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Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana.
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Speaker 2: This is Col’s Week in Review with Ryan cow Cala.
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Speaker 1: Here’s Cal. Last week, police were called to investigate a shotgun blast at a gas station convenience store in Scott’s Bluff, Nebraska. Thankfully it wasn’t a hold up gone wrong, but instead a sit stay, lie down gone wrong. It seems that the driver of a pickup truck had left a loaded shotgun in the passenger seat of the vehicle. The driver’s dog allegedly moved from one side of the truck to the other, possibly stepping on the gun’s trigger in the process. The firearm discharged, blowing a hole in the door of the vehicle and sending a single shotgun pellet into the arm of a passing motorist who is dangling her hand out the window the way we all do on a warm day when we want to feel the breeze. Thankful that motorists injury wasn’t serious. It’s illegal to carry a loaded shotgun in a car in Nebraska, so the driver will likely be charged with that violation unless he can prove Fido loaded that sucker himself. Still, this whole story has a kind of a dog ate my homework. Feeling to me, maybe it is true that the dog set off the gun, but maybe this was an excuse that will get the truck owner out of the more serious charge of discharging a firearm illegally. Regardless, there’s part of me that sympathizes with this dog. There have definitely been days going after ducks, reppland birds when I just can’t hit the side of a barn. And on those days, Old Snort gives me a look that me and she wants to take over the shooting as well as the flushing and retrieving. This week, we’ve got Texas lions, poachers, cute little endangered species, and so much more. But first I’m going to tell you about my week. And my week has largely been burping, balancing, swaddling, cleaning butts, and cleaning dishes, which I’m pretty darn good at. We’ve successfully gotten a kid down to the river three times, twice to the Gallatin and once down to the Missouri. Pretty good for almost two weeks of life. Here’s my honest and only real frustration so far. We’ll make the hard commitment to head for outside time. Let the dog swim, get the kids some sun have that whole plan committed to at nine am and about twelve forty will be on the road. There is currently no diaper ash in this house, but that chap’s my ass in the grand scheme, however, the kid’s happy and putting on ounces, and that’s the only actual measure of success. So go team and no name yet. Trust me, we’ll get there, or maybe we won’t. We’ll start a new fab now. I got a whole roundup I gotta do here, and it’s gonna be a little free verse. I’ll try to stick with it as best as I can. But just full disclosure here. I had a lot of other things going on this week. Didn’t quite get to hacking on the keys like I should have been. So lots of things in the news and I want to run through them in a way that paints an honest and appropriate picture. Okay, So, going all the way back to the Big Beautiful Bill, public Lands sell off, budget reconciliation, the public land slice of that threat in the Big Beautiful Bill, the selloff part was the nastiest, and because it’s so hard to get the American public to get up off their butts and demand action, we all put our eggs in that basket, okay, And that turned into the not one acre fight. At the same time, there was a bunch of stuff in the big Beautiful Bill, such as rollbacks of provisions within the permitting process for oil and gas exploration that just makes things way looser than they had previously been. Then we have this effort to rescind the roadless rule. We’ve covered the roadless rule a ton, so very briefly, it’s about fifty eight million acres that fall within roadless Rule inventory roadless area protection. That name is a little bit of a misnomer. There are existing roads and a lot of those fifty eight million acres. Some of it, however, is designated wilderness. As anybody who knows about wilderness areas, you take roads to get to them, right, you just can’t drive in them. In the designated wilderness. There’s these cherry stem roads that punch into them, sometimes all the way through them, like in the case of the frank Church. And then there’s areas where you just cannot build a road because of the grade and the soil type, and the fact that you can build something and then just be in a constant state of rebuilding it like it just literally will not stick to the surface. So there’s lots of areas that don’t have the monetary gain for marketable timber or mineral. But but they fell into the bucket of inventoried roadless because the American taxpayer was just sick, right, the conservative Republicans were just sick a pan for roads that they had to constantly rebuild and didn’t provide the value to the American people. The stated beef with roadless areas and the reason to rescind is because, oh my god, we can’t manage fire within the wildland urban interface, which is basically like that buffer zone where your inventory roadless area is closest to areas of human habitation. Okay, some states put their thumb right in the eye of this statement. Montana is one of them. We’ve done a really great job of exercising the roadless rule of the way it’s written, which provides for habitat improvement and the ability to mitigate fire mechanically. Right, even if you have to build new roads. However, lots and lots of new technology right. Part of this is not being eco friendly. Part of this is trying to get people. The biggest liability and the most expensive part of a job operation out of the job. Right, So you come up with new and more efficient ways to mechanize, and those ways happen to have a smaller footprint on the landscape, and they don’t require new roads to be built, and they can go in there and do that mechanical thinning within the wildland urban interface. Other states and in certain ranger districts within our states too, people really believe to their core they are anti any sort of thinning, anti any sort of logging projects, even those outlined within the roadless rule. And I think some of that’s true. Like there’s litigation groups out there, but it’s literally their job not to see the forest through the trees. Okay, they want to sue and get a settlement. That’s their whole business model. It really doesn’t matter what’s going on with that particular timber project. You know, our stance pragmatic stants right as fifty eight million acres is a lot within that. There’s huge core areas away from roads that we know are trophy animals dear elk, moose, goat, sheep they need in order to feel secure, calv lamb, what have you. Selfishly, it’s those core areas that make hunting renewable. Right, Any outfitter on public or private will tell you you leave the bedding areas alone, and if you leave the feeding areas alone and hit those animals in between, they will run the gauntlet somehow someway every day. On the fishery side of things, there’s a lot of areas in here and really where a lot of like the marketable timber would be are from restrictions that we put in place to have these big old trees holding the soil down around high mountain streams like our cold water reserves, but also happens to be like critical spawning habitat for a lot of endangered species such as bull trout, sakey salmon, chinook salmon. You get the drift on that one, and those areas are off limits. They’re also, you know, very expensive, and most logging operations, big, small, independent, corporate whatever, they don’t want to have their name tied to putting a bunch of erodible soil into spawning areas spawning beds. So all of that is wrapped up within the roadless rule. There’s some pushback there even from the hunting community saying like, well, we need new roads to access this stuff. It’s a cautionary tale. We know not everything can be everywhere all at once, or the stuff that we want to get to just isn’t going to be there, plain and simple. That’s the way it works. And if you don’t believe me, you just go read about the lack of wildlife at the turn of the century when we had man camps all over the place, and you know, the robber Barren era was running a rough shot over this country. We’ve been there already. Our memories just aren’t long. And that just recently we add Trump executive order to rescind some previous administrations executive order going back to the Nixon and Carter administrations that basically set a level of expectation for all new development on our national forests, primarily and BLM to a certain extent on where new roads trails can go that allow for motorized use. Now, motorized use can be like weaponized I would say so, first off, I am aware of zero motorized groups out there that want to degrade a habitat as part of their mission statement or want to eliminate viable wildlife populations as part of their mission statement law biding off roaders, trail riders, they buy off highway vehicles stickers they get off highway gas that is taxed. They contribute to trail maintenance and campground maintenance through those funds. It’s very meaningful, and I have long argued that a great way for you know, like wheeled communities such as e bikes and mountain bikes to have a legitimate, bigger seat at the frickin’ table is start voluntarily slapping those stickers on your fancy pedal bikes there, even the motorized fancy pedal bikes. Don’t kid yourself, those are motors e bikers. So those user groups happen to be kind of everybody’s user group because unless you’re like very very fortunate in my opinion, to have big chunks of public ground right out your back door that you can legitimately go fish, hunt, hike on, you are more than likely taking a vehicle to a jumping off point, a trailhead at minimum. Then you’re getting out and you’re going and doing your thing. That’s how I do it every single time at this point, living an old bos Angelus, when I was living down and Ketchum, I could walk to the river and fish. I could hop on my pedal bike and go hunt on National Forest and get access to like big, big trail networks and all that fun stuff. So speaking generalities here right, Like once in my lifetime I have driven from a hotel out onto a lake, opened the vehicle door and dropped a line in a pre drilled hole, and jigged out of that truck with a bunch of folks from Bimidji, Minnesota after all eel pout and listening to I don’t know, a hockey game or a football game on the radio or something. That’s the only time I’ve actually done the direct access from motorized four wheel drive motorized You’re sick of hearing me say, But like, we all got to work together on this stuff, and what Trump has done here has basically like clean this slate. I’m sure there’s gonna be lawsuits and things like that. I think it’s very, very scary to think that there’s individuals within all of our societies that love to color outside the lines, and they may take this as the go ahead to start ripping new trails through sensitive habitat, really blowing things up, being obnoxious, making a bad face, for the motorized crowd and for everybody else who likes to be in the back country. But the opportunity is that all of these groups can come together and create a new baseline that all travel management plans will go forward from here taking these guidelines into consideration. So very concisely, Trump’s executive order removed those guidelines that I think are very very necessary. It’s not yet the end of the world, but this is something that we have got got to ensure that every time somebody says access, we include responsible use. We want our natural resources and our opportunities surrounding those natural resources to be here in a sustainable manner and in perpetuity. The days of getting it while it’s here and before it’s gone are over. Now. When you take all of those things, expedited oil and gas exploration permitting process, you look the Ambler Road, you look at the oil and gas lease sales going on in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the push to rescind the roadless rule, and you look at the recision or the overriding of these previous executive orders as it pertains to off highway vehicle use and off trail vehicles and you look at the continued use of the Congressional Review Act to rescind a mining moratorium and the Rainy River Watershed upstream of the Boundary Waters Canoe area. It is really safe to say that the bedrock found as of how we manage this insanely beneficial to america public natural resource system that we have is fully under attack.
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Speaker 2: Now.
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Speaker 1: It doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to fight and claw and scratch and kick tooth and nail to get back to where we were. There is a path forward to establishing something new, more modern, but we have to be on the lookout for losing some really good stuff before we get those new bumpers, those new guidelines in place. You know, I’m running on like three hours of sleep. I probably shouldn’t be riffing like this. I appreciate you guys listening to that. Please go over to Backcountry Hunters dot org for more information. We’re putting out a lot of good stuff on this. It is non partisan, there is no spin. You can look at it and do with it as you will. Really need to become a member, Okay. Membership gives us independence, and that’s what we need to be effective. Other thing I want to draw attention to is the news show going on at the meaeater dot com. They’re doing a really good job with the new show. And then I got a whole corner crossing update for you too. But I’ve gone on long enough, so let’s get to some loosey goosey stuff here. Trust me, the corner cross and talk will be around wyoming it. It’s just call to action for you. There’s some proposed legislation that would provide compensation for land owners who are adjacent to public land access through corner crossing, which is legal throughout the Tenth Circuit. Right walking from public land to public land is legal. Imagine that, and I want to hear your thoughts on this. I’ll tell you one of the biggest threats to biodiversity, those good ecosystem services that we all need is punitive tariffs on our farm ranch community, lack of funding and implementation of farm and grazing services, federal dollars which would be like subsidies, and a bunch of other things. Getting to the end producer, and crazy diesel fuel prices. All of this can be the final poop sandwich to a producer out there who may have no other choice than to develop the old family farm or family ranch, and as these places get broken up, there is no bringing them back. So I am all for supporting ecosystem services such as healthy native grasses that are drought tolerant, fire tolerant, put pounds on cattle and happen to be great habitat, the fight against noxious weeds, the fight against the green glacier juniper encroachment, all four. I think the American people should be invested in supporting our producers in ways that focus on the soil health and the habitat that both supports greats and biodiversity. But I’m really really curious to hear from you all if you think that that support should also be extended to land owners who own property that abut public property that is corner accessible because the American people want to walk from public land to public land. Is that something we should all get behind and pay for right in ask cl that’s Ascal at the meat eater dot Com. Jumping on over to Texas. Of the fifteen states in the West where mountain lions prow of the landscape, only Texas doesn’t have a formal management plan for the species or even a population estimate. A recent proposal to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission would have changed that, but it was withdrawn from consideration. In the Lone Star state, mounta lions are considered non game animals under the recently unveiled ten year Mountain Research and Monitoring Plan. That wouldn’t change, though. The new proposal put forward by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department would have instituted a mandatory harvest reporting system for the species statewide. The folks at Texas Parks and Wildlife said that doing so would be a quote critical component of the department’s ongoing attempts to better monitor mountain lion populations. State biologists also said the current voluntary reporting system was inadequate for a science based way of estimating its big cat populations. As with most things related to predator management, the proposal reffled to feathers, with some hunters worried that this proposal could eventually contribute to the species one day being reclassified as a game animal and the take of it being limited. They also took issue that some environmental groups have come out in support of the proposal. Oh Cable Smith host, a Lone Star outdoor show expressed this perspective.
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Speaker 2: We’ve been managing mountain lions the same way in Texas since the dawn of time, and yet their populations are thriving in West and South Texas, Islifornia. This is what they’re trying to do in Colorado. You are negotiating with m wrights, terrorist Texans for mounta lions. These are not sportsmen, these are activists period.
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Speaker 1: It is true that the state’s approach to mounta lion management largely has not changed, with the exception of the Commission banning canned mounta lion hunting and making it illegal to leave a live mountain lion in a trap or snare for over thirty six hours, which happened back in twenty twenty four, and despite large support for what most would consider a very very standard practice of getting a general idea how much of a critter is out on the landscape so you can hunt it in a sustainable manner. All that this conversation has resulted in in Texas is a mountain lion Stakeholder working group, which warned in twenty twenty two to include the perspectives of landowners, livestock producers, trappers, and natural resource professionals. That group thought that the mandatory reporting would be beneficial. So it’s back to the drawing board in the lone Star state once again. Right in. Let me know what you think, askcl at themeeater dot com. Moving on to the miniature rabbit desk. This one was sent to us by longtime listener Jim Lane. Does one of America’s funniest little critters require protection under the Endangered Species Act. Pygmy rabbits are the smallest species of wild bunnies, not just in North America but the whole world. They live in tall stands of sagebrush out here in the West, and as you know from listening to this podcast, a lot of that habitat is fragmenting and disappearing, and this isn’t swell for the little hoppers. In twenty twenty four, the US Fish and Wildlife Service issued in an initial finding that they had substantial information that the species warranted protection under the ESA. After that, the agency is supposed to come to a decision within a year’s deadline. Well it’s been over two years now and the FEDS have yet to issue a listing proposal, and now environ mental groups are suing them to do so. None of this is particularly unusual. It’s a common song and dance in which the Fish and Wildlife Service fails to meet deadlines and then outside parties sue them to try to compel them to do so. Take grizzly Bears, for instance, which Western states have been petitioning the service to dlist for several years now, and the decision keeps getting kicked down the road despite lawsuits. Moving on to the crime desk, we’ve got another story about a bad actor in the deer woods, or actually, in this case some folks front yard. A suspected poacher in Texas was arrested following an investigation that began in June twenty twenty five when dead whitetail bucks started turning up in residential neighborhoods and crossbow bolts were recovered from people’s front yards and porches. That September, Game Warden’s promptly arrested demand by the name of Daryl Maguire on both suspicion of wildlife and drug possession crimes, and they did end up dinging him for possession of five point eighty six grams of meth, which he may or may not I’ve used when he was allegedly whacking all those deer from his vehicle, cutting off their heads and leaving the rest to rot. Ultimately, McGuire was hit with seventy four charges. He suspected of illegally poaching eight white tail bucks from June to September in twenty twenty five. He’s also accused of taking five deer over his season limit in twenty twenty four. McGuire’s case is pending. And while you are innocent until proven guilty in this country, I suspect this fellow is going to be getting his just desserts in the near future. Sounds like a real math down in the southeast Sweetwater, Tennessee. A fracas erupted recently after duck hunters were cited for shooting ducks inside the city limits. Thanks to listener Ricky Davis for sending this one in. Longtime listeners know we’re always encouraging people in cities to get out to hunt and fish. We need as many people as possible involved in protecting wild places and paying into conservation. But can there be too much of a good thing? It seems that a while back, three hunters purchased a seventeen acre property within Sweetwater, specifically for duck hunting. They and three friends were cited in December twenty twenty four for quote unquote discharging firearms within city limits. The hunting spot is across the street from a high school, but the hunters argued that they were more than one hundred yards away from any building’s per state statue. Local courts have upheld the citation, but the case now sits before the East Tennessee Court of Appeals. In response to the case, lawmakers drafted a bill that, in the words of the Tennessee Wildlife Federation, quote, clarifies that cities, counties, and other local governments may not regulate the manner and means of taking wildlife, including the discharge of a firearm, when conducted as part of a lawful hunting. Regulation of hunting methods would remain under statewide rules and proclamations established by the Fish and Wildlife Commission unquote. The idea here is that state, local, and federal laws still cover reckless endangerment and misuse of firearms, but the proper authority governing hunting in particular should always be the state. The measure doesn’t change any existing laws on the books, but just clarifies the lines of authority. That bill recently passed both houses of the Tennessee legislature and was signed by Governor Bill Lee. Although this statute will now allow those sweetwater hunters to make good use of their hunting spot, there’s been no word about whether this existing citation will be dismissed. We’ll let you know. Moving over to the heart of the cold, cold city, the summer weather has been bringing out the rats in America’s urban centers, or more precisely, bringing people outside to witness the rats that are always there. Washington, d C. Has been singled out in particular as the American metropolis with the highest number of rats per capita. And this time we’re not talking the kind who gives speeches on the floor of the Senate. According to an analysis of rat complaint reports across the country, DC had two hundred and sixty two point six rat complaints per ten thousand residents, compared to one hundred and thirty five point six for Chicago, sixty point seventy four for Boston, in just twenty eight point four one for New York City. In response to this terrible showing, DC has launched a rat control initiative, dedicating one hundred and thirty thousand dollars to various measures like contraceptive bait and increased trash pickups. One hundred and thirty k doesn’t seem like all that much money to me, but I guess you have to start somewhere. As reported by the Times of London, a company called American Rat Hunters is now patrolling the streets of our nation’s capital with terriers named Willa, Mia, Kuma, and of course Sir Jacks the Ripper, who has notched over six thousand kills. Jorge Roschak, owner of American Rat Hunters, said quote, I really see it as the most humane way of killing the rat. Within fifteen seconds, the rat is no more. Poison takes seven days. Rats have unsurprisingly become a political issue in Washington. Jackie Rays Yanes, a candidate for DC City Council, told The Times, quote, when I started canvassing, I realized it was my number one issue. Everybody said, what are you doing about the rats? Yanes herself can relate. Earlier this year, rats nod the wire in her car, causing seventeen hundred dollars in damage. Notably, Teddy Roosevelt himself got in on the DC rat hunting game. His two terriers Skip and Jack were credited with ridding the White House of rats, at least temporarily. Tr wasn’t the only famous conservationists dedicated to killing rats. In eighteen thirty nine, John J. Audubon got permission from the Mayor of New York City to shoot rats he saw on the streets. Speaking in New York, the city that Never sleeps is still on a roll in its war on rats, with fifteen straight months of declining rat reports across the five burroughs. This progress has come even despite the departure of Kafi Karate, the city so called Ratsar last September, who was making one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars a year. Newly minted Mayor Zoram Mundani hasn’t appointed a new ratzar, preferring instead to just continue the city’s initiative to get all its trash into rat proof containers instead of plastic bags on the street. All buildings up to nine residential units will be required to use those containers for their trash starting this June. That might seem like government overreach, The bins cost just fifty bucks and can be delivered to buildings by door Dash or Instacart. Might be wondering why a podcast about conservation and the outdoors is talking so much about city rats. Well, this is the exact same solution that prevents bears and other bigger garbage eaters from becoming threats. Requiring locking garbage cans make them cheap and easy to get. If the Big Apple can do it, maybe cities and towns in bear country can do it too. Jumping over to the family history desk, way back seventeen thousand years ago, the area that is now the English Channel was a valley where reindeer, wooly rhinos and ancient horses migrated, leading hunters to what is now England and Wales. Further north, was all glacier. In a cave near the modern day Welsh town of Swansea, one of those people left a few streaks of red ochre on the rock wall. Those marks were discovered in nineteen twelve and declared to be human made by the archaeologists who had verified the Lasso Cave paintings in France, but by nineteen twenty the marks were dismissed as simply naturally occurring pigments. However, a recent study in the journal Quaternary has now concluded that the marks are in fact at work of art. The oldest example so far discovered in the UK. The painting is in a cave called Bacon Hole, in an area of whales called the Mumbles, which should make everyone else who’s ever named a place jealous. Back in nineteen twenty eight, scientists only had their judgment to depend on when assessing archaeological finds because they had no way to date the minerals themselves. Carbon dating wouldn’t be invented until the forties, and even then it wouldn’t be able to analyze minerals that don’t contain any carbon. But chemical dating methods have dramatically improved in recent years, and the scientists a Bacon Hole used uranium thorium analysis to pinpoint the age of the pigments and to isolate all the ingredients of the paint, which could not have come together by accident. I’ll tell you what. With an infant to take care of and a podcast just recorded, I feel like I’m already in a place called the Mumbles, and I need climb into Baconhole. For a little while to get my strength back up. Once the kiddle figures out what his fingers are, and maybe we’ll do a little finger painting. That’s all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write in to ask c al that’s ascalthemeaeater dot com. Let us know what’s going on in your neck of the woods. You know we appreciate it. Please take a hard look at signing up at minimum for the newsletters coming out of conservation groups such ass Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, which can be found at Backcountry Hunters dot org. We need you become a member today. We need you to be informed and take action. There’s a lot of stuff coming down the pipe that will have repercussions for us in the near future. There are unbelievably bad ass hunting landscapes that have been written about for a century, places on the hunter’s bucket list that it is very possible we will lose a portion of under our watch, which I just do not find acceptable unless you get off your butts you’re duffs and start spreading the word. Beyond this here podcast about getting involved. Check out our friends over at the TRCP as well. As National Wildlife Federation, broad scope organizations working on landscape level objectives. Lot’s happening. Trust me, it affects you. Let’s get on it. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll talk to you next week.
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