American, never let foreigners shame you about how we protect our wildlife. Americans invented the field of wildlife biology (Aldo Leopold) integrating biology, ecology, and management. We were the first to create a national university system (starting with the University of Wisconsin’s program) to systematize the discipline of wildlife biology and grow our impact across species and systems. This professionalized wildlife science and management worldwide. Americans created the world’s first national parks establishing the idea of setting aside public land for wildlife and recreation. Our model is emulated globally. I have half a dozen senior fish and wildlife professionals at any given time that come to study with us to learn how we do it and bring what we know back home. Americans invented the idea of wildlife as a public trust (you own all of our wildlife, not a lord or a private land owner like in much of the old world). We passed laws to require rigorous science based management to inform hunting seasons. We saw the early errors of our ways and ended commercial game markets that decimated our big game. We invented the “user pays” system where hunters and anglers fund conservation via licenses and excise taxes on guns and ammo to the tune of $50 billion since our programs began. All of these innovations enabled the most dramatic and remarkable wildlife population recoveries on record. Bison, reduced to ~1000 now number half a million thanks to public land, science, and management. White tailed deer were nearly eliminated by 1900 now see numbers greater than 30 million. Wild turkey, my favorite example of a major conservation innovation in our trap and transfer programs (paid for by hunters) recovered spectacularly. Elk, beaver, birds of prey, pronghorn, the list goes on and on. America has also done more than any other nation in human history to fund global wildlife conservation as well. Billions of taxpayer dollars sent to Africa, LatAm, and Asia to protect wildlife and train local scientists, a largely thankless gift from the US taxpayer. Saying that our wildlife has been “exterminated” is just an insane and ignorant claim to make but don’t let that stop you from weighing in on our affairs!

The new duck stamp, mandatory for American waterfowl hunters to purchase, sends $40 million to protect or purchase wetland habitat for ducks. This “user pays” system is a uniquely American invention where hunters and anglers pay for most wildlife conservation activities. It’s called the North American model. This stamp features a type of arctic sea duck (a long tailed duck) that breeds on tundra lakes, spend much of its year in cold marine waters, and spends its winters on the ice floes etc. Similar to whales and dolphins, they have countercurrent exchange, which means warm blood going out to a duck foot (or whale flipper) runs next to cold blood coming back in, allowing the heat to transfer internally rather than be lost to the water. That keeps their duck feet from freezing. They are in Arctic waters for hours at a time. They use sea ice as wind breaks or hunting platforms. They have three plumages every year and is one of the deepest diving ducks (200 ft). Its call is referred to as a yodel. Even if you don’t hunt, you should buy one. 98% of funds go to habitat purchase directly.

If Donny From Queens solves corner crossing in the West, something that even Montana FWP director Christy Clark is screwing public land hunters and anglers on, we should build him a statue at Buffalo Bill’s Pahaska teepee as he’s a true hero of the west. His hunting and fishing executive order told the Secretaries of interior and ag to propose within 180 days changes to policies that restrict access to public land. It says they need to unlock checkerboard (via rules?) and landlocked parcels via voluntary easements. Many are saying this is signaling language for rules to allow access from public corner to corner. The order sets a “presumption of accessibility.” Meaning federal public is open unless specifically closed for a reason. It’s sort of funny that Wyoming and the 10th circuit figured out corner crossing before Montana, and that an NYC developer needed to come here and slap some people around to get us to figure it out. Steve Rinella recently said the Trump admin offers “nothing” on public land (on the Eric Odell wolf interview episode which was very good), will this change his tune? Hand up, I never expected Trump to sort corner crossing for us. Whoever did this, thank you.

There’s a very famous Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzly (these are the griz near Glacier NP) she’s known as “Lakeside Female” who was collared in the 2010s who basically was the first to show us that water crossings were part of grizzly territory. She kept returning the the west shore of Flathead Lake and they moved her to get her to stop but she’d keep coming back, and they even observed her doing water crossings as long as 7 miles or so lasting 8-12 hours before realizing this is ackshully part of their territory map in their heads. So effectively she had this big body of water in her territory and she’d just cross it so she could use both sides to look for food. This was back when collaring tech was much less advanced than it was today with GPS pinging once every 4 hours so if you talk to the people that discovered “water crossing as territory” science, they’ll be like “yeah we thought that was wrong or wonky.” Swimming might be increasing right now as they try and put on pounds during hyperphagia before they go hibernate.

If you’ve ever had the privilege to dive around giant mantas, they show really remarkable curiosity about humans. They come right up to divers, they’ll circle you for a long time, they’ll make eye contact with you, like you’ll literally look into their eyes and see something there. They’ll keep eye contact while they circle around you. They have the largest brains of any fish and have enlarged regions of their brains linked to sensory processing, memory, and maybe complex behaviors (we don’t know very much about this, there’s still so much out there for young scientists to discover). We have some data from captive mantas that show they spend a lot of time looking in the mirror vs blank walls, blowing bubbles at their reflections, etc. We think they recognize themselves in mirrors, but like I said, still a lot of science to do. Sometimes when you’re diving, they’ll circle you, making eye contact, leave for a few minutes and come back.

Coast redwoods have a lot of tannins and other extractives. Extractives are leftover chemicals in wood that aren’t part of the structural stuff like cellulose. They are things like resins, oils, fats, waxes, sugars. It’s probably what the ents were brewing when they were giving Merry and Pippin Ent Draught, no doubt. But since coast redwoods have lots of tannins and extractives, they’re quite rot resistant. So an old growth log can lay on the forest floor for decades and not rot, and you can still mill it. Most American old growth redwood on private was cut during the post WW2 housing boom. Another really famous salvage was the 1800s Big River Salvage near Mendocino where all these old growth logs were pulled out of the mud. They still had their axe cut ends from before we had circular saws. Second growth redwood is logged all the time, but you cannot commercially log remaining ancient trees as it’s mostly in parks or on private land.

Sir this work of art/nasheed just came across my desk. Remember that the libtard journos at Wired (or whatever magazine they’re wearing the skin suit of now) want to ban these kids on these burners who are the funniest thing going on on this website:

Imagine showing up to the duck blind with your Da Vinci over under. Da Vinci was a duck autist who studied and described bird flight, with the contrasted wing beat of duck flight compared to other species in his journals. He’d have loved TETRA Customshield technology. This gun belongs on an airboat in South Texas or Nebraska.

The aspens are yellow, the air is cool after a hot summer, and the elk are battling over their harems cows. You really don’t see this very often in rut related elk combat. Antler tines are built to interlock and absorb shock, not to act like spears. Since the Estes Park elk are urban adapted elk that hang out on the golf course, the outcomes of the bull fights are more visible. He’ll survive this, their necks have thick hide and dense muscle.

Kind of curious why this was animal control doing this and not California Department of Fish and Wildlife where the actual knowledge and skills are concentrated on immobilization, drugs, mountain lion behavior, and so on. This short video looks like a missed dart on an open residential street during a standoff with tons of people around stressing it out. No bueno. This is just a displaced male looking for territory he’d have moved on on his own without the nose tackle animal control lady blocking his way.

Really nice to see the admin courting hunters and anglers with these executive orders. The presumption that land is open (hunting, shooting sports, and fishing allowed) is a major access shift from what it was before (closed unless we write a rule to open it). Many of these types of restrictions are made by anti hunter extremists and in many cases nobody can explain why they exist or remember who made them. The other good thing is attention to checkerboard and landlocked parcels. Prioritizing voluntary easements is great, that’s a hunter friendly option…although what would be better is saying legal corner crossing is the law of the land. On the land swaps front, we need a lot of caution on that. Land swaps need very close public review because they are permanent and easy to dress up as a win and hide what we lose. Agencies trade federal public acres for private acres of “equal value.” Value is an appraisal number, not meaningful things to us like elk days or access to a trailhead where we know there’s tons of mule deer or native trout. The public can give up accessible, productive ground and receive more acres of high, steep, isolated country. Once the deal closes, the former public parcel can be gated or developed. Proponents often initiate the swap and have more lawyers and better appraisers than local hunters do, local hunters might not be in the loop until it’s already happened. My nutcase conspiracy theory is AI will be proposed as an expedited bundling tool to identify access packages for swaps like this with limited local input and not very much attention paid to things that matter a lot to us (are there elk there?). What to look for when a swap or “access package” is proposed: >Maps of what leaves public ownership and what comes in. Overlay your OnX hunt units, look at winter range, wallows, saddles, and existing roads or trails (not just ownership colors and numbers, where are the elk/deer/trout). You can just cold email land grant faculty to help you do this, many will. Especially your USGS coop. >Whether the public keeps the low, huntable ground and the current access point, or only gains high rocks and ice. >Who appraised both sides, the date of the appraisal, and whether comparable sales were similar hunting land or resort/development land. >The exact access that replaces what is lost: year-round or seasonal, legal on the deed, parked where?, and who can use it. >Public comment period, objection process, and whether the environmental review actually analyzed hunting use, not just acre totals for vague “recreation.” >What happens after closing: can the new private owner close historic routes that people have used for decades? >who is making sure the swap beneficiaries deliver on what they promise? A swap near me promised to building access point infrastructure for anglers and is reneging because they’re now saying there’s too many anglers on that stretch of river. The local BLM office has one old man working there as they can’t hire anyone so they’re getting away with it. A voluntary easement that puts a recorded route on the ground is usually the hunter-friendly first option. A swap can still make sense when both sides consolidate messy checkerboard and the public keeps the better hunting ground. Treat every swap as a trade of specific places rather than a headline about how we are getting “more public access.”

People outside of the field of wildlife are pretty surprised by the idea that species can just hide in plain sight like this. Scientists know of around 40 or so living wild cats (I work on some of these in international contexts) and the last new species were named in the 1920s or thereabouts. This particular cat in Bolivia looks so much like other cats (like the so-called “tiger cats”) but thanks to advances in genetics we can tell it split off from tiger cats (not tigers, tiger cats) 1.4 million years ago. So that visual similarity plus the need for cheap and advanced genetics studies is why many people can lay eyes on a cat like this but it only “becomes a new species” when we have that genetic confirmation. The other thing about the leopardus group, they’re what we call “cryptic species” they occupy overlapping habitats, look almost identical to one another to the untrained eye, and were lumped together by someone working on specimens in a museum some time ago. Whole genome sequencing getting faster and cheaper will reveal more of these. We are describing something like 16,000 new species a year (faster than ever in the history of taxonomy) mostly insects and fungus. New mammals, especially charismatic mammals are rarer and more buzz worthy. I’d die for this cat.

The congressional delegation for the state of Utah and the Department of Education should go ahead and make sure that the @UUtah University of Utah investigates this very serious alleged privacy breach. The university is able to see who logged in on Banner (and similar information systems) and who accessed the UU College Republicans’ schedules on this system via very normal audit logs that go back many years. If it turns out this student, Shaiban Khan, did access their private schedule to harass them with political protests, this is a breach of possibly the most important federal law that governs campus activities, FERPA. I can’t even tell a kid’s parent if they’re going to class under FERPA even if the parent pays the tuition bill. It’s extremely serious, and well enforced. The misuse of that private information via the school’s internal information system would violate internal university policies and FERPA both. I think the whole weight of the federal administrative state should come down on U of U to make sure this wasn’t the case. This is of national interest as, remember, the College Republicans were merely tabling on campus when a deranged young lady presented them with a cake to celebrate the Charlie Kirk assassination. Nowhere in any of this are the cake girl or her leftist friends being held accountable by the admin for breaking university rules (which no doubt would ban a sombrero on Halloween) but somehow the College Republicans are. Are student groups for conservative interests defacto banned thanks to hostile administrators and their kangaroo courts looking the other way when students they agree with politically violate all the hypersensitive norms they themselves have been pushing for years? Are FERPA violations fine so long as you’re a leftist protester?

If I were the @EDSecMcMahon I’d be really curious as to why the @UUtah Dean of Students office tried to use a closed-door, opaque, administrative process to expel these College Republicans after a fellow UU student hand delivered them a deranged cake celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk? Was the cake-bearing student also called in for a disciplinary hearing? These are also things I’d want to ask the Dean of Students leadership if I were the congressional delegation for the state of Utah as this is a public flagship R1. @SenJohnCurtis @SenMikeLee @RepBlakeMoore @RepMaloyUtah @RepMikeKennedy @RepBurgessOwens why not summon the Dean of Students and all their staff to answer these questions bright and early Friday morning? We all know what’s happening here. Bureaucrats who graduate from radical EdD programs use their opaque powers to walk right up to the line of forbidding conservative student groups on campus. They were harassing and threatening these students for posting a picture of a deranged cake celebrating a political assassination.

Here are the names and faces of the bureaucrats at the University of Utah that are looking to intimidate and possibly expel two students for merely posting a photo of a deranged-fellow-student who made a cake to celebrate and mock the death of Charlie Kirk. Notice making the cake, a deranged and strange act, isn’t resulting in any star chamber kangaroo court discipline, just showing the world it happened with a photo that the cake girl posed for in public. Jason Ramirez has a masters in education from Illinois State. The other two don’t have public CVs. Our country’s education colleges crank out these types of leftist bureaucrats who make it their business to walk right up to the line of banning conservative student groups on campus. They make the process the punishment. They know that University of Utah Policy 6-400/Procedure P6-400A and Utah Code § 53H-7-703 (so university policies and state law) says students can attend these disciplinary meetings with a lawyer. Do they inform the students that they’re summoning? Of course not. They get off on the power imbalance and using the opaque authority of their office to attempt to wreck young lives. Imagining studying while all of this is going on. Utah’s congressmen should have these bureaucrats report to their DC office at 9 am tomorrow in the same way that they’re pestering these kids.

The tags they’re using on these bees weigh as much as a grain of rice. This type of technology has advanced so fast in recent years, earlier active radio tags could only be used on the largest insects. They have no battery, and are powered by tiny solar panels. It also transmits a unique digital ID on 2.4 GHz around once a second so you can pick it up on handheld receivers, phones, etc. it doesn’t interfere with flight or forage. Landscape scale bee tracking is now possible, I mean data on 14 mile (!) days was unimaginable with the Dino tech we had when I was in grad school.