create boys that were as
Speaker 2: capable and honorable as him. He was the inspiration for
Speaker 2: Indiana Jones. Oh, that's interesting. He was a freelance adventurer
Speaker 2: who'd up and gone to Africa to fight for the
Speaker 2: British colonial lists because, like a lot of people at
Speaker 2: the time, he thought this was a noble kind of
Speaker 2: project to bring civilization to Africa. He was once described
Speaker 2: as the most complete human being who ever lived.
Speaker 4: What Wow, the most interesting man like back in the gap.
Speaker 2: Sun sounds like it. So Fritz Dukane was a is
Speaker 2: it bolt boor yeah boor boor okay, which are the
Speaker 2: descendants of Dutch settlers in Africa. He was a really
Speaker 2: slippery fellow. He moved through life in this cloud of aliases.
Speaker 2: He was a virtuistic and ambitious con man. He fought
Speaker 2: against the British and the Second Boer War. Like Burnham,
Speaker 2: he was kind of a free ranging spy. Burnham once
Speaker 2: called him the human epitome of sin and deception. That's
Speaker 2: like too far different ends of the spectrum. You're talking
Speaker 2: about the awesomest man who ever lived, and then also
Speaker 2: like the human epitome of sin and deception.
Speaker 3: That's pretty crazy. Also that this dude was of Dutch descent.
Speaker 3: This dude was of English descent, because if you look
Speaker 3: at the East India Trading Company, in the Dutch India
Speaker 3: Trading Company, they were some fierce competitors for a long time.
Speaker 4: Africa was kind of their war ground.
Speaker 3: So this is even this is further back on the
Speaker 3: wow f Then most people could catch on first read
Speaker 3: dog that's wild.
Speaker 2: So during the Boer War, the two men were assigned
Speaker 2: to kill each other, and so the article says, but
Speaker 2: somehow the hippo plan brought them together, and he goes,
Speaker 2: they had this real rivalry, but it's one of those
Speaker 2: old fashioned rivalries where you honor your enemy. It seems
Speaker 2: they never met in battle. And when they finally meet,
Speaker 2: it's under the guise of being collaborators with Brusard on
Speaker 2: this hippo plan based on their experiences in Africa. They're
Speaker 2: going to start what's essentially a lobbying firm to drum
Speaker 2: up donations from rich people as they do as they do.
Speaker 2: Obviously this didn't come to pass, and you go into
Speaker 2: what happened into your at a Tavis story, Okay, but
Speaker 2: you have to wonder what if it had. The guy goes, well,
Speaker 2: it's an interesting thought experiment. I've never tasted hippo, but
Speaker 2: I've read many accounts that it's delicious. So that problem
Speaker 2: is solved. But I don't know how feasible it would
Speaker 2: have been, or what unintended ecological consequences there might have been.
Speaker 2: We didn't get the hippos, but we're not starving. So
Speaker 2: what happened to the meat crisis? What happened was the
Speaker 2: very beginnings of industrial agriculture. Rather than bringing in new
Speaker 2: animals that could take advantage of landscapes that didn't seem productive,
Speaker 2: we basically engineered those landscapes into more pasture, and we
Speaker 2: packed more and more of the same kinds of animals
Speaker 2: onto that land. You can basically trace a straight line
Speaker 2: from this moment in nineteen ten, when another way i e.
Speaker 2: The hippopotamusis seemed possible to the solutions we have now,
Speaker 2: which are feed lots and confinement operations and all the
Speaker 2: attendant consequences in fallout. Interesting.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that's pretty much all we really need to
Speaker 3: read on that article. I will say that we need
Speaker 3: to look at that bill because this was pushed through.
Speaker 4: We almost were so.
Speaker 3: Fucked ladies and gentlemen, because, as you know, the article
Speaker 3: makes it sound, well, the hippos would have taken this
Speaker 3: land that is pretty much unusable and would have been
Speaker 3: able to produce meat, and it would have taken.
Speaker 4: Care of the water hyacinth, and it was this good idea,
Speaker 4: bub ba bup.
Speaker 3: Hippos are the deadliest animal on the globe or the
Speaker 3: flat earth or whatever. They do not have any natural
Speaker 3: predators because they are so large. Yeah, some of the
Speaker 3: babies might get hit, but honestly not much because when
Speaker 3: you fuck with the baby, you get the mama. And
Speaker 3: there's no water aquatic type of predator anywhere in Africa
Speaker 3: that fucks with them.
Speaker 4: So they just get larger than life and ruin everything.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, these are the people that take up
Speaker 2: three seats on an airplane.
Speaker 4: Ah fuck whole row.
Speaker 3: Yes, and they're like Lizo about it. They're fat and
Speaker 3: they want you to know. They want you uncomfortable. They
Speaker 3: want you to know they're not going to the gym,
Speaker 3: and fat is beautiful and bute, bute, it's that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but they're also trying to eat your boat and kill
Speaker 3: you because again, the deadliest animal on earth. And in
Speaker 3: this timeframe nineteen ten, they got so close that there
Speaker 3: was actually an American.
Speaker 4: Hippo bill that was proposed before Congress.
Speaker 3: They were voting on that if they should or should not,
Speaker 3: and it got fucking close to wow.
Speaker 2: So Bruceard argued the hippopotamuses would eat the invasive water
Speaker 2: hyacinth that was clogging the rivers and also help produce
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, also produce meat to help solve a meat
Speaker 2: shortage in the United States. The chief collaborators and proponents
Speaker 2: of bruce ARD's bill were Major Frederick Russell Burnham and
Speaker 2: Captain Fritz Dukane. Former President Teddy Roosevelt back to plan
Speaker 2: and as did the United States Department of Agriculture, The
Speaker 2: Washington Post the New York Times, which praised hippopotamus meat
Speaker 2: as lake col Bacon William Newton Irwin, a researcher for
Speaker 2: the United States Department of Agriculture recruited by Bruceard, told
Speaker 2: Congress that the bill could add one million tons of
Speaker 2: meat to yearly American supply, and further suggested that more
Speaker 2: erotic animals should be imported for the same purpose, including exotic.
Speaker 2: What did I say erotic? Oh, where's my mind?
Speaker 3: I just when you said, I was like, I know,
Speaker 3: he didn't catch it, but everybody else did.
Speaker 4: I'm sure exotic ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: Sorry, it's been a minute, but anyway, it says uh.
Speaker 2: So they wanted to import more animals, including the Of course,
Speaker 2: I probably saw erotic because I saw dick Dick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the dick dicks, a little tiny deer.
Speaker 2: The tic tick. What a fucked up name? Uh so,
Speaker 2: the dig dicks, the rhinoceroses, American buffalo or African buffalo,
Speaker 2: Tibetan yaks, and Manchurian pigs. These are all the animals
Speaker 2: that they wanted to introduce to America. It says, although
Speaker 2: the American hippo build developed a broad base of support,
Speaker 2: it was never passed by the United States Congress.
Speaker 3: And for the record, if anybody would like to see
Speaker 3: an example of what would have happened if this went through.
Speaker 3: Have you heard about Pablo Escobar's cocaine hippos? I have, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 3: all right, good, we're gonna talk about them here at
Speaker 3: the end. But you know what, let's go ahead and
Speaker 3: listen to this little vigia here. It's only four minutes
Speaker 3: forty nine seconds. Shout out to Tidewater Teddy, and I
Speaker 3: think there's a pretty excellent video showing the entire process
Speaker 3: of the hippos in Louisiana and how close we were
Speaker 3: to being unable to use the Mississippi River pretty much
Speaker 3: ever again, which is a huge source of trade for
Speaker 3: our country. And we were this close to hippos growing
Speaker 3: to the size they want in the Mississippi River and
Speaker 3: just fucking up everything, but here we go.
Speaker 11: In nineteen ten, the United States was facing dual crises.
Speaker 11: In one corner, invasive water highacins. We're choking American waterways
Speaker 11: in the Gulf States, blocking shipping and eliminating fish. In
Speaker 11: the other corner, America was facing a major meat shortage
Speaker 11: after butting heads with the Meat Trust. In a desperate
Speaker 11: attempt to restore order, US Representative Robert F. Brussard of
Speaker 11: Louisiana was willing to try anything with the help of
Speaker 11: these two guys, Russell Burnham and Captain Fritz Dukins, as
Speaker 11: well as two guys from the Department of Agriculture. Broussard
Speaker 11: proposed importing wild and domestic animals from around the world
Speaker 11: into America, though in as House Resolution two three six
Speaker 11: two to one, or the American Hippo Bill, the bill
Speaker 11: would have authorized the importation of hippos and a bunch
Speaker 11: of other African animals to the United States, specifically the
Speaker 11: Gulf States that were plagued by water hyacinth. In theory,
Speaker 11: this bill would kill two mosquitoes with one swat, the
Speaker 11: hippos would eat the water hyacinth, and the Americans would
Speaker 11: eat the hippos to butter up American appetites to this
Speaker 11: new strange animal. The men compared hippos to bacon, a
Speaker 11: product that's irresistible to many Americans. A year prior, at
Speaker 11: a meeting of the American Breeders Association, hippos were described
Speaker 11: using the South Africa can term zico spick or lake
Speaker 11: cow bacon, and in Broussard's own statement, he says that
Speaker 11: hippos in Africa are made into bacon and used as bacon. Presumably,
Speaker 11: under this new bill, Americans would have been eating hippo
Speaker 11: bacon alongside their pancakes every morning. Of course, not everyone
Speaker 11: was swayed by the idea of hippo bacon, and Charles F. Scott,
Speaker 11: the chairman of the Committee of Agriculture, had a lot
Speaker 11: of questions. He wanted to know whether hippos were easily domesticated,
Speaker 11: whether they would become a pest if let lose, how
Speaker 11: much they would breed, how they would taste, whether white
Speaker 11: men like them. Yeah, that was a serious question back then,
Speaker 11: because all these dudes were white, how big they get,
Speaker 11: what they eat, and the logistics behind confining them to
Speaker 11: rivers and streams. Some answers seem to be based on
Speaker 11: anecdotal evidence rather than scientific evidence, but for the most
Speaker 11: part the answers were pretty straightforward. Naturally, the press went insane,
Speaker 11: and the headlines were even more so. The focus was
Speaker 11: mostly on whether or not the reader could stomach hippomte,
Speaker 11: although some papers did highlight the water hyacinth issue. In
Speaker 11: the end, the American Hippo Bill barely failed to pass,
Speaker 11: and that was probably for the best. First Off, hippos
Speaker 11: are insanely aggressive and they can and do kill anyone
Speaker 11: wandering in their territory, So if you wanted to paddle
Speaker 11: a canoe in the bayou, you'd be in serious trouble. Secondly,
Speaker 11: it's usually not a good idea to introduce non native
Speaker 11: species to a new environment. Just like how the water hyacinth,
Speaker 11: which is native to the Amazon Basin, took over American waterways,
Speaker 11: hippos could have also become invasive. I mean, you're solving
Speaker 11: a problem with another problem. Here's an example in Colombia,
Speaker 11: for hippos owned by Infanta drug lord Pablo Escobar were
Speaker 11: left on his estate after his death in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 11: By two thousand and seven, these hippos had multiplied to
Speaker 11: sixteen and By twenty twenty, their population had exploded to
Speaker 11: over ninety hippos. Now these feral Colombian hippos are harassing fishermen,
Speaker 11: killing cattle, and frightening villagers.
Speaker 2: Yikes.
Speaker 11: Lastly, since water hyacinths are South American plants, how could
Speaker 11: these men have expected African hippos to eat them? Nowadays,
Speaker 11: water hyacinths have evaded many other continents, including Africa, and
Speaker 11: hippos are not known to eat them there. Maybe these
Speaker 11: dudes just assumed hippos would eat any type of aquatic plant.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 11: Anyways, that's the story of how hippos were almost introduced to.
Speaker 4: America, So let's just talk about that, shall we. Dude.
Speaker 2: So I was looking up pictures of them and what like.
Speaker 2: I I mainly really just wanted to see what a
Speaker 2: baby hippo look like because I imagine that, Oh they're adorable,
Speaker 2: really cute. So I want to share this right here,
Speaker 2: Look at this fat little baby hippo.
Speaker 4: Dude.
Speaker 3: Oh no, baby hippos are like the cutest things almost ever.
Speaker 2: That is freaking adorable.
Speaker 1: You know what?
Speaker 2: They kind of they kind of look like uh snorlax,
Speaker 2: the pokemon.
Speaker 4: I think that he might have been based off of it,
Speaker 4: or at least some of it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, would god look at the size of that
Speaker 2: fucking beast.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying. And so here's the deal. They
Speaker 3: get so big they can't be on land for long.
Speaker 3: That's why they're aquatic. They literally have to be in
Speaker 3: water because their legs will snap if they're on land
Speaker 3: for too long.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: They mainly live in the water, which means they get
Speaker 3: as big as the water will allow them to get,
Speaker 3: which I mean, you know, sky's the limit, so to speak.
Speaker 4: There is there is a limit.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying you'll see one the size of like
Speaker 3: a eighteen willer, but I mean maybe one day, I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But it says they live forty to fifty years. That's
Speaker 2: pretty long time.
Speaker 4: Oh dude. Yes, that's why there's such a problem.
Speaker 3: And in Africa, certain rivers you just don't boat down
Speaker 3: because you know that they're a problem. Now you talk
Speaker 3: about this the water hyacinth. Come to find out, they
Speaker 3: didn't even eat it. They had no idea. They were
Speaker 3: just going off of it because they eat all kinds
Speaker 3: of water plant life.
Speaker 4: Bu bah buh. It's all good.
Speaker 3: If they would have done that, we would have been
Speaker 3: fucked and still had the highestcinth problem.
Speaker 4: And now we have a hippo problem.
Speaker 2: Dude, I'm looking up how how big they can get
Speaker 2: in The largest documented hippo ever was ten thousand pounds
Speaker 2: and sixteen feet tall.
Speaker 3: Like longly, thousand pounds has five tons of an animal.
Speaker 3: Look at how many deaths just off top how many
Speaker 3: deaths did hippopotami account for in twenty twenty three. You know,
Speaker 3: I just have a weird feeling. It's a lot more
Speaker 3: than people are expecting.
Speaker 2: I'm sure it is.
Speaker 3: I mean, and did you know they also sweat pink.
Speaker 3: I know that's a random fat them, but their sweat
Speaker 3: is pink. Their milk is pink.
Speaker 2: That's where we get the meat glue from.
Speaker 3: It's hippopotamus sweat. It has to be, actually, and I
Speaker 3: looked into it. As far as hippo steak goes, every
Speaker 3: review says that it's fucking delicious and like it is
Speaker 3: a thing. So I'm excited to try someone day.
Speaker 2: Honestly, Oh yeah, I'd definitely take a bite to that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've eaten gator. I mean, what's the difference.
Speaker 4: Really, I'm gonna be honest with you.
Speaker 3: I feel like if they would have been released in Louisiana,
Speaker 3: we as Cajuns could have handled that problem, knowing that
Speaker 3: it's water steak.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, don't.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Well I looked up how many deaths that
Speaker 2: they're typically known to cause annually, and so the just
Speaker 2: for a little bit of compare and contrast here, a
Speaker 2: lion causes about twenty two deaths a year annually, right, right.
Speaker 4: Because humans are not on their food chain, right.
Speaker 3: They have to go out of their way or be
Speaker 3: fucked with by humans in order to have that happen.
Speaker 2: A hippo causes five hundred human deaths a year. Ah, dude,
Speaker 2: imagine death by hippo.
Speaker 4: Fuck that they're drowning you while they're crushing you.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, what an absolute hell idea.
Speaker 4: So thankfully, and it said it barely didn't pass. I forget.
Speaker 4: I looked up the numbers.
Speaker 3: I wish I would have pulled that article up, but
Speaker 3: it was like, I think, like fourteen votes was the
Speaker 3: deciding And that's how split it was of people saying
Speaker 3: yay or nate to this. We were that close to
Speaker 3: having a hippo evasive species problem all throughout Louisiana and
Speaker 3: Florida on top of the other shit we have going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the trademarket definitely would still be trying to grow
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 3: Ah, And I honestly am in a small way bummed
Speaker 3: that we couldn't like domesticate them and successfully do it
Speaker 3: without them running rampant, because, dude, water steak sounds awesome.
Speaker 3: You're telling me gator hunting is a thing, But we
Speaker 3: could do hippo hunting and like hippo trapping and shit,
Speaker 3: that sounds fun.
Speaker 2: It says that you can get it, like you can
Speaker 2: get it imported from other countries and stuff. And then
Speaker 2: I saw like another question that somebody asked if you
Speaker 2: could if you could import giraffe meat, and that sounds
Speaker 2: I don't know if I would want to do that,
Speaker 2: but why it's a fucking giraffe. It's awesome.
Speaker 3: No, but you all right, So there's these hunts that
Speaker 3: go down, right, these guided hunts, Uh, these big wealthy
Speaker 3: doctors and stuff. They'll pay ten thousand dollars to kill
Speaker 3: a giraffe right right, and it's seen as like horrible
Speaker 3: for the species.
Speaker 4: However, if you look at how they're doing it.
Speaker 3: They're calling the herd certain species, especially giraffe, when they
Speaker 3: get older they're like, you know, fourteen years old or whatever,
Speaker 3: it will like start fucking up and killing the young
Speaker 3: males that are like coming of age of breeding age
Speaker 3: to dominate the herd. So if they don't kill this
Speaker 3: one giraffe, this herd might stop growing, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure that they're managing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure that that is a thing. But also
Speaker 2: like those African hunts are fogged, dude, Like if you
Speaker 2: really look into it, like at all, it's like it
Speaker 2: is absolutely you think about it. Those people that own
Speaker 2: those those lands for that, yeah, they're making shitloads of money.
Speaker 4: And they're just pennies.
Speaker 2: It's how are they making pennies?
Speaker 4: Hold on? Hold on?
Speaker 3: And I'm not saying, oh, there is some horribly illegal
Speaker 3: hunting poaching things going on, for sure, but the guided
Speaker 3: hunts that are put on by the countries and by
Speaker 3: the tribes and everything, they're done like for that purpose
Speaker 3: of trying to preserve the wildlife call herds. That's why,
Speaker 3: like we talked about with hunting with wildlife management, it's
Speaker 3: done with that ethos and all of the money that
Speaker 3: spent on that trip gets put into the country.
Speaker 2: All, well, I guess if it's done that efforts. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to complain about that, but yeah it is.
Speaker 2: It is pretty crazy. But they were saying that you
Speaker 2: actually can get giraffe meat imported into the United States.
Speaker 2: There's no laws against that.
Speaker 3: Looking into it immediately, I don't know how expensive it is,
Speaker 3: though I'm not paying more than I am for like
Speaker 3: wag you you know what I'm saying, like per pound,
Speaker 3: like within limits.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'll eat I'll eat a hippo, not a giraffe. Though
Speaker 2: I can't do that. I like, I still feel weird
Speaker 2: eating lamb. Dude, Well, let me ask you this.
Speaker 4: Let me ask you this.
Speaker 3: As we're talking about that, would you ever consider eating
Speaker 3: ostrich meat?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's a fucking bird. You Yeah, it's a bird.
Speaker 4: It's a bird.
Speaker 3: Even if it's more comparable to like a steak type situation.
Speaker 2: That entices me even more.
Speaker 4: Okay, but the hippo meat doesn't.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I'll happily eat hippo meat.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: I get that.
Speaker 4: Sounds like we're doing this.
Speaker 3: It sounds like we're gonna start ordering things and trying them,
Speaker 3: and that's gonna be a Patreon exclusive because now you
Speaker 3: know me as a cage and I must eat everything
Speaker 3: and at least try the worlds or dervs. This is
Speaker 3: just another another chink in that bro. We got to
Speaker 3: do it all right, Yeah, I'm down. Let's do it
Speaker 3: fucking right.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: So we almost another example of trying to fuck with
Speaker 3: the circle of life, the natural order of things in
Speaker 3: certain biomes, trying to make money essentially, and thankfully this
Speaker 3: one was shot down. That would have been a really
Speaker 3: bad situation. And in my studies of all this, I
Speaker 3: learned about the Ostrich farming situation that happened in the nineties.
Speaker 3: Do you remember this at all, Jonathan, I know we
Speaker 3: talked about a little bit on the trip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, just from what you've told me.
Speaker 3: Okay, Cause gonna be honest, I didn't know too terribly
Speaker 3: much about it, and I'm very glad that I learned
Speaker 3: about it, because you know, I was talking about maybe
Speaker 3: doing a farm at some point, and like things that
Speaker 3: would be a good source of protein and living standards
Speaker 3: and what's a good feed to output of protein all that.
Speaker 4: Come to find out, I'm not the first person to
Speaker 4: think about that.
Speaker 3: And as I was looking at species of animals that
Speaker 3: don't necessarily belong there, and do they get evasive in
Speaker 3: all these things, that led me to the Ostrich farming
Speaker 3: situation from America. And that let me think about the
Speaker 3: Emu war of Australia that they lost. The nation lost
Speaker 3: the war to a bunch of birds, just saying.
Speaker 2: Dude, emos are kind of scary though if they're chasing.
Speaker 4: You, oh, no doubt.
Speaker 3: But like they have machine guns and bombers and they
Speaker 3: still have not won the war against the EMUs.
Speaker 4: They had to build a fucking wall.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, it probably it shouldn't take that long
Speaker 2: to try and figure out how to defeat fucking birds.
Speaker 2: But it's yeah, it's I mean, it's pretty funny.
Speaker 3: Actually it is fucking hilarious. But then, okay, okay, so
Speaker 3: back to the Ostrich farming in America. Let me play
Speaker 3: this little clip here from Andrew Fraser that talks more
Speaker 3: about it more intelligently than I.
Speaker 12: As far as I've known, Ostrich has been a failed
Speaker 12: meat In the early nineteen nineties, a new farming christ
Speaker 12: swept across the United States, hand Australia, a craze that
Speaker 12: promised a revolution in agriculture, a sustainable alternative to traditional
Speaker 12: livestock farming. This was the dawn of the ostrich industry.
Speaker 12: At first glance, ostrich farming seemed like a brilliant idea.
Speaker 12: The meat was remarkably similar to beef, leaner, lower in cholesterol,
Speaker 12: and higher in protein. In a world that was increasingly
Speaker 12: concerned with environmental sustainability, ostrich meat appeared to be a
Speaker 12: perfect solution. Ostriches were highly efficient animals. They had feed
Speaker 12: conversion ratios that were far better than that of beat.
Speaker 12: In simple words, you put in less feed, but you'd
Speaker 12: get the same amount of meat out. The efficiency extended
Speaker 12: beyond feed. Ostriches also required far less water, They were
Speaker 12: less environmentally impactful, they required less land, They had lower
Speaker 12: carbon footprints, and this combination of efficiency meant less environmental
Speaker 12: impact and for farmers the potential for significantly higher profits.
Speaker 12: Lower impro costs, less feed, less water, less land. Compared
Speaker 12: with a product that could be marketed as both sustainable
Speaker 12: and healthy, it seemed like a recipe for success. Add
Speaker 12: to that, the multiple revenue streams from feathers, leather, and
Speaker 12: even the eggs. Ostridge farming was poised to be the
Speaker 12: next big thing in agriculture, thing in agriculture.
Speaker 2: And boom it did.
Speaker 12: In the United States alone, the number of ostridge farms exploded,
Speaker 12: with as many as two thousand and five hundred to
Speaker 12: three thousand farms by nineteen ninety five. Texas became a hotspot,
Speaker 12: with vast lands being repurposed to house these towering birds.
Speaker 12: The trend wasn't confined to America. Australia saw over one
Speaker 12: thousand ostriche or emu farms spring up during the same period.
Speaker 4: And they still couldn't win the war against them. But
Speaker 4: they're gonna form them now. But all right, all right,
Speaker 4: we're gonna keep going. But just I just want to
Speaker 4: make that mention. That's fucking ridiculous. But all right, if
Speaker 4: you can't beat I'm joining them, my guest boys.
Speaker 12: Investors poured in buying up breeding pairs at astronomical prices.
Speaker 12: A breeding pair of ostriches in the US could fetch
Speaker 12: between thirty and eighty thousand dollars. In Australia, prices were
Speaker 12: lower but still significant, ranging from twenty thousand to fifty
Speaker 12: thousand aud even in use a smaller, non relative but
Speaker 12: similar looking bird saw similar speculative investment. Breeding pairs went
Speaker 12: for ten to twenty five thousand dollars in the US
Speaker 12: and a similar amount in Australia. The market was estimated
Speaker 12: to be worth over two billion globally by ninety six,
Speaker 12: driven by the combination of speculation, high hopes, and the
Speaker 12: belief that ostridge meat would soon be a common sight
Speaker 12: in supermarkets and on restaurant menus worldwide. But as quickly
Speaker 12: as the industry rose, it began to crumble. The first
Speaker 12: cracks appeared in the form of consumer demand, or rather
Speaker 12: the complete lack there of it. Despite all the promise,
Speaker 12: ostrich meat remained a niche product. The industry had failed
Speaker 12: to educate the public on its benefits, and without a
Speaker 12: strong consumer base, the market couldn't sustain the prices that
Speaker 12: had been set during the boom. And then there was
Speaker 12: the reality of farming ostriches. These were not just feathered cattle.
Speaker 12: They were faster, smarter, and more difficult to manage. Ostriches
Speaker 12: could run at speeds of up to forty five miles
Speaker 12: per hour, making them a challenge to contain. They were
Speaker 12: prone to stress, which could severely impact the growth and reproduction.
Speaker 12: Many farmers found themselves underprepared for the unique challenges of
Speaker 12: ostrich farming, which led to high mortality rates and increased costs.
Speaker 12: As more and more farms open, the market became oversaturated,
Speaker 12: the speculative bubble and prices for breeding pairs plummeted. Farms
Speaker 12: that had once been seen as the future of agriculture
Speaker 12: was suddenly struggling to just even stay afloat, and by
Speaker 12: the late nineties, the ostrich industry.
Speaker 2: It had largely collapsed.
Speaker 12: Thousands of farms were abandoned, and the investors who had
Speaker 12: sunk fortunes into breeding pairs and the infrastructure were left
Speaker 12: with little to show for it.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that's a whole conspiracy in and of itself,
Speaker 3: to be honest with you. You had all these investors, these
Speaker 3: farmers that were being told by somebody, by some group
Speaker 3: that ostrich meet was going to be the next big thing.
Speaker 4: There's a sound investment. This is a look.
Speaker 3: The government don't want you to know this, but ostriches
Speaker 3: are on the right. It was that whole thing just
Speaker 3: to get fucked in the end. And then, as we
Speaker 3: saw in that one clip, but I actually did more
Speaker 3: digging on it. Bird flew You remember that pandemic that
Speaker 3: took off. Yeah, yeah, a lot of the government officials
Speaker 3: came and just slaughtered people's whole herds, which at that
Speaker 3: point the farmers didn't care.
Speaker 4: They couldn't sell the meat.
Speaker 3: They weren't making money off the leather anything else, because
Speaker 3: I mean the market was.
Speaker 4: Already so saturated that it was whatever.
Speaker 2: Well they did that during they did that during covids
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: They did but I'm saying this was bird flu was
Speaker 3: the early two thousands. So this problem became a thing
Speaker 3: in the mid nineties and then about a decade later,
Speaker 3: low key under the radar, no one. I didn't even
Speaker 3: know that ostrich farming was a thing in America.
Speaker 2: I mean I imagined that it was somewhere, because I
Speaker 2: know that people eat ostrich.
Speaker 3: I mean I assumed that, yes, just like there's more
Speaker 3: tigers in captivity in Texas than there are in the wild.
Speaker 3: I assumed that some Americans be doing American shit and
Speaker 3: have ostrich farms, yes, like the small amounts. I didn't
Speaker 3: realize that there was ever some sort of a prospective booming.
Speaker 4: Ostrich industry in this country.
Speaker 3: Now, that is an example from what I can tell of, like,
Speaker 3: ostrichs have a fucked up ecosystems because, if anything, they
Speaker 3: have a much like we said, smaller carbon footprint.
Speaker 4: They require less water, less feed so.
Speaker 3: And they don't have any predators that we need to
Speaker 3: worry about in our environment. They are not predators themselves.
Speaker 3: So that was one where it wasn't a bad integration.
Speaker 3: It was just a good initiative, bad judgment. You see
Speaker 3: what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, dude. And you know it's so funny, dude,
Speaker 2: just watching them run like that. That is hilarious because
Speaker 2: they keep their neck all straight, their head up that
Speaker 2: it's like they're proud and they're proper, and they're also
Speaker 2: hauling ass.
Speaker 4: Yeah, dude. And ostrich racing is a thing. Have you
Speaker 4: seen that.
Speaker 2: Where people get on the back of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, full on jockeys like on horses, and they
Speaker 3: just take off on these birds.
Speaker 2: Man, dude, it's awesome. I want to ride one.
Speaker 3: And then you're gonna say, dude, ostrich legs are strong.
Speaker 3: That's why the meat is so good and so large.
Speaker 3: Those ostrich legs are meant to potentially kill lions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, whenever they showed the picture of the
Speaker 2: Ostrich meat cooked, I was like, oh my god, that
Speaker 2: looks good.
Speaker 3: Oh dude, if you want to, I'll send you the
Speaker 3: link to that video because in Vietnam right now, that
Speaker 3: video is about why Ostrich meat is on the rise
Speaker 3: in Vietnam. There's like a whole breakfast dish where you
Speaker 3: do something with the Ostrich egg something with the Ostrich steak.
Speaker 3: It's steaking eggs but from Ostrich and it looks delicious.
Speaker 4: Do you look at this massive turkey leg situation.
Speaker 3: Homeboy just cooked it in a big ass walk and
Speaker 3: it took forever to cook.
Speaker 4: But that's a part of it.
Speaker 3: And I'm just like, bro, I would not be mad
Speaker 3: at one day when I have a farm having an
Speaker 3: ostrich er too. You know what I'm saying. Those eggs
Speaker 3: are very huge. They produce up to sixty a year.
Speaker 3: They have no natural predators on this continent, so I'm
Speaker 3: not worried about that. And if I get tired of
Speaker 3: them running, you know, you just fucking dust rolled a
Speaker 3: ass and you cook you a whole Thanksgiving like yo,
Speaker 3: like a four x four Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: Oh one hundred percent. Yeah, I mean it's way more
Speaker 2: meat than a Turkey. I mean, how many turkey goes
Speaker 2: into an Ostrich you think.
Speaker 4: I would think probably four or.
Speaker 2: Five, right, right? And you know, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: I'm looking there's a website called American Ostrich Farms.
Speaker 4: Yo. I found him.
Speaker 3: He has a whole YouTube channel, and I was looking
Speaker 3: him into him as we were doing these things. Apparently
Speaker 3: there's one of the Ostrich farms that were able to
Speaker 3: withstand the crash of the projected industry, and they were
Speaker 3: able to corner a good section of the market early.
Speaker 3: So a lot of the leather comes from them, the eggs,
Speaker 3: the feathers. They've kind of I'm not saying cornered the
Speaker 3: American market, but they're doing their thing.
Speaker 4: They're killing it.
Speaker 2: It does look a bit more expensive. So it's like
Speaker 2: they have the Ostrich inside strip which is sixty dollars,
Speaker 2: the Ostrich tenderloin which is sixty dollars, Ostrich fan filays
Speaker 2: that are forty five dollars. But that's a little bit
Speaker 2: of a smaller chunk of meat. I don't know how.
Speaker 4: That's one steak or is that per pound. We'll be talking.
Speaker 2: It's looking like, okay, so the just for example, what
Speaker 2: looks to be like a steak is the Ostrich inside strip,
Speaker 2: and it says, oh, share the screen I want to
Speaker 2: see Okay, yeah, it's it's pretty nice website. Actually look fair.
Speaker 3: I mean I really want to order some Ostrich steak
Speaker 3: and see what's up, brother.
Speaker 2: So it says alongside the fan, this is the most
Speaker 2: premium cut available. Okay, so this is the most expensive
Speaker 2: part of the Ostrich. Inside strips are packaged as whole
Speaker 2: intact fu lays and weigh approximately three three quarters to
Speaker 2: one and a quarter pounds each.
Speaker 4: See, I'm trying to buy the whole Ostrich like processed.
Speaker 3: I would reach out to them and be like, yo,
Speaker 3: get me a fat one and let me ship me
Speaker 3: all of it already processed and cut up and everything,
Speaker 3: the same way I want to do with a cow,
Speaker 3: same way I want to do with a pig. If
Speaker 3: you do this right, bro, you only have to buy
Speaker 3: meat like one time for the year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it says right here, you can get the whole
Speaker 2: Ostrich leg for three hundred dollars, but it's on sale.
Speaker 2: It's typically six hundred.
Speaker 3: Look at the size of that though, dude, that's the
Speaker 3: small section right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Ostrich burgers that sounds good. Twenty bucks
Speaker 2: for is that one burger? Sink your teeth into a
Speaker 2: supremely satisfying burger? Uh? Okay, so one pound is twenty dollars. Okay,
Speaker 2: so that's about me one burger if you eat a
Speaker 2: big boy burger, yeah, or maybe two if you want
Speaker 2: a little you want a double quarter pounder. You know
Speaker 2: what I mean.
Speaker 3: But I mean they're not selling this as like a
Speaker 3: cheaper alternative. They're selling this as premium cuts, which like
Speaker 3: mad respect, mad respect, But if I was going to
Speaker 3: have a farm, you can have a couple of cows
Speaker 3: for this yo Ostrich wing?
Speaker 4: Bo, what part of the wing is that small?
Speaker 3: On an Ostrich? What are they talking? Are They just
Speaker 3: took a big ass wing piece and like chunked it.
Speaker 2: Up And it says each Ostrich wing is cut in
Speaker 2: half to fit it to fit in reasonably sized packages.
Speaker 2: The package contains at least two pieces with a total
Speaker 2: weight of approximately one to one and a half pounds
Speaker 2: for fifteen bucks.
Speaker 4: So two wings is about one and a half to
Speaker 4: two pounds of meat.
Speaker 2: Wow. Oh they have rib chops.
Speaker 13: Uh.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you, like I want to know what this
Speaker 3: is about. I might reach out and see how much
Speaker 3: it is to process a whole bird.
Speaker 2: I have never looked into ostrich meat, but I am
Speaker 2: definitely enticed.
Speaker 3: Oh dude, I'm And I was already kind of looking
Speaker 3: into this because I was looking at getting some land
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago, and thank god I didn't honestly,
Speaker 3: there was that land flooded and I didn't know it
Speaker 3: was gonna flood, so whatever. But I was looking at
Speaker 3: how to get it approved for a rural development loan,
Speaker 3: and I was thinking about what kind of livestock would
Speaker 3: I be able to have to call it a farm
Speaker 3: to get those tax credits in all those things. And
Speaker 3: I was just perusing, as I do, into the Google
Speaker 3: verse of animals that are not that hard to maintain,
Speaker 3: that don't cost that much to upkeep, that also you
Speaker 3: can eat.
Speaker 4: I was, you know, pragmatic, as my add brain does.
Speaker 4: I stumbled into the ostrich farming stuff. But I didn't
Speaker 4: spend a lot of time there because in theory, like yo,
Speaker 4: that's dope, and then like yo, I don't want that
Speaker 4: thing to be able to take off at forty five
Speaker 4: miles an hour away from me when I'm trying to
Speaker 4: like that's if it gets out like I'm fucked, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, catching it. There's there's other problems
Speaker 4: with it that, like for what I was looking at,
Speaker 4: wouldn't have been feasible. But it is not a bad
Speaker 4: model if you can do it correctly.
Speaker 2: Brother, Well that's what you were telling me yesterday that
Speaker 2: you don't need a lot of land for ostriches either.
Speaker 3: These people in Vietnam in like my backyard, and I
Speaker 3: do not have a big backyard. I'm in a subdivision,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, in a size of my
Speaker 3: backyard have eight full grown ostriches living and thriving and
Speaker 3: all the stuff. And it's like, yo, eight of those
Speaker 3: and you're selling that meat for how fucking much?
Speaker 2: Like, hey, now, what is that like a half acre
Speaker 2: in the backyard?
Speaker 3: Maybe no, dude, I got of like usable fenced in backyard.
Speaker 4: I might have like fifth of an acre or maybe
Speaker 4: a tenth.
Speaker 2: I actually don't think I've ever even seen your backyard. Really, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't. I've never been back there.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, know I have a relatively smaller backyard. I
Speaker 3: mean again, we're one thousand houses in this one subdivision.
Speaker 4: We're crammed in here. It's it's horrible. But because I'm
Speaker 4: on like a call to sack, my yard has a.
Speaker 3: Weird fan outward towards the back, so it's like at
Speaker 3: the front, I think my property is like fifteen feet
Speaker 3: in to end, but at the back it's like one
Speaker 3: hundred and forty five. Because across the servitude on a colt,
Speaker 3: it's dumb, it's weird, it's whatever.
Speaker 4: But my point is, in a regular sized.
Speaker 3: Backyard, you could really have an ostrich or two like
Speaker 3: and they'd have plenty of room. They wouldn't be cramped up,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't be like you're treating them poorly. And they're
Speaker 3: able to be harvested and killed at like sixteen months.
Speaker 2: Oh that's not bad.
Speaker 3: So you really don't have to maintain them that long,
Speaker 3: maybe two years of your life at most to like
Speaker 3: get them how you want them and fucking hackets on.
Speaker 4: You ow and you got meat for the year.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, okay, I could fuck with this, but
Speaker 3: for what I was looking at it what and feasible.
Speaker 3: But it's interesting, it's interesting, and that's again this is
Speaker 3: an example of a species from another land being brought
Speaker 3: in and it didn't go poorly.
Speaker 4: It just didn't take off either.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, they were expecting it to be a serious,
Speaker 2: booming industry and turned out the meat was a little
Speaker 2: bit too erotic.
Speaker 3: The fact you so smoothly said that, I was like, well,
Speaker 3: I almost didn't say anything because I was like, all right,
Speaker 3: what are the chances that I'm the only one that
Speaker 3: heard it?
Speaker 4: Like real shit?
Speaker 2: Probably not. Yeah, I'm happy you said it, but also
Speaker 2: what a fun gaff?
Speaker 4: A fun gaff?
Speaker 3: All right, So I'm gonna go ahead and share the
Speaker 3: screen again because we talked about this on an episode
Speaker 3: once before, briefly, but on some very real levels. Do
Speaker 3: you remember when they were talking about they were reintroducing
Speaker 3: wolves to Yellowstone.
Speaker 2: So fucking dumb.
Speaker 3: Okay, So let's talk about that because we've got I've
Speaker 3: got articles put up on both sides of that quote
Speaker 3: unquote argument. I'm telling you people, people didn't learn lessons
Speaker 3: the first time about.
Speaker 2: That was just like last year. That was recently, I think, right,
Speaker 2: it was this article.
Speaker 4: As a matter of fact, it was written hold on,
Speaker 4: it says.
Speaker 2: Two okay, two years ago.
Speaker 3: So here we have America's new war on wolves and
Speaker 3: why it must be stopped now once again, before we
Speaker 3: read this.
Speaker 4: Let's keep in mind.
Speaker 3: There's already examples of the government putting species where they
Speaker 3: don't belong and things going really south. There's examples of
Speaker 3: them reintroducing animals to areas of the world where they
Speaker 3: used to live but were pushed out because of human
Speaker 3: populations and all these things, and they tried reintroducing them
Speaker 3: back to that land, and unfortunately whatever that animal used
Speaker 3: to eat no longer grows there or lives there. So
Speaker 3: it even fucked up the life cycles of further plant
Speaker 3: animal life, and the o arching themes got way out
Speaker 3: of whack because of it, and so in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: two we talked about it.
Speaker 4: The United States government was really putting.
Speaker 3: Wolves, gray wolves, apex predators in areas where humans now live,
Speaker 3: and they kept saying, no, it's too far, the humans
Speaker 3: won't be impact, and it's like, do you have any
Speaker 3: idea how long it got it.
Speaker 4: Took to get the wolves out of that area, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not like they're going to find a
Speaker 2: little nestle in the woods and just stay there for
Speaker 2: the rest of forever. Like wolves typically branch out.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, and I have videos where they're trying
Speaker 3: to make it seem like it's a good thing and
Speaker 3: it's done good things for Yellowstone.
Speaker 4: It's oh, we're gonna get to it.
Speaker 3: It's crazy how they phrase it and how they were things,
Speaker 3: and then to hear other people who live there to
Speaker 3: be like, uh, yeah, that's this, this and this.
Speaker 4: We'll get to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's just you know, let's just bring a bunch
Speaker 2: of fucking slender men to this area because it'll scare
Speaker 2: away the crows or something like, well, yeah, I might
Speaker 2: scare away the fucking crows, but you know, it'll also
Speaker 2: haunt you in your dreams.
Speaker 4: Because apparently the elk population was too much. We have
Speaker 4: too many elk, you know what we need to do.
Speaker 3: That's a good problem that oh my god, we have
Speaker 3: that much meat just walking around. Okay, So instead of
Speaker 3: hiring and incentivizing hunters to go out and harvest meat,
Speaker 3: and like, now everybody's eating better, more natural, good meat
Speaker 3: that they took themselves, which is proper and just in
Speaker 3: all walks of everything. Hunting is so inherent to human beings. Okay,
Speaker 3: So instead of enticing hunters to hunt more elk, let's
Speaker 3: drop wolves into the mix. They'll eat the elk, that'll
Speaker 3: solve the problem.
Speaker 4: Brow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds like the most liberal idea I've ever
Speaker 2: heard in my life.
Speaker 4: Let's read about it, because oil boy, do they have
Speaker 4: a take?
Speaker 2: America's tradition of persecuting wolves has resumed, and although it's
Speaker 2: mostly happening on federal land, the Biden administration appears singularly
Speaker 2: unmoved and unconcerned. In twenty twenty one, conservative lawmakers in Idaho, Montana,
Speaker 2: and Wiscanson seized wolf management authority from trained wildlife professionals
Speaker 2: and remarked or re embarked on the age old war
Speaker 2: on wolves, radically liberalizing wolf trapping and hunting regulations. In Wyoming,
Speaker 2: where wolves were delisted from the Endangered Species Act in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, the politicized Department of Game and Fish allows
Speaker 2: year round wolf killing across eighty five percent of the
Speaker 2: state at any time and by virtually any means, including
Speaker 2: running them over with snowmobiles and incarcerating pups and nursing
Speaker 2: mothers and dens, oh not the puppies. On July first,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, Idaho implemented legislation designed to reduce its
Speaker 2: wolf population by ninety percent. It established bounties as high
Speaker 2: as two thousand dollars rise financial compensation for wolf hunters
Speaker 2: and trappers, amounting to an additional bounty, And like Wyoming,
Speaker 2: legalized wolf killing at any time and by virtually any means,
Speaker 2: Idaho a is earmarked just over one million dollars for
Speaker 2: wolf killing. How about that?
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Montana passed similar legislation that seeks to eradicate ninety percent
Speaker 2: of its wolves. It also implemented a de facto bounty
Speaker 2: system by compensating trappers and hunters for wolf killing expenses,
Speaker 2: and it did away with the wolf protection buffer around
Speaker 2: Yellowstone National Park. Before their nineteen ninety five reintroduction, wolves
Speaker 2: had been the only missing major element of the park's
Speaker 2: native ecosystem. Okay, so let's reintroduce that.
Speaker 3: At it they had it, and they reintroduced them, and
Speaker 3: it's like, well, cool.
Speaker 2: This is why you got to learn from your mistakes.
Speaker 2: It's like, why were they getting rid of them in
Speaker 2: the first place.
Speaker 3: You know, because they were attacking people and fucking up
Speaker 3: the wildlife and their appredator. And it's like, hey, if
Speaker 3: we want a national park like you know, Yellowstone, where
Speaker 3: we want people to come and experience raw nature, you know, safely,
Speaker 3: so that they keep coming back and all, maybe we
Speaker 3: should get rid of bears and wolves and shit that
Speaker 3: fucks with people that makes them scared to come see nature. Yes,
Speaker 3: I understand anti anti the natural order of things, but
Speaker 3: you know you want people to come to the natural parks,
Speaker 3: don't you?
Speaker 4: Hold on?
Speaker 2: I just I just thought of something. So there has
Speaker 2: long been a conspiracy that people are disappearing in the
Speaker 2: national parks, and whether that be by criminal organizations, maybe
Speaker 2: it's the government that is stealing people and doing weird
Speaker 2: like Nazi experiments on them or whatever the fuck. But
Speaker 2: there's also people have said that maybe you'll find some
Speaker 2: weird portals in the national parks.
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to get super super weird. But if
Speaker 2: you think about it, if it is if if the
Speaker 2: national parks the people that are running them are running
Speaker 2: some kind of like human trafficking or you know, polling
Speaker 2: organs from people or whatever, you introduce wolves, you could
Speaker 2: always just blame it on the wolves, then you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. So that might have been like a
Speaker 2: cover story kind of deal.
Speaker 3: So they were reintroducing them to further cover some criminal
Speaker 3: activities that.
Speaker 2: Were going down, I would think so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, and if that is to be true, it
Speaker 3: would make sense that the current lawmakers are incentivizing hunters
Speaker 3: to kill wolves. They're like they're third tiering fighting the crime. Okay, sure,
Speaker 3: see that too.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: After twenty twenty, when the Trump administration delisted wolves everywhere
Speaker 2: save the Northern the Northern Rockies, and Alaska, where they
Speaker 2: weren't listed anyway, Wisconsin authorized killing during the breeding season.
Speaker 2: During three days in February twenty twenty one, two hundred
Speaker 2: and eighteen wolves were slaughtered.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a little bit more than a little reintroduction, bro,
Speaker 3: that's a fucking problem.
Speaker 2: Wow. I also don't feel good about wolves being hunted
Speaker 2: like that. I don't know, it's just because because they're
Speaker 2: big dogs, you know. I mean, I know that they're
Speaker 2: scary and shit, but it's like, you know, that's where
Speaker 2: the puppies come from.
Speaker 4: I get it, But like that's like a gat.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna cuddle with a gat though.
Speaker 4: You're not gonna cuddle with a fucking wolf either.
Speaker 2: I will cuddle with its descendants.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I also like iguanas, but you don't see
Speaker 3: me cuddling with it eat.
Speaker 13: I don't know.
Speaker 2: After virtually extirpating wolves from the West, America briefly recognized
Speaker 2: them as a critical to or as critical to healthy ecosystems.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety five and ninety six, sixty six wolves
Speaker 2: were trapped in Canada for release in Yellowstone National Park
Speaker 2: in central Idaho, and arguably the greatest success story in
Speaker 2: the history of wildlife management, gray wolves reoccupied lost habitat
Speaker 2: across the Northern Rockies. The recovery goal fifteen breeding pairs
Speaker 2: each in Idaho, Wyoming in Montana, or about four hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty wolves, was surpassed before the decades end. By
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, there were an estimated nineteen hundred, mostly in Idaho, Montana,
Speaker 2: and Wyoming, but ife in Oregon, Washington, California, and Colorado.
Speaker 2: In Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota there were an estimated forty
Speaker 2: two hundred, none of us.
Speaker 3: Again, that's not a little reintroduction or even a manageable level.
Speaker 3: That's a infestation. Bro that's a problem. That's where the
Speaker 3: amount that the wolves fuck up.
Speaker 2: That's where the Minnesota timberwolves come from. I guess maybe
Speaker 2: none of what's happening now is new or surprising. In
Speaker 2: nineteen oh five, the federal government tried biological warfare, infecting
Speaker 2: wolves with mange. Ten years later, Congress passed the law
Speaker 2: requiring their eradication from federal land. By nineteen twenty six,
Speaker 2: all wolves have been poisoned, shot, and trapped out of
Speaker 2: Yellowstone National Park, and by nineteen forty five wolves had
Speaker 2: been essentially eliminated from the American West. All because of
Speaker 2: the fantasy that they were a major menace to livestock
Speaker 2: and a threat to big game. The States fought wolf
Speaker 2: reintroduction from the get go. For example, the Eastern Timberwolf
Speaker 2: Recovery Plan, released in quotes for discussion only in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five, contained not but suggestions for state sponsored research.
Speaker 2: Yet the ink was barely dry when the state fishing
Speaker 2: game bureaucrats decried it as a federal meddling. Eastern timberwolf
Speaker 2: recovery never happened.
Speaker 4: Okay, so real quick, this paragraph you just said all
Speaker 4: because of the fantasy that they were a major menace
Speaker 4: to livestock and a threat to big game.
Speaker 2: How is that not a reality?
Speaker 3: About to say they just said a fantasy? Okay, a fantasy.
Speaker 3: So why were they reintroduced to Yellowstone. Some might ask,
Speaker 3: I want everybody to keep that question on the back burner,
Speaker 3: as we just read that it was a fantasy.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is from Vic van ballingergie I think, retired
Speaker 2: US fourst service biologist, former member of Alaska's Board of Game,
Speaker 2: and still the strongest voice opposing the state's ineffective, politically
Speaker 2: motivated war on wolves. His quote is, it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: if hunters live in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Wisconsin, or Alaska.
Speaker 2: They have the same theories about wolf predation on big
Speaker 2: game animals and the same politically powerful organizations that lobby
Speaker 2: for broadskill wolf reduction. So wolves in Idaho and Montana
Speaker 2: and parts of Washington, Oregon, and Utah have been delisted
Speaker 2: from the ESA end Agried Species thing via a Congressional
Speaker 2: rider on a must pass budget bill. So the states
Speaker 2: assumed management. Trained wildlife professionals in Idaho and Montana said
Speaker 2: hunting and trapping regulations in the face of soaring morality mortality. Rather,
Speaker 2: wolf populations continued to thrive and even expand. Then in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, newly elected Conservative legislators took over wolf management.
Speaker 2: End quotes. It says it's about making wolves. No, it's
Speaker 2: about making snowflakes, cry, remarks ed Bangs, who led wolf
Speaker 2: recovery for the Northern Rockies. Wild ass hysteria is driving
Speaker 2: public policy invent a non issue like too many wolves.
Speaker 2: Fishing game departments have been doing a good job since delisting.
Speaker 2: Then the legislators politicized everything and made wolves a symbol
Speaker 2: of liberals and outsiders. It's eighteen fifty stuff. Let's show
Speaker 2: how much we hate wolves and the people who like them,
Speaker 2: and let's stick it to the Feds. I don't know
Speaker 2: if that's really the angle. A large element of the
Speaker 2: hunting community hates wolves too. In fact, with some notable exceptions,
Speaker 2: hunters are the main driving force in the new war
Speaker 2: on wolves. The allegation echoed by politicians is that overpopulated
Speaker 2: wolves are devastating deer in elk. This isn't about elk, deer, livestock,
Speaker 2: or science, says a critic of wolf hunting. It's just
Speaker 2: it's just old fashioned persecution, hatred, and cruelty.
Speaker 3: Right because wolves have never done anything to people. Ever,
Speaker 3: That's why they live in such harmony with humans all
Speaker 3: over the world.
Speaker 4: Except they don't right yet.
Speaker 2: In Wisconsin, grossly overpopulated whitetailed deer are destroying wildlife habitat,
Speaker 2: including their own, and Dan Ash, director of the US
Speaker 2: Fish and Wildlife Service under Obama, offers this in his quotes,
Speaker 2: elk numbers across the West are way above management objectives.
Speaker 2: I used to be proud of being a hunter. Not
Speaker 2: so proud now. Hunting has become radicalized and embedded with
Speaker 2: gun culture and wolf persecution. It's quotes hunters.
Speaker 3: Wait, I'm sorry. I used to be proud of being
Speaker 3: a hunter. Not so proud now hunting has become radicalized
Speaker 3: and embedded with the gun culture of wolf persecution.
Speaker 2: Uh, that is what somebody under Obama would say, I
Speaker 2: would imagine is exactly.
Speaker 3: That is exactly what somebody would say, especially a director
Speaker 3: of the US Fish and Wildlife Services.
Speaker 4: I have a.
Speaker 3: Weird feeling that he probably wasn't actually a hunter, and
Speaker 3: if he was, he probably didn't eat the meat, otherwise
Speaker 3: he wouldn't say anything that he's saying right now.
Speaker 2: But okay, you know, there is this weird thing that
Speaker 2: is actually going extinct along with other animals that we
Speaker 2: have talked about here, and it's called critical fucking thinking.
Speaker 2: Like if you're trying to survive on land as a human,
Speaker 2: or if you're somebody who wants to you would rather
Speaker 2: eat your own game meat than buy it from a store,
Speaker 2: which everybody should try at least I eventually plan on
Speaker 2: getting my hunting license and and you know, doing all
Speaker 2: that because I don't trust what the stores are selling. Personally,
Speaker 2: why would keeping wolves around be a good idea. It's like, maybe,
Speaker 2: all right, maybe you don't want to kill them, then
Speaker 2: find a better way to trap them and move them somewhere.
Speaker 3: You know, I absolutely agree. Uh depends on if you
Speaker 3: want to keep reading the rhetoric against hunters. We could
Speaker 3: skip ahead a little bit.
Speaker 2: Well, hunters can have it both ways. They say they
Speaker 2: can't brag about performing the ecological function of natural predators
Speaker 2: and simultaneously demand that those are eliminated. Hunters are seeing
Speaker 2: fewer elk and deer, not because wolves have reduced populations,
Speaker 2: but because wolves have made their prey skittish. Again, Shooting
Speaker 2: from truck windows doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 3: Livestocks pause, Holy fucking pause, No one shoots from truck windows.
Speaker 4: First off.
Speaker 3: Second off, if the population of elk and deer is
Speaker 3: such a problem, and you're seeing less of them.
Speaker 4: Something's not adding up here.
Speaker 3: We're talking about hunters that have been hunting in this
Speaker 3: land for generations that know what elk do. There, you're
Speaker 3: saying that the wolves have made it more skittish, meaning
Speaker 3: hunters can't do their function of helping the population of
Speaker 3: elk and deer that are such a problem. So you've
Speaker 3: made the problem even harder to fix. Yeah, it's sounds
Speaker 3: like shooting out of trucks doesn't work anymore. Do you
Speaker 3: think spotlight hunting is what all of us do my this.
Speaker 2: Guy, Yeah, it's a stupid idiot rhetoric from a stupid idiot.
Speaker 4: For the record, we hunt legally in my house. We
Speaker 4: hunt fair, thank you.
Speaker 2: Right, there's certain times to hunt certain things, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you don't hunt at night.
Speaker 3: Yes, I understand that it's you shine a spotlight in
Speaker 3: a deer's face. You can walk up and hit them
Speaker 3: with a nine mil I get it. We disagree with
Speaker 3: doing that. We believe in showing respect for our food,
Speaker 3: thank you. Y.
Speaker 2: There's a certain honor for it. Yes, so it doesn't
Speaker 2: work anymore, that's funny. Livestock depredation is another make believe
Speaker 2: issue in twenty fifteen, nineteen hundred and four wolves shared
Speaker 2: the Rocky Mountain West with one point six million cattle.
Speaker 2: Wolves killed one hundred and forty eight cows or point
Speaker 2: zero one percent, and the state's compensated ranchers. This isn't
Speaker 2: about elk, deer, livestock, or science. It's just old fashioned
Speaker 2: persecution and hatred and cruelty. They say, at this writing,
Speaker 2: the only action taken by the Abiden administration other than
Speaker 2: other than defending the Trump delisting, Like, why do we
Speaker 2: got to even talk about this shit right here? You
Speaker 2: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: You're talking about them.
Speaker 3: It's from Yale dot edu. So you understand it's going
Speaker 3: to be dripping with liberalism. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: before we show what's actually going down in Yellowstone from
Speaker 3: the locals, I wanted everybody to see what the what
Speaker 3: the narrative of why introducing apex predators that had been
Speaker 3: eradicated from this area was such a good idea because
Speaker 3: it was there was so much science, and it was
Speaker 3: it was prejudiced.
Speaker 2: All right. So it says at this writing, the only
Speaker 2: action taken by the Biden administration has been a year
Speaker 2: long wolf status review, as if proof is required that
Speaker 2: wiping out most of the population is bad for a
Speaker 2: recovering species.
Speaker 3: Wow, and you see right here the farmers kill wolves.
Speaker 3: Wolves smoke a pack of day like they're trying to
Speaker 3: make it seem like the wolves are horrible, and they are,
Speaker 3: and we don't want them around our livestock. Because once again,
Speaker 3: that's not a small problem. That number, by comparison, seems
Speaker 3: like a small number that it still ranchers livelihoods. When
Speaker 3: you lose a cow, you're losing like potentially ten twenty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in some cases.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, the state compensates.
Speaker 3: Oh, like the state compensated the victims of the hurricane
Speaker 3: that one time payment of seven to fifty that they
Speaker 3: had to pay back the next one alone, or that
Speaker 3: time the government helped out the victims of the Hawaiian fires,
Speaker 3: a sane thing, by the way, alone.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, how about eminent domain. The government just
Speaker 2: loves these people so much that they're set to give
Speaker 2: them a fair price. You know what fair price is.
Speaker 2: It's about ten percent below market value according to the government.
Speaker 3: Or don't put fucking wolves in the mountains, and these
Speaker 3: farmers don't have that problem.
Speaker 2: It's crazy, dude, yeah, anyhow, it says the Obama administration
Speaker 2: didn't put up with this kind of behavior. For instance,
Speaker 2: so fucking stupid, I hate you, pal.
Speaker 4: You put up with was fucking big Mike's dick. You
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Oh, he put it up all right. For instance, when
Speaker 2: Alaska announced that it would shoot wolves from helicopters on
Speaker 2: nine hundred and ten thousand acres of USFWS managed wild
Speaker 2: wilderness on Unimac Island.
Speaker 14: A she.
Speaker 2: A, she Okay, it looks like Ash, but I don't
Speaker 2: know anyway. So Ash told them no. Alaska said it
Speaker 2: would proceed anyway. Ash said, okay, my next call is
Speaker 2: to the Justice Department, and then Alaska back down. In
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, the Trump administration reversed an Obama administration rule
Speaker 2: that banned killing of wolves and bears and their nursing
Speaker 2: young on national preserves in Alaska. That Biden administration seems
Speaker 2: fine with that. In an op ed last week, Interior
Speaker 2: Secretary Deb Halland expressed support for wolves and alarm at
Speaker 2: current mismanagement, but she could instantly end the slaughter in
Speaker 2: the Rockies with an emergency ESA listing. The administration has
Speaker 2: another option. Most wolves are killed on land owned by
Speaker 2: all Americans and managed by the US Four Service and
Speaker 2: Bureau of Land Management. These agencies could ban hunter access
Speaker 2: by snowmobile and ATV, and the wolf slaughter would practically cease.
Speaker 2: Hunters aren't going to walk into federal land and to
Speaker 2: shoot out a wolf, says Ash at the very list.
Speaker 2: At least the Forest Service and BLM could impose that's
Speaker 2: not the BLM, that that's a different BLM. Has to
Speaker 2: be right, I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's why I was like scrolling, like there has to
Speaker 3: be something else in here that's gonna that that's gonna.
Speaker 4: Make that sense.
Speaker 3: Is that the oh, the Bureau of Land the Bureau
Speaker 3: of Okay, Oh, for the love of god, I was like,
Speaker 3: please don't tell me they have a fucking platform on
Speaker 3: this one.
Speaker 2: So the Forest Service in BLM could impose fair chase
Speaker 2: regulations such as banning running over wolves, night hunting, and
Speaker 2: killing pups and nursing mothers and dens. Thus far silence,
Speaker 2: so frightened of political fallout in the National Park Service
Speaker 2: that it has a gagged Yellowstone biologist. Still, the park
Speaker 2: superintendent entreated Montana new Republican Governor Greg Gianforte to restore
Speaker 2: the wolf pop protection buffer around the park. Since becoming
Speaker 2: governor last year, gian Forte has been cited for illegally
Speaker 2: trapping and shooting a wolf near the former buffer zone
Speaker 2: without completing the required trapping education program. Shally got nowhere
Speaker 2: with him. Okay, So now they're just complaining that nobody's
Speaker 2: really getting on board because most people have a little
Speaker 2: sensibility to them that you need to kill these things.
Speaker 2: And like you ever been around a wolf. They're scary
Speaker 2: as shit, dude.
Speaker 3: Well you're I agree, And yes, I do think they're
Speaker 3: gorgeous animals, and I do think there are places for them,
Speaker 3: you know, places where humans aren't.
Speaker 4: I know, that's a crazy, crazy concept, the same way.
Speaker 3: That like hippopotomi, Oh well, why wouldn't we put them
Speaker 3: in the water in Louisiana. They have a right to
Speaker 3: this land too, except like they would fuck up everything? Right,
Speaker 3: Why don't we put the mongoose on Hawaii? They would
Speaker 3: because they'll fuck up everything? And these people or like well,
Speaker 3: wolves used to live here, so why don't we put
Speaker 3: them back here? And again, the reason why they put
Speaker 3: them back there was to cut down on elk and
Speaker 3: deer populations, and then they say that it's not about
Speaker 3: elk and deer populations, it's about wolf persecution.
Speaker 4: Bro what.
Speaker 2: Oh man, this is so silly. It says people come
Speaker 2: to Yellowstone to see wolves and spend money on hotels
Speaker 2: and restaurants. A dead wolf might fetch a hunter two
Speaker 2: hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: Yellowstone is not a lot for the ery if anybody
Speaker 3: hunts and traps for hides two hundred dollars for a kill, Like, what,
Speaker 3: what was it for a fucking puppy?
Speaker 2: Right? Right? Yeah? Uh well, it says Yellowstone had been
Speaker 2: an oasis for wolves, no longer, having encountered only tourists
Speaker 2: firing cameras park wolves don't fear humans now when they
Speaker 2: leave the park, hunters shoot them as easily as if
Speaker 2: they were pet dogs. Yellowstone used to lose two or
Speaker 2: three wolves a year to hunters and trappers. So far
Speaker 2: this winter it has lost twenty four, including breeding females.
Speaker 2: Such mortality is unsustainable.
Speaker 4: People come to yellow soon.
Speaker 12: God.
Speaker 3: Oh I already read that, yeah, saying thank god, thank
Speaker 3: god that it is unsustainable.
Speaker 4: That that's kind of the manor fucking point.
Speaker 2: Do people really go to Yellowstone to see the wolves?
Speaker 2: I mean, I imagine it's an attraction, but is it
Speaker 2: the attraction?
Speaker 3: I mean, you know that's a attraction, right, But you
Speaker 3: know what, let's go ahead and see as we just
Speaker 3: read about how it's wolf persecution and it is not
Speaker 3: about the wildlife. It is not Jonathan, they don't even
Speaker 3: fuck with the wildlife. According to what your boy ash
Speaker 3: head of the fucking Bureau of Land Management and the
Speaker 3: Wildlife Management all these things. Wolves aren't even making a
Speaker 3: dent in the elk and deer population. But they belong there,
Speaker 3: so they need to be there. But the reason they
Speaker 3: were dropped was for those populations. So let's see what
Speaker 3: the uh this is a woman explore from National Geographic
Speaker 3: and again take this with all the grains of salt,
Speaker 3: ladies and gentlemen, trust me, you're gonna need it. The
Speaker 3: Tiler's wolves saved Yellowstone National Park, So let's see what
Speaker 3: they have to say about it as of now three
Speaker 3: years ago. As a matter of fact, let's.
Speaker 8: See Yellowstone the world's first national park protected to ensure
Speaker 8: that was always wilderness, to inspire the human spirit for
Speaker 8: generations to come. It all began in nineteen ninety five
Speaker 8: when Yellowstone Park workers released thirty one gray wolves into
Speaker 8: the wild over the year and did not interfere with
Speaker 8: their lives at all. Although they expected certain changes, they
Speaker 8: certainly did not expect the cascade of environmental change it
Speaker 8: will cause. To this day, ecologists sire astonished by the
Speaker 8: continuing wave of direction direct consequences of this step throughout
Speaker 8: the ecosystem.
Speaker 13: The Northern Range is the hub of wildlife in Yelstone,
Speaker 13: so much of the wildlife in Yellowstone lives here. It's
Speaker 13: ten percent of the area of the park, yet half
Speaker 13: the wolves live here. It's arguably the most carnivore rich
Speaker 13: area in North America, and it's been studied a lot.
Speaker 15: The Northern Range has been referred to as the Serengetti
Speaker 15: of North America, and that's because of the vast numbers
Speaker 15: of ungula species mostly and so when people look out,
Speaker 15: they may in one afternoon in the valley bottom of
Speaker 15: a Northern Range valley, it may see bison, elk, pronghorn, mule, deer, wolves,
Speaker 15: and bears, and all of these species interacting with each other.
Speaker 12: Well.
Speaker 13: The Northern Range is the northern area of the park
Speaker 13: where the Northern Yellowstone elk herd spends the winter, so
Speaker 13: it's winter range for the biggest elk herd in the park,
Speaker 13: and it's probably the densest year round wolf population at
Speaker 13: any location in North America. We roughly have thirty five
Speaker 13: to forty wolves year round in the park portion of
Speaker 13: the Northern Range, but we've been as dense as one
Speaker 13: hundred wolves just in the northern part of Yellowstone. And
Speaker 13: we have pretty high bear densities and cougar densities as well,
Speaker 13: So we have a great mix of carnivore species and
Speaker 13: we have high density. You know, fifty years ago that
Speaker 13: was not the case.
Speaker 15: We came into the Northern Range as Yellowstone was designated
Speaker 15: a park and changed a lot of things. So wolves, coyotes,
Speaker 15: mountain lions, bears, to some degree, we're all being removed
Speaker 15: in vast numbers.
Speaker 13: Wolves were eliminated by people directly in the early part
Speaker 13: of the twentieth century. So what happens when you kill
Speaker 13: off the predators, Well, the prey increases to very high
Speaker 13: levels and starts to impact the environment. And by doing that,
Speaker 13: the el kurds shot up, and no one really knows
Speaker 13: how high they shot up. Twenty thirty thousand was the
Speaker 13: estimated figure, and they were degrading the environment.
Speaker 3: But again, just real quick, it is not about dr
Speaker 3: and l cards. It's about wolf persecution, right, Just okay,
Speaker 3: make sure we're all on the same page here.
Speaker 13: Our policy on helping restore nature's fairly clear. If humans
Speaker 13: did it will help the system get back on the
Speaker 13: right track. So what was missing were all these carnivores,
Speaker 13: and so they were not performing their ecological function. Cougars
Speaker 13: came back to also on their own through natural dispersal.
Speaker 13: We start seeing signs of that in the eighties, and
Speaker 13: we reintroduced wolves in the mid nineties. And now that
Speaker 13: wolves and cougars have been restored and bears have increased,
Speaker 13: the news story is about what happened to all the
Speaker 13: elk and what is happening to the willow and aspen.
Speaker 13: Now that the elk have declined and these carnivores are.
Speaker 15: Back, the willow is relied on by a lot of animals,
Speaker 15: and so it's kind of a positive feedback loop. The
Speaker 15: more willows there are, the more moose and beaver, and
Speaker 15: the healthier ecosystem because of those animals being involved too.
Speaker 15: And so beaver's are of course nature's engineers, and they'll
Speaker 15: build lodges and dams that will help raise the water tables.
Speaker 4: Real quick.
Speaker 3: Put a pin in that whole beaver discussion. Promise you
Speaker 3: we will be discussing it after this video, but just
Speaker 3: real quick. Apparently the wolves save the beaver population and
Speaker 3: they're seeing the results.
Speaker 15: Put a pin in that one, and raising the water
Speaker 15: table is one of the things that the willows rely
Speaker 15: on the most. They can't deal with cut banks and
Speaker 15: swiftly moving creeks. They have to have that slow moving water.
Speaker 13: So the smaller l cred is more natural. We're seeing
Speaker 13: a response of willow and aspen which used to be suppressed.
Speaker 13: We've got wolves and Kruger's back, we've got more bears.
Speaker 13: So Yellowstone system now is the National Parks of a
Speaker 13: success story.
Speaker 15: I think the Northern Range is incredibly unique, not only
Speaker 15: for the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, but for the world. Protecting
Speaker 15: Yellowstone is important to just protect the species that live here,
Speaker 15: but also provide people a place to be able to
Speaker 15: see natural processes and use that throughout their life for
Speaker 15: making decisions on what they think is important.
Speaker 13: I think a huge value of the National Parks is
Speaker 13: to instill awe of nature into people. Going out on
Speaker 13: a landscape filled with grizzly bears is not the same
Speaker 13: as you know, going to the mall and seeing wolves
Speaker 13: bring down an elk or seeing two wolfpacks clash right
Speaker 13: in front of you. Our life altering events. There's no
Speaker 13: question we are changing people's lives by having places like Yelstone.
Speaker 13: And the Northern Range is probably the heart of the park,
Speaker 13: and the parks the heart of the ecosystem. So it's
Speaker 13: all built upon each other. But it grounds zeros the
Speaker 13: Northern Range.
Speaker 4: All right, all right, So that's about it.
Speaker 3: They keep stroking their own dicks a little bit as
Speaker 3: far as how there's a success story. The wolves saved
Speaker 3: the parks. Well, at least that's the story that they
Speaker 3: have been telling us, right and all these things.
Speaker 4: So let's hear a little different perspective, shall we.
Speaker 16: What's more important an apex predator or an ecosystem engineer. Well,
Speaker 16: up until a couple of days ago, a lot of
Speaker 16: us it was the apex predator. It's all thanks to
Speaker 16: a thing called trophic cascade, where we thought that predation
Speaker 16: from the top had heavy dramatic influences on vegetation downstream,
Speaker 16: and it was never better represented in any ecosystem than Yellowstone.
Speaker 16: We removed the wolves from Yellowstone and the ecosystem kind
Speaker 16: of fell out of whack. So just bring the wolf
Speaker 16: back in and everything will go back to normal, right, guys. Well,
Speaker 16: it turns out it's not that simple. It might be
Speaker 16: the absence of the beaver that caused the most damage
Speaker 16: to the ecosystem. But unlike the wolf, you can't just
Speaker 16: bring the beaver back because the system is so out
Speaker 16: of whack it can't even support them. God, I love ecology.
Speaker 4: What okay?
Speaker 3: So there have been examples in the past, and I
Speaker 3: wish it would have brought up an article on it
Speaker 3: where the government actually was called Operation Beaver where they
Speaker 3: dropped beavers into a certain area of I want to
Speaker 3: say it was the Ozarks and they dropped them in
Speaker 3: parachutes in wooden crates and they like had dosed them up,
Speaker 3: and then once the beavers landed, they ate their way
Speaker 3: out of the crates because you know, they eat wood,
Speaker 3: and then.
Speaker 4: They did their thing and made dams.
Speaker 3: Actually was a successful operation of relocating beavers. But that
Speaker 3: whole thing she just said, the nature's architect and all
Speaker 3: of that, what's more important?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: We just heard the Yellowstone Park Services say, oh, you
Speaker 3: could tell because look at this, Look at this growth
Speaker 3: that we see, it's trackable. It's happening with the wolves.
Speaker 3: Did it not true? Not only is that not true,
Speaker 3: it's actually worse now because the wolves have pushed the
Speaker 3: other animals that helped the environment further away.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is very differing stories. And so they talked
Speaker 2: about Yellowstone the park people. They were talking about how
Speaker 2: bringing the wolves back was restoring a little bit more
Speaker 2: balanced but after a few years they're noticing a decline
Speaker 2: in other things.
Speaker 3: But they were saying that it wasn't about the elks
Speaker 3: and deer, even though all the images we just saw
Speaker 3: was about wolves hunting elks and moose and all these things.
Speaker 3: The population is down, which is that's nature, It's the
Speaker 3: way it's supposed to be. The numbers have skyrocketed, they
Speaker 3: have gotten to an unmanageable level. But when people want
Speaker 3: to do something about it, oh, it's wolf persecution. Even
Speaker 3: though once again, has the government done many things that
Speaker 3: worked out well as far as relocating animals, because I
Speaker 3: can't name many.
Speaker 2: Most of the time people just fuck things up rather
Speaker 2: than make things better.
Speaker 4: I think they do indeed, And let's hear Joe Rogan
Speaker 4: speak on it. He's talked about this on quite a
Speaker 4: few episodes.
Speaker 3: I thought this was a pretty solid clip of just
Speaker 3: kind of all encompassing what we're talking about with the wolves.
Speaker 17: They have an understanding of the carrying capacity and the
Speaker 17: resources of the land. They understand how many hunters there are.
Speaker 17: They understand how many that's how tags are allocated.
Speaker 2: They guessing game.
Speaker 17: Yeah, it's the way people need to understand this. It's
Speaker 17: like they've done this for a long time. These people have,
Speaker 17: you know, painstakingly researched these numbers. They know exactly what
Speaker 17: they're doing. But when it comes to this game of
Speaker 17: reintroduction of animals, the first step is they say there's
Speaker 17: a carrying capacity for the amount of wolves. This is
Speaker 17: the number. When it gets to that, we will agree
Speaker 17: to open up a season on wolf hunting. But every
Speaker 17: time that happens, there's lawsuits, and there's lawsuits to try
Speaker 17: to stop that hunt, and then the wolves get larger
Speaker 17: and larger, and then you have larger and larger populations.
Speaker 4: I was looking at a graph the other day where
Speaker 4: they showed.
Speaker 17: Reintroduction of wolves to the Yellowstone the amount of elk
Speaker 17: that existed, and now the amount of wolves versus the
Speaker 17: amount of elk, they haven't understand.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it is completely collapse the system. The whole thing
Speaker 3: about what it was meant to do and what the
Speaker 3: whole reason for it, all that is gone by the wayside.
Speaker 3: And then well, actually before we talk about the next issue,
Speaker 3: let's talk about the wolves for just a little second.
Speaker 3: Once again, the United States government introducing a level excuse me,
Speaker 3: an animal to an area that quote unquote is indigenous
Speaker 3: to quote unquote maybe not, doesn't fucking matter.
Speaker 4: It took decades to get rid of them from here.
Speaker 3: You bring them back because you say it's about maintaining
Speaker 3: the populations, which is what wildlife management's all about. And
Speaker 3: now you have this problem because, like he said, and
Speaker 3: it happens all over, It happens all over.
Speaker 4: Black bear population.
Speaker 3: In Louisiana was considered endangered and they we could not
Speaker 3: hunt them, right, which black bears, for the record, are
Speaker 3: not predators.
Speaker 2: They're like, they're the smallest bears, aren't they.
Speaker 3: Well, one of I'm not sure if it's I mean
Speaker 3: Kowala bears of American bears, yeah, yeah, of North American bears,
Speaker 3: black bears are the smallest and they're vegan.
Speaker 4: They don't attack humans unless you're fucking with their babies.
Speaker 3: But as hunters, we have to maintain the population because
Speaker 3: once black bears get to be so dense, they start
Speaker 3: making their way into neighborhoods. They start getting people's trash,
Speaker 3: fucking up cars, fucking up property like it's a thing.
Speaker 2: They dive into your swimming pool they can you ever
Speaker 2: see those videos? They're crazy, dude.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, if you are cool with bears in
Speaker 3: your swimming pools, then fine, this this episode is not
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 4: But for the rest of us.
Speaker 3: Want bear skin, rugs and shit taken correctly and respectfully.
Speaker 4: Of course that's a problem.
Speaker 3: And so finally they've gotten to where they will lottery
Speaker 3: style give out bear tags, and that's the way it
Speaker 3: should happen. Now in Louisiana, we're not seeing any lawsuits
Speaker 3: because people here see the problem, but people.
Speaker 4: Who don't know any better. I e.
Speaker 3: If some sort of liberal media source decided that the
Speaker 3: black bear population in Louisiana was under attack because all
Speaker 3: these these racist redneck hunters that are just trying to
Speaker 3: kill the black bear population, and they ran that story
Speaker 3: it would become a mainstream narrative.
Speaker 4: You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the news articles are all about suggestion anyway. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's all just about pulling out your heart strings. And unfortunately,
Speaker 2: whenever you're pulling at heart strings, that is the opposite
Speaker 2: of the logical part of the human brain. And I
Speaker 2: think you need a little bit of both. I understand
Speaker 2: the people that care for certain animal populations and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, but ultimately, if they're becoming a nuisance, you're
Speaker 2: re introducing a nuisance. Like yeah, I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: the elk problem is a problem, but like I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe entice hunters to come out a little bit more.
Speaker 3: Yes, oh, man, Like, for instance, when actually know what
Speaker 3: to talk about enticing hunters to come out a little
Speaker 3: bit more.
Speaker 4: Let's talk now about the neutra.
Speaker 2: Oh but I'm sorry before we even get into that too.
Speaker 2: Whenever we're talking about you know, certain predators and elk
Speaker 2: and all these animals that are like overpopulated or whatever
Speaker 2: in certain areas, when it bothers me whenever they say, well,
Speaker 2: we need to reintroduce wolves to get back to the
Speaker 2: natural way, I'm sorry, Like what planet are humans from?
Speaker 2: Because I thought it was earth. So are we not
Speaker 2: natural predators? Are we not that problem? Already?
Speaker 3: We are the tip of the food chain. That's what
Speaker 3: separates us from the animals and all of this. So
Speaker 3: instead of enticing hunters and like, how would you entice them?
Speaker 3: How about pay them? Because in Louisiana you can get
Speaker 3: paid for neutrire tales bro wes of one year ago.
Speaker 3: They even reinstated that. So and this is another example
Speaker 3: of governments introducing an animal to an environment.
Speaker 4: It was not supposed to happen this way.
Speaker 3: It ran out of control, and now we're losing land
Speaker 3: every day in the Bayous and the Marshes.
Speaker 2: Dude, that's some ugly motherfuckers too. But I just want
Speaker 2: to say, like, people think that we're we're so above
Speaker 2: animals and stuff like that, and yeah we are, but
Speaker 2: let's not forget we're also part of the animal kingdom,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. It's so silly to think otherwise.
Speaker 3: I agree, but I also disagree with bringing wolves into
Speaker 3: the picture. Like, yo, humans could handle that, like they
Speaker 3: just hunt. You could just pay us like something. But
Speaker 3: all right, so let's talk about the nutri real quick.
Speaker 3: There's only a little four minute video, and we'll talk
Speaker 3: about the next item on the addenda, the reintroduction of
Speaker 3: bears to our certain areas on the West Coast. We'll
Speaker 3: get to it, but here's an example of a situation
Speaker 3: gone wrong and examples of how we're trying to fix it.
Speaker 2: One of the ugliest crezures you'll ever see in your.
Speaker 4: Life, but so tasty, so tasty.
Speaker 2: I can't eat that shit, dude, Just.
Speaker 3: Wait, No, you could, dude. It's clean meat. They only
Speaker 3: eat fresh green vegetation. They're like a coppy bara. We
Speaker 3: call them a neutra rat because they look like a
Speaker 3: giant rat, but they're more like a well.
Speaker 2: Like a smaller kapa bara.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, all right, let's see.
Speaker 6: Really more about this road in that is capturing everyone's
Speaker 6: attention and what the laws really are surrounding them in Louisiana.
Speaker 6: If you're joining us with that part of the story,
Speaker 6: because a lot of questions about what you can have,
Speaker 6: what you can't have, well, you know, e.
Speaker 18: Shirts everything all over the internet, charis. So here's some facts.
Speaker 18: Nutrient multiply fast, they eat vegetation constantly, and they aren't
Speaker 18: just lawnmowers. Cutting it back the way they eat kills
Speaker 18: the marsh and all the plants here in Louisiana. We've
Speaker 18: tried to eat and wear our way out of the overpopulation.
Speaker 18: Our experts say it doesn't taste like chicken, it takes
Speaker 18: seasoning very well, and the fore coats are very soft.
Speaker 18: But why are they still so plentiful. Well, our nutrient
Speaker 18: experts have not seen even hand raised nutrient as calm
Speaker 18: as Newdy.
Speaker 19: That amazed me because normally you have problems with them,
Speaker 19: and I would suggest that anybody that wants to do
Speaker 19: that be very cautious because they're wild animals, especially the males.
Speaker 19: As they age up, they're ready to breathe.
Speaker 20: I have to say I was also very surprised we've
Speaker 20: hand raised them and wanted to use them for program.
Speaker 20: But once they get a little older, they just become
Speaker 20: hard to handle. They want to bite, and they're just
Speaker 20: more wild.
Speaker 18: Louisiana professor doctor Bob Thomas once ran the Nature Center.
Speaker 18: He says nutria are not indigenous to Louisiana. They were
Speaker 18: brought here in the late thirties for the fur trade
Speaker 18: and escaped and the population exploded and they ate away
Speaker 18: the protective marshland and outflow canals.
Speaker 19: The animals were burrowing into the banks. They were also
Speaker 19: burrowing up under the roadways. Well, they're be a collapse
Speaker 19: of the streets and somebody gets killed.
Speaker 18: He was on the Neutria Control Committee in the nineties
Speaker 18: when the late Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee had a solution.
Speaker 19: That he said, well, I can handle this with small
Speaker 19: caliber rifles. We can go out at night and we
Speaker 19: can have police officers keeping traffic away and we can
Speaker 19: pick them off one after the other. And they did
Speaker 19: and it worked very well.
Speaker 18: The Nature Center hosted the first Neutria festivals. Chef Paul
Speaker 18: Prudom served a Nutria dish.
Speaker 19: A National Geographic came down and did a peace on
Speaker 19: us and Olivia Newton John had a nature show out
Speaker 19: of Australia and before Paul Prudom left, he says, what
Speaker 19: can I do to serve this in my restaurant tomorrow?
Speaker 18: But the state red meat regulations took a few years
Speaker 18: to design and interest waned, so did interest in these
Speaker 18: soft for coats. But to control the population, people make
Speaker 18: income now as bounty hunters.
Speaker 19: When you kill the animal, you cut the tail off
Speaker 19: and you bring the tails in they give you six
Speaker 19: dollars per tail.
Speaker 18: Ottoman Institute senior veterinarian doctor Bob McLain explains what category
Speaker 18: these rodents fit in.
Speaker 20: Basically, the state of Louisiana. I like to say owns
Speaker 20: the wildlife, so you need permission to do that. Now,
Speaker 20: for nutrient, it's a little different because they're considered injurious wildlife.
Speaker 20: They cause a lot of damage.
Speaker 18: Now, Doctor Thomas says, Nutria's teeth constantly grow, so they
Speaker 18: have to gnaw to control how long they get. He said,
Speaker 18: one family woke up one morning with their rescue Nutria
Speaker 18: and it had chewed off all the legs of the
Speaker 18: dining room table.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a problem.
Speaker 2: That's also a well groomed the nutrient that they're showing.
Speaker 2: That's the well groom like, kept like as pets kind
Speaker 2: of Nutria. If you see them fuckers out in the wild,
Speaker 2: my god, are they some of the most hideous because
Speaker 2: their teeth gets so long and bugging and yellow and disgusting.
Speaker 2: Their hair is all greasy and mangy, looking like they
Speaker 2: just look like a river rat. Dude.
Speaker 4: Their coats are nice. Though their coats are very nice.
Speaker 3: It's very comparable to beaver fur, and that's what they
Speaker 3: thought it was gonna do. They were brought here for
Speaker 3: the fur, for the fur trade, and they escaped and
Speaker 3: took to the wildlife.
Speaker 4: And so now they're offering six dollars a tail.
Speaker 3: Now, if we had that big of an elk and
Speaker 3: deer problem that we needed to incentivize hunters, I feel
Speaker 3: like we could do something like that rather than introduce
Speaker 3: apex predators back to areas that they've been eradicated for decades.
Speaker 2: I don't know, right right, So this article right here,
Speaker 2: you want to start reading it.
Speaker 3: You know, as a matter of fact, let's just play
Speaker 3: this little video three minutes long describing what that's about,
Speaker 3: and it'll make it come a little more full circle.
Speaker 3: Whereas we're talking about reintroducing wolves, reintroducing all these deadly things,
Speaker 3: you know, when I heard they're reintroducing grizzly bears to
Speaker 3: that also was a bit of a red flag. Let's
Speaker 3: listen in on the Wild Times podcast here.
Speaker 5: The introduction of the California Golden Grizzly.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, wait, first tell me about the Golden grizzly.
Speaker 2: What's this?
Speaker 21: So if you look at so Kyle before you pull
Speaker 21: that up. Pull up the California state flag.
Speaker 5: Yes, something that most people don't know.
Speaker 21: Not insane, by the way, California Republic flag right there
Speaker 21: are literally the emblem of our state is an extinct
Speaker 21: bear that once roam through California, the golden grizzly And
Speaker 21: if you're like the photo to the right of the
Speaker 21: one that Kyle's on, they've really embellished the gold But
Speaker 21: that is our state.
Speaker 5: That that is our flag. Yeah, and it's representative of
Speaker 5: a subspecies.
Speaker 21: Of grizzly that only lived in California, known as the
Speaker 21: California golden grizzly bear. So it's a grizzly bear, not
Speaker 21: a brown bear that had a very light golden yellowish coat.
Speaker 21: It was expatriated in I don't know, Kyle would have
Speaker 21: to look it up. I want to say, like the twenties. Yeah,
Speaker 21: you know, people came out here for the gold rush.
Speaker 21: There were grizzly bears that are like fuck that shot
Speaker 21: them out as quickly as possible.
Speaker 5: Right nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 4: So they're going to reintroduce them.
Speaker 5: Discovery So this is kind of interesting.
Speaker 21: Look, less than seventy five years after the discovery of
Speaker 21: gold in eighteen forty eight, almost every grizzly bear in
Speaker 21: California had been tracked down and killed, and the last one
Speaker 21: being killed in nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 5: But whatever, that's the way things were.
Speaker 21: I'm not condoning it, okay, But most people again don't
Speaker 21: even know this. They look at the California fighting like,
Speaker 21: oh cool a bear, like they don't even know grizzly bears.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I don't know if Kyle's found the article or not.
Speaker 21: Here there has somebody and I know this because it
Speaker 21: happened at UCSB managed to get some sort of permission
Speaker 21: to bring back California and grizzly bears.
Speaker 2: So they have the DNA just from pelts and things.
Speaker 21: No, I don't even think it's a DNA, it's it
Speaker 21: was just a subspecies. And maybe Kyle will find the
Speaker 21: answer here. But I think basically what they're gonna do
Speaker 21: is reintroduce light cinnamon colored oh wow, grizzlies into northern
Speaker 21: California and see if they can sort of bring that back.
Speaker 2: Gotcha interesting? Very cool?
Speaker 5: Is that what you're finding their? Kyle, do you have
Speaker 5: anything there?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: It says the California Grizzly Research Network plans to conclude
Speaker 3: its work in twenty twenty five and in reintroduction there
Speaker 3: that's interesting. So they're gonna try and basically genetically breed
Speaker 3: these selectively selectively breed these back into this where they
Speaker 3: release like Yosemite era.
Speaker 21: Yeah, I don't know, it'll probably it probably says here somewhere.
Speaker 21: I just sort of saw the headline that they were
Speaker 21: gonna bring grizzlies back.
Speaker 5: It's great, dude, if we could.
Speaker 21: Have grizzlies and wolves and all these things back in
Speaker 21: California to balance the ecosystem way more, especially for.
Speaker 2: When none of us are here anymore.
Speaker 21: Well, I mean, you know, everybody's like, oh, it's so dangerous,
Speaker 21: we can't do this, blah blah blah blah. They have
Speaker 21: all these things in like half the states in the
Speaker 21: United States, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: I think it's Sina Wyoming. They have all of it.
Speaker 5: Nobody else.
Speaker 3: And once again, what do the people in Montana and
Speaker 3: Wyoming say about the wolves and the bears and shit.
Speaker 4: So let's listen to what this is in Washington.
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, because California started this because
Speaker 3: of the Golden Bear. They were trying to bring it back,
Speaker 3: and we will read about it. But now let's talk
Speaker 3: about Washington, Oregon. Right here in Seattle, there's a whole
Speaker 3: group of local people, not you California boy, who are
Speaker 3: actually got something to say on reintroducing bears, because again,
Speaker 3: this isn't a brown bear. It's a light colored grizzly bear. Dude,
Speaker 3: it's a grizzly.
Speaker 2: Fuck that dude. Get rid of all of them.
Speaker 4: They're well, I think it's great. He'll balance out the
Speaker 4: ecosystem in California.
Speaker 1: Yo.
Speaker 3: You mean you'll let them free on your homeless population.
Speaker 3: You might actually be a little bit of a benefit,
Speaker 3: a win win, if you will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to balance out the human population as well.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So let's say Darrington locals say no to reintroducing grizzley
Speaker 3: This is Fox thirteen Seattle.
Speaker 22: The debate of a reintroducing grizzly bears in Washington State
Speaker 22: is growing more divisive by the day.
Speaker 14: Over in the lines are now being drawn. Fox thirteen's
Speaker 14: Lauren Donovan that with local leaders who say returning the
Speaker 14: apex predators to the North Cascades would be a dangerous mistake,
Speaker 14: at the.
Speaker 23: End of the day, it's the federal government's decision, but
Speaker 23: folks here in Darrington, they don't want to take it
Speaker 23: lying down. At a recent public comment meeting, two hundred
Speaker 23: locals showed up to voice their opposition to the reintroduction
Speaker 23: of the grizzlies, saying, hey, Feds, we're the ones who
Speaker 23: have to deal with the bears.
Speaker 24: Well, the number one thing I think is the danger.
Speaker 24: I mean, we're going to live right here where the
Speaker 24: bears are eventually going to be.
Speaker 7: As Kevin ash just pointed out, the FEDS want to
Speaker 7: reintroduce grizzly bears to the North Cascades smack dab within
Speaker 7: that ninety eight hundred square miles sits.
Speaker 2: Darrington locals argue historically the.
Speaker 24: Bears are never here in any significant numbers on this
Speaker 24: side of the Cascades.
Speaker 7: Kevin is among the leaders of a grassroots movement here
Speaker 7: in town to keep the humpback predators at bay. Even
Speaker 7: Mayor Dan Rinkin is backing it. He says, the ecosystem
Speaker 7: is just not ready.
Speaker 10: When we bring back the salmon, that's the time that
Speaker 10: we can look at those other building blocks of that
Speaker 10: ecosystem that makes.
Speaker 2: Sense of the community.
Speaker 7: Complain livestock and game like elkin deer could suffer too.
Speaker 24: The biggest fear is your kids, or your somebody in
Speaker 24: your family gets small, or god forbid, killed by a grizzly.
Speaker 7: Kevin says recent headlines have left him unsettled. Not that
Speaker 7: long ago, a grizzly bear in Banff killed two experienced
Speaker 7: hikers and their dog.
Speaker 24: They're the apex predator. They fear nothing.
Speaker 7: Wildlife biologists Jason Knight acknowledged bringing back large carnivores into
Speaker 7: any ecosystem is a controversial move, but overall he sees
Speaker 7: it as a net positive.
Speaker 2: There's enough havocat up there in the North Cascades.
Speaker 22: But I think it's also going to draw a lot
Speaker 22: more people into the North Cascades too. I mean, think
Speaker 22: about how many folks go to Alaska specifically to go
Speaker 22: see grizzly bears.
Speaker 7: Jason pointed out salmon isn't their prime target. Grizzlies are
Speaker 7: more interested in berries and roots. He also says they've
Speaker 7: got a low reproduction rate, so let's say twenty five
Speaker 7: are reintroduced, it could take at least a century for
Speaker 7: that population to hit one hundred or two hundred.
Speaker 22: It takes years before they can breed and reproduce, and
Speaker 22: then when they have cubs like they usually perish.
Speaker 2: Like the survival rate of cubs is very very low.
Speaker 23: Local reporting shows north of US, in New Halem, right
Speaker 23: inside North Cascades National Park. There appears to be split
Speaker 23: reaction to this decision. If you want to give your
Speaker 23: two cents on the matter.
Speaker 4: You've okay. So it's not about the salmon population. Yo,
Speaker 4: what did.
Speaker 2: Grizzlies eat salmon?
Speaker 3: I mean, I knew that they eat some roots and berries, sure,
Speaker 3: but they're not black bears do They're not vegans? They're
Speaker 3: fucking grizzly bears. Since when do bears not eat salmon?
Speaker 3: I thought that was like literally the entire point of
Speaker 3: the big salmon rush up north.
Speaker 4: Yes the year it's like a big gathering of the bears, right.
Speaker 2: I thought that that was as commonly understood as a
Speaker 2: bear shooting in the woods personally.
Speaker 3: But here we have it titled what was this article?
Speaker 3: Outdoor life dot com. As many as seventy grizzly bears
Speaker 3: will be released in Washington State over the next decade.
Speaker 3: So once again, remember how he said it might take
Speaker 3: one hundred years to get twenty five bears to get
Speaker 3: to one hundred.
Speaker 4: You know, they're starting with seventy. And do they know
Speaker 4: for sure that the bears won't do more?
Speaker 3: Like they're scientifically factual on that, And how do you
Speaker 3: stop it if it does decide to go crazy? And
Speaker 3: like that one town is in the middle of that
Speaker 3: national park, like what, they're.
Speaker 2: Just fucked Yeah, yeah, it sounds like it. I would
Speaker 2: definitely not be happy about this if I was living there,
Speaker 2: that's for sure, dude.
Speaker 4: This articles written April twenty ninth of this year.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, the idea is safety. It's
Speaker 2: not running for your life. Whenever you go into a
Speaker 2: gas station, No, dude.
Speaker 4: Like a gas station, that glass is gonna stop a
Speaker 4: grizzly bro. They'll fall through it accidentally, right right.
Speaker 2: So as many as seventy Grizzly bears will be released
Speaker 2: in Washington State over the next decade. Federal federal agencies
Speaker 2: planned relocate bears from British Columbia and the Rocky Mountains
Speaker 2: until they established an initial population of twenty five grizzlies
Speaker 2: in the North Cascades.
Speaker 4: So definitely twenty five, but up to seventy.
Speaker 2: The National Park Service in the US, fish and Wildlife
Speaker 2: Service released a joint Record of decision on Thursday, finalizing
Speaker 2: a grizzly bear reintroduction into the North Cascades of Washington.
Speaker 2: This move doesn't come as much of a surprise after
Speaker 2: a final Environmental Impact Statement advocated for reintroducing grizzlies as
Speaker 2: a non essential experimental population under the ten Jay rule
Speaker 2: of the Endangered Species Act in March. The bears will
Speaker 2: be transplanted from the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia. The
Speaker 2: agencies clarify in the Record of decision the details of
Speaker 2: the reintroduction mirror the plan outlined in the final EIS.
Speaker 2: Officials were released three to seven grizzly bears a year
Speaker 2: for five to ten years, with the goal of establishing
Speaker 2: an initial population of twenty five bears. That means as
Speaker 2: few as fifteen bears and up to seventy it would
Speaker 2: be released, depending on how many reintroduced bears die or
Speaker 2: emigrate from the area. Andrew Lavau, a public public affairs
Speaker 2: specialist for the NSFWS Washington Ecological Services Branch. He objects
Speaker 2: to the possibility that as many that as many as
Speaker 2: seventy bears could be released and reinforces that the initial
Speaker 2: population goal is only twenty five bears, not seventy.
Speaker 4: He goes.
Speaker 2: The three to seven bears per year figure is to
Speaker 2: allow for flexibility between years. If there are fewer bears
Speaker 2: one year, there could be up to seven the next.
Speaker 2: Bear mortalities do happen as agencies seek to as they
Speaker 2: seek to establish that initial population of twenty five. If
Speaker 2: there is a grizzly bear mortality, that bear could be replaced.
Speaker 2: The ROD also describes a contingency plan for bear mortality
Speaker 2: that estimates some thirty six bears could be released to
Speaker 2: establish the population of twenty five. That makes sense, You're okay.
Speaker 3: Basically say that, like, if we drop in thirty six,
Speaker 3: natural causes will probably take out eleven of them. So
Speaker 3: you're gonna lose almost a third of your population just
Speaker 3: on accident, just on oop siez bro.
Speaker 2: Based on the projected range of mortality and immigration rates
Speaker 2: for bears released into the NCE, the analysis assumes that
Speaker 2: an additional eleven bears would need to be released in
Speaker 2: the NCE for a total of thirty six bears in
Speaker 2: the primary phase. Each of these alternatives is anticipated to
Speaker 2: result in a population of two hundred bears within approximately
Speaker 2: sixty to one hundred years. There is currently no timeline
Speaker 2: for when these translocations will begin. According to the NPS,
Speaker 2: the US portion of the North Cascades Recovery Zone is
Speaker 2: some ninety eight hundred square miles in size, which the
Speaker 2: NPS points out is larger than the state of New Jersey.
Speaker 2: The ten J designation is a popular tool in predator
Speaker 2: reintroductions across the West, as these reintroductions put more pressure
Speaker 2: on nearby livestock growers and rural rural I hate that word,
Speaker 2: rural residents to protect themselves and their livelihoods. The ten
Speaker 2: J rule adds flexibility to how these predators are managed.
Speaker 2: Rather than giving the reintroduced grizzly bears all the protections
Speaker 2: of an endangered species and in and in turn making
Speaker 2: any harassment or use of lethal force against the bears illegal.
Speaker 2: Both lethal and non lethal methods of deterrence are on
Speaker 2: the table for ranchers and times of emergencies under the
Speaker 2: ten This is also the case for Colorado's reintroduced wolves.
Speaker 3: For example, Okay, okay, right, I mean they're saying that
Speaker 3: basically this is gonna go down whether they like it
Speaker 3: or not, and so this article has just kind of
Speaker 3: giving people a good grasp on the situation.
Speaker 4: You can pick up right here.
Speaker 2: Grizzly bears once occupied the North Cascades for millennia before
Speaker 2: getting wiped out the area in the late nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: The last confirmed grizzly sighting was in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 2: According to NBS, about eighty five percent of the region
Speaker 2: in federal or is federal land, including North Cascades National Park,
Speaker 2: which is over five hundred and four thousand acres in size.
Speaker 2: The North Cascades region is one of six formal grizzly
Speaker 2: bear recovery zones. Two other zones, the Northern Continental Divide
Speaker 2: and the Greater Yellowstone ecosystems, are home to robust grizzly
Speaker 2: bear populations that are expanding beyond their zone boundaries. Agencies
Speaker 2: are also currently considering a reintroduction in the Bitter Root
Speaker 2: ecosystem of Montana and Idaho. The other two recovery zones,
Speaker 2: the Selkirk and Cabinet Yak's ecosystems, are both home to
Speaker 2: roughly forty to fifty bears.
Speaker 3: Okay, so here we have a clarification was made on
Speaker 3: April thirtieth, twenty twenty four real quick, just as I
Speaker 3: think that's the end of the article.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it says.
Speaker 3: A previous version of this article was vague in addressing
Speaker 3: the differences between total number of bears released and the
Speaker 3: initial bear popular population goal. It has been updated clarify
Speaker 3: that while the initial North Cascade Grizzly population goal is
Speaker 3: twenty five bears, more than twenty five bears might be
Speaker 3: released over the next decade to achieve that goal. Okay,
Speaker 3: so we already have this going on this year. They
Speaker 3: are absolutely releasing bears into the wild. They are just saying, look,
Speaker 3: us to balance out the ecosystems, rather than like, all right,
Speaker 3: what portion of that ecosystem are you trying to balance out?
Speaker 4: Is there another way to balance that out?
Speaker 3: Rather than introducing predators back to areas where humans now live.
Speaker 3: They don't think about that. They just say, go, go, go,
Speaker 3: And we have a long history. You can go all
Speaker 3: the way back to the Hawaiian Islands, you can go
Speaker 3: to the Louisiana Bayous, you can go to the Florida Everglades,
Speaker 3: you can go to California, you can go to Yellowstone.
Speaker 4: All over this country.
Speaker 3: There are so many examples of them trying to fuck
Speaker 3: with mother nature for one of a few different reasons,
Speaker 3: a few different means. I think this one, though, bro
Speaker 3: is to make people scared of going to national parks,
Speaker 3: keep people afraid of going outdoors. It's not to stop hunting.
Speaker 3: Hunters are carrying weapons, and all of us have dreamt
Speaker 3: of the opportunity, right, I mean, that is what it is.
Speaker 3: It's honestly to keep people from going camping and going
Speaker 3: fishing because you never know what you'll see out there.
Speaker 3: There's beers in those woods. That has been a joke
Speaker 3: for the longest time. No, it's not a joke anymore.
Speaker 2: It sounds like it's probably a little bit of everything.
Speaker 2: I think that there's probably some people with a few
Speaker 2: more brain cells to rub together that are looking at
Speaker 2: it for the benefits of some kind of control of
Speaker 2: the people and control of what goes on inside the wild,
Speaker 2: inside the national parks and stuff like that. But it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, because I'm sure that there are some people
Speaker 2: in there that you know, deeply just care about animals,
Speaker 2: and they're like, well, we need to get back to
Speaker 2: the natural ways, and you know, we took this land
Speaker 2: from them, And so you have those people with the
Speaker 2: heart I understand that, But then there's also like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, we'll see how.
Speaker 4: That brainpower to it. Then feeling though, brother, there's.
Speaker 2: Got to be logic, right, Well, that's my point is
Speaker 2: that sometimes logic takes time for certain people. And for
Speaker 2: these people who are going to be experiencing probably a
Speaker 2: lot of bear attacks, a lot of wolf attacks, they'll
Speaker 2: see that one heavily outweighs the other whenever it comes
Speaker 2: to reintroduction or non reintroduction.
Speaker 3: I see this as another example of your boy Jeff Goldbloom,
Speaker 3: as he once said, so you were so occupied with
Speaker 3: the thought of if you could that you never stopped
Speaker 3: to ask.
Speaker 2: If you should Jurassic Park. Yes, yes, saying yes.
Speaker 3: Saying this is it's happening before our eyes. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 3: and to all the good cult members out there, you know,
Speaker 3: we are keeping you in the loop of what the
Speaker 3: government is doing behind closed doors out there in the public.
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: We're importing on it, and we are making sure that
Speaker 3: all of you are aware of what's going on.
Speaker 2: That's actually a really good point, dude, because let's I mean,
Speaker 2: you were really really worried about the land and the ecosystem.
Speaker 2: Let's just bring back fucking dinosaurs. Let's let's bring back dragons.
Speaker 4: I mean, who cares.
Speaker 2: They want to charcoal some things from time to time.
Speaker 4: They got to eat.
Speaker 3: You know, why are we living in an air conditioned
Speaker 3: home with free on a chemical that was made in
Speaker 3: a plant. Bro We got to go back to living
Speaker 3: in caves and mud huts or driving our cars with
Speaker 3: alleged liquid exploding dinosaurs in the tank. Like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: we uhuh, we're we're living improperly.
Speaker 4: Maybe the Amish do have it right.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, maybe we ought to reintroduce ourselves back to
Speaker 2: the ecosystem. See if that works out.
Speaker 3: Just bury ourselves, you know, ashes the ashes dust to dust,
Speaker 3: and just let the earth take us back cycle of life.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, go out into the woods with with
Speaker 2: no weapons and in these heavily you know, wolf populations
Speaker 2: and the grizzly bear populations, go out there, reintroduce yourself.
Speaker 2: The bears and the wolves aren't gonna starve there. They
Speaker 2: will thrive off of your meat. And you know, we'll
Speaker 2: see if you care about it that much.
Speaker 3: You know, it's people make shit their problem. That has
Speaker 3: not anything to do with any of their problem. But
Speaker 3: it's like virtue signaling.
Speaker 4: And like I said, good cult members, that's what we
Speaker 4: do here.
Speaker 3: We shine a light on those things that might just
Speaker 3: go overlooked, missed, if you will.
Speaker 4: And we bring it to your attention.
Speaker 3: And if you liked this episode, dear cult members, if
Speaker 3: you thought it was entertaining, you thought it was informative,
Speaker 3: you got something you want to add to it. Please
Speaker 3: at this time, hit the five stars, hit the share
Speaker 3: the likes, describe to comment, leave a post, leave review,
Speaker 3: shares with the friends of family, shares everywhere.
Speaker 4: Here's the deal. The more activity the algorithm.
Speaker 3: Sets across all of our listening platforms, the more we
Speaker 3: get promoted to more potential listeners who could then become
Speaker 3: potential cult members like the rest of you.
Speaker 4: Finallyies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3: While you're at it and you're in the giving mood
Speaker 3: of the five stars and the reviews, go check out
Speaker 3: Meta Mysteries Jonathan's other channel and give him all the
Speaker 3: love and the reviews as well.
Speaker 4: Go check out the YouTube channel Cajun Night.
Speaker 3: We will be dropping the video vlog of our experiences
Speaker 3: at Brohemian Groove this week.
Speaker 4: Go check me out.
Speaker 3: Give the subscribes, the likes and all the things we
Speaker 3: thank you for.
Speaker 4: Everybody's already gone and done so.
Speaker 2: And by the way, over on Meta Mysteries, me Sean
Speaker 2: and Electro Nick just shot a whole episode on my
Speaker 2: DMT experience. If that's something you're interested in listening to,
Speaker 2: maybe you're thinking about trying it, you might want to
Speaker 2: listen to that first. I know I am but one man,
Speaker 2: but I mean, hey, sometimes I feel like a lot
Speaker 2: of people only ever hear about the good DMT experiences,
Speaker 2: and you don't hear about the bad ones. So if
Speaker 2: that's something that strikes your fancy a little bit, then
Speaker 2: go check it out over on Meta Mysteries. But anyway,
Speaker 2: with all of that being said, this was another beautiful
Speaker 2: episode of the Cult of Conspiracy. And my name's Jonathan,
Speaker 2: I'm Jake, and there's one very important and surely final
Speaker 2: piece of information we need you to learn just as
Speaker 2: soon as humanly possible.
Speaker 1: I'll bead off that are.
Speaker 24: Shot.
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