For The Wild - MIKE PHILLIPS on Gray Wolves and the Vitality of Death [ENCORE] ⧸275

00:00:00.740 Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with Mike Phillips.

00:00:18.840 I came to wonder if all these many years, these decades, these centuries, Mother Earth has been

00:00:25.300 howling to us, hoping for us to respond by affirming her importance,

00:00:30.700 hoping for us to respond by rising up in defense of the defenseless parts of nature.

00:00:43.660 Mike has served as the executive director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund

00:00:48.300 and advisor to the Turner Biodiversity Divisions

00:00:51.540 since he co-founded both with Ted Turner in June 1997.

00:00:56.720 Prior to that, Mike has worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

00:01:00.360 and National Park Service since 1981.

00:01:04.120 During his employment with the Department of Interior,

00:01:07.260 Mike served as the leader of historic efforts to restore

00:01:10.340 red wolves to the southeastern U.S. and gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park.

00:01:16.020 He also conducted important research on the impacts of oil and gas development

00:01:20.520 on grizzly bears in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, predation costs for gray wolves in

00:01:26.160 Alaska, black bear movements in northeastern North Carolina, and dingo ecology in Australia.

00:01:33.580 In 2006, Mike was elected to the Montana legislature, where he served as the representative

00:01:39.500 for House District 66 in Bozeman until 2012, where he was elected to the Montana Senate.

00:01:46.140 Welcome to the show, Mike. I feel so grateful to be connecting with you today as a fellow

00:01:53.700 conservationist so deeply immersed in this work. Oh, Ayanna, it is very much my privilege and my

00:02:00.560 pleasure. Thank you for having me. Well, within these circles, we often organize and orient around

00:02:06.940 the notion of sustaining life. And in preparing for this interview, I was immediately struck by

00:02:12.940 the way you speak and write about the biological necessity of death. In an interview with Mountain

00:02:18.480 and Prairie podcast, you share, quote, all of life that we see around us, the fantastic forms

00:02:24.780 so well adapted to local challenges, are a function of death. Evolution drives by death, end quote.

00:02:32.340 And what has drawn you to build lifelong alliances with predators like the coyote and the gray wolf,

00:02:38.120 so-called deliverers of death. And in your answer, perhaps you could also speak to the depth that

00:02:43.540 these species bring to our ecological systems and the phenomenon of trophic cascades.

00:02:48.420 My work with coyotes many years ago back, heaven's sakes, it would have been the early 1980s.

00:02:54.960 A wolf researcher by the name of Dave Meech said to me, I don't have any room on my field crew

00:03:02.200 right now, I suggest that you go study coyotes. Back in the early, the 1980s, gray wolves were

00:03:09.100 very, very uncommon in the United States. There were only maybe a thousand gray wolves in

00:03:15.080 northeastern Minnesota. That was it. So Dave's program was the only game in town if you wanted

00:03:20.320 to work with gray wolves. So I took Dave's advice to heart and conducted a study of coyote food

00:03:26.200 habits in Illinois and published that study and as soon as I did that within about a year I went

00:03:33.540 right back to Dr. Beach and I said okay well you did exactly what you told me to do now do you have

00:03:38.380 an opening and he did that was in 1981 that I began working with Dave and Ayana I've had the

00:03:47.020 good fortune to work on wolf recovery and conservation and research on a near daily basis

00:03:54.180 ever since. The reason that wolves made so much sense to me as a lens for examining

00:04:00.680 opportunities to contribute, the wolf is a fantastic species for illuminating all sorts

00:04:07.180 of problems that are only at best tangentially related to the gray wolf. Wolf recovery,

00:04:13.340 wolf restoration, wolf research is always about more than gray wolves. Wolves can be almost in

00:04:20.240 in a ways viewed as a trim tab. You may not know what a trim tab is, but many years ago I learned

00:04:24.860 how to fly small aircraft anticipating working in remote country where working out of a plane was

00:04:31.180 sometimes essential. A trim tab is a device in the plane that gives you a mechanical advantage

00:04:37.620 over portions of the wing to make the wing behave properly so the plane can be flown properly.

00:04:44.720 there's such great force over the wings you need a mechanical advantage a system of pulleys

00:04:51.440 to be able to move the wing and manage the wing in a fashion that allows the plane to

00:04:56.780 perform properly it's the trim tab that allows you that control a small movement of the trim tab

00:05:04.000 can create a great opportunity for the plane a small movement with wolf recovery can create a

00:05:10.780 great opportunity for conservation in general. Grey wolves are a wonderful way for examining

00:05:16.800 our relationship with Mother Earth, which has been clearly out of whack for a long, long time.

00:05:23.500 And once we come to accept that fact, then we're on the road to finding a new relationship going

00:05:28.900 forward where it's possible, I think, and possible to imagine peace, prosperity, and justice for more

00:05:36.640 of human life and, at least for me, non-human life, which is essential too. Now, on to trophic

00:05:45.160 cascades. Well, gee whiz, as I said in that Mountain Prairie podcast, it is true that the

00:05:51.920 wondrous diversity of life that we see all around us is a function of all of that life trying to

00:05:59.220 stay one step ahead of death. And so we know predation matters. Predation is the process

00:06:05.960 whereby death is delivered. So if you're a predator, like a gray wolf, and you exist by

00:06:11.580 delivering death, you have to matter. You have to matter in an evolutionary sense, because

00:06:17.580 it is death that sort of sits at the knife's edge of evolution, improving forms so they can

00:06:24.120 better stay one step ahead of death. Specifically with gray wolves, there are very good studies that

00:06:30.580 showed that if wolves are common enough for a long enough period of time, their predatory

00:06:36.140 activities will lead to a change in the system, principally by reducing the number of ungulates

00:06:43.800 in an area. Ungulates, of course, I don't have just hoofed mammals, deer and elk and moose

00:06:49.300 ungulates. If wolf predation can reduce their numbers, if wolf predation can cause them to

00:06:55.920 behave differently, forage differently. Those changes in numbers and behavior on the part of

00:07:02.280 the ungulates can bring about system-wide changes in the ecology of a setting. That's fundamentally 0.54

00:07:08.260 all a trophic cascade means, is that the activity of one level of the trophic system, the gray wolf

00:07:14.880 would be one level of the food system, the trophic system, its activities can create a cascading

00:07:20.200 effect through all the other levels. If elk in Yellowstone National Park, as an example,

00:07:25.960 if elk are less common, that provides an opportunity for willows and aspen to experience

00:07:32.200 a release. When the willows and aspens grow big, tall, and healthy, that creates lots of

00:07:38.620 opportunities for other members of the system, like pastoring birds and beavers. And of course,

00:07:43.980 the birds and the beavers operate and exist at a different level of the trophic system.

00:07:49.060 So gray wolf predation can create this cascading effect that spills through the food chain,

00:07:54.600 that spills through the trophic system, thereby creating greater ecological resiliency and

00:08:00.280 integrity. But for gray wolves to operate as those ecological engineers affecting a trophic cascade,

00:08:07.040 they have to be fairly common and they have to be in place for an extended period of time.

00:08:13.320 And so really the take home message from trophic cascades isn't gray wolves. No, that's not the

00:08:18.060 case. Lots of things serve as predators, cougars and black bears and grizzly bears and coyotes.

00:08:24.060 They're all important predators too. The important part of trophic cascade that we should touch on

00:08:29.740 today is predation, predation delivered by all of these species that make a living by killing things.

00:08:37.320 Thank you, Mike, for explaining trophic cascades so beautifully. I could imagine

00:08:43.800 the ecosystem as you spoke. Simply. Simply. That's the best way for me to view things. It's

00:08:51.820 simple. And the systems are exceedingly complicated, but the fundamentals are pretty simple. If life

00:08:58.360 matters, then death matters. If prey matter, then predators matter. It really is just that simple.

00:09:05.480 I'd like to dive into the conservation and restoration work you've done over the years

00:09:10.360 with gray wolves, particularly within the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. And to begin, I think it

00:09:16.520 could be helpful to ground our listeners in the history of this great species that once thrived

00:09:21.500 in abundance across the so-called United States. I imagine the nearly 250,000 to 500,000 wild wolves

00:09:30.460 that used to roam freely across the lower 48 states, later reduced to the brink of extinction

00:09:35.960 in the 1950s, with numbers dipping into the low 300s. So could you share with us the story of the

00:09:43.020 gray wolf illuminating the differences between the vilified mythic wolf and the adaptive,

00:09:48.820 powerful creature that you've come to know? Sure. I need to listen more carefully,

00:09:54.640 but did you say historically 200,000 to 500,000 gray wolves in the United States?

00:09:58.880 That's what I was reading. A quarter of a million to half a million.

00:10:02.100 I would guess, yeah, I would guess there were far more than that, which makes this story even more compelling.

00:10:08.180 Gray wolves were historically one of the most widely distributed large mammals in North America.

00:10:13.520 You could find gray wolves everywhere from coast to coast, east to west and north to south.

00:10:17.420 You could find gray wolves in the grasslands.

00:10:19.840 You could find them in the forests.

00:10:21.060 You could find them in the desert.

00:10:22.200 You could find them in swamps.

00:10:24.020 You could find gray wolves everywhere where there was something bigger than themselves to eat.

00:10:28.800 A fundamental difference between coyotes and gray wolves is based on their food habits. Coyotes are, on average, designed to kill things smaller than themselves. It doesn't mean that a coyote won't on occasion kill a deer, but on average, they're subsisting on items that are smaller than themselves.

00:10:49.100 In contrast, the gray wolf is designed physically, socially, intellectually, designed to kill things bigger than itself.

00:10:58.540 Doesn't mean that a gray wolf won't kill a snowshoe hare on occasion, but it does mean that gray wolves are hardwired to kill things bigger than themselves.

00:11:07.960 Because of that, they were seen as a direct threat to the settling of the United States.

00:11:15.180 It's part of the manifest destiny that guided the settling of this country was that the wild places and wild things that early settlers encountered had to be subdued.

00:11:26.140 They had to be commanded so that they could be tamed and controlled, so that the landscape provided in a more predictable manner those things that the settlers wanted.

00:11:37.160 we should find it quite intriguing that the settlers took what is arguably one of the

00:11:43.460 greatest assemblages of mammalian biomass the world has ever produced in the form of the plains

00:11:50.280 bison they took that tremendous abundance of life and drove it to the brink of extinction

00:11:58.080 the massacre of the bison is a tremendously sad story in the history of this country you know

00:12:06.000 what they did in response? They replaced the bison with European cattle. They took this most

00:12:14.800 common large mammal, a fantastic herbivore, and replaced it with what is, without doubt,

00:12:23.020 an exotic species from Europe. All of the cattle that were used to settle this country came from

00:12:30.420 Europe after the native bison had been nearly completely destroyed. Now, it is true, a massacred

00:12:38.000 bison is a way to promote the subjugation of Native Americans as well, but it was all part 0.92

00:12:43.920 and parcel of settling the big wild landscape that was the United States back in the day.

00:12:50.060 Part of that was also creating an opportunity to command gray wolves to near zero. And so the

00:12:57.780 gray wolves were subjected to a war, a war that lasted, oh my lord, I honor the war and the gray

00:13:04.620 wolf lasted well over 200 years. It was a war that was fought with the most murderous means

00:13:09.520 and as the war ended by the late 1950s, a war that began in the late 1600s ended by the late

00:13:18.040 1950s, you could find this most common large mammal, the gray wolf, only in northeastern

00:13:25.260 Minnesota, represented by a few hundred individuals and a few animals, 10, 12, 15 animals,

00:13:35.280 on Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior. We purposely took this most common large mammal,

00:13:41.780 the gray wolf, and purposely drove it to the brink of extinction. Things improved, admittedly,

00:13:47.360 in the mid-1970s with passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973. The gray wolf's one of the

00:13:53.160 first species listed under that most important federal law. The listing brought forth recovery

00:13:58.780 programs that eventually led to the restoration of gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains,

00:14:06.460 Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. It led to the recovery of gray wolves in the Great Lake States,

00:14:11.680 Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan. It led to a hopeful recovery of the Mexican gray wolf,

00:14:17.320 Canis lupus baleae in the southwest. And so today, today, there would probably be, let's assume

00:14:24.280 5,000 or so gray wolves in the Great Lakes states, and 2,000 gray wolves in the northern Rocky

00:14:31.280 Mountains, and about 150 Mexican wolves in the border country. That would give us, well, a little

00:14:37.340 over 7,000 animals that have been recovered across about 15% of the species historical range.

00:14:45.040 That's good progress. It certainly does not detract from the fact, though, that the gray wolf remains extirpated from approximately 85% of its historical range. The destruction of the gray wolf was like the American plains bison, like the passenger pigeon, represents a very, very sad chapter in the history of this country.

00:15:09.240 i was noting that the government's outright campaign of extermination against the gray

00:15:17.140 wolf officially ended in the 1960s and since that time restoration projects have popped up across

00:15:23.120 the west like the infamous program in yellowstone national park in 1995 but despite these efforts

00:15:29.980 i think that these notions of proper cultivation civilization and domination over all that is wild

00:15:37.500 continue to live on in our collective American imagery, particularly in the West. And I wonder

00:15:44.100 how you see this era of human supremacy continue to play out in our cultural and policy handlings 0.85

00:15:49.880 with the gray wolf. I don't think it's a cultural predisposition to treat some wildlife with

00:15:55.640 total disregard. I think it is a principally a consequence of one camp. And as a biologist,

00:16:04.760 your listeners need to know, I'm a big believer that our evolutionary past matters. I think you

00:16:12.460 are Pleistocene woman. I am Pleistocene man. Our Pleistocene roots made us who we are today. We

00:16:19.880 can't deny the fact that for most of our evolutionary past, we existed in small bands

00:16:25.920 of hunter-gatherers. For heaven's sakes, agriculture hasn't been practiced for more

00:16:30.300 in about 8,000 years, and yet you can find clear evidence of sapiens, homo sapiens, walking this

00:16:37.600 planet 200,000 years ago, 300,000 years ago. Let's assume that our evolutionary clock started 250,000

00:16:44.720 years ago. And over the last 8,000 years, we've been able to grow crops and take advantage of

00:16:52.200 domesticated animals, which means over 200 some thousand years of our evolutionary past, we were

00:16:59.620 hunter-gatherers, places to see men and women, they were decidedly tribal. Very social with one

00:17:07.280 another, but very, very tribal. That's how we survived. I think we're still tribal. And so I

00:17:15.380 will have you believe that the principal problem of disregard for wildlife is principally a function

00:17:22.000 of one tribe. And I can pick at this tribe because it's my tribe. It's the old white guy tribe.

00:17:29.620 It's the old white guys that still insist that we dominate landscapes. 0.99

00:17:35.740 It's the old white guy tribe that insists that we kill wildlife needlessly. 0.94

00:17:41.320 Just a story to that effect. 0.69

00:17:43.040 In the last legislative session in early 2019, I brought a bill to the Montana Senate that said we're going to prohibit the killing of coyotes by snowmobiles.

00:17:55.300 In the state of Montana, you can hunt a coyote off a snowmobile.

00:17:58.140 You can run it and you can run it and you can run it.

00:18:00.980 You can run it so long and so hard that the coyote just drops with exhaustion.

00:18:06.100 It's not dead.

00:18:07.120 It's just so pooped it can't move. 0.99

00:18:09.720 At that point, you can use your snowmobile to run it over repeatedly to kill it. 0.98

00:18:14.920 In other words, it's lawful to torture the coyote to death. 0.82

00:18:19.300 I said with my bill, we're better than that, folks.

00:18:22.380 We should pass a bill that says you can't torture the coyote to death.

00:18:26.780 at the point of killing the animal, you have to deliver the death blow humanely. You run it to

00:18:34.100 the point of exhaustion. At that point, you have to shoot it or kill it somehow quickly and humanely. 1.00

00:18:39.320 You can't run it over repeatedly with your snowmobile. Well, the bill did not make it out 0.99

00:18:44.620 of the Senate Fish and Game Committee. So I said, okay, okay. As any senator, I then had the option

00:18:50.360 to go to the full Senate and say with a motion, I move to remove my coyote killing bill from the

00:18:57.020 Fish and Game Committee and bring it to the full Senate for a proper discussion. So when it got

00:19:03.220 stuck in committee, I was going to blast my bill from the committee for consideration by the full

00:19:09.180 Senate. Before I did that, a few days before I did that, I went to my colleagues on the Republican

00:19:14.580 side of the aisle and I said, please help me with this blast motion. You may ultimately choose to

00:19:20.320 vote against the bill. But let's at least have a proper discussion. Montana is better than allowing

00:19:27.260 coyotes to be tortured to death. So I stand up two days later on the Senate floor and I say,

00:19:33.640 Mr. Chairman, I move to remove Senate Bill 212 from the Senate Fish and Game Committee and bring

00:19:41.320 it before the full Senate for consideration. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As is the habit, then the

00:19:46.860 chairman says, Senator Phillips. And I have a moment or two to speak on the rationale of my

00:19:51.500 blast motion. So I said to my colleagues in the Senate, I said, members of the Senate,

00:19:56.500 this is an important bill. We should consider it as a full body. As you consider that note,

00:20:03.220 if we knew of a 12-year-old boy in our neighborhoods that was using his bicycle to

00:20:11.500 run over the local cat. We would be deeply concerned for that young boy's mental health.

00:20:17.420 This is no different than that. Please vote for this blast motion so we can properly consider

00:20:23.100 this bill. At that point, Ayanna, we voted and my blast motion failed on a party line vote.

00:20:31.440 18 Democrats, myself and my 17 colleagues voted yes. 32 Republicans voted no. I was deeply

00:20:38.360 embarrassed by that vote. I had served with many of these people for 14 years. I knew them. I

00:20:43.360 considered them colleagues. I considered some friends. I was asking something very simple,

00:20:49.640 let's not torture coyotes to death. And they said, no, they wouldn't even join me to stand up

00:20:56.560 and at least have a discussion. Ayanna, at that point, at that point, I could no longer pray with

00:21:03.140 them. Every day when the Montana Senate begins its work, and I don't know what other state

00:21:08.560 legislatures do, but I know what we do every day, we would stand and we would pray and then pledge

00:21:13.940 allegiance to the flag and then begin our work. From that day forward, at the beginning of any

00:21:21.400 session, I would step out into the ante room and I would stand quietly and wait for the prayer to

00:21:27.920 end. Then I would step back into the chamber and I would pledge allegiance. Then I would take my

00:21:33.320 seat. I could no longer, I could no longer pray with my colleagues and my friends because I could

00:21:40.320 no longer accept their hypocrisy. I'm quite confident that God holds coyotes in high regard

00:21:47.240 and would not want his coyotes to be tortured to death. It's the old white guy tribe that 0.63

00:21:53.320 that continues to get in the way 1.00

00:21:55.820 because we have this gross inability

00:21:58.980 to accommodate wild and self-willed nature.

00:22:03.640 Oh my goodness, Mike.

00:22:05.700 Your story touched me so much

00:22:07.580 and I just am taking a moment

00:22:12.700 to let your response sit

00:22:15.920 and I want to tell you in this moment

00:22:19.200 that I am so grateful for you

00:22:20.980 and I respect you so much for your courage and your convictions. You're really such a unique

00:22:31.040 person. And I think a lot about this typical American Western identity, or as you put it,

00:22:41.160 this white man tribe identity. And, you know, it's as one that has been forged around a shared

00:22:47.600 sense of pride and wilderness and outdoorsmanship and a settler mentality of conquest and rugged

00:22:53.240 individualism, and I feel a sense of hollowness around this profession of belonging and ownership.

00:22:59.740 The grizzly bear that remains at the center of the California flag, but only in its symbolic form,

00:23:05.680 as this species has vanished from our forested landscapes, our mountains, our waters, and

00:23:10.840 these creatures remain at the center of our collective mythology, but they're simultaneously

00:23:15.620 tremendously revered and hated. And just listening to your stories and how you are connected so

00:23:25.120 deeply to the land and these creatures, it gives me pause. And I just want to say thank you before

00:23:32.400 we continue on. Yeah, you're welcome. I wish I was more effective, but I learned a long time ago,

00:23:40.960 oh, I can't be responsible for other people's decisions.

00:23:43.480 I can barely figure out how to make my own decisions.

00:23:48.180 And I will say that we sometimes celebrate wildness and symbols only,

00:23:55.100 the grizzly bear and the California flag,

00:23:58.200 in part because we're increasingly living in a world of ecological illiterates.

00:24:02.860 People don't understand that everything that we need,

00:24:07.340 And when you cut it deep enough, everybody needs food, cover, water, space.

00:24:12.880 All living organisms in one form or fashion need food, cover, water, space.

00:24:18.320 Most people today, 99.999% of the people today buy what they need.

00:24:24.920 You buy food, cover, water, space.

00:24:26.900 There's not enough subsistence hunters left in the world to matter.

00:24:31.020 And in the miracle sense, everybody's buying food, cover, water, space.

00:24:35.360 So the marketplace really matters.

00:24:37.100 And yet, we place so much emphasis on the marketplace that we forget that it sits on landscapes the world over.

00:24:47.180 Absent healthy landscapes the world over, marketplaces struggle.

00:24:52.620 If marketplaces struggle, all of those of us who buy our food, cover, water, space, have no choice but to struggle too.

00:25:03.240 We are burdened with ecological illiteracy. I'm on with you today because I think these types of podcasts can promote literacy. And I think from the perspective of living in greater harmony with one another and Mother Earth, we need to be more literate.

00:25:26.060 I absolutely agree with you, Mike.

00:25:28.680 And yeah, there's so much to say about that.

00:25:32.660 And I feel like it's also impossible.

00:25:35.500 But there's things to do.

00:25:38.380 There's things that we should.

00:25:39.360 I mean, I'm not guided by despair.

00:25:41.800 I'm guided by hope.

00:25:42.940 But my hope is guided by what I think are good facts rooted in reality.

00:25:48.020 Like many people don't understand how systems operate.

00:25:51.960 They don't understand the importance of wild and self-willed nature.

00:25:55.100 to humankind's future. I am guided by a determination to try to contribute to a better

00:26:01.820 way forward. So I don't want the listeners to get down in the dumps. I'm sorry I shared my

00:26:06.300 coyote story and my inability to pray, but it drives home the fact that nearly everybody that

00:26:11.460 voted against my coyote bill, well, on the Republican side of the aisle in the 2019 session

00:26:18.040 in Montana. They were all old white guys except one woman, I'm sorry, two women and one Native 0.67

00:26:26.720 American. So there's 38 of them, 35 were all white guys. 0.87

00:26:48.040 Feeling so confused 0.82

00:27:01.940 You don't know what to do

00:27:05.400 Afraid she might not love you anymore

00:27:09.800 I know she says she does

00:27:15.040 And hasn't lost your trust

00:27:17.860 Who could that be knocking at her door?

00:27:25.660 Must be another one

00:27:28.480 Must be another one she loves

00:27:35.920 Must be another one

00:27:41.500 It's impossible to tell these stories without calling upon the colonial roots of land management

00:27:54.060 in the U.S. that have perpetrated egregious acts of violence, often in the name of conservation

00:27:59.600 itself. And I feel like you were speaking a bit to this at the beginning of our conversation.

00:28:03.760 The wars waged against Gray Wolf, the Grizzly, the Coyote, the Buffalo have also been wars against

00:28:09.980 the indigenous peoples that have actively tended the lands and waters of Turtle Island

00:28:14.400 since the beginning of time. In what is now Yellowstone National Park, for example,

00:28:19.920 the U.S. Army was stationed from 1886 to 1918 and forcibly displaced the Awanichi from their

00:28:27.880 tribal homelands. This logic of extermination that sought to sever the sacred bonds of life 0.99

00:28:33.960 in these places paved the way for the construction of untouched quote-unquote wilderness for the

00:28:39.820 exclusive use of recreation, mass tourism, and resource extraction. So do you see indigenous

00:28:46.500 sovereignty as an important thread to weave into a new model of conservation? And how can these

00:28:52.200 lineages of violence inform how we go about protecting spaces in the future? Well, certainly

00:28:59.080 I agree that indigenous sovereignty matters. Sovereignty has to matter or nations all across

00:29:05.560 the planet don't have sufficient standing. In our own small way, at Team Turner, we're

00:29:13.440 working to promote, for example, bison restoration on tribal lands throughout the United States

00:29:18.680 as a celebration of the tribe's sovereignty, create a future of their own making, and ideally

00:29:24.480 that future would include plains bison as a fixed feature on their landscapes. How does that

00:29:30.660 translate into more open lands conservation, if that was your question.

00:29:35.800 I'm not sure.

00:29:37.040 I'm not sure.

00:29:37.780 I think that large-scale changes, changes that operate at sufficient scale to matter,

00:29:45.140 have to be effective through a political process.

00:29:48.060 As much as I regret my ineffectiveness as a politician, I have thought long and hard

00:29:56.700 about the great collective endeavor that is politics in the United States, and accepting

00:30:03.800 for the marketplace. I don't know of any greater collective human endeavor across the long sweep

00:30:11.840 of our history than politics. It's how we move forward when we were small bands of hunter-gatherers.

00:30:21.260 It's how we move forward as great nations of people.

00:30:25.660 And I would hope that your listeners, if they're committed to a more peaceful, prosperous, and just future for human and non-human life, they would consider putting their name on the ballot and running for office.

00:30:38.160 Many of the issues that touch on peace, prosperity, and justice for human and non-human life are not properly considered in a political context today because people serving aren't sensitive to the issues.

00:30:53.460 One that has guided our work at the Turner Endangered Species Fund and certainly guides our work to advance wolf recovery to western Colorado, which is the next great and probably the last great restoration campaign for the gray wolf in the United States, is acknowledgement of the increasing seriousness of the extinction crisis.

00:31:14.900 And Ayanna, when you think about that, it is a most unique circumstance.

00:31:19.820 It is truly a crisis of the most damning kind.

00:31:24.480 We know from history that along the big sweep of time that this planet has supported multicellular life, let's say 300 million years, 400 million years, there have been, prior to the current extension crisis, five previous such events.

00:31:44.260 The fifth occurred about 65 million years ago when an asteroid measuring something like six miles across and traveling at something like 25,000 miles an hour slammed into the planet off of the coast of what is now the Yucatan Peninsula.

00:32:02.340 And fundamentally, in a geological instant, ended the reign of dinosaurs.

00:32:06.960 The sixth crisis is now in place.

00:32:10.280 It's been in place at least since the Inductible Revolution in the late 1700s.

00:32:15.580 Probably, technically, we can find evidence of the crisis dating back centuries, if not thousands of years before that. 0.77

00:32:24.680 Humankind has always been hard on the planet and the non-human components of life.

00:32:30.080 So when you think about the extinction crisis, I would have you believe it's the clarion call for recognizing and need or adjust our relationship with Mother Earth.

00:32:39.200 because it is so absolute. There is no workaround to the extinction crisis. It is patently

00:32:46.800 absolute. Another heaven and earth would have to pass, along with a great deal of luck for any

00:32:53.360 extinct species to ever rise again. That makes it, I think, a clarion call. And it's also a

00:33:00.380 clarion call because it should matter no matter who you are. No matter who you are, the extinction

00:33:06.080 crisis should matter so let's assume you're a person of faith well i would pose the question

00:33:12.600 how can you love the creator and not love the creation and if you love something how can you

00:33:20.480 stand by and watch it needlessly destroyed without rising up in defense or let's assume

00:33:27.000 for a moment that you're a secular humanist and rather than faith you believe that what matters

00:33:34.740 most is facts and data and logic and empiricism well the best science tells us that the fate of

00:33:42.500 humanity has always been and will always be connected the health of local landscapes the

00:33:49.400 world over the extinction crisis makes clear that those landscapes are not the least bit healthy

00:33:56.300 no matter who you are the extinction crisis should matter

00:34:00.700 mm-hmm yes i'm with you mike i'd also be curious to hear about your thoughts around a future of

00:34:11.300 coexistence with gray wolves and i know this can be an incredibly polarizing issue especially on

00:34:17.400 the front lines of reintroduction projects where people have competing visions of land use whether

00:34:23.060 towards conservation hunting or livestock production and as an advocate for the gray wolf

00:34:28.420 within this highly debated arena, how do you present the case of restoration to people

00:34:34.200 who perhaps feel fearful or in defense of their safety and livelihood?

00:34:39.500 And what is needed to ultimately reconcile these differences? 0.81

00:34:43.680 Gray wolves are actually really easy to coexist with.

00:34:48.020 The only thing that's ever gotten in the way of wolf recovery,

00:34:52.560 the only thing that stands as an obstacle to coexisting with gray wolves

00:34:57.520 is the mythical wolf people have this sense that gray wolves have an almost supernatural ability

00:35:04.820 to exercise their predatory will on a whim and by doing so they create a wake of death and

00:35:13.000 desolation and destruction everywhere they go oh gee was nothing could be further from the truth

00:35:18.160 for the gray wolf life is a daily struggle to survive most hunting attempts by gray wolves

00:35:24.780 failed. Starvation is a common cause of death. Hunting is a dangerous activity. I did a study

00:35:31.480 years ago of over 200 gray wolf skulls that had been collected by the Alaska Department of Fish

00:35:38.640 and Game. These were animals that Alaska Department of Fish and Game had shot in an attempt to

00:35:44.240 minimize predation pressure on a local caribou herd or a local moose population. So these animals

00:35:49.260 were killed by being shot. I looked at their skulls for evidence of blunt force trauma. How

00:35:56.200 often did they get kicked in the head by a moose, for example? Fully a quarter of the skull showed

00:36:03.040 a broken jaw, broken nose, broken skull. A good friend of mine, Rolf Peterson, Dr. Peterson from

00:36:09.040 Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan, has studied prey wolves on Isle of

00:36:14.880 Royal National Park since 1972.

00:36:18.580 Rolf has never done a necropsy of a gray wolf.

00:36:21.360 Necropsy is just an autopsy of an animal.

00:36:24.580 He's never done a necropsy of a gray wolf from Isle Royale

00:36:27.620 that has not shown evidence of blunt force,

00:36:31.140 trauma, broken leg, broken rib, broken nose.

00:36:33.960 It's very difficult to make a living in the woods with your teeth.

00:36:37.940 But people are unwilling to accept that fact.

00:36:40.640 They are more willing to embrace the mythical wolf,

00:36:43.480 This devil incarnate that exercises its predatory will on a whim.

00:36:50.380 Unfortunately, the myth is as strong as it is wrong.

00:36:54.340 As I said, life is a daily struggle for the real wolf.

00:36:58.780 The real wolf found and reliable data collected over decades.

00:37:04.780 The gray wolf is one of the most studied large mammals in the world.

00:37:08.060 We know a lot about gray wolves.

00:37:09.660 We know without doubt, gray wolves do not represent a threat to human safety.

00:37:14.900 They do not represent a threat to the livestock industry.

00:37:18.660 They do not represent a threat to the big game hunting industry.

00:37:22.480 Gray wolves are really, if you're willing to embrace an honest portrayal of the species,

00:37:28.620 gray wolves are relatively easy to coexist with when problems do arise.

00:37:34.000 we have very good tools at the ready for resolving conflicts and very good tools at the ready for

00:37:42.900 preventing conflicts it's the mythical wolf that gets in the way of the future of the real wolf

00:37:49.640 i can absolutely see that i really appreciate your deep understanding of this issue and

00:37:56.620 how you're able to speak with so much compassion to the many sides of this complex topic

00:38:02.400 I'd also like to take a step back and look at this from more of a systemic level.

00:38:08.540 An article published in National Geographic by Emma Maris reports that, quote,

00:38:12.580 Today, only 4% of the world's mammals by weight are wild.

00:38:17.440 The other 96% are livestock and ourselves, end quote.

00:38:21.760 And this statistics illustrates such a staggering image of our biosphere,

00:38:25.900 and I think speaks to the way industry has privileged certain species over the lives of

00:38:31.120 many others, creating landscapes stripped of all biological diversity purely for human consumption

00:38:36.920 of one kind or another. So could you speak to the ways that cattle ranching and grazing rights

00:38:42.960 have been prioritized both in the past and present terms? Well, we've already spoken about

00:38:50.680 the destruction of the Plains Bison. That was very much justified on the grounds that the 0.98

00:38:58.380 grasslands needed to provide forage for European cattle, which spoke about the destruction of the

00:39:04.920 gray wolf. It was the cattlemen that developed a pathological hatred of the gray wolf to make room

00:39:11.280 for European cattle. The grizzly bear was pushed to the brink of extinction in the United States

00:39:16.580 to make room for cattle. Even to this day, predators continue to be persecuted to make

00:39:24.800 room for cattle. We have achieved recovery in both a biological and legal sense for the gray wolf in

00:39:31.320 the northern Rocky Mountains, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. But we continue to persecute them

00:39:37.100 with a great deal of determination. In Montana, as an example, there may be

00:39:43.300 eight or nine hundred gray wolves that live in the western quarter of our great state.

00:39:49.740 Every year, eight or nine hundred animals. In an average year, oh, gee whiz, up to 300 of those

00:39:56.840 animals are killed. I saw some data recently that indicated the average age of a gray wolf

00:40:02.880 in Montana, outside of highly protected areas like Yellowstone Park, the average age of a gray wolf

00:40:10.280 was about three years. My Lord, three years is nothing. A gray wolf, if left to her own devices

00:40:17.960 and not killed by people, would live to be eight or nine or maybe 10. They don't live for that long,

00:40:26.620 but they certainly have capacity to live longer than three years. The biggest hurdle

00:40:33.460 to wolf recovery in western Colorado and when people think about it is tremendous opportunity

00:40:40.380 western Colorado is God's gift to gray wolves over 17 million acres of federal public lands

00:40:48.020 across which gray wolves will receive priority consideration a robust prey population consisting

00:40:53.640 of deer and elk unlike anything in the world anything in the world reliable studies clearly

00:41:00.580 indicate Western Colorado could support a viable population of prairie wolves. That population is

00:41:06.120 mandated. The existence of that population is mandated by the Federal Endangered Species Act.

00:41:12.300 It's also mandated in a softer fashion, but nonetheless mandated by state law. And yet it's

00:41:19.840 principally the livestock industry that stands in opposition because they just can't imagine how

00:41:27.300 and their operations could be conducted in wolf country,

00:41:31.240 even though many of their operations are based on federal public lands

00:41:34.800 and they're already heavily subsidized to use those lands.

00:41:39.660 We don't charge public land ranchers an amount of money for the grass

00:41:45.860 that their livestock consumes that's actually equal to what that grass is worth.

00:41:51.020 We as a country have said, we're not going to charge you what the grass is worth

00:41:55.200 because they recognize ranching in remote western range lands owned by the federal government.

00:42:02.500 That's a tough business. That's a risky proposition. So we're going to help by charging you a fraction

00:42:08.740 of what that grass is actually worth. And still, that helping hand is not enough. It's not enough.

00:42:16.300 They would rather the landscapes be wolfless. They don't want another challenge. Even though

00:42:23.780 we know from reliable studies conducted over decades that it's the atypical wolf that depredates

00:42:28.420 on livestock. We know that in the northern Rocky Mountains, nearly 100% of the livestock that

00:42:35.500 would call Montana home, nearly 100%, 99.995% of those livestock will never be involved in a wolf

00:42:45.200 depredation. Depredations are so uncommon to be of little interest to the industry. Now,

00:42:51.980 If you're the rancher who lost a cow last night, you've got a problem.

00:42:55.620 And I readily acknowledge that.

00:42:57.780 But as I said, fortunately, we've got good tools at the ready for resolving such conflicts

00:43:03.960 when they do occur.

00:43:05.400 Very good tools at the ready for preventing such conflicts from ever occurring in the

00:43:10.700 first place.

00:43:11.180 You know, we can put an astronaut on the moon and bring her home. 0.86

00:43:16.600 We can take your heart out of your chest and put it back better than before.

00:43:21.460 I promise you we can coexist with the gray wolf, but the livestock industry stands in sharp

00:43:27.840 opposition. So we continue to bow down to the great hamburger.

00:43:35.040 Oh, Mike, I really appreciate those metaphors. I'm wondering, as we wrap up this part of the

00:43:41.620 conversation around gray wolves, I'd be curious to hear about what kind of future path you

00:43:46.260 envision for gray wolf reintroduction and any updates surrounding your partnership with Rocky

00:43:50.820 Mountain Wolf Project in Western Colorado. Yes, thank you. Yeah, of course. Yeah, the folks need

00:43:58.520 to know there's this tremendous effort brewing to restore variables to Western Colorado.

00:44:02.440 It's been underway for many years. It is now very muscular, very capable. It is predisposed to

00:44:09.760 succeed. It's represented by two organizations that have related different roles. The first

00:44:15.940 organization is Rocky Mountain Wolf Project. The website is just rockymountainwolfproject.org.

00:44:22.440 The project is a coalition of conservation visionaries and conservation organizations

00:44:26.820 that believe that if Coloradans simply embraced an honest portrayal of the gray wolf,

00:44:32.860 they would conclude that coexisting with the species is a straightforward affair

00:44:36.840 that requires only a modicum of accommodation. That conclusion, of course, advances restoration.

00:44:44.000 But by itself, that conclusion is probably not enough to affect change.

00:44:49.880 So the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project stands alongside what could be seen as a companion organization known as the Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund.

00:44:58.080 That website is just www.wolfactionfund.com.

00:45:03.120 The Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund is a political organization.

00:45:08.000 It's not a coalition.

00:45:09.140 It is a lean, mean, fighting political machine that aims to allow Coloradans to decide if the wolf has a future across the great public wild lands of western Colorado by vote.

00:45:23.600 The Action Fund intends to place a wolf restoration initiative on the 2020 general election ballot and let Coloradans decide by November of 2020 whether the wolf should be a part of the state's great future.

00:45:39.320 The project has done well educating, drawing attention to the real wolf. The Action Fund has done well advancing the political campaign to give Coloradans a chance to vote. Now, listeners might say, well, that's great for Colorado. But what does that have to do with me?

00:45:59.580 Well, really, the Wolf Action Fund is launching a national campaign to use direct democracy to elect the wolf to restore the wolf.

00:46:11.760 And the reason it's a national campaign is that the gray wolf, Canis Lupus, remains fully protected under federal law.

00:46:20.600 Consequently, Americans all over the country have the right, some would say the responsibility to

00:46:27.700 concern themselves with the future of the gray wolf in places like Western Colorado. And the

00:46:33.460 second reason that the Wolf Action Fund is launching a nationwide campaign is that the

00:46:39.260 landscape of relevance to wolf restoration in Western Colorado is federal public lands.

00:46:44.780 Americans all over the country can fairly claim ownership of the San Juan National Forest in southwestern Colorado, for example.

00:46:55.260 So because the gray wolf is considered protected by federal law and because the landscape restoration landscape of relevance is federal public lands,

00:47:04.420 Americans all across the country can choose to engage.

00:47:07.960 They won't be able to vote. That's true. But they could choose to offer support in the form of donations, in the form of moral support, in the form of intellectual support. It is a nationwide campaign. 0.98

00:47:21.020 There are people all over the country that are going to rise up, rise up in support of the ecological integrity of the federal public lands of Western Colorado that can be improved with the restoration of the endangered gray world.

00:47:37.960 Sometimes my love may be put on hold

00:47:44.580 Sometimes my heart may seem awful cold

00:47:53.340 These times come and these times go

00:48:01.760 As long as I live

00:48:07.380 All you need to know is

00:48:11.600 It's so dark

00:48:16.000 Ain't about to forget

00:48:19.300 All we've had

00:48:24.680 And all that's next

00:48:27.860 long as my heart's beating in my chest

00:48:36.640 it's so dark ain't about to forget now mike faced with a constant deluge of shocking reports and

00:48:50.180 articles i think it can be easy to numb ourselves to all of the loss that we're facing on a

00:48:55.580 planetary scale at this time. And that said, I want to take a moment to name the current extinction

00:49:00.800 crisis and voice the gravity of living in this time of the Anthropocene. I'll read a short passage

00:49:06.900 from The Song of the Dodo, a beautiful and tragic book by David Quammen. Quote,

00:49:13.320 The Song of the Dodo, if it had one, is forever unknowable because no human from whom we have

00:49:20.320 testimony ever took the trouble to sit in the Moorishan forest and listen, end quote. And I

00:49:26.800 could ask you to recount more scientific data or name the species that sit atop the endangered

00:49:31.960 species list, but I'd really like to ask you as someone who has their heart and hands on the

00:49:37.360 ground, what are you listening to right now? And what messages from the non-human realm are emerging

00:49:43.880 in the stillness? And maybe a second part of that question is, what brings you energy to continue

00:49:49.680 on in the struggle and fight to make spaces for these species in our human-centered world?

00:49:54.620 Well, first, let me say thank you for reading from Song of the Dodo. David Quammen is a good

00:49:59.160 pal of mine. He lives down the street from me and I hold David in very high regard. Song of the Dodo

00:50:06.320 is a fantastic and important book. So thank you for drawing attention to it. You said,

00:50:12.060 what am I listening to? I assume that you mean in the form of a podcast or, but...

00:50:17.920 Well, I actually meant, what are you listening to in the stillness of?

00:50:23.300 Well, that was going to be my answer.

00:50:24.580 Oh, great. Okay.

00:50:25.640 Yeah. Mostly I try to sit and listen to the natural world. I don't find much satisfaction in TV movies. I pretty much just watch things that are funny, or at least things that aim to be funny. I think laughter is important. I think being able to see ourselves in a realistic light and not take ourselves too terribly seriously is important.

00:50:47.080 for plowing ahead and I enjoy music but I really enjoy sitting quietly and and listening to just

00:50:55.580 the sounds of nature one of the most important things that me and my family do at certain times

00:50:59.860 of the year the Flying D Ranch is just about 25 minutes from our home here in Bozeman and we'll

00:51:05.340 go out to Flying D Ranch it supported the bear trap pack of wolves since about 2003 the bear

00:51:11.020 trap pack of wolves is one of the largest packs of wolves in North America consistently about

00:51:15.200 20 animals strong we know a lot about the bear trap pack and we know where they did and we know

00:51:20.600 where they raised their puppies so we can go out in July and August and September and sit on the

00:51:25.760 hillside and inevitably if we're patient as day gives way to the evening they'll howl and I am

00:51:32.980 just always moved I like seeing gray wolves that's fun that's cool but boy oh boy I really like

00:51:38.120 hearing them howl it's one of the great sounds of wild and self-built nature like the call of a loon

00:51:43.520 or a bugling elk, some sounds just affirm that Mother Nature got it right without much help of

00:51:51.540 any from us so very long ago. We are and have been for a long time a big ecological disaster,

00:51:57.860 we being humanity, because we have such a rapacious appetite for dominating and consuming

00:52:05.120 things. So I certainly like to sit quietly and listen to nature and it can be in my backyard,

00:52:10.580 It doesn't have to be on a flying deer ranch.

00:52:13.160 But in terms of listening, a little story that your listeners might enjoy.

00:52:17.540 Two years ago, me and my family were honored to be able to camp for a long weekend on Peel Island.

00:52:24.880 Peel Island is this tiny sort of dot of isolation and magic in the southern part of Yellowstone Lake.

00:52:33.660 first day out as the setting sun was giving way to a rising moon, we heard the howl of a lone wolf.

00:52:42.300 It was, she howled, I don't know the gender necessarily, but it's my story. And so I wouldn't

00:52:47.240 believe it was a female. And so I'm going to say she howled, she howled all night long. That never 0.99

00:52:52.080 was a response, which I found intriguing. It's hard to be a gray wolf under the best of

00:52:56.280 circumstances. It's especially hard to be a lone wolf. It was clear to me she was searching for

00:53:01.580 some kind of companionship. More than once, I crawled out of my tent, my sleeping bag, and

00:53:06.220 howled back. I've held at a lot of gray wolves in my day, but on that particular night, it just

00:53:12.260 didn't seem to be the thing to do. So I stayed in my tent, I stayed in my sleeping bag, and I

00:53:16.060 listened, and I reflected. And as I did, you know, I came to wonder if all these many years, these

00:53:23.680 decades, these centuries, Mother Earth has been howling to us, hoping for us to respond by affirming

00:53:30.900 her importance, hoping for us to respond by rising up in the defense of the defenseless

00:53:38.860 parts of nature. As I laid there and thought about that, as is my habit, my thoughts then

00:53:47.140 drifted from conservation science to politics. And I was reminded of some very important words

00:53:53.540 that were uttered by Congressman John Lewis. Congressman Lewis was a contemporary of Martin

00:53:59.680 Luther King and was an important senior cardinal figure in the civil rights movement. At one point

00:54:06.300 as Congressman Lewis was fighting for the rights of the oppressed, he uttered words that now have 0.93

00:54:13.100 as much meaning to the non-human world as they did back in the day when Lewis was fighting for 0.58

00:54:19.440 the rights of people. And he said quite simply, if not us, then who? If not now, then when?

00:54:29.680 And so when you ask me what I'm listening to, what I think about, I think about rising up now, using my time to rise up and do what I can to fight for those among us that are unable to defend themselves.

00:54:46.060 Thank you, Mike, for sharing that story.

00:54:48.980 And I feel very aligned with that.

00:54:52.820 One of the challenges we ask ourselves daily at For the Wild is how we can help our listeners

00:54:58.360 become more active participants and resilient earth defenders.

00:55:02.580 We're constantly orienting and reorienting within this question to try and figure out

00:55:07.640 how we can bridge a connection of caring to what might otherwise feel like distant lands

00:55:14.260 or distant problems.

00:55:15.920 As such a fierce advocate for imperiled species and a public servant, I'd like to

00:55:22.140 turn this question back to you. How have you sought to inspire your constituents to care

00:55:27.460 differently and tune into the multiplicity of beyond human worlds that turn alongside our own

00:55:34.600 human experience? And how do you feel like people can continue or just begin to be more active

00:55:41.960 participants and earth defenders? I think the problems are now so systemic that nothing less

00:55:48.940 than a grand systemic solution will suffice. And I know of only two encompassing activities that

00:55:55.300 could bring about the types of systemic solutions that will make the planet a more peaceful,

00:56:00.120 prosperous, and just place for human and non-human life. And the one that matters here today is

00:56:04.340 politics. I'm proud to have served in elected office. I still sit in my state Senate seat.

00:56:10.240 I'll hold that seat to the end of 2020 when I'll be term limited. We'll rent in 14 years of service

00:56:16.100 as a state legislator. I'm proud. I don't see politics as a problem. I see politics as an

00:56:21.080 important part of the solution of moving us as a collective forward to a better place.

00:56:25.360 So I would say to the listeners, become more involved in the political process. Insist that

00:56:30.000 candidates are aware of the extinction crisis. They're aware of the climate change crisis,

00:56:35.020 that they're aware of the pressing need for a new energy future, that they're aware of the fact that

00:56:39.280 the fate of humanity has always rested on the health of global landscapes. Insist that the

00:56:44.440 The cost of an item is accounted for today fully.

00:56:47.760 The cost of production, consumption, and distribution is accounted for fully.

00:56:51.340 So we're not passing to future generations a bill that we should have paid long ago. 1.00

00:56:55.980 And the best way, I think, to move forward, and I will challenge your female listeners, 0.95

00:57:01.440 we need more women in decision-making positions. 1.00

00:57:05.340 The world will be a more peaceful, prosperous, and just place if women rise up and say to 1.00

00:57:09.700 the old white guy tribe. You've had access to the power levels long enough, long enough. Get the hell 1.00

00:57:15.680 out of the way because now we're going to take over because you don't have the skill set that

00:57:20.580 is needed to bring people together to go forward and celebrate a future that is more peaceful and

00:57:25.340 more prosperous and more just. Serve in elected office, put your name on a ballot, get behind

00:57:30.140 candidates, drill down the electoral process, contribute to this country by serving as an

00:57:35.380 informed voter. And if you can, put your name on a ballot and recognize that this country needs

00:57:41.420 more women leaders. I wish you could see my face as you were saying that. I was grinning from ear

00:57:49.780 to ear. Thank you. I can tell you, I was so proud. I was so proud in the Senate, state Senate here in

00:57:56.420 Montana. We were in a deep minority hole. That's true. There were only 18 of us. There were 32

00:58:02.620 two of our colleagues on the Republican side, but of the 18, of the 18 Democrats, 12 were women.

00:58:10.340 And I was so honored to serve in a caucus that was guided by such a steady hand and thoughtfulness.

00:58:16.920 And I am convinced that this country will do better when we have more women in positions

00:58:23.080 of decision-making. So can I end with a joke? Oh gosh, please. Let's end with a joke. Okay. 0.99

00:58:28.360 Here's my only endangered species joke, and it will be my final word.

00:58:33.520 But there was some time ago, there was some time ago, two condors flying around.

00:58:39.120 And of course, condors are scavengers. 0.95

00:58:41.520 They're flying around and they see this clown. 0.88

00:58:44.080 This clown had died on the side of a road. 0.96

00:58:46.880 And as condors do, they flew down and they landed and they began eating on this clown 0.96

00:58:51.060 because that's what scavengers do.

00:58:53.080 And after a few minutes, one condor said to the other,

00:58:55.700 Condor, does this taste funny to you?

00:58:58.360 that's the joke it was a clown right it was a clown does this taste fun

00:59:03.040 thank you for making us laugh because i agree we need we do need laughter in this time

00:59:11.160 and i i appreciate that and mike this has been so wonderful to have you on the show and i think

00:59:19.060 we're all going to garner so much from hearing your words so thank you so much well it has been

00:59:26.520 my privilege and my honor. Thank you so much for the chance to contribute.

00:59:36.540 Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.

00:59:43.040 The music you heard today was from Mac DeMarco. I'd like to thank our wonderful podcast production

00:59:50.020 team, Aidan McRae, Andrew Storrs, Cameron Stallones, Carter Lou McElroy, Erica Ekrem,

00:59:59.280 Aaron Wise, Francesca Glassbell, Hannah Wilton, and Melanie Younger.

For The Wild - March 02, 2022

MIKE PHILLIPS on Gray Wolves and the Vitality of Death [ENCORE] ⧸275

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