Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marcia for Radio I. To day, I
Speaker 1: will be reading National Geographic magazine dated February twenty twenty six,
Speaker 1: which is donated by the publisher as a reminder. RADIOI
Speaker 1: is a reading service intended for people who are blind
Speaker 1: or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
Speaker 1: printed material. Please join me now for the first continuation
Speaker 1: of the article I began last time, entitled can the
Speaker 1: Basilica that inspired Notre Dame Return to Glory? This article
Speaker 1: by Robert Kunzig. Until he retired in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: Moolain was one of several dozen chief architects of historic
Speaker 1: monuments in France who oversee restoration projects at hundreds of
Speaker 1: historic sites. He worked on the Chateau of Fontainebleau and
Speaker 1: the gardens of Versailles, as well as San Denis, where
Speaker 1: he restored the west facade and the stained glass. The
Speaker 1: way he tells it, the story of how the church
Speaker 1: lost its steeple is a slightly sordid one. It's a
Speaker 1: tale of the harshness of men and what he calls
Speaker 1: the original crime committed by France's vaunted Monument's Service, the
Speaker 1: agency to which Mooloan himself devoted his career. Sandini is
Speaker 1: named for the first Bishop of Paris, a third century
Speaker 1: martyr who was decapitated for preaching the Gospel to skeptical Parisians.
Speaker 1: According to legend, Dennis picked up his own severed head
Speaker 1: and walked with it four miles north to what became
Speaker 1: his grave site. By the sixth century, a small church
Speaker 1: stood above the grave, and by the twelfth century the
Speaker 1: church was part of a prestigious abbey and crowded with pilgrims.
Speaker 1: That's when it underwent a crucial transformation at the hands
Speaker 1: of a visionary abbot named Suget. In just over a
Speaker 1: decade from roughly eleven thirty to eleven forty four, Suget
Speaker 1: dramatically expanded the building, adding a massive and richly decorated
Speaker 1: facade to the way front and a Gothic apse to
Speaker 1: the east end. His choices were a bold departure from
Speaker 1: the darkness of the prevailing Romanesque style, with its massive
Speaker 1: walls and small windows. Souget believed that beauty in this
Speaker 1: world could transport people to a higher one, and that
Speaker 1: sunlight flooding into sun Denis would show the way to
Speaker 1: the true light, that is to God. His vision survived
Speaker 1: intact for nearly seven centuries, but on June ninth, eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven, lightning ripped through the Sandinese fire, piercing three
Speaker 1: large holes, including one more than six feet high, as
Speaker 1: the bolt jumped to a nearby building and exploded a gargoyle.
Speaker 1: Within a year of the storm, Francois Debray, an architect
Speaker 1: who had been restoring Sundynys since eighteen thirteen, had dismantled
Speaker 1: and rebuilt the spire. The Monuments Service, though, which had
Speaker 1: been established in eighteen thirty, didn't thank him. What its
Speaker 1: ambitious leaders really wanted, Leniold has found was to take
Speaker 1: control of one of France's most coveted restoration projects. To
Speaker 1: do that, they had to oust the old guard Debray.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty five, when a series of storms again
Speaker 1: damaged the steeple, the Service blamed the weight of Debray's
Speaker 1: restored spire wrongly, according to Moulan, Debray was forced to
Speaker 1: dismantle it. Then they replaced the sixty nine year old
Speaker 1: pioneer with their hand picked thirty two year old Fenomme
Speaker 1: Eugene Manuel Bruila le Duc, who had just begun a
Speaker 1: two decade long restoration of Notre Dame. Boiles le Duc
Speaker 1: dismantled the tower under the spire too, saying he intended
Speaker 1: to rebuild the whole steeple. Instead, he sold off the stones.
Speaker 1: Boiles Le Duc hated debray Leniold says that's clear San
Speaker 1: Deni was their battleground, Mulan has argued, and the steeple
Speaker 1: paid the price. Bourles le Duc's own status as a
Speaker 1: pioneer in the monument's service is unassailable. His restoration of
Speaker 1: Notre Dame was masterful, albeit with many additions of his own,
Speaker 1: including the gargoyles and a new spire. Nor is there
Speaker 1: any disputing the service's tremendous work preserving France's rich heritage,
Speaker 1: But especially in the past half century or so, its
Speaker 1: doctrine has evolved, and Mulon believes gotten too rigid and
Speaker 1: too devoted to restoring monuments only to their last documented state,
Speaker 1: preserving changes made through their previous history, but adding as
Speaker 1: few new ones as possible. Consider how Fidipe Villeneuve, chief
Speaker 1: architect of historic monuments at Notre Dame, described the restoration
Speaker 1: he led after the twenty nineteenth fire. We leave no
Speaker 1: trace of our passage. Moolah favors a more interventionist approach,
Speaker 1: and from the start his plan to rebuild Debray's spire
Speaker 1: at San Deini has faced blowback. In twenty seventeen, when
Speaker 1: he first presented the plan, national Commission on Historic Monuments
Speaker 1: rejected it, arguing that San Deni's steeple had been gone
Speaker 1: so long its absence had become part of the church's history.
Speaker 1: Rebuilding it now, the Commission said, would be problematic in
Speaker 1: terms of the authenticity and materiality of the monument. The
Speaker 1: monument's commission as well respected, but its opinions our only advisory,
Speaker 1: and by twenty twenty one, two successive presidential administrations had
Speaker 1: endorsed the project and the Culture Ministry had authorized it.
Speaker 1: That's when the national newsweekly Laponte published a letter of
Speaker 1: outrage opposition signed by one hundred twenty eight experts. The
Speaker 1: Basilica of San Denis doesn't need a spire, it began.
Speaker 1: Matieur le Jeune, a young historian who did his pH
Speaker 1: d on Gothic spires, was one of the petition's two
Speaker 1: co authors and remains opposed to the project. It's an
Speaker 1: intact monument. He said last spring, shortly after construction began
Speaker 1: and its being denatured just to build a Neo Gothic spire.
Speaker 1: The city government seized the steeple as an economic development
Speaker 1: project that will help revitalize the city center. Nicholas Matijad's Josik,
Speaker 1: director of Souavese La Fleche follow the Spire, the non
Speaker 1: profit that's managing the project, predicts it will double annual
Speaker 1: attendance to around three hundred thousand, still only a tiny
Speaker 1: fraction of the twelve million expected at Notre Dame this year.
Speaker 1: One afternoon in May, on top of the Basilica, architect
Speaker 1: Christophe Boltineau knelt down on what's left of the front
Speaker 1: wall of the North tower. With Moulal now retired, Bolteneau
Speaker 1: fifty sixth has taken over the project. He was examining
Speaker 1: one of the first new stones to be added to
Speaker 1: the wall, and he wasn't happy. Its top service was
Speaker 1: perfectly smooth. The optic authenticity he and Moulan are aiming
Speaker 1: for in the new towers a matter not just of
Speaker 1: historical documentation documentation, but also of craftsmanship. Mulon is dismayed
Speaker 1: by what he perceives as the shoddy work of some
Speaker 1: restoration projects. I've seen horrors, he says. Among the most
Speaker 1: common building stones cut by mechanized saw into perfect rectangular blocks,
Speaker 1: then distressed with a power tool to make the visible
Speaker 1: face look old. This method was used even at Notre
Speaker 1: Dame after the twenty nineteen fire. It off fends Mulam.
Speaker 1: Medieval church builders carved every block by hand, and they
Speaker 1: wasted no energy on things no one could see. They
Speaker 1: put a final smooth finish only on a block's visible face.
Speaker 1: The back faced inside the hollow wall, so they'd leave
Speaker 1: it lumpy and unformed. Then they'd roughly shape the fore
Speaker 1: sides with a large chisel and join them by mortar
Speaker 1: to neighboring blocks. The irregular blocks create a visual effect
Speaker 1: of vibration. Batineaux calls it that is easy to distinguish
Speaker 1: from the rulers straight joints of the machine age. He
Speaker 1: and Lulon want the new tower to have that vibe.
Speaker 1: Their goal is not to go full medieval, it's to
Speaker 1: achieve the original chiseled look with practical methods available today.
Speaker 1: Power saws are forbidden, but eighty five percent of the
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand, two hundred stones for the new steeple will
Speaker 1: be cut off site using handheld pneumatic chisels. The remaining
Speaker 1: fifteen percent of the stones will be cut in the
Speaker 1: shed at San Denis without any machines. It was a
Speaker 1: gorgeous spring afternoon, five months before the construction site was
Speaker 1: opened to the public last October, when I went up
Speaker 1: into the scaffolding with Boutineau. A few miles south that
Speaker 1: Notre Dame, crowds of tourists would be queuing on the
Speaker 1: plaza waiting to get in. We looked down at the
Speaker 1: square in front of San Denis. It was empty. On
Speaker 1: the stone pavement. A festive graphic in blue and white
Speaker 1: stencil outlined the shape of the missing steeple. Some day
Speaker 1: soon the new one will cast its shadow there when
Speaker 1: the sun rises behind it once again. Next Into the
Speaker 1: Kingdom of Sea Horses by Lindsay Lyles. On a Bahamian
Speaker 1: island in a landlocked lagoon, the planet's densest collection of
Speaker 1: sea horses is offering scientists new insights into the secret
Speaker 1: lives of one of the world's most reclusive fish. Heather
Speaker 1: Mason was used to her quarry being much more elusive.
Speaker 1: Sea horses are often only a few inches long, can
Speaker 1: change colors like a chameleon, and rarely gather in groups.
Speaker 1: Their ability to disappear into their habitats tropical sea grasses, mangroves,
Speaker 1: and reefs helps keep the slow swimming, largely defenseless fish
Speaker 1: from becoming an easy meal. That makes devoting a career
Speaker 1: to studying them. As Mason, a marine ecologist of the
Speaker 1: University of Tampa, has done for decades and exercise in patience,
Speaker 1: but when she first snorkeled the pristine waters of Sweding's
Speaker 1: Pond on the Bahamian island of Eluthera, she found herself
Speaker 1: in a sea horse studded heaven. Over her first weekend
Speaker 1: in the pond's clear blue water in twenty thirteen, she
Speaker 1: counted sixteen sea horses, far more than the one or
Speaker 1: two she'd be lucky to spot during multi week research
Speaker 1: trips along the coast of the Bahamas. Immediately, Mason realized
Speaker 1: that the mile long Sweeting's Pond was special, a safe
Speaker 1: haven for one of the ocean's most enigmatic creatures. It
Speaker 1: was life changing as someone who looks for sea horses
Speaker 1: in the wild, she says, and this rare window into
Speaker 1: their existence has revealed fascinating behaviors. Mason's life changing moment
Speaker 1: can be traced back some seven thousand to ten thousand years.
Speaker 1: That's when scientists estimate Sweeting's pond filled with ocean water
Speaker 1: that filtered in from nearby Hatchet Bay, roughly one mile
Speaker 1: east through underground cracks and holes. The land locked salt
Speaker 1: water lagoon in turn became a fortress for brittle stars,
Speaker 1: spider crabs, octopuses, bio luminis, sint plankton, and of course,
Speaker 1: the sea horses, a refuge who are several of the
Speaker 1: species regular predators, skates and rays, Tuna sharks can't possibly
Speaker 1: break in. It's an island on an island, explains Mason.
Speaker 1: Inside Sweeting's pond, Mason found sea horses as singular as
Speaker 1: the body of water itself, with oddly long snouts, squat bodies,
Speaker 1: and short tails. They differed radically from anything she had
Speaker 1: seen since she'd begun studying the creatures in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: She and her collaborator, evolutionary biologists Emily Rose, classified them
Speaker 1: as lined sea horses Hippocampus erectus. But the sea horses
Speaker 1: of Sweetings are on the path to becoming their own subspecies.
Speaker 1: Observing so many of them in isolation offers an opportunity
Speaker 1: to study evolution in action, as Mason puts it. But
Speaker 1: the biggest breakthrough came in the dark. Botanist Ethan Freed,
Speaker 1: who works for the Bahamas National Trust, the nonprofit that
Speaker 1: manages the country's national parks, had originally learned from locals
Speaker 1: about Sweding's seahorse population and contacted Mason after the marine
Speaker 1: ecologist's initial visit field. Freed had an idea, what if
Speaker 1: they explored the pond at night under a starlit sky.
Speaker 1: Mason and Freed donned scuba gear with dive lights and
Speaker 1: waded into sweetings. They could barely believe their goggled eyes.
Speaker 1: I ran my light across the bottom, and it was
Speaker 1: like road reflectors at night, Mason recalls. You could see
Speaker 1: seahorses lit up everywhere. Freed describes the scene as resembling
Speaker 1: a seahorse rave. On a later trip, over the course
Speaker 1: of four days and nights, Mason and a research team
Speaker 1: documented eight hundred sea horses, roughly five times as many
Speaker 1: as they'd counted during daylight hours in the same limited area.
Speaker 1: Some were just a few days old. A surprise as tiny,
Speaker 1: jubilant juveniles are rarely seen, and little is known about
Speaker 1: what happens to newborn sea horses in the wild. Most
Speaker 1: striking was the difference in the fish's behavior. During the day.
Speaker 1: The sea horses are face down, their cryptic their hiding,
Speaker 1: Mason says, and at night they come up higher in
Speaker 1: the vegetation, so they're upright and obvious that nighttime. Rave.
Speaker 1: As Freed puts, it doesn't necessarily mean all sea horses
Speaker 1: are nocturnal. Sweetings is isolated and its sea horses behavior
Speaker 1: may be unique. Nor does the research team understand why
Speaker 1: these sea horses spend their days face down, though it's
Speaker 1: possibly possible their testing resting after a night of eating
Speaker 1: plankton and small crustaceans or hiding from birds that feed
Speaker 1: on them in shallow waters. Still, the overnight survey and
Speaker 1: subsequent research resulted in the first published paper on sea
Speaker 1: horses nocturnal lives. In twenty twenty three. The team reported
Speaker 1: that Sweeting's pond is home to the highest known density
Speaker 1: of sea horses in the world, a number in the thousands.
Speaker 1: At the time of the Dark of Night discoveries, the
Speaker 1: pond was still open to the public but Mason's years
Speaker 1: of research helped the Bahamas National Trust petition the Bahamian
Speaker 1: government for protection. Two years ago, Sweeting's Pond became part
Speaker 1: of the newly created Seahorse National Park, a preserve that
Speaker 1: spans five hundred forty eight acres and includes Hatchet Bay Cave,
Speaker 1: one of the longest dry cave systems in the Bahamas.
Speaker 1: The park closed the pup to the public a few
Speaker 1: months later, and the Trust now raises funds and prioritizes
Speaker 1: conservation over access. Macemills still pluming the data she collected
Speaker 1: over a decade and hopes to return to the pond
Speaker 1: answers to questions about courtship rituals, the reason for mail pregnancy,
Speaker 1: and where seahorses babies go after being borne. May float
Speaker 1: in the ponds, plants, placid waters. Sweetings might also show
Speaker 1: how the species responds to rising water temperatures. Before this project,
Speaker 1: I would have hesit to ever use this word about
Speaker 1: a system, but Sweeting's Pond is magical. Mason says. There
Speaker 1: is a sea of questions to answer for now, the
Speaker 1: seahorses of Sweeting's Pond are safe in their island inside
Speaker 1: an island, and can keep their secrets a little while longer. Next,
Speaker 1: the poles are teeming with more life than we can
Speaker 1: see by Andrew Zeleski. In order to understand the massive
Speaker 1: changes afoot in the warming polar regions, oceanographer Alison Fong
Speaker 1: is hunting for the tiniest clues. The northern and southern
Speaker 1: reaches of our planet are heating up faster than anywhere
Speaker 1: else on Earth. While researchers already know that the region
Speaker 1: is poised to change dramatically with ice melting and sea
Speaker 1: levels rising, there's a larger question of just what species
Speaker 1: may survive under these new conditions, which is how micro
Speaker 1: bi Microbial oceanographer and National Geographic Explorer Alison Pong found
Speaker 1: herself wearing a dry suit and eighty pounds of scuba
Speaker 1: underneath a twenty six foot thick ice floe in the
Speaker 1: Arctic Ocean. Clutching a glorified turkey baster, Fong was using
Speaker 1: the enormous syringe to slurp up a thin film of
Speaker 1: tiny organisms living in the floes underbelly. These microbes, like
Speaker 1: photosynthetic phytoplankton and sea ice algae, are fundamental to the
Speaker 1: habitat habitability of Earth. She says by studying them, we
Speaker 1: can understand how ecosystems are thriving or not, and how
Speaker 1: different parts of the planet will transform as climate change accelerates.
Speaker 1: In polar food webs, microbes can capture energy from the
Speaker 1: sum and become nutrients for all the animals above them
Speaker 1: in the food chain. But unlike larger creatures like polar
Speaker 1: bears and whales, microbes have short life spans, sometimes as
Speaker 1: brief as a few days, making them much more responsive
Speaker 1: to what's happening in their environments. In the past six years,
Speaker 1: Following has measured oxygen concentration in microbial communities found in
Speaker 1: sea ice at both poles to assess what biologists call abundance,
Speaker 1: which is a measure of the nutrient availability in an environment.
Speaker 1: The research could provide a window into the types of
Speaker 1: species that are able to flourish and those that may flounder.
Speaker 1: Take the Pacific cod Currently, there are hardly any of
Speaker 1: these fish in the High Arctic because there isn't enough
Speaker 1: available food, but as sea ice decreases, more sunlight will
Speaker 1: reach the water. In turn, some scientists expect the microbe
Speaker 1: population to grow, providing nutrients at the base of the
Speaker 1: food chain. Thereby allowing the fish to migrate and making
Speaker 1: the far north and South a potentially lucrative opportunity. One
Speaker 1: report from the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at the University
Speaker 1: of British Columbia Project projects total fisheries revenue in the
Speaker 1: Arctic may increase as much as thirty nine percent by
Speaker 1: twenty fifty. But commercial exploiting the waters of the Arctic
Speaker 1: would have huge implications for both the ecosystem and the
Speaker 1: indigenous communities that rely on early marine life to support
Speaker 1: their subsistence livelihoods. Experts warned that models predicting new fish
Speaker 1: stocks are extrapolating too much from a small amount of
Speaker 1: available information. After all, the Arctic is a massive area
Speaker 1: where few people have collected reliable data. Thong is well
Speaker 1: aware of how her measurements may be construed. People could
Speaker 1: look at our data at the base of the food
Speaker 1: web and then make a couple of leaps, she says.
Speaker 1: When minute you're measuring microbes, the next a government department
Speaker 1: is saying the poles are ripe for the picking. From
Speaker 1: Pong's perspective, that makes capturing the most complete picture of
Speaker 1: how the region is changing ever more urgent. When we
Speaker 1: lose sea ice from our polar regions. She says, we
Speaker 1: are altering the landscape of what can and cannot exist.
Speaker 1: Next the wolf keepers Erika Biri High in the mountains
Speaker 1: of western Mongolia, Kazakh herders have lived in careful balance
Speaker 1: with wolves for centuries. Now they are increasingly compelled to
Speaker 1: haunt the creatures they have revered for generations. The horse's
Speaker 1: body was still warm when the three men came upon
Speaker 1: it in the snow. From only the wounds in a
Speaker 1: constellation of tracks around the horse, the trio of Kazakh
Speaker 1: herders could unspool. The morning, a pair of wolves had
Speaker 1: jumped onto the horse's upper back and brought it to
Speaker 1: its knees because its tender rear flank was missing, the
Speaker 1: part a wolf might gorgehn and then later regurgitate to
Speaker 1: a nursing mother tending to her young. The hunters were
Speaker 1: confident there was a den nearby. Eyes peeled, they stowed
Speaker 1: their guns and traveled on. The wolf hunt continued. The
Speaker 1: hunters Ibolat Koulmeshkan, Galim Bapar and Serakbo Koshigen belonged to
Speaker 1: a community of nomadic Kazakh herders that has been shepherding
Speaker 1: livestock for generations through Mongolia's jagged, wind swept Altay Mountains.
Speaker 1: Though Kazakhs make up only four percent of Mongolia's total population,
Speaker 1: they represent ninety eight percent of the roughly one hundred
Speaker 1: five thousand inhabitants. Inhabitants in Bayan old Ghi, the country's
Speaker 1: highest and westernmost province, nestled along the border of China
Speaker 1: and Russia, they raise sheep, yax, horses, and occasionally camels
Speaker 1: for income and year round sustenance. But it's the gray wolves,
Speaker 1: both predators of their livestock and in the herder's culture,
Speaker 1: sacred beings with which they have the most complex relationship.
Speaker 1: Sarahk Pole says his ancestors, the Blue Turks, who conquered
Speaker 1: Central Asia in the sixth century, descended from wolves. Most
Speaker 1: of the Kazak herders are Muslim, but their spirit dual
Speaker 1: regard for wolves is rooted in an animism that extends
Speaker 1: to horses and eagles as well. Occupy a special place,
Speaker 1: though and are revered for many of the same reasons
Speaker 1: they are feared, including their intelligence, courage, and heightened senses.
Speaker 1: The wolves and herders have coexisted in the Aultae for millennia,
Speaker 1: Surviving the ebb and flow of empires and shifting borders.
Speaker 1: An increasingly volatile climate has pushed the wolves to attack
Speaker 1: livestock more frequently over the past several years, more often
Speaker 1: than ever. The Kazakh nomads are forced to balance their
Speaker 1: reverence for the wolf with their duty to protect their
Speaker 1: herds and their livelihoods. This wolf hunt in April twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three was the community's first in two years. It
Speaker 1: came on the heels of a particularly brutal stretch, a
Speaker 1: Zazud year, as it is known in the region, with
Speaker 1: a summer scorched by record breaking wildflowers wild fires, followed
Speaker 1: by a subzero winter. Rather than relief, spring had brought whiplash,
Speaker 1: days warm enough for rain than nights so cold that
Speaker 1: some wet animals within the herd froze to death. Syrah
Speaker 1: Bowl says a neighbor lost two hundred animals over night
Speaker 1: in one snap. At night, Sarah Bowle and his wife
Speaker 1: would bring the weakest animals into their gurr, a type
Speaker 1: of traditional tent, for warmth. He would often scale cliffs
Speaker 1: in search of wild grasses to feed his malnourished livestock.
Speaker 1: We've had hard winters before, but never a dazud like
Speaker 1: this in our lives, he says. The Mongolian wolves were
Speaker 1: just trying to survive. The dazud too. A species of
Speaker 1: gray wolf, they live throughout the region, though it's difficult
Speaker 1: to estimate their numbers. Slightly then there at North African counterparts.
Speaker 1: They tend to hunt in smaller packs. When their natural prey,
Speaker 1: such as wild sheep and red deer, become scarce, the
Speaker 1: wolves unsurprisingly turn to livestock for an easier meal. We
Speaker 1: have a saying in Mongolia the wolf fattens during a dzud,
Speaker 1: says Bazar Saran, bold eve and ecologist at the National
Speaker 1: University of Mongolia in Ulang Batur. Complicating matters, livestock herd
Speaker 1: sizes across western Mongolia have gone up while the number
Speaker 1: of herders has gone down, leaving domestic animals less protected.
Speaker 1: More than ninety percent of bayon Olghi's surveyed herders reported
Speaker 1: losing livestock to wolves. According to a recent study, on average,
Speaker 1: nearly fourteen animals per herder, seven times more than just
Speaker 1: two decades earlier. That costs each herder nearly thirteen hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a year, or around forty percent of the herder's
Speaker 1: annual income. In nature, wolves are the ones who control
Speaker 1: the number of other animals, sarah Bole says, but there
Speaker 1: is nothing to control the number of wolves. Back on
Speaker 1: the wolf hunt, Aborat Galim and serak Bole alternated between
Speaker 1: horseback and foot as they moved through belly deep snow.
Speaker 1: Spotting a wolf meant crouching, sometimes for hours with binoculars.
Speaker 1: When the hunters finally approached a den the next day,
Speaker 1: the choreography was precise, removing their boots to step quietly
Speaker 1: through snow in socked feet. They moved only when the
Speaker 1: wind blew their scent in the opposite direction. That day,
Speaker 1: they killed an adult wolf and discovered a den of
Speaker 1: eight pups, eyes still pinched shut. Had the pups been
Speaker 1: a few weeks older, the Cossacks would have considered taking
Speaker 1: most of them home to raise to adulthood, a form
Speaker 1: of population control passed down through generations, with the stipulation
Speaker 1: that at least one pup is always left in the
Speaker 1: den for the mother. Once grown, the wolves would have
Speaker 1: been killed, their pelts and other parts used for warmth
Speaker 1: and traditional medicine. These pups, though, were barely a week old,
Speaker 1: so herd her tradition said they were too young to touch.
Speaker 1: The men left them alive in the den, despite knowing
Speaker 1: they would grow to become a risk to live stock.
Speaker 1: There has to be humanity in your tradition. Sarah Fall
Speaker 1: says that humanity goes beyond veneration, and Kazakh herders understand
Speaker 1: the rural wolves play in the fragile mountain ecosystem, killing
Speaker 1: off weak in old animals on the step and strengthening
Speaker 1: the overall vitality of the herd. Sarah Bull once left
Speaker 1: a few male sheep behind when he changed pastures for
Speaker 1: the season, only to come back a year later to
Speaker 1: find they'd survived. Syak Bull bred those sheep deemed strongest
Speaker 1: in the face of predators and had the healthiest herd
Speaker 1: around wolf. We call it an ecological doctor, says Sakin Asphan,
Speaker 1: a park ranger who works in wildlife management in bayan
Speaker 1: Olghi's al Thai Tavan the Good National Park. If the
Speaker 1: wolf disappears, there will be lots of diseases. Months later,
Speaker 1: on a separate hunt, Sarah Bull took home a pup
Speaker 1: from another den. He treated it like livestock, feeding it
Speaker 1: meat as it matured while keeping it tethered in the
Speaker 1: yard of his household. When the wolf is full grown,
Speaker 1: he'll say a prayer and raise his gun Sarah bull
Speaker 1: so the pelt into a winter proof vest and use
Speaker 1: parts of the animal medicinally. The herders believe that a
Speaker 1: raw tongue tied around the neck can help with thyroid issues,
Speaker 1: and that a wolf's brain boiled into soup lower's blood
Speaker 1: pressure bullets are expensive, so to recoup some costs, Cerikole
Speaker 1: will sell the wolf's skull, but he'll keep the ankle
Speaker 1: bones for himself. The herders wear them to ward off
Speaker 1: bad spirits. They know their prosperity remains intertwined with the wolves,
Speaker 1: even in death. Serrakol prays before taking the life of
Speaker 1: a wolf he captured as a pop and raised for
Speaker 1: his community. Killing the creatures a sacred act born from
Speaker 1: a belief that their Turkish ancestors were descendants of wolves.
Speaker 1: Increasingly extreme temperatures wreck have it on both the wolves
Speaker 1: prey and the herder's livestock. Serakole pulls a mother yack
Speaker 1: away from a calf that dyed. Weaker animals often perish
Speaker 1: when their rain soaked coats freeze over night during the
Speaker 1: fall harvest or Sogim serah Bol and his son Musa
Speaker 1: rest below freshly butchered meat from their livestock that's been
Speaker 1: hanging to dry. It will be the basis for the
Speaker 1: family's food supply during the brutal winter months. The Kazakh
Speaker 1: herders use many methods to protect their livestock from wolves,
Speaker 1: loud dogs bringing the animals closer to their gurs at night,
Speaker 1: and some creativity. Serkol built a kind of scarecrow made
Speaker 1: of fabric and a willing horse. Dmitri s. Dazzuski was
Speaker 1: on a twenty sixteen trip with Mongalian guide nirbolot Len
Speaker 1: when he first learned about Kazakh herders who both revere
Speaker 1: and hunt wolves in Nirbolot's native bayan Olique province. It
Speaker 1: was Nirbolat's father who shared a cryptic Kazakh ottage horse
Speaker 1: boasts I can see half the world at night. This
Speaker 1: concludes readings from National Geographic Magazine for today. Your reader,
Speaker 1: husband Marsha, thank you for listening. Than keep on listening
Speaker 1: and have a great day. Story did Stradisky since its meaning.
Speaker 1: The wolves are so elusive they seem omniscient. This records