Ep. 796: Heart of the Jaguar

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening past, you
can't predict anything brought to you by first Light. When
I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds,
no compromise, gear that keeps me in the field longer,

(00:30):
no shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at
first light dot com. That's f I R S T
L I T E dot com. When's the play start bill?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Second week in December?

Speaker 1 (00:47):
I think no, No, I got we got tickets. We're
doing date night. You know, it just came up in here.
It came up in here, and we followed through. Turn
the machine on.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Phil, Sheine's on Steve. It always is.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
It's the Crash Report. Here we go again, the report
filled the engineer. II feeling Phil, I'm feeling great.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
By the time this airs, where we're a week or
two away from opening, I'm excited. I've got like seventy
five percent of my lines down. I know that that's
an important stat for you.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Hit me, hit me with just give me a line,
Give me a line. I saw your script was open
on your desk.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
The yelling for a five thing. Yeah, it screwge.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
He seems unaffected by the season, so even on Christmas Eve, Well, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Your British accent. Hit me with it again.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Oh no, this is a bad time for you to
be doing this.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
To hit me with it again.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
He sits by the fire after uh, after working, goes
over the Femmes accounts.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Hum, right a little bit, Okay, I'm not buying work
on it.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
You're not buying it because because it doesn't sound like fit.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah. He wants you to sound like a cab driver site,
bring it man, He to be a from.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Braveheart more Harry Potter, More, Harry Potter one night?

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Are we going to be there? Randall?

Speaker 4 (02:13):
Uh, it's it's the Sunday performance, I believe the thirteenth.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
So on the third, I don't care what you're doing.
I'm not there on the third, greinh I want you
to just come in hard.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Okay, so scratch your previous notes about about all American
accents American currency.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
You don't want that you want.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Full I did, but change my mind. I want you
to bring it now, and I want you to sound
like what I expect. A old timey English guy is
unwell Cockney Man. Yeah, yeah, joy today. Bye. The author
James Campbell, who's got a ton of books Man books
that would be a very of high interest to listeners.

(02:50):
James Campbell, he's a magazine writer for a long time,
but he wrote The Final Frontiersman, which if you haven't
read it, you've seen it around. I'm sure. He wrote
The Ghost Mountain Boys, which I just finished nights ago.
Here's the problem I run, and I always I'm always
honest with guests. Yeah, I didn't get to the Jaguar
book yet because I got sidetracked by Ghost Mountain Boys.

Speaker 5 (03:11):
I'm not sure what I should think of that, but
thank you, I'm getting there.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
It's like the stack, the stack. See, I got onto it,
and Randall's been on one too. I got out into
a whiskey whiskey to book kit. Kid. They spent a
lot of time in the Pacific. Well, it's a two books.
So I read The Battle of the Battle for Manila,
The Battle of Manila like an academic title that just
came out, and that got me all fired up about
World War two. And it's just about the Pacific theater

(03:35):
mile Man was European theater was so I know that. Well, yeah,
but then I got to then I I just it
just kind of opened up this whole world of suffering. Yeah,
just like it's like World War two with malaria, you
know what I mean. Yeah, it's just like the disease.
Just stuff. I wasn't like I was familiar with all
his stories, you know, like people freezing their toes off

(03:57):
and everything. And then and of course I was aware.
You know, my my my wife's grandfather was a marine
on Ewo Jima, Right, I was aware. But anyways, I
got into the Battle of Manila, then I got into this,
and I never got to the damn Jaguar. We're gonna
talk about. I'm like super interested in jaguars.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
Sure, but it hasn't dissuaded you from continuing on to
the Jaguar book.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
No, no, no, Yeah. But The Ghost Mountain The Ghost
Mountain Boys, what you did? This one come out two
thousand and eight. The Ghost Mountain Boys tells the tale
of the campaign and Papua New Guinea.

Speaker 5 (04:36):
Yeah, and a lot of them were from your country,
from southern Michigan. Yeah, lots of the guys Company G Company, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Comes them from the county I came from. And the
thing that uh, there's a couple of things that are
like about it that really stuck me. One just the
disease factor, Like most your casualties are tropical diseases.

Speaker 5 (04:59):
Which MacArthur never took into consideration when he sent those
guys over the mountains. You know, they had they had dysentery,
they had jungle rot, they had trench foot, they had malaria, hookworm, hookworm,
and they he never considered.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
That that would happen.

Speaker 5 (05:14):
Yeah, how could he not after having been in the Philippines.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, Oh, it's just And then in the end you
realize they're taking these guys and I don't know if listeners,
I'm sure you've been on malaria medication. Yeah, Like malaria
medication leads to like its own little form of psychosis.
Like there's people that can't take it. Yeah, that's right.
I mean it gives you like wild dreams, It can
send you into balts of depression, especially the stuff they

(05:38):
used to use. They take these guys and like there's
this one guy that you follow through the book. He's
writing all these loving letters with his wife, he's got
kids waiting at home. Yeah. Then they go to treat
them for malaria and they dose them so heavy with
this drug. They didn't understand the psychological effects. They start
dosing them with this drug and shoots himself.

Speaker 5 (05:59):
In the adaburin psychosis it was called. So he was
the division surgeon, a guy named Major Simon Warmanhoven, and
he was an amazing guy. So I'd finished the book
completely ready to turn it into my publisher, and Simon
warm Warmenhoven's two daughters happened to find my number and
they called me up and they said, I want to

(06:23):
send you the love letters that my dad sent to
my mom from Papua New Guinea. Would you be willing
to look at him? And I said, yeah, I'd love
to see him. So I read all one hundred love
letters and then I called my publisher and I said,
stop the press.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
These are two beautiful lts.

Speaker 5 (06:42):
I have to completely rewrite the book and write in
this character and write in his love letters because they're
just so heart wrenching. And my publisher gave me an
extra two months to their credit.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
But that's not much. I wrote hurriedly.

Speaker 5 (07:01):
But can you imagine that the first of all the
courage of his daughters, because obviously, you know you there's
a stigma attached.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
To the you know, to to shooting yourself.

Speaker 5 (07:12):
But it was adebrit psychosis and they had a lot
of that.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah. I mean I didn't know him, but like you
look at the transition and even say his last letter
home and he's on the treatment, his last letter home
is like I try not to let it happen. Yeah,
but I have the blues. That's why I haven't been writing.

Speaker 5 (07:28):
Yeah, and he had to.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
He had.

Speaker 5 (07:31):
He was in Brisbane at the end, just outside of
Brisbane at the at the thirty second Division Hospital, and
he was caring for all these men, you know, who'd
been wounded in battle and who had various diseases and
tropical diseases, and I mean he was just overwhelmed in
addition to taking Adebrant and having Adebritan psychosis.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, it's just a just a horrible story. You know,
nothing that came out reading this and reading that book
about the Battle for Manila and also just documentaries I've
been seeing and stuff. Is it seems like but we're
kind of running out of them now. It seems like
as a lot of veterans from World War Two got

(08:12):
to a certain age, they became more ready to discuss.
I don't want to call them like what would what
would be regarded as war crimes, but I don't even
want to condemn it. But it became like later in life,
like I watched this, watch this series, and they're now
is watching these old guys being like they're talking about
the the concentration camps, and they're like anyone that worked

(08:35):
at a concentration camp, we just lined them up, shot them.
And guys in here they're like guys that are talking
about stuff later or whatever. It just seems like for
a long time, a lot of that stuff was just
not mentioned. They don't get their day in court. Yeah,
And now it seems like more people are like, no, man,
I mean we didn't we didn't deal with prisoners, or

(08:58):
we don't like to deal with prison Yeah.

Speaker 5 (09:00):
I mean you're talking about the wounded Japanese. They would
just stick them with their bayonets. And of course they
didn't talk about that till a lot later. But a
lot of those guys I contacted, ultimately contacted about eighty
guys that fought on the island in New Guinea, and
I interviewed a lot of them, and a lot of
them I drove over to Michigan, you know, to interview
these guys and typical story. You know, they never told

(09:24):
their stories about World War Two. I think James Bradley
in Flags of Our Father said, they came home and
they got on with living. You know, they didn't want
to remember, so they, you know, they deliberately just repressed
this stuff.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
And I started talking to.

Speaker 5 (09:39):
Them, and initially they'd tell funny stories, you know, and
I'd go to their Old Timers Division meeting and they'd
tell jokes and listen to bad poke music, you know,
and play cards all night. But slowly they started to
like reveal stuff, and then it was like it was
like this.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Gusher of emotion.

Speaker 5 (09:57):
You can imagine after you know, fifty years, is trapped
inside and you know, they never talked about it. And
sometimes their wives would call me up and say, you
know so and so, you gotta you can't interview him anymore.
He's he has nightmares, you kid, and it's haunting him.
And I said, okay, that's the last thing in the

(10:18):
world I want to do, you know, is put him
through this again. But then they would call back and
they would say, no, man, I gotta talk about this
is the first time I've ever talked about this in
my life. My kids don't even know these stories. I
have to keep talking. So it was Yeah, it was
pretty it was pretty emotional.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, it was. You know. I don't like you know,
I usually I don't like any well, not any I
think the only Yeah. But I'm a Bob Service fan.

Speaker 5 (10:51):
Oh yeah, yeah, sure, I love Bob.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
He's a poet, is a poet. Yeah, and Cladie Bayley
Cladi Bailey used to dude wrote, Yeah, that's the first
time we had read a poem possibly quite possibly Bob Hartman. Yeah,
Bob Hartman, Right, this is a veteran grand rapid. Did
he write this much after the war? Yeah he did,

(11:14):
he did. Okay. I laid him down by the bend
in the stream and he erected it across at his head.
His funeral song was a cockatoo's scream, as if they
knew my buddy was dead. I've even the score, yes,
a do a dozen times over, but no matter, the

(11:34):
distance between my mind wanders yet, and I'll never forget
his grave by the bend in the stream. Yeah, it's poignant,
it's got a Bob Service.

Speaker 5 (11:46):
It does have a Bober These poets.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
That don't even bother Ryman. It's just that.

Speaker 5 (11:51):
Bob, Bob Hartman is the same guy that said if
I owned New Guinea and I owned Hell, I would
live in Hell brant out New Guinea.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
But you just got back from New Guinea. I just
got back here. So what we're gonna get don't worry
about this. We're gonna get to this jaguar. We're gonna
get to the jaguar situation. I love talking about New Guinea.
But what were you doing there? Now?

Speaker 5 (12:13):
So two things?

Speaker 1 (12:15):
You help me understand something?

Speaker 5 (12:16):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Why do What is the difference between saying Papa New
Guinea and saying New Guinea.

Speaker 5 (12:22):
So the entire island is called New Guinea. Papa New
Guinea is a separate is a separate nation on the
eastern half, formerly an Australian colony German colony. Once upon
it it was called Kaiser Willielm's Land way back when.
And the other side is owned by is part of Indonesia,
and that's called West Papua. So the whole island is

(12:44):
called New Guinea.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Okay, no idea, Yeah, okay.

Speaker 5 (12:47):
So I've been going there since nineteen eighty nine. My
brother and I first went there on a you know,
you know, young men's adventure or misadventure.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
But somewhere in that took my wife there for our honeymoon.
By the way, she got malaria. How romantic.

Speaker 5 (13:09):
Her parents wanted her to ditch me so fast, so
fortunately she did in three daughters later. But I discovered
for the first time I didn't even know the story. Okay,
I didn't even know the story of the war.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
In Papua New Guinea.

Speaker 5 (13:28):
But anyway, So in two thousand and six, I repreat
repeated the track that the Ghost Mountain Boys did for
the first time since World War Two, and I became
interested in the villages and just the World War two history.
So on the most recent trip, we brought in people
there in the villages, isolated villages, they die, skin infections,

(13:51):
you know, they're dying and malarious. We brought in four
thousand dollars worth of medicines that the one health clinic
can you know, can give out to the people. You know,
they have a little cut. You know that they eventually
lose their leg or lose their life, so you know,
it doesn't have to be dramatic stuff, but medicines to
help them and that the Ghost Mountain Trail used to

(14:14):
be called the Kapa Kapa Trail because there was a
village called Gaba Gaba. The soldiers couldn't pronounce it. It became
Kappa Kapa. It was called the Kappa Kapa Trail, and
we want that to be a national historic trail like
the Kokota Trail.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
I don't know if you guys have ever heard of it.

Speaker 5 (14:31):
That's where the Australians fought the Japanese on the island
in New Guinea, on the Kokota Trail. And now five
thousand trekkers come every summer to Papua New Guinea to
trek the Kokoda Trail where they're you know, grandfathers or
great grandfathers or great uncles fought the Japanese.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
So it's a big deal.

Speaker 5 (14:52):
So we want to try to bring Americans over to
Papua New Guinea to walk this trail. It's twenty one days,
it's over the own Stanley Mountains.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
It's tough. Yeah, you'll run that song the bitch what's that? Yeah? Yeah,
you run it?

Speaker 2 (15:03):
How many miles is that?

Speaker 1 (15:05):
One hundred and thirty miles?

Speaker 5 (15:06):
But it is straight up and straight down, straight up.

Speaker 1 (15:10):
You know you go up to nine?

Speaker 4 (15:13):
Are you a runner a little bit by a little bit,
like one hundred miles at a time.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Oh, how what's the elevation when you say up and down?

Speaker 5 (15:24):
Well, the plane we tried to find on this trip
was at about ten thousand feet, but don't Stanley's get
up to about twelve thousand. But you're going through solid jungle,
I mean absolute solid jungle. I remember, I don't want
to go straight here. But I was reporting in two
thousand and six for National Public Radio and I was
doing I was calling them and doing interviews with them

(15:47):
from the jungle, and my first interview.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
I was late for.

Speaker 5 (15:53):
So I grabbed the SAT phone and I wandered out
into the jungle and I did my interview, and then
I thought, I don't know where the hell I am.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
I have no idea where I am. You lost? Yeah,
I lost my direction that fast.

Speaker 5 (16:10):
I was probably like forty feet.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
You're not being deliberate, no.

Speaker 6 (16:15):
Not being delivered at all, And so I'm screaming, you know,
my lungs. And fortunately one of the villagers, one or
one of the carriers that was with us happened to
find me.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
Otherwise, who knows is there.

Speaker 7 (16:29):
When you say trail. Yeah, I can have a lot
of different definitions. So at this point, what is it
like just a regular old hiker follow.

Speaker 5 (16:37):
No, it's like when you want to like a deer
trail or a rabbit trail through the woods. And the
people of New Guinea are the most like physically fit
people you've ever seen. It's like the people of the
Andes or something. They they they live in the mountains,
so they're accustomed to it. They just walk straight up
and straight down. No National Park switchbacks. So yeah, I

(17:01):
mean it's tough, but if you ever want to come in.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
You big, you can't run it, so you need to
organize like one of them races. Yeah, it was.

Speaker 7 (17:16):
I'm sure with the recent explosion and participation in these
endurance races, you could very easily get that's for people
to go and fast hike, run you're that track.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Hadn't even considered it.

Speaker 5 (17:31):
But just to finish the story, we were my part
my co partner in Australia found a plane called the
Flying Dutchman, you know, the ode to the michigan Ers
at ten thousand feet. He found it last year and
it hadn't.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Been seen since. I think like nineteen sixty seven.

Speaker 5 (17:50):
So we were taking a small group up into the
mountains to identify the plane, see the plane, touch the plane,
and retell.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
The story for the remains in there. Still no, they're gone.
They've been taken. They were taken out.

Speaker 5 (18:03):
I think in night. I can't remember the date, but
the plane. Plane has this really poignant story about it
crashed and I think six of the guys were killed.
Eight fifteen of the guys were too injured to get out,
but two parties tried to make it out. One party

(18:25):
march to the north coast. That took him about thirty
days to get through the jungle, and another party marched
a guy from named Ed Holloman from just outside of
Grand Rapids, Michigan, found safety after about thirty days. And
they tried to court martial him for leaving the plane
and he did, I mean, he saved these guys' lives.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
And it was well, what happened to the guys went
of the other direction.

Speaker 5 (18:49):
The other guy they they actually two of the guys drowned.
They tried to they tried to ride logs on the
river to the north coast, and two of the guys drowned.
The other two of the guys. The other two guys
made it to safety, tried to get a rescue party
to come back to save the guys on the plane.
The rescue party stopped one day short because they ran

(19:11):
out of food, and ultimately all the guys on the
plane died. So in fact, the chaplain died in the
arms of the villagers who found the plane on January seventh,
nineteen forty three. So it's yeah, it's really it's a
terrible story.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
So what was the plane, what was it? What were
they doing at the time.

Speaker 5 (19:32):
So you read about the Ghost Mountain boys who walked
over the mountains. They were trying they'd found usable airfields
on the north coast of Popping the Guinea near the
battlefield of Buna, and they were trying to fly the
guys over instead of having them walk. And they were
probably trying to punch holes in the clouds because they
hadn't they hadn't really flown over the own stanleys very much.

(19:55):
They called it the hump like in Burma. They called
it the Hump, and the you know that plane crashed
up there at ten thousand feet, so, but they were
the intention was to fly him over to the battlefield.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
Wow, okay, but we have a transition into Jaguars. That's
why you're here, right, Yeah, sure, but I love talking
about Papa the Guinea and the Ghost Mountain Boys. Uh,
it's gonna be a gradual transition because's two things so
so so. James's books are are for reading. Ours of cooking.
We got just letting people know here. So we took
our two cookbooks, our Meat Eater, Fish and Game Cookbook

(20:30):
and our Outdoor Cookbook and made like a gift box.
You can get both of them right here. This two
for one great gift item we signed. We signed a
whole mountain of.

Speaker 8 (20:40):
The only place you can get to sign ones is
on the mediater website.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Not true, where else you get in the stores retail stores. Yeah,
we just signed a whole mountain of them. And then
uh yeah, it's a very it's a very economical way
of getting both our books for someone for Christmas. I'm
not even going to get into ff old trucks. But
look at this. Can that make you want to get

(21:06):
a calendar? The hell of a calendar? Now get into that.
The other plug is this. Well. While back on the show,
we ran an episode of something called blood Trails. It
was about that dude who was turkey hunting and got
shot in the back while he's turkey hunting, and they've
like interviewed all these guys. They've definitely interviewed whoever did it,
but they have yet to how many years has been,
like seventeen years, eighteen years, something like that. So we

(21:29):
got a whole series out now called Blood Trails, a podcast,
and it's about hunting and fishing related like murders, cold cases, mysteries.
It's really good. Jordan Sillers has been doing a phenomenal
job on it, So check out and subscribe to the
Blood Trails podcast feed. It turned out. I'm very proud

(21:53):
of it. It turned out very very good. It's well worth
to listen. He did a phenomenal job. And rather like
a lot of that kind of stuff. It's like some
dude will go read like a Wikipedia entry or read
somebody else's book and then they'll make like a podcast
where they basically like regurgitate some stuff they just read. It.
It's like interviews. It's interviews with it's interviews with investigators,

(22:15):
it's interviews with victims, families. It's it's very well done,
like a ton of original reporting in it. It's a
great series, all right. Jaguars Jaguars? Is this stuff good? Here? Phil? Yep?
How many jaguars are floating around in the world right now?

Speaker 5 (22:35):
Well, there's a big discrepancy between the numbers. One number
is sixty three thousand, the other number is seven one
hundred and seventy three thousands. Most jaguar biologists think the
lower number is the more accurate number. But about eighty
percent of those jaguars, let's say sixty three thousand, let's

(22:59):
say one hundred thousand are in the Amazon or the
Pontinal of Brazil. Outside that, so in the IUCN, the
jaguar is considered threatened or near threatened. But if you
eliminate the Amazon and the Pontinal, they're considered endangered or
critically endangered.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Which would be true of a lot of wildlife species.
I mean, if you eliminate their core range. Yeah, good point.
Then it looks grim. It looks grim. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (23:31):
However, you know, with the corridor, there's a reinvestment of
time and effort into the corridor. There's something called the
twenty thirty Roadmap that a lot of the environmental organizations
have signed onto including Panthera WCS, lots of other IUCN,
and by twenty thirty they want to they want to

(23:56):
solidify thirty jaguar conservation unit and connect thirty more potential
jaguar units. So there's a big across Latin America and
South America. There's kind of this new appreciation of what
the jaguar represents.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Yeah, explain their historic range a little bit. And while
you're doing that, can you touch on do you believe
Coronado ran into jaguars, like way up in Kansas?

Speaker 5 (24:24):
First of all, Yeah, I do believe Coronado ran into jaguars.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, I think that.

Speaker 5 (24:29):
When was Coronado what was the date, late fifteen hundreds, definitely, Yeah,
I think jaguars were pretty much spread across much of
the United.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Because he talks about he talks about leopards and he
talks about lions. Yeah, and you're like the lions, mountain lions.
But then people are like, what in the hell is
he talking about when he mentioned seeing leopards.

Speaker 5 (24:52):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I do think up until up
until probably nineteen hundred, they were in you know, Colorado,
in California and West Texas, Alabama, Louisiana. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you think that.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Alabama and Louisiana you think legit.

Speaker 5 (25:14):
I think it's legit. I mean you look at their head,
look at the habitat. I mean that's the that's the
ideal habitat for a jaguar until what year, up until
maybe nineteen hundred, maybe maybe mid eighteen hundreds. But their range,
their range is now five thousand latitude and a miles

(25:35):
from southern Arizona. Right now, there's one jaguar roaming the
mountains of southern Arizona.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
The US is usually good for like y know, you
wanted to write.

Speaker 5 (25:44):
His name is co Chiese and he was discovered in
I think late twenty twenty three. But so all the
way down to the Eberra in northern Argentina. But of
course once how you say that word?

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, the eber Era, No, I've been there. Oh have
you thought of Iberra fish down there? Oh? Really no,
the Ibera wetlands.

Speaker 5 (26:05):
Well maybe it is, I've called it Iberra. Well, well
we'll ask a Spanish expert, I suppose. But so in
where they're actually doing a reintroduction of jaguars now, but.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
That's like near the that's where like that that deadly
Triangle Paraguay, Uruguay. Yes, exactly, it all come together. It's
like kind of a little bit of a lawless.

Speaker 5 (26:27):
What kind of fishing were you doing down there, Golden Dradoan. Yeah,
so once upon a time, yeah, they I mean, they
migrated obviously over the Burying land Bridge like a million
years ago, and then they saw a bunch of ice
in front of them, so they they they stayed for
many generations in kind of the Yukon and Yukon territories.

(26:47):
And then as that as that ice began to began
to melt during the place the scene warm ups, I mean,
what whether like twenty or something like that, the jaguars
started moving south, moved into Canada, then into Montana and uh,
you know the grasslands of North and South Dakota and Kansas,
and then continue to move down to you know, almost
the tip of South America.

Speaker 8 (27:08):
So they didn't evolve as like a warm weather tropical species.

Speaker 5 (27:13):
No, they're they're they're complete generalists. You know, they can
they can live anywhere in it like a mountain lion,
like a mountain lion. Or so I was down in
southern Bolivia in the Grand Chaco the Grand Chaco is
like parched country, brittle parched country, and the the the

(27:35):
jaguars thrive there, really, Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. They thrive
in the Sierra Madres of Mexico, they thrive in the
in the Madraan Sky Islands of of Arizona. They're they're
really they're remarkable creatures.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah. I know there's a picture. I have this book
called Candid Critters, and it's like it's like influential trail
cam photos. Yeah, and there's I think at the time
was maybe the only known photo taking an Arizona of
a jaguar standing in the snow in the Wachuka Mountains.
I think, Okay, yeah, you're saying that that's not a

(28:11):
problem for the jaguar. Well, I don't.

Speaker 5 (28:14):
I don't know about snow. Snow might be pushing it.
But he was obviously not she but likely he was
obviously in the Wachuka Mountains. You know, you get snow
there and you know, in late April. So but I'm
familiar with that photo.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, I've seen a bunch of tracks, Jaguar tracks, not
in the US. One time we weren't remember we were
we were It was in Guyana, and we were there's
this big sand bar where the turtles were, oh yeah, nesting.

(28:52):
So we went there with native people to dig turtle
eggs and you could see where the jaguars were digging
the turtle eggs out and probably also hunting the turtles
when they come out of the water. Yeah. Right, We
go back to our camp and then a couple of
guys went back to the sandbar to take a bath

(29:14):
and there's tracks all over. I was dying to see one.
I was dying to see one. Yeah, there's tracks all over.
They turn around and go right back to take a bath,
and they're like, as soon as we got there's jaguars
standing on the grave bar. Missed I'm not kidding. I
missed it by twenty minutes, just because you didn't want
to take a bath. Yeah, yeah, whatever. But no, no,
I've never let eyes on one. Man, I would.

Speaker 5 (29:34):
Yeah, they're incredible.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
You've no doubt laid eyes on Yeah. What was the
first time you saw one in the Pontinal.

Speaker 5 (29:40):
So the Pontinal is kind of like Kruger National Park
of Brazil, So the jaguars there have become habituated to people.
And this was during this was during COVID, so there
were almost no other tourists, but we were.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
We were on the Quiaba.

Speaker 5 (29:57):
River in motoring, motoring down the river into one of
the tributaries, and all you know, we're all looking at
the banks of the river, and all of a sudden
I spotted I spotted one, you know, kind of lounging
in the sand underneath the tree. And just then the guide,
you know, the boat captain and guide also also saw

(30:20):
that jaguar. And I'll never forget he was like barely whispered,
he said, Onsa And you know, Panthera on is is
you know the name for the jaguar.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
What's that? What is that word?

Speaker 5 (30:33):
So Panthera is the genus and then Osa, I mean,
Onsa is the is it?

Speaker 1 (30:42):
Would it be the family name? I'm not sure, but man,
what does that word mean? Jaguar?

Speaker 5 (30:49):
So he just said, he just said jaguar, and all
he had to do was whisper it.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
And man, my whole body was and this hue.

Speaker 5 (30:58):
We we we anchored the boat just outside, just outside
the bank, the river bank, and all of a sudden,
this jaguar rose, just this absolutely enormous jaguar, absolutely beautiful
and came to the river to drink, and he was
just unperturbed. You know, it wasn't it wasn't like he

(31:21):
he moved quickly in I think in the book I
describe its something like music. I mean, like every part
of his body just operated so beautifully. And he stood
there drinking and then he looked up at us, and
then he walked kind of broadside to us down the river,
and it was just I mean, it was magnificent.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yeah, it's just like a like having not seen one,
I'm just fascinated by him. And it is just a
different crater man.

Speaker 5 (31:50):
Even people who's just a how do they compare it
to a mountain lion?

Speaker 7 (31:54):
Yeah, as are the sizes a burlier.

Speaker 5 (31:58):
Right, So I think the biggest there I was with
this this Brazilian trapper he traps in you know, collars jaguars.
The biggest one he's I think trapped in collars one hundred.
His name is Joe rs May and he's famous and
he's trapped about three hundred you know, maybe one hundred

(32:19):
and twenty jaguars. The biggest one he's ever trapped.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
Was three hundred pounds.

Speaker 5 (32:23):
Wow, you know, like a you know like a lioness
in Africa, but in the in the Pontinal they grown big.
In the Amazon they grow them big. But you know,
if you get one in northern Mexico or say one
in Arizona, they're going to be maybe one hundred and
thirty or one hundred and forty.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Paums like a lion.

Speaker 5 (32:44):
Yeah, like, yeah, exactly like a lion. So they're much
much smaller, same species, but just much much smaller. And
I don't know if it has to do with habitat
or food. I mean, jaguars eat like eighty five different species,
everything from frog to skunks, you know, to have a
line's but I think Teddy Roosevelt he he hunted jaguars

(33:06):
and the Pontinal with his with his son Kermit, And
I think there's one account he said, uh, Kermit shot
a jaguar with a four h five Winchester and it
was as big as a small male, you know, African lion.
So I imagine that was three hundred pounds or maybe even more.

Speaker 8 (33:27):
Do they have like uh, leopards and tigers in India? Say,
do they have a reputation for attacking people or not?

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Really?

Speaker 5 (33:37):
That's that's the thing, just almost no accounts of unprovoked attacks.
And Alan Rabinowitz, the guy I wrote about, called them
the reluctant warrior. He said they were much much more
comfortable kind of eluding man. And there's a biologist down

(33:58):
in Brazil who said and was never part of their
prey template for one thing.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
And also there's something.

Speaker 5 (34:05):
Called the t Griyadas, which was the jaguar craze which
Jackie o' nassas set off when she stepped out of
a limousine in a knee length, double breasted Somali leopard
coat and she started this this fashion craze for spotted

(34:25):
cat accessories.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
So you make me like Kennedy.

Speaker 5 (34:31):
Yeah. So so what happened during the Tigriyadas maybe is
like what happened during to Grizzly. What is the word,
it's t I g t gre yadas.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah, the jigger craze. Yeah, And and that set off
a market hunting campaign huge in the sixties.

Speaker 5 (34:54):
In in the sixties to nineteen seventy five when Sighte's
finally stepped in and to eliminate the trafficking. But from
nineteen sixty two to nineteen seventy five, one hundred and
eighty thousand jaguars were killed in Brazil alone for the
fashion maybe not all for the fashion industry, but for

(35:16):
far part of the fashion industry. More jaguars than we
have now were in total during what years.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
Nineteen sixty three to nineteen seventy five, during the day
they were not running a quota program.

Speaker 5 (35:27):
They were not running no, everybody was out trying to
kill jaguars. Alan Rabinowitz said they had the dollar sign
on the back right next to the bullseye.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
What was at that time? What kind of money was
a jaguar hide like? It must have been extraordinary to
drive that level of commitment, because it's not like they're
like hanging out now Falcon.

Speaker 5 (35:47):
Yeah, yeah, right, maybe two hundred dollars, but two hundred
dollars for you know, I hate to say lowly, but
two hundred dollars for someone living in a village in
Bolivia or jag Or or Brazil is a lot of money.
And they killed them like snakes, that's.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
What George Schaller said. They just killed them like snakes,
even though but mostly all black market.

Speaker 5 (36:11):
All black market. Yeah, they until side stepped in in
nineteen seventy five to try to shut down the traffic,
which they did to a certain extent. Yeah, there was
a there was a lively black market in Jaguar Pelts.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
If you look over your left shoulder, you see that
that's a bobcat right there. Okay, right now, here's an
interesting thing about side's and spotted cats. So that's from Texas.
Uh okay, yeah, in Texas there's no close season on bobcats.
Bobcats are non game, no close season on bobcats, no

(36:48):
bag limit on bobcats. Wow. Part of it is because
texts those south like Texas bobcats aren't valuable. Okay, Like
a bobcat up here, oh yeah, I mean mean about
cat up here could be like five six, seven hundred bucks,
sure right about cat from certain areas like high Desert
country could be one thousand dollars. But those cats are

(37:09):
effectively valueless. So there's not like a huge push on it.
But what's interesting is you haven't you haven't in Texas.
Here's an animal. It's non game, no close season, no
bag limit. But you can't move that cat out of
Texas without a site's tag. And you'd be like, well,
why the state doesn't even manage them? And it's because
it's because.

Speaker 5 (37:26):
Like spotted cats in general.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yeah, so any spotted cat is going to have regulatory
pressure on it because it's so easy to be like,
oh no, that's not that. Do you follow what I'm saying.
So it's like like they're trying to regulate the movement
of spotted cats because there's so many imperiled spotted cats.
They just want to be that if it's a spotted cat,

(37:50):
it's a painted even if it's worthless. Yeah, if it's
got spots, we just don't know what it is. Is
it like is it that or is it a snow leopard? Yeah,
you know or whatever?

Speaker 5 (38:02):
Right, Yeah, Well you've had Dan Floris on you know that,
and you know his book American Serengetti. He talks about,
you know, what they did to predators, you know in
Colonial America, and jaguars were one of the things they
just you know, they just shot.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Would they would they poison jaguars too? Yeah?

Speaker 5 (38:22):
I think they poison all predators. You know, wolves, bear,
coyotes in in Brazil, in you know, South America. Sure,
they used to poison them, poison them all the time.

Speaker 8 (38:34):
You mentioned Colonial America, are are do you think black
jaguars and colonial America are responsible for the continued sightings
of black like claim sightings of black panthers wherever in.

Speaker 5 (38:49):
Southern the southern United that's interesting there, there's the black
jaguars only come from one place?

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Is that right?

Speaker 1 (38:57):
To one place? Like the colonists would not have Taylor
Sledge in Clay's dead or listening in the entire state
of Mississippi. I was listening right now. I don't let
you know, but they have on their hands right now.
Black jaguar. Who does he's just roaming or it's a cat,
it's a house cat. There was just a picture that

(39:18):
our buddy in Mississippi sent us, and he's like, he's
like the whole state's panties are on fire. And you
kind of look and you're like, maybe it's like a
house cat. It's like a guy has a picture of
a cat standing on the side of the road. But
it's also people.

Speaker 5 (39:32):
Like black mountain lions.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Oh yeah, but everybody knows there's no such now that
now that words out, there is no never has been.
There's no such thing as a black panther. A black
panther is a wet panther. So then the black Panther.
Crowd hit on the thing that there is melanism in jaguars,
so Taylor's sledge was staying. He even had a veterinarian

(39:55):
tell him it's got to be a melanistic jaguar in
Mississippi terrorizing Mississippi, as.

Speaker 5 (40:04):
We well, maybe that's the second jaguar we got coaches
in Arizona and whatever. The black jaguar is named the Mississippi.
But there's a place in Brazil called the Sahavo. It's
it's c E r R A d oh, but they
pronounced the double r like ha though, in the Sahavo,
and that's the only place that black jaguars there.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
So there's like a melanistic est jaguars. Is he like black?
Or is he got like dark spots? No, I have a.

Speaker 5 (40:32):
Pulled off a picture, Oh, pull up of your friends.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
I can read picture. I'll put it up there like
they show fill.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
More serious theater, you know. Quit. Yeah, I'm gonna get
a guy that's just pummeling pictures on that screen.

Speaker 8 (40:51):
Stop like jet black ones, but also like spots really
barely like yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:01):
So it's like, uh, it's it's like those black bears,
you know, like the the spirit bears.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Or whatever in Canada.

Speaker 4 (41:08):
It's it's like a very localized expression of some sort
of gene.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Yeah that must be. Yeah, I don't that. I expect
that's what it is.

Speaker 5 (41:18):
Yeah, you can see that.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
Take that back. I don't think you should do that, okay,
because some places I've been on they do it, and
it gets a little anoying. Like every damn thing you
talk about up on the screen.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
I'm glad you've had a complete one eight in the last.

Speaker 4 (41:32):
Your original instincts for correct feeling.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Don't put it up. What was the what was the
give me some of the like of the and let's
say let's take meso America, okay, familiar like like Mane culture,
different meso American cultures, pre Contacts or pre Columbian cultures.

(41:56):
What was there? Is there a way to generalize about,
like what was their understanding of the animal, like like
the Amerindian indigenous understanding of the animal? Was it like
a prize thing to get? Was it like what you know,
if you had to sort of typify the relationship.

Speaker 5 (42:14):
They worshiped it, I mean metaphysically, there was like no
more important animal, but it was it represented to those people.
What say the grizzly bear represented to you know, northern
Native American tribes. It was part of their religion, part
of their art, part of their architecture, part of their iconography.

(42:37):
They absolutely worshiped it. The Mayans believed that the jaguar
escorted the sun from day tonight and back today. The
Olmecs would would would mutilate their heads so they resembled
jaguar heads. And but at the same time they did

(42:57):
kill jaguars because they value their pelts, they valued their teeth,
you know, et cetera. But they had I mean it
was you know, it was their totem. It was something
you know that was important to every aspect of their lives.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
But they didn't regard it as like as one of
their predators. You mean it has something to be feared. Yeah,
Like when you went out, you know, like, let's you
talk about the northern plains, right, and the northern plains
you knew people, everyone would have known people that were

(43:32):
killed by grizzlies, yeah, right, and so but there wasn't
like an element of that, like a thing that was
you were afraid of.

Speaker 5 (43:39):
No no I I from all the reading I've done,
and you know the traveling I did, I never got
I never got that impression.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
Yeah, I mean it was you know, they they were worshiped.
Mm hm. So what what At what point did you
go from being like kind of interested in jaguars to
being that you're gonna do a whole book like that
little transition?

Speaker 5 (44:01):
Yeah, right right, Well, let's see. I read I was
living just above Boulder, Colorado, on a little mining town
called Jamestown, and I was going to grad school at
CU and I read Jaguar for the first time in
like nineteen ninety It came out in nineteen eighty six

(44:23):
or something like that, and I.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Was bold, over, what is that book? I'm not faking.

Speaker 5 (44:26):
That's Alan Rabinowitz's first book.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
He wrote Jaguar. It was about his.

Speaker 5 (44:30):
Experience in Belize when he was there for a year
and a half and he radio collared the first jaguar
in the rainforest. But he dedicated himself to this Coxhoam
Basin in Belize. He dedicated himself to the jaguars of Belize.
And I read that book and I was like, man,

(44:52):
this guy's my hero. He's incredible. He's like fierce and fearless.
He'll go anywhere. He'll do anything. And he brought his weights.
He was like he was a he was a martial
artist and he was a weightlifter. Brought his weights to
this little, tiny, little Mayan village down in Belize and
he would do his weights and he had green eyes

(45:14):
and a hairy chest. And the people of the Maya
people didn't know they were they feared him. Initially they
thought he had the eyes of a jaguar. But anyway,
I would go around and you know, I would I
would hike around the mountains, fish or hunt or backpack,
and I would pretend like I was looking for jaguar tracks.

(45:35):
And then like fast forward to two thousand, I don't
know one or two I didn't. I did an interview
with Alan Rabinowitz for I think it was Outside magazine,
and I talked to him at length, what.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Year like two thousand one or two there? Then, oh
you were I started writing there in two thousand. Oh
well then I'm sure I read it.

Speaker 5 (46:00):
Were you in Santa Fe?

Speaker 1 (46:01):
At the time? I was just like what they call
it a time contributing editor contributing Oh yeah, yeah, so
I was never under contract? Why did like cover stories
and yeah.

Speaker 5 (46:13):
Sad what's become of outside.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Was different now, but not sending you over to the
Philippines for now.

Speaker 5 (46:19):
They got no budgets now. So anyway, I I interviewed
him at length, and I proposed writing a biography at
at that time of him, and he kind of entertained
the notion. And about six months later, after we had long,
long conversations about his life, he'd just been diagnosed with

(46:41):
chronic lymphatic leukemia, which the doctors told him would eventually
kill him. And they told him not to get like amoebic.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Dysentery or malaria or whatever.

Speaker 5 (46:52):
It would, you know, it would it would set him back.
But of course he didn't, you know, he didn't listen
to it.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
And where was this guy from? He was from He
was from New York.

Speaker 5 (46:59):
He grew up in Queens, New York. But there was
nowhere he wouldn't go and nothing he wouldn't do. He
I mean, he studied tigers in Burma and Thailand. He
studied clouded leopards on the island and for most of.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
A big cat guy, oh, big big cat.

Speaker 5 (47:15):
The most you know. They called him the Indiana Jones
of wildlife ecology. He was super fit he's super courageous,
would do anything.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
But anyway, I gotta tell you something, this nuts man
that I feel like lines up with this. Yeah. So
then it would have been around ninety or ninety one, No,
like ninety one or ninety two. I went to a
National Trappers Association convention, Okay, might have been in Iowa,
and I go to a lecture by a prominent trapper.

(47:46):
His last name was Brown. I'm trying. I feel like
his name is Jerry Brown. But that's like the old government.
There's probably million Jerry Brown's. He's a he's a predator trapper,
like a kyo trapper, cat trapper. Yeah, he was giving
a lecture. I'm not shooting you. He's giving acture. He
had been contracted and had been down in South America

(48:06):
with researchers trying to figure out how to get collars
on jaguars using foot snares and other things. And because
he's like, he's like a big cat trapper and he
was like talking about his experiences like that dude had
to have somehow been lined up with the guy you're
talking about, because.

Speaker 5 (48:25):
I'm sure he was. Was his name Darren Simpson? Not definitely,
not that definitely not that okay, And he was like he.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
Was just a consultant and a guy that knew his
way around cat trapping, and he was taking I remember
him talking about they were developing because he's trying to
hook him and he just gave this lecture about I
remember at that time even thinking like that was bad
ass because those professional trappers are I was trying to
find ways to round out their income, and that was
what he was doing. And I wonder if he, like.

Speaker 5 (48:54):
They first started trapping jaguars and the pontinal in in
the early like late in the seventies or early eighties,
but then but it wasn't prominent. It wasn't a you know,
common practice. They will cable snares on the foot, on
the foot, yeah, like a loaded snare, like a loaded snare, right, No,

(49:14):
no bait, no bait, blind sets, blind sets. Yeah, yeah,
that's the way you got to You got to be
really good. So this Joe rs May, he's a veterinarian
and a big cat trapper that I spent you know,
considerable amount of time with in Brazil. The guy's amazing.
He's like my cousin Himo trapping wolverines. You know up

(49:34):
in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I mean he's he
traps osclity, traps mained wolves, he traps jaguars over one
hundred and it's really pretty simple. But the trail sets
trade yeah yeah, and he and it's it's it's amazing.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
I don't know how he goes about, like what is
he doing?

Speaker 5 (49:55):
So you have the so he sets the he sets
a piece of you know, the base plate. He uses
rebar and he anchors it like two feet down. Then
he has then he has swivels in springs and then
he attaches that to the thrower. And then there's the

(50:16):
cable snare so and then there's the pressure plate just outside.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
You know the cable snare.

Speaker 5 (50:22):
Which is just a sponge with with.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
Dirt on top.

Speaker 5 (50:26):
And and then he makes this little lane.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
And that's the trigger. Is the weight on the pressure.

Speaker 5 (50:31):
Exactly, that's the that's the trigger, that's the weight is
the weight on that. And then he makes this little trail.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
It's amaze.

Speaker 5 (50:38):
I don't know how.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
And they don't worry about about scent human scent, which
you know, they don't give it. They don't care. That's
kind of true. Like cat trapping in general. Oh is it? Yeah,
they're not like.

Speaker 5 (50:50):
They're not like I don't watching my my cousin Jimo
trapped wolves.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
I mean, you know, cats like bare hands, you know,
you don't even a lot of guys don't cover the pan.

Speaker 5 (51:00):
Yeah, exactly. So so then he made this kind of
trail of leaves to the to the snare, and then
he got out all the all the stuff in the
middle of the trail. Because jaguars like to walk side,
jaguars like to walk silently.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
They can't even be a leaf there, can't offer him
a quiet place to put exactly, offer him a quiet
place to put his foot.

Speaker 5 (51:26):
And then and then they have a little like fishing
line attached to the cable snare which runs up a
pole which attaches to a magnet in a transmitter. So
when the cat trips that, you know you have a receiver.
You know that that that kid that yeah, you know

(51:46):
that that trap has been tripped and it's.

Speaker 1 (51:51):
And you got like a tape here or a white
lipa you don't know what's in there.

Speaker 5 (51:56):
Sometimes you got a taper, right.

Speaker 8 (51:58):
Is there some urgency to get there so they don't
hurt them?

Speaker 5 (52:01):
Yeah, you know, they they they have a cat in
the catch circle, you clear everything out of the catch circle.
Otherwise they will tear the thing up like a wolverine or.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Something, hurt himself and hurt himself. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (52:13):
In fact, in the book Alan Rabinowitz, one of the
the first jaguar he traps is i Puk, which is
the Mayan god of death, tears tears off his tears
off his canine in one of the in one of
the traps.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
So yeah, so it does. It does happen?

Speaker 8 (52:33):
Is he using trail cameras to zero in on specific
jaguars or just to like keep Yeah, they use.

Speaker 5 (52:42):
They use lots of lots of trail cams to zero
in on jaguars.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (52:47):
Yeah, and then you know, they they start establishing the
big cat's routine and then they'll put you know, then they'll.

Speaker 1 (52:52):
Put bea ah. So they're like targeting a cat.

Speaker 5 (52:55):
They're targeting a cat. Yeah, they're targeting a specific cat.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
How many countries you been to you in your life? Oh,
my god, in my life? Yeah, like a hundred? No,
probably not, no, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (53:09):
I for the for the book, I traveled, you know,
all over South America, Central America. You know, my my
friend's lab. My friends joke that I only write books
when I so I could travel to those places. Oh yeah,
so I guess there was an element of truth.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
To that, but.

Speaker 5 (53:26):
Yeah, i'd have to get I have to think about it.
You know, been to Africa, been to you know, all
over Southeast Asia, now South American, Central America.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Probably not as many places as you, not a bit more. Yeah,
I don't know. I've repeatedly gone back to New Guinea.
So you keep burning up opportunities, right, yeah. So, uh,
when we got off on a couple not tangents because
they're very relevant, you were warming up to you were
warming up to your subject. Yeah, and he got sick.

Speaker 5 (53:56):
Oh sorry, yeah, sorry, yeah, so he got he got sick.
But ultimately he said, you know what, this has been great.
We remain friends, but I'm going to write my own books.
By that time, he'd already written Jaguar Chasing the Dragon's
tale about trying to find the foremost and the mythical

(54:17):
formos in clouded Leopard, which he never found.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Well, I don't know what that is.

Speaker 5 (54:22):
A clouded leopard is a little is a little, you know,
small little leopard out of very elusive Thailand formosa, you know,
and it's not an actual thing or it is, no,
it is, it is, but they I say mythical because
they thought it existed.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
But you know, he probably died one hundred years before. Oh,
like he thought it was like a Lazarus species. Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 5 (54:46):
And then he wrote a book about two books about Burma,
one called Life in the Valley of Death and one
called Beyond the Last Village. So he's a great writer.
And I mind all his books, you know, and did
lots of interviews with friends and his wife to write
the book. But ultimately he decided, you know, he didn't
need me to write a book. But we remain friends.

(55:09):
We remained friends for a long time. And then, you know,
as some of these friendships do, you know, we we
just we stopped talking for no other reason than we
just got busy. And in twenty eighteen, I went to
New Guinea and we'd been in touch and I talking
again about doing a documentary about him or a book
about him, and we've been talking and you know, in

(55:32):
back in touch, and I was elated, because you know,
he's an amazing guy. I got back from I got
back from New Guinea and one of the people at
panther The communications director called me and told me he died.
So so, you know, he died way before his time,
you know, of actually leukemia together with with a skin cancer.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (55:58):
So you know that was in twenty eighteen. I think
he was sixty sixty three at the time. But you know,
he was just he was fearsome and you know, fearless.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
He was someone to be admired. Yeah, so eventually you
decided to I mean, obviously I'm looking at it right now. Yeah,
he picked up the project.

Speaker 5 (56:16):
Yeah, so I picked up the project and you know,
got in touch with Panthera, the organization he kind of
helped establish.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
And there was this other guy named.

Speaker 5 (56:26):
Howard Quigley who was a famous jaguar biologist and also
tiger biologist. He was one of the first people to
collar amyer tigers in Siberia.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Amazing guy too.

Speaker 5 (56:39):
So he helped me, you know, kind of find places
along the Jaguar Corridor, you know, along that five thousand
miles to visit you know, people people that wanted to talk,
people that were doing amazing things, and also people places
where I might have a chance of seeing jaguars.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
Yeah, along that corridor. Imagine the Darien Gaps got be
a real bit huh, Like that's got to be like
the problem, right, that that is the yeah exactly.

Speaker 4 (57:06):
I feel like the Darien Gap only gets brought up
in the context of it being a problem, yeah, for
various reasons.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Well. And then and then at the height, like at
the height of the Biden administration, when there was so
much illegal immigration, it like brought in tons of people
into the into the Darien Gap, and then the Darien
Gap kind of became like almost like a conflict zone.
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 5 (57:27):
I mean, wasn't there a New York Times reporter who
went down there and walked the Darien Gap with the people?
I mean, can you imagine like four year old children
going through the Darien Gap.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
And people in there preying on them? Oh oh yeah yeah.
And it like this this very isolated place became also
like a very visited place, yeah, right, and a lot
of a lot of violence out of.

Speaker 5 (57:50):
A lot of violence, yeah, a lot of trafficking.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (57:53):
But for yeah, for the Jaguar that that's like a
pinch point. And when they were first establishing the Jaguar
cort Or, that was something they really worried about is
the Darien getta.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess, I guess through that context,
let's talk about this corridor. Like the objective presumably is
to get jaguars back into their northern range, right back
in the meso America.

Speaker 5 (58:16):
Yeah, I mean, that's part of it.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
But the.

Speaker 5 (58:21):
Major point is that because jaguars are the only wide
ranging predators without a subspecies, that's to preserve that's to
preserve the DNA. You know, there are no taxonomic differences
between jaguars. You know, when that was discovered in nineteen
ninety nine, Alan Rabinowitz was elated. He's like, you know,

(58:45):
we can treat jaguars as a single ecological unit, as
one species. So that was the idea, you know, is
the genetic flow, genetic freedom, make sure that jaguars could
move throughout the corridor, you know, in spread their genes.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
What is the what are the the corridor, what are
the what's the northern terminus in the southern terminus? Like, like,
what is the corridor?

Speaker 5 (59:10):
So the corridor is this kind of loosely connected they
call them jaguar conservation units. The the kind of the
the avenues or the trails or whatever you want to
call them the passageways by which they connect the jaguar
conservation units, which are just areas that produce a lot

(59:33):
of jaguars that are just you know, good habitat for jaguars.
But it goes from again the Ebera or Ibera all
the way up to essentially the Sierra Madres of of
of Mexico or to southern Arizona. Essentially everything below Highway
ten in southern Arizona. In Arizona, that's the corridor. So

(59:56):
it's a huge quarridor it's one of the biggest corridors
of any animal on earth, except the leopards may be
a little bit bigger.

Speaker 4 (01:00:04):
Just for like, as far as there their range like
of an individual animal and their social lives, is it
fair like what would expect, like males rome and they're
fairly solitary creatures. I mean, is there anything unique in
terms of jaguars and how they move around the landscape
and relate to one another.

Speaker 5 (01:00:25):
Yeah, well, I mean they're first of all, they're they're solitary.
You know, they get together to mate and that's pretty
much yet. But jim, oh yeah, sorry, And the the
females they have what they call range fidelity, so they
don't move that far. But the males, particularly a male

(01:00:49):
in what they call natal dispersal, a male that has
not mate it like like co cheese or like this
this famous jaguar el Hefe. You know, they'll come out
of they'll come out of the Sierra Madres of northern Mexico,
the Northern Jaguar Reserve, which is like one hundred and
twenty five miles south of the border, and they'll they'll

(01:01:11):
roam all the way into you know, the Santa Rita
Mountains of southern Arizona. So they have huge ranges.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
So that's that's where those Arizona cats are coming from. Yeah,
I didn't know that that was that close to the border.

Speaker 5 (01:01:25):
Yeah, one hundred and twenty five miles south of the border.
And that's you know, kind of like the a Waning Well,
I wouldn't say waning, but the last population, the farthest
north breeding population of jaguars.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
And are we talking like ten are we talking hundreds?
Now you're probably talking like thirty or forty in the
Sierra Madra in the Sierra Madres. Yeah, eating Cou's deer,
eating cou's deer.

Speaker 5 (01:01:52):
Yeah, yeah, I know, you've had Jim Jim Hefflefinger. I
know you've had Jim Heffelfinger on it. He I talked
with him at length. He's a great guy. We've discovered
that we grew up like ten ten miles from there.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
Yeah. Yeah, so I was just I wasn't gonna bring
up Halfelfinger by name. But let's talk a little bit
about wildlife politics and Arizona. Yeah, sure, Well you can't
avoid it, all right. So the like there's a sort
of I don't know, man, there's a sort of battle. Okay,
there's a there's a management battle where in Arizona there

(01:02:27):
are there are forces, there are powers that be that
want to just kind of wash their hands of this
whole jaguar thing, and they want to say, sure, like
maybe now and then a male would wander up into Arizona.
But you can't call this core habitat because once someone says, no, bro,

(01:02:49):
this is core habitat, then they're gonna be like, it'd
be like the same thing like Colorado them saying, you
know what, we have a mandate. We're gonna we're gonna
reintroduce wolves in Colorado. The fear is that someone down
the road says, and this is not my fear. I
think it's a great idea. The fear is that someone
down the road, someone says, Hey, this is historic jaguar range,

(01:03:11):
this is core habitat for jaguars. We have a legal
responsibility to restore jaguars in Arizona, which I think is
a phenomenal idea. I'd like it even more if I
live there.

Speaker 5 (01:03:24):
That's a cool I want to see because you didn't
see it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
I just like all that. I like I like all that,
Like I like looking over my shoulder, you know, And
even though they're passive and all that, I just like
the whole thing about them. And you're never gonna have
it's not gonna have like enough jaguars where you're having, Like,
it's not gonna have like a it's not gonna be
that all of a sudden predation goes up because what

(01:03:47):
it's gonna come. It's gonna come at the expensive mountain lions. Yeah,
do you know what I mean? So I think it's
a phenomenal idea. I'm just throwing that out there. But
that's like the wildlife politics end. And so these guys
came up with this great map. Yeah, it's every known
and so it's in the U in the United States
of America. It's this map of like every known instance,

(01:04:11):
and they track down stuff even like photos and bars. Yeah,
like some old photo a barers, like a dude with
a dead jaguar.

Speaker 9 (01:04:18):
Like what is that all about? They're like, oh, yeah,
my grandpa he shot it. Yeah, does anyone No, No,
it's just like a picture in the bar. But then
they get to interview people.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Are like, legitimately at some point in time, like it
seems like this dude's grandpa, no joke, shot a jaguar,
and so on the map and people argue about the map,
and on the map is also jaguars that dudes trucked
up there to turn loose for jaguar hunts, right, And
so the map is like a contentious map where they're there.

(01:04:52):
There's people going like not legit, not legit, not legit,
and other people are going like, no, these are all
legit sightings. And it boils down to is someone someday
gonna say we're gonna do a release of jaguars. Well
you seem to not like this subject.

Speaker 5 (01:05:12):
Well, I'm telling you you called it controversial, man, that's it.
In the nail on the head and it's been going
on for a long time since pretty much nineteen ninety
six when two ranch when one rancher Warner Glenn guy
straight out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
I'm gonna ask you if you ran he caught that one.

Speaker 5 (01:05:31):
Yeah, yeah, straight out of Central casting. You know, saw
someone in nineteen ninety six and this other guy named
he and his wife Jack Childs, and he was a
he was a you know, he ran lions with his
with his daughters.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
And yeah, we've we've had like our colleague Clay has
done a lot with him.

Speaker 5 (01:05:51):
Oh oh Jack video Warner with Warner, Yeah, well with Warner. Yeah, yeah,
well they're both They're amazing, amazing guys and probably pretty
middle of the middle of the road guys as far
as jaguars are concerned.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
If you go into like even in those years like
back then a little bit later that know, it's much
in two thousands. Yeah. Uh, there's a guy that knew
those guys that that me and Yanni are friends with
Floyd Green and you went into his optic shop and
there's a picture of that jaguar. Yeah, and I was like,
what's up with that jaguar. It's like the Warner Glenn jaguar,
oh Marazona.

Speaker 5 (01:06:26):
Yeah, he talked about the shiny green, shining green eyes.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
You're thinking Leopold, Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking.
In Leopold.

Speaker 5 (01:06:35):
Leopold loved, ultimately loved jaguars. He wrote a lot about jaguars.
But I won't we won't go that far straight.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
But so, I mean, this is.

Speaker 5 (01:06:44):
Really really complicated, and I won't give you too much history,
but there is. There was an effort called CANDRA, the
Central Arizona, New Mexico Recovery Area, and this group that
this group that you're called you were talking about, wanted
to set aside twenty million acres from the Elder Leopold

(01:07:05):
Elder Leopold Wilderness and the Hila all the way up
to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon along the
Muggy and Rim as jaguar historically, historically it was probably
jaguar habitat. So they wanted to do a reintroduction of
jaguars ninety to one hundred and twenty jaguars in that area,

(01:07:25):
which was shot down by fishing. US Fish and Wildlife
Service and the Secretary of the Interior.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
Did you want to talk about people's panties getting on fire.

Speaker 5 (01:07:35):
I'm sure you can imagine the Cattleman's Association, et cetera.
But you know, and the hunters too. I mean, I hunt,
so you know it's a tough thing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
But jaguars and I wasn't like, here's the deal. Yeah,
I feel and I'm not a cat expert. Yeah, I
feel this is just my me ballpark or like crystal
ball in it. I don't think you'd see because this
is all mountain lion country. Yeah, I don't think you'd
probably see an increase in predation.

Speaker 5 (01:08:07):
I think you'd see it shift from what to what.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
I think the mountain lions would would pay the price.

Speaker 4 (01:08:15):
Oh like if you if you species, you don't all
of a sudden double your big cat population.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
Yeah, like when you put so if you put wolves
into the mountain lions, you get like additive predation has
been very demonstrated. I just have a hard time picture
and it throwing another cat in the mix. Maybe I'm wrong,
throwing another cat in the mix. I still think you're
going to see X number a dead deer killed by cats.

Speaker 5 (01:08:39):
Yeah, not not double or trip now, I don't think.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
Yeah, well what do I know?

Speaker 4 (01:08:44):
I don't know, yeah, makes sense though I can see
it both ways.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
It makes complete sense.

Speaker 5 (01:08:50):
Well, first of all, jaguars living really low low densities.
Second of all, they eat eighty five species. You know,
they're not They're not going to just eat cous deer
and elk. They're going to eat frogs, They're going to
eat skunks, They're gonna eat turtles. They like turtles, Yeah,
they love turtles.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
No turtles and airs.

Speaker 5 (01:09:10):
Yeah, but yeah, I mean they're real generalists, you know,
so they're not going to concentrate, you know, on the
deer or on the yelk. And I think Jim Heffelfinger
has said that, you know, I don't think that predation
would be increased that much, right, I.

Speaker 1 (01:09:30):
Don't want to drag him into this. Matter of fact,
I can't remember what his take on this whole thing is.

Speaker 5 (01:09:35):
Well, I think he I think his take on I
think his take on critical habitat and reintroduction is very
is negative. I mean, he's like, it's a it's a
powder keg. And also why waste in endangered species money
on a cat that may or may not want to
live because because they got the jowel muscles?

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
Yeah, I mean you see one of these cats.

Speaker 5 (01:10:02):
I mean they are so magnificent.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
I mean their heads are like that. Oh, and they're
so powerful.

Speaker 5 (01:10:09):
I mean they and they live in trees. They swim,
you know, they swim rivers with caman in their mouths
for a mile. I mean they are like they are
like the most they are like the most athletic cat
there is athletic beast there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
When I get attacked by a lion or grizzly, I
can pull their upper and lower jawpart so they can't
clamp down on me. Like I don't know what the
jag man one hundred and fifty pounce, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:10:36):
Pounds of pressure per square it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
I'm gonna start working out so I can hold them.

Speaker 7 (01:10:41):
They said, yeah, I've never seen a jaguar, but I
think it was at a Denver zoo. They had some
sort of tigers, and I don't know if they were
the bangle tiger what tiger. But I remember having that
that this sense of awe that you're describing, and it
was only, you know, there's a pane of glass between
me and this giant cat, but when you look at it, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
Just, Yeah, it gives you a weird feeling.

Speaker 4 (01:11:07):
Well, this is what you said earlier, is like when
they move, every part of their body is activated. They're
not like my lab where they're kind of walking and
there's like legs like like there's shaking and jiggling like
when a cat moves. It's like it's almost like a snake.
It's like the whole thing is Yeah, like a.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Runway model, dude, We're like just the whole thing. There's
not a muscle out of place.

Speaker 5 (01:11:30):
Yeah, that's exactly That's exactly right. You see one of
those things. It's something to behold.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
People.

Speaker 5 (01:11:37):
Jaguar biologists who've seen like, you know, dozens in their
lives still.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
Think it's like a dream to see a jaguar. And yeah,
they are. They are just incredibly beautiful, and there's such
magnificent athletes.

Speaker 5 (01:11:51):
You know, they're just you know, I mean, you know,
they jump twenty feet you know, standing jump into a tree,
and then they can live in trees in certain parts
of the Amazon. When it floods, they live in trees
for months. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:12:06):
Huh, So what the what the sciet these protections? YEA,
with more awareness with the quarters are we like has
the decline and jaguars been reversed or is it Are
they still a species in decline and is there is
their territory still shrinking.

Speaker 5 (01:12:25):
Yeah, that's that's a good question. I think jaguar biologists
have hope.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
You know, they have to have hope.

Speaker 5 (01:12:34):
You know, it's kind of in kind in the you know,
conservation you know, hope can be hard to come by.
But yeah, I think that I think that people are
hopeful that the jaguar will persist, that they can kind
of lock down these jaguar conservation areas and they can
defend the corridor. So I think they're Yeah, I think

(01:12:56):
I don't know what's happening to the population in general,
but I do think that they have hoped that the
jaguars will continue to persist, if not, if not thrive.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
Yeah, so you didn't have, like in your book, you
didn't have a through all that reporting, you didn't come
up with like a strong personal opinion about what's going
to happen with the animal. It just seems like it's
like a legitimate question.

Speaker 5 (01:13:24):
Well, yeah, I'm it's it's it's tough. I mean, it's tough.

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
I hate to be you know.

Speaker 5 (01:13:32):
I there were times when I was pessimistic, and there
were times when.

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
I was optimistic. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:13:36):
Well you go to the Pontinal and you're filled with
optimism because you see, you see a lot of jaguars
and they're you know there, there are a lot of
jaguars there. But the Amazon, you know, the the the
Amazon is imperiled, you know, and that's where the bulk
of jaguars, maybe seventy to eighty percent of jaguars live,

(01:13:57):
and the Amazon, I could you know, when I was
in Brazil, when when when I don't mean to be political,
but when Donald Trump slapped tariffs son Chinese goods, Chinese
you know, reciprocated or retaliated slapped tear of son soybeans.
So you know, our soybean farmers couldn't send soybeans to China.

Speaker 1 (01:14:20):
So what did they Chinese do. They went to Bolivia
and they went to the They went to they went
to Brazil and to invest in soybeans.

Speaker 5 (01:14:28):
Yeah, and they just raised forests for you know, thirty
forty miles you see nothing but bean fields and that's
where they that's where they got their beans. So and
jaguars cannot live, you know, in a bean field.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
But you don't need to apologize for being political, because
what's not political? Yeah, particularly these you know what I
mean like like, well, no, I mean like wildlife is political. Yeah,
it is. It's like you can't. There's no world in
which you could talk about wildlife and have it not
intersect with politics. It's just it's like it is political. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:14:57):
And Alan Rabinowitz worked in Burma shortly after the generals
crushed the pro democracy movement, and he worked there and
he was criticized. He was criticized by fellow biologists. He
was criticized in the newspaper newspapers. He said, you know,
since when do you know tigers get a vote? He said,
I'm going to go save tigers.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
And well, they expected him to withdraw from Burma.

Speaker 5 (01:15:18):
Yeah, they expected him to withdraw from Burma and he wouldn't.
And you know, in some cases he was dealing with
generals you know, who were you know, pretty unscrupulous people.
But his commitment was to you know, was to the
jaguar or they're the tigers, I mean to the tiger.

Speaker 1 (01:15:35):
Yeah, yeah, thanks, Yeah. Do you focus mostly on his
work with jaguars or do you get into his work
with other cats?

Speaker 5 (01:15:42):
I get into his work a little bit with tigers
in Burma, but mostly I focus, you know, on the jaguar,
just because it was so kind of, you know, revolutionary,
the notion of the jaguar corridor. You know, that swath
of land, you know, five five thousand, five thousand miles

(01:16:02):
just hadn't been attempted before for one species.

Speaker 1 (01:16:06):
And then how much did he live through by the
time he died, Was it clear that his vision was
going to carry was going to be effective.

Speaker 5 (01:16:16):
Yeah, definitely he inspired. I mean, the jaguar Corridor was
essentially his idea in the jaguar Corridor lives on today,
and I mean they're countless biologists and countless environmental organizations
who are dedicated to it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
So yeah, it lives on.

Speaker 5 (01:16:39):
And I think that he was aware before he died,
you know, that that there was a commitment to maintaining
the jaguar Corridor.

Speaker 1 (01:16:48):
Do you think he's looking down and he's pissed that
you want to write the book after all? After that
be thankful? Well, he's like son of I asked ten
times his.

Speaker 5 (01:17:00):
His wife was really really helpful, and it was I
think it was still a painful experience for her because
she still hadn't taken all his journals out of his closet. George,
he was a he was a protege of George Shaller,
and George Shaller said, your job is at the end
of every first of all, take field notes, and at

(01:17:22):
the end of the day revisit those notes and write
about the sights and sounds and smells, you know, he said.
I think his quote was the the the pen is
your is the weapon against oblivion. So Alan Rabinowitz followed that,
and he was a He was a he was a
very careful and dedicated note taker. So his his wife,

(01:17:45):
you know, it was pretty brave to allow me to
to you know, to do Yeah, exactly, Karin.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
When we were in Africa, wasn't it wasn't those guys
from Pantera that we were talking the lion guys.

Speaker 9 (01:17:58):
Yep, yep, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:17:59):
Yeah. We were with some dudes that were we just
shared a camp with them, and they were coming in
to set up they were coming in to set up
a huge camera trap array. Yeah, we'll call them trail
cams in our circle. They were coming in to set
up a huge trail cam array around lions leopards. I

(01:18:22):
think mainly, I think mainly those two. Yeah. Oh wow, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:18:28):
I used to call them trail cams too, but I've
been around jaguar biologists for so long I call them
camera traps.

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
Fast. You had to assimilate, Like I got a thing
like like coyote, coyote. You know, there's very like you
don't meet many people who you don't meet trappers and
stuff to.

Speaker 5 (01:18:50):
Say you got a code switch.

Speaker 1 (01:18:55):
Yeah, trail cams you kind of know where they're coming from.
Camera traps, you kind of know where to comes.

Speaker 5 (01:19:00):
You don't call them mountain lion. Mountain lion, you call
him cats, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
Right, yeah, So it's a yeah, it's funny you can
tell someone's background there, but it's been what an amazing
tool though, And my understanding too is with with leopards
and also with jaguars, the rosettes are identifiable complete, so
it gives you the ability to to name them and
know them.

Speaker 5 (01:19:25):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's how that's how they Jack Child's
identified a jaguar in two thousand and five he caught
him on his trail cams and in two thousand and five,
and he looked at the rosettes and said, these are
the same rosettes that I saw on the jaguar that

(01:19:46):
we photographed in nineteen ninety six, and then.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
What year was it in two thousand and five? Okay,
So he recognized.

Speaker 5 (01:19:52):
There was one that resembled Pinocchio and one resembled a
cartoon character called Betty Boop. I don't know, I don't
I'm not familiar, but that's how he identified that cat.
So that cat had been living in Arizona from nineteen
ninety six through two thousand and five. Huh so, yeah,
so that is the no.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):
No Arizona that long without getting in trouble. Yeah, without
getting in trouble. Yeah. Yeah, pretty amazing man. You know.

Speaker 5 (01:20:21):
Uh, they're one thing their grout there. Jaguars have this
modified hi oed bone in their throats so they can
roar unlike any other cat in the United States, and
so every jaguars roar is different too. That's kind of
their auditory signature. No no, no roar is the same.

Speaker 1 (01:20:40):
Huh really? Yeah? Do you know the story This was
another controversial one in the book. Do you tell the
story of the jaguar that gets killed by researchers in Arizona?
Tell that story real quick?

Speaker 5 (01:20:53):
Oh man, that's a that's a that's a sore one. Right,
that's a complicated one. So that that's called that's macho
b that. So in two thousand and eight, oh man,
this is gonna be tough. In two thousand and eight,
the Department of Homeland Security set aside or made it
known they had fifty million dollars to give to agencies

(01:21:18):
who were studying who wanted to study the effects of
the border wall on endangered species. And there was a
group called the Jaguar Borderland Detection Group, and they set
up trail cams all over southern Arizona from the Chiracaua

(01:21:43):
Mountains or the Anamous Mountains in New Mexico all the
way to the Barbakiveries, you know, in southwest of Tucson.
And I've kind of lost my thought from moment.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
Oh we're talking about that cat that turned up got killed. Yeah,
So so.

Speaker 5 (01:22:06):
They what what the Arizona Game and Fish Department wanted.
They wanted to They wanted to capture and collar a jaguar. Now,
there was a group called the jag the Jaguar Conservation Group,
which was made up of guys in the government, conservationists ranchers,

(01:22:29):
et cetera. And the environmentalists in that group said, if
you're not going to set aside critical habitat and refuse
to why do we have to call her a jaguar
Because that's essentially what you want to know. You want
to figure out what his range is and where.

Speaker 1 (01:22:45):
He's But then you're not going to do anything with
the info. But you're not going to do anything.

Speaker 5 (01:22:49):
You're not going to do anything with the info. So
so the so there was a surreptitious plan to capture
a cat, this Macho B, in an area where they

(01:23:11):
were also trying to trap mountain lions and bears. So
in February eighteenth, two thousand and nine, Macho B was captured,
and he was captured in a snare which they baited

(01:23:34):
with the scat of a female jaguar in heat. Yeah,
this is this is a long.

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
This is gonna be a long. There's like some little
ring go here, I pressed.

Speaker 5 (01:23:47):
Yeah, it's it's still a sore point down there.

Speaker 1 (01:23:52):
And so.

Speaker 5 (01:23:55):
There was this guy named Amo McCain who was had
studied in Brazil with learned and was an amazing tracker. Well,
he had set up this snare with these two other
biologists from the Arizona Game and Fish Department, and he
said everything had been cleared, everything was above board. Well,

(01:24:17):
it turns out it wasn't above board. So this jaguar,
Macho B, was snared in February eighteenth of two thousand
and nine. Two biologists said he was extremely frail at
the time, and so the they collared him, and then

(01:24:39):
they waited six hours for the telezol to drift out
of his body, and then the jaguar stumbled off, but
he already was in bad condition. And then about two
weeks later, they weren't getting a signal from Macho B
from the collar. So about two weeks later some Arizona

(01:25:01):
Game and Fish people went to check on Macho B.
And they said he was extremely frail and stumbling around.

Speaker 1 (01:25:09):
Check on him, houf and not getting a signal from
the collar.

Speaker 5 (01:25:12):
They went back to that that site, the snare site,
and essentially he hadn't moved. The jaguar hadn't moved. So
then like a couple of days later.

Speaker 1 (01:25:25):
So they're not getting a move they're not getting moved,
they're not getting any movement off the college.

Speaker 5 (01:25:30):
So then on like March second, two thousand and nine,
a whistleblower came out. This woman named Janey Brunn, who
was working with the Borderland Detection Group, said that she
had placed the female scat at the snare site to.

Speaker 1 (01:25:52):
Lure Macho B.

Speaker 5 (01:25:55):
So right there, the Arizona Game and Fish essentially rationale
went out the window because it was deliberate.

Speaker 1 (01:26:04):
Yeah, because their deal was that it just inadvertently got.

Speaker 5 (01:26:09):
It was an incidental thing, but they had baited it.

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
But they had baited.

Speaker 7 (01:26:15):
It for jaguar, for jaguars, And I'd like to know
what it takes to get female jaguar in heat's gap.

Speaker 5 (01:26:24):
That's a great I have no idea. It's a great question.
I have no idea. That should be asked.

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
But then a day later, so what how is that
a whistleboard? That seems more like an admission.

Speaker 5 (01:26:39):
Well, because the the the Game and Fish department was
trying to cover up that it was, you know, an
incidental inadvertent.

Speaker 1 (01:26:48):
Oh, and so she was like, hey, it wasn't. In fact,
I did it.

Speaker 5 (01:26:52):
And then she wrote eventually wrote a book called Cloak
and Jaguar.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
Was actually it was actually a.

Speaker 5 (01:27:01):
Pretty good book. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right right, So anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
We had good titles. So anyway, on.

Speaker 10 (01:27:11):
Let's see March third, another party went out to check
on Macho B and captured him because they could tell
that he you know, he was hurting.

Speaker 1 (01:27:26):
He was hurting and hurting bad.

Speaker 5 (01:27:28):
So they brought him to the Phoenix Zoo and they
did the bunch of tests and they.

Speaker 1 (01:27:32):
Were like this, this jaguar is going to die. So
they thought about they thought about putting and what did
the tests revealed that he been drugged bad or he
was starving. He was starving. He he he was he
had already starving.

Speaker 5 (01:27:45):
Yeah, already starving physically in bad condition. And his kidneys
were shot old old animal, so he would kidneys were
shot from the drugs. No kidneys were shot from dehydration.
When when they found him the first time, he was hypothermic.

(01:28:05):
I think his core pressure was his core temperature was
like ninety degrees or something like that. So so yeah,
I mean this if I want so, I'm trying to
give you some kind of broad brushstrokes. But ultimately they
had to put the jaguar down. And when they put
had to put the jaguar down on March third, all

(01:28:29):
the pay you know, papers across the Country covered the
death of Macho B. And then the whole, the whole
kind of I hate to say, guys, but the whole.

Speaker 1 (01:28:40):
Thing just blew up.

Speaker 5 (01:28:41):
Sure, and to two reporters for the Arizona Daily Star,
a guy named Tim Steller and I think Tom Davis
waded into this for for months, wading into all the
all the all the literature, and ultimately sided that what

(01:29:02):
had happened was that the Arizona Game and Fish Department
did not have an incidental take permit from the US
Fish and Wildlife Service for jaguars. They had no jaguar
protocol handling protocol, so they just you know, because ultimately
there was another reporter who reported on this and said

(01:29:24):
it was driven by greed, driven by environmental politics, and
driven by a desire to get some of that homeland
security money that for that they had set aside for
endangered species.

Speaker 2 (01:29:41):
Can you get close it to your micro Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:29:42):
Sure.

Speaker 5 (01:29:42):
They they thought if they could capture Macho B, they
would be able to get, you know, some of that
homeland security money.

Speaker 1 (01:29:50):
Does that all make sense? It's yeah, here's the one part.
Here's the one part doesn't make sense. Yeah, not nothing.
If this jaguar there seems to me like a little
bit like what was the result of and what was before?
If this jaguar is on death's door, right, how much
does he give a shit about a female dropping I'm saying,

(01:30:17):
he's out doing jaguars stuff. Okay, he got himself, Like,
he gets himself to the snare location, right, and they
might have had a great set, a great trail. But
he's there. He's enough to be interested, he's got curiosity.
He gets hooked. But then all of a sudden, it's like,
oh no, he was half dead already. It's like, are

(01:30:39):
you sure? Because he showed up there but never left,
so you caught him at the moment at his last
gasp was stepping on that plate. He's like, I'm good
for one more step. It's just I feel like there's
a little you know, like you could say like, oh no,

(01:31:01):
he was all but he was in rough shape. He
was all beat up. It's like, could have been that
bad shap, dude. He caught him. Yeah, right, If he's
in bad shape, he's laying in a thicket.

Speaker 5 (01:31:08):
Right, Well, I should on the second printing of my book.

Speaker 1 (01:31:15):
Having not been there, having brief consideration of the fact
that case.

Speaker 5 (01:31:21):
No, So that that was a real that for me,
that was a real conundrum about do I include that story?
Do I dredge up all that old crap?

Speaker 1 (01:31:32):
Well you have to, yeah, but because it's a new story. Yeah,
that's right.

Speaker 5 (01:31:39):
But there were a lot of people, you know, who
were kind of injured by by the story. And Jack
Childs said it put put jaguar biology in Arizona back
into the Stone Age. So I really really thought long
and hard, or thought long and hard about whether I
wanted to tell that story, and ultimately I decided to

(01:31:59):
because guys, I mean that pretty much has set the
course for jaguar conservation in the Southwest in what way.
It just it's just it's a stain. It's a stain
that you know that nobody, nobody wants to dredge up.

Speaker 1 (01:32:17):
And note right now, nobody really wants to touch.

Speaker 5 (01:32:22):
The jim Heth helthfel finger that the Arizona Game and
Fish Department may be a little more receptive to jaguars
in Arizona had this not happened. But they're just they
just don't like talking about it anymore, rightfully, So.

Speaker 1 (01:32:39):
You look skeptically, Well, no, I'm just picturing the email
on it.

Speaker 5 (01:32:41):
That's what I'm thinking, literally literally think.

Speaker 1 (01:32:45):
We will get Yeah, I'm not saying who, but there
will be emails.

Speaker 5 (01:32:48):
Yeah, there will be emails. It's a I mean, it's
a it's a complicated, unfortunate, tawdry story, you know. It
just it's just I think there were a lot of
people who meant well and things just went bad.

Speaker 1 (01:33:04):
But but I mean, just just to talk shop a
little bit, not even about jaguars, just to talk shop
a little bit. The the as a writer whatever, yeah,
podcast or writer researcher, the why do you got to
go bringing this up? Thing? Right? I understand it. But

(01:33:25):
it's like the answer is kind of like because because right,
so I should apology.

Speaker 2 (01:33:30):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (01:33:30):
It's like, because it mattered, It mattered, Yeah, mattered, matters,
It matters.

Speaker 5 (01:33:37):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's a it's a big, big
deal and a lot of a lot of jaguar biologists
were like, I didn't give a shit about a geriatric
old jaguar that died in Arizona. But but because.

Speaker 1 (01:33:52):
You know, but it's also the cover of the only
one in the reality.

Speaker 5 (01:33:56):
Yeah, and it was the only one in the country
at that time.

Speaker 1 (01:34:00):
So trust me, if that if they had hooked a
mountain lion and it died, we would have been talking
about it. We wouldn't know. But it's like the only one.
There's just I mean, you can't well and like bad
stuff happens. I have a dear friend who I'm not
gonna name his name because what he said to me
in private. He said this one time he was doing

(01:34:21):
a mark and recapture project. I'm not gonna tell you
what kind of because people will put it together. He's
doing a market recaptured project with with with wildlife, he said.
His advisor once said to him, if you're not killing shit,
you're not working hard. Wow, because he initially was like

(01:34:43):
so afraid of and he's supposed to be getting collars, yeah,
on right, and he was so afraid that it was crippling.
And eventually someone said that if you're not if you're
not killing seff, you're not doing it. It's hands on work. Yeah,
it's like you got there's an inherent meaning, there's like

(01:35:05):
an inherent risk. Yeah, that becomes very different. One. There's one.
There's one. It's a different conversation.

Speaker 5 (01:35:14):
Well, the protocol for capturing jaguars in for instance, Brazil
is like super complicated.

Speaker 1 (01:35:20):
Sure.

Speaker 5 (01:35:20):
Yeah, And if you're going to do if you're going
to do a capturing coloring program, which I was part of.

Speaker 1 (01:35:26):
You thought you were talking about.

Speaker 5 (01:35:27):
Seeing this magnificent jaguar, you know, just behind the glass,
and how it made you feel.

Speaker 1 (01:35:33):
You know, we had prepared.

Speaker 5 (01:35:35):
Night after night after night for the chance of capturing
a jaguar, and when it finally happened, no one had
ever told me about what an emotional experience it would be.
When they presented that jaguar and laid them on the
back you know, of the truck and said, okay, now

(01:35:56):
you can touch that jaguar.

Speaker 1 (01:35:57):
Oh my god.

Speaker 5 (01:35:59):
I mean I still still like, I still get a
little shaky thinking about it.

Speaker 1 (01:36:03):
It was just like, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:36:04):
As the jaguars breathing, like touching, you know, touching the
belly and just moving my hand, you know, moving my
hand along the jaguar and the chail.

Speaker 1 (01:36:13):
Trying to get one of those teeth out. You would
love jaguar too, to hang from their neck. But it
was really like he's yeah, so, I mean, but that
was that was pretty laid a hand on, laid a

(01:36:34):
hand on one. Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty and that's
gotta feel just like muscle man, just complete muscle.

Speaker 5 (01:36:42):
Yeah, like the hind quarters you know that's oh man, Yeah,
just solid muscle, solid muscle.

Speaker 1 (01:36:50):
That's cool that he's breathing, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:36:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was pretty pretty special.

Speaker 1 (01:36:56):
Exp what's a jaguar smell like?

Speaker 5 (01:36:58):
Just nothing, no fact, And that jaguar oddly didn't smell.
But there's this guy named Eduardo Correo in Costa Rica
who said he was talking about how elusive jaguars are,
you know, cryptic, and he could he said he could
be crawling through the jungle and he knew that jaguar

(01:37:20):
was close because his trans he because his his receiver.
He was getting beeps. And he said what he does is,
he said, you know, jaguar could be three feet away
from me, you and you wouldn't see him. He'd listen
for the monkeys, or he'd.

Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
Use his nose. Oh, you're kidding me.

Speaker 5 (01:37:38):
No, he said, jaguars reek, so he would use his
nose and smell them out.

Speaker 1 (01:37:43):
Huh. Johnny got to do that with lions. Oh you
did well, collared lions and y'all. He was saying It's amazing, man,
Like tell him, like, you get close to that sucker
and you don't know he's there.

Speaker 7 (01:37:54):
Oh that yeah, I thought you were talking about the
part where we had him drugged and then we're handling them.

Speaker 1 (01:37:59):
Oh no, you're like letting me get this close.

Speaker 7 (01:38:02):
Yeah, but no, we he was doing a study where
he was basically seeing if he repeated hazing would cause like,
would be a deterrent for mountain lions proximity to humans.

Speaker 2 (01:38:16):
Right, oh yeah, if that makes sense. In the one
broad brushstroke and so to do.

Speaker 7 (01:38:20):
That, they were collaring them and then walk once they
had him collared, walking towards known locations of lions, coincidentally
playing the Meat Eater podcast at eighty decibels on a speaker,
and then he's watching the GPS as he walks towards it,
and he's like, okay, we're at fifty meters, we're at
thirty meters and the closest one we got to I

(01:38:42):
think was twelve And I'm like, are we going to
keep going?

Speaker 1 (01:38:46):
And he's like, no, at this point, we can stop.

Speaker 2 (01:38:49):
It's there.

Speaker 7 (01:38:50):
And what was amazing is that it's literally right there.
He says, it's in that cops of trees and he goes, oh,
now it's moving and you're looking right there, and you
ever see ith you never see the cat?

Speaker 1 (01:39:02):
Yeah, right, so amazing. Yeah that's great, Yeah, so amazing.
Are you to retire now? Oh?

Speaker 5 (01:39:09):
Man, No, you know, I'm a writer. I can't I'll
retire and I'm pushing up daisies here. I'm not sure,
you know, that's a good question. Usually I should have
a book, you know, another book project ready to go,
but I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:39:27):
Looking for that plane. Is this for the hell of it?

Speaker 5 (01:39:30):
Looking looking for that plane is about, you know, a
passion project.

Speaker 1 (01:39:35):
Yeah, it was not a book I assumed as a
book project.

Speaker 5 (01:39:38):
Yeah, well, you know, it could be, you know, it
could be like a long form story or something like that.
But I'm not sure if it's a book project. But
I'd love to write about New Guinea again. Maybe maybe
next book will take me back to Alaska.

Speaker 1 (01:39:51):
I don't know. I got a few ideas.

Speaker 5 (01:39:53):
But this book, this book because well for a lot
of reasons, because of COVID. Actually, the the guy who
filled it, who became the new Alan Rabinowitz, who was
a great friend of Alan Rabinowitz, a guy named Howard Quigley.

Speaker 1 (01:40:08):
He died in the middle of my research and it
just you know what he did cancer too.

Speaker 5 (01:40:17):
Oh yeah, yeah, And so this project took me way
longer than it should have, and it became ultimately it
became a passion project, you know, not a not a
not a pain project.

Speaker 1 (01:40:30):
Yeah, you spent much time.

Speaker 5 (01:40:32):
Yeah yeah, yeah, and some you know, not unnecessarily, but necessarily.

Speaker 1 (01:40:37):
But yeah, like the the economics that makes sense.

Speaker 5 (01:40:40):
Yeah, yeah, which you know a lot of writers will
tell you these days. It's hard hard to make for
the economics to make sense.

Speaker 1 (01:40:47):
But you know, I got a couple of ideas. But
you know, we'll we'll see it's hit me at one.
I'll tell you if it's a good one or not.
I was thinking tons of time right now. Yeah, okay,
I was thinking i'd tell the don't give it away,
and if it's a cut it out of the podcast.
I better not talk. I better not say. Give me

(01:41:07):
a hint.

Speaker 5 (01:41:08):
Alaska.

Speaker 1 (01:41:10):
That's idea about as vague as yeah, the collapse of
the Yukon salmon collapse. Yeah, that's it. That's it.

Speaker 5 (01:41:19):
That's a great story.

Speaker 1 (01:41:20):
I got it. Well, that is no, but that's a
great story. So should do a book on that.

Speaker 5 (01:41:25):
Yeah, somebody should. That's you know, I know a lot
of guys who ran fish wheels on on on the
Yukon and.

Speaker 1 (01:41:31):
They're you know, you know what the answer is that
they're leaning toward yeah, hat trees. Oh is that right? Really?
In Alaska of all places, that's the political that's the
that's what they're coming in with, is like, oh that's
easy hat tries.

Speaker 7 (01:41:46):
Wow, that's the fix, not the that's not the reason.

Speaker 1 (01:41:53):
It's it's it's like because it's the whole thing of
it's it's just like, what's the problem everything m hammer
and fishing, the see like hammer and fishing to see
intercept fisheries, water temperatures, it's like it's just too big
and too it's it's it's you can't unravel it. Everybody's

(01:42:14):
got it's this. It's that there's a real problem. I mean,
it seems to be that there's a real problem with
like intercept fisheries, like hitting those fish, hitting hitting those
fish before they're in the water in the fresh so
you know, and they got like even like subsistence people
like subsistence people living along the river, like Native alask

(01:42:35):
and subsistence fishermen aren't able to put their wheels out.
It's bad. And I guess like the way that they're
you know, as people at high levels in the state
look at they're like, why it's easy fishery setcheries.

Speaker 5 (01:42:51):
Yeah, yeah, well Alaska, yeah right, I mean the public
lands issue up there is pretty dire now.

Speaker 1 (01:42:57):
Too, right now it is, yeah, right now it is. Yeah. Alright,
that's a good book. Thanks, come back out and finish it. Yeah,
tell us what you find out. How I save the

(01:43:19):
sam I think cover Yeah, yeah, we can get it.
We can get on this right now. I'll blur it
right now. Help book. You guys are amazing. Hell yeah,
oh throw well James Campbell, thanks for coming on.

Speaker 5 (01:43:35):
Yeah, I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:36):
Thank you. I got one more for you. What's your
favorite book that you wrote, Like one where the fight
of your man.

Speaker 5 (01:43:43):
At the height of them. I like to think I'm
still at the height of my powers.

Speaker 1 (01:43:49):
You know, I wrote a book, say this one because
it's for sale right now?

Speaker 5 (01:43:51):
Well, that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:43:52):
I mean that, Thank you. Apparently I'm a really marketing
firm as well. Publisher's gonna kill me. Yeah, I mean,
this was a.

Speaker 5 (01:44:04):
Real passion project. There's no question about it. But you know,
I love you know, I love writing all my books.
I got another one about my daughter and I doing
a bunch of stuff in Alaska, including building a cabin
with my cousin I'm ocorth and you know, the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge. That was a particularly personal one. But yeah,

(01:44:24):
all of them, you know, you know, audios. I mean,
you're a writer, it's all you know, it's all really
meaningful stuff, all of them you do, and then when
you're done, you're like kick them out of the house,
like I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:44:41):
Tired of that book. Yeah. Yeah. The latest is A
Heart of the Jaguar, the extraordinary conservation effort to save
the America's legendary cat. And then if you're into whiskey,
whiskey too, I highly recommend Ghost Mountain. Thank you, Ghost

(01:45:01):
Mountain Boys. Right, I can't see the covers, the proper
title Ghost Mountain, Ghost Mountain Boys, about the you know,
the Pacific Theater during World War Two, particularly the Battle
of New for New Guinea. Oh, that rips your heart
out there, That still still rips my heart out. A

(01:45:21):
lot of suffering, a lot of heroism, a lot of sacrifice.
Thanks for coming on my pleasure. I really enjoyed it.
Thanks guys, Thanks Jams,

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Steven Rinella

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 796: Heart of the Jaguar