September 16, 2024 • 23 mins
This week, Cal talks about crime at the fish market, prion poo hounds, a Euro brown bear hunt, and one heck of a trivia question.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
From Meat Eaters World News Headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This
is Cow's Week in Review with Ryan cow Klah Here's
cal A new study is found that dogs can detect
chronic wasting disease with nothing more than their legendary noses.
The study, published in the Plus one Journal last month,
describes how researchers trained six shelter dogs in a laboratory
(00:34):
and field settings to sniff out the always fatal neurodegenerative disease.
The researchers started by obtaining hundreds of fecal samples from
both farmed white tail deer and deer killed by hunters
in western Tennessee. The dogs were walked down a line
of five boxes, only one of which contained poop from
an infected deer. The dogs were able to detect CWD
(00:54):
with ninety percent accuracy by scenting a metabolic change that
occurs when deer get an infected with the preon disease.
To a dog, CWD poop smells different, sort of like
how you always know when your roommate in college head
etn Taco bell, cheap beans and plastic cheese gives off
a distinct aroma after passing through the digestive tract doesn't
(01:16):
it anyway. Once the dogs were trained to detect CWD
and deer poop, they were given intestinal samples to sample.
In one portion of the study of the dogs correctly
identified CWD in deer colons with ninety six percent accuracy.
At this point, you might be wondering why anyone would
bother training dogs to detect CWD. There isn't a cure
(01:39):
for the disease, and it's not like the deer trying
to smuggle misfolded preons through the airport. This research is
important because we still don't have a reliable anti mortem
CWD test for deer and other ungulates. In other words,
it's hard for us to tell whether a deer has
CWD without killing it first. Obviously, we can guess with
a larger degree of certainty in areas where the disease
(02:02):
has a high prevalence and those deer are showing the
physical manifestations of the disease, which are super nasty. But
that's still going to be a guess until you do
the actual test, and that is a big problem for
states like Texas where deer breeders want to ship their
deer across the state to hunting properties or other breeding facilities.
(02:24):
Right now, we don't really know whether those deer are
infected and will spread the disease to areas that don't
already have it. It's unclear whether dogs are the solution
to this problem. Some would argue that deer breeders shouldn't
really exist in the first place, and they certainly shouldn't
be allowed to transport deer to other counties. But as
we work out those debates, it would be great if
we could know with certainty that we aren't making the
(02:46):
problem worse. CWD sniffing dogs might be one piece of
that puzzle. This week, we've got the great bear call
or how other countries do it? Salmon, salamanders, lobsters and fish.
But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. And
right now, as you listen to this old dirt myth,
Brad Brooks are golly outdoors, which you know, Brad makes
(03:09):
a bunch of awesome stuff over there, so he's check
that out, longtime hunting buddy of mine. We're kind of
marching ourselves out of the woods, if I can envision this,
and we're loaded to the hilt with elk meat and
hopefully elk antlers so big it's going to be hard
to find a wall to stick them on or a
door frame to fit them through. And even though we're
(03:29):
tired and beat up and stinky and dirty, we're going
to ignore the beer cooler. Brad's gonna drive away Old
Dirt and I are going to pick up some lamas
from Old bull Baby, and we're going to head out
and up to Parts unknown in pursuit of the elusive
gigantic high Mountain Mule Deer. Body sore, but brain function
(03:50):
increased substantially. Due to the lack of screen time and
oppressive connection to the outside world, We've probably we experienced
more than a couple of setbacks, hopefully all minor. But
you know, part of living life in the outdoors is
being able to think on your feet, keep your head
on a swivel, and figure stuff out, improvise, adapt, and overcome.
(04:11):
As they used to say, We're gonna film both of
these hunts. That's what Dirt Myth's doing there. But if
you would be interested in a podcast recap with these fellas,
just rite in you know where to ride in and
let me know and we'll try to do our best
on that one might just record one for fun. Anyway,
(04:32):
Outside of that, I hope everyone is starting to get
some fall weather and thinking about that amazing outside time
or getting out in the out of doors. Right now,
if you are out doing the college football thing, look
for the meat Eater tailgate tour and say hi to
those great folks. For me, I can't say hi because
I'm going to be in the woods, and I can't
(04:53):
say I wish I was there because fall is for hunting.
There is admittedly a part of me that's still truly football.
It's a great opportunity to build skills and have fun.
I wouldn't go back and change the great experiences I
had playing the sport as a kid, But I also
had anxiety standing on the field as leaves were falling,
(05:14):
frost was in the grass, and geese were flying overhead,
or like when that early season snowstorm had hit, and
part of you was looking forward to playing in those conditions,
but a bigger part of you was mentally carrying the
old three hundred win meg looking for elk tracks, maybe
even falling the old outfitter around, watching his hand rolled
cigarette smoke show you how the wind was drifting after
(05:35):
the storm broke. It's a great time of year and
we just can't be two places at once. Moving on
to the bear management desk. Police officers in Sweden were
forced to accompany hunters during this year's brown bear hunt
as protesters tried to interfere with the annual event. Officers
(05:55):
have been patrolling the forests on foot and with drones
to ensure the hunter's peaceful progress. Amid concerns that high
license numbers could provoke unrest. Swedish wildlife officials issued four
hundred and eighty six licenses this year, which animal rights
activists complain is equal to about twenty percent of the
country's brown bear population. Hunters know that an issued license
(06:18):
does not always result in a dead animal, which is
kind of what I was alluding to in last week's
episode when we were talking about name and deer, having
clients pick them out and then letting those deer come
into big old piles of corn in Utah. But Swedish
bear hunters appear to be unusually effective. Last year, hunters
were issued six hundred and forty nine licenses, and that's
how many bears they killed during the regular hunt. The
(06:41):
quota has been significantly reduced this year, but it still
represents a good chunk of the estimated twenty five hundred
bears that reside in the country. In relation to its size,
Sweden has a similar brown bear population as Montana. Montana
is about fifteen percent smaller than the northern European country,
and it has an estimated twenty one one hundred grizzlies
(07:01):
shambling around within its borders. As in Montana, brown bears
in Sweden were more or less wiped out by the
beginning of the twentieth century, but protective policies allowed the
population to grow to a peak of thirty three hundred
in two thousand and eight. Allowing an annual hunt has
stabilized that population to where it is now, but protectionist
(07:21):
groups are warning that the state is allowing too many
of the bruins to be taken each year, and they
believe the hunt will permanently harm the population, even though
quotas are set at the local level. They accused the
Big government of unofficially aiming for the minimum population goal,
which is fourteen hundred bears. They accuse hunters of only
wanting to shoot bears because of quote a macho dimension
(07:44):
and to protect the reindeer and moose populations. About one
hundred and fifty bears were killed the first two days
of the hunt, and thanks to police efforts, I haven't
seen any reports of activists interfering with the proceedings. We'll
keep an eye on this one. It's hard not to
see parallels between how sweet and manages its brown bears
and how states like Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming would like
(08:05):
to manage theirs if the species is removed from the
endangered species list. I can see annual hunts to keep
the population at an acceptable level, with flexible hunt quotas
to respond to changing circumstances. Seems like a sustainable plan
to me. I know you're asking this question, so I'll
just say it out loud. If these anti hunters really
cared about animal populations, you think they'd protest people who
(08:28):
build houses in sensitive habitat. The urban encroachment on wildlife
kills way more animals than hunters do. But don't take
my word for it. I'm just a hunter. Moving on
to the hunting desk. In a related piece of news,
the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries announced last month
that the states black bear hunting lottery will officially open
(08:51):
to state hunters beginning August twenty ninth and ending September
twenty fifth. Ten black bear hunting permits will be given
out by a lottery, and it costs fifty dollars to apply.
The hunt will be confined to Bear Management Area four,
which includes Tensas Madison, East Carroll, and West Carroll Parishes
in portions of Richland, Franklin, and Catahula parishes. The season
(09:13):
will begin seven, twenty twenty four and run through December
twenty two, twenty twenty four. We've covered this story before
and it's gotten lot to play in the media. For
that reason, the odds of being selected as one of
the ten hunters probably aren't high, but sending fifty dollars
to the Department of Wildlife is never a waste of money. Plus,
if you're not selected this year, you'll be given an
(09:35):
additional preference point for each subsequent year you apply. Each
preference point serves as an additional lottery opportunity, though you'll
lose your preference points if you fail to apply one year,
and preference points are capped at five. The Louisiana black
bear hunt is a great conservation success story, and it
would be very cool to be one of the hunters
who bags a bruin on this inaugural season. If you're
(09:58):
one of those hunters I'd love to hear from. Can
you send me an email at askcal at the Meat
Eater dot com Let me know how it goes. Speaking
of additional hunting opportunities, listener Rob Holland wrote in with
exciting news from his neck of the woods. The US
Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing a new rule that
would open up one hundred thousand acres of National Wildlife
(10:19):
refuge land in North Dakota two elk hunting. These acres
would be spread across four different refuges, the J. Clark
Sailor Upper Souris, Lost Wood, and De Laxe. Rob is
supporting this new rule because quote, there is a limited
opportunity for a true backcountry style hunt in North Dakota
as there is a lack of roadless areas in the state.
(10:40):
Opening these wildlife refuges would greatly help increase those opportunities,
and they are largely devoid of roads and motorized travel.
As with most new hunting opportunities on National wildlife refuge land,
hunters would be required to use non lead bullets, but
I think that's a small price to pay for so
much additional hunting opportunity. Rob says that he's seen some
(11:01):
opposition to this new rule, largely from people who object
to hunting on land supposedly reserved as wildlife refuges. I
can see how someone learning about this topic for the
first time might think that that's incongruous. Why would we
hunt and kill animals on a refuge. First, it's worth
noting that the National Refuge System was founded by Teddy Roosevelt,
(11:22):
who's not exactly known as a vegan. Well, Teddy loved
to hunt, which is partly what motivated him to fight
to conserve wildlife habitat. Second, hunting and fishing are tightly
regulated on refuge properties. Biologists closely monitor the populations of
game animals, so there's no need to fear that those
species are being hunted to extinction. In fact, much of
our refuge land is home to non game species that
(11:44):
are at risk of extinction. Allowing recreational use on these
properties helps promote buy in from the general public. Hunters
and anglers fight to protect these areas because they want
to keep hunting and fishing. In turn, those protected acres
provide permanent habitat for all their critters that would otherwise
be trampled under the endless march of new condos and subdivisions.
(12:06):
Hunters have been among the most vocal supporters of the
refuge system, so it makes sense to expand hunting opportunities
on those properties wherever we can. Moving on to the
amphibian desk, here's a trivia question for you. A recent
study found that this amphibian has a biomass in northeastern
(12:26):
North America equal to or greater than white tailed deer.
If you said frogs, you're wrong. The answer is red
backed salamanders. According to this study, conducted by the US
Geological Survey, there are an estimated fifty three hundred red
backed salamanders living in every patch of forest the size
(12:47):
of a football field in the northeast. This means that
they also have some of the highest biomass estimated for
animals other than insects, similar to or greater than America's
favorite big game animal. In other words, if you get
gathered up all the white tailed deer and all the
salamanders in the northeastern parts of North America, you'd have
about the same amount of matter. If that's not surprising.
(13:08):
I don't know what is. This matters because it highlights
the importance of salamanders to these ecosystems. Salamanders are in
the middle of the food chain. They live mostly underground,
which is why you don't step on any of those
fifty three hundred critters when you walk through the forest
and Maine in that damp undergrowth through at the top
of the food chain, the worms, snails, larvae, and insects
and aid in the decomposition of matter and contribute to
(13:31):
the health of the soil. But they're also a prey
species for things like birds, rodents, raccoons, and skunks. If
salamanders were to disappear, it would leave a massive hole
in the ecosystem network in that area of the world.
No one knows exactly what would happen, but it probably
wouldn't be good. This is concerning in the light of
a fungal disease discovered in the Netherlands in twenty thirteen,
(13:53):
Battrack Coquittrium salamandrivorans or b sal for short, has decimated
salamander pop relations in Central Europe and continues to spread
across that continent. According to a recent report in fizz
dot org, it hasn't been detected in the US yet,
but in our global world, it seems like it's only
a matter of time. That's why scientists are working to
(14:14):
implement protective measures that can help protect our salamander populations
before the disease arrives on our shores. These proactive measures
can include making it harder for amphibians to spread the
disease by installing barriers or increasing habitat complexity, reducing B
cell fungal spores in aquatic habitats by temporarily raising the
water temperatures, increasing the salinity, or increasing the abundance of zooplankton,
(14:37):
And helping amphibians fight off the disease by improving their
health through supplemental feeding. Whether wildlife managers will be able
to secure the funding to implement any of these measures
is anyone's guess, but knowing how prevalent these little amphibians
are is a great first step. If biologists can prove
that red back salamanders almost literally carpet the forest floor,
(14:58):
it will be much easier to invents policy bankers that
they're important and that protecting them is worth the cost.
One more thing you got to point out when you
talk about amphibian salamanders in particular, is that they have
porous skin, making them the first canary in the coal
mine to tell us what we did wrong. Moving on
(15:19):
to the salmon desk, the controversy over Alaska king salmon
came to a head last month when the National Marine
Fishery Service agreed to investigate whether the species deserves protection
under the Endangered Species Act. The decision comes in response
to a petition filed by the Wildfish Conservancy, which argued
that the king salmon's numbers have dropped so precipitously that
(15:41):
the specie warrants federal protection. The sixty seven page petition
was submitted in January, and the Marine Fishery Service as
well as the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration just came to
a decision. They decided that there was a substantial basis
to warrant a more in depth review of Gulf of
Alaska at kings. Now, the federal agencies have one year,
(16:03):
starting when the petition was submitted so January, to conduct
a detailed assessment. This will include breaking down kings into
geographically and genetically distinct subpopulations to determine which ones might
be at risk of extinction. The State of Alaska, however,
is not happy with the petition or with Noah's decision
to look into the issue more closely. In a press release,
(16:26):
Commissioner Doug Vincent Lang wrote a scathing critique, quote, the
petition is rife with significant factual errors, omits important data
that are widely available, and does not accurately describe the
status of Chinook salmon and Alaska. It is mind boggling
that NMFS could make a positive finding based on cherry
(16:46):
pick data to support a predetermined viewpoint. I am concerned
that this decision will encourage more frivolous petitions in the future. Amazingly,
Noah agreed that the document contained a plethora of errors,
but they still determine that allow usk and kings are
in dire enough condition to potentially warrant action. They said, quote,
we found that the information present in the petition contained
(17:08):
numerous factual errors, omissions, incomplete references, and unsupported assertions and conclusions. Still,
we concluded that the petition contained enough information for a
reasonable person to conclude that the petitioned action ESA listing
may be warranted. Other objections have come from the commercial
fishing industry, which worries that an ESA listing will shut
(17:31):
down some fisheries altogether. Representatives from the Wildfish Conservancy who
spoke with meat eaters Eli Fournier, acknowledge these concerns, but
say that some of them are overblown. They say that
listing the fish as endangered in some areas won't shut
down fishing throughout the Gulf of Alaska. That's small comfort
to those fishermen who live in areas where it will
(17:53):
be limited. Right now, nothing has been determined. This is
the very first step in deciding whether or not to
put King Sam on the ESA, and Noah might very
well decide that it's not warranted. Whatever happens, you can
be sure we'll stay on top of it. Weigh in
on this one. I know there's a lot of commercial
folks that listen to this year podcast. I'd love to
(18:13):
hear from you, especially those of you who keep their
logs tight year over year. It'd be great to get
your data as far as like something measurable like fuel
used per pound of fish would be a good one.
Something like that. How hard you got to work to
get your quota King's type of deal anyway, Moving on
to the mafia desk, the fisheries minister in the Canadian
(18:38):
province of Nova Scotia's sounding alarm about what he says
is an organized crime ring taking advantage of the area's
lucrative lobster fishery. Minister Kent Smith sent a letter to
his counterpart in the federal government claiming that the illegal
fishery has entrenched itself in coastal areas of the province.
He said in an interview with the CBC that criminal
(18:59):
elements are quote causing havoc in the community and causing
a lot of fear and anxiety. He says he's spoken
to fishermen that have been threatened, have had their property damaged,
and live in constant fear of repercussions for speaking out.
Is true that the historically peaceful area has seen a
string of violent crimes, including the burning of a police vehicle,
two arsons and shooting. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which
(19:22):
is Canada's equivalent of the FBI, admits that these crimes
are acts of intimidation. However, they do not believe these
attacks are related to illegal lobster fishing. Whether the lobster
mafia is breaking kneecaps in Nova Scotia is unclear, but
one thing is certain. Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans
has come under fire for failing to enforce the stated
commercial lobster fishing season. It's supposed to run from the
(19:45):
end of November until the end of May, but out
of season fishing is rampant. Minister Smith says there is
zero enforcement on the water, so lobster poachers can harvest
as much as they want. He said he's not just
concerned about violence, but about unreport income through cash transactions,
and that out of season fishing risks destroying lobster stocks
(20:07):
and the fishery. Canada's reputation internationally is also at stake,
he said, particularly if undersized lobsters or females bearing eggs
are being caught and sold moving on to the fishy
fish desk. Speaking of fish related crime, a Mississippi seafood
distributor and two of its managers pled guilty last month
(20:29):
to mislabeling foreign fish as premium local filets. Quality Poultry
and Seafood Inc. QPS, the largest seafood wholesaler on the
Mississippi Gulf Coast, has agreed to pay the United States
one million dollars in forfeitures and a criminal fine of
one hundred and fifty thousand. In addition, to the company's managers,
Todd A. Rosetti and James W. Gunkel, pled guilty to
(20:51):
misbranding seafood to facilitate the company's fraud. According to a
DOJ press release, the fish substitution scheme started all the
way back into two thousand and two and ran until
twenty nineteen. Over those years, the company recommended and sold
to its restaurant customers foreign sourced fish that could serve
as convincing substitutes for the local species the restaurants advertised
(21:13):
on their menus. Sometimes those restaurants were in the know.
A well known Mississippi Gulf Coast restaurant has also pled guilty.
In this case, Mary Mahoney's Old French House in Biloxie
admitted to selling a whopping twenty nine tons of fraudulently
labeled seafood between twenty thirteen and twenty nineteen. For example,
restaurant goers were told they were ordering snapper and grouper
(21:36):
from the Gulf of Mexico, when in fact they were
eating other species from abroad. DNA tests conducted by the
FDA confirmed that some of these filets were actually Lake
Victoria perch from Africa, tripletail from Surinam, and unicorm filefish
from India. That's not great for paying customers, it's not
great for the fish industry's carbon footprint, and it's especially
important to prosecute these crimes to protect local fishermen. If
(21:59):
a supply and a restaurant conspire to mislabeled seafood, they
can undercut all the other local suppliers and restaurants, which
means honest fishermen have a hard time making a profit.
If you don't mind eating frozen fish from overseas, that's fine,
but lots of folks would prefer eating local, freshly caught fish,
and that won't be possible if all those commercial operations
(22:21):
are forced out of business. Quality poultry and seafood has
already been sentenced, but the individual managers who made these
decisions won't be until later this year. Hopefully they'll throw
the book at them. That's all I got for you
this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to
write in to askcl that's Ascal at the meat eater
(22:41):
dot com. We'll let you know what's going on in
our neck of the woods, but you know you do first.
Had a lot of coffee today. Kids. Anyway, thank you
so much for listening. Get out in the woods. Be
kind and courteous to those you encounter out there, and
you know, spread your love of the outdoors. November's coming
up quick. Got a big vote in Colorado, and every
vote matters. We've got to engage the non hunting public.
(23:05):
Our access to wildlife is at stake. Thanks again, We'll
talk to you next week.
From Meat Eaters World News Headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This
is Cow's Week in Review with Ryan cow Klah Here's
cal A new study is found that dogs can detect
chronic wasting disease with nothing more than their legendary noses.
The study, published in the Plus one Journal last month,
describes how researchers trained six shelter dogs in a laboratory
(00:34):
and field settings to sniff out the always fatal neurodegenerative disease.
The researchers started by obtaining hundreds of fecal samples from
both farmed white tail deer and deer killed by hunters
in western Tennessee. The dogs were walked down a line
of five boxes, only one of which contained poop from
an infected deer. The dogs were able to detect CWD
(00:54):
with ninety percent accuracy by scenting a metabolic change that
occurs when deer get an infected with the preon disease.
To a dog, CWD poop smells different, sort of like
how you always know when your roommate in college head
etn Taco bell, cheap beans and plastic cheese gives off
a distinct aroma after passing through the digestive tract doesn't
(01:16):
it anyway. Once the dogs were trained to detect CWD
and deer poop, they were given intestinal samples to sample.
In one portion of the study of the dogs correctly
identified CWD in deer colons with ninety six percent accuracy.
At this point, you might be wondering why anyone would
bother training dogs to detect CWD. There isn't a cure
(01:39):
for the disease, and it's not like the deer trying
to smuggle misfolded preons through the airport. This research is
important because we still don't have a reliable anti mortem
CWD test for deer and other ungulates. In other words,
it's hard for us to tell whether a deer has
CWD without killing it first. Obviously, we can guess with
a larger degree of certainty in areas where the disease
(02:02):
has a high prevalence and those deer are showing the
physical manifestations of the disease, which are super nasty. But
that's still going to be a guess until you do
the actual test, and that is a big problem for
states like Texas where deer breeders want to ship their
deer across the state to hunting properties or other breeding facilities.
(02:24):
Right now, we don't really know whether those deer are
infected and will spread the disease to areas that don't
already have it. It's unclear whether dogs are the solution
to this problem. Some would argue that deer breeders shouldn't
really exist in the first place, and they certainly shouldn't
be allowed to transport deer to other counties. But as
we work out those debates, it would be great if
we could know with certainty that we aren't making the
(02:46):
problem worse. CWD sniffing dogs might be one piece of
that puzzle. This week, we've got the great bear call
or how other countries do it? Salmon, salamanders, lobsters and fish.
But first I'm gonna tell you about my week. And
right now, as you listen to this old dirt myth,
Brad Brooks are golly outdoors, which you know, Brad makes
(03:09):
a bunch of awesome stuff over there, so he's check
that out, longtime hunting buddy of mine. We're kind of
marching ourselves out of the woods, if I can envision this,
and we're loaded to the hilt with elk meat and
hopefully elk antlers so big it's going to be hard
to find a wall to stick them on or a
door frame to fit them through. And even though we're
(03:29):
tired and beat up and stinky and dirty, we're going
to ignore the beer cooler. Brad's gonna drive away Old
Dirt and I are going to pick up some lamas
from Old bull Baby, and we're going to head out
and up to Parts unknown in pursuit of the elusive
gigantic high Mountain Mule Deer. Body sore, but brain function
(03:50):
increased substantially. Due to the lack of screen time and
oppressive connection to the outside world, We've probably we experienced
more than a couple of setbacks, hopefully all minor. But
you know, part of living life in the outdoors is
being able to think on your feet, keep your head
on a swivel, and figure stuff out, improvise, adapt, and overcome.
(04:11):
As they used to say, We're gonna film both of
these hunts. That's what Dirt Myth's doing there. But if
you would be interested in a podcast recap with these fellas,
just rite in you know where to ride in and
let me know and we'll try to do our best
on that one might just record one for fun. Anyway,
(04:32):
Outside of that, I hope everyone is starting to get
some fall weather and thinking about that amazing outside time
or getting out in the out of doors. Right now,
if you are out doing the college football thing, look
for the meat Eater tailgate tour and say hi to
those great folks. For me, I can't say hi because
I'm going to be in the woods, and I can't
(04:53):
say I wish I was there because fall is for hunting.
There is admittedly a part of me that's still truly football.
It's a great opportunity to build skills and have fun.
I wouldn't go back and change the great experiences I
had playing the sport as a kid, But I also
had anxiety standing on the field as leaves were falling,
(05:14):
frost was in the grass, and geese were flying overhead,
or like when that early season snowstorm had hit, and
part of you was looking forward to playing in those conditions,
but a bigger part of you was mentally carrying the
old three hundred win meg looking for elk tracks, maybe
even falling the old outfitter around, watching his hand rolled
cigarette smoke show you how the wind was drifting after
(05:35):
the storm broke. It's a great time of year and
we just can't be two places at once. Moving on
to the bear management desk. Police officers in Sweden were
forced to accompany hunters during this year's brown bear hunt
as protesters tried to interfere with the annual event. Officers
(05:55):
have been patrolling the forests on foot and with drones
to ensure the hunter's peaceful progress. Amid concerns that high
license numbers could provoke unrest. Swedish wildlife officials issued four
hundred and eighty six licenses this year, which animal rights
activists complain is equal to about twenty percent of the
country's brown bear population. Hunters know that an issued license
(06:18):
does not always result in a dead animal, which is
kind of what I was alluding to in last week's
episode when we were talking about name and deer, having
clients pick them out and then letting those deer come
into big old piles of corn in Utah. But Swedish
bear hunters appear to be unusually effective. Last year, hunters
were issued six hundred and forty nine licenses, and that's
how many bears they killed during the regular hunt. The
(06:41):
quota has been significantly reduced this year, but it still
represents a good chunk of the estimated twenty five hundred
bears that reside in the country. In relation to its size,
Sweden has a similar brown bear population as Montana. Montana
is about fifteen percent smaller than the northern European country,
and it has an estimated twenty one one hundred grizzlies
(07:01):
shambling around within its borders. As in Montana, brown bears
in Sweden were more or less wiped out by the
beginning of the twentieth century, but protective policies allowed the
population to grow to a peak of thirty three hundred
in two thousand and eight. Allowing an annual hunt has
stabilized that population to where it is now, but protectionist
(07:21):
groups are warning that the state is allowing too many
of the bruins to be taken each year, and they
believe the hunt will permanently harm the population, even though
quotas are set at the local level. They accused the
Big government of unofficially aiming for the minimum population goal,
which is fourteen hundred bears. They accuse hunters of only
wanting to shoot bears because of quote a macho dimension
(07:44):
and to protect the reindeer and moose populations. About one
hundred and fifty bears were killed the first two days
of the hunt, and thanks to police efforts, I haven't
seen any reports of activists interfering with the proceedings. We'll
keep an eye on this one. It's hard not to
see parallels between how sweet and manages its brown bears
and how states like Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming would like
(08:05):
to manage theirs if the species is removed from the
endangered species list. I can see annual hunts to keep
the population at an acceptable level, with flexible hunt quotas
to respond to changing circumstances. Seems like a sustainable plan
to me. I know you're asking this question, so I'll
just say it out loud. If these anti hunters really
cared about animal populations, you think they'd protest people who
(08:28):
build houses in sensitive habitat. The urban encroachment on wildlife
kills way more animals than hunters do. But don't take
my word for it. I'm just a hunter. Moving on
to the hunting desk. In a related piece of news,
the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries announced last month
that the states black bear hunting lottery will officially open
(08:51):
to state hunters beginning August twenty ninth and ending September
twenty fifth. Ten black bear hunting permits will be given
out by a lottery, and it costs fifty dollars to apply.
The hunt will be confined to Bear Management Area four,
which includes Tensas Madison, East Carroll, and West Carroll Parishes
in portions of Richland, Franklin, and Catahula parishes. The season
(09:13):
will begin seven, twenty twenty four and run through December
twenty two, twenty twenty four. We've covered this story before
and it's gotten lot to play in the media. For
that reason, the odds of being selected as one of
the ten hunters probably aren't high, but sending fifty dollars
to the Department of Wildlife is never a waste of money. Plus,
if you're not selected this year, you'll be given an
(09:35):
additional preference point for each subsequent year you apply. Each
preference point serves as an additional lottery opportunity, though you'll
lose your preference points if you fail to apply one year,
and preference points are capped at five. The Louisiana black
bear hunt is a great conservation success story, and it
would be very cool to be one of the hunters
who bags a bruin on this inaugural season. If you're
(09:58):
one of those hunters I'd love to hear from. Can
you send me an email at askcal at the Meat
Eater dot com Let me know how it goes. Speaking
of additional hunting opportunities, listener Rob Holland wrote in with
exciting news from his neck of the woods. The US
Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing a new rule that
would open up one hundred thousand acres of National Wildlife
(10:19):
refuge land in North Dakota two elk hunting. These acres
would be spread across four different refuges, the J. Clark
Sailor Upper Souris, Lost Wood, and De Laxe. Rob is
supporting this new rule because quote, there is a limited
opportunity for a true backcountry style hunt in North Dakota
as there is a lack of roadless areas in the state.
(10:40):
Opening these wildlife refuges would greatly help increase those opportunities,
and they are largely devoid of roads and motorized travel.
As with most new hunting opportunities on National wildlife refuge land,
hunters would be required to use non lead bullets, but
I think that's a small price to pay for so
much additional hunting opportunity. Rob says that he's seen some
(11:01):
opposition to this new rule, largely from people who object
to hunting on land supposedly reserved as wildlife refuges. I
can see how someone learning about this topic for the
first time might think that that's incongruous. Why would we
hunt and kill animals on a refuge. First, it's worth
noting that the National Refuge System was founded by Teddy Roosevelt,
(11:22):
who's not exactly known as a vegan. Well, Teddy loved
to hunt, which is partly what motivated him to fight
to conserve wildlife habitat. Second, hunting and fishing are tightly
regulated on refuge properties. Biologists closely monitor the populations of
game animals, so there's no need to fear that those
species are being hunted to extinction. In fact, much of
our refuge land is home to non game species that
(11:44):
are at risk of extinction. Allowing recreational use on these
properties helps promote buy in from the general public. Hunters
and anglers fight to protect these areas because they want
to keep hunting and fishing. In turn, those protected acres
provide permanent habitat for all their critters that would otherwise
be trampled under the endless march of new condos and subdivisions.
(12:06):
Hunters have been among the most vocal supporters of the
refuge system, so it makes sense to expand hunting opportunities
on those properties wherever we can. Moving on to the
amphibian desk, here's a trivia question for you. A recent
study found that this amphibian has a biomass in northeastern
(12:26):
North America equal to or greater than white tailed deer.
If you said frogs, you're wrong. The answer is red
backed salamanders. According to this study, conducted by the US
Geological Survey, there are an estimated fifty three hundred red
backed salamanders living in every patch of forest the size
(12:47):
of a football field in the northeast. This means that
they also have some of the highest biomass estimated for
animals other than insects, similar to or greater than America's
favorite big game animal. In other words, if you get
gathered up all the white tailed deer and all the
salamanders in the northeastern parts of North America, you'd have
about the same amount of matter. If that's not surprising.
(13:08):
I don't know what is. This matters because it highlights
the importance of salamanders to these ecosystems. Salamanders are in
the middle of the food chain. They live mostly underground,
which is why you don't step on any of those
fifty three hundred critters when you walk through the forest
and Maine in that damp undergrowth through at the top
of the food chain, the worms, snails, larvae, and insects
and aid in the decomposition of matter and contribute to
(13:31):
the health of the soil. But they're also a prey
species for things like birds, rodents, raccoons, and skunks. If
salamanders were to disappear, it would leave a massive hole
in the ecosystem network in that area of the world.
No one knows exactly what would happen, but it probably
wouldn't be good. This is concerning in the light of
a fungal disease discovered in the Netherlands in twenty thirteen,
(13:53):
Battrack Coquittrium salamandrivorans or b sal for short, has decimated
salamander pop relations in Central Europe and continues to spread
across that continent. According to a recent report in fizz
dot org, it hasn't been detected in the US yet,
but in our global world, it seems like it's only
a matter of time. That's why scientists are working to
(14:14):
implement protective measures that can help protect our salamander populations
before the disease arrives on our shores. These proactive measures
can include making it harder for amphibians to spread the
disease by installing barriers or increasing habitat complexity, reducing B
cell fungal spores in aquatic habitats by temporarily raising the
water temperatures, increasing the salinity, or increasing the abundance of zooplankton,
(14:37):
And helping amphibians fight off the disease by improving their
health through supplemental feeding. Whether wildlife managers will be able
to secure the funding to implement any of these measures
is anyone's guess, but knowing how prevalent these little amphibians
are is a great first step. If biologists can prove
that red back salamanders almost literally carpet the forest floor,
(14:58):
it will be much easier to invents policy bankers that
they're important and that protecting them is worth the cost.
One more thing you got to point out when you
talk about amphibian salamanders in particular, is that they have
porous skin, making them the first canary in the coal
mine to tell us what we did wrong. Moving on
(15:19):
to the salmon desk, the controversy over Alaska king salmon
came to a head last month when the National Marine
Fishery Service agreed to investigate whether the species deserves protection
under the Endangered Species Act. The decision comes in response
to a petition filed by the Wildfish Conservancy, which argued
that the king salmon's numbers have dropped so precipitously that
(15:41):
the specie warrants federal protection. The sixty seven page petition
was submitted in January, and the Marine Fishery Service as
well as the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration just came to
a decision. They decided that there was a substantial basis
to warrant a more in depth review of Gulf of
Alaska at kings. Now, the federal agencies have one year,
(16:03):
starting when the petition was submitted so January, to conduct
a detailed assessment. This will include breaking down kings into
geographically and genetically distinct subpopulations to determine which ones might
be at risk of extinction. The State of Alaska, however,
is not happy with the petition or with Noah's decision
to look into the issue more closely. In a press release,
(16:26):
Commissioner Doug Vincent Lang wrote a scathing critique, quote, the
petition is rife with significant factual errors, omits important data
that are widely available, and does not accurately describe the
status of Chinook salmon and Alaska. It is mind boggling
that NMFS could make a positive finding based on cherry
(16:46):
pick data to support a predetermined viewpoint. I am concerned
that this decision will encourage more frivolous petitions in the future. Amazingly,
Noah agreed that the document contained a plethora of errors,
but they still determine that allow usk and kings are
in dire enough condition to potentially warrant action. They said, quote,
we found that the information present in the petition contained
(17:08):
numerous factual errors, omissions, incomplete references, and unsupported assertions and conclusions. Still,
we concluded that the petition contained enough information for a
reasonable person to conclude that the petitioned action ESA listing
may be warranted. Other objections have come from the commercial
fishing industry, which worries that an ESA listing will shut
(17:31):
down some fisheries altogether. Representatives from the Wildfish Conservancy who
spoke with meat eaters Eli Fournier, acknowledge these concerns, but
say that some of them are overblown. They say that
listing the fish as endangered in some areas won't shut
down fishing throughout the Gulf of Alaska. That's small comfort
to those fishermen who live in areas where it will
(17:53):
be limited. Right now, nothing has been determined. This is
the very first step in deciding whether or not to
put King Sam on the ESA, and Noah might very
well decide that it's not warranted. Whatever happens, you can
be sure we'll stay on top of it. Weigh in
on this one. I know there's a lot of commercial
folks that listen to this year podcast. I'd love to
(18:13):
hear from you, especially those of you who keep their
logs tight year over year. It'd be great to get
your data as far as like something measurable like fuel
used per pound of fish would be a good one.
Something like that. How hard you got to work to
get your quota King's type of deal anyway, Moving on
to the mafia desk, the fisheries minister in the Canadian
(18:38):
province of Nova Scotia's sounding alarm about what he says
is an organized crime ring taking advantage of the area's
lucrative lobster fishery. Minister Kent Smith sent a letter to
his counterpart in the federal government claiming that the illegal
fishery has entrenched itself in coastal areas of the province.
He said in an interview with the CBC that criminal
(18:59):
elements are quote causing havoc in the community and causing
a lot of fear and anxiety. He says he's spoken
to fishermen that have been threatened, have had their property damaged,
and live in constant fear of repercussions for speaking out.
Is true that the historically peaceful area has seen a
string of violent crimes, including the burning of a police vehicle,
two arsons and shooting. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which
(19:22):
is Canada's equivalent of the FBI, admits that these crimes
are acts of intimidation. However, they do not believe these
attacks are related to illegal lobster fishing. Whether the lobster
mafia is breaking kneecaps in Nova Scotia is unclear, but
one thing is certain. Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans
has come under fire for failing to enforce the stated
commercial lobster fishing season. It's supposed to run from the
(19:45):
end of November until the end of May, but out
of season fishing is rampant. Minister Smith says there is
zero enforcement on the water, so lobster poachers can harvest
as much as they want. He said he's not just
concerned about violence, but about unreport income through cash transactions,
and that out of season fishing risks destroying lobster stocks
(20:07):
and the fishery. Canada's reputation internationally is also at stake,
he said, particularly if undersized lobsters or females bearing eggs
are being caught and sold moving on to the fishy
fish desk. Speaking of fish related crime, a Mississippi seafood
distributor and two of its managers pled guilty last month
(20:29):
to mislabeling foreign fish as premium local filets. Quality Poultry
and Seafood Inc. QPS, the largest seafood wholesaler on the
Mississippi Gulf Coast, has agreed to pay the United States
one million dollars in forfeitures and a criminal fine of
one hundred and fifty thousand. In addition, to the company's managers,
Todd A. Rosetti and James W. Gunkel, pled guilty to
(20:51):
misbranding seafood to facilitate the company's fraud. According to a
DOJ press release, the fish substitution scheme started all the
way back into two thousand and two and ran until
twenty nineteen. Over those years, the company recommended and sold
to its restaurant customers foreign sourced fish that could serve
as convincing substitutes for the local species the restaurants advertised
(21:13):
on their menus. Sometimes those restaurants were in the know.
A well known Mississippi Gulf Coast restaurant has also pled guilty.
In this case, Mary Mahoney's Old French House in Biloxie
admitted to selling a whopping twenty nine tons of fraudulently
labeled seafood between twenty thirteen and twenty nineteen. For example,
restaurant goers were told they were ordering snapper and grouper
(21:36):
from the Gulf of Mexico, when in fact they were
eating other species from abroad. DNA tests conducted by the
FDA confirmed that some of these filets were actually Lake
Victoria perch from Africa, tripletail from Surinam, and unicorm filefish
from India. That's not great for paying customers, it's not
great for the fish industry's carbon footprint, and it's especially
important to prosecute these crimes to protect local fishermen. If
(21:59):
a supply and a restaurant conspire to mislabeled seafood, they
can undercut all the other local suppliers and restaurants, which
means honest fishermen have a hard time making a profit.
If you don't mind eating frozen fish from overseas, that's fine,
but lots of folks would prefer eating local, freshly caught fish,
and that won't be possible if all those commercial operations
(22:21):
are forced out of business. Quality poultry and seafood has
already been sentenced, but the individual managers who made these
decisions won't be until later this year. Hopefully they'll throw
the book at them. That's all I got for you
this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to
write in to askcl that's Ascal at the meat eater
(22:41):
dot com. We'll let you know what's going on in
our neck of the woods, but you know you do first.
Had a lot of coffee today. Kids. Anyway, thank you
so much for listening. Get out in the woods. Be
kind and courteous to those you encounter out there, and
you know, spread your love of the outdoors. November's coming
up quick. Got a big vote in Colorado, and every
vote matters. We've got to engage the non hunting public.
(23:05):
Our access to wildlife is at stake. Thanks again, We'll
talk to you next week.
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