Meaning and Moxie After 50
Guardians of the Wild: Triumphs and Trials of the Greater Yellowstone Area
My guest this week is Jack Bayles. He and his wife Gina own a guiding service near Jackson, Wyoming called Team 399 (see below). Our conversation covers the magnificence of Yellowstone and the profound commitment required to protect these treasured landscapes.
We discuss the challenges of preserving species like grizzlies and wolves amidst local resistance and unravel the complexities of wildlife management. Jack addresses the myths surrounding predators and the delicate balance between human and animal cohabitation.
As we wrap up, the conversation turns reflective, emphasizing the sacred human connection to the natural world. Jack explains the power of informed stewardship, and the personal gratification that comes from championing the cause of wildlife conservation.
All things related to Jack can be found here:
https://www.team399.com/
**The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content and materials available on this site are for general informational purposes only. Information on this podcast may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. This podcast contains links to other third party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user or browser.
My guest this week is Jack Bayles. He and his wife Gina own a guiding service near Jackson, Wyoming called Team 399 (see below). Our conversation covers the magnificence of Yellowstone and the profound commitment required to protect these treasured landscapes.
We discuss the challenges of preserving species like grizzlies and wolves amidst local resistance and unravel the complexities of wildlife management. Jack addresses the myths surrounding predators and the delicate balance between human and animal cohabitation.
As we wrap up, the conversation turns reflective, emphasizing the sacred human connection to the natural world. Jack explains the power of informed stewardship, and the personal gratification that comes from championing the cause of wildlife conservation.
All things related to Jack can be found here:
https://www.team399.com/
**The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content and materials available on this site are for general informational purposes only. Information on this podcast may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. This podcast contains links to other third party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user or browser.
So are you looking for more inspiration and possibility in midlife and beyond? Join me, leslie Maloney, proud wife, mom, author, teacher and podcast host, as I talk with people finding meaning in Moxie in their life after 50. Interviews that will energize you and give you some ideas to implement in your own life. I so appreciate you being here. Now let's get started. My guest this week is Jack Baylis. He and his wife, gina, live near Jackson, wyoming. They own a guiding service called Team 399, yes, named after the famous Grizzly 399, who Gina affectionately refers to as the other woman. They are guides, conservationists and grizzly bear advocates, and since 2016, they have led over a thousand tours and workshops in the greater Yellow Stone area. Their knowledge of these magnificent creatures and the ecosystem of Yellow Stone is unparalleled. Enjoy our conversation. So welcome, jack. I'm so excited to have you here.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for having me Glad to be here. We're looking forward to talking about all of us in the Northern Rockies.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I was saying before we started recording that we share a love of greater Yellow Stone area. The greater Yellow Stone area, Such a beautiful wild place.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, it's the last great, relatively intact temperate ecosystem on the planet, and every species that made it out of the Ice Age is still here and the temperate latitudes it's the only place on earth where that's true.
Speaker 1:So for our audience, give them a little bit more when you're saying temperate, and explain that ecosystem a little bit more for somebody who might not be familiar.
Speaker 2:So, like the mid-latitudes, so the border, the Northern border of Yellowstone, is 45 degrees north, right. It's a straight, kind of relatively arbitrary line on a map, the pre-dates of two states and from 1872. And so that's the mid-latitudes right. So you could probably talk to different people and get different opinions. But somewhere in that 30 to 45, 50 is kind of that mid temperate latitude and, like I said, the greater Yellowstone ecosystems, the only place in those latitudes where everything that made it out of the Ice Age is still here, or every species anyway.
Speaker 1:So you're a fifth generation. Greater Yellowstone, wyoming, montana. That's going back a ways.
Speaker 2:So when my great great grandfather, ll Shaw, was discharged from the Union Army he was in one of the New York units. He came out west and he was driving freight from Salt Lake to the Montana gold fields, so up toward Hellenit, and he found a place in the very northern corner of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and he had the second set of water rights up there. And so he did that in 1867. And my family's been here continuously since. My mom grew up in the northern Madison Valley, my dad just a little bit further north in Broadwater County, and then, like I said, I kind of so. When we moved back here about 10 years ago, for us it was kind of a homecoming. My dad moved away. Okay.
Speaker 2:But we spent a lot of our summers up here and we would camp just outside of Yellowstone in the Southern or Central Madison range.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Places that are now Lee Metcalf wilderness area, and the first time I was up there was 1968 or 69. And we'd be camping and invariably back then, even 50 years ago, we'd be getting snowed out in July In the mountains, and we'd always end up at the Travel Watch in West Yellowstone, which my grandfather owned for about 25 years after World War II.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then I had a break. Right, you get the high school age and different things are important. But I started coming back up here to photograph and just spend time out there. The military back in 1992.
Speaker 1:What brought you back? I mean, it just kind of was a calling or what.
Speaker 2:I would say it was a calling. I mean, it's the wildlife and it's just there's solace in spending time with these other sapient sentient beings and seeing how things could be. And we found that we were spending most of our free time here anyway. So why not live? Why not move here? Yeah.
Speaker 2:And since then we become I mean we. I was photographing back before I met my wife Gina. I was up here on my own back before Wolves were officially back, so like in the early nineties. And then when we started coming up here and right after my folks died in the late 2000 years, we just started coming up more and more and more and more time we were spending two to three months a year up here, so we should just live here.
Speaker 1:I don't think people realize that's one of the things I love about that area. We've been to my husband and I have been to a lot of the national parks, but Yellowstone just is so wild and there are just so many animals that you see everywhere. I don't think there's a there's not a in my mind anyway a national park that competes with that. You just have an opportunity to see so much wildlife, depending on where you go in the park, and that's what keeps drawing us back there. We've been there a handful of times now and it's still, of all the national parks, both of us would say that Yellowstone, glacier is a close second, but Yellowstone just it's amazing what you see there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And the nice thing about Yellowstone is it was actually once it was designated a park in 1872, right, but that's four years before the little bighorn, that's pre little bighorn it was a national park and so it was kind of set up as a park and because a good portion of the parks inside the inside the caldera of the super volcano, so it's a lot of it's more rolling terrain, and so you've got this two wheels and spokes so you can get to so many different places. And no one's ever really tried to live there. Well, no European people, european extraction, have tried to live there and so there's no indication of civilization in a lot of places.
Speaker 2:You can actually go up on Teton, overlook out by Lake Butte, and you can look south and see Grand Teton and see 40 miles of roadless area and so largest roadless area in the lower 48. And yeah, there's more wildlife there in aggregation than there is, I think, anywhere else you can go, and maybe in Grand Teton, I mean, there's not as much wildlife, but because Grand Teton is so much smaller it's maybe a little more concentrated, like I would say it's ambicelli versus the Mara. But in Yolston you can go and you can go on a good day you can go and see 15 grizzly bears, right? If you'd been in Yellowstone last week, I mean, you would have seen three or four wolfpacks, and there's nowhere else you can do that.
Speaker 1:No, it's interesting because the grizzly is the only thing we have not seen in our travels out there. But the last time we were out there we were up in the Lamar Valley area for those of you who don't know, that's kind of the northern part of Yellowstone and that is a prime area to see wolves and we saw we ended up stopping where a bunch of people had their scopes. They were up on a little hill and there was a bunch of people gathered. We started chatting with those folks and some of them who you may know, because some of them are out there like every day and they know the wolves, and so we looked through their spotting scopes, because you're not getting right up close to the wolf, you know, you're looking out maybe a half a mile to a mile. And we saw I forget which pack it was, I think it began with a J.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And it was just amazing. So the next day we rented a scope ourselves and we started getting into this little subculture of these people that in this case it was the wolves People that could look in their scope and tell you oh, that's this pack and that's number 219 or something like that. They were just following at that closely the whole story. To hear the wolves howling is just what an experience it is to hear that. It was just very spiritual for both of us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely getting the opportunity. Especially in Lamar Valley and places where you're in, we have the mountains for the house to bounce off of Right. That's a natural symphony.
Speaker 1:It is oh, that's a great way to put it yeah, a natural symphony.
Speaker 2:It's a shame that we don't have more opportunities throughout the West or other places to experience that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, what is it like living there? So many people have questions that aren't familiar with. They have this idea of the Wyoming Montana area, they have this idea of the West and so on, and what is it like to live there?
Speaker 2:Well, so it costs more to live here. Everything's more expensive because we live, actually, in eastern Idaho. I can see Grand Teton from my living in a window, but we're on the West side, actually sort of toward the Western edge of the G? Y. We're about half an hour from Jackson. It's more expensive when winter finally decides to show up like it has now and we've got three feet of snow in the last 72 hours Everything shut down in our valley today.
Speaker 2:I want to go to an airport like I want to go. We're going to Africa in a little bit, in a few months or a few weeks, so we have to either drive an hour and a half down to Idaho Falls or we have to drive an hour over to Jackson and you're not getting on a big jet, you're taking a smaller jet to, probably, salt Lake.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Sometimes Atlanta, to actually get where you're going. So there's just little things like that that you know are commensurate with living toward the end of the road. A lot of people don't understand. I mean, most of the mountain time zone is high desert, so we're going to get in the rain shadow of the Sierras and the Cascades. So Eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, nevada, and we're getting drier, we're getting warmer. Winners are not on average right every winter. Every so often something happens, and we're in the El Nino year, but there was no snow on the ground on New Year's Eve. We had.
Speaker 2:Christmas, which is inconceivable in the Northern Rockies, and so we are highly dependent on the snowpack and we don't have a lot of supplemental water. Being this close to the source, like all the reservoirs are downstream. And then there's Sophie's choice of sorts to be made Do you let certain species of salmon go extinct, or do you start taking down dance? And as more people are moving into the region, which everyone has a right to do? But as more people are moving into the region, there's less water to go around, right, so that's an issue. But what it's like living here is, if we decided to get up and get moving, I might be looking at wolves in 45 minutes. Every so often things sit out on my deck and here in the mountains although out here in this valley they're a wolf, that scene doesn't live very long.
Speaker 1:Are you snowed in right now? Are you using a snowmobile? How do you get around?
Speaker 2:Well, so what we would do I mean driving. The roads are plowed Right, people are still going to work. A lot of businesses are closed. Today, if we're going to go over to Idaho Falls, or Rexburg, which we call, we come out of the Teton Valley and go it's called out below those, go across the Rexburg bench, which are now treeless areas, and the wind really can really badly glaze the road and you're just not going there.
Speaker 2:So you want to think. If you're going somewhere in winter, you want to think about am I going to actually be able to get where I'm trying to go? We don't use snowmobiles, we have high clearance SUVs. We put proper snow tires on somewhere around Thanksgiving and we don't take them off until somewhere around Mayday. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's in the tires we have on the rest of your snow rated Right. I posted a video. We were getting snowed on and done Raven pass the last day of summer this year, and so you use, right. I mean you're not going to use a road, you're not? It's not such that Like, say, in the northern, upper mid or the upper Midwest way of North North Woods where people are getting around going to town on some of the wheels. I mean there's roads so that's all fine, you get over into the park and that's all good. And then what really closes the roads down is when the wind starts pushing the snow on the roads and the drifts get really bad.
Speaker 2:But my dad would. My dad used. One of his favorite stories is when he was working for his dad as a stage coach in West Yellowstone and he had a room on the second floor. The way that he would get down to the street is open his window and slide down the snow bank and then they'd have to tunnel into the main entrance and we don't see whether like that anymore. Okay.
Speaker 2:You know, we had one tour where we were coming back from us a couple of years ago, where we're coming back from Yellowstone down here, and we stopped for lunch in West Yellowstone and whether quickly deteriorated. You know we had wrecks all around us, so we just booked rooms and we got snow coaches and we went into the interior of the park. Good move.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so when we travel around a winter, we'll always have an overnight bag with us. Like you can get on the wrong side of the Teton Pass and then you just spend the night in Jackson.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned your tour, the tours. Talk about your business a little bit and what you all do, you and your wife Gina.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what we do is we do private anywhere from wildlife to educational tours, to photography workshops. We've been doing this. This will be our ninth year and we just wanted to share the ecosystem with people and also, you know, in particular, bears and wolves. So we do the wolf trips are better in the winter, and then we do the grizzly bear trips. Bears will start waking up. Oh, they'll be out and about in the Teton's by the end of March and some years, 399 has stayed up to New Year's Day, january 2nd. And then we're starting. We're starting to go international.
Speaker 2:Okay, we have a trip to Namibia this summer. We have a trip to Kenya next March. Cool, you're going to do a trip next September where we go to the Mara for the wildebeest migration, and then we're going to go over to Rwanda, and Rwanda they have a ceremony called Cui de Zina, which is where they actually it's like a national day of celebration. They actually name the baby mountain girls for the year. Wouldn't that be a sight to be in these parks here? And in September of October, we're naming the baby grizzly bears and the name and naming the baby wolves. Yeah, I mean that's, you'll look at that. You know that's the right approach, and so that's kind of what we do. We're going to get in the water with whales starting no later than July done in Australia.
Speaker 1:Wow, so you all are, you're all over the place, you're taking people all over on and really safaris what you can call a safari.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're also starting to do our own film work. Like, we put a lot of video clips out on social media, but we're working on some longer form stuff and what we're trying to do is really make the case, for these animals are sapient, they're sentient, they have a right to that, the innate right to be here, to exist, no matter what your belief system, they fit into that belief system and we have street and different.
Speaker 1:So that leads us to some of the controversy for some people and it must be really hard for you, because I know the grizzlies and the wolves are so protected in Wyoming and Yellowstone, in Grand Teton and Yellowstone and so on, and the moment you mentioned earlier, the moment they step outside, that they can be shot and killed because some rancher can be upset, that they're on their land and so on. So it's very, very controversial. Yes, they're on the endangered list, but there's a I've witnessed it myself some of the strong feelings people have anti these animals. So how do you deal with that? Out, living out there?
Speaker 2:Well, we've had guns pointed at us, We've been assaulted. We've had our vehicle vandalized when it's parked somewhere. We've had people threatened to kill us. Just deal with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and under what circumstances? You're out giving a tour trying to educate people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've had that happen. We had a guy driving by us in the park. He's through a pint size steel can full of a beverage. Hit me in the head, you know, and fortunately didn't hurt me too bad. But I mean you throw a pound weight at somebody and you're already going 40 miles an hour.
Speaker 1:I can go this way Ouch yeah.
Speaker 2:We had our vehicle vandalized when we were up at Pacific Creek last fall. You know we, I don't know it's because of the license plate or or what. So there's definitely some of that hostility. Anytime I post anything about wolves, I get I don't know 515, 20 people that just shoot, shovel shut up, smoke back. A day, all that.
Speaker 1:And where? Where do you think I think there? Where do you think that comes from? I mean, there's the obvious, there's the obvious concerns people might have, but that seems to run very, very deep for people I've witnessed it with people's feelings about coyotes as well and other parts of the country. And how, where do you think it comes from and how do we change it or start to live more in tune and harmoniously with these animals?
Speaker 2:Well, so if you think about kind of our earliest beginnings of Western civil civilization, romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were raised by a wolf. The wolf was a hero and by the time we emerge out of the dark ages the wolves are the villain. And if you think about the brothers Graham and their fairy tales, the wolves are always the villain, always the villain, and so people start getting conditioned as soon as they're being read to. I think that when you you've heard that howl, you know it's really primordial and it's arch primal emotions in people and for some of those people that emotion is fear and for some people it's a transcendental experience, like you've talked about. And Dayton Duncan, who is the writer with Ken Burns in some of his films he's interviewed in one about the national parks and he talks about at some point in our history, human history, beginnings of civilization one wolf decided to come over to our side of the campfire and became a dog, ultimately most loyal companion, and all that. The other wolf decided to stay on the other side of the campfire and stay wild and humans some humans have not forgot, will not forgive that wolf for not coming over to our side of the campfire. And I think the way he says that, I mean I think he's really onto something there. I mean, the Montana Livestock Board reports will show you very clearly that wolves predated on cattle is not an issue.
Speaker 2:You lose far more cattle to wrestling, to poor husbandry, to the cardiovascular problems that you have, to the pulmonary problems that you have to right because the ranchers are trying to get bigger cattle. So you've got higher weight, hoof weight. Well, that means that you've got bigger calves being born. So there's a lot of calves and cows died during birth because they're now so big. They've got a lot of cardiovascular problems. You've got what's called brisket disease, which is basically pulmonary hypertension, which basically means, right, we're out here in the desert, we're out here at eight. You know, you have the cows, there's a pasture, it can be eight, nine thousand feet and you've got the animal. That cannot support that kind of a hypoxic atmosphere. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's called brisket and it happens a lot. Yeah. And it's easier to just blame the wolf than say I knew that storm was coming and I didn't go get my cows and they all died in the snowstorm because they don't do well in deep snow. So yeah, the wolves are the problem. I can't pick up the mirror.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know I've looked at some of the data that you're talking about and I agree that in a lot of cases the wolves are getting a bad rap and it's got to be super frustrating and I don't think a lot of people realize how much the reintroduction of them back into the greater Yellowstone area, how much that changed and improved the ecosystem there and, you know, bringing that species back in. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Well, so wolves? My grandfather who entered the Madison range for about 45 years Before he died, he or he would pass the stories down to my mom who also went with them in the Madison range over in the Bradley range. They'd say it wasn't necessarily frequent but wolves weren't necessarily completely gone. My father, who hunted the Madison range starting 1945-ish up through the early to mid-70s, would say the same thing. And we know that wolves started coming down from Canada along the North Fork of the Flathead River in the mid-70s and ultimately came the Magic Path. Well, some of those wolves dispersed, some went back to Canada, but they didn't all go back to Canada.
Speaker 2:And if you look at OR 93 last year in California where he started out all the way up there by Alturas, went all the way down the eastern side of the Sierra right, crossed somewhere in southern Sequoia, hung out in that area on the east of Bakersfield for a while, went all the way over to the coast range, went all the way up to Monterey, then came back down and was hanging out about 30 miles northeast of Los Angeles. That's 1,000 miles in a year. So to get from the North Fork of the Flathead to Yellowstone it's a pretty straight line and for a wolf, a young, dispersing male wolf, it's a week if that, if they're really moving. So you know, the anecdotal evidence is that the wolves were already here. I remember listening to something on NPR that there was a fellow who filmed a wolf in the Hayden Valley back in 1991. And it got to the point, I think, and the same thing just happened in Colorado is they're here. You can't deny it.
Speaker 2:So if we don't get in front of it, they're going to get full protection of the SA, rather than we'll quote unquote reintroduce them, and now we can designate them an experimental population and that gives us more control over how we manage them. And manage them as a you manage the euphemism for kill. So, as Carter Neymar says and he was one of the wildlife services, a trapper for the court, for the Department of Agriculture, until he came over here on the side and he'll tell you very plainly yeah, they're probably here in some walk and some flu, referring to when they were quote unquote reintroduced Just happened in Colorado. The wolves have been in northern Colorado here and there for at least 20 years, I mean, and we talked to no enough people when we used to do art shows in Steamboat. Yeah, we've got them on a ranch. There's photos of the footprints and it just got to the point where they could no longer say they're not here, gotcha, and what should have happened is they should have been afforded full protection of the SA.
Speaker 1:When you say the SA, that stands for what?
Speaker 2:Danger Species Act.
Speaker 1:Okay, right.
Speaker 2:But instead they allowed them to be baited back into Wyoming, where a lot of those ones up in North Park were killed, and then they took it what's, by law, federal issue, turned it into a state issue, and then we're going to quote, unquote, designate them an experimental population when we reintroduce them, pull them out of their habitat in Oregon. Right right. And that's you know, that's seen in plain view.
Speaker 1:Got to be, very frustrating.
Speaker 2:Well, everyone's declaring it's a great victory and I'm glad they're there. But they should not be. They're not an experimental population. We know very clearly that wolves were endemic to most of the country, except for the Southeast, the places where there's a lot of places where people are complaining about coyotes. Now there were no coyotes Right, I mean the in the 18th, early 19th century. Nobody was talking about coyotes on the Eastern seaboard, mid-atlantic places. Now we know at some point deeper in our history that there were coyotes over there, because the red wolf appears to be a largely hybrid between a gray wolf and a coyote. So we know we were there at some point in prehistory. But when Europeans showed up there weren't coyotes east to the Missouri Right. Lewis and Clark saw them and they referred to them as prairie wolves, zebulous, the Yikes expedition, the Red River expedition, which took place at the same time. They were talking about them as prairie wolves or Spanish wolves, but they were out here on the plains, or really on the plains, and they didn't expand until the wolves were gone.
Speaker 1:Are you running into a similar situation with the grizzlies out there?
Speaker 2:Well, so the grizzlies are definitely trying to recover more of their habitat and they're showing up in places where they haven't been seen in a long time. But whether they're doing that because the population is increasing so much or whether they're doing that because the habitat's degrading is, I think it's up for some levels debate. Regardless, they occupy two to 3 percent of the range they occupied in 1800. You can't have Grizzlies in downtown Denver got it or Boise or actually went from prevalent over there, but their stronghold was the plains.
Speaker 2:Lewis and Clark started running into Grizzlies in western North Dakota, from western North Dakota up until about great falls, maybe down to as far as three-fourth. That was where they saw Grizzlies. They didn't run into Grizzlies here in the mountains. They're here now in the mountains, not because it's the best habitat but because it's the last habitat. They were gone at the Tetons and they came out of Yellowstone. The only reason they were in Yellowstone is because nobody tried to live there and because folks had the foresight to turn Yellowstone into National Park before. People are trying to live there, also because they didn't think anybody could live there up on the plateau.
Speaker 1:Do you run into the same strong feelings about the Grizzlies as compared to the wolves?
Speaker 2:I don't think that there is the same level of hatred of the Grizzlies as there is of the wolves. I don't know this for sure, but if you go back again to your childhood stories, the bears are not the villain. I don't think they're as hated, except in some places. There's just an attitude. There's these little Dunning-Kruger bubbles all over the place where we're going to stay here in the late 19th century and you can't tell me what to do.
Speaker 2:My great daddy didn't have to do it that way, so I don't have to either. I'm not playing nice with anybody or anything. There's some of that, but there's some of that everywhere. You have that in big cities too, in different ways.
Speaker 1:It's almost like an archetype the wolf for people. I don't know if it's their shadow. I mean, you could really dig into that as we talk here. That's what's coming up for me. I'm thinking about the fact that, because it's so intense for people, so there's something deep there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think what's happening in Montana and I don't know if this is getting off the rails here, but the state leadership are all millionaires or not all, but increasingly millionaires who've moved in from out of the area. If you get wolves, you got wolves off the endangered species list back in 2011 for the Greater Yellowstone, for the three states, by Fiat. John Tester slipped that into the budget and pass in April 2011. Senate voter improved Because now every year you see these manufactured budget crises and late in the night you see all this stuff pass and then you've really I mean, you got to look deep into the shadows of that legislation to see what actually got put in there as well. Sure, and if you get grizzlies off the endangered species list, I think you're going to see a 19th century level land grab.
Speaker 2:It's the real motivation, and you have people out here that are their lives are getting harder. It's kind of they call it the Wyoming way. We're going to dig our heels in and change reality and we're not going to adapt. We're just going to John Wayne our way out of this. And in the meantime, increasingly the political leadership is not from here. But all they got to do is say wolves are bad. Everyone's like, sign me up.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. Yeah, I've definitely seen. In our visits out there with my daughter and son-in-law, I've definitely seen and they've talked about the impact of the show Yellowstone and how it has brought a lot out of town or out of state or in, and they have this vision and I really thought that that wouldn't last and maybe now that the show is coming to an end maybe that'll start to change. But and I thought the winners might run people out but maybe they just leave for the worst of the winter, I don't know Definite growth going on there.
Speaker 2:People trying to get out of these Eastern cities, then these West Coast cities and those failed policies, and they watch a show and they think a fictional television show has something to do with reality. And the first time this really happened was you remember Norman Maclean's book got made into a movie of River runs through it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and then right after that was Legends of the Fall, right. So my aunt and uncle, who are still with us, they retired to the Bitterroot Valley in Western Montana after he retired from the Air Force. Love it there.
Speaker 2:And so they can see, they can talk and he's a big, avid fly fisherman and talk about how that growth. Within a year of that movie coming out there was a fly shop every mile Between Darby and all the way up to Stevensville or Lolo and you could. And so that was the first big concentrated westward expansion. And now you're seeing it again. I mean, since World War II ish, a little bit after World War II the population of the country has doubled About 180 million do now. I mean nobody really knows now with how many people are coming in the country every day, 350, 360 million. So the population of the country has doubled, but the population, and say the Northern Central Rockies, has increased eight to ten fold.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's dramatic. You definitely see it when you're out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember, because my parents followed my aunt and uncle up to the Bitterroot Valley when they retired 93. And you can still buy a house in Missoula for 35 grand.
Speaker 1:Not anymore.
Speaker 2:Right, because I was just kind of in their down period as they were sort of recovering from being a logging town and and the damage that I mean we all live in stick built houses so the woods got to come from somewhere but you know the stuff is getting in the rivers and Things like that. And then when the TV show Yellowstone happened and then covered happened, a lot of people were coming from cities with lots of money and they were buying up these places and they don't necessarily live here, like you know why a lot of people the really, really uber wealthy they live in Wyoming to hide their money. They don't?
Speaker 2:they don't. They own a house here and Wyoming has no residency requirement. So you could go down today to a real estate office and say I want you to build me a house on this lot, okay, well, it's going to be 3 years, there's a waiting list, but in the meantime you just bought the lot. So here's your piece of paper saying you live here and now you get your driver's license and now you're a Wyoming resident. Right, and that's part of the reason you see some of these states like New York and California talking about, or haven't acted, exit taxes, because you got people actually work there. That's where they're making their money, but they're not officially residents anymore, so they're trying to get a pan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you have these out of towners coming in and then they're. They are coming to you for tours to get to know the area. How does that play out for you? What are some of them? That's got to be super rewarding when you do encounter somebody that gets it. What are some of your favorite stories with that? As you're encountering these, these different groups that you're taking out, you're getting exposed to the air and going out and look at the wildlife.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think to watch the way people are moved and I tell people that you see a grizzly bear in the wild and it'll change your life, and to watch those people have that experience. And 399 super famous, and you know so. As she's famous, she gets a few more people that are really interested in seeing her specifically, but that fame has also kept her alive for things that other bears might have been, in my opinion, unjustly killed for, and so there's a double edged sword there. Covenants from FOIA is where she gets a different set of rules.
Speaker 1:So for the so for the listener who might not be familiar, so that your company is team 399, named after this particular famous bear. Why is she so famous?
Speaker 2:Well, so she is so famous because she's lived For 27 years. She's had 18 cubs across is it seven or seven or eight letters? You know? Yeah, eight letters and she's been really successful in getting those cubs to independence. And she has lived. She has chosen to live a lot of her, a lot of her life, near people and in an area where she can be. She's viewed most frequently.
Speaker 1:She's down in the tea times, isn't she?
Speaker 2:The tea time bear yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And but, um, you know there are other bears that has been around and then you don't necessarily see them. There was a sow that lived a little bit east of the park Um, people had called her willow and she was really being seen a lot in the spring. For about 3 years Just sort of disappeared and we don't really know what happened. But 399 has consistently been Seen since 2007 on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:So people want you to take them out to see her.
Speaker 2:They've read about her somewhere and they're like, yeah, and so you know we try makes. Point 399 is definitely we'll try and get you to see her, but there are a lot of other bears and each one of these bears is just as important. Sure. And um, you know we get, sometimes we get sear, sometimes we don't. Um, after she had the 4 Cubs she's been a little more furtive. Last couple years.
Speaker 1:Yeah Cool, any particular story that stands out, one of your customers, one of your clients that you took out, that really just it was just so moving and very memorable.
Speaker 2:Well, we know people. We had a fellow come out and he wanted to see 399. And we did. We saw a lot of the bears when he was out, but we didn't see 399 and we told him we call him and she came out. And she came out and we called and he's like I just got on my plane. Now we'll come down the airport and get you and you know the plane. They were already closed the door so he couldn't, but he was willing to do that. I mean that people tell us that watching 399 story in 2020 is what got them through COVID. I mean there's people who have told us directly that, yeah, this bear saved my life.
Speaker 1:Wow, Is that? Is that some documentary on her? I'm not familiar with that.
Speaker 2:No people who like follow us on Facebook. Who said, following the story of the quad, her and the quads in 2020, during the year of COVID and the shutdown, all that other stuff saved my life. That's how moved and that's how willing to be moved people are.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we have every person that we brought out and they get a good opportunity to hear Wolf's howl. I mean, they're always moved to tears.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's unforgettable. Yeah, I mean you've heard it he almost choked up right now thinking about it. It's just really just Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And then you think about the level of persecution they've suffered. Yeah. I mean Rick McIntyre's outstanding book the War on Wolves, and the first 250 pages is just the worst of human brutality. Yeah. And then he starts to talk about in the second half or second 40, 45% of the book. He starts to talk about how attitudes are changing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are, slowly but surely.
Speaker 2:Well, we don't have a lot of time because this is my opinion and I don't want to go to 10 foil hat on you, but I think there's a coordinated effort to get these animals off the endangered species list and if they do that then you're not going to have those protections to save habitat and then once it's gone I mean forever is a really long time, but functionally forever I mean the fish wildlife service is supposedly so. Last year there were four bills in Congress that were going to legislatively delist grizzly bears beyond judicial review. They've got this small cabal of politicians trying to cut out the judiciary. I mean that's blatantly unconstitutional.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And we have these checks. And then you have you hear these. These folks are all these activist judges. Well, the judges are the sober reality check. It's the activist legislators pandering for donations and votes, the ones going off into the weeds, and the judiciary is here to bring them back in. So when you get these legislators trying to cut the judiciary out, that should make whether you agree with what they're trying to do or not. The fact they're trying to run, do an end run around the constitution should make you gravely concerned. Yes.
Speaker 2:But the next time that happens it might be in something that you're opposed to. They just took your rights away by fiat. It's a two. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's what I'm driving it make a big land grab, as you said earlier.
Speaker 2:Well, so there's a small nonprofit in Helena called Alliance for the Wild Rockies and they're fighting a lot for grizzlies and grizzly habitats and it really habitat in Northern Montana, the yak, the cabinet, selkirk and the Endangered Species Act is what's being used to save that habitat from development. And if that's no longer in play and those small stands of old growth are gone and now there's locking roads everywhere and most grizzlies that are poached are poached from a road, it's a good opportunity, like this guy who poached that grizzly over by Newton Creek, east of the East Endurance last spring. Right.
Speaker 2:I mean that bower was 30 yards off the road. Yeah, wow. I mean, there's a lot of poaching that goes on, that you never know about, that you hear about later. Yeah. Like there's that guy over somewhere in the Grable area and his wife just turned him in because she knew he'd poached at least four grizzly bears while they were married.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Is there a way, maybe after we finish here, that you could send us, because I know we probably have some listeners that would like to help out in this effort and make you know, raise awareness and maybe get involved on some level. So you just mentioned that group. Maybe you could send me a couple of different you know websites or places they could go and certainly following you, because you all are doing a lot and we'll have your Facebook page and you want to talk about that a little bit, how they could follow you or where they can go.
Speaker 2:So we're Team 399 on Facebook and we're Team 399 on YouTube and we're underscore Team 399 underscore on Instagram and we're most active on Facebook. We're trying to get stuff on YouTube moving slower, taking longer than it should. But the Fish and Wildlife Service is maybe to probably going to try and administratively delist grizzly bears in February and then it's then they're going to play defense. And now you've got, like two years ago, ken McDonald's Montana Fish and Wildlife Parks at the grizzly meeting over here at the Jackson Hole Lodge. So we're not going to translocate. It's too much, we're just not going to do it. And now that's the way.
Speaker 2:One of the conditions of the Endangered Species Act is you've got to get the GYE grizzlies off of this genetic island. They're wrong. As long as they're on this genetic island, their long term extinction is 100% assured and one of the core tenants of Judge Christensen's ruling back in 2018 was you've got to have genetic flow. And now in the last six years well, five and a half years that area between you know you come out of the Paradise Valley. You got to cross interstate 90, then you got to go over to Highway 200 to get into the Southern Bob Marshall Wilderness and because of. I mean, there's a lot more development going on there now and no one wants to clear a path. So now what they're talking about doing is taking bears out of the NCDE, northern Continental of ID ecosystem think Glacier and then the Bob Marshall Wilderness right south of Glacier about capturing there and then driving them down to Yellowstone and turning them loose.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's not a problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, instead of a wildlife corridor.
Speaker 2:Instead of the wildlife corridor. And you know from the studies that you lose about 40% of bears when you do that. Yeah, and that's just. It's just trickeration to get around doing what they know they have to do. But if you look at, you know we've talked to some lobbyists, we've had some people we know talk to some lobbyists and there's a lot of big dark money in Washington pushing this. And you know we didn't come up here meaning to turn into advocates but you can't spend the time with the wildlife. Observe their again, their intelligence. They're I mean, they're not that different from us, right, they don't have the vocal cords for advanced speech and they don't have a visible thumb, but beyond that, they have social structures, they have families, they care about their kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah they don't want to die and so deep, deep connection, deep, deep connection. And I think I think there's a really concerted effort and that's that's really like. There's just hatred driving the wolves and it's maybe dying out slowly, but I don't think the wolves have that long, you know. Let's see what happens. But I think the grizzly bears is more just a land grab.
Speaker 1:So what's? What's the thing that people can do? That's one of the easiest things that they can do, I mean, other than following you guys, and I'll definitely have that in the show notes, but somebody's listening to this today, or whenever they listen to it. What could be some things that they do to be part of this advocacy?
Speaker 2:They got to contact your representatives. Okay, I think. I think if you have, in the reason you've seen both of these parties stand together and just stomp out any third party movement, any third party movement, it's because they want to keep all this for themselves. Right. In a little. They lose a little, but it's just these two, and these are so many. Elections are so tight that if you had a voting block at 3 or 5%, you can swing elections.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that may be changing. With Bobby Kennedy Jr running as an independent, that may be changing when I look at not to go too far off the rails.
Speaker 2:When I look at my other choices, I've been okay, right, anyone else other than who it looks like it's going to be, and I think you make this an election issue for your representatives and in some districts, if you had 500 people. And. But because there's so much money being thrown at this on the other side and there's so many billionaires who want this all for themselves, right, you were coming to hear under what they think is the cloak of darkness and all sorts of make you stuff is happening. So that's what politicians are looking at on one side. Right, everyone in the house has to be elected every two years, and I think the American people have to stand up and decide to get engaged and exercise the rights of citizens.
Speaker 1:Do you see yourself running for office to that, at that level?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think I have anywhere near the bank, the backing or the financial resources to go into, say, Even the state house. I actually volunteered for a position with in the county commissioners, but I think I'm probably in where we live. So we live in Teton County, Idaho, which is about well, boys, you start and turn this way but it's one of the only purple counties in the state. But our state representative is on a fourth, fifth generation Cattle rancher. I mean he's not. I mean he's one of these guys is spewing this flat earth nonsense about oh my God, there's no elk, you know, and while they're out here feeding the elk in the winter because they're so overpopulated, you know, in some places in Idaho they're shooting wolves to protect the elk and they're feeding the elk because there's too many.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't you know, because at that point you're no longer talking about things that make any kind of sense, You're just talking about raw emotions. Right.
Speaker 2:Right To people who have lived here I don't know, I just that plays and there's places where it plays and there's, you know, there, and there's places where other things play the sense. And I'm not trying to say it's just this, this is just the issue. Right, give me $150 million and I'll change how wildlife has managed in this country. But we're thousandaires. Right after year, after a lifetime in the military and public safety were thousandaires and trying to do is rally, the rally, the troops.
Speaker 2:And if the American people choose not to be engaged and mistake an angry an angry face emoji For being engaged. Right. Well, what I tell people is you know, go to Congress, dot gov, type in your zip code, and now you know who you're. Three, right? You've got one house representative in your district and two senators in your state. Those are your three said representatives. Get on.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah, it doesn't take. Or even a quick phone call, leave a message. You know it doesn't take. It doesn't take, it's not that much time once you get that information.
Speaker 2:No and get. Get three of your friends. Yeah, have them. Get three of your friends, Three of their friends. Now you've got a voting block.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And you know things are so tight right now in both houses you don't have to change that many people. You know, and there was a few years ago I forget his name, but he was trying to introduce a grizzly bear protection act which was modeled after the bald and golden eagle protection act of 1940, 1948, somewhere there we recognize these creatures unique place in our history and our culture. And they're you can't shoot, they're not a rug, that's it, full stop. And then we start having a sober discussion about what habitat do we think is actually suitable and what habitat is maybe not. Because you're like, if you look at the walls, the historical church with walls, there weren't necessarily a lot of wolves in the Great Basin, because, right, if you look on a map, it's all these old dry lake beds, right, but it's been getting warmer and ryer since the last glacial maximum. That was not a suitable habitat.
Speaker 2:But up here, all the way down through the spine of the Rockies, I think you could have a corridor. I mean you could go out onto the plains, have corridors. Yeah, you know, you don't want them in Tulsa, obviously you don't want, right, I mean.
Speaker 1:But they probably don't want to be there either. They don't want to be close to all that population.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and some people say we'll give them to California. And well, okay, I mean the California grizzly bears been extinct for 100 years? Yeah, according to grizzly bear experts like Dave Mattson.
Speaker 1:You know there's room for six or 700.
Speaker 1:And I think that's a good indication you're giving us here today on this issue, and I know that it's. It's got a lot of different sides to it and I mean I think it's taking away the emotion and really looking at, you know, the deep hatred emotion and really looking at where that comes from, and then you know you've also got on the other side, the strong emotion of the had, the connection we have with these animals. It's it's really it's a big issue and it really, I think, is a metaphor for some of the other things that we are experiencing outside of this area as well. So we really appreciate the education that you're giving us. I have one final question for you, because I know that you're a busy guy. I don't want to keep you too long, so I like to finish with this question what does a meaningful and moxie filled life look like to you?
Speaker 2:Well, I think for us it looks like kind of like what we're doing after you know, I've had 28 surgeries, I have two joint replacements, my spine's fused in two places, I've got a TBI from my time of public safety and my agency just threw me out with a trash. Today they legally could down in Colorado and I mean it comes out here and what I think it in in a culture where meaningless things have increasing importance in our life and we just become, every aspect of our lives becomes some iteration of fast food, just for a visual. You know, if you don't want to get involved in this, find something to care about and whatever that is and maybe it's helping homeless, maybe that's if you want to be specific. Maybe it's your local animal shelter Don't have money. If you don't have a lot of money, I mean they still need some of the clean stalls, they still need someone to walk the pads. But find something you're passionate about. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And therein is your meaning, your reason to get up in the morning.
Speaker 1:That's right, so important, so important. It has led you to the moxie that you know your love for this has. You've turned, you and your wife have turned into advocates to protect it. So that's the courage of stepping up as well and saying the truth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean that in this part of the world, you know it doesn't come without blowback.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But I mean, you've got. You've got to tell the truth, and as loud as, as loud as you have the resources to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah and chips fall where they may, yeah, but it does. You take your lumps for sure when you stop tell the truth, and that's happening in a lot of other areas.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean so our story is unique. But in this area, I mean, you know, there's there's definitely blowback. I have people who complain I just want to look at pretty pictures. Well then, they treat you. You know we're going to show you pretty pictures and we're going to, but we're going to talk about these animals, going to try and get you engaged so that we can get you motivated to help keep them alive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I just personally thank you, both of you, for doing this work and and kind of putting your stake in the ground. I think it is so important and I think you are. I'm sure you have days when you get discouraged and I think you're making more of a difference than you ever will ever you realize and will ever know, because you're just. You put that information out there and then it takes seed with people and it might not even take form for them for another two, five, 10 years down the road, but you, you planted the seed, so we need more people like you out there doing this work and it's education, it's education.
Speaker 2:It's all is education and you know wolves are going to take few, cattle they're going to take having cheaper, easier. I would argue that domestic, domestic sheep has no business being in wilderness. Right. Yeah, and they're wild.
Speaker 2:And they're going to take the time to get their crops out there and they're going to have to be able to do that, and they're going to have to be able to do that. So that's the big business. And what I would flip on the other side for, say, ranchers, is we've we've allowed the meat processing industry to be consolidated into four country, four companies largely, and we've allowed the meat, in some cases by foreign companies on US soil. Yeah, so that needs to be, that needs to be addressed in some way. Sure, and yeah, that's what we're trying to do. We let people know.
Speaker 1:And so I'm going to encourage everybody to check out the show notes and I'll have Jack and Gina's information there Facebook links, instagram, all that good stuff where you can find them, youtube, youtube channel. And, once again, thank you so much. And it sounds like your tours, your trips, are amazing. People get so much out of them, so check them out if you're interested in this area or traveling want to travel down to Africa or Australia with them as well.
Speaker 2:That's really cool. So the whales were the whales, like we're doing dwarf Mickey whales in July and then we're still working on sperm whales. We're probably not going to get that done this year, but Southern humpbacks the places where we can get in the water with these large, intelligent creatures. And get to visit with them and see why. Again, as far as we know, right underscore, bold face italicized no, not what we believe, but what we know is this is our home and that's our only home. Yep.
Speaker 2:And we need to think about it as a lifeboat Right and maybe start thinking about taking a little bit better care of lifeboat.
Speaker 1:Great place to end this interview. Thank you so much for your knowledge and your words, words of wisdom today. I really, really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Okay, everybody, take care and look for another episode soon. Bye now. If this podcast was valuable to you, it would mean so much if you could take 30 seconds to do one or all of these three things Follow or subscribe to the podcast and, while they're, leave a review and then maybe share this with a friend if you think they'd like it. In a world full of lots of distractions, I so appreciate you taking the time to listen in. Until next time, be well and take care.