January 4, 2023 • 40 mins
Do you know that nature depends on various keystone species to survive and thrive? That's right, and the wolf is one of these critical keystone creatures. By regulating prey populations, wolves enable many other plants and animals to flourish. They initiate a domino effect and support natural levels of biodiversity.
However, the wolf is in danger – at one time there were an estimated quarter of a million wolves in this country, and we now have fewer than 6,000 in the lower 48 states - so it's never been more urgent than right now to stand up and defend the mighty wolf.
Samantha Attwood, Co-Founding Member of the #RelistWolves Campaign, a coalition made up of dedicated conservationists, wildlife advocates, and scientists committed to raising public awareness about wolves and advocating to restore Gray wolves to the Endangered Species List, and Maggie Howell, Executive Director of the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York, join me to discuss wolves, what is happening to them, and why it is so important to help protect them.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
To one more howl. They don't laugh though the gray
wolf is in danger. In the nineteen seventies, wolves were
one of the first species to be protected under the
(00:22):
Endangered Species Act. Due to population decline in the years
that followed, Congress removed protections from gray wolves, first in
the Northern Rocky Mountains, then across the country. By February
of two, federal protections were restored to wolves and much
of the contiguous United States, except in the Northern Rocky
(00:42):
Mountain region, where more than of the killing of wolves occurs.
I've always been passionate about animals and their welfare, so
on this episode of my podcast, we're talking about how
we can help protect the gray wolf and learn more
about these wonderful creatures. Joining me today or Samantha Atwood,
co founding member of the hashtag Realist Wolves Campaign, and
(01:06):
Maggie Howell, executive director of the Wolf Conservation Center right
here near my home in South Salem, New York. Welcome
to my podcast, Maggie and Samantha, and it's a pleasure
to have you here to talk because wolves are on
a lot of people's minds right now. Do you know why.
I hope it's because campaign. Well, I wish it were
(01:27):
just your campaign, but you should be very thankful that
Kevin Costner and Yellowstone have brought wolves to the forefront
of everybody's sort of consciousness. Uh. You know, you watch that.
You watch the conflict on that show between the conservationists
who are trying to save the wolves and the wildlife
(01:48):
in the national parks and all the contiguous properties, and
then you see the the ranchers who want to kill
the wolves because they kill the calves and the data.
But um, but I think we are all kind of thinking.
All my friends are watching Yellowstone and thinking wolves and
um and did you put that together or not? Sort of,
(02:09):
so I have to say, what do you think are
do you think they're doing a disservice or a service?
So the wolf population on that show, I think any
point at which the wolves are becoming part of the
conversation is a win, right it open. That's what I think.
That's what I think, And I think that you have
a chance now and opening a big opening to get
to all those millions of people that are watching Yellowstone
(02:31):
season five. So it's it's kind of interesting, it really is. No,
we really appreciate the opportunity here. Well, Maggie and Samantha, Um,
tell me what is the hashtag realist Wolves campaign all about? Okay,
the Releast Wolves campaign is a campaign aimed at restoring
Endangered Species Act protections to the gray wolf across the
(02:55):
entire you know, forty lower forty eight states in the
United States are campaign. We founded in a June shortly
after there's this really horrible wolf hunt in Wisconsin where
two eighteen wolves were killed in under sixty hours by
any means necessary, running them down with a TVs, packs
of dogs, night hunting, baiting, snaring. What was the reason?
(03:20):
The reason is, well, Maggie, you want to take that one. Yeah,
but you know what did they say? Why did they
go on such a massive hunt? So because wolves have
been um protected due to illegal battles, have been going
back and forth over wolf protection, um really across the
United States. And so when it was actually from a
President Trump, he's really the exiting kind of speech almost
(03:43):
out of the office, was to delist wolves nationwide. So
after protections were lost, um, really, there were some people
just raring to go for a long time, um to
kill wolves. And there's a lot of it just based
on fear and hatred, um, which is really unfortunate. And
but really what we saw happen, you know, as soon
(04:05):
as they lost protections is just just how important protections are.
And uh and really Samanthan mentioned it was like sixty hours,
um and these are wolves, wolf pups, you know it was.
But what do you do with a population that exists
today that carry guns. Why does a regulation stop them
(04:26):
from killing wolves? It doesn't really does it. One of
the things we say is legal killing leads to more
illegal killing, so it emboldens everybody when these protections were lost. Look,
you can't save every single wolf. Will there be poachers? Yes, However,
regulation has a massive impact on protecting these species. And
(04:46):
that's the goal of the campaign, which is actually to
restore these protections wolves, and to do it in a
way that's a little bit interesting and out of the box,
where we're talking to the public, we're putting pressure on
public officials. We're going about this in a little bit
of a different way, because interestingly enough, this issue until
recently has really flown under the radar in my opinion.
You know, you love your dog, you love nature. There's
(05:08):
only fewer than six thousand wolves left in the lower
forty eight states. We're not talking at all, that's all.
And they're being hunted down. Montana and Idaho alone pass
legislation to incentivize the killing of between eighty five and
nine of their wolf populations. It's the cattle, I think.
Sitting where we are, it can be a little hard
(05:29):
to understand when you look at the data. Wolves are
responsible for less than one percent of unwanted deaths of
cattle that's unwanted, that includes disease, sickness, birds of prey,
believe it or not, wolves are responsible for one percent,
and the data really doesn't actually support um. You know
what's happening here. And frankly, it's not a zero sum game.
(05:51):
It's not kill wolves, protect cattle, protect you know, keep
the wolves. You know, all the cattle are going to
get eaten. There's really really good mechan isms you have,
whether it's fencing, flags, lights, uh what do they call livestock,
guardian dogs, all of these things that work and allow
you to actually coexist with these animals who are incredibly
(06:11):
important for our ecosystem. You know, there's a lot of
really major forces working against wolves. You know, whether it's
the cattleman kind of lobby or the n R A
UM or hunting associations UM, and there's not that many
you know groups or I guess a lobby UM really
speaking for wolves, and you know they need our voices.
(06:33):
So that's why the campaign has been so great, to
really elevate what's already been out there among many conservation groups,
but to bring it to really people across all different functions.
So lawyers, you have, the artists, you have you know,
just normally scary and statistic books mentioning the wonderful wolf
(06:55):
population and now Yellowstone and yellow just to elevate this
and and give everyone an idea of what's really happening
and hopefully um, you know, really the roadmap they need
to use their voice and create change. So you co
founded this grit this group. Well, actually my mom co
founded this and I kind of got sucked in, so
(07:17):
it's kind of a funny story. So you know, my
mom is a very passion environmentalist. I I am too,
and you know she saw what happened after these hunts
and saw what was going on. Mom is Leslie Atwood,
who is a neighbor of mine here in Bedford, New York,
and uh. And she is a passionate woman in many, many,
many different fields. Absolutely, and you she saw what was
(07:38):
going on, it was like, wow, you know, we need
to kind of taken out of the box approach. Can
we all speak in one voice? All these little NGOs,
all these groups that are doing such great work on
the ground. We're stronger together. You know, we are going
to you know, at the risk of stealing someone's phrase
over there, you know we are we are able to
speak in one voice and it is much more impactful.
So I kind of got sucked in because I was
(07:59):
going to, you know, help get our our campaign firm,
test strategy set up, get a social media expert who
you would love, by the way, Brandon Kennedy. He comes
from a fashion background to actually look at things a
little bit differently. So I was gonna help the team
set up. And as I learned more and more about
this issue and how important wolves are, I just couldn't.
I couldn't step away so out of outside of my
(08:20):
day job, this is this is what we do. What
about you, Maggie, how did you get involved with this campaign? Well,
we're practically neighbors with with Jim and Leslie Um and Samantha. So, um,
we've known them for quite a bit. In fact, we
had a wolf celebrate his fifteenth birthday um at the restaurant. Gosh,
some handful of years ago. Um, but it was quite
(08:44):
a turnout, but people showing up to celebrate with a
big meaty steak and people still talk about it. Yeah, yeah,
still talk about that. So this is one of the
wolves from the contribution. Yes, his name was after he
since passed away. He passed away, um a few years ago,
but um, but boy it was and he was famous.
He was a beautiful Yeah. I got to talk to
(09:07):
him a couple of times. Did But really I just
appreciated new new strength and new kind of um energy
coming into the fight for wolves. So I thought, you know,
the more the merrier, and you know, the strength of
the wolf is the pack. And to have the Realist
Campaign kind of joined this effort, I just thought it
(09:28):
was great and so I want to do anything I
could do to help and and it's been really fun collaboration. Well,
there are many threatened endangered species of animals. Why are
wolves so important? Do you know what a keystone is?
So keystone species plays the exact same role in the
ecosystem where they basically punch above their weight in terms
(09:48):
of the effects they have on the entire environment. And
wolves are exactly like that. If you look at the
reintroduction to Yellowstone that happened in the nineties, UM, what
you saw coming out of that was wolves actually are
creating this environment where you know they're they're eating elk, yes,
but they're actually making the elk herds move along more quickly,
(10:08):
which meant the elk stopped to browsing. Vegetation, allowed the
beavers to come back, allowed um erosion to stop alongside
the streams, and really you know, allowed these fish to
come back. So like all of these as you call
like a trophic cascade effect happened within the ecosystem that
was really due to these wolves coming back. Wolves are
critical for healthy ecosystem. Like I like that analogy to
(10:31):
the keystone of a building I have. I have keystones
in my arches of the nail on the No, you
don't want to lose the keystone because everything comes tumbling down. Exactly.
(10:52):
So the ecosystem that exists in the wild in the
United States UM is fragile, becoming more and more fragile
with the expansion of the gas lines with the whether
the horrible climate crisis that we're experiencing right now and
probably forever henceforth, don't you think? And so disbelievers, people
(11:13):
who don't see a climate crisis or don't see the
what's happening to the wildlife in the United States? How
can how can we How how powerful can this group
be to to make people pay attention? What can you
do and how can we help? As individuals? That's a
great question, I would say as individuals, you know, the
first step is awareness and education, right and then going
(11:36):
to take action. Realists Wolves dot org. You can send
letters to your representatives, you can share on social media
from at Realist Wolves campaign, and frankly opportunities UM with
with folks like yourself, Martha, who are You're You're a
keystone in your own way, right you punch above your
weight in terms of all the people that you reach
using your voice as an incredible opportunity to UM, you know,
(11:58):
shed light on this issue and let folks know like
there is there is a path here. The path here
is to get wolves relisted. That decision lies with the
buying in administration and they are currently conducting what's called
a status review. So it started in September of one.
They said they're gonna take one year because of all
the hunting. They were going to make an assessment in
(12:19):
the US Fish and Wildlife Service December. It is they're late,
We're waiting. They're late, and they have to know that
we're paying attention. So every call you make, every letter
you send, shows them that we're paying attention and that
this is an issue that you know, I think the public,
you know, really should care about. You know, six thousand
wolves may not seem like such a big deal in
(12:41):
the grand scheme of things, but every little bit helps everything.
I'm shocked and in the lower forty eight. Yes, are
they protected in Canada? Canada is facing many of the
similar issues. Yeah, there's a the Gonquin wolf is some
protections just Alon, Yes, just north of Aspen the Eastern
(13:03):
are Algonquin wolf. But generally they're it's pretty much open
season on wolves. I consider them gorgeous creatures. I love
dogs that look like wolves, and I think about wolves
and I think about how badly they've been treated by
so many people. Farmers have done terrible things to wolves.
When one of the things I can't do I can
stand is to read some of the bad things people
(13:24):
have done to them. They're not they're not humans, and
they don't know that they're being you know why they're
being tortured. Uh, and they tortured them. So what can
we do? Just letters? Letters outraging about this outrage? And
also like do you make do you make a lot
of personal appearances talking talking about wolves two groups? Uh?
(13:47):
You know, to some degree, I think at anything we
can do to get into the public conversation is what
we want to do. And you know you mentioned their animals,
they don't have a voice. It's our obligation and responsibility
to actually be the voice when we can. Well, it's
like the octopus. I mean, I did you watch My
Octopus Teachers? Did you watch that? And yet every single
(14:08):
restaurant that's had octopus on the menu still has octopus
on the menu. I will not eat octopus. I mean
I never eat it anyway, because because I've always loved octopus,
but as a creature. But it's just incredible, They're just
they don't It doesn't make any difference. And that was
a powerful movie, powerful documentary, and the difference between octopus
(14:30):
and wolves is that the octopus doesn't isn't surrounded already
in this cloak of untruths and myths and fables that
have been, you know, around for centuries. So beyond giving
the wolf of voice and asking people to protect wolves
and care about wolves, we have a lot of unraveling
to do, um to change perceptions of the wolf, because
(14:52):
already people have really poor the big bad wolf and
little red riding hood. I mean, this is why this
was brand even our language. You know, just just if
you open the New York Times on a given day,
you're probably going to see some Wolf of Wall Street
or lone wolf terrorist or really just we have to
(15:13):
kind of unleash some of these negative connectations that we
connect to the word wolf um and kind of start
from scratch that people can understand what they really are,
their wild animals living their own like wild lives, but
their family, you know, just trying to do and survive
and thrive on the landscape. So incomes another canine. I
(15:36):
guess it's a canine, the coyote that lives all around
us here in it's just your county. What do you
think about them? I love coyotes. The thing about coyotes
that I find most remarkable is that just like wolves,
they can persecuted for centuries and they're thriving. And now
(15:58):
they're not only thriving, but they're all four the forty
nine of our fifty states, so every state except Hawaii.
So in terms of being outfoxed, the coyote is remarkable. Um, However,
still we're killing the hundreds of thousands. I have a
pack of coyotes on my property. They couldn't just well
be wolves. I would have a very hard time shooting
(16:22):
a coyote. Yeah, and yet the coyotes are wreaking havoc
on the farm. I mean, here, I am living in
this this little world, here, this little hundred and fifty
acre world of mine, wondering what the heck am I
going to do with these beautiful creatures? They walk with
me when I ride my horse, the coyotes. It's interesting horse.
I talked to them. They listen. And yet there they
(16:44):
go at lunch time not long ago, and ate six
of my most beautiful peacocks. I'm sorry about they did.
They just ate them at daytime, at noon when everybody
else was having their lunch. They had their lunch, and
uh and and then I called the town. I said,
is there some way to and I'm fenced, but coyotes
(17:04):
have their way of getting in and over and under fences.
Have to set something up for you because there are
lots of really neat tools to use, um that can
be proactive, non lethal to help the turn. Are you
doing that from people being beleaguered by wolves chew out
in the West. We don't do it personally at the
Wolf Conservation Center because we're here wolves, but definitely that
(17:27):
works would be very good because I'm not I'm not
about to go out and shoot the coyotes. And actually,
you say they could be wolves, you know, in terms
of they could be wolves, they actually are a little
bit wolf. I know they are because yeah, well the
coyotes we have in this area are called Eastern coyotes. Well,
we had a pack of seven babies last year, and
I've watched them grow up, and some of them are
(17:48):
really dark, almost black, and some are kind of a
golden color. And there they are, and you know, you
you look at I go out with flashlights at night
and find them. And but what do we do My
my domesticated animals cannot roam my dogs. I'm not worried
about my dogs. And funny because my dogs would would
(18:09):
make mincemeat of the coyotes, I think. But I don't
want my dogs to have the taste of blood like that.
I just don't want them to So I want them
to get in a fight. But what do you do?
What do you do? What do you do? Um? There
are things just most A lot of it's based on fear. Um.
A lot of animals, wolves, coyotes have something called neophobia,
(18:29):
fear of anything new. So it could be flattery, like
you know, kind of flags or ribbons that are on
fence line or noisemakers, um, you know, just anything that's
going to shock them so they don't feel comfortable. So
but yeah, I mean the dogs are pretty noisy, they're
not afraid of people's I'm so they probably thought they
(18:50):
were like toys. I mean, big giant peas are not.
They're as big as the coyotes, if not bigger. Quite
a snack. It was really something. But back to back
to tell us about the gray wolf, because I think
everybody says that's really what we're trying to trying to
protect the most now since there's only six thousand of them. Um,
(19:10):
and there's many millions of I bet there's millions of coyotes, right, millions,
So what about the gray wolf? I think I think
the one thing I would say on the last point though,
is that, like the conflict reduction methods are very similar.
When you're dealing with predators. It really is about you know,
securing as much as you can, but you can't secure
everything right, So it is lights. It is like a
(19:32):
livestyle guardian, dogs, range writers, various things that work. And
I think what we want to highlight is there is
a middle ground here, right, there are solutions, and frankly,
you know, in my opinion, those are the things that
we really should be funding at the state level to
try to coexist with these beautiful creatures here that people
all were going to be overrun by wolves. I'm like,
(19:52):
there's six thousand of them. I think we're really far
off from that. We're going in the wrong direction. But
even where there's like all of these elk, all of
this food, all of this environment, it's hard being a wolf.
You have to chase down huge prey, very high mortality
rates and um. And so they've actually really stabilized, I think,
you know, sadly, last season there were twenty five Yellowstone
(20:14):
wolves who were killed. That's the population. There are only
a d and twenty five in the park, which is
where they were lured out of the park and shot.
How were they lured The new laws that were passed
in just in the past couple of years UM allowed
baiting for the first time. So they had people baiting
the you know, right beyond the kind of boundary, that
(20:37):
invisible boundary. UM would learn them from the safety of
the park and making calls like anything they could do
to get the wolves out. And these are rules. By
the way, most wouls are not accustomed to people, but
people come to Yellowstone to sea wolves. Yeah, it was
it Like I think there's two million dollars per year
in tourism revenue of people coming to see wolves in
(20:59):
this area, and so they're kind of used to people.
They're not expecting this invisible boundary. You cross it, you're
going to be shot and killed. How terribly unfair is
that it is? And that's in Yellowstone where there is
no management, there's no lethal management to control their populations,
and that population has stabilized over the years. And the
same thing in Wisconsin, where they've been protected for um
(21:22):
a handful of years, and during that time without having
these state state sanction hunts, they saw that the population
reached carrying capacity. That means it really was able to
kind of control itself and has stabilized UM, which demonstrated
that there's no in terms of population control. The wolves
that they're set, that's not a problem. They can do
that without our help. How big is a gray wolf ah, Um,
(21:47):
Well they vary. There are different kinds of gray wolves. UM.
But a lot of people think from fairy tales or
movies like Twilight what have you, that there are these monstrous,
huge animals. UM. Like in the Great Lakes area of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Wish, Michigan,
a female might be seventy to ninety maybe hundred pounds.
(22:07):
A male might get to a hundred ten pounds UM.
In the Northern Rockies Great and that Great Jans, they're
like a giant German shipherds. Yeah, they get a little
bit bigger in the in the northern Rocky states of
like Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, UM, a male might be
a hundred fifteen pounds UM. They can be bigger. There's
been a few in Yellowstone that were over a hundred
(22:28):
and THIRTYE knows all of this intimately because as director
of the Wolf Conservation Center here in South Salem. How
many wolves do you have there? Now? We have thirty two?
Oh wow, you have a lot more. Yes, last time
I was there was a couple of years ago, and
now you have thirty two. What kind of wolves? Um? Well,
(22:49):
there are different kinds. We have um two wolves that
we just call a kind of our generic which sounds terrible,
but gray wolves and they're who, um, the wolves that
helped teach people, so there aren't bassids or education wolves.
And their names are Laywa and Nicai. And then we
have ten critically endangered red wolves, which is a totally
different species of wolf um that are currently living only
(23:11):
here in the north or southeast um in the state
of North Carolina. And then we have twenty Mexican gray wolves,
which are gray wolves but a different subspecies of gray wolf.
And they're about um, we have twenty of those and
they're about two hundred little fewer than two hundred in
the southwest United States. They're all in pretty bad shape
numbers wise. Yeah. What does the what does your conservation
(23:35):
center do for these wolves? Sure? Yeah, so we Obviously
we house them, we take care of them, we nurture them. UM.
But we're really teaching people about them. So we do
a lot of education programs. We have people on site,
we do remote programs, we do scientific webinars. We really
try to get that education at every level. How big
an area do you have for them to roam? We
(23:55):
have thirty four acres right now. Are they kept separate
or are they enclosures? It's they're separated by family groups.
So we have some families are just a pair of wolves. UM.
We have some families that are quite larger, up to
eight wolves, UM, that are multigenerational. But wolves ultimately live
or belong in the wild. So even you know, if
(24:17):
we have an enclosure that's say two acres or more,
it's it's they're dynamic creatures. They belong in the wild,
so keeping them in captivity is really difficult. UM. We
have no wolves wild in this area, do no. UM.
There has been the occasional wolf that's gotten into the Northeast,
likely from Canada UM usually UM and even into New
(24:40):
York UM. But those animals are usually coming via like
dead wolves. That's the only way we find out about
them because we have really robust coyote hunting throughout the Northeast.
People like, oh, I killed a really large coyote. They
do some genetic tests and confirmed that it was a wolf,
and that's happened a couple of times, so they're really
close by. But there's no populations just kind of known,
(25:03):
no proven populations to be here right now, what's the
lifespan of a gray wolf? Um? It really depends, you know.
Samantha touched on this earlier. How living in the wild
is hard even before you put the kind of the
human component in there. But um, you know, most pups
don't even survive to adulthood. About sixty percent of pups
(25:25):
UM die within the first year, usually of starvation. UM.
And during the late summer I think is the hardest time,
early fall. UM. But if they get past that that
first year and make it to two years old, they'll
likely make it maybe two four to six years old.
If there's no you know, hunting UM. So those you
know that the things that we can really be an
(25:46):
issue would be disease, UM starvation usually just for the
youngsters UM and UH and actually other wolves. So wolves
are a top predator, but they're also have lots of
competitors out there, and wolves will compete with mountain lions,
wolves will compete with um bears, they will compete with
coyotes to a degree um, but they also compete with
(26:09):
other wolves. So they're very much like people and that
they have their home turf kind of like their their
area and they're going to defend their territory um from
their neighbors. Fox fox don't really pose much of a
competition risk for wolves. Their pack animals wolves yep. So
how big is a pack um? That varies, But basically,
you know what a wolf pack is essentially just a
(26:31):
family um. Even you know, the alpha male alpha female
kind of terms have been pretty much uh you know,
aren't used so much in there in the wolf circles
these days because really just alpha the alpha male would
be the dad, the help of femails, the mom, and
they are the bosses because that's how it goes parent
that's how it should go, right. So, and then they
(26:52):
have their offspring once a year every year and they
will make up the rest of the pack. Sometimes a
wolf that's not related will join the pack um. But
they're dynamic x you have, just like with our families
you know, they kind of leave the nest at some
point and start their own families. So UM, so that's
why the numbers are a bit you know, it changes.
And also had a lot of babies that the we
(27:13):
have we actually we're hoping to have some more babies
this spring. Um. But last spring we had um one
letter born Mexican Mexican gray wolves. How many this letter
was five healthy and one of them actually was released
into the wild, which is very exciting and um, but
(27:34):
the largest litter repent at the Wolf center was a
litter of nine and nine yeah, nine and um. We
decided that we wanted to name it um name each
member after really important UM players on the Yankees and uh,
and we thought, oh, how fun because I make up
(27:56):
baseball team and so we're trying to do that. And
then we just I had last minute and I hope
you have an errand well we were. There was a
lot of debate, robust ongoing debate about foo should these
Yankees be and and actually we decided on second thought,
we'll name them after female conservationists, because of course Yankees
female conservationists. UM. But it worked out for the best
(28:18):
because the boys from that letter were actually transferred to
a different facility in Boston, And if they were named
after the Yankees, it would have been nobody would have liked.
So female conservationists one out. So wolves, what what do
wolves in the wild each? What are they looking for? Yeah?
So wolves? Um, their menu will vary depending on where
(28:41):
they live, Like in Yellowstone, they're going to be hunting
animals like elk um dear bison some of sometimes it's
a little bit harder for them. But there's one pack
called the Molly's Pack for years that was their expertise,
was hunting bison effectively. Um. They'll also eat smallers like
beaver hair. You know, really it depends. It's going to
(29:04):
take the whole family group though, in order to really
chase down a successfully hunted animal like an elk or
a bison. Um, those other animals would be more of
like a single snack. What's the ideal habitat for the
gray wolf? Is it? I mean, do they seem to
be rather adaptable? They are very adaptable. Um, And ideal
habitat is a habitat that has prey. Honestly, that's going
(29:28):
to be the biggest thing. Are they looking for possums
and skunks and things like that too. Yeah, you know,
like even um like the Arctic the Arctic gray wolf.
Let's say, um, while they're they're really large, you know, um,
caribou migrations, and there's the musk ox, but otherwise it's
pretty barren UM. So they're gonna be hunting things like
Lenning's and Arctic fox. UM. Really the smaller prey than
(29:52):
those are the ones where they won't rely on the
rest of the family members necessarily. But because food is
a bit more scarce, UM, they have a large your
territory size because they have to roam farther distances justifine food. UM,
they tend to have smaller litters as well. So the
(30:15):
question is what's the difference between being endangered and being threatened.
Is there a distinct difference? Yeah, I would say, you know,
endangered when when something when a species is designated as
an endangered species, they get the maximum protections, right, can't
hunt them like you have to kind of preserve their habitat,
(30:36):
and and endangered means well they're at risk of going extinct.
Threatens It is kind of like the next level, which
is like yo, you think they're going to become endangered.
So by the time they're endangered is really dire. Yeah,
so they're now endangered. Yeah, seriously, Yeah they are. I mean,
if you look at what's happening with these hunts and
all the barbaric methods that are being used, and frankly,
(30:57):
like you know, there are groups and states they're paying
bound teams, they are incentivizing hunters to go out and
cobols they're gonna pay in Idaho they'll pay between five
hundred dollars per wolf. And there's no i mean berries everywhere,
but like there's not a buch limitation in terms of
what what hunters can go out. They could go get
twenty wolves and it's really it's really slipped into the
(31:19):
dark ages and and no better. I mean, we used
to have likely more than a quarter of a million
wolves living coast to coast no longer. And really it
was through you know, these these predator eradication programs UM
that used poison and bounties and trapping and snares, UM
that brought them down to just a few isolated, you know,
(31:41):
almost family groups, mostly in the Great Lakes area and
they were gone everywhere else. UM. So then you know,
with UM, the Endangered Species Act being passed in ninety three. Um,
we stopped killing wolves and we started to protect wolves.
And at the height, how many wolves have we counted?
I mean, if we're if there's six thousand, now, what
(32:04):
was the most we ever counted? Um, well they don't
they weren't counting, but they're estimating at least a quarter
of a million. Really, and that's when was that. That
was really before we colonized and started these massive programs
to just get rid of most of the predators. Yeah,
it's just like you know, late eighteen hundreds, I would say,
(32:24):
So it was a long time ago when the bison
were running free. It's a lot always different, and there
were millions of bison and now they've been reduced to
such a pitiful number. Two. No, it's true, it's um.
So the Endangered Species list that was what year were
they removed from it? So they were removed from it.
(32:44):
It's gone back and forth, kind of a legal battle.
But they were initially removed like in two thousand and eleven,
and it's kind of gone back and forth in different
places for a little while now. Um. But while it
has gone back and forth, it's been a little bit confusing. UM.
But we've seen what happens when there is wolf hunting,
and then we've seen when wolves are afforded protections. Really
(33:07):
a lot of those populations stabilize, which really takes away,
you know, some of the reasons they're the justifications, um
for these hunts in the first place. Is there legal
hunting anywhere in the United States? Where um, legal hunting
right now is in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. And that's
(33:27):
where again, like Samantha said, they're using some of these
you know bounties. You know, bounties aren't legal. I mean,
essentially we we kind of got over bounties. You know,
we celebrated the Endangered Species Act. It's fifty year anniversary
is next year. I mean, it's one of the most
uh successful environmental reinstated. I don't know, I don't know.
(33:53):
I think it's unfair. I think it's very unfairly. But
wolves have become sort of an emblem of this political
out all between environmentalists and you know, we don't want
to be told what to do at the state level.
And the problem is it really is not the wolves
are caught in the middle. It's not about the science
or the data behind it, because all of a sudden
(34:14):
you're seeing a lot of emotion um being pulled into
this issue. Where yet you look at the data, you
look at how many cattle are being killed by wolves.
You've got Montana, the state of Montana is being overrun
by elk right now, to the point where it's a
big problem that everyone knows about. You have a natural
solution here, and yet you're out there killing your natural solution.
At the same time this endangered Species list, who else
(34:36):
is on it? Oh gosh, lots of critters? Um, Yeah,
so it depends. You know. Again, different parts of the
country almost has different kinds of protection. But in terms
of predators, you have the grizzly bear that's currently still
being protected. Um, those different kinds of wolves, lots of birds, birds,
(34:56):
and that that the Endangered Species Act is really responsible
for one of the greatest conservation success stories, the emblem
of the United States. We had our first sighting here
at the farm last week. We got a picture of
a bold eagle circling the whole farm, looking looking around.
(35:16):
It was so exciting because I am not in the
twenty years I've been here seeing an eagle. Have you
seen one here? I haven't, but I live over in
Washington and they're like a pest out there. They're gorgeous,
they are, you know, one of the things they actually
still have some protections under what's called the Migratory Bird
Protection Act. All of a sudden, you see wolves they're
(35:37):
dealists that they have no protection. So, you know, I
don't know if there's like a link between those two,
but certainly something worth considering. Going from zero to do
both of you go to Washington and make your case.
Do you actually go in front of of the Congress
or the people that the committees in charge of this
this act. A key part of the campaign is really
(35:59):
talking too elected officials, and we do have have some
some of the members of our team are lobbyists who
are going and doing that and making it clear why
why this is important. And frankly, like I think, if
you take a step back, you look at the data,
healthy ecosystems are something we can all get behind. So
what has been the public response to your campaign for
(36:20):
realist wolves. Oh, it's been awesome, it's been great. It's
it's um so awesome. And I think the thing is,
it's like most people just don't know how do you
break through and talk to people. We've done a couple
of really cool things. We did this collaboration with Jim Bacher,
who's this pothole mosaic artists, so he put in these potholes.
That's a realist in d C. We put up billboards.
(36:42):
We collaborated with Jason Momoa and Sender Films on a
public service spot. Um. All of these things are you know,
incremental grains of sand that are building up into a
mountain of change. And so it's been really great. But
I would say probably every day I talked to someone,
whether it's at work or a friend, they're like, they
didn't know about this issue. To the wolves, like the
(37:02):
cold weather, they love the cold yes, And do they
have dens? Do they go into den's at night? They do?
And you know, we're tear. I would hate to be
a wolf with the wolf setter sometimes just because we
have webcams everywhere, So we have webcams and their enclosures
and also in their dens. So unbeknownst to the wolves,
(37:24):
we have an unlimited uh number of like a global
audience basically sneaking into their dens at night to watch.
How do how do we access that um at our
website as just and why wolf dot org. But yeah,
I encourage I wanted to go check out the wolves.
Webcams are so cool. Yeah, so that's that's important. I mean,
you can watch so many animals by webcam, and it
(37:47):
is extraordinary that we can. We can be nosy in
the best possible way. We are now you know we
are nosy. Um. So, wolves were some of the first
animals shield by the Natured Species Act and the decision, well,
we we've discussed this have been politically charged ever since.
(38:07):
And and how do you think, how do you really
think we can change this? We need a president that cares,
you know, voice, a voice that cares and is outspoken
and who's ready to be brave about an issue that
is is surprisingly difficult. And I think we've been surprised
at how difficult it has been to push this administration,
(38:29):
which generally is very science driven, until they can actually
come up with a plan to meet in the middle
and figure out how do we live with wolves? They
need protections and the administration needs to recognize that and
restore them. Well, I really think that you have to
go out to Montana, to the Yellowstone Ranch and talk
to Kevin and his producers, and and uh and make it,
(38:53):
make it even a bigger subject on such a program
like that, and get and get get some more programs
about wolves. Because as as you say, they have been,
they have been made menaces, they have been made evil,
they have been miscast. Miscast is the best word. They've
been miscast and in American history. And um, and I think, uh,
(39:14):
the voice, your voices have to be heard bigger and
bigger and bigger. Well, we have some very exciting ideas
as much as you want to lean in with us here,
and um, I mean, this is just an incredible opportunity
to do that. Thank you very much for educating us
on such an important topic and these very very beautiful creatures.
To find out more. Again, remember everyone, you can save
(39:38):
the wolves by visiting Realist r E. L I S T.
Wolves dot org and use the hashtag realist wolves. And
to learn more about wolves in general, visit New York,
n Y wolf dot org. Those are important addresses for
you to know. I have been instructed that before we're
(39:59):
done here that Maggie should teach Martha how to howl
like a wolf. Oh you can you have? Well really
and Maggie's name is Maggie yes, which is so weird,
but my name is My name is Stuart art on
the artists of Stuart O Good, Okay, blow out the mic, Maggie,
(40:22):
don't get scared everybody because oh pretty legit
To one more howl. They don't laugh though the gray
wolf is in danger. In the nineteen seventies, wolves were
one of the first species to be protected under the
(00:22):
Endangered Species Act. Due to population decline in the years
that followed, Congress removed protections from gray wolves, first in
the Northern Rocky Mountains, then across the country. By February
of two, federal protections were restored to wolves and much
of the contiguous United States, except in the Northern Rocky
(00:42):
Mountain region, where more than of the killing of wolves occurs.
I've always been passionate about animals and their welfare, so
on this episode of my podcast, we're talking about how
we can help protect the gray wolf and learn more
about these wonderful creatures. Joining me today or Samantha Atwood,
co founding member of the hashtag Realist Wolves Campaign, and
(01:06):
Maggie Howell, executive director of the Wolf Conservation Center right
here near my home in South Salem, New York. Welcome
to my podcast, Maggie and Samantha, and it's a pleasure
to have you here to talk because wolves are on
a lot of people's minds right now. Do you know why.
I hope it's because campaign. Well, I wish it were
(01:27):
just your campaign, but you should be very thankful that
Kevin Costner and Yellowstone have brought wolves to the forefront
of everybody's sort of consciousness. Uh. You know, you watch that.
You watch the conflict on that show between the conservationists
who are trying to save the wolves and the wildlife
(01:48):
in the national parks and all the contiguous properties, and
then you see the the ranchers who want to kill
the wolves because they kill the calves and the data.
But um, but I think we are all kind of thinking.
All my friends are watching Yellowstone and thinking wolves and
um and did you put that together or not? Sort of,
(02:09):
so I have to say, what do you think are
do you think they're doing a disservice or a service?
So the wolf population on that show, I think any
point at which the wolves are becoming part of the
conversation is a win, right it open. That's what I think.
That's what I think, And I think that you have
a chance now and opening a big opening to get
to all those millions of people that are watching Yellowstone
(02:31):
season five. So it's it's kind of interesting, it really is. No,
we really appreciate the opportunity here. Well, Maggie and Samantha, Um,
tell me what is the hashtag realist Wolves campaign all about? Okay,
the Releast Wolves campaign is a campaign aimed at restoring
Endangered Species Act protections to the gray wolf across the
(02:55):
entire you know, forty lower forty eight states in the
United States are campaign. We founded in a June shortly
after there's this really horrible wolf hunt in Wisconsin where
two eighteen wolves were killed in under sixty hours by
any means necessary, running them down with a TVs, packs
of dogs, night hunting, baiting, snaring. What was the reason?
(03:20):
The reason is, well, Maggie, you want to take that one. Yeah,
but you know what did they say? Why did they
go on such a massive hunt? So because wolves have
been um protected due to illegal battles, have been going
back and forth over wolf protection, um really across the
United States. And so when it was actually from a
President Trump, he's really the exiting kind of speech almost
(03:43):
out of the office, was to delist wolves nationwide. So
after protections were lost, um, really, there were some people
just raring to go for a long time, um to
kill wolves. And there's a lot of it just based
on fear and hatred, um, which is really unfortunate. And
but really what we saw happen, you know, as soon
(04:05):
as they lost protections is just just how important protections are.
And uh and really Samanthan mentioned it was like sixty hours,
um and these are wolves, wolf pups, you know it was.
But what do you do with a population that exists
today that carry guns. Why does a regulation stop them
(04:26):
from killing wolves? It doesn't really does it. One of
the things we say is legal killing leads to more
illegal killing, so it emboldens everybody when these protections were lost. Look,
you can't save every single wolf. Will there be poachers? Yes, However,
regulation has a massive impact on protecting these species. And
(04:46):
that's the goal of the campaign, which is actually to
restore these protections wolves, and to do it in a
way that's a little bit interesting and out of the box,
where we're talking to the public, we're putting pressure on
public officials. We're going about this in a little bit
of a different way, because interestingly enough, this issue until
recently has really flown under the radar in my opinion.
You know, you love your dog, you love nature. There's
(05:08):
only fewer than six thousand wolves left in the lower
forty eight states. We're not talking at all, that's all.
And they're being hunted down. Montana and Idaho alone pass
legislation to incentivize the killing of between eighty five and
nine of their wolf populations. It's the cattle, I think.
Sitting where we are, it can be a little hard
(05:29):
to understand when you look at the data. Wolves are
responsible for less than one percent of unwanted deaths of
cattle that's unwanted, that includes disease, sickness, birds of prey,
believe it or not, wolves are responsible for one percent,
and the data really doesn't actually support um. You know
what's happening here. And frankly, it's not a zero sum game.
(05:51):
It's not kill wolves, protect cattle, protect you know, keep
the wolves. You know, all the cattle are going to
get eaten. There's really really good mechan isms you have,
whether it's fencing, flags, lights, uh what do they call livestock,
guardian dogs, all of these things that work and allow
you to actually coexist with these animals who are incredibly
(06:11):
important for our ecosystem. You know, there's a lot of
really major forces working against wolves. You know, whether it's
the cattleman kind of lobby or the n R A
UM or hunting associations UM, and there's not that many
you know groups or I guess a lobby UM really
speaking for wolves, and you know they need our voices.
(06:33):
So that's why the campaign has been so great, to
really elevate what's already been out there among many conservation groups,
but to bring it to really people across all different functions.
So lawyers, you have, the artists, you have you know,
just normally scary and statistic books mentioning the wonderful wolf
(06:55):
population and now Yellowstone and yellow just to elevate this
and and give everyone an idea of what's really happening
and hopefully um, you know, really the roadmap they need
to use their voice and create change. So you co
founded this grit this group. Well, actually my mom co
founded this and I kind of got sucked in, so
(07:17):
it's kind of a funny story. So you know, my
mom is a very passion environmentalist. I I am too,
and you know she saw what happened after these hunts
and saw what was going on. Mom is Leslie Atwood,
who is a neighbor of mine here in Bedford, New York,
and uh. And she is a passionate woman in many, many,
many different fields. Absolutely, and you she saw what was
(07:38):
going on, it was like, wow, you know, we need
to kind of taken out of the box approach. Can
we all speak in one voice? All these little NGOs,
all these groups that are doing such great work on
the ground. We're stronger together. You know, we are going
to you know, at the risk of stealing someone's phrase
over there, you know we are we are able to
speak in one voice and it is much more impactful.
So I kind of got sucked in because I was
(07:59):
going to, you know, help get our our campaign firm,
test strategy set up, get a social media expert who
you would love, by the way, Brandon Kennedy. He comes
from a fashion background to actually look at things a
little bit differently. So I was gonna help the team
set up. And as I learned more and more about
this issue and how important wolves are, I just couldn't.
I couldn't step away so out of outside of my
(08:20):
day job, this is this is what we do. What
about you, Maggie, how did you get involved with this campaign? Well,
we're practically neighbors with with Jim and Leslie Um and Samantha. So, um,
we've known them for quite a bit. In fact, we
had a wolf celebrate his fifteenth birthday um at the restaurant. Gosh,
some handful of years ago. Um, but it was quite
(08:44):
a turnout, but people showing up to celebrate with a
big meaty steak and people still talk about it. Yeah, yeah,
still talk about that. So this is one of the
wolves from the contribution. Yes, his name was after he
since passed away. He passed away, um a few years ago,
but um, but boy it was and he was famous.
He was a beautiful Yeah. I got to talk to
(09:07):
him a couple of times. Did But really I just
appreciated new new strength and new kind of um energy
coming into the fight for wolves. So I thought, you know,
the more the merrier, and you know, the strength of
the wolf is the pack. And to have the Realist
Campaign kind of joined this effort, I just thought it
(09:28):
was great and so I want to do anything I
could do to help and and it's been really fun collaboration. Well,
there are many threatened endangered species of animals. Why are
wolves so important? Do you know what a keystone is?
So keystone species plays the exact same role in the
ecosystem where they basically punch above their weight in terms
(09:48):
of the effects they have on the entire environment. And
wolves are exactly like that. If you look at the
reintroduction to Yellowstone that happened in the nineties, UM, what
you saw coming out of that was wolves actually are
creating this environment where you know they're they're eating elk, yes,
but they're actually making the elk herds move along more quickly,
(10:08):
which meant the elk stopped to browsing. Vegetation, allowed the
beavers to come back, allowed um erosion to stop alongside
the streams, and really you know, allowed these fish to
come back. So like all of these as you call
like a trophic cascade effect happened within the ecosystem that
was really due to these wolves coming back. Wolves are
critical for healthy ecosystem. Like I like that analogy to
(10:31):
the keystone of a building I have. I have keystones
in my arches of the nail on the No, you
don't want to lose the keystone because everything comes tumbling down. Exactly.
(10:52):
So the ecosystem that exists in the wild in the
United States UM is fragile, becoming more and more fragile
with the expansion of the gas lines with the whether
the horrible climate crisis that we're experiencing right now and
probably forever henceforth, don't you think? And so disbelievers, people
(11:13):
who don't see a climate crisis or don't see the
what's happening to the wildlife in the United States? How
can how can we How how powerful can this group
be to to make people pay attention? What can you
do and how can we help? As individuals? That's a
great question, I would say as individuals, you know, the
first step is awareness and education, right and then going
(11:36):
to take action. Realists Wolves dot org. You can send
letters to your representatives, you can share on social media
from at Realist Wolves campaign, and frankly opportunities UM with
with folks like yourself, Martha, who are You're You're a
keystone in your own way, right you punch above your
weight in terms of all the people that you reach
using your voice as an incredible opportunity to UM, you know,
(11:58):
shed light on this issue and let folks know like
there is there is a path here. The path here
is to get wolves relisted. That decision lies with the
buying in administration and they are currently conducting what's called
a status review. So it started in September of one.
They said they're gonna take one year because of all
the hunting. They were going to make an assessment in
(12:19):
the US Fish and Wildlife Service December. It is they're late,
We're waiting. They're late, and they have to know that
we're paying attention. So every call you make, every letter
you send, shows them that we're paying attention and that
this is an issue that you know, I think the public,
you know, really should care about. You know, six thousand
wolves may not seem like such a big deal in
(12:41):
the grand scheme of things, but every little bit helps everything.
I'm shocked and in the lower forty eight. Yes, are
they protected in Canada? Canada is facing many of the
similar issues. Yeah, there's a the Gonquin wolf is some
protections just Alon, Yes, just north of Aspen the Eastern
(13:03):
are Algonquin wolf. But generally they're it's pretty much open
season on wolves. I consider them gorgeous creatures. I love
dogs that look like wolves, and I think about wolves
and I think about how badly they've been treated by
so many people. Farmers have done terrible things to wolves.
When one of the things I can't do I can
stand is to read some of the bad things people
(13:24):
have done to them. They're not they're not humans, and
they don't know that they're being you know why they're
being tortured. Uh, and they tortured them. So what can
we do? Just letters? Letters outraging about this outrage? And
also like do you make do you make a lot
of personal appearances talking talking about wolves two groups? Uh?
(13:47):
You know, to some degree, I think at anything we
can do to get into the public conversation is what
we want to do. And you know you mentioned their animals,
they don't have a voice. It's our obligation and responsibility
to actually be the voice when we can. Well, it's
like the octopus. I mean, I did you watch My
Octopus Teachers? Did you watch that? And yet every single
(14:08):
restaurant that's had octopus on the menu still has octopus
on the menu. I will not eat octopus. I mean
I never eat it anyway, because because I've always loved octopus,
but as a creature. But it's just incredible, They're just
they don't It doesn't make any difference. And that was
a powerful movie, powerful documentary, and the difference between octopus
(14:30):
and wolves is that the octopus doesn't isn't surrounded already
in this cloak of untruths and myths and fables that
have been, you know, around for centuries. So beyond giving
the wolf of voice and asking people to protect wolves
and care about wolves, we have a lot of unraveling
to do, um to change perceptions of the wolf, because
(14:52):
already people have really poor the big bad wolf and
little red riding hood. I mean, this is why this
was brand even our language. You know, just just if
you open the New York Times on a given day,
you're probably going to see some Wolf of Wall Street
or lone wolf terrorist or really just we have to
(15:13):
kind of unleash some of these negative connectations that we
connect to the word wolf um and kind of start
from scratch that people can understand what they really are,
their wild animals living their own like wild lives, but
their family, you know, just trying to do and survive
and thrive on the landscape. So incomes another canine. I
(15:36):
guess it's a canine, the coyote that lives all around
us here in it's just your county. What do you
think about them? I love coyotes. The thing about coyotes
that I find most remarkable is that just like wolves,
they can persecuted for centuries and they're thriving. And now
(15:58):
they're not only thriving, but they're all four the forty
nine of our fifty states, so every state except Hawaii.
So in terms of being outfoxed, the coyote is remarkable. Um, However,
still we're killing the hundreds of thousands. I have a
pack of coyotes on my property. They couldn't just well
be wolves. I would have a very hard time shooting
(16:22):
a coyote. Yeah, and yet the coyotes are wreaking havoc
on the farm. I mean, here, I am living in
this this little world, here, this little hundred and fifty
acre world of mine, wondering what the heck am I
going to do with these beautiful creatures? They walk with
me when I ride my horse, the coyotes. It's interesting horse.
I talked to them. They listen. And yet there they
(16:44):
go at lunch time not long ago, and ate six
of my most beautiful peacocks. I'm sorry about they did.
They just ate them at daytime, at noon when everybody
else was having their lunch. They had their lunch, and
uh and and then I called the town. I said,
is there some way to and I'm fenced, but coyotes
(17:04):
have their way of getting in and over and under fences.
Have to set something up for you because there are
lots of really neat tools to use, um that can
be proactive, non lethal to help the turn. Are you
doing that from people being beleaguered by wolves chew out
in the West. We don't do it personally at the
Wolf Conservation Center because we're here wolves, but definitely that
(17:27):
works would be very good because I'm not I'm not
about to go out and shoot the coyotes. And actually,
you say they could be wolves, you know, in terms
of they could be wolves, they actually are a little
bit wolf. I know they are because yeah, well the
coyotes we have in this area are called Eastern coyotes. Well,
we had a pack of seven babies last year, and
I've watched them grow up, and some of them are
(17:48):
really dark, almost black, and some are kind of a
golden color. And there they are, and you know, you
you look at I go out with flashlights at night
and find them. And but what do we do My
my domesticated animals cannot roam my dogs. I'm not worried
about my dogs. And funny because my dogs would would
(18:09):
make mincemeat of the coyotes, I think. But I don't
want my dogs to have the taste of blood like that.
I just don't want them to So I want them
to get in a fight. But what do you do?
What do you do? What do you do? Um? There
are things just most A lot of it's based on fear. Um.
A lot of animals, wolves, coyotes have something called neophobia,
(18:29):
fear of anything new. So it could be flattery, like
you know, kind of flags or ribbons that are on
fence line or noisemakers, um, you know, just anything that's
going to shock them so they don't feel comfortable. So
but yeah, I mean the dogs are pretty noisy, they're
not afraid of people's I'm so they probably thought they
(18:50):
were like toys. I mean, big giant peas are not.
They're as big as the coyotes, if not bigger. Quite
a snack. It was really something. But back to back
to tell us about the gray wolf, because I think
everybody says that's really what we're trying to trying to
protect the most now since there's only six thousand of them. Um,
(19:10):
and there's many millions of I bet there's millions of coyotes, right, millions,
So what about the gray wolf? I think I think
the one thing I would say on the last point though,
is that, like the conflict reduction methods are very similar.
When you're dealing with predators. It really is about you know,
securing as much as you can, but you can't secure
everything right, So it is lights. It is like a
(19:32):
livestyle guardian, dogs, range writers, various things that work. And
I think what we want to highlight is there is
a middle ground here, right, there are solutions, and frankly,
you know, in my opinion, those are the things that
we really should be funding at the state level to
try to coexist with these beautiful creatures here that people
all were going to be overrun by wolves. I'm like,
(19:52):
there's six thousand of them. I think we're really far
off from that. We're going in the wrong direction. But
even where there's like all of these elk, all of
this food, all of this environment, it's hard being a wolf.
You have to chase down huge prey, very high mortality
rates and um. And so they've actually really stabilized, I think,
you know, sadly, last season there were twenty five Yellowstone
(20:14):
wolves who were killed. That's the population. There are only
a d and twenty five in the park, which is
where they were lured out of the park and shot.
How were they lured The new laws that were passed
in just in the past couple of years UM allowed
baiting for the first time. So they had people baiting
the you know, right beyond the kind of boundary, that
(20:37):
invisible boundary. UM would learn them from the safety of
the park and making calls like anything they could do
to get the wolves out. And these are rules. By
the way, most wouls are not accustomed to people, but
people come to Yellowstone to sea wolves. Yeah, it was
it Like I think there's two million dollars per year
in tourism revenue of people coming to see wolves in
(20:59):
this area, and so they're kind of used to people.
They're not expecting this invisible boundary. You cross it, you're
going to be shot and killed. How terribly unfair is
that it is? And that's in Yellowstone where there is
no management, there's no lethal management to control their populations,
and that population has stabilized over the years. And the
same thing in Wisconsin, where they've been protected for um
(21:22):
a handful of years, and during that time without having
these state state sanction hunts, they saw that the population
reached carrying capacity. That means it really was able to
kind of control itself and has stabilized UM, which demonstrated
that there's no in terms of population control. The wolves
that they're set, that's not a problem. They can do
that without our help. How big is a gray wolf ah, Um,
(21:47):
Well they vary. There are different kinds of gray wolves. UM.
But a lot of people think from fairy tales or
movies like Twilight what have you, that there are these monstrous,
huge animals. UM. Like in the Great Lakes area of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Wish, Michigan,
a female might be seventy to ninety maybe hundred pounds.
(22:07):
A male might get to a hundred ten pounds UM.
In the Northern Rockies Great and that Great Jans, they're
like a giant German shipherds. Yeah, they get a little
bit bigger in the in the northern Rocky states of
like Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, UM, a male might be
a hundred fifteen pounds UM. They can be bigger. There's
been a few in Yellowstone that were over a hundred
(22:28):
and THIRTYE knows all of this intimately because as director
of the Wolf Conservation Center here in South Salem. How
many wolves do you have there? Now? We have thirty two?
Oh wow, you have a lot more. Yes, last time
I was there was a couple of years ago, and
now you have thirty two. What kind of wolves? Um? Well,
(22:49):
there are different kinds. We have um two wolves that
we just call a kind of our generic which sounds terrible,
but gray wolves and they're who, um, the wolves that
helped teach people, so there aren't bassids or education wolves.
And their names are Laywa and Nicai. And then we
have ten critically endangered red wolves, which is a totally
different species of wolf um that are currently living only
(23:11):
here in the north or southeast um in the state
of North Carolina. And then we have twenty Mexican gray wolves,
which are gray wolves but a different subspecies of gray wolf.
And they're about um, we have twenty of those and
they're about two hundred little fewer than two hundred in
the southwest United States. They're all in pretty bad shape
numbers wise. Yeah. What does the what does your conservation
(23:35):
center do for these wolves? Sure? Yeah, so we Obviously
we house them, we take care of them, we nurture them. UM.
But we're really teaching people about them. So we do
a lot of education programs. We have people on site,
we do remote programs, we do scientific webinars. We really
try to get that education at every level. How big
an area do you have for them to roam? We
(23:55):
have thirty four acres right now. Are they kept separate
or are they enclosures? It's they're separated by family groups.
So we have some families are just a pair of wolves. UM.
We have some families that are quite larger, up to
eight wolves, UM, that are multigenerational. But wolves ultimately live
or belong in the wild. So even you know, if
(24:17):
we have an enclosure that's say two acres or more,
it's it's they're dynamic creatures. They belong in the wild,
so keeping them in captivity is really difficult. UM. We
have no wolves wild in this area, do no. UM.
There has been the occasional wolf that's gotten into the Northeast,
likely from Canada UM usually UM and even into New
(24:40):
York UM. But those animals are usually coming via like
dead wolves. That's the only way we find out about
them because we have really robust coyote hunting throughout the Northeast.
People like, oh, I killed a really large coyote. They
do some genetic tests and confirmed that it was a wolf,
and that's happened a couple of times, so they're really
close by. But there's no populations just kind of known,
(25:03):
no proven populations to be here right now, what's the
lifespan of a gray wolf? Um? It really depends, you know.
Samantha touched on this earlier. How living in the wild
is hard even before you put the kind of the
human component in there. But um, you know, most pups
don't even survive to adulthood. About sixty percent of pups
(25:25):
UM die within the first year, usually of starvation. UM.
And during the late summer I think is the hardest time,
early fall. UM. But if they get past that that
first year and make it to two years old, they'll
likely make it maybe two four to six years old.
If there's no you know, hunting UM. So those you
know that the things that we can really be an
(25:46):
issue would be disease, UM starvation usually just for the
youngsters UM and UH and actually other wolves. So wolves
are a top predator, but they're also have lots of
competitors out there, and wolves will compete with mountain lions,
wolves will compete with um bears, they will compete with
coyotes to a degree um, but they also compete with
(26:09):
other wolves. So they're very much like people and that
they have their home turf kind of like their their
area and they're going to defend their territory um from
their neighbors. Fox fox don't really pose much of a
competition risk for wolves. Their pack animals wolves yep. So
how big is a pack um? That varies, But basically,
you know what a wolf pack is essentially just a
(26:31):
family um. Even you know, the alpha male alpha female
kind of terms have been pretty much uh you know,
aren't used so much in there in the wolf circles
these days because really just alpha the alpha male would
be the dad, the help of femails, the mom, and
they are the bosses because that's how it goes parent
that's how it should go, right. So, and then they
(26:52):
have their offspring once a year every year and they
will make up the rest of the pack. Sometimes a
wolf that's not related will join the pack um. But
they're dynamic x you have, just like with our families
you know, they kind of leave the nest at some
point and start their own families. So UM, so that's
why the numbers are a bit you know, it changes.
And also had a lot of babies that the we
(27:13):
have we actually we're hoping to have some more babies
this spring. Um. But last spring we had um one
letter born Mexican Mexican gray wolves. How many this letter
was five healthy and one of them actually was released
into the wild, which is very exciting and um, but
(27:34):
the largest litter repent at the Wolf center was a
litter of nine and nine yeah, nine and um. We
decided that we wanted to name it um name each
member after really important UM players on the Yankees and uh,
and we thought, oh, how fun because I make up
(27:56):
baseball team and so we're trying to do that. And
then we just I had last minute and I hope
you have an errand well we were. There was a
lot of debate, robust ongoing debate about foo should these
Yankees be and and actually we decided on second thought,
we'll name them after female conservationists, because of course Yankees
female conservationists. UM. But it worked out for the best
(28:18):
because the boys from that letter were actually transferred to
a different facility in Boston, And if they were named
after the Yankees, it would have been nobody would have liked.
So female conservationists one out. So wolves, what what do
wolves in the wild each? What are they looking for? Yeah?
So wolves? Um, their menu will vary depending on where
(28:41):
they live, Like in Yellowstone, they're going to be hunting
animals like elk um dear bison some of sometimes it's
a little bit harder for them. But there's one pack
called the Molly's Pack for years that was their expertise,
was hunting bison effectively. Um. They'll also eat smallers like
beaver hair. You know, really it depends. It's going to
(29:04):
take the whole family group though, in order to really
chase down a successfully hunted animal like an elk or
a bison. Um, those other animals would be more of
like a single snack. What's the ideal habitat for the
gray wolf? Is it? I mean, do they seem to
be rather adaptable? They are very adaptable. Um, And ideal
habitat is a habitat that has prey. Honestly, that's going
(29:28):
to be the biggest thing. Are they looking for possums
and skunks and things like that too. Yeah, you know,
like even um like the Arctic the Arctic gray wolf.
Let's say, um, while they're they're really large, you know, um,
caribou migrations, and there's the musk ox, but otherwise it's
pretty barren UM. So they're gonna be hunting things like
Lenning's and Arctic fox. UM. Really the smaller prey than
(29:52):
those are the ones where they won't rely on the
rest of the family members necessarily. But because food is
a bit more scarce, UM, they have a large your
territory size because they have to roam farther distances justifine food. UM,
they tend to have smaller litters as well. So the
(30:15):
question is what's the difference between being endangered and being threatened.
Is there a distinct difference? Yeah, I would say, you know,
endangered when when something when a species is designated as
an endangered species, they get the maximum protections, right, can't
hunt them like you have to kind of preserve their habitat,
(30:36):
and and endangered means well they're at risk of going extinct.
Threatens It is kind of like the next level, which
is like yo, you think they're going to become endangered.
So by the time they're endangered is really dire. Yeah,
so they're now endangered. Yeah, seriously, Yeah they are. I mean,
if you look at what's happening with these hunts and
all the barbaric methods that are being used, and frankly,
(30:57):
like you know, there are groups and states they're paying
bound teams, they are incentivizing hunters to go out and
cobols they're gonna pay in Idaho they'll pay between five
hundred dollars per wolf. And there's no i mean berries everywhere,
but like there's not a buch limitation in terms of
what what hunters can go out. They could go get
twenty wolves and it's really it's really slipped into the
(31:19):
dark ages and and no better. I mean, we used
to have likely more than a quarter of a million
wolves living coast to coast no longer. And really it
was through you know, these these predator eradication programs UM
that used poison and bounties and trapping and snares, UM
that brought them down to just a few isolated, you know,
(31:41):
almost family groups, mostly in the Great Lakes area and
they were gone everywhere else. UM. So then you know,
with UM, the Endangered Species Act being passed in ninety three. Um,
we stopped killing wolves and we started to protect wolves.
And at the height, how many wolves have we counted?
I mean, if we're if there's six thousand, now, what
(32:04):
was the most we ever counted? Um, well they don't
they weren't counting, but they're estimating at least a quarter
of a million. Really, and that's when was that. That
was really before we colonized and started these massive programs
to just get rid of most of the predators. Yeah,
it's just like you know, late eighteen hundreds, I would say,
(32:24):
So it was a long time ago when the bison
were running free. It's a lot always different, and there
were millions of bison and now they've been reduced to
such a pitiful number. Two. No, it's true, it's um.
So the Endangered Species list that was what year were
they removed from it? So they were removed from it.
(32:44):
It's gone back and forth, kind of a legal battle.
But they were initially removed like in two thousand and eleven,
and it's kind of gone back and forth in different
places for a little while now. Um. But while it
has gone back and forth, it's been a little bit confusing. UM.
But we've seen what happens when there is wolf hunting,
and then we've seen when wolves are afforded protections. Really
(33:07):
a lot of those populations stabilize, which really takes away,
you know, some of the reasons they're the justifications, um
for these hunts in the first place. Is there legal
hunting anywhere in the United States? Where um, legal hunting
right now is in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. And that's
(33:27):
where again, like Samantha said, they're using some of these
you know bounties. You know, bounties aren't legal. I mean,
essentially we we kind of got over bounties. You know,
we celebrated the Endangered Species Act. It's fifty year anniversary
is next year. I mean, it's one of the most
uh successful environmental reinstated. I don't know, I don't know.
(33:53):
I think it's unfair. I think it's very unfairly. But
wolves have become sort of an emblem of this political
out all between environmentalists and you know, we don't want
to be told what to do at the state level.
And the problem is it really is not the wolves
are caught in the middle. It's not about the science
or the data behind it, because all of a sudden
(34:14):
you're seeing a lot of emotion um being pulled into
this issue. Where yet you look at the data, you
look at how many cattle are being killed by wolves.
You've got Montana, the state of Montana is being overrun
by elk right now, to the point where it's a
big problem that everyone knows about. You have a natural
solution here, and yet you're out there killing your natural solution.
At the same time this endangered Species list, who else
(34:36):
is on it? Oh gosh, lots of critters? Um, Yeah,
so it depends. You know. Again, different parts of the
country almost has different kinds of protection. But in terms
of predators, you have the grizzly bear that's currently still
being protected. Um, those different kinds of wolves, lots of birds, birds,
(34:56):
and that that the Endangered Species Act is really responsible
for one of the greatest conservation success stories, the emblem
of the United States. We had our first sighting here
at the farm last week. We got a picture of
a bold eagle circling the whole farm, looking looking around.
(35:16):
It was so exciting because I am not in the
twenty years I've been here seeing an eagle. Have you
seen one here? I haven't, but I live over in
Washington and they're like a pest out there. They're gorgeous,
they are, you know, one of the things they actually
still have some protections under what's called the Migratory Bird
Protection Act. All of a sudden, you see wolves they're
(35:37):
dealists that they have no protection. So, you know, I
don't know if there's like a link between those two,
but certainly something worth considering. Going from zero to do
both of you go to Washington and make your case.
Do you actually go in front of of the Congress
or the people that the committees in charge of this
this act. A key part of the campaign is really
(35:59):
talking too elected officials, and we do have have some
some of the members of our team are lobbyists who
are going and doing that and making it clear why
why this is important. And frankly, like I think, if
you take a step back, you look at the data,
healthy ecosystems are something we can all get behind. So
what has been the public response to your campaign for
(36:20):
realist wolves. Oh, it's been awesome, it's been great. It's
it's um so awesome. And I think the thing is,
it's like most people just don't know how do you
break through and talk to people. We've done a couple
of really cool things. We did this collaboration with Jim Bacher,
who's this pothole mosaic artists, so he put in these potholes.
That's a realist in d C. We put up billboards.
(36:42):
We collaborated with Jason Momoa and Sender Films on a
public service spot. Um. All of these things are you know,
incremental grains of sand that are building up into a
mountain of change. And so it's been really great. But
I would say probably every day I talked to someone,
whether it's at work or a friend, they're like, they
didn't know about this issue. To the wolves, like the
(37:02):
cold weather, they love the cold yes, And do they
have dens? Do they go into den's at night? They do?
And you know, we're tear. I would hate to be
a wolf with the wolf setter sometimes just because we
have webcams everywhere, So we have webcams and their enclosures
and also in their dens. So unbeknownst to the wolves,
(37:24):
we have an unlimited uh number of like a global
audience basically sneaking into their dens at night to watch.
How do how do we access that um at our
website as just and why wolf dot org. But yeah,
I encourage I wanted to go check out the wolves.
Webcams are so cool. Yeah, so that's that's important. I mean,
you can watch so many animals by webcam, and it
(37:47):
is extraordinary that we can. We can be nosy in
the best possible way. We are now you know we
are nosy. Um. So, wolves were some of the first
animals shield by the Natured Species Act and the decision, well,
we we've discussed this have been politically charged ever since.
(38:07):
And and how do you think, how do you really
think we can change this? We need a president that cares,
you know, voice, a voice that cares and is outspoken
and who's ready to be brave about an issue that
is is surprisingly difficult. And I think we've been surprised
at how difficult it has been to push this administration,
(38:29):
which generally is very science driven, until they can actually
come up with a plan to meet in the middle
and figure out how do we live with wolves? They
need protections and the administration needs to recognize that and
restore them. Well, I really think that you have to
go out to Montana, to the Yellowstone Ranch and talk
to Kevin and his producers, and and uh and make it,
(38:53):
make it even a bigger subject on such a program
like that, and get and get get some more programs
about wolves. Because as as you say, they have been,
they have been made menaces, they have been made evil,
they have been miscast. Miscast is the best word. They've
been miscast and in American history. And um, and I think, uh,
(39:14):
the voice, your voices have to be heard bigger and
bigger and bigger. Well, we have some very exciting ideas
as much as you want to lean in with us here,
and um, I mean, this is just an incredible opportunity
to do that. Thank you very much for educating us
on such an important topic and these very very beautiful creatures.
To find out more. Again, remember everyone, you can save
(39:38):
the wolves by visiting Realist r E. L I S T.
Wolves dot org and use the hashtag realist wolves. And
to learn more about wolves in general, visit New York,
n Y wolf dot org. Those are important addresses for
you to know. I have been instructed that before we're
(39:59):
done here that Maggie should teach Martha how to howl
like a wolf. Oh you can you have? Well really
and Maggie's name is Maggie yes, which is so weird,
but my name is My name is Stuart art on
the artists of Stuart O Good, Okay, blow out the mic, Maggie,
(40:22):
don't get scared everybody because oh pretty legit
Host
Martha Stewart
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