September 2, 2025 • 32 mins
“Fear often comes from not knowing. Once you take time to learn, fear can turn into respect.”
Notable Moments
[00:02:22] Doug shares his curiosity-driven adventures in Mexico and Russia.
[00:05:00] The challenge of endless progress on a finite planet.
[00:07:18] Why wilderness is essential for grizzlies and for us.
[00:09:34] Tracking wildlife movement near highway corridors.
[00:18:55] The lasting influence of The Monkey Wrench Gang.
[00:28:02] How our treatment of bears reflects how we see ourselves.
[00:29:08] A family’s shift from fear of grizzlies to awe and respect.
[00:31:10] The need for united action to defend wilderness and parks.
Conservationist and author Doug Peacock returns to share stories from a lifetime spent in wilderness. From grizzlies in Yellowstone to tigers in Russia, Doug reflects on the threats facing wild places and the fight to protect them. He offers hard truths, hopeful lessons, and a reminder that humility is at the heart of conservation.
Read the blog for more from this episode.
More from Doug Peacock
Order the book Was It Worth It? A Wilderness Warrior’s Long Trail Home
Order the book Grizzly Years
Resources
https://parkleaders.com/about/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/theparkleaders/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to the Park Leader show where we are changing the landscape of
leadership in parks and conservation. I'm your host,
Jody Mayberry, and joining me is someone who was on the
show four years ago. It's been a long four years.
He has a newer book out called Was It Worth It?
A Wilderness Warriors Long Trail Home. It's Doug Peacock.
(00:24):
Welcome back to the show, Doug. Hey, thanks, Jody. Pleasure.
Well, I thought your new book was fantastic
and I read it and then I listened to the
audio version. I'm so thankful you took the time to narrate
the audiobook yourself. Yeah, I haven't listened to it
yet and I'm looking forward to it someday. But
(00:46):
yeah, I thought it about time I did one of those. I
did it. Yeah. Partial records. Grizzly Years some time ago.
20 years ago. Yeah. That would be great to have
Grizzly Years as an audiobook. Yes. What did you think of
the audio experience? I know this has nothing to do with parks. I'm just
curious. What did you think of the narration experience? Well, you have
(01:08):
to get used to. You really have to get used to it. But as long
as you sort of accept you're going to be in this box talking to
yourself four or five days, you know, it gets easier
as you go on. You know, it was a. It wasn't
that difficult. I thought I was going to probably have to repeat myself,
you know, every other paragraph, but it wasn't too. Wasn't too
(01:31):
bad. And I hear people like the results and you know,
I ordered a copy one time, but I just haven't got around to listening to
it yet. Yeah, it's. Doug, it's a lot like just
sitting down with you and talking. That's what I enjoyed about it. Yeah. It
doesn't feel like a narration. It just feels like Doug Peacock
telling stories. Yeah, that's right.
(01:53):
The BS is what I'm a master of. Well,
in your book there's all those wonderful stories, but
you mentioned something that I really enjoyed that
you realize now that you're older that it was just time to
knock trips and experiences off your bucket list. And,
and many of the good experiences that you talk about in the book
(02:16):
came after you made that decision. Is there anything left
on your bucket list? No, I'm not sure I really had a bucket
list. I just, I had a curiosity and it would take me, you know,
I, I'd go wherever I needed to go for it. I was interested
in, you know, and going down to Mexico
and checking out, you know, The Grizzly Scene,
(02:39):
1985 and we did. We found the last grizzly sign
known in Mexico down in the north of Chihuahua City in a
mountain range down there. And I had it at the same time
on the same trip I had a jaguar backtrack me and
I'd never, I'd never seen a jaguar before. And, you know, all
I knew, this is a really big cat track and it wasn't
(03:01):
quite right for a mountain lion, but, you know, it was, it was,
it was a great experience and, you know, and I did the same thing when
I went with my buddies over to the Russian Far East. I was really
interested in Siberian tigers, as they're called, even though that's the
Russian Far east is where they are. And, you know, and over
there in this little bit of habitat, I hope they can
(03:22):
hang on to a little longer. You know, you've got, you've got big
cats, you've got, you know, you've got panthers and you've got
tigers, you've got, you know, you've got Tibetanus, which
is an Asian black bear, a big black bear. And you've also
got Ursus arctis, which is, you know, the brown bear
of Asia. Same species as our grizzly bear. There's
(03:44):
different subspecies, but they look the same. That was a
place I needed to see. Yeah, and it's, it was
so neat to read about those stories. I had not explored
anywhere outside of North America until a recent
trip to Chile. And it is, it just has me
enthused to go other places around the world. Up
(04:07):
until about 2019, I actually had no interest
in leaving the United States to explore because there's
just so much here to see and do. But once you get a taste
of what else is out there in the world, it's kind of hard not to
want to keep going. Oh, yeah. There's so much beauty out
there. And there it really is. And nowhere, there's
(04:28):
nowhere that's not being affected, you know, it's some of not going to
last at all. And you know, globally, the
climate change is really whipping us a new
rear end everywhere. It's the one thing we can't
afford to ignore. And of course, that's what's happening right now.
Well, with that, having seen what you've seen, been where you've
(04:51):
been and knowing what's going on not only
here in North America, but around the world, what are the biggest challenges you see
coming in conservation? Well, you know, the
bedrock problem is the same one we've had. You know,
endless progress on a planet of finite
resources is impossible. It's death.
(05:13):
And we're, we're still, you know, we're still
developing everybody, cutting the last forest, drilling the last
wildernesses, and that, you know, that is not sustainable.
And even the shortest run and climate change is something that
we ignore at our own peril because, you know, we're
all going to be on an endangered species list and, you know,
(05:34):
huge changes are going to come by the end of the
century if there's, you know, if nothing changes,
we'll be experiencing heats that Homo sapiens have
never experienced on Earth, you know, at least 3 degrees
centigrade above baseline, at least. And
we've never experienced that. So by then, you know, survival
(05:56):
even for human beings is Russian roulette. You know, we've never been
there. We've never experienced that. We don't know if we can live through it. And,
you know, that's enough to keep you working until the end of your days. And
that's why I wrote this book. Everywhere I went, nothing was quite
immune, you know, to change and even negative changes. And,
you know, you just got to pay attention and you got to fight every day.
(06:19):
You know, there's nothing. My bedrock issue is probably
wilderness. And, you know, I think that's the chief
thing. That's the thing that Abby and I shared, is the value of
wilderness and the need to fight for it. And that's what's at stake these
days. I mean, I, you know, I'm thinking of, you know, people I know, like
the superintendent of glacier, he's got such a hard job
(06:40):
all of a sudden this year with administration cutting everybody
down. And, you know, I've been planning on sitting down
and writing a letter to the few ranger friends I've got left here that
are still working. And. And he's one of them. With all
the work that you've done towards wilderness,
you just mentioned that that's your most important thing. You've done so much work
(07:03):
towards grizzly bears. Most people, though,
will never get to experience wilderness, will never
see a grizzly bear. So how do you get people to care
about conserving a place that they may never see?
I think, you know, you need to see the existence of these
places and these beings in your own interest.
(07:26):
You know, you kind of realize you've got a stake and, you know,
and maintain wild areas, you know, and the ideal
habitat for a grizzly bear is wilderness. You know, they don't need any
roads or anything else in there. And it's not a value that's
going to, you know, it is under assault Today like it's never
been before. You know, the threat against wilderness and wild animals
(07:49):
like grizzly or even wolverines, you know, that live in those
habitats. We could lose them all. You know, I'm probably
gonna. I'm a geezer now and I'll probably croak, but, boy, it's
coming sooner than we think. I've found it really
interesting and to see the work that you've done trying
to connect the corridors between
(08:11):
Yellowstone and Glacier. How is that
project coming along? Does it look likely or
probable that there will eventually be a full
connection? Well, I've certainly got people working
on it, but what stands in the way is the state of
Montana and their, you know, Department of Transportation
(08:32):
or highways. They will not recommend that. They've got the money and
everything else. And, you know, this is a. I90 is
the great barrier between the Yellowstone grizzly populations and
glaciers. And at times in the last two or three years,
we've had grizzlies on either side of the freeway within 15
or 20 miles of each other. But, you know, that final step to
(08:55):
go over under that freeway, it just doesn't happen.
And that's exactly the underpass. You know, I. I started
working on it quite a while ago in
2016. And, you know, it's a place I've gone
and I know that even lived down there for a while. And I know grizzlies
use this particular creek to come up almost all the way to the
(09:16):
freeway from the south. And those are Yellowstone bears.
And. And so I followed the creek and it's an
existing underpass. And, you know, there was a fresh black
bear family that crossed, a mother and a couple small cubs
and, you know, everything else, moose, we've got mountain lion. I put up
trail cams for a couple of years and hired a couple of young
(09:37):
biologists to do the field work. Lance
Craighead, my friend, supervised that project and,
you know, and we tried to pass it out, but it hasn't
gotten past the state of Montana yet. All they got to do is look at
it and say, well, why not? Because the money was there
a couple of years ago. It was right there to go ahead and complete
(10:00):
overpasses, underpasses. Can you give us an
idea of the impact that would have on the future of
grizzly bears if that connection was made?
Along with that, the underpass or
overpass itself, there has to be a degree of tolerance for
grizzly bears because they're going to hop on public, you know, tracks of
(10:22):
land, but there's private lands in between. And you know they've got to get through
fences and they've got to move north and they're doing that on their
own right now. I think the reason that so many grizzly being
found, some of them way out on the high plains, pretty much
that is because of climate change. It's not because the population
is saturated, you know, and its habitat is being
(10:44):
overrun. It's not that at all. I believe it's climate
change and you know what's in store for grizzlies with
a heating planet is not good. We lost the white
bark pine, you know that was a principal food in Yellowstone. The nuts of the
white bark pine, we lost them all back in, you know
from 2002 to about 2007 we just
(11:07):
saw red swaths across the white
pine belts high on the mountain. It's a high altitude pine tree
and five needle pine and grows above 9,000,
10,000ft and the tops of mountains. Those years
you just look up there and it was all red. You
didn't need a PhD to figure out climate change and global warming.
(11:30):
All the trees were dead and they turned, you know, rough when they died.
So when you say the bears are on the move because of climate
change, not because of their population, does that mean
they're, they have to go further to look for food?
Yeah, just further it and you know grizzly bears
are incredibly adaptable. They can pioneer new foods,
(11:53):
you know, a food that's never eaten before and they will, they
experiment and they adapt new foods. But
yeah it's you know in the fall, you know the approaching
fall here they all, not all but you know
a significant portion and segment of
Yellowstone's grizzlies went up high to the high
(12:14):
altitudes which are also remote. You know, they're away from people
in hunting season and in fed on the
sea caches of red squirrels and ate the nuts from the pine
cones. And that doesn't happen anymore. And that
served to keep especially mothers with young went up there
and it kept them away from you know, hunters and other humans who
(12:37):
kill them and you know the
mortality of grizzly bears with humans killing grizzly bears is still incredibly
high. They were such an intolerant, ignorant
species. You know, if we don't know something we fear
it. And nobody knows much about grizzlies anymore. We know we
fear the animal and we hate what we fear. John
(12:59):
Jarvis, the retired director of the National Park Service was recently
on the park leader show and he was talking about how
in other places they're so much more
tolerant of tigers for example, or other
wildlife. They're just more tolerant of human interaction,
seeing animals. He even mentioned that in some places they're
(13:21):
even a little more tolerant and understanding of if
humans get attacked by animals. That's not something we really
have accepted here in the United States. No, I'm
afraid that's a, you know, that is a value of
dominion which, you know, slopped over in the North America.
Europeans and, you know, we don't have a great record in this country.
(13:44):
We showed up, we went out. Genocide was the first act.
All Indians mainly died of European diseases. But, you
know, they saw the final solution to the Indian problem to get rid of it,
the bison. And they did. Now we were down to 22 wild bison
in 1902 in Yellowstone park that they couldn't catch. And
the rest of them, of the 60 million that they talk about all the time,
(14:07):
we killed off. And, you know, that's amazing. No,
I don't think any species has inflicted that amount of death
on another species. The bison and
whatever you want to call our frontiers. And it's a
value. It's a sick value, I think, sees everything
as commodities to be priced and sold.
(14:30):
And it's not a healthy thing, never has been.
And it's a deep cultural flaw and it's lingering. And I
know, I know what you say is true because we have a lot of that
in the Rocky Mountain West. Yeah. And it does seem like
you mentioned it earlier, that in order for grizzly
bears to survive and move up and down that corridor,
(14:52):
some attitudes need to change about interactions with bears.
Yeah, well, that's what I've been trying to do for the
last 50 or so years. I don't know how far I've gotten,
but, you know, I lived with them wonderfully
for 20 years, you know, in the back countries of many Glacier and
Yellowstone. And those stories are so
(15:15):
neat to read about grizzly years and watch some of the
films that you've made and your old footage of grizzly
bears. And I want to come back to that. But talking about being a wilderness
warrior for 50 years, I read a quote
that Rick Bass said about you that I just thought was wonderful. He
said, Peacock's diplomatic skills are less than zero,
(15:37):
but his feist quotient exceeds any known scale of
measurement. Oh, yeah.
And I thought that was wonderful.
Yeah. And I think when I read that, it
gave me. I really thought about that because you've talked about being
an anarchist and you don't fit in the National Park Service. You don't fit
(16:01):
with working with Other groups and I thought, my goodness, we really,
we need that though. We need someone like Doug Peacock out there just as
much as we need people fighting for conservation that have the
diplomatic skills. Yeah, I haven't been so sharp
on the diplomatic end, but that's true, you know,
and I'm still, you know, I do,
(16:23):
you know, found conservation groups, you know, like Ground
river and you know, Wildlife Damage Review and
Vital Ground and Save the Yellowstone Grizzly.
And the last one that's just been incorporated was, I think
it's called Grizzly Guardians. You know, so I get things started and I
help out but that's probably not my use of my best
(16:46):
talents. You know, I write and I give talks
and you know, there's a lot of other work to be done. And
the fight these next few years is going to be so political that,
you know, I'm going to have to find some partners like
Earthjustice to work with that I can raise them. But
that's where we're going to end up, I'm afraid for some of the big
(17:08):
grizzly bear conservation issues, we're going to end up in court.
Well, we talked about how feisty you are and
there's so many other great conservationists that
have wonderful stories, have decades long
careers of fighting for this. Are you hopeful
for the next generation of
(17:30):
conservationists? Are there people out there that have caught your eye
that say, okay, when my work is done, these are the people that are,
are going to carry it on. And I feel good about that. Well,
yeah, it's down to that. And they are the last hope
because everything is going to, you know, the next generation or
couple generations, it's all going to come down on them
(17:53):
and they're going to have to struggle for their own survival. And
that's how I see this. I see it as a fight for survival for
everybody. You know, grizzly bears, tigers,
human beings. You know, we're basically all, you know, sharing
the same roof and it's going to be a fight like hell.
And you know, my children's generation, that's
(18:15):
where my hope is. And you know, Ed Abbey, when
he wrote the Monkey Wrench Gang, had hope that, you know, little
cells of, you know, of monkey wrenchers would spring up all
around the country, especially among the younger people. I don't think that quite
happened but you know, it's still a great hope of people that care
about wilderness and wild animals. Yeah. Even
(18:38):
though that never happened, I think still today young people read
that book and they may say, I'm not going to Go,
Monkey Wrench. But I can do more than I'm doing. I think that
book still, after all this time, is a catalyst for
younger people to get more involved. Yeah, well, you know, I've been
pushing it this year because the 25th anniversary
(19:00):
of the Monkey Wrench game was published on August 5,
just a week ago. I wrote the introduction to it and I've been
promoting it. You know, I've got an article I published out in the California
magazine. It just, it's just as timely today because
above all, the Monkey Wrench Gang, you know, preaches
question authority at every step of the, you know,
(19:23):
the fight. Question authority and, you know, consider
the possibility of militant resistance, you know, the
eco sabotage for the sake of life and animals.
You know, that idea of questioning our authorities,
it's every day now, and that's really valuable.
When Doug was on the show four years ago, we talked about this.
(19:46):
So in case Doug is new to you, in case you haven't heard that episode
the Monkey Wrench Gang, there is a character in the book, George
Washington, hey, Duke. Who is based on Doug Peacock.
So that's one of the things, aside from his own work, that
Doug became known for. And I, I know people
are. Are always surprised and delighted when they find that out about
(20:08):
you, Doug. Well, it's not much of the introduction
I wrote sheds some light on that. So if you go out and buy a
copy of the Monkey Wrench Gang and it's only 19 bucks, read the
introduction because I wrote it and that's kind of how we got started down
there. And, you know, I. I've been talking about
in a week from yesterday, I'm going to give a little program here in
(20:31):
Livingston and just celebrate that publication. But, you know,
it's as timely today as ever. It really is.
And the main thing is to resist. With that book
being as timely today as it has ever been, it shows
that the fight from 25 years ago is the same as
the fight now. And I was on an expedition
(20:54):
with the Nature Conservancy in Chile this year, and
someone in that group said the tough part about
conservation work is if you lose,
it's forever. And if you win, it's only temporary. You've
had 50 years of getting hit with some forever
losses and temporary wins. What have
(21:15):
you done to keep going? Even when you're faced with
a loss, you lose something that'll never come back, or you
win, and then the very next year you're fighting for the same thing. I don't
see as sharp an edge to that one, you know,
it is true. You know, if you fight to preserve a stand of timber
someplace they want it to clear cut, you know, you may come up doing
(21:38):
that every five years or so. But just a
lesson to the animals themselves. You know, grizzly bears are so
adaptable and so resistant and if you don't
go out intentionally try to kill them, they will take care of themselves.
And also the fact they need about
as pure a wilderness as we can imagine
(22:00):
makes my fight for them a lot easier because we're all looking for
the same thing. That's why I think the battle
for wilderness and wild country is still salient.
It's the best thing we can do. I meant to mention something. When you
were talking about writing the forward for the new,
the reissue volume of Monkey Wrench Gang, I
(22:22):
came across the introduction and read it. And I love how you share
the story. How the two of you met, how casual
it seemed when you and Edward Abby met each other, and the
friendship that formed from that. And that also reminded me,
Rick Bass told me how he first met you, how he
was hitchhiking in Utah and you and a couple other people
(22:45):
picked him up. Just how, how interesting to
have just casual encounters like that lead to such great friendships.
Well, it's true. And you know, you can't. If
anything, when I talk to younger people, I say,
you know, arm yourself with friendship because it's
the best thing you'll find on earth and, you know, fight to
(23:07):
protect the wild. It all goes hand in hand.
My more important friendships have really shared that value.
You know, we all value the lessons of the wild.
I have recommended, of course, Grizzly Years to many, many
people. And then I say, if you want another good read,
a just absolutely wonderful story is the Lost Grizzlies
(23:30):
by Rick Bass. I love that story of the two of you
tramping around in Colorado looking for grizzly bears. That is such a good
book. Yeah, it is. We didn't find any
grizzlies, but we produced a couple books,
you know. Yeah. Well, I mentioned before
all the video work that you did when you were younger in
(23:53):
Yellowstone and in Glacier, and I'm sure you had no
idea what would happen with that. You just took the video
having no idea how impactful those videos would end up
being. I'm sure you couldn't have known what it would become. What
encouragement do you have for younger
conservationists who don't understand or don't see
(24:16):
yet the impact that their work will have? Well, in,
in my case, I was what I thought I was doing,
was assembling, you know, a last collective
portrait of the grizzlies in the lower 48. And
it really looked like for a while back in say, the early
70s, that it wasn't going to make it. And I felt like, you know,
(24:38):
I was an ethnographic anthropologist going upriver
in the Missouri river, you know, in 1804, past the
Mandan villages that had just got. They were all dying off
of smallpox that year and just recording the
last rites of a dying species. But it didn't turn out that
way. You know, the bears have, you know, the
(25:00):
efforts we've made to protect the bears have done, have had an
effect. It's not like there's more work to be done or
things are perfect, but better than the fact, you know, it's really worth doing.
Yeah, it's. To me, that was an encouragement to
see some of the. Your older videos and then
realize how far it had come since then. There's still such
(25:23):
a long way to go, but bears are doing better than they
were at that time. And there's hope in there and it's
just encouragement to know that. Do the work. You don't know how
it will turn out. So just show up and do the. Work,
you know, and speak out at all times any way you can. You
know, you protest or write or whatever you do. But you know,
(25:46):
right now, you know, there's a couple. There's a bill that would take the
grizzly off the endangered species list forever and not allow
the courts to even review it. You know, that's going to be voted on this
sometime later this year. And at the same time, the new
administration has a new director of the Federal Wildlife
Service. And he is certainly going to, you know, he's going to
(26:08):
delist the grizzly, which means remove it from protections under the
Endangered Species Act. And you know, that's got to be either
one of those things. And they've also got a redefinition
from the Federal Wildlife Service again that within the
Endangered species Act, they're going to redefine the
term harm to exclude habitat. That means, you
(26:30):
know, you can say you want to protect the grizzly, but you can't protect
its habitat. And I think, you know, that would doom the bear
right there. And so it's going to be, you know, the
next few years they're going to be, you know, it's a matter of life
and death decisions and we got to stay on top of that.
Yeah, it is. It seems like there's. There's never
(26:53):
not pressure when it comes to bears and
wolves in wilderness, there's never not pressure fighting against
it. No. And the source of that hatred really runs deep.
It's, you know, more transparent perhaps with wolves
in Europe. But, you know, we don't know
wild animals anymore. And like I said, I think we
(27:15):
fear what we don't know and we hate what we
fear. Just a lot of animosity, especially towards wolves.
I live in Washington state and we have had a
tremendous wolf recovery in this state, at least
on the eastern side. And it has been fascinating
to watch because it seems to only be two sides.
(27:37):
People either think the wolf is the devil or the wolf is their spirit
animal. And there's no in between. Yeah. Yes
indeed. I see that too. You talking about
people having hatred towards bears. I
saw or heard you say in one of your videos that
our treatment of bears is a reflection of what we see when we
(28:00):
look in the mirror. What do you mean by that? Because I think
that kind of irrational hatred is akin to
self loathing. And you know, we haven't made
quite. If we haven't made peace with ourselves, we're going to have trouble loving
grizzly bears. They're too big and too powerful and they
challenge, you know, our dominion. It's a single animal
(28:22):
that you can put out there, you know, that absolutely refutes the
notions that human beings like to have of being top dog
everywhere they go. You know, we're not top dog. We live in a get out
there with grizzly country. You smell better, you see better, you look around a lot
and you're not the top animal out there. There's an
animal out there that wanted to could kill and eat you. And
(28:44):
having to take that into stock, I think it makes you a better human being.
It opens you up, it makes you more observant. You know, it's kind of an
enforced form of humility. And that's such
a valuable posture for human beings. It's really the,
you know, it's the emotional posture behind reason.
Humility is. And we could use a great big injection
(29:07):
of it. This has been one of my favorite moments
as a father. We have been doing a family vacation
to Glacier national park every year for several years. When we first
started doing it, my family was scared,
somewhere between scared and terrified of grizzly bears.
And over the years of talking to them and
(29:30):
us seeing bears and them watching how bears behave,
they've gotten to the point now where when we come across a grizzly bear,
depending on the situation, they are perfectly comfortable standing
there or sitting there. And just watching the bear. And
I'm so pleased that we went from terrified
to just in awe of the bear. Yeah. My
(29:52):
daughter, you know, before she was one year old,
was living up at Huckleberry Lookout in
Glacier National Park. So she got to
see grizzly bear before she probably remembered. Oh, my goodness.
I imagine that Huckleberry Lookout holds a special spot. I
remember you saying before that you wrote the grizzly years up there, and now
(30:14):
I hear your daughter lived up there. That's got to be. That's got to be
a special place for you. Oh, it is. You know, I'm no longer
working with the park Service, but I've had, you know, that's a perfect job
for a guy that likes to write and read and doesn't mind
his own company. You know, it's not annoying to have a bunch of bears
around. Yeah. I can't believe, you know, they
(30:37):
paid me four bucks an hour more than I've ever been worth in my life.
Wow, that had to really be something. Well, Doug, it
has been so wonderful to catch up with you again, and
it's great to hear you're still as feisty as ever. You're still
fighting as hard as you ever have. And I know I could talk to you
for hours. I've got so many questions. But I do appreciate you've
(30:59):
been willing to give us this much time. And is there
any work that you're doing now that you want all
of our park leaders to go check out? Yeah, we're going to
have to collectively fight for our national parks, and they might
as well. We might as well join, you know, the people outside
and the people inside. It's really a single fight right now.
(31:22):
Because wilderness and the values of
wilderness and the work of park personnel
and including scientific research, it's all being dumped
these days. It's just, you know, it's how there's not going
to be any significant natural history science done for a few years
here. You know, nobody left to do it. And, you know, same for law
(31:44):
enforcement or whatever problems they have. Like I said, I feel
sympathy for the superintendent of Glacier in particular,
but we're going to have to show our outrage
and, you know, physically man a resistance.
That means, you know, probably show up sometime. Yeah,
that is something when radicals and park rangers
(32:06):
get together and make something happen. But maybe we're at that
point. Well, we got a lot more in common right now than we did
a year or two ago. Yeah. Well, Doug, it
is great talking with you. Thank you so much for joining us again.
Until you're great. And. And it's been a pleasure. And thank you for
listening to the park leaders show.
Welcome to the Park Leader show where we are changing the landscape of
leadership in parks and conservation. I'm your host,
Jody Mayberry, and joining me is someone who was on the
show four years ago. It's been a long four years.
He has a newer book out called Was It Worth It?
A Wilderness Warriors Long Trail Home. It's Doug Peacock.
(00:24):
Welcome back to the show, Doug. Hey, thanks, Jody. Pleasure.
Well, I thought your new book was fantastic
and I read it and then I listened to the
audio version. I'm so thankful you took the time to narrate
the audiobook yourself. Yeah, I haven't listened to it
yet and I'm looking forward to it someday. But
(00:46):
yeah, I thought it about time I did one of those. I
did it. Yeah. Partial records. Grizzly Years some time ago.
20 years ago. Yeah. That would be great to have
Grizzly Years as an audiobook. Yes. What did you think of
the audio experience? I know this has nothing to do with parks. I'm just
curious. What did you think of the narration experience? Well, you have
(01:08):
to get used to. You really have to get used to it. But as long
as you sort of accept you're going to be in this box talking to
yourself four or five days, you know, it gets easier
as you go on. You know, it was a. It wasn't
that difficult. I thought I was going to probably have to repeat myself,
you know, every other paragraph, but it wasn't too. Wasn't too
(01:31):
bad. And I hear people like the results and you know,
I ordered a copy one time, but I just haven't got around to listening to
it yet. Yeah, it's. Doug, it's a lot like just
sitting down with you and talking. That's what I enjoyed about it. Yeah. It
doesn't feel like a narration. It just feels like Doug Peacock
telling stories. Yeah, that's right.
(01:53):
The BS is what I'm a master of. Well,
in your book there's all those wonderful stories, but
you mentioned something that I really enjoyed that
you realize now that you're older that it was just time to
knock trips and experiences off your bucket list. And,
and many of the good experiences that you talk about in the book
(02:16):
came after you made that decision. Is there anything left
on your bucket list? No, I'm not sure I really had a bucket
list. I just, I had a curiosity and it would take me, you know,
I, I'd go wherever I needed to go for it. I was interested
in, you know, and going down to Mexico
and checking out, you know, The Grizzly Scene,
(02:39):
1985 and we did. We found the last grizzly sign
known in Mexico down in the north of Chihuahua City in a
mountain range down there. And I had it at the same time
on the same trip I had a jaguar backtrack me and
I'd never, I'd never seen a jaguar before. And, you know, all
I knew, this is a really big cat track and it wasn't
(03:01):
quite right for a mountain lion, but, you know, it was, it was,
it was a great experience and, you know, and I did the same thing when
I went with my buddies over to the Russian Far East. I was really
interested in Siberian tigers, as they're called, even though that's the
Russian Far east is where they are. And, you know, and over
there in this little bit of habitat, I hope they can
(03:22):
hang on to a little longer. You know, you've got, you've got big
cats, you've got, you know, you've got panthers and you've got
tigers, you've got, you know, you've got Tibetanus, which
is an Asian black bear, a big black bear. And you've also
got Ursus arctis, which is, you know, the brown bear
of Asia. Same species as our grizzly bear. There's
(03:44):
different subspecies, but they look the same. That was a
place I needed to see. Yeah, and it's, it was
so neat to read about those stories. I had not explored
anywhere outside of North America until a recent
trip to Chile. And it is, it just has me
enthused to go other places around the world. Up
(04:07):
until about 2019, I actually had no interest
in leaving the United States to explore because there's
just so much here to see and do. But once you get a taste
of what else is out there in the world, it's kind of hard not to
want to keep going. Oh, yeah. There's so much beauty out
there. And there it really is. And nowhere, there's
(04:28):
nowhere that's not being affected, you know, it's some of not going to
last at all. And you know, globally, the
climate change is really whipping us a new
rear end everywhere. It's the one thing we can't
afford to ignore. And of course, that's what's happening right now.
Well, with that, having seen what you've seen, been where you've
(04:51):
been and knowing what's going on not only
here in North America, but around the world, what are the biggest challenges you see
coming in conservation? Well, you know, the
bedrock problem is the same one we've had. You know,
endless progress on a planet of finite
resources is impossible. It's death.
(05:13):
And we're, we're still, you know, we're still
developing everybody, cutting the last forest, drilling the last
wildernesses, and that, you know, that is not sustainable.
And even the shortest run and climate change is something that
we ignore at our own peril because, you know, we're
all going to be on an endangered species list and, you know,
(05:34):
huge changes are going to come by the end of the
century if there's, you know, if nothing changes,
we'll be experiencing heats that Homo sapiens have
never experienced on Earth, you know, at least 3 degrees
centigrade above baseline, at least. And
we've never experienced that. So by then, you know, survival
(05:56):
even for human beings is Russian roulette. You know, we've never been
there. We've never experienced that. We don't know if we can live through it. And,
you know, that's enough to keep you working until the end of your days. And
that's why I wrote this book. Everywhere I went, nothing was quite
immune, you know, to change and even negative changes. And,
you know, you just got to pay attention and you got to fight every day.
(06:19):
You know, there's nothing. My bedrock issue is probably
wilderness. And, you know, I think that's the chief
thing. That's the thing that Abby and I shared, is the value of
wilderness and the need to fight for it. And that's what's at stake these
days. I mean, I, you know, I'm thinking of, you know, people I know, like
the superintendent of glacier, he's got such a hard job
(06:40):
all of a sudden this year with administration cutting everybody
down. And, you know, I've been planning on sitting down
and writing a letter to the few ranger friends I've got left here that
are still working. And. And he's one of them. With all
the work that you've done towards wilderness,
you just mentioned that that's your most important thing. You've done so much work
(07:03):
towards grizzly bears. Most people, though,
will never get to experience wilderness, will never
see a grizzly bear. So how do you get people to care
about conserving a place that they may never see?
I think, you know, you need to see the existence of these
places and these beings in your own interest.
(07:26):
You know, you kind of realize you've got a stake and, you know,
and maintain wild areas, you know, and the ideal
habitat for a grizzly bear is wilderness. You know, they don't need any
roads or anything else in there. And it's not a value that's
going to, you know, it is under assault Today like it's never
been before. You know, the threat against wilderness and wild animals
(07:49):
like grizzly or even wolverines, you know, that live in those
habitats. We could lose them all. You know, I'm probably
gonna. I'm a geezer now and I'll probably croak, but, boy, it's
coming sooner than we think. I've found it really
interesting and to see the work that you've done trying
to connect the corridors between
(08:11):
Yellowstone and Glacier. How is that
project coming along? Does it look likely or
probable that there will eventually be a full
connection? Well, I've certainly got people working
on it, but what stands in the way is the state of
Montana and their, you know, Department of Transportation
(08:32):
or highways. They will not recommend that. They've got the money and
everything else. And, you know, this is a. I90 is
the great barrier between the Yellowstone grizzly populations and
glaciers. And at times in the last two or three years,
we've had grizzlies on either side of the freeway within 15
or 20 miles of each other. But, you know, that final step to
(08:55):
go over under that freeway, it just doesn't happen.
And that's exactly the underpass. You know, I. I started
working on it quite a while ago in
2016. And, you know, it's a place I've gone
and I know that even lived down there for a while. And I know grizzlies
use this particular creek to come up almost all the way to the
(09:16):
freeway from the south. And those are Yellowstone bears.
And. And so I followed the creek and it's an
existing underpass. And, you know, there was a fresh black
bear family that crossed, a mother and a couple small cubs
and, you know, everything else, moose, we've got mountain lion. I put up
trail cams for a couple of years and hired a couple of young
(09:37):
biologists to do the field work. Lance
Craighead, my friend, supervised that project and,
you know, and we tried to pass it out, but it hasn't
gotten past the state of Montana yet. All they got to do is look at
it and say, well, why not? Because the money was there
a couple of years ago. It was right there to go ahead and complete
(10:00):
overpasses, underpasses. Can you give us an
idea of the impact that would have on the future of
grizzly bears if that connection was made?
Along with that, the underpass or
overpass itself, there has to be a degree of tolerance for
grizzly bears because they're going to hop on public, you know, tracks of
(10:22):
land, but there's private lands in between. And you know they've got to get through
fences and they've got to move north and they're doing that on their
own right now. I think the reason that so many grizzly being
found, some of them way out on the high plains, pretty much
that is because of climate change. It's not because the population
is saturated, you know, and its habitat is being
(10:44):
overrun. It's not that at all. I believe it's climate
change and you know what's in store for grizzlies with
a heating planet is not good. We lost the white
bark pine, you know that was a principal food in Yellowstone. The nuts of the
white bark pine, we lost them all back in, you know
from 2002 to about 2007 we just
(11:07):
saw red swaths across the white
pine belts high on the mountain. It's a high altitude pine tree
and five needle pine and grows above 9,000,
10,000ft and the tops of mountains. Those years
you just look up there and it was all red. You
didn't need a PhD to figure out climate change and global warming.
(11:30):
All the trees were dead and they turned, you know, rough when they died.
So when you say the bears are on the move because of climate
change, not because of their population, does that mean
they're, they have to go further to look for food?
Yeah, just further it and you know grizzly bears
are incredibly adaptable. They can pioneer new foods,
(11:53):
you know, a food that's never eaten before and they will, they
experiment and they adapt new foods. But
yeah it's you know in the fall, you know the approaching
fall here they all, not all but you know
a significant portion and segment of
Yellowstone's grizzlies went up high to the high
(12:14):
altitudes which are also remote. You know, they're away from people
in hunting season and in fed on the
sea caches of red squirrels and ate the nuts from the pine
cones. And that doesn't happen anymore. And that
served to keep especially mothers with young went up there
and it kept them away from you know, hunters and other humans who
(12:37):
kill them and you know the
mortality of grizzly bears with humans killing grizzly bears is still incredibly
high. They were such an intolerant, ignorant
species. You know, if we don't know something we fear
it. And nobody knows much about grizzlies anymore. We know we
fear the animal and we hate what we fear. John
(12:59):
Jarvis, the retired director of the National Park Service was recently
on the park leader show and he was talking about how
in other places they're so much more
tolerant of tigers for example, or other
wildlife. They're just more tolerant of human interaction,
seeing animals. He even mentioned that in some places they're
(13:21):
even a little more tolerant and understanding of if
humans get attacked by animals. That's not something we really
have accepted here in the United States. No, I'm
afraid that's a, you know, that is a value of
dominion which, you know, slopped over in the North America.
Europeans and, you know, we don't have a great record in this country.
(13:44):
We showed up, we went out. Genocide was the first act.
All Indians mainly died of European diseases. But, you
know, they saw the final solution to the Indian problem to get rid of it,
the bison. And they did. Now we were down to 22 wild bison
in 1902 in Yellowstone park that they couldn't catch. And
the rest of them, of the 60 million that they talk about all the time,
(14:07):
we killed off. And, you know, that's amazing. No,
I don't think any species has inflicted that amount of death
on another species. The bison and
whatever you want to call our frontiers. And it's a
value. It's a sick value, I think, sees everything
as commodities to be priced and sold.
(14:30):
And it's not a healthy thing, never has been.
And it's a deep cultural flaw and it's lingering. And I
know, I know what you say is true because we have a lot of that
in the Rocky Mountain West. Yeah. And it does seem like
you mentioned it earlier, that in order for grizzly
bears to survive and move up and down that corridor,
(14:52):
some attitudes need to change about interactions with bears.
Yeah, well, that's what I've been trying to do for the
last 50 or so years. I don't know how far I've gotten,
but, you know, I lived with them wonderfully
for 20 years, you know, in the back countries of many Glacier and
Yellowstone. And those stories are so
(15:15):
neat to read about grizzly years and watch some of the
films that you've made and your old footage of grizzly
bears. And I want to come back to that. But talking about being a wilderness
warrior for 50 years, I read a quote
that Rick Bass said about you that I just thought was wonderful. He
said, Peacock's diplomatic skills are less than zero,
(15:37):
but his feist quotient exceeds any known scale of
measurement. Oh, yeah.
And I thought that was wonderful.
Yeah. And I think when I read that, it
gave me. I really thought about that because you've talked about being
an anarchist and you don't fit in the National Park Service. You don't fit
(16:01):
with working with Other groups and I thought, my goodness, we really,
we need that though. We need someone like Doug Peacock out there just as
much as we need people fighting for conservation that have the
diplomatic skills. Yeah, I haven't been so sharp
on the diplomatic end, but that's true, you know,
and I'm still, you know, I do,
(16:23):
you know, found conservation groups, you know, like Ground
river and you know, Wildlife Damage Review and
Vital Ground and Save the Yellowstone Grizzly.
And the last one that's just been incorporated was, I think
it's called Grizzly Guardians. You know, so I get things started and I
help out but that's probably not my use of my best
(16:46):
talents. You know, I write and I give talks
and you know, there's a lot of other work to be done. And
the fight these next few years is going to be so political that,
you know, I'm going to have to find some partners like
Earthjustice to work with that I can raise them. But
that's where we're going to end up, I'm afraid for some of the big
(17:08):
grizzly bear conservation issues, we're going to end up in court.
Well, we talked about how feisty you are and
there's so many other great conservationists that
have wonderful stories, have decades long
careers of fighting for this. Are you hopeful
for the next generation of
(17:30):
conservationists? Are there people out there that have caught your eye
that say, okay, when my work is done, these are the people that are,
are going to carry it on. And I feel good about that. Well,
yeah, it's down to that. And they are the last hope
because everything is going to, you know, the next generation or
couple generations, it's all going to come down on them
(17:53):
and they're going to have to struggle for their own survival. And
that's how I see this. I see it as a fight for survival for
everybody. You know, grizzly bears, tigers,
human beings. You know, we're basically all, you know, sharing
the same roof and it's going to be a fight like hell.
And you know, my children's generation, that's
(18:15):
where my hope is. And you know, Ed Abbey, when
he wrote the Monkey Wrench Gang, had hope that, you know, little
cells of, you know, of monkey wrenchers would spring up all
around the country, especially among the younger people. I don't think that quite
happened but you know, it's still a great hope of people that care
about wilderness and wild animals. Yeah. Even
(18:38):
though that never happened, I think still today young people read
that book and they may say, I'm not going to Go,
Monkey Wrench. But I can do more than I'm doing. I think that
book still, after all this time, is a catalyst for
younger people to get more involved. Yeah, well, you know, I've been
pushing it this year because the 25th anniversary
(19:00):
of the Monkey Wrench game was published on August 5,
just a week ago. I wrote the introduction to it and I've been
promoting it. You know, I've got an article I published out in the California
magazine. It just, it's just as timely today because
above all, the Monkey Wrench Gang, you know, preaches
question authority at every step of the, you know,
(19:23):
the fight. Question authority and, you know, consider
the possibility of militant resistance, you know, the
eco sabotage for the sake of life and animals.
You know, that idea of questioning our authorities,
it's every day now, and that's really valuable.
When Doug was on the show four years ago, we talked about this.
(19:46):
So in case Doug is new to you, in case you haven't heard that episode
the Monkey Wrench Gang, there is a character in the book, George
Washington, hey, Duke. Who is based on Doug Peacock.
So that's one of the things, aside from his own work, that
Doug became known for. And I, I know people
are. Are always surprised and delighted when they find that out about
(20:08):
you, Doug. Well, it's not much of the introduction
I wrote sheds some light on that. So if you go out and buy a
copy of the Monkey Wrench Gang and it's only 19 bucks, read the
introduction because I wrote it and that's kind of how we got started down
there. And, you know, I. I've been talking about
in a week from yesterday, I'm going to give a little program here in
(20:31):
Livingston and just celebrate that publication. But, you know,
it's as timely today as ever. It really is.
And the main thing is to resist. With that book
being as timely today as it has ever been, it shows
that the fight from 25 years ago is the same as
the fight now. And I was on an expedition
(20:54):
with the Nature Conservancy in Chile this year, and
someone in that group said the tough part about
conservation work is if you lose,
it's forever. And if you win, it's only temporary. You've
had 50 years of getting hit with some forever
losses and temporary wins. What have
(21:15):
you done to keep going? Even when you're faced with
a loss, you lose something that'll never come back, or you
win, and then the very next year you're fighting for the same thing. I don't
see as sharp an edge to that one, you know,
it is true. You know, if you fight to preserve a stand of timber
someplace they want it to clear cut, you know, you may come up doing
(21:38):
that every five years or so. But just a
lesson to the animals themselves. You know, grizzly bears are so
adaptable and so resistant and if you don't
go out intentionally try to kill them, they will take care of themselves.
And also the fact they need about
as pure a wilderness as we can imagine
(22:00):
makes my fight for them a lot easier because we're all looking for
the same thing. That's why I think the battle
for wilderness and wild country is still salient.
It's the best thing we can do. I meant to mention something. When you
were talking about writing the forward for the new,
the reissue volume of Monkey Wrench Gang, I
(22:22):
came across the introduction and read it. And I love how you share
the story. How the two of you met, how casual
it seemed when you and Edward Abby met each other, and the
friendship that formed from that. And that also reminded me,
Rick Bass told me how he first met you, how he
was hitchhiking in Utah and you and a couple other people
(22:45):
picked him up. Just how, how interesting to
have just casual encounters like that lead to such great friendships.
Well, it's true. And you know, you can't. If
anything, when I talk to younger people, I say,
you know, arm yourself with friendship because it's
the best thing you'll find on earth and, you know, fight to
(23:07):
protect the wild. It all goes hand in hand.
My more important friendships have really shared that value.
You know, we all value the lessons of the wild.
I have recommended, of course, Grizzly Years to many, many
people. And then I say, if you want another good read,
a just absolutely wonderful story is the Lost Grizzlies
(23:30):
by Rick Bass. I love that story of the two of you
tramping around in Colorado looking for grizzly bears. That is such a good
book. Yeah, it is. We didn't find any
grizzlies, but we produced a couple books,
you know. Yeah. Well, I mentioned before
all the video work that you did when you were younger in
(23:53):
Yellowstone and in Glacier, and I'm sure you had no
idea what would happen with that. You just took the video
having no idea how impactful those videos would end up
being. I'm sure you couldn't have known what it would become. What
encouragement do you have for younger
conservationists who don't understand or don't see
(24:16):
yet the impact that their work will have? Well, in,
in my case, I was what I thought I was doing,
was assembling, you know, a last collective
portrait of the grizzlies in the lower 48. And
it really looked like for a while back in say, the early
70s, that it wasn't going to make it. And I felt like, you know,
(24:38):
I was an ethnographic anthropologist going upriver
in the Missouri river, you know, in 1804, past the
Mandan villages that had just got. They were all dying off
of smallpox that year and just recording the
last rites of a dying species. But it didn't turn out that
way. You know, the bears have, you know, the
(25:00):
efforts we've made to protect the bears have done, have had an
effect. It's not like there's more work to be done or
things are perfect, but better than the fact, you know, it's really worth doing.
Yeah, it's. To me, that was an encouragement to
see some of the. Your older videos and then
realize how far it had come since then. There's still such
(25:23):
a long way to go, but bears are doing better than they
were at that time. And there's hope in there and it's
just encouragement to know that. Do the work. You don't know how
it will turn out. So just show up and do the. Work,
you know, and speak out at all times any way you can. You
know, you protest or write or whatever you do. But you know,
(25:46):
right now, you know, there's a couple. There's a bill that would take the
grizzly off the endangered species list forever and not allow
the courts to even review it. You know, that's going to be voted on this
sometime later this year. And at the same time, the new
administration has a new director of the Federal Wildlife
Service. And he is certainly going to, you know, he's going to
(26:08):
delist the grizzly, which means remove it from protections under the
Endangered Species Act. And you know, that's got to be either
one of those things. And they've also got a redefinition
from the Federal Wildlife Service again that within the
Endangered species Act, they're going to redefine the
term harm to exclude habitat. That means, you
(26:30):
know, you can say you want to protect the grizzly, but you can't protect
its habitat. And I think, you know, that would doom the bear
right there. And so it's going to be, you know, the
next few years they're going to be, you know, it's a matter of life
and death decisions and we got to stay on top of that.
Yeah, it is. It seems like there's. There's never
(26:53):
not pressure when it comes to bears and
wolves in wilderness, there's never not pressure fighting against
it. No. And the source of that hatred really runs deep.
It's, you know, more transparent perhaps with wolves
in Europe. But, you know, we don't know
wild animals anymore. And like I said, I think we
(27:15):
fear what we don't know and we hate what we
fear. Just a lot of animosity, especially towards wolves.
I live in Washington state and we have had a
tremendous wolf recovery in this state, at least
on the eastern side. And it has been fascinating
to watch because it seems to only be two sides.
(27:37):
People either think the wolf is the devil or the wolf is their spirit
animal. And there's no in between. Yeah. Yes
indeed. I see that too. You talking about
people having hatred towards bears. I
saw or heard you say in one of your videos that
our treatment of bears is a reflection of what we see when we
(28:00):
look in the mirror. What do you mean by that? Because I think
that kind of irrational hatred is akin to
self loathing. And you know, we haven't made
quite. If we haven't made peace with ourselves, we're going to have trouble loving
grizzly bears. They're too big and too powerful and they
challenge, you know, our dominion. It's a single animal
(28:22):
that you can put out there, you know, that absolutely refutes the
notions that human beings like to have of being top dog
everywhere they go. You know, we're not top dog. We live in a get out
there with grizzly country. You smell better, you see better, you look around a lot
and you're not the top animal out there. There's an
animal out there that wanted to could kill and eat you. And
(28:44):
having to take that into stock, I think it makes you a better human being.
It opens you up, it makes you more observant. You know, it's kind of an
enforced form of humility. And that's such
a valuable posture for human beings. It's really the,
you know, it's the emotional posture behind reason.
Humility is. And we could use a great big injection
(29:07):
of it. This has been one of my favorite moments
as a father. We have been doing a family vacation
to Glacier national park every year for several years. When we first
started doing it, my family was scared,
somewhere between scared and terrified of grizzly bears.
And over the years of talking to them and
(29:30):
us seeing bears and them watching how bears behave,
they've gotten to the point now where when we come across a grizzly bear,
depending on the situation, they are perfectly comfortable standing
there or sitting there. And just watching the bear. And
I'm so pleased that we went from terrified
to just in awe of the bear. Yeah. My
(29:52):
daughter, you know, before she was one year old,
was living up at Huckleberry Lookout in
Glacier National Park. So she got to
see grizzly bear before she probably remembered. Oh, my goodness.
I imagine that Huckleberry Lookout holds a special spot. I
remember you saying before that you wrote the grizzly years up there, and now
(30:14):
I hear your daughter lived up there. That's got to be. That's got to be
a special place for you. Oh, it is. You know, I'm no longer
working with the park Service, but I've had, you know, that's a perfect job
for a guy that likes to write and read and doesn't mind
his own company. You know, it's not annoying to have a bunch of bears
around. Yeah. I can't believe, you know, they
(30:37):
paid me four bucks an hour more than I've ever been worth in my life.
Wow, that had to really be something. Well, Doug, it
has been so wonderful to catch up with you again, and
it's great to hear you're still as feisty as ever. You're still
fighting as hard as you ever have. And I know I could talk to you
for hours. I've got so many questions. But I do appreciate you've
(30:59):
been willing to give us this much time. And is there
any work that you're doing now that you want all
of our park leaders to go check out? Yeah, we're going to
have to collectively fight for our national parks, and they might
as well. We might as well join, you know, the people outside
and the people inside. It's really a single fight right now.
(31:22):
Because wilderness and the values of
wilderness and the work of park personnel
and including scientific research, it's all being dumped
these days. It's just, you know, it's how there's not going
to be any significant natural history science done for a few years
here. You know, nobody left to do it. And, you know, same for law
(31:44):
enforcement or whatever problems they have. Like I said, I feel
sympathy for the superintendent of Glacier in particular,
but we're going to have to show our outrage
and, you know, physically man a resistance.
That means, you know, probably show up sometime. Yeah,
that is something when radicals and park rangers
(32:06):
get together and make something happen. But maybe we're at that
point. Well, we got a lot more in common right now than we did
a year or two ago. Yeah. Well, Doug, it
is great talking with you. Thank you so much for joining us again.
Until you're great. And. And it's been a pleasure. And thank you for
listening to the park leaders show.
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