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Well, so this is Conservation and Science Podcast, where we take a deep dive into topics
of ecology, conservation and human-wildlife interactions.

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And I'm Tomasz Serafinski and I always try to bring you diverse perspectives on every
environmental story, which means that sometimes on this podcast you may hear voices and

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opinions that you're not necessarily agreeing with.

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And that's okay, because this is how the progress is made.

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And I'm doing that because I think we need more communication and understanding and less

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fighting and division general in life not only in conservation, but we dealing with
conservation here and today we're gonna drive right into one of the hotly contested

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subjects, which is coexistence of large carnivores and existence with them and Our guest
is once again, Johnny Hanson Johnny.

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Welcome back to the show.

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Thank you so much.

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Sorry.

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It's great to be back on

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The show, know, of all the podcasts that I have been on since I was last on this one,
yours is definitely the most recent one.

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Johnny previously was on the episode 185.

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So if you listen to this one, you can go back and listen to the previous episode if you
want more large carnivore goodness.

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What episode is this, What are we on now?

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This one.

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This one?

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I think it is going to be 190.

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six maybe seven.

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Wow.

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Yeah.

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You know, I'm recording that well in advance to release.

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So it's a tricky question.

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It's a tricky question.

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It's going to be at the 200 mark.

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Congratulations.

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It's going to be a big one.

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200.

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Yeah.

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I'm gearing up to record, do something special for this.

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So anyway, like we spoke the last time, Johnny, you have a book out and folks who are
watching this.

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not only listening, here's the cover of the book titled Living with Links and by the way,
if you're watching this, you can watch it on YouTube and Spotify also on Spotify and if

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you're listening, if you're only listening to this you're not gonna lose much you're just
not gonna see our handsome faces talking and the cover of the book Johnny, I gotta start

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with like what's up with the title?

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Living with links, but the book is about so much more than just links.

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Well, firstly, everybody loves a bit of alliteration.

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So living with links just has a nice ring to it.

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Secondly, we had actually previously called the book coexistence, but some of the feedback
we were getting was that that term, which we had actually put a definition off inside the

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front page.

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I suppose if you feel you need to define something, you're assuming people won't
understand it.

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So the consensus was it was maybe a bit too technical.

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And coexistence is about living with Lynx.

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It's about sharing landscapes with big cats, wolves and bears.

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So we wanted to make the book title a bit more what it's doing, what it says on the tin
kind of thing.

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But you're right.

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It's about multiple species.

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It's about sharing landscapes with large carnivores.

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It's also about sharing landscapes with each other, which is what you've just said in the
introduction to this podcast.

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But in practical terms, Lynx are the most likely species to be reintroduced, certainly to
Britain.

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probably to Ireland, although whether that's a reintroduction is something we'll probably
discuss later.

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And as recent events have shown in this year, the topic has moved from something that's
theoretical to something that's on the ground.

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And I'm talking about the illegal release of, of Lynx in Scotland.

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So this topic is, it's alive and kicking, Tommy.

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It's alive and kicking.

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Yeah.

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That was a good mess with this Lynx released.

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You could say that.

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Johnny, I just want to start with helping the listeners to imagine a little bit what's
going on in the book.

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You're describing your visit to the place where Last Wolf was shot in Ireland.

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Tell us, how was it?

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there any special about this visit?

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How did you feel being in that place that the Last Wolf was there in Ireland?

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Yeah, so I live

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quite close to the Glens of Antrim and the Glens of Antrim is one of the sites that is
proposed for the last wolf in Ulster, I would say.

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So the last wolf in Ireland, is therefore the last large carnivore in Britain or Ireland,
actually in County Carlo in 1786.

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But around 1712, records would tell us the last wolf in Ulster was shot in the Glens of
Antrim on the Garham Plateau.

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And that's somewhere where I walk regularly.

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I skipped to those mountains.

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And those hills as often as I can.

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And I begin and I finish the book there because it's a very poignant place to think in
geological and evolutionary terms.

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That is only the blink of an eye.

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It is but the blink of an eye.

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And yet much has changed since 1712.

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So much has changed.

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The world has changed and this island, these islands have changed.

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But it seemed like an appropriate place to start and end my journey as I think.

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and help us to think through the book, this topic of should we have species like this back
amongst us?

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Yeah, I think this is in general that the timeframes that we as humans operate on are here
I say incompatible with timeframes that nature operates on.

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That's part of the problem, isn't it?

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It is.

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then you had said political times,

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time for which is at warp speed.

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They say a week is a long time in politics.

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At the moment in global politics, it seems like 24 hours, everything can change.

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So yeah, there's all these different timescales, the evolutionary, the cultural, the
political.

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There's a lot of, a lot of different overlapping timescales.

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And just in general, think we as people struggle with change and particularly this change,
proposed change of, of bringing back these species, it dredges up from our psyche.

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deep in our, I think, our subconscious, all of these old instincts that we maybe can't
even quantify or even qualify with science or anything else.

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So talk about that in the book, but certainly it brings up history as well.

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All these layers of history, particularly in Ireland, where we lived alongside wolves and
they're such a part of our culture compared to say England or Wales.

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for sure.

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Listen, your background is both in farming and in conservation.

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Some say that this is, you know, seemingly conflicting passions, whether they're
conflicted or not, you can elaborate in a second, but I'm just wondering how these,

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having, you know, uh, foot in both camps shaped your way, shaped the way you wrote the
book and, know, how does it make it special?

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And it's just a long way of asking like, why did you wrote that book?

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Well, those two passions.

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which are sometimes complimentary and sometimes are contradictory and possibly at times
are in conflict have not just shaped this book, but they've shaped my whole life.

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And the book, which is semi-autobiographical in that it's my story of wrestling with these
twin passions.

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And also as I became a professional and a researcher and a practitioner, twin parts of my
professional life.

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The book really unpacks that in relation to large carnival coexistence across the world.

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And then especially in relation to Britain and Ireland.

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And I drew on a couple of things, especially the ship that one was growing up partly in
Malawi.

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before I lived in rural County Monaghan all of the nineties, but in the late eighties as
an infant and then through all of through the noughties as a teenager, I lived in Malawi

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in Southern Africa and

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Went from seeing charismatic megafauna, to use that phrase, on the Siddalbrit screen and
in National Geographic, to actually seeing it in real life.

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And not just in the national parks, places we define as wild, but on the edges of the
city, was, Blantyre was one of the fastest growing cities in the world at the time.

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And yet on the edge of the cities, we had forest reserves with, there was a clan of a
hundred hyena, leopards, population of leopard, bush pig, baboons, all sorts of things.

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But then.

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in our garden, chameleons, the snake in my school bag at one point.

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it was bursting at the seams of wildlife and it lived amongst us.

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It didn't just live over there far away and that stayed with me.

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But what I also realized and developed from that, which has carried through into what I do
now with this book, is that I became aware as I became an adult that my interaction with

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these animals living a relatively affluent urban existence was different from say someone
who

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was living in a rural area who depended on maize, maize monoculture, monocropping to feed
their families.

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And the herd of aloans would come through and they'd just wipe out an entire family's
entire village's crop of maize in a single night.

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The elephant or whatever the species might be is the same, but our perspectives were
different and our perspectives depended on how close we lived to the land, how much skin

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we had in the game, how much risk.

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And what that for me then carried through into my

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research with snow leopards in Nepal was understanding farmers' perspectives in snow
leopards, understanding the impacts on farming communities from snow leopards in terms of

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eating livestock, but also the opportunities from things like tourism.

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And then I went into running Northern Ireland's first community-owned farm.

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So bringing that to this topic, I put everything through the lens, two lenses.

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One is the lens of my training as an environmental social scientist where I

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deconstruct ideas and then I put them back together and I interrogate ideas.

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That's what I'm trained to do.

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But also I put it through the lens of having run a small farm, trying to balance
conservation and agriculture and doing it on marginal ground, coping with the cascading

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demands of market state and society simultaneously.

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And so every aspect of what I say and think about, I don't just consider does that work?

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scientifically and theoretically and what did the academic paper say?

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But I also remember when I ran that farm and I said to myself, how would that have worked
for my daily routine?

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How would that have worked for the profitability of what was a social enterprise, but even
so margins were tight?

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And how would that have worked for my way of life, me and my family?

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And the book tries to look at it through this lens, conservation and agriculture, the
practical and the theoretical.

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and bring it all together because there is no way anywhere in the world that we can have
flourishing populations of large carnivores without also sharing landscapes with people

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and people who often have livestock.

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So this is a question.

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It's a circle that has to be squared, Tommy.

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There's no way avoiding it, whether we're talking about Nepal, Malawi or the Island of
Ireland.

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know, this is, this is actually leads me to, to ask you about

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What are in your view and with your expertise, experience, what are the differences
between perception of large carnivores, between people who are living in the rural areas

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and people who are maybe not, you know, bearing the brunt of the inconvenience of having
wolves or bears or whatever on the, on the landscape.

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And I don't want to go into this, like, you know, like a urban rural.

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rural divide trope, but there is a little bit, a little bit of it there, right?

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There is, and it can become, as you say, this very binary black and white division.

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think it's actually much more complex because you could have someone working in the city,
skipping to the country, nice fancy house and their livelihood not dependent on the land

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who says, absolutely, I'd love to have links, wolves and brown bears back because it's no
skin off my nose.

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It's not going to affect my

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way of life.

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as with this, as with this topic in general, there is, there is nuance and complexity.

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And I always like to see things in terms of spectrums or continuums instead of these
binary dichotomies.

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But in general, a couple of examples would say that there often is some division or
difference.

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One example of that would be from Colorado where wolves have been reintroduced recently.

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And that was because of a citizens ballot initiative on the

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topic in 2020 and the vote was very narrow.

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I mean, was tighter than Brexit.

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So it was 50.5 to whatever, 49.5, really, really very close.

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And almost all of the votes in favor came from the Denver metropolitan area and the rest
of the state geographically.

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I mean, there's this tiny patch that was pro pretty much the rest of the state was anti
within that obviously a mixture of perspectives, but

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That has then resulted when in some contention about how that actually has worked out the
planning court, because those who voted for it are not those who are going to be living

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for it.

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And when I went to Western Colorado and I talked to an anonymous rancher off the record
and that was his concern, said, I didn't vote for this, but I'm going to have to live with

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it.

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My cattle, my neighbor's sheep.

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And so there is that division that can lead to tensions.

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then once politicians

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get involved because these animals are political animals, those are opportunities for
politicians of any stripe to exploit.

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In these islands, there's a bit of recent and distant work from Scotland.

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There was, think, a study done in the nineties about wolf reintroductions and those who
live closer to the proposed reintroduction site were much less keen than people who didn't

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live close to the reintroduction site.

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Having said that, studies from Scotland have said that

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Well, these are polls.

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So with polls, not quite as rigorous as an academic study for various reasons, but the
links to Scotland folks using this poll were saying, actually, there isn't a big

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difference between rural and urbanite.

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Just one last example, which is really interesting, thinking about a European context that
in a year and a bit ago, there was a survey of 10,000 Europeans across, I think, 10

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European countries.

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And generally,

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Those were rural Europeans and they were generally keen on having large carnivores.

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But one of the things that stuck out to me from that was when they were asked, what is the
primary means by which you get knowledge and information about large carnivores?

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It was documentaries.

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And this is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, but when I think back over all the
documentaries that I was raised on, particularly David Attenborough, who is such an

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inspiring individual, I'm sure he's inspired many of us, including many people listening
to this podcast or watching it.

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But so many of the stories, the large carnivores are over there and the people are over
there and you never see them connecting.

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Maybe a scientist, maybe a conservationist, but you don't see this messy complexity where
you have large carnivores in rural and agrarian landscapes where we are with our people.

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And so when wolves return to those landscapes, either conceptually and theoretically in
these islands or somewhere like the Netherlands, where in a country

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Half the size of Ireland was three times the population.

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have hundred wolves in 11 packs and 40 plus wolf pups were born last year.

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And when they show up there, the people I talked to said, these animals don't belong here.

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And that is partly because the stories we have been fed on coexistence separate us from
the landscapes where large carnivores are present.

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And so we need stories.

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And that's again why I've written this book to help us understand what sharing landscapes
actually looks like.

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Exactly.

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And you know, like you said, like people who are just, you know, like they call it city
refugees who bought a house and they're in the rural areas.

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I think, I think there's also this, it's not going to affect me, but when the wolf will
snatch his little dog, that's when the attitude will change.

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And the other thing I want to say is like,

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With Colorado, I was actually on a podcast as a guest and we were talking, it was a
podcast in the US.

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We were talking about the Colorado and the host of the podcast, he's a hunter and
obviously, you know, we talked about the introduction Colorado and what you mentioned is

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like, because the urban areas tends to concentrate people, then when you're doing a vote,

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It's like this proportional amount of votes goes from the very tiny compared to the whole
state geographical area.

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And, and, you know, and then I remember like, is it, I don't think it's a good idea to put
those things into votes.

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a democratic thing.

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It shouldn't be like that.

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What you think?

203
00:17:28,313 --> 00:17:34,213
well, part of the reason I went to Colorado was to compare this, to compare it to the
Yellowstone reintroduction, which was federally mandated.

204
00:17:34,213 --> 00:17:36,494
And there were issues then when, when

205
00:17:36,494 --> 00:17:40,375
particularly in Wyoming, which is 90, 80, 90 % of Yellowstone Park.

206
00:17:40,375 --> 00:17:45,776
And as they spread into the surrounding states, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho as well.

207
00:17:46,517 --> 00:17:56,789
The problem there was then, and I still hear it when I was there 30 years later, the
federal government imposing these flipping wolves on us per rural righteous.

208
00:17:56,789 --> 00:17:59,560
So there was a state federal conflict there.

209
00:17:59,560 --> 00:18:03,621
So I went to Colorado to see, did a grassroots bottom up approach?

210
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Would it be different?

211
00:18:05,022 --> 00:18:06,702
And I think

212
00:18:06,978 --> 00:18:12,700
The answer is no, it's just a different version of the same conflict.

213
00:18:12,700 --> 00:18:22,384
this time it wasn't, there were the same arguments about out of state actors, but they
were out of state donors, for instance.

214
00:18:22,384 --> 00:18:30,367
So the ranchers I talked to, and I talked to people across the full spectrum, people
involved, people in the middle, people opposed.

215
00:18:30,408 --> 00:18:36,696
And they said, this was this campaign for this boat was largely driven by out of state.

216
00:18:36,696 --> 00:18:39,307
big dollars from out of state.

217
00:18:39,908 --> 00:18:41,329
there's some truth to that.

218
00:18:41,329 --> 00:18:51,725
What concerns me with Colorado and what makes me sad and certainly a mistake that we would
need to correct in Britain and Ireland as it relates to this issue is huge amounts of

219
00:18:51,725 --> 00:18:55,417
money were funneled into that campaign for the reintroduction vote.

220
00:18:55,417 --> 00:18:57,858
And it worked even though it was really tight.

221
00:18:58,218 --> 00:19:04,321
But are the huge amounts of money now available to fund the coexistence with ranchers over
the next decades?

222
00:19:04,422 --> 00:19:05,144
No.

223
00:19:05,144 --> 00:19:13,357
Those same donors aren't stumping up and putting in millions to fund coexistence trust
funds.

224
00:19:13,357 --> 00:19:14,808
Let's call them in those landscapes.

225
00:19:14,808 --> 00:19:23,642
And there's some great colleagues I meet at Colorado State University who have set up a
Wolf Conflict Reduction Fund and they've brought together stakeholders.

226
00:19:23,642 --> 00:19:26,443
And it's a really great and really exciting project.

227
00:19:26,443 --> 00:19:33,410
They're like triage response when the wolves are reintroduced and there's a problem in
this area.

228
00:19:33,410 --> 00:19:40,994
They're there to provide advice and small amounts of money, but those, the months are
small and they would like to have an endowment.

229
00:19:40,994 --> 00:19:52,561
So I would have really loved to seen those same donors who put in millions to the vote,
putting in millions to make sure that it works and it works not just for the urbanites,

230
00:19:52,561 --> 00:20:02,540
but especially for rural dwellers and especially for livestock keepers because in these
debates, I do think we need to listen to their concerns, especially.

231
00:20:02,540 --> 00:20:08,414
because they're the ones whose livelihoods and ways of life are going to be most impacted.

232
00:20:08,414 --> 00:20:12,597
And we should do everything in our power to listen to and respond to those concerns.

233
00:20:12,597 --> 00:20:22,204
And again, that's the rationale and writing this book to help us think about those and to
consider these multiple perspectives on this issue.

234
00:20:22,204 --> 00:20:22,984
Yeah.

235
00:20:22,984 --> 00:20:26,867
And there is another aspect of it as well with the compensations.

236
00:20:26,867 --> 00:20:31,530
I think this is a situation unfolding in France with bears.

237
00:20:31,672 --> 00:20:40,124
where they have fund and they even have like a free air quotes, dog, guardian dogs for the
flocks.

238
00:20:40,124 --> 00:20:49,807
And the farmers refusing to take funds and take those dogs because then it's perceived
like if you take the money, then you're on the program.

239
00:20:49,807 --> 00:20:56,909
And if you're really opposing it, then you shouldn't, you you're just opposing it and
you're not going along with it.

240
00:20:56,909 --> 00:20:59,382
So that's another layer of complexity.

241
00:20:59,382 --> 00:21:00,470
100%.

242
00:21:00,470 --> 00:21:03,751
There's so much of this is it's not even about the money.

243
00:21:03,751 --> 00:21:05,652
It's about power.

244
00:21:05,692 --> 00:21:07,573
It's about social groups.

245
00:21:07,573 --> 00:21:17,677
It's about, for example, in, in France, in the Pyrenees, I'm not familiar with the
details, but already based on what you said, I'd be wondering this probably complex social

246
00:21:17,677 --> 00:21:27,142
dynamics, also known as peer pressure that farmers in a community would, you know, some
who sign up to that might be seen as a sellout and selling out the farming cause and going

247
00:21:27,142 --> 00:21:28,406
over to the other side.

248
00:21:28,406 --> 00:21:32,750
What we do as people, it's inevitable and often sadly unavoidable.

249
00:21:32,750 --> 00:21:44,680
And I saw that in Switzerland, some of my interviews where some people just, Switzerland
is a wealthy country and they really resource not just the compensation, but actually

250
00:21:44,680 --> 00:21:52,126
funding this whole, the coexistence toolkit, the dogs, the fences, the shepherds, and
that's the really expensive, but it's not so varied.

251
00:21:52,126 --> 00:21:56,718
It's not particularly expensive to fund the losses of livestock, even at twice the market
rate.

252
00:21:56,718 --> 00:22:10,804
It's fun they not hold package of deterrence and the coexistence toolkit responses, but
there were some who said, we refuse all help because we don't want to be, we don't want

253
00:22:10,804 --> 00:22:12,565
the bureaucracy and the red tape.

254
00:22:12,565 --> 00:22:16,867
So there's that element, but we don't want, we just don't want to be involved with this.

255
00:22:16,867 --> 00:22:17,647
We reject it.

256
00:22:17,647 --> 00:22:24,056
And again, even Switzerland, which here in Ireland, we would think of the Alps as being
wilder than the mountains and hills of Ireland.

257
00:22:24,056 --> 00:22:27,188
But I went there and people said, these wolves don't belong here.

258
00:22:27,469 --> 00:22:31,152
Maybe lynx, but these wolves, they belong in North America.

259
00:22:31,152 --> 00:22:39,758
So I coined the term biological NIMBYism, which is that everybody loves a large carnivore
when it's somewhere else.

260
00:22:40,039 --> 00:22:51,389
And it's easy for us in Ireland to talk, and it has been for decades and centuries to talk
about this because we're talking about Yellowstone and the Serengeti and whichever

261
00:22:51,389 --> 00:22:53,464
wildlife presenter often travels.

262
00:22:53,464 --> 00:23:06,496
But now that we're having to grapple with the complexities and the nuances, well as the
opportunities of this issue on this Island, then it means we have to have these really

263
00:23:06,496 --> 00:23:07,577
tough conversations.

264
00:23:07,577 --> 00:23:11,350
There's a lot of, there's a lot of things to be ironed out, Tommy.

265
00:23:11,511 --> 00:23:17,076
And again, I hope this book can help us to, to think that through.

266
00:23:17,076 --> 00:23:18,056
Yeah.

267
00:23:18,307 --> 00:23:20,138
it's, it's, you know, the,

268
00:23:20,238 --> 00:23:27,378
Partially why I love this topic is because it's so wonderfully complex wonderfully again
in the air quotes.

269
00:23:27,598 --> 00:23:38,298
All right Listen livestock compensations you you mentioned life the compensations Are do
they work is like from your experience?

270
00:23:38,298 --> 00:23:45,018
Do they work or or is it matter of also like I don't want your compensations?

271
00:23:45,018 --> 00:23:47,810
Because you know it is often

272
00:23:47,810 --> 00:23:52,895
brought up by like, you have a compensation, need to have a good, right?

273
00:23:52,895 --> 00:23:59,201
It's like this quote people say, like, we need to, da, da, da, da, have a good
compensations programs.

274
00:23:59,201 --> 00:24:05,426
And then you look at the compensations programs that are around and there's like so much
misunderstanding, right?

275
00:24:05,426 --> 00:24:14,094
People, even people who are, you know, very, I would say consider themselves educated
about the matters, like talking about like European.

276
00:24:14,168 --> 00:24:21,696
compensations, where there's obviously nothing like European compensations and each
country has different things and even if those compensations are sometimes like, you have

277
00:24:21,696 --> 00:24:32,798
a loss, you have a livestock killed and then someone needs to confirm that that actually
was the wolf that killed and then there's a problem like what if your sheep disappeared

278
00:24:32,798 --> 00:24:34,399
and it's never found?

279
00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:36,762
How you get a compensation then?

280
00:24:36,928 --> 00:24:42,170
And then the whole bureaucracy about, you know, the biologists coming in, taking samples.

281
00:24:42,170 --> 00:24:43,030
Was it a wolf?

282
00:24:43,030 --> 00:24:43,991
Was it a dog?

283
00:24:43,991 --> 00:24:45,641
Was it like whatever?

284
00:24:46,082 --> 00:24:52,404
And then you might get a call like I think in Lithuania, you get in compensation the
following year.

285
00:24:53,105 --> 00:24:53,435
Right.

286
00:24:53,435 --> 00:24:55,486
It's like, whoa.

287
00:24:55,486 --> 00:25:04,929
So tell me or tell us what works, what doesn't about those compensations, like how, how
that should be structured.

288
00:25:04,929 --> 00:25:07,020
And does it even make sense?

289
00:25:07,318 --> 00:25:08,478
It's a great question.

290
00:25:08,478 --> 00:25:15,010
And I feel like I could have written a book just on the compensation side of things,
although I'm not sure it would sell very well.

291
00:25:15,010 --> 00:25:23,702
But firstly, there's something about human behavior and money where we're quite fond of
finance and even small amounts can change our behavior.

292
00:25:23,702 --> 00:25:34,135
this is a very funny story in the book of me getting paid by my parents growing up in
Malawi to kill mosquitoes and which posed a threat because of chiropractic malaria and how

293
00:25:34,135 --> 00:25:35,316
that affected my behavior.

294
00:25:35,316 --> 00:25:36,516
So do check that out.

295
00:25:36,516 --> 00:25:37,238
It's quite.

296
00:25:37,238 --> 00:25:50,416
amusing, but financial tools are absolutely essential to fund carnivore coexistence
because theoretically they transfer the financial costs of sharing landscapes with them

297
00:25:50,416 --> 00:25:54,228
from the public who generally want it.

298
00:25:54,228 --> 00:26:05,024
Even if they're living in urban areas, they see either the presence or return of large
carnivores as a public good, which they want to pay for either through

299
00:26:05,666 --> 00:26:11,389
their taxes through public investment in nature conservation or through supporting NGOs
through the donations.

300
00:26:11,389 --> 00:26:14,151
You also want to have the same goal.

301
00:26:14,151 --> 00:26:23,616
And the theory is that then the costs which compensate farmers for lost livestock are a
way of transferring that cost from those who want it to those who actually bearing the

302
00:26:23,616 --> 00:26:25,917
cost and losing livestock.

303
00:26:25,917 --> 00:26:35,182
That's the theory in practice, as you've already alluded to, it is a lot more complicated
and one big complaint about them.

304
00:26:35,182 --> 00:26:44,991
across the world, was a meta-analysis, which is a study of studies that I cite, I think in
75 % of cases across the world, bureaucracy was a complaint.

305
00:26:44,991 --> 00:26:51,056
I've seen it in Nepal with snow leopards, and I've seen it on my travels.

306
00:26:51,397 --> 00:27:01,226
There's one example I use it because it struck me and it made me quite sad, was an example
in the Netherlands where I met a farming family who had lost four sheep to a wolf,

307
00:27:01,226 --> 00:27:01,838
probably a

308
00:27:01,838 --> 00:27:04,838
young dispersing wolf, still figuring out how to hunt.

309
00:27:04,838 --> 00:27:12,378
And it's often the case with those dispersing wolves that they're the ones that are often
causing the most trouble for livestock farmers.

310
00:27:12,378 --> 00:27:14,618
this was the first time wolves were coming into the area.

311
00:27:14,618 --> 00:27:15,618
They lost four sheep.

312
00:27:15,618 --> 00:27:17,758
And in many ways it was a textbook response.

313
00:27:17,758 --> 00:27:26,238
The Dutch Nature Agency, Bage 12 was out that very day and they took swabs and that's
textbook.

314
00:27:26,238 --> 00:27:27,758
Neighbouring farmer also lost sheep.

315
00:27:27,758 --> 00:27:29,574
Textbook response, same day.

316
00:27:29,922 --> 00:27:38,689
But it was what happened next and what had happened previously that upset the Van der
Wetterings and upset me hearing about it a year later.

317
00:27:38,689 --> 00:27:49,358
So firstly, a coalition of Dutch conservation NGOs had said to the Dutch state, you need
to expand the risk zone in which you're offering compensation for wolves.

318
00:27:49,358 --> 00:27:58,702
This zone you've indicated, this Veluwe, which is the forested central part of the
Netherlands, it's not big enough because wolves disperse, they're such adaptable.

319
00:27:58,702 --> 00:28:00,523
creatures, will move out of this area.

320
00:28:00,523 --> 00:28:03,685
So you need to have a bigger zone in which you will offer compensation.

321
00:28:03,685 --> 00:28:09,029
The Dutch state, or it may have been the provinces who held the purse strings said, no,
that's going to cost too much money.

322
00:28:09,029 --> 00:28:14,792
So when they turned up in the Van der Wettering farm, the Van der Wettering went in the
risk zone.

323
00:28:14,792 --> 00:28:23,078
So although there was a textbook response to take the DNA swabs, that alone took several
months to get a confirmed response.

324
00:28:23,078 --> 00:28:27,521
Then the Dutch state after three months said, we will give you partial compensation.

325
00:28:28,462 --> 00:28:31,102
Vendor veterans were not happy.

326
00:28:31,122 --> 00:28:36,682
So they said, no, they sued the government and that took another couple of months.

327
00:28:36,682 --> 00:28:38,722
And when I was there, the case was still ongoing.

328
00:28:38,722 --> 00:28:40,502
They were deeply unhappy.

329
00:28:40,502 --> 00:28:43,742
Now the Dutch state is one of the wealthiest in the world.

330
00:28:43,742 --> 00:28:47,562
is to me, at least a model of efficiency and effectiveness.

331
00:28:47,862 --> 00:28:53,322
The amount that would have cost to give them full compensation or even double the market
rate.

332
00:28:53,322 --> 00:28:55,342
I mean, we're talking 500 euros.

333
00:28:56,502 --> 00:29:06,668
And so there's a symbolism to this that it's not just about the money, that in action and
stinginess on the part of the Dutch state, which they've since they've made it easier

334
00:29:06,668 --> 00:29:09,129
since, but it was too late for the van der Eertreiks.

335
00:29:09,129 --> 00:29:12,321
It has turned them from being fairly ambivalent about wolves.

336
00:29:12,321 --> 00:29:13,991
They weren't opposed to wolves being back.

337
00:29:13,991 --> 00:29:16,693
They educated their children about them.

338
00:29:16,693 --> 00:29:18,684
They said, you know, we've got wolves back in Alaska.

339
00:29:18,684 --> 00:29:20,235
This is really exciting.

340
00:29:20,535 --> 00:29:24,597
But the way that was handled has turned them into implacable opponents.

341
00:29:24,597 --> 00:29:26,294
They will never accept wolves.

342
00:29:26,294 --> 00:29:29,265
in the Netherlands, they're really not keen.

343
00:29:29,265 --> 00:29:37,819
so the danger because of money and how these are handled is that fairly small amounts of
money become really big conflicts.

344
00:29:38,019 --> 00:29:40,340
And it's not just about the money, it's about power.

345
00:29:40,340 --> 00:29:41,501
It's about symbolism.

346
00:29:41,501 --> 00:29:45,123
It's about the state interfering in people's lives and livelihoods.

347
00:29:45,123 --> 00:29:51,255
It's about urban elites getting on the hobby horse of having these animals back in rural
areas.

348
00:29:51,255 --> 00:29:52,918
It's, there's

349
00:29:52,918 --> 00:29:59,120
You think this is just about Lynx, Wills and Bearish, Tommy, but it's an inch wide in that
regard, but it's a mile deep.

350
00:29:59,120 --> 00:30:03,547
It's about all of these other things that are going on in rural areas across the world.

351
00:30:03,547 --> 00:30:13,205
And the danger for large carnivore conservationists is that species like Wills especially,
but also Lynx and Bearish is that they become lightning rods for discontent.

352
00:30:13,205 --> 00:30:18,770
come to symbolize interference and all of the things that we've said.

353
00:30:18,770 --> 00:30:21,482
So we need to approach this with.

354
00:30:22,574 --> 00:30:27,956
a broad mind, but also to think about the complexities of this and the nuances of it.

355
00:30:27,956 --> 00:30:38,068
And while financial tools are absolutely essential, we need to think very carefully about
how they're designed to minimise that bureaucracy.

356
00:30:38,068 --> 00:30:46,801
But also I think in these islands, financial schemes, people who want to do this, you need
to make farmers an offer that they can't refuse.

357
00:30:46,841 --> 00:30:51,616
You need to make this as easy as possible for them, not as hard.

358
00:30:51,616 --> 00:30:54,587
And you need to be as generous as you can be.

359
00:30:54,587 --> 00:30:58,579
then some, so that it's people, it's worth people's while.

360
00:30:58,579 --> 00:31:02,871
they're saying, I want to have these species of my land because this is good for my bottom
line.

361
00:31:02,871 --> 00:31:04,471
It's good for my way of life.

362
00:31:04,471 --> 00:31:09,126
And they see this species as an asset instead of liability.

363
00:31:09,126 --> 00:31:10,134
A hundred percent.

364
00:31:10,134 --> 00:31:11,854
like time is money.

365
00:31:12,054 --> 00:31:21,240
And I just can't imagine, like you said, the whole thing is like 500,000 euro and it drags
for years of papers.

366
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:24,551
phone calls, responses.

367
00:31:24,551 --> 00:31:25,731
It's just...

368
00:31:26,651 --> 00:31:29,232
Yeah, that's a huge lesson.

369
00:31:29,232 --> 00:31:30,832
That's a huge lesson.

370
00:31:31,413 --> 00:31:39,255
Listen, on that vein, what's your take on the thorny subject of lethal control?

371
00:31:39,755 --> 00:31:51,010
Is that something that is important and meaningful because it gives people a sense of
agency over what's going on, even though the...

372
00:31:51,010 --> 00:31:59,626
You know, maybe in terms of minimizing the conflict or minimizing the losses, biologically
speaking, it's not that great.

373
00:31:59,626 --> 00:32:03,819
It's not probably has less effect than one would think.

374
00:32:03,819 --> 00:32:09,273
Some some say that it has the opposite effect because it disrupts pack structure, etc.

375
00:32:09,273 --> 00:32:10,584
In case of walls.

376
00:32:11,065 --> 00:32:18,990
On the other hand, right, when people feel powerless and they feel like the government,
them.

377
00:32:18,990 --> 00:32:25,130
make them powerless against the animal on the landscape that they could do something about
it.

378
00:32:25,170 --> 00:32:31,730
That's as one of my previous guests said, like that's where the hatred of wolf slings bear
is born.

379
00:32:32,030 --> 00:32:41,230
So from your experience across the world, what is the utility and importance of the lethal
control?

380
00:32:41,350 --> 00:32:42,350
It's an important question.

381
00:32:42,350 --> 00:32:46,970
It is a thorny one, but it's not one that can be avoided.

382
00:32:46,970 --> 00:32:47,830
Tommy.

383
00:32:47,854 --> 00:32:59,685
And in seeking to reintroduce these species to Ireland, to Britain, or when they return
naturally to Europe, are having these, we're introducing these issues and these topics and

384
00:32:59,685 --> 00:33:01,428
we're going to have to wrestle with them.

385
00:33:01,428 --> 00:33:12,361
so talking about it openly and calmly and acknowledging that there are multiple points of
view, but also acknowledging that this is a matter of life and death and any topic that

386
00:33:12,361 --> 00:33:16,862
involves issues of life and death, we should approach with care and with ethics.

387
00:33:16,862 --> 00:33:17,632
And so it's.

388
00:33:17,632 --> 00:33:21,926
important to have these conversations instead of just sweeping it under the carpet, but
there is no avoiding it.

389
00:33:21,926 --> 00:33:32,385
And we will be bringing this topic back as it has come back over in Europe, all the way up
to the highest, the top of the political food chain with Ursula von der Leyen's pony at

390
00:33:32,385 --> 00:33:34,036
towards the end of 2022.

391
00:33:34,036 --> 00:33:34,657
pony.

392
00:33:34,657 --> 00:33:41,102
then the Italian joker in Northern Italy, which was, think around the same time.

393
00:33:41,102 --> 00:33:46,006
again, on a crowded continent of 700 million people where large carnivores have

394
00:33:46,006 --> 00:33:49,867
made an astonishing recovery over the last 30 years.

395
00:33:50,027 --> 00:33:53,918
There's more of many of these species than there are in North America living amongst us.

396
00:33:53,918 --> 00:34:05,751
It is quite extraordinary, but in crowded landscapes and in the crowded continent that is
much of Europe, especially the Western parts, there's no avoiding this thorny issue.

397
00:34:05,751 --> 00:34:16,191
And you're right to highlight, especially with wolves, some concerns about disrupting pack
structure and what that can actually then lead to those dispersal like that.

398
00:34:16,191 --> 00:34:19,582
lone wolf that attacked the Van de Wetterings sheep flock.

399
00:34:19,862 --> 00:34:28,125
think one of the solutions, and this will annoy some who may be romanticise rewilding, I
think we need more technology and monitoring.

400
00:34:28,125 --> 00:34:35,127
So for example, when I was in Wyoming, the Game and Fish Department's large carnivore
team, they have a collar on every wolf pack in the state.

401
00:34:35,127 --> 00:34:44,010
And when I was in one of their offices in Cody meeting Robo Bear, which we can talk about
later, they showed me the screen and I could see the

402
00:34:45,376 --> 00:34:47,637
indicators of where every wolf pack in the state was.

403
00:34:47,637 --> 00:34:51,770
And I said, does that help you manage conflict?

404
00:34:51,770 --> 00:35:00,534
Does it help you respond appropriately and know when there are problem animals or maybe a
problem pack that's developing a bad habit with livestock?

405
00:35:00,534 --> 00:35:07,819
And they said, yeah, gives them the data to make those data informed and evidence-based
decisions as well.

406
00:35:07,819 --> 00:35:14,520
But when we talk about large carnivores, the second part is that we're not just talking
about evidence, we're talking about emotion.

407
00:35:14,520 --> 00:35:16,170
We're not just talking about facts.

408
00:35:16,170 --> 00:35:20,402
We're talking about feelings and ultimately we're not just talking about science, Tommy,
we're talking about stories.

409
00:35:20,402 --> 00:35:26,763
So things like agency, which I don't know, I'm not sure how you measure agency, but it's a
feeling, right?

410
00:35:26,763 --> 00:35:34,935
It's something we feel is really important, especially for those rural communities and
livestock keeping communities that we've been talking about.

411
00:35:35,176 --> 00:35:43,938
Who, as you've also said, feel that they, the government, Brussels, whichever national
capital,

412
00:35:43,938 --> 00:35:51,100
they in the country they live in, urban elites are imposing large carnivores on their
conservation.

413
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:58,802
think having that, the choice probably matters even more than actually implementing it to
feel that people are being listened to.

414
00:35:58,802 --> 00:36:07,045
Certainly in Switzerland, where there's been a quite a poisonous debate about lethal
control over the last couple of years, really toxic.

415
00:36:07,785 --> 00:36:11,234
The farming individuals that I spoke to,

416
00:36:11,234 --> 00:36:19,923
where they didn't use the term agency, but they were just wanting to have, they felt their
way of life as being threatened and they wanted some sense of control to be able to take

417
00:36:19,923 --> 00:36:20,584
it back.

418
00:36:20,584 --> 00:36:27,951
Will shooting every wolf in sight, I think the proposals in Switzerland or something like
20 % of wolves, is that going to magically solve one of the problems?

419
00:36:27,951 --> 00:36:29,312
I don't think it is.

420
00:36:29,432 --> 00:36:35,318
So again, there's a lot of nuance and complexity here, but it's

421
00:36:35,458 --> 00:36:36,668
We can't avoid this topic.

422
00:36:36,668 --> 00:36:45,962
It's a tricky one, but it does, I think, give some degree of agency, but it also needs to
be very carefully managed with data.

423
00:36:46,583 --> 00:36:49,083
I think also there's some interesting...

424
00:36:49,784 --> 00:36:56,722
Second part of this why I think it's important is I think we need to, especially with
wolves and bears, less so with lynx because they pose almost no risk to people.

425
00:36:56,722 --> 00:37:01,129
We do need to keep them afraid of people for the good of the species.

426
00:37:01,129 --> 00:37:05,102
That may lead to, and there's this tension between the individual and the species, right?

427
00:37:05,102 --> 00:37:06,202
here.

428
00:37:06,222 --> 00:37:19,542
If that means as happened in 2024 in the Netherlands when a wolf knocked over a child in a
kindergarten class that was visiting a forest in the Netherlands.

429
00:37:19,542 --> 00:37:30,482
And then also the details are disputed and contested may have bitten or nipped nipped a
child in the same class, possibly the same wolf.

430
00:37:30,482 --> 00:37:33,222
And I'm not sure if it was the same or a different occasion.

431
00:37:33,462 --> 00:37:35,302
To me, that's a sign that

432
00:37:35,566 --> 00:37:38,746
that wolf is losing fear of people.

433
00:37:38,746 --> 00:37:47,646
be a couple of videos that you've probably seen and some of your listeners have probably
seen of wolves being very close to cyclists and joggers and families in the Netherlands.

434
00:37:48,126 --> 00:37:58,046
I think those wolves need, whether it's through through hazing, they need to fear people
because if that wolf, a wolf were to seriously injure a person, it's going to be really

435
00:37:58,046 --> 00:38:00,246
bad for the wolf conservation in the Netherlands.

436
00:38:00,246 --> 00:38:05,486
So we do need to maintain, I think, a fear of human beings.

437
00:38:05,728 --> 00:38:08,479
so that they stay away from people for sure.

438
00:38:08,479 --> 00:38:11,760
May not stay away from a lifestyle, but they do need to stay away from people.

439
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:15,761
And that is for the good of large carnivores as a group.

440
00:38:15,761 --> 00:38:23,350
Even if that means that the occasional individual either is shot or shot with paintballs
as has been proposed in the Netherlands.

441
00:38:23,350 --> 00:38:24,713
But the court cases are flying.

442
00:38:24,713 --> 00:38:32,245
I mean, it's really hard to have the sort of conversation we're having about this topic,
Tommy, because it gets under people's skin.

443
00:38:32,245 --> 00:38:35,704
And once it gets in social media, it just goes bananas.

444
00:38:35,704 --> 00:38:36,655
Goose bananas.

445
00:38:36,655 --> 00:38:48,344
No, no, that's why I am significantly limiting my participation in social media this year
because it's just like not really helpful with any conversation.

446
00:38:50,206 --> 00:38:58,452
Well, all I can say that if I was a kid, I was nipped by wolf, I would consider this being
very cool that I was nipped by wolf, like who want to touch?

447
00:38:59,454 --> 00:39:01,295
Well, that's a different thing.

448
00:39:01,295 --> 00:39:05,088
My parents might have a different views on this as well as the parents of

449
00:39:06,059 --> 00:39:07,140
of those kids.

450
00:39:07,140 --> 00:39:12,464
No, but on the habituation, is the word I guess, to humans.

451
00:39:12,964 --> 00:39:18,588
Not long ago we spoke on the podcast about the situation with bears in Romania.

452
00:39:18,769 --> 00:39:23,493
When there, you're probably familiar with that, where the band hunting completely.

453
00:39:23,493 --> 00:39:30,538
And then what started to happening is that bears, you know, they figure out quickly that
people are feeding them.

454
00:39:30,646 --> 00:39:43,373
So they're just flocking into the tourist areas, sitting around the roads and basically
waiting for people to give them sweets and people giving him sweets, but the bear's hands

455
00:39:43,373 --> 00:39:46,415
have a big freaking claws on it.

456
00:39:46,995 --> 00:39:51,458
And the whole thing of people taking selfies with, you know, feeding bears.

457
00:39:51,458 --> 00:39:53,099
You got the picture.

458
00:39:53,099 --> 00:39:59,348
But then the interesting fact was, which I found counterintuitive, is that

459
00:39:59,348 --> 00:40:17,773
when they reintroduced hunting again as a way of controlling those bears' then the bears
that needs to be taken out first are the ones that seems to be more habituated.

460
00:40:17,773 --> 00:40:26,776
it's not like, you know, my question was like, what is the percentage of the local hunters
and what is the percentage of the tourist hunters who come from abroad and bring money and

461
00:40:26,776 --> 00:40:28,096
et cetera, et cetera.

462
00:40:28,288 --> 00:40:38,965
And the answer was like, initially it is all local people, because tourist hunters, want
to have experience in being in the woods, while all the bears that they need to take out

463
00:40:38,965 --> 00:40:45,099
first are all around the road, because these are the ones that pose the most risk and
danger.

464
00:40:45,099 --> 00:40:55,376
And that's also the bears that tends to be on the social media, have names and everybody
who listens to that already sees the picture how messy that situation is.

465
00:40:55,417 --> 00:40:57,858
So that is to your point that

466
00:40:58,274 --> 00:41:09,524
For the benefit of these animals, they're better not be habituated because from that
point, things are getting solved very quickly.

467
00:41:09,524 --> 00:41:20,834
And you've just made me think of something else, is that if this is, if we're talking here
about Britain and Ireland, if it were not to be regulated officially, I know we were

468
00:41:20,834 --> 00:41:25,806
complaining about regulation and bureaucracy in the last question about finance, but

469
00:41:25,806 --> 00:41:33,870
Particularly with issues of matters of life and death and lethal control, there is a
degree of regulation and care that needs to be mandated and enforced.

470
00:41:33,870 --> 00:41:41,695
But if it's not done in an official procedural way and brought into the open, it will
still happen and it will happen legally.

471
00:41:41,695 --> 00:41:49,099
And these are also be shot, trapped and poisoned illegally, partly because of that lack of
agency that people feel.

472
00:41:49,099 --> 00:41:55,722
So in my opinion, much better to bring it into the light and be open about it and make it
official.

473
00:41:55,726 --> 00:42:05,166
with sanction and training and data and ethics, then let it be done in the dark,
illegally, I think.

474
00:42:05,166 --> 00:42:06,006
hundred percent.

475
00:42:06,006 --> 00:42:07,846
It's a hundred percent.

476
00:42:07,966 --> 00:42:09,406
Johnny, I got to ask you one thing.

477
00:42:09,406 --> 00:42:18,466
It's it's maybe a little bit of a sidebar here, but you talk about in your book about
wolf, wolf change rivers situation in Yellowstone.

478
00:42:18,466 --> 00:42:21,086
And it was like this big wolf change rivers.

479
00:42:21,086 --> 00:42:22,350
And there was like, what about

480
00:42:22,350 --> 00:42:27,790
if wolves don't change rivers and they were saying, no, no, no, you actually, know, they
actually don't change rivers.

481
00:42:28,350 --> 00:42:36,310
Could you give us, in a, just to, just to clarify some things for our listeners, what's
this like?

482
00:42:36,310 --> 00:42:38,010
Do wolves change rivers?

483
00:42:38,870 --> 00:42:41,550
Wolves alone did not change rivers in Yellowstone.

484
00:42:41,930 --> 00:42:43,930
Sorry if that bursts anybody's bubble.

485
00:42:43,930 --> 00:42:50,130
It burst my bubble at some point in this journey when I watched the documentaries and I
thought, wow, that's amazing.

486
00:42:50,130 --> 00:42:51,262
And that

487
00:42:51,262 --> 00:42:54,335
Story has taken hold of the public's imagination.

488
00:42:54,335 --> 00:42:55,144
It's gone global.

489
00:42:55,144 --> 00:43:06,094
We're having this conversation in part because we think some that wills will change rivers
in Britain and Ireland, that links may change rivers in Britain and Ireland.

490
00:43:06,094 --> 00:43:13,360
And to investigate that, and also because in my opinion, I'm old enough and cynical enough
to believe that something sounds too good to be true.

491
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:15,302
It's probably too good to be true.

492
00:43:15,302 --> 00:43:20,718
So I went to Yellowstone on my travels with a leading wolf ecologist called Joanna
Lambert.

493
00:43:20,718 --> 00:43:22,858
Who's based at the university of Colorado.

494
00:43:22,858 --> 00:43:23,558
you know him?

495
00:43:23,558 --> 00:43:24,158
Yeah.

496
00:43:24,158 --> 00:43:24,458
Yeah.

497
00:43:24,458 --> 00:43:25,398
I don't know.

498
00:43:25,398 --> 00:43:26,118
don't know.

499
00:43:26,118 --> 00:43:26,358
Yeah.

500
00:43:26,358 --> 00:43:29,458
I don't know her personally, but I heard, heard about her.

501
00:43:29,458 --> 00:43:30,818
She's quite famous.

502
00:43:30,818 --> 00:43:31,258
Yeah.

503
00:43:31,258 --> 00:43:31,698
Oh, is.

504
00:43:31,698 --> 00:43:33,258
And you'll have to have her in the podcast.

505
00:43:33,258 --> 00:43:39,018
At some point I can make an introduction, I went there her to really investigate this
issue in Yellowstone.

506
00:43:39,018 --> 00:43:45,758
We went to the Lamar Valley in Northern Yellowstone to the last holding pen from the 1995
reintroduction.

507
00:43:45,758 --> 00:43:48,998
And we looked out on some of those very rivers that are.

508
00:43:49,132 --> 00:43:55,345
have been immortalized in the Wolf's Change River story that George Monbiot has
popularized.

509
00:43:55,345 --> 00:44:04,310
And in my conversations with Joanna, and also then in reading some of the scientific
liturgians, papers that have come out in the last couple of years, it's a bit more

510
00:44:04,310 --> 00:44:05,351
complex.

511
00:44:05,431 --> 00:44:09,433
So wolves did have a profound ecological impact.

512
00:44:09,433 --> 00:44:18,868
That concept of trophic cascades, relatively small in number, but outsize impacts
cascading all the way down through the layers of the web of life.

513
00:44:18,946 --> 00:44:24,548
but also through changing the behavior of the elk because of what are called
non-consumptive effects.

514
00:44:24,548 --> 00:44:33,532
So that landscape of fear where they changed the parts of the landscape that elk were,
that definitely happened and no one's arguing with that, but it wasn't the only factor in

515
00:44:33,532 --> 00:44:34,333
changing rivers.

516
00:44:34,333 --> 00:44:42,987
There were other factors, including the fact that beavers had been reintroduced to the
neighboring state forest from the late eighties and they were naturally spreading,

517
00:44:42,987 --> 00:44:46,664
dispersing into the park at the same time that wolves were dispersing.

518
00:44:46,664 --> 00:44:56,119
the park and then you have this panoply of other factors that shape ecosystems like fire
and disease and climate.

519
00:44:56,580 --> 00:45:00,562
as Joanna pointed out, ecosystems don't work monolithically.

520
00:45:00,562 --> 00:45:02,363
There are always multiple factors at work.

521
00:45:02,363 --> 00:45:06,396
So where wolves, did wolves change rivers in Yellowstone by themselves?

522
00:45:06,396 --> 00:45:08,607
No, but they were certainly a factor.

523
00:45:08,827 --> 00:45:11,629
Would wolves and lynx change rivers in Britain and Ireland?

524
00:45:11,629 --> 00:45:13,292
Probably not, but

525
00:45:13,292 --> 00:45:18,025
Will they certainly have beneficial ecological impacts?

526
00:45:18,025 --> 00:45:18,975
Yes, I think they will.

527
00:45:18,975 --> 00:45:26,249
And that for me remains the strongest part of the argument, but it's not going to be a
panacea for the nature crisis.

528
00:45:26,249 --> 00:45:33,172
They alone will not solve that nature crisis, but they could be one part of the solution.

529
00:45:33,353 --> 00:45:35,294
for clarifying that.

530
00:45:35,714 --> 00:45:37,895
I wanted to have this out of the way.

531
00:45:38,436 --> 00:45:43,078
Johnny, you mentioned that technology can play a part.

532
00:45:43,078 --> 00:45:46,640
in enabling coexistence, really.

533
00:45:47,021 --> 00:45:55,666
You mentioned already colored wolves, you mentioned various different things, fences, et
cetera, et cetera.

534
00:45:56,146 --> 00:46:08,684
Now, we're coming to like, obviously also term rewilding is central to some extent to the
whole conversation about reintroductions and coexistences with the carnivores.

535
00:46:09,650 --> 00:46:16,255
And the question obviously that goes in is like, okay, is it really wild in any way?

536
00:46:16,255 --> 00:46:16,815
Right?

537
00:46:16,815 --> 00:46:22,139
One of the previous guests on the podcast basically said that if there is a fence, it's
not rewilding.

538
00:46:22,139 --> 00:46:24,841
Like the fence is the problem.

539
00:46:24,841 --> 00:46:29,704
Whether the fence keeps the animals in or keeps the animals out.

540
00:46:29,704 --> 00:46:31,715
If you have a fence, it's not rewilding.

541
00:46:31,715 --> 00:46:34,027
If it's farming, it's not rewilding.

542
00:46:34,647 --> 00:46:38,734
And that leads me to the question, like, is it really

543
00:46:38,734 --> 00:46:43,014
wild to any effect, right?

544
00:46:43,014 --> 00:46:47,234
Is the wolf with the collar really a wild wolf?

545
00:46:47,554 --> 00:46:53,214
Is it not your wolf, which just exacerbates the conflict?

546
00:46:53,594 --> 00:46:56,554
And that in a sense, it's a very open question.

547
00:46:56,554 --> 00:47:08,364
That is just an invitation for you to elaborate on that, because from this, we have to go
to the point where, like in Europe, wolves naturally migrate and expand and they

548
00:47:08,364 --> 00:47:11,815
wolves do wolves things, they're wild.

549
00:47:11,815 --> 00:47:25,509
Perhaps that makes them easier to accept when you talk about reintroductions like in
Pyrenees, like in Colorado, and like because of a geographical separation in Britain and

550
00:47:25,509 --> 00:47:31,990
Ireland, you can make an argument that they're not wild, they're not gonna be wild.

551
00:47:31,990 --> 00:47:37,942
The wildness of those carnivores are gone and it's never gonna come back.

552
00:47:38,616 --> 00:47:41,048
So maybe why try?

553
00:47:41,048 --> 00:47:44,390
Is it gonna cause even more conflict?

554
00:47:44,811 --> 00:47:50,155
Again, very open question, but I'm sure you have some interesting insights on this.

555
00:47:50,536 --> 00:47:53,318
Yeah, there's kind of two parts to the response.

556
00:47:53,318 --> 00:48:03,746
One is the technological aspect of could technology facilitate coexistence, which I have
some ideas on, which I'll share in a minute.

557
00:48:03,746 --> 00:48:08,622
But before we get to the science and the technology bit, there is a deep philosophical

558
00:48:08,622 --> 00:48:14,506
question here about what is wild and where wild is.

559
00:48:14,927 --> 00:48:16,848
It's a pretty slippery term.

560
00:48:16,848 --> 00:48:18,840
I have a whole chapter on philosophy.

561
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:22,633
spend it cycling around Missoula, Montana with an environmental philosopher.

562
00:48:22,633 --> 00:48:26,936
And then I also meet another environmental philosopher in the Netherlands and we spend a
bit of time.

563
00:48:26,936 --> 00:48:32,440
And throughout the book, I keep coming back to what is wild and where is wild.

564
00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:35,702
And it comes back a bit even to those

565
00:48:35,854 --> 00:48:48,354
documentaries and those stories that have shaped those 10,000 Europeans, rural Europeans
views on large carnivores is often in our stories and in our philosophizing about wild,

566
00:48:48,354 --> 00:48:50,414
was somewhere where people are not.

567
00:48:50,414 --> 00:48:54,954
It was somewhere over there that was distant in space and time.

568
00:48:55,794 --> 00:49:01,294
And actually that is often a forest as well, closed canopy forest.

569
00:49:01,294 --> 00:49:02,966
Whereas actually if you look at

570
00:49:02,966 --> 00:49:04,467
many landscapes across Europe.

571
00:49:04,467 --> 00:49:08,171
It's often, again, I come back to this idea of spectrums and continuums.

572
00:49:08,171 --> 00:49:22,053
There's there between your urban CBD and your Alaska's across this weather, just this
spectrum of landscapes, which have this shifting balance of how much order or people have

573
00:49:22,053 --> 00:49:29,849
brought to the landscape and how much quote unquote disorder we accept from having
wildlife around because they get in the way of us as people and they do things that we

574
00:49:29,849 --> 00:49:30,850
don't like.

575
00:49:30,860 --> 00:49:31,650
and all the rest of it.

576
00:49:31,650 --> 00:49:33,752
And it's just, just constant shifting balance.

577
00:49:33,752 --> 00:49:46,799
And even in terms of what ecosystems look like, it's often this mix of woodland, scrub,
open pasture that probably characterizes a lot of European ecosystems and landscapes, at

578
00:49:46,799 --> 00:49:49,980
least historically before we came along and changed them.

579
00:49:49,980 --> 00:50:01,046
So when you have species like large carnivores, which more than almost anything else
symbolize the wild as an idea, they symbolize the wild as a place.

580
00:50:01,088 --> 00:50:10,022
And then through the process of rewilding, they symbolize it as a process because they
take it as something that is far away in space and time.

581
00:50:10,022 --> 00:50:17,305
And they bring it right into here and now, or in our islands and in Ireland and in
Britain, they bring it into our future.

582
00:50:17,465 --> 00:50:20,866
That can be a lot for people to, to get their heads around.

583
00:50:20,866 --> 00:50:30,144
And it often leads to polarized emotions in this topic because while some of us, I hear
the term wild and I think, wow, I run to the wild I go, it's where

584
00:50:30,144 --> 00:50:31,165
I escaped to it.

585
00:50:31,165 --> 00:50:32,215
is soulless.

586
00:50:32,215 --> 00:50:33,636
It is salvation.

587
00:50:33,636 --> 00:50:34,847
It is beauty.

588
00:50:34,847 --> 00:50:36,057
is wonder.

589
00:50:36,197 --> 00:50:37,738
But not everybody thinks like that.

590
00:50:37,738 --> 00:50:45,623
For some it is threat and even throughout human history and European civilization, if you
want to call it that, the wild is a threat.

591
00:50:45,623 --> 00:50:46,533
It is chaos.

592
00:50:46,533 --> 00:50:48,544
is damnation instead of salvation.

593
00:50:48,544 --> 00:50:50,605
is something to be afraid of.

594
00:50:50,605 --> 00:50:54,707
It is a landscape of fear to set against the landscape of wonder.

595
00:50:55,328 --> 00:50:59,390
And large carnivals symbolize all of that complex.

596
00:50:59,662 --> 00:51:05,502
philosophy in these very discreet individuals off the links and the wolf and the bear.

597
00:51:05,902 --> 00:51:19,562
So there's a lot of questions here that science not only can't answer, but science can't
even ask really deep questions about what constitutes reality and knowledge, where is wild

598
00:51:19,562 --> 00:51:25,862
and what is wild and where on this spectrum of landscapes are willing to accept species
like.

599
00:51:26,028 --> 00:51:26,839
links, and bears?

600
00:51:26,839 --> 00:51:37,426
it just in the Alaskans and the Yellowstones and the Serengetes, or is it in the Dutch
countryside with its canals and its roads flanked by trees on both sides?

601
00:51:37,426 --> 00:51:42,489
And is it even in the future in Mayo and Kerry and Galloway and Argyle?

602
00:51:42,769 --> 00:51:46,331
These are questions that we have to think deeply and wrestle with.

603
00:51:46,452 --> 00:51:53,607
And yet at the same time, philosophising with this topic is not going to alone solve all
of our questions.

604
00:51:53,607 --> 00:51:55,680
We do need the natural science and particularly

605
00:51:55,680 --> 00:52:01,873
I think technology has a critical role in informing our decisions and giving us tools.

606
00:52:01,873 --> 00:52:11,057
It is not instead of the philosophy and the relationships, but it is in addition to the
philosophy and the human relationships and ideas that underpin coexistence.

607
00:52:11,057 --> 00:52:19,601
And especially when we're talking about working with farmers, the threat to the routine
and the livelihood in the way of life, that is because farming is hard.

608
00:52:19,601 --> 00:52:20,711
The margins are tight.

609
00:52:20,711 --> 00:52:22,182
The days are so long.

610
00:52:22,182 --> 00:52:23,562
It's a tough gig.

611
00:52:23,712 --> 00:52:33,918
And the idea that I'm going to have to change how I farm and how I live and fence in a
different way, farm in a different way, it's going to affect my business, my business plan

612
00:52:33,918 --> 00:52:40,911
and my bottom line is not just a philosophical threat, but it's a practical threat and
it's going to cost more money.

613
00:52:40,911 --> 00:52:50,096
So my point is if there are technological tools that we can use to automate a lot of this,
I think we should be actively exploring that.

614
00:52:50,096 --> 00:52:53,730
And what I mean by that is sensors on or in large carnivores.

615
00:52:53,730 --> 00:52:58,051
whether on collars or maybe in the future actually inside them, the same with livestock.

616
00:52:58,051 --> 00:53:04,433
So that when a lynx or a wolf in the Irish countryside approaches a field that has sheep
in it, it's setting off a sensor.

617
00:53:04,433 --> 00:53:15,736
It's setting off an alarm, some sort of something like a Fox light, which is this light
that can turn on and be used at night, but automate that some sort of siren.

618
00:53:15,736 --> 00:53:22,398
And again, those, these would have to change because predators will become habituated to
this over time.

619
00:53:22,398 --> 00:53:23,218
And

620
00:53:23,446 --> 00:53:26,719
I would like to see those sorts of tools.

621
00:53:26,719 --> 00:53:33,094
It's not something I have a great deal of knowledge on, but I'd like to see us thinking
about those because I think they could automate that.

622
00:53:33,094 --> 00:53:43,042
But for some, that is philosophically unacceptable because as you've hinted at already,
and I found in my discussion, some people would not accept that degree of human

623
00:53:43,042 --> 00:53:50,728
interference in the wild, but we have to ask, do we want a romantic view of rewilding or
do we want a pragmatic view of rewilding?

624
00:53:50,728 --> 00:53:53,324
And I would go for the pragmatic view.

625
00:53:53,324 --> 00:53:56,836
If you want to have these animals back, it's going to involve compromise.

626
00:53:56,956 --> 00:54:07,712
And if those sensors make it easier for farmers to accept that, if those sensors make it
easier, mean that there's less individual animals that need to be shot or hit.

627
00:54:07,712 --> 00:54:09,233
That's a win win.

628
00:54:09,233 --> 00:54:16,247
So I would say try and accept that philosophically and the benefits scientifically and
economically will follow.

629
00:54:16,287 --> 00:54:16,628
Yeah.

630
00:54:16,628 --> 00:54:21,090
It's a, it's a hard conversation because you have like, okay.

631
00:54:21,344 --> 00:54:38,564
What are the benefits and is the colored walls that's going to be jolted if it goes too
close to whatever, is it still going to fulfill those goals and those roles?

632
00:54:38,564 --> 00:54:50,850
then they go like this pragmatic approach versus a little bit of this emotional as well,
because I think that people, least some, at least if can speak about myself,

633
00:54:50,950 --> 00:55:02,840
for having large carnivores on the landscape, it's not only their biological function that
they're going to do this, that, change river or don't or whatever.

634
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:08,264
It's also this bit of like story and this, right?

635
00:55:08,264 --> 00:55:18,673
Like it's like, okay, I'm not gonna see, I'm probably not gonna see the lynx, but just
knowing that lynx is there, it's already a huge win.

636
00:55:18,673 --> 00:55:21,054
And that's the thing.

637
00:55:21,132 --> 00:55:22,323
Yeah, completely.

638
00:55:22,323 --> 00:55:33,179
And you're absolutely right in only focusing on the ecology and to lesser extent, the
economics of tourism, which I think have significant potential, certainly if Yellowstone

639
00:55:33,179 --> 00:55:34,290
is anything to go by.

640
00:55:34,290 --> 00:55:38,442
And this is often because rewilding and reintroductions are driven by natural science.

641
00:55:38,442 --> 00:55:49,588
We can miss out on that philosophical stroke moral argument, which is that are, and the
philosophers I spoke to, especially Christopher Preston in

642
00:55:49,698 --> 00:55:56,352
Montana, said, and he's an environmental philosopher, written on this, landscapes are more
exciting when these animals are back.

643
00:55:56,352 --> 00:55:58,063
There is that sense of wonder.

644
00:55:58,063 --> 00:56:00,965
And as you said, probably never see a lynx.

645
00:56:00,965 --> 00:56:04,357
They're the ghost of the forest, just like my snow leopards are the ghosts of the
mountains.

646
00:56:04,357 --> 00:56:06,248
I've never seen a snow leopard in the wild.

647
00:56:06,248 --> 00:56:16,123
Hasn't diminished my love of the species or my intention to spend my whole life working on
them because there is a wonder and a thrill that comes from just being in a landscape

648
00:56:16,123 --> 00:56:17,544
where these species are.

649
00:56:17,662 --> 00:56:26,187
And especially as the species get bigger, particularly with bears, maybe to an extent with
wolves, you're reminded that you're not top of the food chain.

650
00:56:26,187 --> 00:56:29,529
And it's good for us as humans to be reminded of that.

651
00:56:29,529 --> 00:56:35,712
It's humbling and humbling is an underrated, but crucial virtue for the human race.

652
00:56:35,712 --> 00:56:40,534
So it's a really important part of the discussion.

653
00:56:41,282 --> 00:56:41,948
100%.

654
00:56:41,948 --> 00:56:46,914
Folks who listening to this, remember the title is links, living with links.

655
00:56:46,914 --> 00:56:49,496
Sharing landscapes with big cats, wolves and bears.

656
00:56:49,496 --> 00:56:55,041
The link is obviously in the description of the show if you want to buy this book and you
should buy this book.

657
00:56:55,041 --> 00:56:56,982
Johnny, I gotta ask you a question.

658
00:56:57,003 --> 00:57:09,954
I said many times when talking about hunters and hunting and communication about hunting
is that hunters are missing out on the emotional aspect of telling story about hunting

659
00:57:09,954 --> 00:57:14,370
because usually they talk about, you know,

660
00:57:14,370 --> 00:57:21,255
population control and this and that and how much money goes from hunting to conservation,
da da da da.

661
00:57:21,255 --> 00:57:27,119
And really these are not arguments that general public will process.

662
00:57:27,200 --> 00:57:34,285
partially the success, for example, for about veganism and so on is because the message is
emotional and simple, right?

663
00:57:34,285 --> 00:57:35,446
Go vegan.

664
00:57:35,727 --> 00:57:40,556
And I often say like, hey, as a hunters, there's too much...

665
00:57:40,556 --> 00:57:46,909
focus on science and facts and not enough focus on the emotional story.

666
00:57:46,909 --> 00:57:57,654
Tell me how do you see that in this space of large carnivores, restoration,
reintroduction, coexistence, however you want to call it.

667
00:57:57,654 --> 00:58:06,458
What is the balance in your view between having a factual data-driven approach and telling

668
00:58:06,562 --> 00:58:19,865
well, story, but story based on like, this is gonna happen and you're gonna be control of
deer and that, and what is the percentage of these emotional stories, which we know that,

669
00:58:19,865 --> 00:58:30,645
you know, on average, if you present it with factual and emotional, emotional will win
like 99 % of the time out of a hundred.

670
00:58:30,946 --> 00:58:31,786
So.

671
00:58:31,786 --> 00:58:39,869
Where is the balance in your view and do we need to shift the conversation more either
direction as it stands right now?

672
00:58:39,869 --> 00:58:41,850
Yeah, that's a great question.

673
00:58:41,850 --> 00:58:48,863
I, I guess the precise balance may depend on our personal inclinations.

674
00:58:48,863 --> 00:58:52,214
I'm not sure there's one specific answer to that.

675
00:58:52,435 --> 00:58:57,447
I can see in different scenarios, just where we, the balance may need to shift.

676
00:58:57,447 --> 00:59:00,938
So for example, a lot of arguments about having

677
00:59:00,950 --> 00:59:04,853
wolves back are driven by the cup driven by people who've trained in natural science.

678
00:59:04,853 --> 00:59:13,339
So there's a bias towards having that natural science data and the cases, the ecological
benefits, the trophic cascades and the landscape of fear.

679
00:59:13,339 --> 00:59:15,521
And that's really important.

680
00:59:15,521 --> 00:59:25,128
And yet there are often then gaps in that social environmental social science, which is
where my particular training and interest in that relationship between us and the species,

681
00:59:25,128 --> 00:59:27,672
not just relationship that we hold individually.

682
00:59:27,672 --> 00:59:35,367
but that we hold collectively and in groups or in tribes and those that conflict then that
can often come between these different tribes.

683
00:59:35,367 --> 00:59:44,123
So I think in general, we need more social science and social science and conservation is
often about looking for numerical patterns in human behavior.

684
00:59:44,123 --> 00:59:49,157
So it tries to mimic what natural science does looking for numerical patterns in the
natural world.

685
00:59:49,157 --> 00:59:56,482
But we actually need that, but we also need the sort of social science that's getting into
like history as well.

686
00:59:56,856 --> 01:00:06,310
politics that understands the qualitative and the nuance and the symbolic, the story
element of these species.

687
01:00:06,910 --> 01:00:17,355
At the same time, we've been talking about world's change rivers and how much it can swing
too much to the story end where the story takes over and it's a really simple story.

688
01:00:17,355 --> 01:00:22,117
But when you actually dig down into the science of it, there is nuance and complexity.

689
01:00:22,117 --> 01:00:25,548
So I would be wary to put a precise

690
01:00:25,722 --> 01:00:27,823
50-50, I think it can just depend.

691
01:00:27,823 --> 01:00:33,085
Sometimes we will need to leaven the science with more story, more emotion, more feeling.

692
01:00:33,085 --> 01:00:38,447
Sometimes when there's maybe too much emotion and story, we need to say, hold on a minute.

693
01:00:38,447 --> 01:00:39,758
This is what the science says.

694
01:00:39,758 --> 01:00:41,429
And actually we do need facts.

695
01:00:41,429 --> 01:00:51,943
And I've tried in the book to really try to bring both together because we as, as human
beings, we are quantitative and we are qualitative.

696
01:00:51,943 --> 01:00:54,464
We live by words, but we also live by numbers.

697
01:00:54,488 --> 01:00:57,200
We live by science, but we also live by stories.

698
01:00:57,200 --> 01:01:05,966
And it's, it's that combination of the boat of both that we need that I tried to practice
and that are key to understanding this topic.

699
01:01:05,966 --> 01:01:11,120
know, I always finish the podcast with asking, you know, how do you think it's going to
play out?

700
01:01:11,120 --> 01:01:13,131
How do you think it's going to happen?

701
01:01:13,131 --> 01:01:23,598
But I want to do something different this time around, because when I was reading your
book, I, I thought that you were very careful to not commit to either side.

702
01:01:24,138 --> 01:01:26,158
maybe a little bit too careful at times.

703
01:01:26,158 --> 01:01:29,172
So I want you to come clean.

704
01:01:29,172 --> 01:01:31,403
So I want you to come clean right now.

705
01:01:31,403 --> 01:01:34,335
How would you like this to play out?

706
01:01:34,335 --> 01:01:38,288
know, which size you're on, Johnny.

707
01:01:38,729 --> 01:01:42,591
I'm obviously, you know, joking right now.

708
01:01:42,591 --> 01:01:44,953
But what is your take?

709
01:01:44,953 --> 01:01:49,015
Like how would you love to see this playing out?

710
01:01:49,256 --> 01:01:52,458
Yeah, I have been careful.

711
01:01:53,246 --> 01:01:58,839
And that is in part because I genuinely, it's not just a sales pitch, I genuinely do have
mixed feelings about it.

712
01:01:58,839 --> 01:02:00,550
And I continue to have mixed feelings.

713
01:02:00,550 --> 01:02:04,502
And this book was my attempt to work out what those feelings were.

714
01:02:04,502 --> 01:02:13,577
And after 85,000 words and 29,000 kilometers, 56 interviews and all the literature, I
still have mixed feelings about it.

715
01:02:13,577 --> 01:02:16,779
And I love this idea in principle.

716
01:02:17,079 --> 01:02:17,599
I love it.

717
01:02:17,599 --> 01:02:22,710
I would love to walk through those landscapes that I walk through every week and come
across a wolf.

718
01:02:22,710 --> 01:02:23,570
or links.

719
01:02:23,570 --> 01:02:33,499
And I love it because of the scientific benefits that it would bring, but also because of
the ethical, the moral dimensions, the wonder that I knew from being in landscapes with

720
01:02:33,499 --> 01:02:42,386
large carnivores growing up in Africa and never seeing the leopard and the hyena, but
knowing they were there just filled me with a magic that is cannot be put into words.

721
01:02:42,527 --> 01:02:51,944
At the same time, the pragmatic part of me does worry about the social conflict that this
could bring about.

722
01:02:51,966 --> 01:02:54,107
in these islands.

723
01:02:54,128 --> 01:02:57,531
for that reason, I think at this moment, I just don't think it's workable.

724
01:02:57,531 --> 01:03:03,896
And I don't even think it's workable in Scotland and Northern England where we've had the
most work done.

725
01:03:03,896 --> 01:03:12,433
Now, I believe there are reports and things in the pipeline that have probably been
delayed by the recent events that are probably going to come out this year that may help

726
01:03:12,433 --> 01:03:21,110
to answer a lot of the concerns I have that I've laid out in the book and the report,
because I think to do this properly and do it well, those need to be addressed and we need

727
01:03:21,110 --> 01:03:22,056
to see

728
01:03:22,056 --> 01:03:31,995
coexistence toolkit funding coexistence trust funds that will make sure it can be funded
over the next century, not just over five years, over the next hundred years and

729
01:03:31,995 --> 01:03:39,060
safeguarded from the meddling of politicians and the prevailing winds of
agri-environmental policies, which just changed like that.

730
01:03:39,501 --> 01:03:49,279
And because none of those things are not in place and not enough has been done, I think it
will be some time before it can happen.

731
01:03:49,279 --> 01:03:50,760
But I do think that

732
01:03:51,254 --> 01:03:53,035
It will happen at some point.

733
01:03:53,035 --> 01:03:57,869
It's moving even, especially in Britain, it's moving from mainstream.

734
01:03:57,869 --> 01:04:01,281
It's moving from fringe to mainstream, even the last couple of years.

735
01:04:01,321 --> 01:04:04,343
Recent events may slow it down, but I don't think it's going to stop.

736
01:04:04,343 --> 01:04:14,561
But I think we should try, as we said at the very start, try and take a step back and
think about a slightly longer term view and think about this in terms of decades and not

737
01:04:14,561 --> 01:04:14,901
years.

738
01:04:14,901 --> 01:04:18,173
I think at some point in the 21st century, it will take place.

739
01:04:18,173 --> 01:04:19,778
And that's partly because

740
01:04:19,778 --> 01:04:21,659
we will create the conditions for it.

741
01:04:21,659 --> 01:04:30,085
Not just through answering all of these questions through research that I've highlighted
and I intend to be answering many of those in the coming years, but also because I think

742
01:04:30,085 --> 01:04:33,647
people will become more open to the idea.

743
01:04:33,728 --> 01:04:43,994
I think at some point the overwritten window of what is politically acceptable to the
majority of population will overlap with that general public desire for this.

744
01:04:43,994 --> 01:04:49,550
And then as we reforest and rewild upland areas to meet

745
01:04:49,550 --> 01:04:57,955
climate goals, especially in Ireland and in Britain, we're going to be creating habitat as
deer populations expand to fill those expanding forests.

746
01:04:57,955 --> 01:05:05,059
We're creating the perfect ecological, social, and maybe one day the political conditions
for this to happen in the future.

747
01:05:05,059 --> 01:05:15,205
But I would really stress the need to not rush it because if this is doing well, if it's
worth doing, then it's worth doing well.

748
01:05:16,888 --> 01:05:20,080
We come back to the charismatic nature of these species.

749
01:05:20,080 --> 01:05:27,283
And I just mentioned this briefly in the book, these charismatic species and others like
them, including cell leopards, they attract charismatic people.

750
01:05:27,624 --> 01:05:28,685
I'm one of them.

751
01:05:28,685 --> 01:05:38,249
So I have no problem with charismatic people, but these charismatic people can sometimes
be quite controversial and add a whole nother layer of relational complexity to this.

752
01:05:38,250 --> 01:05:41,692
And there are some big egos attached to this topic.

753
01:05:41,692 --> 01:05:46,504
And if my point is, if people are trying to make this happen because they want to see it,

754
01:05:46,690 --> 01:05:50,492
take place before the end of career or even the end of their life.

755
01:05:50,673 --> 01:05:52,945
I'm sorry, but that's not a good enough reason to do it.

756
01:05:52,945 --> 01:05:56,498
That's getting into Tiger King territory and that's not a good place to be.

757
01:05:56,498 --> 01:05:59,119
If this is worth doing, it's worth doing well.

758
01:05:59,119 --> 01:06:04,863
It's worth doing at a speed that makes sure it is thought through and funded and
resourced.

759
01:06:04,944 --> 01:06:08,266
And if that takes decades, then so be it.

760
01:06:08,418 --> 01:06:12,021
Folks, listen, once again, there's only one call to action in this podcast.

761
01:06:12,021 --> 01:06:12,772
Buy the book.

762
01:06:12,772 --> 01:06:14,123
The link is in the description.

763
01:06:14,123 --> 01:06:21,088
And while you're buying the book, you will also support my work because I will get a tiny
teensy commission from each sale.

764
01:06:21,309 --> 01:06:22,400
You're not going to regret it.

765
01:06:22,400 --> 01:06:25,742
It's one of the best books about large carnivores I have read.

766
01:06:25,742 --> 01:06:27,154
And I read quite a few.

767
01:06:27,154 --> 01:06:28,865
Johnny, congratulations on the book.

768
01:06:28,865 --> 01:06:29,496
It was great.

769
01:06:29,496 --> 01:06:31,017
And thank you for your time.

770
01:06:31,017 --> 01:06:32,068
Thank you so much, Tom.

771
01:06:32,068 --> 01:06:36,542
Always a pleasure to be on your show and congratulations and almost getting to 200.

772
01:06:36,542 --> 01:06:37,682
Big achievement.

773
01:06:37,923 --> 01:06:38,855
Soon enough.

774
01:06:38,855 --> 01:06:39,417
Soon enough.

775
01:06:39,417 --> 01:06:40,250
Soon enough.