Oh fello, thats are.
Hello, and welcome to the show. This is the Cult of Conspiracy. And my name's Jonathan, I'm Jacob and today is the first day that we are fully back in our home uh States from Florida, Bohemian Grove. It was a great time and and but you know what it's like, there's something about home that's just like, ah, I missed you. Yeah, you know.
Let's give some shout outs real quick. Steph our homegirl. She was there, we met Oh shit. There was one guy that flew in from Ohio that was there for to see us. One group dude from I think he was from California. There was a couple from Vegas. But yeah, for anybody that did make it out to Brohemian Grove.
Thank you. We love you all. We are thinking about things that we are going to do in the future.
We've we've talked about and flirted with the idea of doing a cult meet up or some sort of a some sort of a con right, some sort of a convention put on by us where everybody could fly in and do stuff. I'm gonna be honest with you, Me and Jonathan have been brainstorming a good bit on this way home. I'm thinking sometime in the next year, and it may be very small scale, it may be nothing major, but just to get the ball rolling, I'm thinking that we are.
We got some good ideas in the works right now. See, I'll stay tuned for that.
Oh yeah, yeah. We're always trying to brainstorm about what's possibly in the future. And you know, as the cult grows, as the third eyes open, you know, people just need to meet up.
They do, they do, and so all right, on the vibe of this trip.
On the way back, I found a little video here and there that I was watching, and I had heard of a couple of these things. Right We have talked about the United States government, especially with our political system,
doing the wild acrobats that it's doing right now. We've talked about examples of in the past where the government overstepped and had this really, really good idea that sounded like it was going to be great, and then once it was executed, it kind of backfired because the government, for some reason can't quit trying to fuck with mother nature.
I feel like we've talked about that time or two.
Right Well, the government is always trying to see what they can do to have more power and manipulate and all that shit. God forbid the people actually stood up and did it to them, because then we would all be in jail. But they get to do it and they get to go back home to their family. They make all the money, you know what I mean. So's it's rules for thee and not for me.
Right, no doubt.
And we just had an episode about the storm right, the hurricanes and how they potentially and in my opinion, definitely can control manufacture hurricanes and maybe even tornadoes, maybe a blizzard. Right, talking about some weather control shit. Okay, we've had that discussion.
Have we talked.
About really now the reintroduction of certain animal breeds too areas where they allegedly were indigenous at one point or were introduced for economic and commercial reasons, and how that backfired a million percent.
Well, that's just people thinking that they know better than animals, I think, you know what I mean. Whenever it's so silly that you know, we say that we're at the top of the food chain, and I guess we are. We're the ones with the cars and the buildings and the roads, and you know, we can travel. We don't have to run everywhere it's pretty sweet.
You know.
We get to pull up at McDonald's a burger king if you want to poison yourself. We have that free will kind of thing going on. But whenever we compare ourselves to certain animals, yeah they don't do what we do, but they're also a lot more in tune with nature, and so you're you're having a being us taking an animal from a different part of nature into another part of nature because we think that we know better than the fucking motherfuckers that are always in nature, you know what I mean?
See, Okay, perfect, perfect, yes, and as there it's all that could be taken to a spiritual place absolutely into the physical place, the circle of life, if you will. For the desert is a different circle of life from the rainforest. That is a different circle of life than the ocean. Right when you try to mix and match things sometimes yes, you can in fact do this in.
A good way, and it does meld well.
Into the already existing circle of life, and then things, you know are okay, that's like almost never been done though, like realistically it's almost never been done. When you take a species from one continent and move it to a whole other continent. Typically things go really badly, really quickly, And that seems to be a recurring theme, right.
Well you think that, like I don't know, I know that they were obviously breeding a bunch of different dogs throughout the years, and you know, messing with certain animals and stuff like that. But it does make you wonder and people will all go back and they'll think like, oh, it was all Pangaea anyway, all the animals were all living together, and they could roam from the hot to the cold and to the water, and you know what
I mean. And so then then it starts getting a little bit obscure where you're trying to figure it out and it's kind of like, you know, my excuse where I'm always like, but what even Israel? Like that's really what it goes back to, you know.
But I mean to your point.
Also, yeah, all dogs allegedly come from an ancestral wolf, right, and everything broke down. So the theory quote unquote that wolves should be able to exist at all corners of the globe or the flat plane or the double tord or whatever. Wolves inherently arguably should be able to exist
in most of that area, maybe not deserts, right. Maybe there's some exceptions to that, but it stands to reason that if there is a breed of dog that can exist there, there might be a wolf that could exist there if you go back in history far enough, right, And okay, okay, I get that, but people forget that the circle of life ten thousand years ago, even in a certain area of the world right now, was different then than it is now. Like we have different animals,
we have different plant life. It's a completely different time. And I would argue a different world.
Oh yeah, it couldn't be more different. I mean, just think about the fact that, like you know, we're we're building shit on top of land right like there's already that And I'm not gonna be one of those that, like, I mean, I think we should protect our wildlife and stuff like that. But for the most part, like this world that they're living in is a completely different world than what they're used to, like over the span of millennia obviously, so they're gonna be pushed into certain areas
that they're not maybe used to kind of deal. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
So.
Have you. Here's what started all of this, y'all.
I was thinking about this, thinking about these animals and just random shit. I found a clip and it got me pondering. So in Hawaii. Now, you think about Hawaii is an island in the middle of like bump fuck nowhere ocean.
There's no mainland continent that it's connected to.
So there wouldn't be roaming herds of animals on the island of or islands of Hawaii, right. The only kind of real animals that would exist there would be bird species and small, small little creatures, you know what I'm saying, except things introduced by humans. They have a wild chicken population and a wild pig population, both of which were
brought over from Polynesians exploring the Pacific Islands. None of those were indicatively native to the volcanic islands of Hawaii, right, But the things that are indicatively like from the islands. There was actually a wide variety of exotic birds, and I thought that was so crazy because the vast majority of them are extinct right now. And then I thought, what happened there?
Humans?
Humans just haunted them to extinction and some of that, yes, but I thought about this too. Hawaii being the place that it is, their bird population never had to set nests in trees because there was no predators on the island. There was no snakes, there's no you know, raccoons, there was none of these things that would eat the eggs on the ground. So ground nesting became a thing. And it got me thinking of what the fuck changed the
ground nesting? And oh wait a minute, that time that they introduced mongooses to Hawaii to help fight the rat population that was eating up all of their crops. Problem is, mongooses and rats are ones nocturnal and one is turnal, meaning that they pretty much never see each other.
Why would they think that the mongoose would does a mongoose traditionally eat rats?
You know what? Let's talk about, Jonathan.
At this time, I'm gonna go ahead and share the screen and if you would like to see what we were talking about, because I do have a few videos, a few aids today as we go down a wild, weird list of creatures that are not living where they're supposed to and how we are somehow the responsible parties for that and the only ones.
That could fix it, because that's the way this shit works. Jonathan, tell them where they can go.
You can go to Patreon dot com slash Cult of Conspiracy podcast or rockfan dot com slash Cult of Conspiracy. Both of those links are down in the show notes below. It is a great way to be able to support the show, and it's something that if you hate listening to all the commercials, it is absolutely commercial free. You get the days the show's a couple of days in advance, and you'll be able to join us every Tuesday night at nine pm Central for the Cult Member Live Show.
And as a matter of fact, one more thing today, I am going to upload the full versions of both of my DMT trips if anybody is interested in checking that out. It was we talked about it on yesterday's show, but if you wanted to watch it for yourself, I'm gonna put it up there. So maybe it'll entice you, maybe it'll scare the fuck out of you. I'm not sure, but I mean I had a good experience and a horrible experience, so a little bit of heaven and hell if you will.
I was gonna say you would like the video of you your response to it, or the entire video of the l down and all of that too.
Yeah, I mean all encompassing, because it's only you know, you're only tripping for like three to five minutes.
Yeah, I was actually shocked at that.
Now, everybody who didn't see that episode, I did not partake, but I was kind of the d D on this on this journey, and yeah, so I was actually shocked that I heard people say that it last on in like fifteen minutes. No, dude, like sub five minutes. You, I think were the only one that broke that line.
I I And it just so happened that I break I broke that line on the Bad Trip. So you know, you don't want to be in a bad trip longer than you have to be. And it's not you know, I I don't.
I don't.
I don't even really want to call it a bad trip because I got a lot out of it. And honestly, like I'm I'm looking at the world differently because of the bad trip, not the good trip. So I think that it's cause and effect kind of deal. That's how I'm looking at it.
I'm with you, I'm with you.
And yeah, Also, is there any like conversations in the background there are like a private information or something.
Because I'm trying to think of the conversation I listened back to them and it was just basically people bullshitting and talking about trips and stuff.
Okay, that's I thought.
So I'm just like looking back, like shit, I I really don't remember everything that was said that night.
I hope this doesn't I hope this doesn't ruin our lives or anything.
But you tell you what, if you want to find out for yourselves what that was about, what was being said?
The behind this the most behind the scenes I think we have ever released.
Come to just check us out on patreon dot com slash cult conspiracy and it is the best way to directly support the show. And I cannot stress this enough, y'all. Commercial free, yes, completely commercial free. We know it's a bitch. Come help us out. Come get the commercial free listens. We love you all. Now let's do a little bit of digging into why the fuck were non indigenous mongeese? Mongoose is actually I looked it up. Mongoose is the
plural and the singular. It's it's annoying, But why or all of these mongoos brought to Hawaii?
And what the hell? Why are we still fighting this fight today?
And you want me to read it today or you want to. I know you, your throat's kind of fucked.
No, it's all right. I mean, my throat's not hurting. It's just that i'm like super congested because of the trip for some reason. Honestly, probably a lack of sleep. That'll do it too, But no, I read it. I don't have a problem reading.
It all right.
This weekend, I'm got to say, I think I got three to four hours of sleep a night per night, which is a solid amount for me, but it could have been longer.
You know.
Yeah, it felt good sleeping in this morning, but I still got a lot to make up for.
Ye Is it weird that waking up at six am this morning was sleeping in for me. That's sad because I got to sleep early, though, I'm be honest. I got home and I crashed early. It felt so nice.
Oh I wish I still had to drive four and a half more hours to Louisiana after I dropped you off, and then I had to come pick the dogs up from the borders, and then I had to come home edit two shows. So it was just a lovely night.
Dude, What time did you get down?
I think I ended up going to sleep like three thirty or something like that.
Fuck dude, Hey, okay, you got to sleep in this morning?
Hell yeah, a little bit, A little bit. So the bizarre history of the mongoose in Hawaii and why colonial sugar barons are to blame for the havoc that it's caused. Okay, rich plantation odors in the eighteen eighties were so desperate to combat the rats eating their sugar cane that they brought the mongoose to Hawaii and the government still can't get rid of them to this day. Colonialism and white supremacy, Oh there we go.
I mean, oh, you're gonna hear that a couple of times on this one.
Oh, you just love to hear it. Anyway, Colonialism and white supremacy have caused many problems all over the world, and those problems even extend to the animal kingdom, like in the case of the mongoose in Hawaii, originally brought to the island nation and the hopes of controlling the rat population today's mongooses mongooses. That just doesn't seem right
to say, though it doesn't. Today's mongooses have threatened their other flora and fauna on the Big Island, and despite officials' best efforts has become difficult, if not impossible, to control the population. Let's take a look at the efforts that are being made to get the mongoose population in Hawaii under control and why it hasn't been an easy task for anyone involved.
Bro, look at that mongoose, though.
That is not what I thought a mongoose looked like.
What do you think they looked like?
I don't know, Like I thought it was a bird.
No, dude, mongoose are like tall, skinny rat. Think of a muscular ferret that fucks shit up.
That's like fucking timone. Uh he was a meer cat looks just like it. It's like the distant cousin.
Maybe kind of okay, but see, meer cats aren't predators, I don't think anyway. Mongoose are absolutely pretty. They're like they eat meat. They don't just like eat little bugs and subsist off that.
Like, No, they eat eggs. They fuck up coke is all kinds of shit.
On the surface, the mongoose is a cute and furry creature with its pointed face and bushy tail. It's even immortalized in Ricky Tiki Tavi, the classic children's Tale by Rudyard Kipling. However, for Hawaii, the mongoose has been nothing but trouble. Various mongoose species can be found in Africa, Southern Asia, and Southeast Europe. The Hawaiian Islands are inflicted with an infestation of the small Asian mongoose, a native of Java, which is considered one of the world's most
invasive species. In addition to being introduced to Hawaii in the Bahamas, the small Asian mongoose has been introduced to Cuba, Croatia, Jamaica, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles, Belize, Honduras, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Suriname, Venezuela, Guyana,
and Mafia Island. As for how these omnivorous critters, who are related to the meerkat more than the mouse, go to Ergata all these places, credit or blame goes to the colonial setters, who settlers who were hoping to capitalize on the burgeoning sugar trade.
Basically, the sugar trade was starting to boom.
They saw these farms in these areas and was like, all right, this could help us in some way.
So why is the mangous in Hawaii. Before it became known as the island Paradise of the United States, Hawaii was best known for one important export, sugar cane. The popular crop grew especially well on the Hamuka Coast, which is located just north of High Low on the so called Big Island of Hawaii. In eighteen eighty three, the biggest sugar cane plantations on the island could be found on this beautiful coast. But there was just one problem.
The sweet taste of sugar brought rats who loved to munch on sugar cane all day and who destroy all the crops in They're wake the plantation owners who were almost universally white colonialists. What does that even matter for this thing?
Like you know what I Meanan was an American territory, so like, yeah, it stands to reason, you know what I'm saying, if it was a if it was an Indian territory, stands to reason, all the uh dudes in charge would have would have had red dots.
That I mean that that stands you know.
But all right, people just love to blame shit, you know what I'm saying. I think that's really what it is.
The sort the source is the uh alt hissed? Uh what is this alt heads history? All that's interesting?
Dot com? Excuse me? All that's interesting.
So if I'm not mistaken into more liberal leaning uh you know media source. However, as far as the actual meat and potatoes of what happened, they did a pretty good job. And there's a video I had that actually does a pretty good, uh you know, humorous twist on it. But we'll get there in a minute.
Then got the brilliant idea of introducing the mongoose to Hawaii, the uh white colonialist They expected that the mongoose would spot the rats and kill them on site, thus saving the sugarcane from certain destruction.
This theory of mine.
There was no record of them ever showing that mongeese mongoose is mongoose and whatever eat rats? Now one time was it ever seen like, oh, dude, mongoose are like a natural predator to rats. This will be great. They just thought, like, yo, this would work really well, because why wouldn't it. They had no backing whatsoever.
Yeah, they got this story from bad sources.
I think, No, no, no, we're gonna show more here in a minute.
This is actually true.
They brought mongeese in to fight rats, knowing or not even knowing for sure that mongoose would eat rats.
They just assumed they would.
No, No, I'm not saying this story is fake. I'm saying the white colonialists that got the bright idea to bring the mongoose in it maybe they got a bad story saying that the mongese the mongoose would eat the rats.
You know, maybe maybe they were reading some bad information. It's also possible they were that dumb, and there's been dumber shit. This whole episode is about dumb people doing dumb shit that sounds great on paper until you actually read it, you know.
But we'll get to it.
This theory, however, fell apart once they realized that the rats and the mongoose kept different schedules. The mongoose only came out during the day, while the rats foraged for their sugary treats at night.
They literally passed each other going to and from the same fields. They never ate each other. If anything, they didn't fuck with each other.
I see that. Yeah, it's it's a not a very good plan.
No, it is not so.
Not only was introducing the mongoose in Hawaii and epic fail and that it couldn't keep the burgeoning rat population at bay, but it resulted in the mongoose in Hawaii becoming an invasive species on the island Paradise. Look at that fucking thing. It kind of does look like a ferret.
Kind of like an up armored ferret.
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. You put a ferret in a mongoose in front of me, There's no way I'm telling a difference, Dude.
A mongoose is bigger, I think to each other. You'd be able to tell, but like just without knowing. If you don't have like a pet ferret and you see one every day, you yeah, same, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
In addition to having a presence on the Big Island, the mongoose in Hawaii can be found on the islands of Oahu, Maui, and Molokai, with a rare sighting on Kawhai from time to time.
Kawaii even has them, dude, But.
These opportunistic animals have disrupted the natural flora and fauna on any island that they touch. Their favorite treats are small birds and their eggs but they're also known to eat plants, fruits, and insects. The mongoose also eats sea turtle eggs, thus disrupting that population as well. No, not the sea.
Turtles, I'm telling you, dude, walking with the sea turtles.
Fuck dude. And worst of all, the mongoose is responsible for the deaths of at least eight species of birds that are native to Hawaii, birds that were on the federally endangered list and whose existence existence yeah, continues to be threatened by this cute but annoying creature. To combat the presence of the mongoose in Hawaii, locals have learned to set traps all around their properties and reports any sightings of the creature to six forty three pest. Okay,
that's a phone number. I'm thinking, an organization endorsed by the Hawaii Invasions Invasive Species Council, whose sole purpose is to contain invasive species on the island. The council also tells residents not to worry about reporting any mongoose sightings to the government itself, as it has proven to be a bit of an issue that takes up most of their time. Oh damn wow.
So the government is just like, yeah, we know how bad it is. There ain't shit we can do.
Okay, cool, Yeah you fucking fend for yourself then really is what you need to do. But the Hawaii Invasive Species Council also warns its residents against mistaking cats and rats for mongooses, which also seems to be a pervasive problem on the Big Island. But with more than fifty million dollars in annual damages caused by the mongoose in Hawaii, it's safe to say that the council would love, no, nothing more than to be rid of the critter once and for all.
Yes, indeed, So, like I said, that was a good little quick one. But now let's go into a little bit more of the details of the situation of the mongoose problem on Hawaii. Once again done by the United States government and the corporate pocracy, the big money. This was big sugar back in the day, and we're still dealing with these problems today.
Here it is. This is an extra history. Shout out to them on YouTube.
As for their beaches, surf breaks, and lush volcanic mountains, often it's been called a paradise, but among biologists it has a different more somber name the extinction capital of the world. Hawaii has more endangered and extinct species than any other comparably sized place on the planet, with its
native bird populations especially impacted by human habitation. Like nearly every other part of the globe, habitat loss and urban encroachment have driven many species to the brink, Yet unusually in the case of Hawaii, much of that devastation can be tracked to the decision of a single man. But to understand how that was even possible, we first have to explain Hawaii's ecosystem a bit and why it was
uniquely vulnerable to being upended. The Hawaiian Islands are a remote volcanic chain two thy five hundred miles from the nearest continent, meaning to establish a population on the island, animals had to either fly, swim, or float there. This
made the island's ecosystem largely a kingdom of birds. They arrived in waves over the eons, many evolving specifically to feed on native plants that also evolutionarily adapted to their new home, and their physiology reflected that some had beautiful crimson plumage, others had dramatically hooked and needlelike beaks evolved
to feed on specific flowers. Not to mention, certain birds only arose on specific islands, meaning the populations were relatively small and dependent on the plants they were adapted to. Hawaii was also a surprisingly gentle environment with no terrestrial ground mammals. Plants largely didn't need to evolve defenses such as poisons or thorns, and many birds even took to nesting on the ground. But then a major predator arrived humans.
In roughly twelve hundred AD, Polynesian voyagers arrived from Tahiti to settle the islands, and like everywhere humans settled, they upended the environment. Humans have kind of always been a threat to ecosystems, but what makes us particularly dangerous are the domesticated and undomesticated species that we bring with us. The Polynesian voyagers brought chickens and small pigs, but perhaps their most consequential introduction was the pacific rat, which occasionally
preyed on bird eggs. Just bookmark that one for later. Eventually, bird feathers also became a major component in Hawaiian culture, used to decorate musical instruments, god images, and battle standards, but their greatest use was actually in the feather cloaks worn by the chiefly class. However, it should be noted that the bird catchers who were gathering these feathers would not kill the birds. They'd catch them by smearing glue on branches, then pluck a few feathers before releasing them.
As a result, both historians and biologists believe that the impact of Hawaiian featherwork on bird populations was ready relatively minor. Now, despite the initial shock of settlement, things in the islands did eventually reach equilibrium. Native Hawaiian practices emphasized sustainability and ethos that was partially a religious duty but also a social imperative since there was really nowhere left to expand to. But these principles crumbled when Western business interests and economic
models started to remake how the Kingdom of Hawaii managed land. Now, that is a much longer story, but to summarize, in a bid to keep their kingdom's independence, the Hawaiian royal family westernized themselves, their society, and their economy, and a large part of that was allowing American and European investors to open large sugarcane plantations staffed largely by immigrant workers brought in from Japan, China, Korea, the Philippines, Portugal, and
Puerto Rico. By the eighteen eighties, the sugar plantations were major economic drivers and miniature governments in and of themselves. But the sugarcane planters had a problem rats the Pacific rat who loved sugar cane, and it was starting to cause crop loss, so the plantation owners went looking for an answer. In an eighteen seventy two article, a sugar planter in Jamaica described how he'd significantly decreased the rat problem in his fields by importing mongoose from India and
releasing them as a form of rodent control. Which is why William Herbert Purvis, an Englishman who'd invested in a cane plantation, thought this made eminent sense. After all, mongoose were famous for their ability to kill basically any opponent, even cobras, so he was sure they could raid his specific sugar mill of its rodent problem. Now keep in mind, Purvis was no amateur at introducing new species to the islands. The previous year, he'd imported macadamia trees from Australia as
an ornamental plant though they gave good nuts too. Surely these mongooses would be just as much of a success. Right then, After Purvis released the beasts, other plantation owners followed suit on nearly every island, with the exception of Kauai, where a local man booted the crate off the dock, drowning the invasive animals. And invasive they were because mongoose
don't just prey on rats, they prey on anything. In their naive India, they largely ate insects, rats, and snakes, but like any animal, it went for the easiest and most convenient prey. One Hawaiian article published the same year purpose introduced mongoose warned that the animal was a general destroyer. Sadly, they were exactly right. The mongoose killed rats, but not many, mainly due to the fact that rats are nocturnal while mongoose are diurnal, meaning they basically just passed each other
while they were commuting to work. No, the easiest prey turned out to be eggs. Groups of mongoose ravaged the native bird population. It burgled eggs from nests, killed chicks that recently left the protection of trees, and even dug up and feasted on turtle eggs buried in the sand of the beaches. Particularly hard hit with the native ground nesting birds, who again had evolved in an environment with
no terrestrial predators. And this was so obvious early on that an article in a local newspaper published in nineteen hundred already remarked on the population crash when we first took possession. A groundkeeper was quoted in the article, there were a good many pheasants and skins eyelarcs there. Now they're nearly extinct, and it's too bad. The mongoose is solely responsible for the passing of these desirable birds. It's
particularly destructive on eggs. Birds cannot raise broods when it's about Yet, even as this became apparent, business interests published editorials touting the introduction as a success and denigrating reports of birds being killed. Articles often focused on humorous stories of mongoose raiding henhouses. Meanwhile, not particularly caring about any
pr spin, the mongoose kept killing. Among its victims was the Nanae goose state bird of Hawaii, whose population fell from twenty five thousand in seventeen seventy eight to only thirty in nineteen fifty two. Though mongoose weren't the only factor. Feral cats also took their toll, and another large threat were invasive mosquitoes imported via Western ships that spread avian diseases, and as a result, Hawaii is the bird extinction capital of the world. When humans arrived, the islands had one
hundred and forty two unique bird species. Since then, ninety five of them have been driven to extinction, and of the forty four endemic species remaining, thirty three are listed as endangered, and some who have not been sighted in
decades are likely already gone. Some of those threatened include the Allalla or Hawaiian crow, which many native Hawaiians consider a family guardian spirit, and the evy, known in mythology to be the demigod Maui's favorite bird, and since many of these birds are also pollinators, their declining population have led to a collapse in native plant life that depended
on them as part of their life cycle. When W. H. Purvis released his horde of mongoose into a field on the Big Island, he didn't expect to destroy an ecosystem, but he did a harsh reminder that ignorance and overconfidence can be just as devastating as malicious intent. Today, efforts to introduce species as a form of biocontrol are studied extensively for their impact before being tried. Thankfully, the lesson
took root. In eighteen eighty eight, King Kalakawa decreed the kingdom's first plant quarantine, hoping to keep botanical diseases out of the islands. Two years later, in eighteen ninety in importation of non native insects were banned, and in nineteen oh five non native animals were added to the list not to mention. Today, a host of local organizations are
attempting to preserve what native birds remain. Actually, one of Hawaii's success stories is the Nane goose, a breeding and reintroduction program begun in the nineteen fifties has moved to the Nane off the endangered species list and its population now sits around two thy five hundred.
So all right, so that's about it for that episode. All right, for that video. Excuse me, what are your thoughts on this one? As of now?
I think that if they had the Internet back then, that that wouldn't have happened.
Okay, So there was one story of a dude from Jamaica who had some success one story which could have literally been the game of telephone through newspapers from Jamaica to Hawaii in the eighteen hundreds.
You know what I'm saying.
But that's typically how you would have gotten that information unless you were reading it from a book or certain zas or which I don't even think they had a wallow just back then. But you know, certain people who are closer to the land, and and also like, how do we know that this that this other guy talking about the mongoose, you know, getting getting rid of the rats? How did how did he know that he was even
being truthful? I mean, at a certain point you have to take people on trust, especially when you can't search their Facebook, you can't look up their Instagram, you can't find, you know, any kind of information on the internet. Like you kind of just had to take people at their word, and especially somebody you know who was kind of like working with these with these kind of animals and saw great results. I mean, why wouldn't you take that advice? That's the way I would look at it.
And you know it's crazy. I used to work at a sugar refinery. I can tell you from first hand experience. Rats don't fuck with like milled sugar. They fuck with sugarcane. Yeah, but once it's milled and it's like raw state sugar, before it's even cooked and processed raw sugar itself, you'll have some but not a fucking epidemic like they were having.
Just build a fucking mill higher locals.
It's not a whole process refinery and it's gonna be some horrible thing. It's literally like a big grinder to do that. But well, I mean, were the eighteen hundreds, they didn't know these things. They were trying to make it happen as best they could.
You know.
Yeah, the mills, the mill were the slaves, bro, you know what I mean, Like.
I mean, that's true, true, Wow.
If you really think about it, that's really what was going on with that. But yeah, dude, that's like a dick. I mean, you can only do so much. There wasn't really heavy machinery, you know back in the what was it eighteen eighties.
Well no, that was after the Civil War, so the slaves were no longer a thing. However, they were really fucking cruel to the local indigenous population that they had hired for them. That's why they had to bring in workers from Japan and all these places, because the local Hawaiians.
Quote unquote didn't make good workers.
They were a proud people of long standing tribal traditions, and these new white dudes are coming in trying to work them like annabellum slaves, and they're like, I'm sorry, you understand, we have a king, like, you know, we are a proud people. Like what the fuck are you talking about this shit? So they had to bring in workers from other countries just to run these plantations, and that pissed off the Hawaiian's even worse. It's a horrible,
horrible situation what happened to those islands. And then on top of that, their native indigenous bird and plant population fucked up because of the mongoose and they're still fighting it. There's they don't have a cure for that problem to this day.
It's probably why till this day, any time you go out to Hawaii, the you know, the people that live there, they're like, yes, please come visit.
You know.
That's kind of like how we're making our money is by people who are coming and visiting and touring and all that kind of stuff. But they're like, don't you dare fucking move here? Dude, don't don't do that, like cause they'll I've heard stories people moving out to Hawaii and the people that are like native there, that have lived there for generations, they don't want nothing to do with them.
Right, No, bro, Because here's the thing.
There's only so much square footage of an island, you know what I'm saying. It's not like, uh, when the city of Baton Rouge gets a little too overcrowded, a little too overpopulated, Oh you just moved to the next town over and you just kind of push out and whatever.
There's only so much pushing that can.
Happen, which is a funny durable of.
A spot that push out. They can't afford to relocate.
Right right, well, which is funny because we you know, well not we I wasn't there, but you know, uh, after Hurricane Katrina, a bunch of people moved from New Orleans and that whole area up to Baton Rouge and dispersed out to Texas and stuff like that. But dude, you hear so much about how Baton Rouge used to be so different, and then Katrina happened and it completely, like everybody was kind of all over the place and it was just so packed and crowded.
Bat and Rouge. Bro how could I how can I even put that?
Yeah, an exodus, a mass migration. People walked down I tend from New Orleans two Baton Rouge because they had no other options. Like, that's real shit, and that crisis that I wouldn't say epidemic, but the overpopulation basically in a matter of days that nobody was really ready or prepped for. You know, that led to so much problems,
especially with criminal organizations that were fleeing as well. That brought their rivalries to wherever they relocated to, if it was even for a day or two, or if they set up shop and now ran there, they brought those old school rivalries with them. And all these people who were innocent that were just trying to get help, a lot of them were caught in the crossfire of all that and were grouped in the same grouping as the trash.
And it was, oh my god, it was horrible.
Was it before or after Katrina? That bat and Rouge at one point was the murder capital of the country.
After that makes it after?
So here's and we talked about that on other shows before. So New Orleans has something called a thirty day murdered trial. They've had a long standing time. Basically, if you get caught broad daylight shooting somebody, all right, you get arrested, cool, you're putting a holding cell for thirty days, and then you appear before a judge. If no one is there to testify against you, the case is dismissed and you're
free to go. And in inner city New Orleans, the victim's family is gonna come and testify against you.
No, dude, Okay, they'll put you away, but your cousin.
Will come and gut them all down tonight and then he'll get released a month later.
That's that's how it runs.
So usually nobody is there to testify against you unless you fucked up and killed somebody important, and usually you just kind of do one month's since in jail and you become a killer. And it became so endemic to the culture that if you see anybody with the cross tattoo right between their eyebrows, like, yeah, that's supposed to be a green cross.
Take that with what you want, but that's supposed to be five kills.
Oh, shit.
Yeah, they became like a whole thing.
Wow, that is crazy. Yeah, there's there's some Uh, there's definitely like a lot of gangshit going down in New Orleans.
Oh yeah, No, there are certain neighborhoods that like, you and I are not allowed to go in. We are white, we will be killed. We have no business down this street. They know that, we know that. And it's not a tourist spot. Like that's yeah, that's absolutely a place.
You just stick to Bourbon. We'll just stick to Bourbon streets.
But that's why I tell people when we're talking about coming to New Orleans for a cult meet up and some things like I want this, but like people need to be aware of the fact that like you'll you will hear gunshots. You're gonna hear that, right, It's very possible. You see somebody get stabbed to death. It's possible. It's not a guarantee. It's not a guarantee. Uh, you will see uh, homeless people shooting up and like just full fledged masturbating out there on the street.
Like you're gonna see it's New Orleans.
Oh you're gonna smell, You're gonna sell smell. Like all of the worst sewer and puke that you can possibly imagine walking down those streets, because for some reason it just gets worse. It never gets better.
When you go down Bourbon Street. Assume you are walking in a living urinal. I think that's a pretty decent rule of thumb to follow.
Oh yeah, well, I mean think about it too. Even during Marti grass so you're having millions of people come from Marti Gras. There's not enough bathrooms most of those shops. Most of the restaurants, you either have to pay to use their restroom or you're just not allowed in, Like you have to buy. You have to buy something in the store and then maybe they'll let you use their bathroom.
So people just whip it out. Some people like I, dude, I've gone with people like where the girls that I've gone with, they'll just pull their pants down and just find a corner somewhere alley and that's it.
Oh bro, The Shei Wei is a game changer for girls.
I'm not even just saying girls, I'm just saying like everybody too, like everybody. That's that's really how New Orleans is treated, because it's like, are you really worried about making something worse that already smells like sewage. It's that's kind of how a.
Treater cans that the episs and old beer cans. And then we just continue on. That's me, you know, because I'm a gentleman like that. Hey, if you gotta drop a deuce and like, look, you just you gotta make the odds ever be in your favor, you know what I'm saying that that's on you.
But then you know what the shei wi is though?
That cup with a spout, Yeah, girl can standing up like camping trips and stuff.
Cone looking thing, Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that is the move at Maudie girl. That the game changer for the ladies.
Uh yeah, I've seen it. I've seen it in use before a couple of times.
It's fucking hilarious.
All right, So anyway back to the topic here about human intervention reintroducing animal populations to areas, and then you heard what he said. These days before this happens, a lot of research is done to make sure that it's a good fit.
Except that's not exactly the case.
We're gonna talk about some more recent examples of that here in a moment. But talking about Hawaii made me think of Louisiana, maybe think of the New Turette. And we're gonna get to that here in a minute. We've talked about it a few times, so this one's gonna be just a little quick, down and dirty of it. But did you know that Louisiana almost had a thriving
hippo population. I didn't so once upon a time, because apparently hippo meat is eaten in like Australia and New Zealand and Africa, and it's very comparable to beef, very comparable to red meat, and it was seen as basically like water cow, like a one hundred percent And so the theory was in the eighteen hundreds, what if we were to introduce some hippos to the Bayous of Louisiana, maybe the Everglades of Florida, and we open up a whole new industry of water cow, and this would be great.
There will be even more food, more production, more and more more, because America is doing that shit in the late eighteen hundred.
Mainly, I would say it's more of a swamp cow because we already have a sea cow as the manatee.
You know.
Indeed, indeed, so I'm going to go and share the screen one on another gain, and let's learn a little bit about the crazy, ingenious plan to bring hippopotamus ranching to America.
All Right, In the early years of the last century, the US Congress considered a bold and ingenious plan that would simultaneously solve two pressing problems, a national meat shortage and a growing ecological crisis. The plan was this hippopotamus ranching. Writer John Something talks with this article about his new article, and Okay, I don't even need to read that bullshit, all right, it says in the early years of the last century, the US Congress considered a bold and ingenious
plan that would simultaneously solve the two problems. Hippos imported from Africa and raised in the Bayous of Louisiana, proponents argued, would provide a delicious new source of protein from meat hungry nation. In the process, the animals would gobble up the invasive water hyacinth with that was killing fish and choking off waterways. It would be an epic win. When a bill was introduced in Congress, and newspaper editorials extolled the culinary virtues of Lake Cow Bacon.
Okay, okay, like, let's go ahead and pause it real quick, because let's break.
It all down here.
The water hyacinth, Okay, that'd be the water lily. Anybody in Louisiana and a lot of the Southern States know this plant, which is it is a it's not it's evasive, but it's not a foreign evasis species.
It's indigenous to this area.
And if it's not taken care of and regulated and raked out of ponds, it will choke out the water oxygen level. Right, the fish will die, the other planets will die. It will literally choke out the life. So that water hippos, right, they eat all kinds of vegetation in the water, and they could just chomp this down. Meanwhile, we harvest them, and again there's a lot of recipes and things, but they're more.
Comparable to beef.
But all of the newspaper editorials kept running cow bacon like water cow bacon. That became a whole synonymous thing because of we're gonna get to it in a minute.
It's definitely click baity water cow bacon. I would try it.
In the eighteen eighties, if somebody told you the government doesn't want you to know this. But they have water cow bacon and they're about to bring to Louisiana. It's gonna be the next big thing.
You'd be like, bro, wait wait wait what Yeah, yeah, I would definitely try it. I always think of Madagascar, though, every time I think of a hippo, it's like, uh, whenever the Loriah the girl, Yeah, Gloria, she met the she met the man, hippo, the boy, hippo whatever, and he was all, you're dunking, Yeah, you're so fat, I love it, or something along the slock.
Yeah, that hippo was he knew what was up?
Like, yes, anyway. It says that this guy he is. He describes the hippo ranching scheme and the story of two fascinating men behind it, A modest frontiersman and a soldier of fortune, the other a the other a self aggrandizing con man. Both were spies, each was sworn to kill each other, but the great cause of hippo ranching brought them together. Oh it's a lovely communion. It says what was going on in America at that time that
made hippopotamus ranching seem like a good idea. This guy goes the dawn of hippopotamus ranching in America was nineteen ten. There was a very serious meat shortage. There were peak years of immigration, cities were exploding in The meat industry was getting bigger and uglier, but it could not keep up. America had always solved its problems by moving west, but now the frontier was closed. So it was a meat crisis,
but it was also kind of an identity crisis. And they asked, so, how were the hippos supposed to fix it? This guy goes, well, the idea was that you could harness land that wasn't productive for grazing cattle, like swamps and bayous, So you'd transplant the hippos into these environments that aren't totally unlike where they live in Africa. You could suck up all the energy in what looks like
a wasteland and turn it into meat. At the same time, there was a real problem with invasive water hyacinth plants. There still is in fact, so in a Louisiana congressman named Robert Brusard decided that he could solve the water hyacinth problem by bringing in hippos to suck suck up the plants. You were literally taking one problem and using it to solve another problem.
Okay, real quick, say his last name again, Robert what Brusard? Okay, you said it differently the first time, and the guy in the video We're Gonna plan.
A second pronounces it that way too.
They're like, they're like Brusard, they put the emphasis on sard, the emphasis goes on brew Brusard.
I mean tomato, fucking tomato, dude.
I know, it's one of those things. It's like it's a Louisiana native that would pick up on that small thing. But it's like, wait, how'd you say it? I mean, you're not saying the words incorrectly at all. It's like the inflection makes it weird.
You know what's weird is is that whenever I'm reading, I read as if like I'm I come from maybe, but I try and sound like I kind of know what I'm talking about, Like I try and give that idea, and so it's like I'm speaking a little bit more proper, and so it's Brusaude not Brusard.
I agree, But like the guy in the video, I think did the same thing, and it's it's crazy to hear it. You know what I mean, I don't know it just maybe it maybe it just made my ears perk up, because not just you, others today i've heard him.
I'm like, why are they saying it like that?
But anyway, yeah, yeah, So anyway, the article is asking this guy, he goes who else was involved in promoting this? Well, Bruce has this congressional hearing and he needs expert witnesses. The first is this geeky apple researcher. The other two are Frederick Russell Burnham and Fritz Duquine. Fritz. We need to bring that name back, dude, Fritz Fritz such a solid name. Anyhow, Frederick Russell Burnham is this staggeringly impressive
and totally forgotten figure in history. The Boy Scouts were founded in his image to create boys that were as capable and honorable as him. He was the inspiration for Indiana Jones. Oh, that's interesting. He was a freelance adventurer who'd up and gone to Africa to fight for the British colonial lists because, like a lot of people at the time, he thought this was a noble kind of project to bring civilization to Africa. He was once described as the most complete human being who ever lived.
What Wow, the most interesting man like back in the gap.
Sun sounds like it. So Fritz Dukane was a is it bolt boor yeah boor boor okay, which are the descendants of Dutch settlers in Africa. He was a really slippery fellow. He moved through life in this cloud of aliases. He was a virtuistic and ambitious con man. He fought against the British and the Second Boer War. Like Burnham, he was kind of a free ranging spy. Burnham once called him the human epitome of sin and deception. That's
like too far different ends of the spectrum. You're talking about the awesomest man who ever lived, and then also like the human epitome of sin and deception.
That's pretty crazy. Also that this dude was of Dutch descent. This dude was of English descent, because if you look at the East India Trading Company, in the Dutch India Trading Company, they were some fierce competitors for a long time.
Africa was kind of their war ground.
So this is even this is further back on the wow f Then most people could catch on first read dog that's wild.
So during the Boer War, the two men were assigned to kill each other, and so the article says, but somehow the hippo plan brought them together, and he goes, they had this real rivalry, but it's one of those old fashioned rivalries where you honor your enemy. It seems they never met in battle. And when they finally meet, it's under the guise of being collaborators with Brusard on
this hippo plan based on their experiences in Africa. They're going to start what's essentially a lobbying firm to drum up donations from rich people as they do as they do. Obviously this didn't come to pass, and you go into what happened into your at a Tavis story, Okay, but you have to wonder what if it had. The guy goes, well, it's an interesting thought experiment. I've never tasted hippo, but I've read many accounts that it's delicious. So that problem
is solved. But I don't know how feasible it would have been, or what unintended ecological consequences there might have been. We didn't get the hippos, but we're not starving. So what happened to the meat crisis? What happened was the very beginnings of industrial agriculture. Rather than bringing in new animals that could take advantage of landscapes that didn't seem productive, we basically engineered those landscapes into more pasture, and we packed more and more of the same kinds of animals
onto that land. You can basically trace a straight line from this moment in nineteen ten, when another way i e. The hippopotamusis seemed possible to the solutions we have now, which are feed lots and confinement operations and all the attendant consequences in fallout. Interesting.
Wow.
Okay, so that's pretty much all we really need to read on that article. I will say that we need to look at that bill because this was pushed through.
We almost were so.
Fucked ladies and gentlemen, because, as you know, the article makes it sound, well, the hippos would have taken this land that is pretty much unusable and would have been able to produce meat, and it would have taken.
Care of the water hyacinth, and it was this good idea, bub ba bup.
Hippos are the deadliest animal on the globe or the flat earth or whatever. They do not have any natural predators because they are so large. Yeah, some of the babies might get hit, but honestly not much because when you fuck with the baby, you get the mama. And there's no water aquatic type of predator anywhere in Africa that fucks with them.
So they just get larger than life and ruin everything.
Oh yeah, yeah, these are the people that take up three seats on an airplane.
Ah fuck whole row.
Yes, and they're like Lizo about it. They're fat and they want you to know. They want you uncomfortable. They want you to know they're not going to the gym, and fat is beautiful and bute, bute, it's that. Yeah, but they're also trying to eat your boat and kill you because again, the deadliest animal on earth. And in this timeframe nineteen ten, they got so close that there was actually an American.
Hippo bill that was proposed before Congress.
They were voting on that if they should or should not, and it got fucking close to wow.
So Bruceard argued the hippopotamuses would eat the invasive water hyacinth that was clogging the rivers and also help produce I'm sorry, also produce meat to help solve a meat shortage in the United States. The chief collaborators and proponents of bruce ARD's bill were Major Frederick Russell Burnham and
Captain Fritz Dukane. Former President Teddy Roosevelt back to plan and as did the United States Department of Agriculture, The Washington Post the New York Times, which praised hippopotamus meat as lake col Bacon William Newton Irwin, a researcher for the United States Department of Agriculture recruited by Bruceard, told Congress that the bill could add one million tons of meat to yearly American supply, and further suggested that more
erotic animals should be imported for the same purpose, including exotic. What did I say erotic? Oh, where's my mind?
I just when you said, I was like, I know, he didn't catch it, but everybody else did.
I'm sure exotic ladies and gentlemen.
Sorry, it's been a minute, but anyway, it says uh. So they wanted to import more animals, including the Of course, I probably saw erotic because I saw dick Dick.
Yeah, the dick dicks, a little tiny deer.
The tic tick. What a fucked up name? Uh so, the dig dicks, the rhinoceroses, American buffalo or African buffalo, Tibetan yaks, and Manchurian pigs. These are all the animals that they wanted to introduce to America. It says, although the American hippo build developed a broad base of support, it was never passed by the United States Congress.
And for the record, if anybody would like to see an example of what would have happened if this went through. Have you heard about Pablo Escobar's cocaine hippos? I have, yeah, Okay, all right, good, we're gonna talk about them here at the end. But you know what, let's go ahead and listen to this little vigia here. It's only four minutes
forty nine seconds. Shout out to Tidewater Teddy, and I think there's a pretty excellent video showing the entire process of the hippos in Louisiana and how close we were to being unable to use the Mississippi River pretty much ever again, which is a huge source of trade for our country. And we were this close to hippos growing to the size they want in the Mississippi River and just fucking up everything, but here we go.
In nineteen ten, the United States was facing dual crises. In one corner, invasive water highacins. We're choking American waterways in the Gulf States, blocking shipping and eliminating fish. In the other corner, America was facing a major meat shortage after butting heads with the Meat Trust. In a desperate attempt to restore order, US Representative Robert F. Brussard of Louisiana was willing to try anything with the help of these two guys, Russell Burnham and Captain Fritz Dukins, as
well as two guys from the Department of Agriculture. Broussard proposed importing wild and domestic animals from around the world into America, though in as House Resolution two three six two to one, or the American Hippo Bill, the bill would have authorized the importation of hippos and a bunch of other African animals to the United States, specifically the
Gulf States that were plagued by water hyacinth. In theory, this bill would kill two mosquitoes with one swat, the hippos would eat the water hyacinth, and the Americans would eat the hippos to butter up American appetites to this new strange animal. The men compared hippos to bacon, a
product that's irresistible to many Americans. A year prior, at a meeting of the American Breeders Association, hippos were described using the South Africa can term zico spick or lake cow bacon, and in Broussard's own statement, he says that hippos in Africa are made into bacon and used as bacon. Presumably, under this new bill, Americans would have been eating hippo
bacon alongside their pancakes every morning. Of course, not everyone was swayed by the idea of hippo bacon, and Charles F. Scott, the chairman of the Committee of Agriculture, had a lot of questions. He wanted to know whether hippos were easily domesticated, whether they would become a pest if let lose, how much they would breed, how they would taste, whether white
men like them. Yeah, that was a serious question back then, because all these dudes were white, how big they get, what they eat, and the logistics behind confining them to rivers and streams. Some answers seem to be based on anecdotal evidence rather than scientific evidence, but for the most part the answers were pretty straightforward. Naturally, the press went insane, and the headlines were even more so. The focus was mostly on whether or not the reader could stomach hippomte,
although some papers did highlight the water hyacinth issue. In the end, the American Hippo Bill barely failed to pass, and that was probably for the best. First Off, hippos are insanely aggressive and they can and do kill anyone wandering in their territory, So if you wanted to paddle a canoe in the bayou, you'd be in serious trouble. Secondly, it's usually not a good idea to introduce non native
species to a new environment. Just like how the water hyacinth, which is native to the Amazon Basin, took over American waterways, hippos could have also become invasive. I mean, you're solving a problem with another problem. Here's an example in Colombia, for hippos owned by Infanta drug lord Pablo Escobar were left on his estate after his death in nineteen ninety three. By two thousand and seven, these hippos had multiplied to sixteen and By twenty twenty, their population had exploded to
over ninety hippos. Now these feral Colombian hippos are harassing fishermen, killing cattle, and frightening villagers.
Yikes.
Lastly, since water hyacinths are South American plants, how could these men have expected African hippos to eat them? Nowadays, water hyacinths have evaded many other continents, including Africa, and hippos are not known to eat them there. Maybe these dudes just assumed hippos would eat any type of aquatic plant.
I don't know.
Anyways, that's the story of how hippos were almost introduced to.
America, So let's just talk about that, shall we. Dude.
So I was looking up pictures of them and what like. I I mainly really just wanted to see what a baby hippo look like because I imagine that, Oh they're adorable, really cute. So I want to share this right here, Look at this fat little baby hippo.
Dude.
Oh no, baby hippos are like the cutest things almost ever.
That is freaking adorable.
You know what?
They kind of they kind of look like uh snorlax, the pokemon.
I think that he might have been based off of it, or at least some of it.
But yeah, would god look at the size of that fucking beast.
That's what I'm saying. And so here's the deal. They get so big they can't be on land for long. That's why they're aquatic. They literally have to be in water because their legs will snap if they're on land for too long.
Oh my god.
They mainly live in the water, which means they get as big as the water will allow them to get, which I mean, you know, sky's the limit, so to speak.
There is there is a limit.
I'm not saying you'll see one the size of like a eighteen willer, but I mean maybe one day, I don't know.
I don't know.
But it says they live forty to fifty years. That's pretty long time.
Oh dude. Yes, that's why there's such a problem.
And in Africa, certain rivers you just don't boat down because you know that they're a problem. Now you talk about this the water hyacinth. Come to find out, they didn't even eat it. They had no idea. They were just going off of it because they eat all kinds of water plant life.
Bu bah buh. It's all good.
If they would have done that, we would have been fucked and still had the highestcinth problem.
And now we have a hippo problem.
Dude, I'm looking up how how big they can get in The largest documented hippo ever was ten thousand pounds and sixteen feet tall.
Like longly, thousand pounds has five tons of an animal. Look at how many deaths just off top how many deaths did hippopotami account for in twenty twenty three. You know, I just have a weird feeling. It's a lot more than people are expecting.
I'm sure it is.
I mean, and did you know they also sweat pink. I know that's a random fat them, but their sweat is pink. Their milk is pink.
That's where we get the meat glue from.
It's hippopotamus sweat. It has to be, actually, and I looked into it. As far as hippo steak goes, every review says that it's fucking delicious and like it is a thing. So I'm excited to try someone day.
Honestly, Oh yeah, I'd definitely take a bite to that. I mean, I've eaten gator. I mean, what's the difference.
Really, I'm gonna be honest with you.
I feel like if they would have been released in Louisiana, we as Cajuns could have handled that problem, knowing that it's water steak.
Oh yeah, don't.
Oh yeah, Well I looked up how many deaths that they're typically known to cause annually, and so the just for a little bit of compare and contrast here, a lion causes about twenty two deaths a year annually, right, right.
Because humans are not on their food chain, right.
They have to go out of their way or be fucked with by humans in order to have that happen.
A hippo causes five hundred human deaths a year. Ah, dude, imagine death by hippo.
Fuck that they're drowning you while they're crushing you.
Oh my god, what an absolute hell idea.
So thankfully, and it said it barely didn't pass. I forget. I looked up the numbers.
I wish I would have pulled that article up, but it was like, I think, like fourteen votes was the deciding And that's how split it was of people saying yay or nate to this. We were that close to having a hippo evasive species problem all throughout Louisiana and Florida on top of the other shit we have going on.
Yeah, the trademarket definitely would still be trying to grow right now.
Ah, And I honestly am in a small way bummed that we couldn't like domesticate them and successfully do it without them running rampant, because, dude, water steak sounds awesome. You're telling me gator hunting is a thing, But we could do hippo hunting and like hippo trapping and shit, that sounds fun.
It says that you can get it, like you can get it imported from other countries and stuff. And then I saw like another question that somebody asked if you could if you could import giraffe meat, and that sounds I don't know if I would want to do that, but why it's a fucking giraffe. It's awesome.
No, but you all right, So there's these hunts that go down, right, these guided hunts, Uh, these big wealthy doctors and stuff. They'll pay ten thousand dollars to kill a giraffe right right, and it's seen as like horrible for the species.
However, if you look at how they're doing it.
They're calling the herd certain species, especially giraffe, when they get older they're like, you know, fourteen years old or whatever, it will like start fucking up and killing the young males that are like coming of age of breeding age to dominate the herd. So if they don't kill this one giraffe, this herd might stop growing, you know what I mean.
I'm not sure that they're managing.
Yeah, I'm sure that that is a thing. But also like those African hunts are fogged, dude, Like if you really look into it, like at all, it's like it is absolutely you think about it. Those people that own those those lands for that, yeah, they're making shitloads of money.
And they're just pennies.
It's how are they making pennies?
Hold on? Hold on?
And I'm not saying, oh, there is some horribly illegal hunting poaching things going on, for sure, but the guided hunts that are put on by the countries and by the tribes and everything, they're done like for that purpose of trying to preserve the wildlife call herds. That's why, like we talked about with hunting with wildlife management, it's done with that ethos and all of the money that spent on that trip gets put into the country.
All, well, I guess if it's done that efforts. Yeah, yeah, I'm not going to complain about that, but yeah it is. It is pretty crazy. But they were saying that you actually can get giraffe meat imported into the United States. There's no laws against that.
Looking into it immediately, I don't know how expensive it is, though I'm not paying more than I am for like wag you you know what I'm saying, like per pound, like within limits.
I don't know.
I'll eat I'll eat a hippo, not a giraffe. Though I can't do that. I like, I still feel weird eating lamb. Dude, Well, let me ask you this.
Let me ask you this.
As we're talking about that, would you ever consider eating ostrich meat?
Oh yeah, it's a fucking bird. You Yeah, it's a bird.
It's a bird.
Even if it's more comparable to like a steak type situation.
That entices me even more.
Okay, but the hippo meat doesn't.
Oh no, I'll happily eat hippo meat.
Okay.
I get that.
Sounds like we're doing this.
It sounds like we're gonna start ordering things and trying them, and that's gonna be a Patreon exclusive because now you know me as a cage and I must eat everything and at least try the worlds or dervs. This is just another another chink in that bro. We got to do it all right, Yeah, I'm down. Let's do it fucking right.
Okay.
So we almost another example of trying to fuck with the circle of life, the natural order of things in certain biomes, trying to make money essentially, and thankfully this one was shot down. That would have been a really bad situation. And in my studies of all this, I learned about the Ostrich farming situation that happened in the nineties. Do you remember this at all, Jonathan, I know we talked about a little bit on the trip.
Yeah, yeah, just from what you've told me.
Okay, Cause gonna be honest, I didn't know too terribly much about it, and I'm very glad that I learned about it, because you know, I was talking about maybe doing a farm at some point, and like things that would be a good source of protein and living standards and what's a good feed to output of protein all that.
Come to find out, I'm not the first person to think about that.
And as I was looking at species of animals that don't necessarily belong there, and do they get evasive in all these things, that led me to the Ostrich farming situation from America. And that let me think about the Emu war of Australia that they lost. The nation lost the war to a bunch of birds, just saying.
Dude, emos are kind of scary though if they're chasing.
You, oh, no doubt.
But like they have machine guns and bombers and they still have not won the war against the EMUs.
They had to build a fucking wall.
I mean, yeah, it probably it shouldn't take that long to try and figure out how to defeat fucking birds. But it's yeah, it's I mean, it's pretty funny.
Actually it is fucking hilarious. But then, okay, okay, so back to the Ostrich farming in America. Let me play this little clip here from Andrew Fraser that talks more about it more intelligently than I.
As far as I've known, Ostrich has been a failed meat In the early nineteen nineties, a new farming christ swept across the United States, hand Australia, a craze that promised a revolution in agriculture, a sustainable alternative to traditional livestock farming. This was the dawn of the ostrich industry. At first glance, ostrich farming seemed like a brilliant idea. The meat was remarkably similar to beef, leaner, lower in cholesterol,
and higher in protein. In a world that was increasingly concerned with environmental sustainability, ostrich meat appeared to be a perfect solution. Ostriches were highly efficient animals. They had feed conversion ratios that were far better than that of beat. In simple words, you put in less feed, but you'd get the same amount of meat out. The efficiency extended
beyond feed. Ostriches also required far less water, They were less environmentally impactful, they required less land, They had lower carbon footprints, and this combination of efficiency meant less environmental impact and for farmers the potential for significantly higher profits. Lower impro costs, less feed, less water, less land. Compared with a product that could be marketed as both sustainable
and healthy, it seemed like a recipe for success. Add to that, the multiple revenue streams from feathers, leather, and even the eggs. Ostridge farming was poised to be the next big thing in agriculture, thing in agriculture.
And boom it did.
In the United States alone, the number of ostridge farms exploded, with as many as two thousand and five hundred to three thousand farms by nineteen ninety five. Texas became a hotspot, with vast lands being repurposed to house these towering birds. The trend wasn't confined to America. Australia saw over one thousand ostriche or emu farms spring up during the same period.
And they still couldn't win the war against them. But they're gonna form them now. But all right, all right, we're gonna keep going. But just I just want to make that mention. That's fucking ridiculous. But all right, if you can't beat I'm joining them, my guest boys.
Investors poured in buying up breeding pairs at astronomical prices. A breeding pair of ostriches in the US could fetch between thirty and eighty thousand dollars. In Australia, prices were lower but still significant, ranging from twenty thousand to fifty thousand aud even in use a smaller, non relative but similar looking bird saw similar speculative investment. Breeding pairs went for ten to twenty five thousand dollars in the US
and a similar amount in Australia. The market was estimated to be worth over two billion globally by ninety six, driven by the combination of speculation, high hopes, and the belief that ostridge meat would soon be a common sight in supermarkets and on restaurant menus worldwide. But as quickly as the industry rose, it began to crumble. The first cracks appeared in the form of consumer demand, or rather the complete lack there of it. Despite all the promise,
ostrich meat remained a niche product. The industry had failed to educate the public on its benefits, and without a strong consumer base, the market couldn't sustain the prices that had been set during the boom. And then there was the reality of farming ostriches. These were not just feathered cattle. They were faster, smarter, and more difficult to manage. Ostriches could run at speeds of up to forty five miles
per hour, making them a challenge to contain. They were prone to stress, which could severely impact the growth and reproduction. Many farmers found themselves underprepared for the unique challenges of ostrich farming, which led to high mortality rates and increased costs. As more and more farms open, the market became oversaturated,
the speculative bubble and prices for breeding pairs plummeted. Farms that had once been seen as the future of agriculture was suddenly struggling to just even stay afloat, and by the late nineties, the ostrich industry.
It had largely collapsed.
Thousands of farms were abandoned, and the investors who had sunk fortunes into breeding pairs and the infrastructure were left with little to show for it.
Okay, so that's a whole conspiracy in and of itself, to be honest with you. You had all these investors, these farmers that were being told by somebody, by some group that ostrich meet was going to be the next big thing.
There's a sound investment. This is a look.
The government don't want you to know this, but ostriches are on the right. It was that whole thing just to get fucked in the end. And then, as we saw in that one clip, but I actually did more digging on it. Bird flew You remember that pandemic that took off. Yeah, yeah, a lot of the government officials came and just slaughtered people's whole herds, which at that point the farmers didn't care.
They couldn't sell the meat.
They weren't making money off the leather anything else, because I mean the market was.
Already so saturated that it was whatever.
Well they did that during they did that during covids as well.
They did but I'm saying this was bird flu was the early two thousands. So this problem became a thing in the mid nineties and then about a decade later, low key under the radar, no one. I didn't even know that ostrich farming was a thing in America.
I mean I imagined that it was somewhere, because I know that people eat ostrich.
I mean I assumed that, yes, just like there's more tigers in captivity in Texas than there are in the wild. I assumed that some Americans be doing American shit and have ostrich farms, yes, like the small amounts. I didn't realize that there was ever some sort of a prospective booming.
Ostrich industry in this country.
Now, that is an example from what I can tell of, like, ostrichs have a fucked up ecosystems because, if anything, they have a much like we said, smaller carbon footprint.
They require less water, less feed so.
And they don't have any predators that we need to worry about in our environment. They are not predators themselves. So that was one where it wasn't a bad integration. It was just a good initiative, bad judgment. You see what I'm saying.
Oh yeah, dude. And you know it's so funny, dude, just watching them run like that. That is hilarious because they keep their neck all straight, their head up that it's like they're proud and they're proper, and they're also hauling ass.
Yeah, dude. And ostrich racing is a thing. Have you seen that.
Where people get on the back of them.
Yeah, yeah, full on jockeys like on horses, and they just take off on these birds.
Man, dude, it's awesome. I want to ride one.
And then you're gonna say, dude, ostrich legs are strong. That's why the meat is so good and so large. Those ostrich legs are meant to potentially kill lions.
Yeah, I mean, whenever they showed the picture of the Ostrich meat cooked, I was like, oh my god, that looks good.
Oh dude, if you want to, I'll send you the link to that video because in Vietnam right now, that video is about why Ostrich meat is on the rise in Vietnam. There's like a whole breakfast dish where you do something with the Ostrich egg something with the Ostrich steak. It's steaking eggs but from Ostrich and it looks delicious.
Do you look at this massive turkey leg situation.
Homeboy just cooked it in a big ass walk and it took forever to cook.
But that's a part of it.
And I'm just like, bro, I would not be mad at one day when I have a farm having an ostrich er too. You know what I'm saying. Those eggs are very huge. They produce up to sixty a year. They have no natural predators on this continent, so I'm not worried about that. And if I get tired of them running, you know, you just fucking dust rolled a ass and you cook you a whole Thanksgiving like yo, like a four x four Thanksgiving.
Oh one hundred percent. Yeah, I mean it's way more meat than a Turkey. I mean, how many turkey goes into an Ostrich you think.
I would think probably four or.
Five, right, right? And you know, as a matter of fact, I'm looking there's a website called American Ostrich Farms.
Yo. I found him.
He has a whole YouTube channel, and I was looking him into him as we were doing these things. Apparently there's one of the Ostrich farms that were able to withstand the crash of the projected industry, and they were able to corner a good section of the market early. So a lot of the leather comes from them, the eggs, the feathers. They've kind of I'm not saying cornered the American market, but they're doing their thing.
They're killing it.
It does look a bit more expensive. So it's like they have the Ostrich inside strip which is sixty dollars, the Ostrich tenderloin which is sixty dollars, Ostrich fan filays that are forty five dollars. But that's a little bit of a smaller chunk of meat. I don't know how.
That's one steak or is that per pound. We'll be talking.
It's looking like, okay, so the just for example, what looks to be like a steak is the Ostrich inside strip, and it says, oh, share the screen I want to see Okay, yeah, it's it's pretty nice website. Actually look fair.
I mean I really want to order some Ostrich steak and see what's up, brother.
So it says alongside the fan, this is the most premium cut available. Okay, so this is the most expensive part of the Ostrich. Inside strips are packaged as whole intact fu lays and weigh approximately three three quarters to one and a quarter pounds each.
See, I'm trying to buy the whole Ostrich like processed.
I would reach out to them and be like, yo, get me a fat one and let me ship me all of it already processed and cut up and everything, the same way I want to do with a cow, same way I want to do with a pig. If you do this right, bro, you only have to buy meat like one time for the year.
Yeah, it says right here, you can get the whole Ostrich leg for three hundred dollars, but it's on sale. It's typically six hundred.
Look at the size of that though, dude, that's the small section right.
Yeah, I mean Ostrich burgers that sounds good. Twenty bucks for is that one burger? Sink your teeth into a supremely satisfying burger? Uh? Okay, so one pound is twenty dollars. Okay, so that's about me one burger if you eat a big boy burger, yeah, or maybe two if you want a little you want a double quarter pounder. You know what I mean.
But I mean they're not selling this as like a cheaper alternative. They're selling this as premium cuts, which like mad respect, mad respect, But if I was going to have a farm, you can have a couple of cows for this yo Ostrich wing?
Bo, what part of the wing is that small?
On an Ostrich? What are they talking? Are They just took a big ass wing piece and like chunked it.
Up And it says each Ostrich wing is cut in half to fit it to fit in reasonably sized packages. The package contains at least two pieces with a total weight of approximately one to one and a half pounds for fifteen bucks.
So two wings is about one and a half to two pounds of meat.
Wow. Oh they have rib chops.
Uh.
I'm telling you, like I want to know what this is about. I might reach out and see how much it is to process a whole bird.
I have never looked into ostrich meat, but I am definitely enticed.
Oh dude, I'm And I was already kind of looking into this because I was looking at getting some land a couple of years ago, and thank god I didn't honestly, there was that land flooded and I didn't know it was gonna flood, so whatever. But I was looking at how to get it approved for a rural development loan, and I was thinking about what kind of livestock would I be able to have to call it a farm
to get those tax credits in all those things. And I was just perusing, as I do, into the Google verse of animals that are not that hard to maintain, that don't cost that much to upkeep, that also you can eat.
I was, you know, pragmatic, as my add brain does. I stumbled into the ostrich farming stuff. But I didn't spend a lot of time there because in theory, like yo, that's dope, and then like yo, I don't want that thing to be able to take off at forty five miles an hour away from me when I'm trying to like that's if it gets out like I'm fucked, you know what I mean, catching it. There's there's other problems with it that, like for what I was looking at,
wouldn't have been feasible. But it is not a bad model if you can do it correctly.
Brother, Well that's what you were telling me yesterday that you don't need a lot of land for ostriches either.
These people in Vietnam in like my backyard, and I do not have a big backyard. I'm in a subdivision, you know what I mean, in a size of my backyard have eight full grown ostriches living and thriving and all the stuff. And it's like, yo, eight of those and you're selling that meat for how fucking much?
Like, hey, now, what is that like a half acre in the backyard?
Maybe no, dude, I got of like usable fenced in backyard.
I might have like fifth of an acre or maybe a tenth.
I actually don't think I've ever even seen your backyard. Really, yeah, I don't. I don't. I've never been back there.
Oh yeah, know I have a relatively smaller backyard. I mean again, we're one thousand houses in this one subdivision.
We're crammed in here. It's it's horrible. But because I'm on like a call to sack, my yard has a.
Weird fan outward towards the back, so it's like at the front, I think my property is like fifteen feet in to end, but at the back it's like one hundred and forty five. Because across the servitude on a colt, it's dumb, it's weird, it's whatever.
But my point is, in a regular sized.
Backyard, you could really have an ostrich or two like and they'd have plenty of room. They wouldn't be cramped up, it wouldn't be like you're treating them poorly. And they're able to be harvested and killed at like sixteen months.
Oh that's not bad.
So you really don't have to maintain them that long, maybe two years of your life at most to like get them how you want them and fucking hackets on.
You ow and you got meat for the year.
And I'm like, okay, I could fuck with this, but for what I was looking at it what and feasible. But it's interesting, it's interesting, and that's again this is an example of a species from another land being brought in and it didn't go poorly.
It just didn't take off either.
Right, Yeah, they were expecting it to be a serious, booming industry and turned out the meat was a little bit too erotic.
The fact you so smoothly said that, I was like, well, I almost didn't say anything because I was like, all right, what are the chances that I'm the only one that heard it?
Like real shit?
Probably not. Yeah, I'm happy you said it, but also what a fun gaff?
A fun gaff?
All right, So I'm gonna go ahead and share the screen again because we talked about this on an episode once before, briefly, but on some very real levels. Do you remember when they were talking about they were reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone.
So fucking dumb.
Okay, So let's talk about that because we've got I've got articles put up on both sides of that quote unquote argument. I'm telling you people, people didn't learn lessons the first time about.
That was just like last year. That was recently, I think, right, it was this article.
As a matter of fact, it was written hold on, it says.
Two okay, two years ago.
So here we have America's new war on wolves and why it must be stopped now once again, before we read this.
Let's keep in mind.
There's already examples of the government putting species where they don't belong and things going really south. There's examples of them reintroducing animals to areas of the world where they used to live but were pushed out because of human populations and all these things, and they tried reintroducing them back to that land, and unfortunately whatever that animal used
to eat no longer grows there or lives there. So it even fucked up the life cycles of further plant animal life, and the o arching themes got way out of whack because of it, and so in twenty twenty two we talked about it.
The United States government was really putting.
Wolves, gray wolves, apex predators in areas where humans now live, and they kept saying, no, it's too far, the humans won't be impact, and it's like, do you have any idea how long it got it.
Took to get the wolves out of that area, you know what I mean.
I mean, it's not like they're going to find a little nestle in the woods and just stay there for the rest of forever. Like wolves typically branch out.
Oh my god, and I have videos where they're trying to make it seem like it's a good thing and it's done good things for Yellowstone.
It's oh, we're gonna get to it.
It's crazy how they phrase it and how they were things, and then to hear other people who live there to be like, uh, yeah, that's this, this and this.
We'll get to it.
Yeah, let's just you know, let's just bring a bunch of fucking slender men to this area because it'll scare away the crows or something like, well, yeah, I might scare away the fucking crows, but you know, it'll also haunt you in your dreams.
Because apparently the elk population was too much. We have too many elk, you know what we need to do.
That's a good problem that oh my god, we have that much meat just walking around. Okay, So instead of hiring and incentivizing hunters to go out and harvest meat, and like, now everybody's eating better, more natural, good meat that they took themselves, which is proper and just in all walks of everything. Hunting is so inherent to human beings. Okay, So instead of enticing hunters to hunt more elk, let's drop wolves into the mix. They'll eat the elk, that'll solve the problem.
Brow.
Yeah, that sounds like the most liberal idea I've ever heard in my life.
Let's read about it, because oil boy, do they have a take?
America's tradition of persecuting wolves has resumed, and although it's mostly happening on federal land, the Biden administration appears singularly unmoved and unconcerned. In twenty twenty one, conservative lawmakers in Idaho, Montana, and Wiscanson seized wolf management authority from trained wildlife professionals and remarked or re embarked on the age old war
on wolves, radically liberalizing wolf trapping and hunting regulations. In Wyoming, where wolves were delisted from the Endangered Species Act in twenty seventeen, the politicized Department of Game and Fish allows year round wolf killing across eighty five percent of the state at any time and by virtually any means, including running them over with snowmobiles and incarcerating pups and nursing
mothers and dens, oh not the puppies. On July first, twenty twenty one, Idaho implemented legislation designed to reduce its wolf population by ninety percent. It established bounties as high as two thousand dollars rise financial compensation for wolf hunters and trappers, amounting to an additional bounty, And like Wyoming, legalized wolf killing at any time and by virtually any means, Idaho a is earmarked just over one million dollars for wolf killing. How about that?
Wow.
Montana passed similar legislation that seeks to eradicate ninety percent of its wolves. It also implemented a de facto bounty system by compensating trappers and hunters for wolf killing expenses, and it did away with the wolf protection buffer around Yellowstone National Park. Before their nineteen ninety five reintroduction, wolves had been the only missing major element of the park's native ecosystem. Okay, so let's reintroduce that.
At it they had it, and they reintroduced them, and it's like, well, cool.
This is why you got to learn from your mistakes. It's like, why were they getting rid of them in the first place.
You know, because they were attacking people and fucking up the wildlife and their appredator. And it's like, hey, if we want a national park like you know, Yellowstone, where we want people to come and experience raw nature, you know, safely, so that they keep coming back and all, maybe we should get rid of bears and wolves and shit that
fucks with people that makes them scared to come see nature. Yes, I understand anti anti the natural order of things, but you know you want people to come to the natural parks, don't you?
Hold on?
I just I just thought of something. So there has long been a conspiracy that people are disappearing in the national parks, and whether that be by criminal organizations, maybe it's the government that is stealing people and doing weird like Nazi experiments on them or whatever the fuck. But there's also people have said that maybe you'll find some weird portals in the national parks.
I don't know.
I'm not going to get super super weird. But if you think about it, if it is if if the national parks the people that are running them are running some kind of like human trafficking or you know, polling organs from people or whatever, you introduce wolves, you could always just blame it on the wolves, then you know what I mean. So that might have been like a cover story kind of deal.
So they were reintroducing them to further cover some criminal activities that.
Were going down, I would think so.
Yeah, okay, and if that is to be true, it would make sense that the current lawmakers are incentivizing hunters to kill wolves. They're like they're third tiering fighting the crime. Okay, sure, see that too.
Well.
After twenty twenty, when the Trump administration delisted wolves everywhere save the Northern the Northern Rockies, and Alaska, where they weren't listed anyway, Wisconsin authorized killing during the breeding season. During three days in February twenty twenty one, two hundred and eighteen wolves were slaughtered.
Yeah, it's a little bit more than a little reintroduction, bro, that's a fucking problem.
Wow. I also don't feel good about wolves being hunted like that. I don't know, it's just because because they're big dogs, you know. I mean, I know that they're scary and shit, but it's like, you know, that's where the puppies come from.
I get it, But like that's like a gat.
I'm not gonna cuddle with a gat though.
You're not gonna cuddle with a fucking wolf either.
I will cuddle with its descendants.
Okay.
Yes, yes, I also like iguanas, but you don't see me cuddling with it eat.
I don't know.
After virtually extirpating wolves from the West, America briefly recognized them as a critical to or as critical to healthy ecosystems. In nineteen ninety five and ninety six, sixty six wolves were trapped in Canada for release in Yellowstone National Park in central Idaho, and arguably the greatest success story in the history of wildlife management, gray wolves reoccupied lost habitat
across the Northern Rockies. The recovery goal fifteen breeding pairs each in Idaho, Wyoming in Montana, or about four hundred and fifty wolves, was surpassed before the decades end. By twenty twenty, there were an estimated nineteen hundred, mostly in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, but ife in Oregon, Washington, California, and Colorado. In Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota there were an estimated forty two hundred, none of us.
Again, that's not a little reintroduction or even a manageable level. That's a infestation. Bro that's a problem. That's where the amount that the wolves fuck up.
That's where the Minnesota timberwolves come from. I guess maybe none of what's happening now is new or surprising. In nineteen oh five, the federal government tried biological warfare, infecting wolves with mange. Ten years later, Congress passed the law requiring their eradication from federal land. By nineteen twenty six, all wolves have been poisoned, shot, and trapped out of Yellowstone National Park, and by nineteen forty five wolves had
been essentially eliminated from the American West. All because of the fantasy that they were a major menace to livestock and a threat to big game. The States fought wolf reintroduction from the get go. For example, the Eastern Timberwolf Recovery Plan, released in quotes for discussion only in nineteen seventy five, contained not but suggestions for state sponsored research. Yet the ink was barely dry when the state fishing
game bureaucrats decried it as a federal meddling. Eastern timberwolf recovery never happened.
Okay, so real quick, this paragraph you just said all because of the fantasy that they were a major menace to livestock and a threat to big game.
How is that not a reality?
About to say they just said a fantasy? Okay, a fantasy. So why were they reintroduced to Yellowstone. Some might ask, I want everybody to keep that question on the back burner, as we just read that it was a fantasy.
Okay, this is from Vic van ballingergie I think, retired US fourst service biologist, former member of Alaska's Board of Game, and still the strongest voice opposing the state's ineffective, politically motivated war on wolves. His quote is, it doesn't matter if hunters live in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Wisconsin, or Alaska. They have the same theories about wolf predation on big game animals and the same politically powerful organizations that lobby
for broadskill wolf reduction. So wolves in Idaho and Montana and parts of Washington, Oregon, and Utah have been delisted from the ESA end Agried Species thing via a Congressional rider on a must pass budget bill. So the states assumed management. Trained wildlife professionals in Idaho and Montana said hunting and trapping regulations in the face of soaring morality mortality. Rather,
wolf populations continued to thrive and even expand. Then in twenty twenty one, newly elected Conservative legislators took over wolf management. End quotes. It says it's about making wolves. No, it's about making snowflakes, cry, remarks ed Bangs, who led wolf recovery for the Northern Rockies. Wild ass hysteria is driving public policy invent a non issue like too many wolves. Fishing game departments have been doing a good job since delisting.
Then the legislators politicized everything and made wolves a symbol of liberals and outsiders. It's eighteen fifty stuff. Let's show how much we hate wolves and the people who like them, and let's stick it to the Feds. I don't know if that's really the angle. A large element of the hunting community hates wolves too. In fact, with some notable exceptions, hunters are the main driving force in the new war on wolves. The allegation echoed by politicians is that overpopulated
wolves are devastating deer in elk. This isn't about elk, deer, livestock, or science, says a critic of wolf hunting. It's just it's just old fashioned persecution, hatred, and cruelty.
Right because wolves have never done anything to people. Ever, That's why they live in such harmony with humans all over the world.
Except they don't right yet.
In Wisconsin, grossly overpopulated whitetailed deer are destroying wildlife habitat, including their own, and Dan Ash, director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service under Obama, offers this in his quotes, elk numbers across the West are way above management objectives. I used to be proud of being a hunter. Not so proud now. Hunting has become radicalized and embedded with gun culture and wolf persecution. It's quotes hunters.
Wait, I'm sorry. I used to be proud of being a hunter. Not so proud now hunting has become radicalized and embedded with the gun culture of wolf persecution.
Uh, that is what somebody under Obama would say, I would imagine is exactly.
That is exactly what somebody would say, especially a director of the US Fish and Wildlife Services.
I have a.
Weird feeling that he probably wasn't actually a hunter, and if he was, he probably didn't eat the meat, otherwise he wouldn't say anything that he's saying right now.
But okay, you know, there is this weird thing that is actually going extinct along with other animals that we have talked about here, and it's called critical fucking thinking. Like if you're trying to survive on land as a human, or if you're somebody who wants to you would rather eat your own game meat than buy it from a store, which everybody should try at least I eventually plan on getting my hunting license and and you know, doing all
that because I don't trust what the stores are selling. Personally, why would keeping wolves around be a good idea. It's like, maybe, all right, maybe you don't want to kill them, then find a better way to trap them and move them somewhere.
You know, I absolutely agree. Uh depends on if you want to keep reading the rhetoric against hunters. We could skip ahead a little bit.
Well, hunters can have it both ways. They say they can't brag about performing the ecological function of natural predators and simultaneously demand that those are eliminated. Hunters are seeing fewer elk and deer, not because wolves have reduced populations, but because wolves have made their prey skittish. Again, Shooting from truck windows doesn't work anymore.
Livestocks pause, Holy fucking pause, No one shoots from truck windows.
First off.
Second off, if the population of elk and deer is such a problem, and you're seeing less of them.
Something's not adding up here.
We're talking about hunters that have been hunting in this land for generations that know what elk do. There, you're saying that the wolves have made it more skittish, meaning hunters can't do their function of helping the population of elk and deer that are such a problem. So you've made the problem even harder to fix. Yeah, it's sounds like shooting out of trucks doesn't work anymore. Do you think spotlight hunting is what all of us do my this.
Guy, Yeah, it's a stupid idiot rhetoric from a stupid idiot.
For the record, we hunt legally in my house. We hunt fair, thank you.
Right, there's certain times to hunt certain things, you know.
Yeah, you don't hunt at night.
Yes, I understand that it's you shine a spotlight in a deer's face. You can walk up and hit them with a nine mil I get it. We disagree with doing that. We believe in showing respect for our food, thank you. Y.
There's a certain honor for it. Yes, so it doesn't work anymore, that's funny. Livestock depredation is another make believe issue in twenty fifteen, nineteen hundred and four wolves shared the Rocky Mountain West with one point six million cattle. Wolves killed one hundred and forty eight cows or point zero one percent, and the state's compensated ranchers. This isn't about elk, deer, livestock, or science. It's just old fashioned
persecution and hatred and cruelty. They say, at this writing, the only action taken by the Abiden administration other than other than defending the Trump delisting, Like, why do we got to even talk about this shit right here? You know what I'm saying.
You're talking about them.
It's from Yale dot edu. So you understand it's going to be dripping with liberalism. But at the same time, before we show what's actually going down in Yellowstone from the locals, I wanted everybody to see what the what the narrative of why introducing apex predators that had been eradicated from this area was such a good idea because it was there was so much science, and it was it was prejudiced.
All right. So it says at this writing, the only action taken by the Biden administration has been a year long wolf status review, as if proof is required that wiping out most of the population is bad for a recovering species.
Wow, and you see right here the farmers kill wolves. Wolves smoke a pack of day like they're trying to make it seem like the wolves are horrible, and they are, and we don't want them around our livestock. Because once again, that's not a small problem. That number, by comparison, seems like a small number that it still ranchers livelihoods. When you lose a cow, you're losing like potentially ten twenty thousand dollars in some cases.
Oh yeah, the state compensates.
Oh, like the state compensated the victims of the hurricane that one time payment of seven to fifty that they had to pay back the next one alone, or that time the government helped out the victims of the Hawaiian fires, a sane thing, by the way, alone.
I mean, well, how about eminent domain. The government just loves these people so much that they're set to give them a fair price. You know what fair price is. It's about ten percent below market value according to the government.
Or don't put fucking wolves in the mountains, and these farmers don't have that problem.
It's crazy, dude, yeah, anyhow, it says the Obama administration didn't put up with this kind of behavior. For instance, so fucking stupid, I hate you, pal.
You put up with was fucking big Mike's dick. You know what I'm saying.
Oh, he put it up all right. For instance, when Alaska announced that it would shoot wolves from helicopters on nine hundred and ten thousand acres of USFWS managed wild wilderness on Unimac Island.
A she.
A, she Okay, it looks like Ash, but I don't know anyway. So Ash told them no. Alaska said it would proceed anyway. Ash said, okay, my next call is to the Justice Department, and then Alaska back down. In twenty twenty, the Trump administration reversed an Obama administration rule that banned killing of wolves and bears and their nursing young on national preserves in Alaska. That Biden administration seems
fine with that. In an op ed last week, Interior Secretary Deb Halland expressed support for wolves and alarm at current mismanagement, but she could instantly end the slaughter in the Rockies with an emergency ESA listing. The administration has another option. Most wolves are killed on land owned by all Americans and managed by the US Four Service and Bureau of Land Management. These agencies could ban hunter access by snowmobile and ATV, and the wolf slaughter would practically cease.
Hunters aren't going to walk into federal land and to shoot out a wolf, says Ash at the very list. At least the Forest Service and BLM could impose that's not the BLM, that that's a different BLM. Has to be right, I don't know.
That's why I was like scrolling, like there has to be something else in here that's gonna that that's gonna.
Make that sense.
Is that the oh, the Bureau of Land the Bureau of Okay, Oh, for the love of god, I was like, please don't tell me they have a fucking platform on this one.
So the Forest Service in BLM could impose fair chase regulations such as banning running over wolves, night hunting, and killing pups and nursing mothers and dens. Thus far silence, so frightened of political fallout in the National Park Service that it has a gagged Yellowstone biologist. Still, the park superintendent entreated Montana new Republican Governor Greg Gianforte to restore
the wolf pop protection buffer around the park. Since becoming governor last year, gian Forte has been cited for illegally trapping and shooting a wolf near the former buffer zone without completing the required trapping education program. Shally got nowhere with him. Okay, So now they're just complaining that nobody's really getting on board because most people have a little sensibility to them that you need to kill these things.
And like you ever been around a wolf. They're scary as shit, dude.
Well you're I agree, And yes, I do think they're gorgeous animals, and I do think there are places for them, you know, places where humans aren't.
I know, that's a crazy, crazy concept, the same way.
That like hippopotomi, Oh well, why wouldn't we put them in the water in Louisiana. They have a right to this land too, except like they would fuck up everything? Right, Why don't we put the mongoose on Hawaii? They would because they'll fuck up everything? And these people or like well, wolves used to live here, so why don't we put
them back here? And again, the reason why they put them back there was to cut down on elk and deer populations, and then they say that it's not about elk and deer populations, it's about wolf persecution.
Bro what.
Oh man, this is so silly. It says people come to Yellowstone to see wolves and spend money on hotels and restaurants. A dead wolf might fetch a hunter two hundred dollars.
Yellowstone is not a lot for the ery if anybody hunts and traps for hides two hundred dollars for a kill, Like, what, what was it for a fucking puppy?
Right? Right? Yeah? Uh well, it says Yellowstone had been an oasis for wolves, no longer, having encountered only tourists firing cameras park wolves don't fear humans now when they leave the park, hunters shoot them as easily as if they were pet dogs. Yellowstone used to lose two or three wolves a year to hunters and trappers. So far this winter it has lost twenty four, including breeding females. Such mortality is unsustainable.
People come to yellow soon.
God.
Oh I already read that, yeah, saying thank god, thank god that it is unsustainable.
That that's kind of the manor fucking point.
Do people really go to Yellowstone to see the wolves? I mean, I imagine it's an attraction, but is it the attraction?
I mean, you know that's a attraction, right, But you know what, let's go ahead and see as we just read about how it's wolf persecution and it is not about the wildlife. It is not Jonathan, they don't even fuck with the wildlife. According to what your boy ash head of the fucking Bureau of Land Management and the Wildlife Management all these things. Wolves aren't even making a dent in the elk and deer population. But they belong there, so they need to be there. But the reason they
were dropped was for those populations. So let's see what the uh this is a woman explore from National Geographic and again take this with all the grains of salt, ladies and gentlemen, trust me, you're gonna need it. The Tiler's wolves saved Yellowstone National Park, So let's see what they have to say about it as of now three years ago. As a matter of fact, let's.
See Yellowstone the world's first national park protected to ensure that was always wilderness, to inspire the human spirit for generations to come. It all began in nineteen ninety five when Yellowstone Park workers released thirty one gray wolves into the wild over the year and did not interfere with their lives at all. Although they expected certain changes, they certainly did not expect the cascade of environmental change it
will cause. To this day, ecologists sire astonished by the continuing wave of direction direct consequences of this step throughout the ecosystem.
The Northern Range is the hub of wildlife in Yelstone, so much of the wildlife in Yellowstone lives here. It's ten percent of the area of the park, yet half the wolves live here. It's arguably the most carnivore rich area in North America, and it's been studied a lot.
The Northern Range has been referred to as the Serengetti of North America, and that's because of the vast numbers of ungula species mostly and so when people look out, they may in one afternoon in the valley bottom of a Northern Range valley, it may see bison, elk, pronghorn, mule, deer, wolves, and bears, and all of these species interacting with each other.
Well.
The Northern Range is the northern area of the park where the Northern Yellowstone elk herd spends the winter, so it's winter range for the biggest elk herd in the park, and it's probably the densest year round wolf population at any location in North America. We roughly have thirty five to forty wolves year round in the park portion of the Northern Range, but we've been as dense as one
hundred wolves just in the northern part of Yellowstone. And we have pretty high bear densities and cougar densities as well, So we have a great mix of carnivore species and we have high density. You know, fifty years ago that was not the case.
We came into the Northern Range as Yellowstone was designated a park and changed a lot of things. So wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, bears, to some degree, we're all being removed in vast numbers.
Wolves were eliminated by people directly in the early part of the twentieth century. So what happens when you kill off the predators, Well, the prey increases to very high levels and starts to impact the environment. And by doing that, the el kurds shot up, and no one really knows how high they shot up. Twenty thirty thousand was the estimated figure, and they were degrading the environment.
But again, just real quick, it is not about dr and l cards. It's about wolf persecution, right, Just okay, make sure we're all on the same page here.
Our policy on helping restore nature's fairly clear. If humans did it will help the system get back on the right track. So what was missing were all these carnivores, and so they were not performing their ecological function. Cougars came back to also on their own through natural dispersal. We start seeing signs of that in the eighties, and
we reintroduced wolves in the mid nineties. And now that wolves and cougars have been restored and bears have increased, the news story is about what happened to all the elk and what is happening to the willow and aspen. Now that the elk have declined and these carnivores are.
Back, the willow is relied on by a lot of animals, and so it's kind of a positive feedback loop. The more willows there are, the more moose and beaver, and the healthier ecosystem because of those animals being involved too. And so beaver's are of course nature's engineers, and they'll build lodges and dams that will help raise the water tables.
Real quick.
Put a pin in that whole beaver discussion. Promise you we will be discussing it after this video, but just real quick. Apparently the wolves save the beaver population and they're seeing the results.
Put a pin in that one, and raising the water table is one of the things that the willows rely on the most. They can't deal with cut banks and swiftly moving creeks. They have to have that slow moving water.
So the smaller l cred is more natural. We're seeing a response of willow and aspen which used to be suppressed. We've got wolves and Kruger's back, we've got more bears. So Yellowstone system now is the National Parks of a success story.
I think the Northern Range is incredibly unique, not only for the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, but for the world. Protecting Yellowstone is important to just protect the species that live here, but also provide people a place to be able to see natural processes and use that throughout their life for making decisions on what they think is important.
I think a huge value of the National Parks is to instill awe of nature into people. Going out on a landscape filled with grizzly bears is not the same as you know, going to the mall and seeing wolves bring down an elk or seeing two wolfpacks clash right in front of you. Our life altering events. There's no question we are changing people's lives by having places like Yelstone. And the Northern Range is probably the heart of the park, and the parks the heart of the ecosystem. So it's
all built upon each other. But it grounds zeros the Northern Range.
All right, all right, So that's about it.
They keep stroking their own dicks a little bit as far as how there's a success story. The wolves saved the parks. Well, at least that's the story that they have been telling us, right and all these things.
So let's hear a little different perspective, shall we.
What's more important an apex predator or an ecosystem engineer. Well, up until a couple of days ago, a lot of us it was the apex predator. It's all thanks to a thing called trophic cascade, where we thought that predation from the top had heavy dramatic influences on vegetation downstream, and it was never better represented in any ecosystem than Yellowstone. We removed the wolves from Yellowstone and the ecosystem kind of fell out of whack. So just bring the wolf
back in and everything will go back to normal, right, guys. Well, it turns out it's not that simple. It might be the absence of the beaver that caused the most damage to the ecosystem. But unlike the wolf, you can't just bring the beaver back because the system is so out of whack it can't even support them. God, I love ecology.
What okay?
So there have been examples in the past, and I wish it would have brought up an article on it where the government actually was called Operation Beaver where they dropped beavers into a certain area of I want to say it was the Ozarks and they dropped them in parachutes in wooden crates and they like had dosed them up, and then once the beavers landed, they ate their way out of the crates because you know, they eat wood, and then.
They did their thing and made dams.
Actually was a successful operation of relocating beavers. But that whole thing she just said, the nature's architect and all of that, what's more important?
Right?
We just heard the Yellowstone Park Services say, oh, you could tell because look at this, Look at this growth that we see, it's trackable. It's happening with the wolves. Did it not true? Not only is that not true, it's actually worse now because the wolves have pushed the other animals that helped the environment further away.
Wow, that is very differing stories. And so they talked about Yellowstone the park people. They were talking about how bringing the wolves back was restoring a little bit more balanced but after a few years they're noticing a decline in other things.
But they were saying that it wasn't about the elks and deer, even though all the images we just saw was about wolves hunting elks and moose and all these things. The population is down, which is that's nature, It's the way it's supposed to be. The numbers have skyrocketed, they have gotten to an unmanageable level. But when people want
to do something about it, oh, it's wolf persecution. Even though once again, has the government done many things that worked out well as far as relocating animals, because I can't name many.
Most of the time people just fuck things up rather than make things better.
I think they do indeed, And let's hear Joe Rogan speak on it. He's talked about this on quite a few episodes.
I thought this was a pretty solid clip of just kind of all encompassing what we're talking about with the wolves.
They have an understanding of the carrying capacity and the resources of the land. They understand how many hunters there are. They understand how many that's how tags are allocated.
They guessing game.
Yeah, it's the way people need to understand this. It's like they've done this for a long time. These people have, you know, painstakingly researched these numbers. They know exactly what they're doing. But when it comes to this game of reintroduction of animals, the first step is they say there's a carrying capacity for the amount of wolves. This is the number. When it gets to that, we will agree
to open up a season on wolf hunting. But every time that happens, there's lawsuits, and there's lawsuits to try to stop that hunt, and then the wolves get larger and larger, and then you have larger and larger populations.
I was looking at a graph the other day where they showed.
Reintroduction of wolves to the Yellowstone the amount of elk that existed, and now the amount of wolves versus the amount of elk, they haven't understand.
Absolutely, it is completely collapse the system. The whole thing about what it was meant to do and what the whole reason for it, all that is gone by the wayside. And then well, actually before we talk about the next issue, let's talk about the wolves for just a little second. Once again, the United States government introducing a level excuse me, an animal to an area that quote unquote is indigenous to quote unquote maybe not, doesn't fucking matter.
It took decades to get rid of them from here.
You bring them back because you say it's about maintaining the populations, which is what wildlife management's all about. And now you have this problem because, like he said, and it happens all over, It happens all over.
Black bear population.
In Louisiana was considered endangered and they we could not hunt them, right, which black bears, for the record, are not predators.
They're like, they're the smallest bears, aren't they.
Well, one of I'm not sure if it's I mean Kowala bears of American bears, yeah, yeah, of North American bears, black bears are the smallest and they're vegan.
They don't attack humans unless you're fucking with their babies.
But as hunters, we have to maintain the population because once black bears get to be so dense, they start making their way into neighborhoods. They start getting people's trash, fucking up cars, fucking up property like it's a thing.
They dive into your swimming pool they can you ever see those videos? They're crazy, dude.
I mean, look, if you are cool with bears in your swimming pools, then fine, this this episode is not for you.
But for the rest of us.
Want bear skin, rugs and shit taken correctly and respectfully.
Of course that's a problem.
And so finally they've gotten to where they will lottery style give out bear tags, and that's the way it should happen. Now in Louisiana, we're not seeing any lawsuits because people here see the problem, but people.
Who don't know any better. I e.
If some sort of liberal media source decided that the black bear population in Louisiana was under attack because all these these racist redneck hunters that are just trying to kill the black bear population, and they ran that story it would become a mainstream narrative.
You see what I'm saying.
Yeah, the news articles are all about suggestion anyway. I mean, it's all just about pulling out your heart strings. And unfortunately, whenever you're pulling at heart strings, that is the opposite of the logical part of the human brain. And I think you need a little bit of both. I understand the people that care for certain animal populations and stuff like that, but ultimately, if they're becoming a nuisance, you're
re introducing a nuisance. Like yeah, I mean, I guess the elk problem is a problem, but like I don't know, maybe entice hunters to come out a little bit more.
Yes, oh, man, Like, for instance, when actually know what to talk about enticing hunters to come out a little bit more.
Let's talk now about the neutra.
Oh but I'm sorry before we even get into that too. Whenever we're talking about you know, certain predators and elk and all these animals that are like overpopulated or whatever in certain areas, when it bothers me whenever they say, well, we need to reintroduce wolves to get back to the natural way, I'm sorry, Like what planet are humans from? Because I thought it was earth. So are we not natural predators? Are we not that problem? Already?
We are the tip of the food chain. That's what separates us from the animals and all of this. So instead of enticing hunters and like, how would you entice them? How about pay them? Because in Louisiana you can get paid for neutrire tales bro wes of one year ago. They even reinstated that. So and this is another example of governments introducing an animal to an environment.
It was not supposed to happen this way.
It ran out of control, and now we're losing land every day in the Bayous and the Marshes.
Dude, that's some ugly motherfuckers too. But I just want to say, like, people think that we're we're so above animals and stuff like that, and yeah we are, but let's not forget we're also part of the animal kingdom, you know what I'm saying. It's so silly to think otherwise.
I agree, but I also disagree with bringing wolves into the picture. Like, yo, humans could handle that, like they just hunt. You could just pay us like something. But all right, so let's talk about the nutri real quick. There's only a little four minute video, and we'll talk about the next item on the addenda, the reintroduction of bears to our certain areas on the West Coast. We'll get to it, but here's an example of a situation gone wrong and examples of how we're trying to fix it.
One of the ugliest crezures you'll ever see in your.
Life, but so tasty, so tasty.
I can't eat that shit, dude, Just.
Wait, No, you could, dude. It's clean meat. They only eat fresh green vegetation. They're like a coppy bara. We call them a neutra rat because they look like a giant rat, but they're more like a well.
Like a smaller kapa bara.
Yeah, yeah, all right, let's see.
Really more about this road in that is capturing everyone's attention and what the laws really are surrounding them in Louisiana. If you're joining us with that part of the story, because a lot of questions about what you can have, what you can't have, well, you know, e.
Shirts everything all over the internet, charis. So here's some facts. Nutrient multiply fast, they eat vegetation constantly, and they aren't just lawnmowers. Cutting it back the way they eat kills the marsh and all the plants here in Louisiana. We've tried to eat and wear our way out of the overpopulation. Our experts say it doesn't taste like chicken, it takes seasoning very well, and the fore coats are very soft.
But why are they still so plentiful. Well, our nutrient experts have not seen even hand raised nutrient as calm as Newdy.
That amazed me because normally you have problems with them, and I would suggest that anybody that wants to do that be very cautious because they're wild animals, especially the males. As they age up, they're ready to breathe.
I have to say I was also very surprised we've hand raised them and wanted to use them for program. But once they get a little older, they just become hard to handle. They want to bite, and they're just more wild.
Louisiana professor doctor Bob Thomas once ran the Nature Center. He says nutria are not indigenous to Louisiana. They were brought here in the late thirties for the fur trade and escaped and the population exploded and they ate away the protective marshland and outflow canals.
The animals were burrowing into the banks. They were also burrowing up under the roadways. Well, they're be a collapse of the streets and somebody gets killed.
He was on the Neutria Control Committee in the nineties when the late Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee had a solution.
That he said, well, I can handle this with small caliber rifles. We can go out at night and we can have police officers keeping traffic away and we can pick them off one after the other. And they did and it worked very well.
The Nature Center hosted the first Neutria festivals. Chef Paul Prudom served a Nutria dish.
A National Geographic came down and did a peace on us and Olivia Newton John had a nature show out of Australia and before Paul Prudom left, he says, what can I do to serve this in my restaurant tomorrow?
But the state red meat regulations took a few years to design and interest waned, so did interest in these soft for coats. But to control the population, people make income now as bounty hunters.
When you kill the animal, you cut the tail off and you bring the tails in they give you six dollars per tail.
Ottoman Institute senior veterinarian doctor Bob McLain explains what category these rodents fit in.
Basically, the state of Louisiana. I like to say owns the wildlife, so you need permission to do that. Now, for nutrient, it's a little different because they're considered injurious wildlife. They cause a lot of damage.
Now, Doctor Thomas says, Nutria's teeth constantly grow, so they have to gnaw to control how long they get. He said, one family woke up one morning with their rescue Nutria and it had chewed off all the legs of the dining room table.
Yeah, that's a problem.
That's also a well groomed the nutrient that they're showing. That's the well groom like, kept like as pets kind of Nutria. If you see them fuckers out in the wild, my god, are they some of the most hideous because their teeth gets so long and bugging and yellow and disgusting. Their hair is all greasy and mangy, looking like they just look like a river rat. Dude.
Their coats are nice. Though their coats are very nice.
It's very comparable to beaver fur, and that's what they thought it was gonna do. They were brought here for the fur, for the fur trade, and they escaped and took to the wildlife.
And so now they're offering six dollars a tail.
Now, if we had that big of an elk and deer problem that we needed to incentivize hunters, I feel like we could do something like that rather than introduce apex predators back to areas that they've been eradicated for decades.
I don't know, right right, So this article right here, you want to start reading it.
You know, as a matter of fact, let's just play this little video three minutes long describing what that's about, and it'll make it come a little more full circle. Whereas we're talking about reintroducing wolves, reintroducing all these deadly things, you know, when I heard they're reintroducing grizzly bears to that also was a bit of a red flag. Let's listen in on the Wild Times podcast here.
The introduction of the California Golden Grizzly.
Oh wow, wait, first tell me about the Golden grizzly. What's this?
So if you look at so Kyle before you pull that up. Pull up the California state flag.
Yes, something that most people don't know.
Not insane, by the way, California Republic flag right there are literally the emblem of our state is an extinct bear that once roam through California, the golden grizzly And if you're like the photo to the right of the one that Kyle's on, they've really embellished the gold But that is our state.
That that is our flag. Yeah, and it's representative of a subspecies.
Of grizzly that only lived in California, known as the California golden grizzly bear. So it's a grizzly bear, not a brown bear that had a very light golden yellowish coat. It was expatriated in I don't know, Kyle would have to look it up. I want to say, like the twenties. Yeah, you know, people came out here for the gold rush. There were grizzly bears that are like fuck that shot them out as quickly as possible.
Right nineteen twenty two.
So they're going to reintroduce them.
Discovery So this is kind of interesting.
Look, less than seventy five years after the discovery of gold in eighteen forty eight, almost every grizzly bear in California had been tracked down and killed, and the last one being killed in nineteen twenty two.
But whatever, that's the way things were.
I'm not condoning it, okay, But most people again don't even know this. They look at the California fighting like, oh cool a bear, like they don't even know grizzly bears.
Yeah.
I don't know if Kyle's found the article or not.
Here there has somebody and I know this because it happened at UCSB managed to get some sort of permission to bring back California and grizzly bears.
So they have the DNA just from pelts and things.
No, I don't even think it's a DNA, it's it was just a subspecies. And maybe Kyle will find the answer here. But I think basically what they're gonna do is reintroduce light cinnamon colored oh wow, grizzlies into northern California and see if they can sort of bring that back.
Gotcha interesting? Very cool?
Is that what you're finding their? Kyle, do you have anything there?
Yeah?
It says the California Grizzly Research Network plans to conclude its work in twenty twenty five and in reintroduction there that's interesting. So they're gonna try and basically genetically breed these selectively selectively breed these back into this where they release like Yosemite era.
Yeah, I don't know, it'll probably it probably says here somewhere. I just sort of saw the headline that they were gonna bring grizzlies back.
It's great, dude, if we could.
Have grizzlies and wolves and all these things back in California to balance the ecosystem way more, especially for.
When none of us are here anymore.
Well, I mean, you know, everybody's like, oh, it's so dangerous, we can't do this, blah blah blah blah. They have all these things in like half the states in the United States, you know what I mean.
I think it's Sina Wyoming. They have all of it. Nobody else.
And once again, what do the people in Montana and Wyoming say about the wolves and the bears and shit.
So let's listen to what this is in Washington.
As a matter of fact, because California started this because of the Golden Bear. They were trying to bring it back, and we will read about it. But now let's talk about Washington, Oregon. Right here in Seattle, there's a whole group of local people, not you California boy, who are actually got something to say on reintroducing bears, because again, this isn't a brown bear. It's a light colored grizzly bear. Dude, it's a grizzly.
Fuck that dude. Get rid of all of them.
They're well, I think it's great. He'll balance out the ecosystem in California.
Yo.
You mean you'll let them free on your homeless population. You might actually be a little bit of a benefit, a win win, if you will.
Yeah, it's going to balance out the human population as well.
Oh my god.
So let's say Darrington locals say no to reintroducing grizzley This is Fox thirteen Seattle.
The debate of a reintroducing grizzly bears in Washington State is growing more divisive by the day.
Over in the lines are now being drawn. Fox thirteen's Lauren Donovan that with local leaders who say returning the apex predators to the North Cascades would be a dangerous mistake, at the.
End of the day, it's the federal government's decision, but folks here in Darrington, they don't want to take it lying down. At a recent public comment meeting, two hundred locals showed up to voice their opposition to the reintroduction of the grizzlies, saying, hey, Feds, we're the ones who have to deal with the bears.
Well, the number one thing I think is the danger. I mean, we're going to live right here where the bears are eventually going to be.
As Kevin ash just pointed out, the FEDS want to reintroduce grizzly bears to the North Cascades smack dab within that ninety eight hundred square miles sits.
Darrington locals argue historically the.
Bears are never here in any significant numbers on this side of the Cascades.
Kevin is among the leaders of a grassroots movement here in town to keep the humpback predators at bay. Even Mayor Dan Rinkin is backing it. He says, the ecosystem is just not ready.
When we bring back the salmon, that's the time that we can look at those other building blocks of that ecosystem that makes.
Sense of the community.
Complain livestock and game like elkin deer could suffer too.
The biggest fear is your kids, or your somebody in your family gets small, or god forbid, killed by a grizzly.
Kevin says recent headlines have left him unsettled. Not that long ago, a grizzly bear in Banff killed two experienced hikers and their dog.
They're the apex predator. They fear nothing.
Wildlife biologists Jason Knight acknowledged bringing back large carnivores into any ecosystem is a controversial move, but overall he sees it as a net positive.
There's enough havocat up there in the North Cascades.
But I think it's also going to draw a lot more people into the North Cascades too. I mean, think about how many folks go to Alaska specifically to go see grizzly bears.
Jason pointed out salmon isn't their prime target. Grizzlies are more interested in berries and roots. He also says they've got a low reproduction rate, so let's say twenty five are reintroduced, it could take at least a century for that population to hit one hundred or two hundred.
It takes years before they can breed and reproduce, and then when they have cubs like they usually perish.
Like the survival rate of cubs is very very low.
Local reporting shows north of US, in New Halem, right inside North Cascades National Park. There appears to be split reaction to this decision. If you want to give your two cents on the matter.
You've okay. So it's not about the salmon population. Yo, what did.
Grizzlies eat salmon?
I mean, I knew that they eat some roots and berries, sure, but they're not black bears do They're not vegans? They're fucking grizzly bears. Since when do bears not eat salmon? I thought that was like literally the entire point of the big salmon rush up north.
Yes the year it's like a big gathering of the bears, right.
I thought that that was as commonly understood as a bear shooting in the woods personally.
But here we have it titled what was this article? Outdoor life dot com. As many as seventy grizzly bears will be released in Washington State over the next decade. So once again, remember how he said it might take one hundred years to get twenty five bears to get to one hundred.
You know, they're starting with seventy. And do they know for sure that the bears won't do more?
Like they're scientifically factual on that, And how do you stop it if it does decide to go crazy? And like that one town is in the middle of that national park, like what, they're.
Just fucked Yeah, yeah, it sounds like it. I would definitely not be happy about this if I was living there, that's for sure, dude.
This articles written April twenty ninth of this year.
As a matter of fact, the idea is safety. It's not running for your life. Whenever you go into a gas station, No, dude.
Like a gas station, that glass is gonna stop a grizzly bro. They'll fall through it accidentally, right right.
So as many as seventy Grizzly bears will be released in Washington State over the next decade. Federal federal agencies planned relocate bears from British Columbia and the Rocky Mountains until they established an initial population of twenty five grizzlies in the North Cascades.
So definitely twenty five, but up to seventy.
The National Park Service in the US, fish and Wildlife Service released a joint Record of decision on Thursday, finalizing a grizzly bear reintroduction into the North Cascades of Washington. This move doesn't come as much of a surprise after a final Environmental Impact Statement advocated for reintroducing grizzlies as a non essential experimental population under the ten Jay rule of the Endangered Species Act in March. The bears will
be transplanted from the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia. The agencies clarify in the Record of decision the details of the reintroduction mirror the plan outlined in the final EIS. Officials were released three to seven grizzly bears a year for five to ten years, with the goal of establishing an initial population of twenty five bears. That means as few as fifteen bears and up to seventy it would be released, depending on how many reintroduced bears die or
emigrate from the area. Andrew Lavau, a public public affairs specialist for the NSFWS Washington Ecological Services Branch. He objects to the possibility that as many that as many as seventy bears could be released and reinforces that the initial population goal is only twenty five bears, not seventy.
He goes.
The three to seven bears per year figure is to allow for flexibility between years. If there are fewer bears one year, there could be up to seven the next. Bear mortalities do happen as agencies seek to as they seek to establish that initial population of twenty five. If there is a grizzly bear mortality, that bear could be replaced. The ROD also describes a contingency plan for bear mortality that estimates some thirty six bears could be released to
establish the population of twenty five. That makes sense, You're okay.
Basically say that, like, if we drop in thirty six, natural causes will probably take out eleven of them. So you're gonna lose almost a third of your population just on accident, just on oop siez bro.
Based on the projected range of mortality and immigration rates for bears released into the NCE, the analysis assumes that an additional eleven bears would need to be released in the NCE for a total of thirty six bears in the primary phase. Each of these alternatives is anticipated to result in a population of two hundred bears within approximately sixty to one hundred years. There is currently no timeline
for when these translocations will begin. According to the NPS, the US portion of the North Cascades Recovery Zone is some ninety eight hundred square miles in size, which the NPS points out is larger than the state of New Jersey. The ten J designation is a popular tool in predator reintroductions across the West, as these reintroductions put more pressure on nearby livestock growers and rural rural I hate that word,
rural residents to protect themselves and their livelihoods. The ten J rule adds flexibility to how these predators are managed. Rather than giving the reintroduced grizzly bears all the protections of an endangered species and in and in turn making any harassment or use of lethal force against the bears illegal. Both lethal and non lethal methods of deterrence are on the table for ranchers and times of emergencies under the ten This is also the case for Colorado's reintroduced wolves.
For example, Okay, okay, right, I mean they're saying that basically this is gonna go down whether they like it or not, and so this article has just kind of giving people a good grasp on the situation.
You can pick up right here.
Grizzly bears once occupied the North Cascades for millennia before getting wiped out the area in the late nineteen nineties. The last confirmed grizzly sighting was in nineteen ninety six. According to NBS, about eighty five percent of the region in federal or is federal land, including North Cascades National Park, which is over five hundred and four thousand acres in size. The North Cascades region is one of six formal grizzly
bear recovery zones. Two other zones, the Northern Continental Divide and the Greater Yellowstone ecosystems, are home to robust grizzly bear populations that are expanding beyond their zone boundaries. Agencies are also currently considering a reintroduction in the Bitter Root ecosystem of Montana and Idaho. The other two recovery zones, the Selkirk and Cabinet Yak's ecosystems, are both home to roughly forty to fifty bears.
Okay, so here we have a clarification was made on April thirtieth, twenty twenty four real quick, just as I think that's the end of the article.
Yeah, it says.
A previous version of this article was vague in addressing the differences between total number of bears released and the initial bear popular population goal. It has been updated clarify that while the initial North Cascade Grizzly population goal is twenty five bears, more than twenty five bears might be released over the next decade to achieve that goal. Okay, so we already have this going on this year. They
are absolutely releasing bears into the wild. They are just saying, look, us to balance out the ecosystems, rather than like, all right, what portion of that ecosystem are you trying to balance out?
Is there another way to balance that out?
Rather than introducing predators back to areas where humans now live. They don't think about that. They just say, go, go, go, And we have a long history. You can go all the way back to the Hawaiian Islands, you can go to the Louisiana Bayous, you can go to the Florida Everglades, you can go to California, you can go to Yellowstone.
All over this country.
There are so many examples of them trying to fuck with mother nature for one of a few different reasons, a few different means. I think this one, though, bro is to make people scared of going to national parks, keep people afraid of going outdoors. It's not to stop hunting. Hunters are carrying weapons, and all of us have dreamt of the opportunity, right, I mean, that is what it is.
It's honestly to keep people from going camping and going fishing because you never know what you'll see out there. There's beers in those woods. That has been a joke for the longest time. No, it's not a joke anymore.
It sounds like it's probably a little bit of everything. I think that there's probably some people with a few more brain cells to rub together that are looking at it for the benefits of some kind of control of the people and control of what goes on inside the wild,
inside the national parks and stuff like that. But it's like, you know, because I'm sure that there are some people in there that you know, deeply just care about animals, and they're like, well, we need to get back to the natural ways, and you know, we took this land from them, And so you have those people with the heart I understand that, But then there's also like, yeah, I mean, we'll see how.
That brainpower to it. Then feeling though, brother, there's.
Got to be logic, right, Well, that's my point is that sometimes logic takes time for certain people. And for these people who are going to be experiencing probably a lot of bear attacks, a lot of wolf attacks, they'll see that one heavily outweighs the other whenever it comes to reintroduction or non reintroduction.
I see this as another example of your boy Jeff Goldbloom, as he once said, so you were so occupied with the thought of if you could that you never stopped to ask.
If you should Jurassic Park. Yes, yes, saying yes.
Saying this is it's happening before our eyes. Ladies and gentlemen, and to all the good cult members out there, you know, we are keeping you in the loop of what the government is doing behind closed doors out there in the public.
It doesn't matter.
We're importing on it, and we are making sure that all of you are aware of what's going on.
That's actually a really good point, dude, because let's I mean, you were really really worried about the land and the ecosystem. Let's just bring back fucking dinosaurs. Let's let's bring back dragons.
I mean, who cares.
They want to charcoal some things from time to time.
They got to eat.
You know, why are we living in an air conditioned home with free on a chemical that was made in a plant. Bro We got to go back to living in caves and mud huts or driving our cars with alleged liquid exploding dinosaurs in the tank. Like, no, no, no, we uhuh, we're we're living improperly.
Maybe the Amish do have it right.
Well, yeah, maybe we ought to reintroduce ourselves back to the ecosystem. See if that works out.
Just bury ourselves, you know, ashes the ashes dust to dust, and just let the earth take us back cycle of life.
Right, I mean, go out into the woods with with no weapons and in these heavily you know, wolf populations and the grizzly bear populations, go out there, reintroduce yourself. The bears and the wolves aren't gonna starve there. They will thrive off of your meat. And you know, we'll see if you care about it that much.
You know, it's people make shit their problem. That has not anything to do with any of their problem. But it's like virtue signaling.
And like I said, good cult members, that's what we do here.
We shine a light on those things that might just go overlooked, missed, if you will.
And we bring it to your attention.
And if you liked this episode, dear cult members, if you thought it was entertaining, you thought it was informative, you got something you want to add to it. Please at this time, hit the five stars, hit the share the likes, describe to comment, leave a post, leave review, shares with the friends of family, shares everywhere.
Here's the deal. The more activity the algorithm.
Sets across all of our listening platforms, the more we get promoted to more potential listeners who could then become potential cult members like the rest of you.
Finallyies and gentlemen.
While you're at it and you're in the giving mood of the five stars and the reviews, go check out Meta Mysteries Jonathan's other channel and give him all the love and the reviews as well.
Go check out the YouTube channel Cajun Night.
We will be dropping the video vlog of our experiences at Brohemian Groove this week.
Go check me out.
Give the subscribes, the likes and all the things we thank you for.
Everybody's already gone and done so.
And by the way, over on Meta Mysteries, me Sean and Electro Nick just shot a whole episode on my DMT experience. If that's something you're interested in listening to, maybe you're thinking about trying it, you might want to listen to that first. I know I am but one man, but I mean, hey, sometimes I feel like a lot of people only ever hear about the good DMT experiences, and you don't hear about the bad ones. So if that's something that strikes your fancy a little bit, then
go check it out over on Meta Mysteries. But anyway, with all of that being said, this was another beautiful episode of the Cult of Conspiracy. And my name's Jonathan, I'm Jake, and there's one very important and surely final piece of information we need you to learn just as soon as humanly possible.
I'll bead off that are.
Shot.
So hey, cult members, Jacob here just want to ask who wants better sex? The best way to get started is to go to Adam and Eve dot com. Right now, abim eve is offering fifty percent off just about any item, but that's not all. When you get one item, they will also send three bonus sexy items and six free movies. They offered a screen shipping as your privacy is a priority, plus free shipping on your entire order. Doesn't matter how much you spend or what you buy.
All we packaged and sent discreetly for free.
That's fifty percent off one item and ten free gifts to boot bring more pleasure and satisfaction into your bedroom. Just go to Adam and Eve dot com and select any one item. It could be an adventurous new toy or anything you desire. Just enter the offer code Cult at checkout and you'll get fifty percent off almost any item, plus ten free gifts, three bonus items, six free movies, and free shipping.
Use the offer code CULT that see Ult at Adammani dot com.
Now this is an exclusive ofll for specific to this podcast, so be sure to use this code to get you not just the discount and the free goodies, but also the one hundred percent free shipping with the code Cult