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Joe Rogan Experience #2213 - Diane K. Boyd

This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Get working on a better you with therapy. Visit http://betterhelp.com/JRE today to get 10% off your first month. Diane K. Boyd is a wildlife biologist who has devoted decades to studying wolves. She is the author of "A Woman Among Wolves: My Journey Through Forty Years of Wolf Recovery." www.dianekboyd.com https://greystonebooks.com/collections/frontpage/products/a-woman-among-wolves

Diane K. BoydguestJoe RoganhostGuest (unidentified, brief caller/clip participant)guest
Oct 15, 20242h 57mWatch on YouTube ↗

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  1. 0:00 – 2:08

    Meeting Diane Boyd: how she became a wolf biologist

    1. DB

      (drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. JR

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

    3. DB

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) What's up?

    4. JR

      How are you?

    5. DB

      (laughs) I am great. Long flight in from Montana, but I'm great. Thank you.

    6. JR

      Well, it's very nice to meet you. And, uh, I really enjoyed you on Steve Renell's podcast as well.

    7. DB

      Oh, good. Oh, good. You got to watch it?

    8. JR

      Yeah. Steve... Well, H- Steve made the introduction.

    9. DB

      Yes.

    10. JR

      Uh, he, uh, told me, "I have to have you on."

    11. DB

      (laughs)

    12. JR

      Because he knows how fascinated I am by wolves. So, uh, I'm real excited to talk to you.

    13. DB

      Thanks. And I'm excited, too, because I thought-

    14. JR

      (laughs)

    15. DB

      ... well, you got... We're y- we're both hunters, we're both dog lovers, you got an interest in wolves. It's all good.

    16. JR

      Yeah. How did you start getting interested in wolves and start working with wolves?

    17. DB

      Well, I grew up in Minnesota, and you can probably tell from the Fargo accent. But, um, I grew up in Minnesota, and back in the 60s and 70s when I was thinking about a career, Minnesota was the only state in the lower 48 that had wolves, with the exception of a few, like 25 maybe in Iowa, a couple here or there in, in, uh, Wisconsin. And so I was interested from the beginning with that. And then when I went to the University of Minnesota, Dave Mech, who was like the go- god of the wolf world, his office was on my campus.

    18. JR

      Oh.

    19. DB

      So I just stopped by and kept bugging him.

    20. JR

      (laughs)

    21. DB

      And I wouldn't, I wouldn't go away, like a good parasite. Persist, persist, persist. (laughs)

    22. JR

      Why wolves? Why were wolves so interesting to you?

    23. DB

      You know, I'm just... I'm kind of, um, a wildlife person. They're the ultimate and, uh, really wild and smart animal. They're a carnivore. They're social like people. And, uh, I think I was denied having a dog most of my life growing up till I was about 15, so I had this com- this passion for canines in general.

    24. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    25. DB

      I love dogs.

    26. JR

      I do too. I love them. Uh, and I love wolves. Um, I'm so fascinated by them, and I'm so, uh, interested in the whole history of them in this country, how they were sort of eradicated-

    27. DB

      Mm-hmm.

    28. JR

      ... from most of the western states and the reintroduction of them.

    29. DB

      Mm-hmm.

    30. JR

      So you were there for all of it, right?

  2. 2:08 – 3:32

    Isle Royale wolves: boom-bust cycles, inbreeding, and reintroduction

    1. DB

      No, Isle Royale, which is an island in Lake Superior.

    2. JR

      Oh.

    3. DB

      It's actually technically part of Michigan.

    4. JR

      Oh.

    5. DB

      They, they walked over on the frozen Lake Superior ice in the late, like, 1949, '50s, early, and they stayed, and they, they got seeded there, and they had endless amount of moose to kill and eat.

    6. JR

      Oh, wow.

    7. DB

      So they were in kind of a wolf paradise with that.

    8. JR

      And is it still like that there?

    9. DB

      Yes, and the populations of, of wolves and moose go up and down, because you know in nature nothing is here.

    10. JR

      Right.

    11. DB

      We always want it to be here, but it's always doing this.

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. DB

      And, um, yeah, they're doing there. And then interestingly when they, when they arrived, they migrated on their own power. Um, there was very little immigration. There was a couple of wolves documented showing up here and there, but apparently genetically there was no influx of new genes. So the wolves that came and went didn't breed, and eventually they became so inbred they started having physical anomalies.

    14. JR

      Oh.

    15. DB

      And eventually, just a few f- years ago, four or five years ago, they got down to just a father-daughter team, and only two wolves left, and it was over, and so they wouldn't breed, um, because they have... They don't breed close relatives generally. So they just did a reintroduction to Isle Royale too.

    16. JR

      Oh.

    17. DB

      That's been relatively new, just a handful of years. So they had to reboost the population if they wanted to keep them going, or wait for the lake to freeze again, which may or may not happen in our lifetimes, you know?

  3. 3:32 – 6:51

    Debunking the 'Canadian super wolf' myth & how far wolves disperse

    1. JR

      Hmm. So, when they reintroduced them, um, th- this is one of the, the sticking points about the reintroduction of Yellowstone. A lot of people that were against it-

    2. DB

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JR

      ... were saying that they reintroduced, uh, a different size wolf, that they, uh, re- reintroduced wolves from Canada.

    4. DB

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      Is that true?

    6. DB

      Um-

    7. JR

      Sorta?

    8. DB

      No. So-

    9. JR

      No?

    10. DB

      ... in my book, I've got a chapter called Slaying the Super Wolf. And so people call these wolves super wolves, 'cause they say that they're, they're not native, they're Canadian super wolves and they weigh 170 pounds, and it goes on and on and on. But, um, I documented a wolf that I caught in the Glacier Park area, Wolf 8551, and we just had VHF collars, we didn't have satellite collars in those days, and she hung around for a while and then she just disappeared. And seven months later, the British Columbia Environmental Ministry Game Warden called me, says, "We got, we got one of your wolves killed. Uh, do you want the collar?" "Yes, please. Where is it?" "Puskupi." I said, "Oh, where is that?" (laughs) Well, it turns out that is 540 miles north of Glacier Park.

    11. JR

      Wow.

    12. DB

      In seven months. So we didn't know if the guy, a farmer shot it in July. If they hadn't, uh, shot it, we would never have known what happened to her. But if she would have gone south instead of north, she'd have been about 100 miles south of Yellowstone Park. So clearly they have the ability to disperse that far. The other interesting thing about that wolf is when she went north sh- they got the d- reintroduced wolves from two areas, um, from Hinton in Alberta and Fort St. Johns in British Columbia, and she dispersed past the Hinton population and ended up almost at where the, the Fort St. Johns wolves were. So this little wolf, 80-pound wolf, showed us that it's one continuous population from Yellowstone almost to the Yukon.

    13. JR

      Wow.

    14. DB

      It's connected. They... Because it's a, it's a walkabout for a wolf. It's not a big deal. We just didn't back... J- back then we didn't have the tools to document kind of those long dispersals. But I just read this week that a wolf that showed up in Colorado that was shot this year, they just did the DNA on it apparently pretty recently, and it was from the Midwest. Think about that. To Colorado.

    15. JR

      Wow.

    16. DB

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      So Midwest like Wisconsin? Like-

    18. DB

      Yeah. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan. It just said the Great Lakes region. It didn't s- identified... 'Cause they're all kind of the same.

    19. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    20. DB

      But it was not, it was not a western wolf. It was not from Wyoming or Montana.

    21. JR

      Is-

    22. DB

      Really interesting.

    23. JR

      Is there any speculation as to why she went so far north?... did- did- so-

    24. DB

      No.

    25. JR

      ... she was originally from, uh, a northern population?

    26. DB

      The wolf that I'm talking about-

    27. JR

      Yes.

    28. DB

      ... 504? Yeah, she was born in Glacier Park. We caught her first as a pup, so we know where she was born, you know, the den. And then, at about a year and a half of age, almost two, she dispersed that far. And she didn't have to go that far. I mean, if she wanted to find other wolves and start a pack or join a pack, she could have gone any direction 50 or 100 miles and found other wolves. H- You know what? If you (laughs) you tell me why wolves do what they do, and, and I'll buy a lottery ticket.

    29. JR

      (laughs)

    30. DB

      I mean, I don't know how these things work. (laughs) I just don't know.

  4. 6:51 – 10:49

    Tracking technology, collar limits, and the surprisingly short wolf lifespan

    1. DB

      It's becoming more and more common. So now that we have satellite collars, we've been using those for years, we can track them without having to stay in touch physically with them. In the old days, we just had VHF collars, and you had to physically be there within range, like from an airplane or track them. But now that we've got satellite collars, I mean, my gosh, we've got wolves going from Washington to Montana. And one of the wolves from Wyoming went all the way down to Arizona to just north of the Grand Canyon-

    2. JR

      Wow.

    3. DB

      ... with a satellite collar. It was tracked, and then it turned around and started home, and it got shot in Utah.

    4. JR

      This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's a really healthy, good thing to talk about what you're going through with people, the good and the bad. Don't keep it all bottled up. And sometimes, it c- that can be friends or family, but it also helps to talk to pros. And that's where BetterHelp comes in. It's therapy that's totally online, which makes it so easy to get started. You just fill out a few quick questions, and they match you with someone to talk to. And if you don't get the right match at first, you can switch therapists at any time for free. It's easy, it's flexible, it's wherever you are. Seriously, it's a great thing to try. Scan to get started or visit betterhelp.com/jre today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com/jre. So when they're doing this and you track them, how long do those collars' batteries last?

    5. DB

      Well, sadly for the VHF collars, the wolves generally die before the collars do because wolves don't live very long. And a, an average VHF collar lasts about four years, an average satellite collar, one to two years. And I don't understand why the technology is not better to prolong some kind of a new battery. 'Cause once you put all the trauma of going through the wolf with a helicopter and catching it or whatever, you'd think they could get some kind of a super battery that would last a long time.

    6. JR

      Probably too heavy.

    7. DB

      Heavy, yeah. And they're, you know, wolves are on average 100 pounds, and the batteries are pretty big, but I'm waiting for Elon Musk to develop a-

    8. JR

      (laughs)

    9. DB

      ... super radio collar battery. (laughs)

    10. JR

      Well, they're pretty close to developing some pretty spectacular battery technology that-

    11. DB

      I just was reading about that.

    12. JR

      Yeah. Yeah, they're trying to implement it in automobiles. They're going to be able to do it.

    13. DB

      Right.

    14. JR

      I think, I believe Samsung is at the forefront of that.

    15. DB

      Ah.

    16. JR

      Yeah. You know, because obviously they make batteries for their phones-

    17. DB

      Right.

    18. JR

      ... and electronics and things along those lines, but-

    19. DB

      Yeah.

    20. JR

      ... yeah.

    21. DB

      Isn't it a hydrogen battery or something crazy?

    22. JR

      I do not know.

    23. DB

      I was just reading. I'm sorry, I don't remember, but-

    24. JR

      Yeah. Um, so, so they're wearing this heavy collar, and they, they're good for about two years. And a wolf in the wild lives how long on, on average?

    25. DB

      Uh, that's a, I always, when I do have a talk, I ask the audience, "Who, how m- how long do you think the average wolf lives?" So if you guess from the time they're visible from the den emergence, like you start to see them at four weeks, and a few die before that, until they die. Do you want to take a, a guess at-

    26. JR

      I would be cheating because I listen to the Little Mellow Podcast.

    27. DB

      Your last... Okay.

    28. JR

      I think it was 4.3 years.

    29. DB

      4.3 years, yeah.

    30. JR

      Yeah.

  5. 10:49 – 13:44

    The lone wolf in Idaho: surviving solo and finding a mate years later

    1. DB

      Yeah, there's a few in Yellowstone that have got that old. We had one of mine that dispersed to Idaho, and he, kind of interesting, I caught him in 1990, and he dispersed about a year later on his own, went to Idaho in the middle of the Frank Church River of Nonreturn- Return Wilderness. There were no other wolves at that time, and he just hung around. We'd see him once in a while from an airplane.

    2. JR

      By himself?

    3. DB

      By himself. He was a big male. When I got him, he was 111 pounds. But this animal had to survive by killing animals alone. You think about-

    4. JR

      That's crazy.

    5. DB

      ... trying to pull down an elk with your teeth.

    6. JR

      Is it-

    7. DB

      Yeah.

    8. JR

      ... because the old males don't get accepted into a new pack?

    9. DB

      He went to where there weren't any wolves, interestingly, but-

    10. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    11. DB

      ... he had a success story because he just waited it out. And when they reintroduced those wolves into Idaho in '95 and '96, a little black female wolf pops out of her crate and just hits the road as fast as she can go, and she bumps into this wolf, and they set up a territory in Kelly Creek, and they became a breeding mating pair for years and years till he died of old age.

    12. JR

      Wow.

    13. DB

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      So he was just kind of chilling on his own-

    15. DB

      Yeah.

    16. JR

      ... for years.

    17. DB

      Yeah.

    18. JR

      How many years?

    19. DB

      Four.

    20. JR

      Wow.

    21. DB

      And that would be-

    22. JR

      Four years without seeing any other wolves?

    23. DB

      Without being having help to kill for your food item either. That's what amazes me.

    24. JR

      Wow.

    25. DB

      Because he could have gone to Montana and found other wolves, but he didn't.

    26. JR

      Was there any understanding of what he was basically go- 'cause like they usually hunt in packs.

    27. DB

      Yes.

    28. JR

      So it was probably very difficult for him to take down anything larger than a fawn or a deer. So what was he, what was he eating?

    29. DB

      I would guess he was killing elk calves, uh, deer fawns, some deer-... and if he got lucky, if we had a really deep snow winter, it's the advantage of the wolves, 'cause they got big snowshoe feet, and elk, you know, punch through, they got-

    30. JR

      Yeah.

  6. 13:44 – 15:58

    Wolves vs other predators: kill efficiency, conflict, and competition

    1. DB

      I ... It's mind-boggling to me. You know, people think, "Oh, wolves can just kill at will. They can do whatever they want." They have a hard life.

    2. JR

      Yeah.

    3. DB

      They just ... They live in packs because they're not very efficient killers. You know, mountain lions, bears, they're a m- a more efficient predator, especially a mountain lion.

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. DB

      And they got all the claws to hang on. But a wolf can only go with its teeth, and so it generally takes numerous wolves to successfully hunt an animal, especially something big like a moose or a bison.

    6. JR

      What a friend said to me, so I wa- I wanted to run this by you to find out if this is true, he said that mountain lions are killing more elk because of wolves, because what happens is, the mountain lion will kill the w- the elk, but then the wolf will scare the mountain lion off and steal it from him. And so the mountain lion then goes and finds a mule deer, finds another deer, and so the mountain lions are killing more animals because in the areas where mountain lions and wolves cohabitate, the, the wolves are really good at chasing mountain lions off of kills.

    7. DB

      That does happen, and I, I saw it, saw 'em in Glacier Park too, but to, to that end, I'll say this are three times more mountain lions than there are wolves in Northwestern Montana.

    8. JR

      Really?

    9. DB

      Three time... Two and a half to three, it's been documented, so-

    10. JR

      Wow.

    11. DB

      If you think about that-

    12. JR

      That's ... I would have never imagined that.

    13. DB

      Yeah. And mountain lions are, on average, a little bit bigger than wolves. I don't know if you've ever-

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. DB

      ... hunted 'em or not, but my God, they're really-

    16. JR

      I've never hunted a mountain lion, but I saw one in the-

    17. DB

      You did?

    18. JR

      On ... Yeah. I saw one in Utah a couple years back, and it was a big one, like 170-

    19. DB

      Impressive.

    20. JR

      ... pound one.

    21. DB

      Oh, my gosh.

    22. JR

      It was enormous.

    23. DB

      Did they, did they, did they tree it with hounds?

    24. JR

      No. No. We were driving-

    25. DB

      Oh.

    26. JR

      ... and, uh, we were about 25, 30 yards from it, and, uh-

    27. DB

      Wow.

    28. JR

      ... my friend stopped the truck and he said, "Look at the size of that cat." It was under a tree, and it was just as dawn w- or just as dusk was happening-

    29. DB

      Yeah.

    30. JR

      ... so you could see his eyes glowing.

  7. 15:58 – 33:28

    Living remote in Montana: off-grid cabin, intuition, and a terrifying human encounter

    1. JR

      And you're out there by yourself too, right?

    2. DB

      Yeah, a lot.

    3. JR

      Do you have, uh, like, modern amenities up there? Do you have satellite-

    4. DB

      Well-

    5. JR

      ... internet and all that jazz?

    6. DB

      ... my, my little cabin is 55 miles off the grid, and it's dry. I don't have any water. I don't have electricity.

    7. JR

      No electricity?

    8. DB

      Mm-mm. It's way off the grid. But, um, I, I built it. I took down an old historic homestead and I moved the logs up to where it sits. You can come up sometime. Check-

    9. JR

      You did it all yourself?

    10. DB

      Well, no, no. I had help with ... A lot of friends helped me over the years. It took me seven years from the time I got the logs and had friends help me take it down til it was livable.

    11. JR

      Wow.

    12. DB

      Long time, 'cause I wa... when I had money, I didn't have time, and when I had time, I didn't have money, right? (laughs)

    13. JR

      (laughs)

    14. DB

      For building it. (laughs) So ... But I eventually got it done, and a lot of friends, very dear friends helped, but I poured concrete and I s- cut logs and, you know, I did everything. But, um, when I built the place ... Where was I going with this? Sorry.

    15. JR

      You were just talking about what it's like out there.

    16. DB

      Okay.

    17. JR

      No electricity-

    18. DB

      Right.

    19. JR

      ... no water.

    20. DB

      And ... So for years, I've lived without ... And I haul water from a spring. In the winter, I melt the snow, 'cause we get a lot of snow. But three su- three summers ago now, I was there alone and I fell down the hard ... the stairs, all the wooden stairs, and I broke the top of my foot.

    21. JR

      (exhales)

    22. DB

      And I said, "You know, this isn't gonna be any fun for a while 'cause I gotta close up the cabin, and I have a propane fridge and stove, and I gotta undo the propane and empty the fridge. And I gotta la- shutter..." 'Cause I'm not gonna be back, I got a broken foot, so I'm hobbling around, and I said, "Okay, now I'm gonna get Starlink." (laughs)

    23. JR

      (laughs)

    24. DB

      That was my motivator, 'cause if I'd had a phone, I, I could've-

    25. JR

      Yeah.

    26. DB

      ... called somebody for help, but I, I didn't and I couldn't. So after that, then I got into Starlink. They were still in the beta development, I think, and anyway, I got it on. So I have Starlink available to me at my cabin, b- but only when I choose to turn it on. It's not-

    27. JR

      Right.

    28. DB

      Like, if you were to email me or call me up there, you wouldn't get me. And when I choose to turn it on, I get the messages. (laughs) So it's kind of the best of both worlds. But I don't live there full-time anymore. I live in town.

    29. JR

      That is actually the best of both worlds.

    30. DB

      Yeah.

  8. 33:28 – 39:34

    Yellowstone tourism effects: habituation, famous wolves, and the cost of visibility

    1. JR

      I went to Yellowstone-

    2. DB

      (laughs)

    3. JR

      ... a few years back with my family, and I f- I felt like it was very weird. I've, I've, I've felt like I'm enjoying... My daughters were really young at the time.

    4. DB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JR

      I'm enjoying that they're seeing bears and they're seeing-

    6. DB

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      Well, we didn't see bears. We did see... They had... There's this place in Montana that has this grizzly bear, uh, preserve. It's like a place where they take care of bears, so they would like feed them frozen watermelons-

    8. DB

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      ... which is crazy to watch a bear chew through a frozen watermelon like it's a grape.

    10. DB

      Whoa. Whoa.

    11. JR

      They just go right through it. It's a frozen watermelon.

    12. DB

      Whoa.

    13. JR

      And they just (chewing sounds) like it's nothing.

    14. DB

      (laughs) Yeah.

    15. JR

      But, uh, we did see a lot of elk and a, a bunch of bison. And the elk was strange, because I'm sure you know this, but for the people at home, elk, uh, understand that wolves don't come to these community centers, these areas where, you know, there's vending machines and buildings. So the elk are all over the place out there.

    16. DB

      Yeah, on the lawns. (laughs)

    17. JR

      Yeah, so I don't know, I don't know if I put it on Instagram. I think I did a, I took a selfie with a, a cow elk that was like 40 feet from me, just lying there. And she wasn't worried about me at all. And I was trying to tell my kids, I was like, "This never happens."

    18. DB

      Mm-mm.

    19. JR

      "This is weird."

    20. DB

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      It's weird that they've become so habitualized-

    22. DB

      Yeah.

    23. JR

      ... to being around cars and people.

    24. DB

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      They just know that peop- It's safe when you're around these people.

    26. DB

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      So they just hang out there.

    28. DB

      That's probably at Mammoth-Gardiner area. That happens all the time up there.

    29. JR

      Well, it happens in Colorado too.

    30. DB

      Colorado.

  9. 39:34 – 42:38

    Livestock depredation: why problem wolves are often euthanized instead of relocated

    1. DB

      You know, it's been interesting to me 'cause I, for my career, I've, I've done everything. My first year, my first job I worked up in northern Minnesota in a little tiny 300-person farming community, and I was hired, US Fish and Wildlife Service, to go in and help (sighs) prevent livestock depredation, and when wolves killed cattle or sheep, to go in and remove, which meant trap and haul away and they were euthanized. And when there weren't depredations, to go out and, and, um, research trap and put collars on the other wolves. And it was, I mean, this was big, big stuff for a girl from Minneapolis, starry-eyed and (laughs) pretty naive to go up and save the folks of Northholm from the wolves, you know? (laughs)

    2. JR

      Yeah.

    3. DB

      Oh my God. It was such an important summer for me to learn professionally and personally, um, and I wrote about that, but I learned a lot and it was interesting work, but I realized, yeah, wolves can cause conflicts for people, and it was a new concept for me.

    4. JR

      So when they captured the wolves and they removed them, why did they euthanize them? Why didn't they just relocate them?

    5. DB

      Well, they would be me 'cause I was the one-

    6. JR

      Right-

    7. DB

      ... catching and trapping them.

    8. JR

      ... you.

    9. DB

      Me.

    10. JR

      Well, obviously someone's telling you what to do, though, right?

    11. DB

      Right. So I had to bring them to the, the s- the main office in Grand Rapids, Minnesota where they were euthanized. So, eh, prior to that, in 1978, you couldn't euthanize wolves. They changed the status of, from endangered to threatened, and so when they were threatened, then, under Endangered Species Act, you could actually euthanize them. And they didn't translocate them. This is a really good question, because they found over the years with studies in Minnesota, and eventually in Montana too, that when you translocate or move a wolf who's causing a problem, that wolf very, very rarely survives to reproduce because it gets killed by other wolves, it comes back to depredate again, it moves onto another farm or ranch and does it again. They, they don't generally survive, and so it was determined that it makes officials feel good to move them and it, it's a good facade for the public to believe in, but sometimes it results in a pretty prolonged and inhumane existence for a few months or a year 'til they die anyway, so-

    12. JR

      Mm.

    13. DB

      Yeah, it's-

    14. JR

      Is it because they're habitualized to start preying on cattle?

    15. DB

      It's tough once they learn to take cattle or sheep, it's tough to n- conf- to break that pattern, let's put it that way. It-

    16. JR

      'Cause it's so easy?

    17. DB

      Well, yeah. I mean, if it was me out there walking around and I had a choice between a deer that's gonna kick me (laughs) -

    18. JR

      Right.

    19. DB

      ... in the teeth or taking the cow, I'd pick the slow, dumb groceries every time.

    20. JR

      Yeah.

    21. DB

      It's just me. (laughs)

    22. JR

      Of course.

    23. DB

      Of course.

    24. JR

      And if they know the groceries are all penned up.

    25. DB

      Exactly.

    26. JR

      Yeah.

    27. DB

      So it's a, it's a difficult challenge and wolves are continuing to expand everywhere in the West, the Midwest, Europe, and so there's more and more challenges in a lot of the w-... s- the early f- excitement about wolves has changed into a, a bitter battle. Um, yeah.

  10. 42:38 – 52:56

    Elk declines, harsh winters, and access politics: wolves as a convenient scapegoat

    1. JR

      Yeah. It's a, it's a really interesting, complex battle, because there's, uh, a lot of hunters that do not like the reintroduction of wolves.

    2. DB

      Yes.

    3. JR

      Because th- and they'll say that the, the elk populations are down, and they, they're down dramatically in Montana because the reintroduction, which was in 1996, uh, when, when did they-

    4. DB

      '95, '96, and then '96, '97, those winters.

    5. JR

      So, but the reality is, it's not natural to not have those predators there, and you're gonna get an overpopulation of elk, and that's gonna lead to starvation and disease.

    6. DB

      Yes. And so, kind of the, the, the die was cast when those wolves were removed, and basically, by the 1930s, there really weren't viable populations in the West anymore. There were wolves here or there in a pack here or there, but there weren't thousands. And, and they went into, inside the national parks. They have a picture in many books of rangers with cute little wolf pups that are, like, seven, eight weeks old and they took the pictures. This was in 1926. And then they killed them all. So they even removed all the predators within national parks. So people, historic memory... You know, we have really short memories.

    7. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    8. DB

      Historic memory of, say, for example, the northern range, northern herd, uh, range of elk out of Gardner, it was about 20,000 before the wolves were introduced. Way over carrying capacity. Elk were starving. The browse lines as high up as they could reach. They ate everything they could eat. They had, were paying people to c- people were being paid to come in and kill deer and elk. And then they started the late hunting seasons out of Gardner, which I wasn't in, 'cause my boyfriend at the time had a tag. And they just have a shooting line in February, and kill, kill all these elk, because they aren't gonna make it, anyway, and so you shoot a starving cow in February.

    9. JR

      Wow.

    10. DB

      'Cause there wasn't predators.

    11. JR

      Right.

    12. DB

      So then when the wolves came back, two things happened. Number one, it was a new, new predator, but number two, in the winter of '96, '97, we had some of the deepest snows ever recorded in-

    13. JR

      Ah.

    14. DB

      ... in the mountains, ever. And so, many of the herd died from snowfall. And I've had hunters tell me, "Yeah, the population of elk from, went from 20,000 to 10,000 in two years. Damn those wolves." And it's like, do you think 35 wolves killed 10,000 elk? (laughs) Come on.

    15. JR

      Right.

    16. DB

      Let's, let's just do the math a minute.

    17. JR

      Yeah, that is the problem with these-

    18. DB

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      ... uh, people that don't have a nuanced perspective on what's happening, because they have a vested interest in it being a problem that the wolves are keeping them from being able to be successful on an elk hunt.

    20. DB

      Right.

    21. JR

      I-

    22. DB

      And I'm a hunter. I get it.

    23. JR

      Yeah. But the, the die-offs are huge. Like, the, the place that I was just telling you about-

    24. DB

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      ... before the podcast that I was in in Utah-

    26. DB

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      ... they lost 80% of their mule deer population a year ago.

    28. DB

      From what?

    29. JR

      Snow.

    30. DB

      Yeah. And, and so w-

  11. 52:56 – 1:24:57

    Wolf hate, viral extremes, and dubious 'super pack' stories

    1. JR

      Well, what they have done though is brought some balance, right?

    2. DB

      I think... Yes, they brought... So they... You can go either way, and I think people who are out on either extreme can actually make people in the middle more involved with conservation efforts, like that guy with the movie. Well, it- it's a rosy story, and pieces of it may be true in certain places for, for a temporal or spatial time period. But then there's the guy in... Where was it? Daniels, Wyoming, who r- roared over that wolf in the snowmobile and crippled it. You heard about this, didn't you?

    3. JR

      Oh, that's a terrible story.

    4. DB

      And then he brought it back crippled-

    5. JR

      To the bar.

    6. DB

      ... to the bar.

    7. JR

      Taped its mouth up.

    8. DB

      And had it in the bar so people could be entertained for an hour before they took it out back and shot it. Now, that's a pretty horrific thing whether it's a deer, a mountain lion, or an o- a wolf. It's horrible.

    9. JR

      With any animal.

    10. DB

      Any animal. But that horrific act got a lot of people in the middle fired up to become more strong conservationists. So, I'm sorry that that happened, but on the other hand, it brings a lot of awareness to people who are not aware of the level of (sighs) capacity of people to be stupid.

    11. JR

      And evil.

    12. DB

      And, and evil.

    13. JR

      That's evil.

    14. DB

      That's a good word.

    15. JR

      That... When I saw the photos of the wolf, I'm like, "That is an evil act."

    16. DB

      Yeah. Right.

    17. JR

      Like, that thing is incr- that's an incredible animal.

    18. DB

      Th-

    19. JR

      You know, and you have no right to do that. And if you crippled it... If you crippled it with a snowmobile, the right thing to do is to call someone or have it euthanized.

    20. DB

      Shoot it.

    21. JR

      Yeah, shoot it or call someone to have it shot, but to drag it to a bar is just sick.

    22. DB

      Well, I mean, he ran it over intentionally, and he had a gun.

    23. JR

      Oh, he did it intentionally.

    24. DB

      O- Oh, yeah, and he had a gun.

    25. JR

      Oh.

    26. DB

      No, he... It was all for show, and it...

    27. JR

      But that's the... The level of vitriol that people have-

    28. DB

      Yeah.

    29. JR

      ... towards wolves is very strange, and I think it goes back to, like, Little Red Riding Hood and, you know, the Big Bad Wolf, and there's just, like, this m- thing that we have in our mind-... that we don't have for other predators. We don't have it for bears, we don't have it for cats.

    30. DB

      No.

Episode duration: 2:57:28

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