June 9, 2025 • 20 mins
This week, Cal covers a fishing controversy in Maryland, criminal duck hunters, Neanderthal art projects, and getting hit on at the grocery store.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This
is Col's Week in Review with Ryan cal Calahan. Here's
cal After much fanfare, the scientists who created what they
call dire wolves now appear to be walking back their claims.
Colossal Biosciences launched a media campaign in April claiming that
(00:32):
the company had successfully de extincted three dire wolves, but
other scientists, including our pal Jim Heffelfinger, disagreed. They pointed
out that the three puppies, dubbed Romulus, Remus, and Kalisi,
aren't real dire wolves genetically speaking. Now, Colossal's chief scientist,
Beth Shapiro appears to be howling from the same songbook.
(00:54):
She said in a late May interview with The New
Scientist quote, it's not possible to bring something back that
is identical to a species that used to be alive.
Our animals are gray wolves with twenty edits that are cloned,
and we've said that from the very beginning. Colloquially, they're
calling them dire wolves, and that makes people angry. That
(01:15):
word colloquially is doing a lot of work in that statement. Basically,
Colossal is saying that they never really hid what these
wolves are. They claimed how they created them for mostly
gray wolf genes, and they just called them dire wolves
as a kind of fun and informal publicity stunt. It worked.
It reminds me a bit of a story from the
last year when a zoo in China got caught painting
(01:37):
chow chow dogs black and white and pretending they were
pandas it's not exactly the same thing. Colossal scientists are
the real deal, and they did in fact copy some
genetic material from dire wolves and put it into these puppies,
but in the public rollout of this project still strikes
me as somewhat deceptive, even if it wasn't totally false. Anyway,
(01:58):
this is hopefully the last Game of Thrones reference I'll
make for a while on this podcast, But if you
want to learn more, Steve and the crew spoke with
Colossal Chief Animal Officer Matt James in a recent episode
of the Media podcast. They dive into all of these
issues and it's worth listen. This week we've got the
crime Desk, public Lands, Fisheries, and the Bear Desk. But
(02:18):
first I'm going to tell you about my week, and
my week was great, hot footed it over to sue Fall,
South Dakota to hang out with all the good folks
at Shields. If you don't know what the heck Shiels is,
it's a I would say it's a growing chain, like
box store chain. You know. It's kind of got everything
from soccer balls to firearms, and a hell of a
(02:39):
fishing section, archery, all the good stuff. On top of
all that, they do a heck of a good job,
very impressive job finding into retaining nice, knowledgeable people to
work there. Spent a bunch of time in the fishing
department and the archery department. I shot a compound bow
for the first time and close to a decade, and
(02:59):
it was the first ever Matthews bow. I think I've
shot just a loner. Not traveling back over to the
wheel assistant side of hunting anytime soon. All Jeff from
the man Cato Shiels got me set up and slinging
arrows at sixty yards in under an hour, which to
me is pretty damn crazy, brand spanking new bow all assembled.
(03:20):
Shot at like five yards, then at twenty and then
apparently if you shoot at three yards with the bottom pin,
that's kind of close to where you're gonna be at
sixty yards. And then sure enough we went out and
shot at sixty yards. I would say I was hitting
something the size of like my old yetty backpack in
(03:41):
a five shot group at sixty yards, which is you know,
it's deep. Another special thing happened on this trip. While
I was away, my next door neighbor walked across the street,
jumped in my truck, drove my truck to his shop,
which is called Freedom four Wheel out in Four Corners, Montana,
and put new tires and wheels on my twenty year
(04:03):
old pickup. It's a long time coming. The rubber was
getting thin. I paid for it, don't worry. I got
to bring up the fact that it's just so freaking
nice to have something done that you didn't have to
do yourself because we're busy. Big thank you to Joe
and the crew at Freedom four Wheel. I appreciate you.
I'm gearing up for Independence Day activities, mostly trying to
(04:25):
cook for a bunch of folks and kids. So I'm
in beta testing on what I want to make, and
I'm thinking of a couple of big plates of turkey
thigh enchiladas. I got a big store of wild turkey
thighs from this season and just recently. I want to
do smash burgers for everybody, because everybody's got those big
flat top grills these days. I mixed up a big
(04:48):
batch at Burger and test rove a couple of variations
of smash burgers, and it's fun like fresh mixing burger
because you just drop the onions and garlic and stuff
that you want in your burger. Adding the g an
onion does a pretty good job of cleaning out the
barrel of your grinder too, just like Celery does. Just
you know, a hot tip for you. Anyway, I was
(05:11):
solicited in the local Town and Country grocery store due
to my buns. I was walking by the deli counter
with a bag of hamburger buns and the gal, who
I would guess is you know, not to be rude,
but older than me just by a scoche, says, hey,
I see you got nice buns there. Probably need some cheese,
and I thought, yeah, I do. So I picked out
(05:34):
smoked Gouda which was sitting there, and I got a
taste test of it was real good, but it man alive.
Doubled up on a smash burger way too overpowering, and
that is why you test things out, no matter how
nice your buns are. Lastly, I'll see everybody at backcountry
Hunters and Anglers Rendezvous and Missoula, Montana looking forward to it.
(05:55):
Lots to celebrate and lots to discuss, learn and laugh about.
Can't wait to get to everybody together and talk public lands.
Moving on to the crime desk, a fishing captain in
Florida has been sentenced to thirty days in prison and
will be forced to pay a fifty thousand dollars fine
for poisoning and shooting dolphins. The story comes just a
(06:17):
few weeks after officials in North Cakilac He found it
decapitate a dolphin washed up on a beach. These incidents
are unlikely to be related, but it goes to show
not everyone loves the playful, squeaky ocean animals. Thirty one
year old Zachary Brandon Barfield is a charter and commercial
fishing captain operating out of Panama City, Florida. The US
Department of Justice says Barfield got frustrated with dolphins eating
(06:40):
red snapper from the lines of his charter fishing clients,
so he started placing metha mill inside bait fish to
poison the dolphins that surface near his boat. Metha mill
is a highly toxic pesticide that can cause paralysis and
respiratory failure on at least two occasions in twenty twenty two.
In twenty twenty three, Barfield also shot and killed doll
dolphins with a twelve gage shotgun as the animals were
(07:02):
eating fish from his client's lines. He did this in
front of two elementary school aged children in one instance
and in another while there were over a dozen anglers
on board. Hot tip for you, if you charter a
fishing trip and the captain whips out a twelve gauge
for anything other than the shark from Jaws, leave a
bad review when you get back to shore. If you
(07:24):
make it back to shore anyway. These actions did not
go unnoticed, and the FEDS launched a prosecution. That prosecution
was successful, and Barfield was convicted of three counts in
violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Federal Insecticide,
Funguside and Rodenticide Act. He'll serve one year of supervised
release after he gets out of the Slammer and Bada
(07:46):
man was hit with a five thousand dollars fine for
killing a trophy class bull elk in the Great Basin
National Park. Members of the public alerted game wardens that
someone had killed the animal a half mile inside the
National Park boundaries. A quick look on on Act shows
me that these seventy seven thousand acre park is bordered
all the way around by state game units. Sounds like
this fella, who was not named in the press release,
(08:07):
wandered into the National Park from the property and shot
his elk. There's a really no excuse for that these days,
which is probably why he was hit with twelve months
of probation along with his fine. Listener Grant Ben sent
me a story about a Virginia man who was fined
at nearly ten thousand dollars for killing at least twenty
birds of prey, including a bald eagle. William Custa Smith
(08:28):
is a big waterfowl hunter, and he had built a
small pond on his property to attract ducks. But he
wasn't the only critter eager for a duck. Dinner hawks
and eagles were killing the waterfowl he wanted to hunt,
so he hit up a brilliant solution. He poisoned dead
fish with a band insecticide called carbo furin and set
those fish out for the birds. Not satisfied with that,
(08:49):
he also set out traps to catch whatever birds didn't
succumb to poison, and then bludging them to death with
a pole. It is against federal law to kill hawks
and eagles in the United States, so once Virginia was
Wildlife Agency got wind of Smith's actions, they brought in
the US Fish and Wildlife Service. They collected evidence of
the Virginia man's wrongdoing, including video of the bird killing
(09:10):
and the carcass of a poisoned eagle, and successfully prosecuted
the case. Along with a ten thousand dollars fine. Smith
will serve one day in jail, fifty hours of community service,
and beyond probation for two years. Moving on to the
Neanderthal finger painting desk. Speaking of collecting evidence, the forensics
team of the Spanish Police Force recently made an impressive
(09:33):
pull of an old fingerprint off a challenging surface. This
wasn't a clue on a doorknob from a couple months ago.
We're talking about a fingerprint that is forty three thousand
years old. In the San Lazaro Rock shelter in Segovia, Spain,
archaeologists had uncovered an unusual oval rock about the size
of a big butternut squash, with a dot of red
pigment right in the center. The rock has natural creases
(09:55):
at the top and the bottom that look a bit
like eyes in a mouth, and the dot sits right
where the nose would be. Neanderthals occupied this particular shelter
for thousands of years, and so the archaeologist speculated that
maybe the dot was made intentionally to create a human image,
possibly one of the earliest works of art ever discovered,
But they couldn't be sure, so scientists brought the rock
(10:17):
to the Spanish National Forensics Lab, where the police scanned
the dot of pigment using multi spectrum analysis. The scan
revealed the distinctive ridge pattern of a human fingerprint, what's
known in the BIZ as a quote unquote dermatoglyphic image.
Hey you're dermatoglyphic. Not too long ago, scientists believed there
(10:38):
wasn't really that much happening inside a Neanderthal's head, just
grunting and ripping meat off of bones. But the Sand
Lazaro Rock means that one of these ancient people was
able to imagine a human face in the random shapes
of a particular stone. They mixed up red ochre pigment
for mineral deposits in the environment and added the mark
of a nose to make the object even more human,
(10:59):
and then carry it back to the shelter to show
their buddies. Add that to the impressive list of Neanderthal
abilities like catching birds with their bare hands and killing
reindeer and hand to hand combat. The fossil evidence that
suggests that they dove for food in the ocean. And
you know, he got some pretty cool critters to hang
out with. All of you who did your twenty three
(11:20):
and meteris and came back with Neanderthal ancestry, you got
another little flagged way. Congrats. Moving on to the public
land desk, Utah Senator Mike Lee doesn't seem to be
able to take a hint. The anti public land senator
told The E and E News last week that he
(11:41):
plans champion of public land sale amendment in President Trump's
quote big beautiful budget bill. If this sounds like deja
vu all over again, join the club. Just a few
weeks ago, public land advocates defeated a measure that would
have disposed over five hundred thousand acres of federal land
in Utah and Nevada. That provision was inserted by two
(12:01):
House members from those states, but Republican House leadership, led
by Montana Rep. Ryan Zinky, removed it before he got
to the House floor. Now, Senator Lee has vowed to
reinsert public land sale provision into the Senate version of
the bill. The Utah Senator was asked by a reporter
whether he planned to bring back the public land provision
that were cut from the House package. He was on
(12:22):
his way to another committee meeting, but he said, quote,
I got to go vote, but yes, So it's unclear
right now exactly what those sales will look like. Maybe
they won't be as broad as the House amendment, and
maybe they'll allow the funds to be used for conservation.
But given Senator Lee's long and storied history of advocating
against federal public lands, I'm not holding my breath. Rather
(12:42):
than fight this fight after it gets reinserted into this bill,
I'd rather convince Senator Lee that new public land sales
are dead on arrival. To do that, we need to
contact other members of the Senate, especially members of the
Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where Senator Lee is the chair.
The Republicans on that committee need to tell Lee that
they won't vote for the package if he shoe horns
(13:02):
public land sales back in another great opportunity for our
Republican representatives and senators to be heroes. A little more
than a year ago, we reported on a rule issued
by the Department of the Interior maximizing protections for thirteen
million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, also known
as the NPR. That rule limited future oil and gas
(13:24):
leasing and industrial development on the largest single area of
public lands in the United States. This week, the Trump
administration reversed that rule, opening all of the NPRA to
oil and gas drilling and mineral extraction, as well as
allowing the roads and other infrastructure necessary to get those
resources and transport them out. Yes, a lot of people's
(13:45):
livelihoods in this area depend on oil and gas, but
there aren't many places like the NPRA left on Earth,
and the critters we want to have around, like Cariboo
and Rock term again depend on those undeveloped places to live.
The consequences of encroaching on public lands. This week, Thai
billionaire pre yued Mahagad Siri was sentenced to twenty four
(14:07):
years in prison for expanding his golf course into seventy
four acres of protected conservation land. The Metals in Coffee
tycoon colluded with government officials to obtain deeds for his
Mountain Creek golf resort, which, according to its marketing materials,
promises and I quote, a sensory multiplex for those with
lofty desires. I think I understand what this guy means, though,
(14:28):
Like if you go lay down in mid September when
the elker buglin and just kind of chill out on
a mountain side, that's a sensory multiplex for those with
lofty desires. Thankfully, law enforcement noticed that the Mountain Creek
Resort contained actual mountain creeks belonging to the people of Thailand.
The case is, of course being appealed, but it's good
(14:49):
to know that we hear in the United States aren't
the only ones fighting the good fight. I'm protecting wildlife habitat.
But it does lead to you to imagine what the
golf course encroaching on the NPRA in Alaska would look
like there would it certainly be some wicked water traps
up there as well as one hole that's a par
ten million. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources recently proposed
(15:12):
lifting a ban on stripe bass fishing during spring spawning
season in the Chesapeake Bay. This opening would be balanced
by closing fishing entirely during August, when heat related fishing
deaths have been on the rise. We've covered Atlantic stripe
bass before, and we always highlighted the tough trade offs
involved here. Allowing spring fishing will of course benefit recreational
(15:33):
anglers and the tackle shops and guides who depend on them.
The Maryland dn R hopes to get more people engaged
with stripers and out on the water year after year.
This change would also bring Maryland's regulations more in line
with rules in nearby areas, reducing the kind of confusion
that causes a lot of people to throw up their
hands with fishing altogether and try pickleball instead. We know
(15:55):
that when more people are invested in going after a
particular species, the resulting money and advocacy helps that species thrive,
and by protecting fish later in the summer, Maryland hopes
that overall fish populations will start growing as a result
of the change. On the other hand, stressing fish populations
when females are carrying their eggs back to rivers to
(16:15):
spawn is an extra risky thing to do. Even though
policy makers are working to find a more precise measure
of how many fish die as a result of being
caught and released back into the water, the generally accepted
number is a nine percent death rate, or around two
and a half million fish a year. Unfortunately, there's no
way to control the sex of the fish you catch,
and so losing that many reproducing females could be disastrous
(16:38):
for population numbers. Female fish who do survive catch and
release often have a harder time land eggs, and the
resulting larvae often have a harder time reaching reproductive age.
Strip bass as a species already facing uphill battle when
it comes to making more little fish, as females have
to reach six years of age before they produce significant
(16:58):
numbers of eggs. Speak Bay is also the most important
spawning area for this entire species, so the stakes here
are pretty high. This fall, there will be a public
comment period before the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, so
you got to show up and make your voices heard.
Moving on to the bear desk. Florida is likely to
(17:19):
get a bear season this fall, and Connecticut might follow suit.
Connecticut bear hunters assumed that possibility was off the table
after a state Senate committee removed it from Senate Bill
one five three two, but a bipartisan group of legislators
proposed an amendment to the bill that would allow, but
not require, the governor to propose a bear hunting season
in coordination with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Specifically,
(17:41):
the amendment allows the governor to call a hunt only
if the agency has found that bear conflicts with people, pets,
and livestock in the state have reached a level that
poses a public safety threat. In doing the assessment, the
Wildlife agency must consider factors like bear entries into occupied
buildings and bear attacks on people and livestock. This really
(18:02):
is the motivation for allowing a bear hunt in the
first place, as in many states in the Northeast, the
black bear populations have grown so large that they're getting
into people's homes, hurting their dogs, and just generally causing mischief.
Residents have been calling on their elected officials to do
something about it, and a bear hunt is one of
several management tools that can be used. Would also help
(18:22):
if people stopped leaving out trash and dangling bird feeders
in places where bears can get them. But I'll never
complain about a new hunting opportunity. The bill passed the
Connecticut State Senate by a huge margin and now heads
to the House. If you live in the land of
Steady Habits, which is no kidding one of Connecticut's nicknames,
get on the horn with your state reps and tell
(18:42):
them how you feel about Senate Bill one five three
to two. You can bet that the anti hunting crowd
will be doing the same. Speaking of problem bears, the
Eastern European country of Slovakia is maintaining its aggressive posture
towards its brown bear population. A few weeks ago, I
told you about Slovakia's plan to call about a quarter
of its thirteen hundred brown bears. They made the decision
(19:04):
after several fatal attacks in the last few years, which
is understandable in a country smaller than West Virginia that
hosts over one thousand of the large, sometimes aggressive ruins.
Now the country's government is trying to make that move
more palatable by allowing the meat from those cold bears
to be sold after this week. According to the BBC,
organizations under the Environment Ministry can offer the meat for
(19:26):
sale provided that all legal and hygiene conditions are met
to put things that will more perspective. Slovakia has seen
on average ten bear attacks per year over the last
few years. That might not sound like a lot, but
the country's population is only about five point four million people.
If you take that ratio and apply it to the
three hundred and forty million people in the United States,
(19:46):
we'd be seeing six hundred and thirty grizzly bear attacks
every single year. As it is, we only hear about
twenty or so each summer and fall. If you ask me,
I'd say the Slovakians have shown a remarkable level of
restraint to have weighted the this long to harvest some
of these bears. Bear meat isn't commonly eaten in Slovakia,
but we know it tastes good. Oddly enough, here in
(20:08):
the US, if you are killing animals in the name
of depredation, as in getting rid of them because they're
destroying crops or property, typically you cannot eat that animal,
which is of course a waste, so I applaud the
Slovakians here. That's all I got for you this week.
Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write into
(20:29):
askcl that's Ascal at the meat eater dot com. Let
me know what's going on in your neck of the woods.
We appreciate it.
From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This
is Col's Week in Review with Ryan cal Calahan. Here's
cal After much fanfare, the scientists who created what they
call dire wolves now appear to be walking back their claims.
Colossal Biosciences launched a media campaign in April claiming that
(00:32):
the company had successfully de extincted three dire wolves, but
other scientists, including our pal Jim Heffelfinger, disagreed. They pointed
out that the three puppies, dubbed Romulus, Remus, and Kalisi,
aren't real dire wolves genetically speaking. Now, Colossal's chief scientist,
Beth Shapiro appears to be howling from the same songbook.
(00:54):
She said in a late May interview with The New
Scientist quote, it's not possible to bring something back that
is identical to a species that used to be alive.
Our animals are gray wolves with twenty edits that are cloned,
and we've said that from the very beginning. Colloquially, they're
calling them dire wolves, and that makes people angry. That
(01:15):
word colloquially is doing a lot of work in that statement. Basically,
Colossal is saying that they never really hid what these
wolves are. They claimed how they created them for mostly
gray wolf genes, and they just called them dire wolves
as a kind of fun and informal publicity stunt. It worked.
It reminds me a bit of a story from the
last year when a zoo in China got caught painting
(01:37):
chow chow dogs black and white and pretending they were
pandas it's not exactly the same thing. Colossal scientists are
the real deal, and they did in fact copy some
genetic material from dire wolves and put it into these puppies,
but in the public rollout of this project still strikes
me as somewhat deceptive, even if it wasn't totally false. Anyway,
(01:58):
this is hopefully the last Game of Thrones reference I'll
make for a while on this podcast, But if you
want to learn more, Steve and the crew spoke with
Colossal Chief Animal Officer Matt James in a recent episode
of the Media podcast. They dive into all of these
issues and it's worth listen. This week we've got the
crime Desk, public Lands, Fisheries, and the Bear Desk. But
(02:18):
first I'm going to tell you about my week, and
my week was great, hot footed it over to sue Fall,
South Dakota to hang out with all the good folks
at Shields. If you don't know what the heck Shiels is,
it's a I would say it's a growing chain, like
box store chain. You know. It's kind of got everything
from soccer balls to firearms, and a hell of a
(02:39):
fishing section, archery, all the good stuff. On top of
all that, they do a heck of a good job,
very impressive job finding into retaining nice, knowledgeable people to
work there. Spent a bunch of time in the fishing
department and the archery department. I shot a compound bow
for the first time and close to a decade, and
(02:59):
it was the first ever Matthews bow. I think I've
shot just a loner. Not traveling back over to the
wheel assistant side of hunting anytime soon. All Jeff from
the man Cato Shiels got me set up and slinging
arrows at sixty yards in under an hour, which to
me is pretty damn crazy, brand spanking new bow all assembled.
(03:20):
Shot at like five yards, then at twenty and then
apparently if you shoot at three yards with the bottom pin,
that's kind of close to where you're gonna be at
sixty yards. And then sure enough we went out and
shot at sixty yards. I would say I was hitting
something the size of like my old yetty backpack in
(03:41):
a five shot group at sixty yards, which is you know,
it's deep. Another special thing happened on this trip. While
I was away, my next door neighbor walked across the street,
jumped in my truck, drove my truck to his shop,
which is called Freedom four Wheel out in Four Corners, Montana,
and put new tires and wheels on my twenty year
(04:03):
old pickup. It's a long time coming. The rubber was
getting thin. I paid for it, don't worry. I got
to bring up the fact that it's just so freaking
nice to have something done that you didn't have to
do yourself because we're busy. Big thank you to Joe
and the crew at Freedom four Wheel. I appreciate you.
I'm gearing up for Independence Day activities, mostly trying to
(04:25):
cook for a bunch of folks and kids. So I'm
in beta testing on what I want to make, and
I'm thinking of a couple of big plates of turkey
thigh enchiladas. I got a big store of wild turkey
thighs from this season and just recently. I want to
do smash burgers for everybody, because everybody's got those big
flat top grills these days. I mixed up a big
(04:48):
batch at Burger and test rove a couple of variations
of smash burgers, and it's fun like fresh mixing burger
because you just drop the onions and garlic and stuff
that you want in your burger. Adding the g an
onion does a pretty good job of cleaning out the
barrel of your grinder too, just like Celery does. Just
you know, a hot tip for you. Anyway, I was
(05:11):
solicited in the local Town and Country grocery store due
to my buns. I was walking by the deli counter
with a bag of hamburger buns and the gal, who
I would guess is you know, not to be rude,
but older than me just by a scoche, says, hey,
I see you got nice buns there. Probably need some cheese,
and I thought, yeah, I do. So I picked out
(05:34):
smoked Gouda which was sitting there, and I got a
taste test of it was real good, but it man alive.
Doubled up on a smash burger way too overpowering, and
that is why you test things out, no matter how
nice your buns are. Lastly, I'll see everybody at backcountry
Hunters and Anglers Rendezvous and Missoula, Montana looking forward to it.
(05:55):
Lots to celebrate and lots to discuss, learn and laugh about.
Can't wait to get to everybody together and talk public lands.
Moving on to the crime desk, a fishing captain in
Florida has been sentenced to thirty days in prison and
will be forced to pay a fifty thousand dollars fine
for poisoning and shooting dolphins. The story comes just a
(06:17):
few weeks after officials in North Cakilac He found it
decapitate a dolphin washed up on a beach. These incidents
are unlikely to be related, but it goes to show
not everyone loves the playful, squeaky ocean animals. Thirty one
year old Zachary Brandon Barfield is a charter and commercial
fishing captain operating out of Panama City, Florida. The US
Department of Justice says Barfield got frustrated with dolphins eating
(06:40):
red snapper from the lines of his charter fishing clients,
so he started placing metha mill inside bait fish to
poison the dolphins that surface near his boat. Metha mill
is a highly toxic pesticide that can cause paralysis and
respiratory failure on at least two occasions in twenty twenty two.
In twenty twenty three, Barfield also shot and killed doll
dolphins with a twelve gage shotgun as the animals were
(07:02):
eating fish from his client's lines. He did this in
front of two elementary school aged children in one instance
and in another while there were over a dozen anglers
on board. Hot tip for you, if you charter a
fishing trip and the captain whips out a twelve gauge
for anything other than the shark from Jaws, leave a
bad review when you get back to shore. If you
(07:24):
make it back to shore anyway. These actions did not
go unnoticed, and the FEDS launched a prosecution. That prosecution
was successful, and Barfield was convicted of three counts in
violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Federal Insecticide,
Funguside and Rodenticide Act. He'll serve one year of supervised
release after he gets out of the Slammer and Bada
(07:46):
man was hit with a five thousand dollars fine for
killing a trophy class bull elk in the Great Basin
National Park. Members of the public alerted game wardens that
someone had killed the animal a half mile inside the
National Park boundaries. A quick look on on Act shows
me that these seventy seven thousand acre park is bordered
all the way around by state game units. Sounds like
this fella, who was not named in the press release,
(08:07):
wandered into the National Park from the property and shot
his elk. There's a really no excuse for that these days,
which is probably why he was hit with twelve months
of probation along with his fine. Listener Grant Ben sent
me a story about a Virginia man who was fined
at nearly ten thousand dollars for killing at least twenty
birds of prey, including a bald eagle. William Custa Smith
(08:28):
is a big waterfowl hunter, and he had built a
small pond on his property to attract ducks. But he
wasn't the only critter eager for a duck. Dinner hawks
and eagles were killing the waterfowl he wanted to hunt,
so he hit up a brilliant solution. He poisoned dead
fish with a band insecticide called carbo furin and set
those fish out for the birds. Not satisfied with that,
(08:49):
he also set out traps to catch whatever birds didn't
succumb to poison, and then bludging them to death with
a pole. It is against federal law to kill hawks
and eagles in the United States, so once Virginia was
Wildlife Agency got wind of Smith's actions, they brought in
the US Fish and Wildlife Service. They collected evidence of
the Virginia man's wrongdoing, including video of the bird killing
(09:10):
and the carcass of a poisoned eagle, and successfully prosecuted
the case. Along with a ten thousand dollars fine. Smith
will serve one day in jail, fifty hours of community service,
and beyond probation for two years. Moving on to the
Neanderthal finger painting desk. Speaking of collecting evidence, the forensics
team of the Spanish Police Force recently made an impressive
(09:33):
pull of an old fingerprint off a challenging surface. This
wasn't a clue on a doorknob from a couple months ago.
We're talking about a fingerprint that is forty three thousand
years old. In the San Lazaro Rock shelter in Segovia, Spain,
archaeologists had uncovered an unusual oval rock about the size
of a big butternut squash, with a dot of red
pigment right in the center. The rock has natural creases
(09:55):
at the top and the bottom that look a bit
like eyes in a mouth, and the dot sits right
where the nose would be. Neanderthals occupied this particular shelter
for thousands of years, and so the archaeologist speculated that
maybe the dot was made intentionally to create a human image,
possibly one of the earliest works of art ever discovered,
But they couldn't be sure, so scientists brought the rock
(10:17):
to the Spanish National Forensics Lab, where the police scanned
the dot of pigment using multi spectrum analysis. The scan
revealed the distinctive ridge pattern of a human fingerprint, what's
known in the BIZ as a quote unquote dermatoglyphic image.
Hey you're dermatoglyphic. Not too long ago, scientists believed there
(10:38):
wasn't really that much happening inside a Neanderthal's head, just
grunting and ripping meat off of bones. But the Sand
Lazaro Rock means that one of these ancient people was
able to imagine a human face in the random shapes
of a particular stone. They mixed up red ochre pigment
for mineral deposits in the environment and added the mark
of a nose to make the object even more human,
(10:59):
and then carry it back to the shelter to show
their buddies. Add that to the impressive list of Neanderthal
abilities like catching birds with their bare hands and killing
reindeer and hand to hand combat. The fossil evidence that
suggests that they dove for food in the ocean. And
you know, he got some pretty cool critters to hang
out with. All of you who did your twenty three
(11:20):
and meteris and came back with Neanderthal ancestry, you got
another little flagged way. Congrats. Moving on to the public
land desk, Utah Senator Mike Lee doesn't seem to be
able to take a hint. The anti public land senator
told The E and E News last week that he
(11:41):
plans champion of public land sale amendment in President Trump's
quote big beautiful budget bill. If this sounds like deja
vu all over again, join the club. Just a few
weeks ago, public land advocates defeated a measure that would
have disposed over five hundred thousand acres of federal land
in Utah and Nevada. That provision was inserted by two
(12:01):
House members from those states, but Republican House leadership, led
by Montana Rep. Ryan Zinky, removed it before he got
to the House floor. Now, Senator Lee has vowed to
reinsert public land sale provision into the Senate version of
the bill. The Utah Senator was asked by a reporter
whether he planned to bring back the public land provision
that were cut from the House package. He was on
(12:22):
his way to another committee meeting, but he said, quote,
I got to go vote, but yes, So it's unclear
right now exactly what those sales will look like. Maybe
they won't be as broad as the House amendment, and
maybe they'll allow the funds to be used for conservation.
But given Senator Lee's long and storied history of advocating
against federal public lands, I'm not holding my breath. Rather
(12:42):
than fight this fight after it gets reinserted into this bill,
I'd rather convince Senator Lee that new public land sales
are dead on arrival. To do that, we need to
contact other members of the Senate, especially members of the
Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where Senator Lee is the chair.
The Republicans on that committee need to tell Lee that
they won't vote for the package if he shoe horns
(13:02):
public land sales back in another great opportunity for our
Republican representatives and senators to be heroes. A little more
than a year ago, we reported on a rule issued
by the Department of the Interior maximizing protections for thirteen
million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, also known
as the NPR. That rule limited future oil and gas
(13:24):
leasing and industrial development on the largest single area of
public lands in the United States. This week, the Trump
administration reversed that rule, opening all of the NPRA to
oil and gas drilling and mineral extraction, as well as
allowing the roads and other infrastructure necessary to get those
resources and transport them out. Yes, a lot of people's
(13:45):
livelihoods in this area depend on oil and gas, but
there aren't many places like the NPRA left on Earth,
and the critters we want to have around, like Cariboo
and Rock term again depend on those undeveloped places to live.
The consequences of encroaching on public lands. This week, Thai
billionaire pre yued Mahagad Siri was sentenced to twenty four
(14:07):
years in prison for expanding his golf course into seventy
four acres of protected conservation land. The Metals in Coffee
tycoon colluded with government officials to obtain deeds for his
Mountain Creek golf resort, which, according to its marketing materials,
promises and I quote, a sensory multiplex for those with
lofty desires. I think I understand what this guy means, though,
(14:28):
Like if you go lay down in mid September when
the elker buglin and just kind of chill out on
a mountain side, that's a sensory multiplex for those with
lofty desires. Thankfully, law enforcement noticed that the Mountain Creek
Resort contained actual mountain creeks belonging to the people of Thailand.
The case is, of course being appealed, but it's good
(14:49):
to know that we hear in the United States aren't
the only ones fighting the good fight. I'm protecting wildlife habitat.
But it does lead to you to imagine what the
golf course encroaching on the NPRA in Alaska would look
like there would it certainly be some wicked water traps
up there as well as one hole that's a par
ten million. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources recently proposed
(15:12):
lifting a ban on stripe bass fishing during spring spawning
season in the Chesapeake Bay. This opening would be balanced
by closing fishing entirely during August, when heat related fishing
deaths have been on the rise. We've covered Atlantic stripe
bass before, and we always highlighted the tough trade offs
involved here. Allowing spring fishing will of course benefit recreational
(15:33):
anglers and the tackle shops and guides who depend on them.
The Maryland dn R hopes to get more people engaged
with stripers and out on the water year after year.
This change would also bring Maryland's regulations more in line
with rules in nearby areas, reducing the kind of confusion
that causes a lot of people to throw up their
hands with fishing altogether and try pickleball instead. We know
(15:55):
that when more people are invested in going after a
particular species, the resulting money and advocacy helps that species thrive,
and by protecting fish later in the summer, Maryland hopes
that overall fish populations will start growing as a result
of the change. On the other hand, stressing fish populations
when females are carrying their eggs back to rivers to
(16:15):
spawn is an extra risky thing to do. Even though
policy makers are working to find a more precise measure
of how many fish die as a result of being
caught and released back into the water, the generally accepted
number is a nine percent death rate, or around two
and a half million fish a year. Unfortunately, there's no
way to control the sex of the fish you catch,
and so losing that many reproducing females could be disastrous
(16:38):
for population numbers. Female fish who do survive catch and
release often have a harder time land eggs, and the
resulting larvae often have a harder time reaching reproductive age.
Strip bass as a species already facing uphill battle when
it comes to making more little fish, as females have
to reach six years of age before they produce significant
(16:58):
numbers of eggs. Speak Bay is also the most important
spawning area for this entire species, so the stakes here
are pretty high. This fall, there will be a public
comment period before the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, so
you got to show up and make your voices heard.
Moving on to the bear desk. Florida is likely to
(17:19):
get a bear season this fall, and Connecticut might follow suit.
Connecticut bear hunters assumed that possibility was off the table
after a state Senate committee removed it from Senate Bill
one five three two, but a bipartisan group of legislators
proposed an amendment to the bill that would allow, but
not require, the governor to propose a bear hunting season
in coordination with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Specifically,
(17:41):
the amendment allows the governor to call a hunt only
if the agency has found that bear conflicts with people, pets,
and livestock in the state have reached a level that
poses a public safety threat. In doing the assessment, the
Wildlife agency must consider factors like bear entries into occupied
buildings and bear attacks on people and livestock. This really
(18:02):
is the motivation for allowing a bear hunt in the
first place, as in many states in the Northeast, the
black bear populations have grown so large that they're getting
into people's homes, hurting their dogs, and just generally causing mischief.
Residents have been calling on their elected officials to do
something about it, and a bear hunt is one of
several management tools that can be used. Would also help
(18:22):
if people stopped leaving out trash and dangling bird feeders
in places where bears can get them. But I'll never
complain about a new hunting opportunity. The bill passed the
Connecticut State Senate by a huge margin and now heads
to the House. If you live in the land of
Steady Habits, which is no kidding one of Connecticut's nicknames,
get on the horn with your state reps and tell
(18:42):
them how you feel about Senate Bill one five three
to two. You can bet that the anti hunting crowd
will be doing the same. Speaking of problem bears, the
Eastern European country of Slovakia is maintaining its aggressive posture
towards its brown bear population. A few weeks ago, I
told you about Slovakia's plan to call about a quarter
of its thirteen hundred brown bears. They made the decision
(19:04):
after several fatal attacks in the last few years, which
is understandable in a country smaller than West Virginia that
hosts over one thousand of the large, sometimes aggressive ruins.
Now the country's government is trying to make that move
more palatable by allowing the meat from those cold bears
to be sold after this week. According to the BBC,
organizations under the Environment Ministry can offer the meat for
(19:26):
sale provided that all legal and hygiene conditions are met
to put things that will more perspective. Slovakia has seen
on average ten bear attacks per year over the last
few years. That might not sound like a lot, but
the country's population is only about five point four million people.
If you take that ratio and apply it to the
three hundred and forty million people in the United States,
(19:46):
we'd be seeing six hundred and thirty grizzly bear attacks
every single year. As it is, we only hear about
twenty or so each summer and fall. If you ask me,
I'd say the Slovakians have shown a remarkable level of
restraint to have weighted the this long to harvest some
of these bears. Bear meat isn't commonly eaten in Slovakia,
but we know it tastes good. Oddly enough, here in
(20:08):
the US, if you are killing animals in the name
of depredation, as in getting rid of them because they're
destroying crops or property, typically you cannot eat that animal,
which is of course a waste, so I applaud the
Slovakians here. That's all I got for you this week.
Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write into
(20:29):
askcl that's Ascal at the meat eater dot com. Let
me know what's going on in your neck of the woods.
We appreciate it.
Host
Cal Callaghan
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