Save What You Love with Mark Titus

00:00:00:11 - 00:00:26:13
Mark Titus
Welcome to the Save What You Love podcast. I'm your host, Mark Titus. My guest today is Doctor Jason Ransom. Jason is the wildlife program supervisor with the North Cascades National Park Service and adjunct professor at Washington State University School of the environment. Go, Cougs. Doctor Ransom has a PhD and MSC in ecology from Colorado State University, and has traveled the world working with large carnivores.

00:00:26:15 - 00:00:59:09
Mark Titus
In our conversation today, we discuss feeling the edge of being when in the field with critters who can eat you. Why reintroduce grizzly bears into the North Cascade Mountains at all? Hearing out people who don't agree with the course of action. Building safeguards ahead of time for interaction between predators, human beings, and their livestock. The importance of traditional wisdom from indigenous stewards watching recovery bloom, and more.

00:00:59:11 - 00:01:23:23
Mark Titus
I learned so much today from Jason and things that I didn't even consider when reintroducing predators back into an environment they had disappeared from. I hope you do the same. I hope you're enjoying the show. If you like what you're hearing, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. Write a review. It really helps spread the word. Thank you and enjoy the show.

00:01:24:01 - 00:02:00:03
Music
How do you save what you love?
When the world is burning down?
How do you save what you love?
When pushes come to shove.
How do you say what you love?
When things are upside down.
How do you say what you love?
When times are getting tough.

00:02:00:05 - 00:02:03:12
Mark Titus
Doctor Jason Ransom, welcome. Where are you today?

00:02:03:14 - 00:02:07:16
Dr. Jason Ransom
I'm up. And you're Bellingham, by the shores of Lake Whatcom.

00:02:07:18 - 00:02:26:10
Mark Titus
Nice. And, we're recording in the summertime, and, it seems to be typically a, pattern here in the PNW where you can kind of go to the bank on July 1st. It'll start getting nice, and, it looks like it's doing that again this year.

00:02:26:12 - 00:02:39:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
That looks to be the case, which means bears are out and about. And I just got a note that there was a bear seen near a campground in the park. So I think I'll be going out to have a visit and see what that bears up to after we finish talking here.

00:02:39:15 - 00:03:01:00
Mark Titus
That's important work. Well, you know, we're going to start exactly there. I would love to hear from you. just this is wide open. There's no rules. We can talk as long as we want or as short as you want, but tell us your story. How did you get into this? Important and honestly, for most people, thrilling and fascinating line of work that you're in.

00:03:01:02 - 00:03:19:03
Dr. Jason Ransom
Wow. Well, that itself is a long story. we'll try to see if I can do the short version. I guess I could say, I could pattern this by saying that I've kind of got, like, relentless curiosity my whole life. I was a kid that was always out looking for stuff under logs, always out in the woods, always.

00:03:19:03 - 00:03:38:16
Dr. Jason Ransom
And to this day, I'm the worst person to go. And if you are like a destination hiker, like point A to point B to me is like wherever all the birds are singing, wherever there's something to watch, whatever plant is blooming like, I just get distracted easily because I'm just curious about nature and I always have that. so I grew up in Georgia.

00:03:39:23 - 00:04:12:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
You know, where there weren't too many scary things. The odd copperhead snake, maybe. I went to undergrad there, study biology, took my first job on a on a 839 mile transect, walking from New Orleans to West Palm Beach, Florida, surveying tortoises because, you know, first job out of college. So go do that. Cool. you know, the occasional alligator, you know, nothing to adrenaline is the wildlife where it goes.

00:04:12:11 - 00:04:33:18
Dr. Jason Ransom
but, you know, I was one of those kids that grew up watching Wild Kingdom, right? They've got the Mutual of Omaha. you know, for Jim Fowler's always taking it in the face from something. And, you know, that was fun weekly viewing, right? and I just had that that year. And to go and see more and, those are those are way before the internet days, way before YouTube.

00:04:33:18 - 00:04:59:22
Dr. Jason Ransom
Davis. And this was, you know, this was back in the 90s and, I had an old professor who had a professor at another college that had a grad student in Africa doing work on something. And I said, do I need help? Because I'll go help. And, I sent some faxes back and forth, old school. And I ended up, yeah, jumping on a plane going to South Africa and, working on crocodiles, not crocodiles.

00:05:00:00 - 00:05:23:14
Dr. Jason Ransom
and I think that lit a different sort of flame in me. you know, my relationship with nature, my relationship with the Earth. You know, I was always very close. I need to be outside. I have that craving. But it's different when everything wants to kill you. it's a different feeling, right? I mean, when you're working with crocodiles, we're like, you know, one of our study animals actually killed somebody.

00:05:23:14 - 00:05:44:10
Dr. Jason Ransom
Like, you know, out in the community. It's like it's a real thing. It's tangible. you know, somebody that was swimming where there's crocodiles, bad things. but there's lions, there's elephants, there's rhinos. There's all sorts of things. And I just loved it. I just loved it. you know, I went back and forth for three years until that project was over.

00:05:44:12 - 00:06:07:20
Dr. Jason Ransom
and it came back to the states, to Georgia, and, and, you know, in about 30s, I said, well, I can't be here. This is not alive enough. I don't feel connected enough. And so I did what anybody would do that sort of wants to stay in the US for a little while and, and, gotten my truck in the time in Georgia and drove to Alaska and, started, working out in Denali National Park.

00:06:07:22 - 00:06:32:16
Dr. Jason Ransom
So I did some backcountry guiding at first, but then I, a couple of years in, I got a position with Park Service. working with grizzly bears and black bears and wolves, and sort of, you know, cut my teeth on navigating that world. And, that was a very real world. Grizzly bears everywhere. did a little detail up with Fish and Wildlife Service to work on polar bears and study polar bear behavior, and that was great fun.

00:06:32:18 - 00:06:55:03
Dr. Jason Ransom
and then, after about five years that I ended up, spending a winter down in Virginia just catching black bears all winter crawling in black bear dens, to take radio collars off for a study. and at that time, I was offered a job, in Colorado, like a full year round job. I mean, I learned early on that just working with bears is bad because they sleep half the year.

00:06:55:05 - 00:07:15:20
Dr. Jason Ransom
and it's not good for your your job trajectory. If your animal goes to sleep and nobody can find it. so I ended up spending almost a decade working on wild horses and, studying wildlife behavior. Got my PhD there and then got recruited to the back to the Park Service, in our national office for endangered species.

00:07:15:22 - 00:07:35:08
Dr. Jason Ransom
and shortly into that, working with all the parks was interesting, but I was working specifically in North Cascades. They were starting to prepare their Fisher restoration. and the biologist was retiring. And I said, well, how about you demote me and let's go back to the park? and so I could tackle fish and restoration and grizzly restoration.

00:07:35:08 - 00:07:55:04
Dr. Jason Ransom
Those are, you know, right? Right in my wheelhouse of sort of putting back repairing some, some some old harms done by, by our ancestors. you know, there's a healing piece of that that really spoke to me and, so, yeah, so I packed up and moved to Washington and for the last ten years been working on that.

00:07:55:04 - 00:08:03:00
Dr. Jason Ransom
We got a lot of fissures on the ground that we're still monitoring and seeing how they're doing and, working hard on grizzly bears.

00:08:03:02 - 00:08:21:13
Mark Titus
Well, gosh, this is what I love about this podcast reality. we can talk as long as we want. I've got this. I've got these nice little tidy notes here that I'm going to bring up at some point. But you just lit about a thousand lights up in my head. So I'm going to drift around here for a minute before we kind of get into the deeper trajectory.

00:08:21:13 - 00:08:26:09
Mark Titus
But, first of all, for our listeners who don't know what what is a fisher?

00:08:26:11 - 00:08:43:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
Oh, we got this question from a lot of people. I think more people in Washington know what fishers are now than they did before. which is great. We spoke to so many school groups and we had kids released them all that stuff. They're a really large member of the weasel family, so think of them like a tree.

00:08:43:13 - 00:08:49:07
Dr. Jason Ransom
Wolverine. That's what I used to tell the border crossing when we were bringing them to Canada, and they didn't know what was in the box.

00:08:49:09 - 00:08:50:12
Mark Titus
Surprise.

00:08:50:14 - 00:09:10:23
Dr. Jason Ransom
Surprise. Yeah. Don't open the box. right. and so they were wiped out by people, you know, you we think probably around the Great Depression, they really blanked out. but they were harvested for fur, and it was an impossible trajectory. They were, I think, second only to fur seal and and fur prices like a turn of the century.

00:09:11:01 - 00:09:29:10
Dr. Jason Ransom
And so I just put a, you know, just put a target on their head. And everybody was trying to find every last fisher, for fur. And they did, and they wiped them out. but the habitat was here, the protected areas still here. and luckily, there's still lots of fishers north of us, British Columbia and Alberta.

00:09:29:12 - 00:09:51:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
so we partnered up with them. We worked with, the governments up there with First Nations tribes, big collaboration. And we managed to get 180 fishers reintroduced back into Washington, between Mount Rainier and North Cascades National parks and by 2020. Thankfully, we got the last fishery over the border before the pandemic shut everything down.

00:09:51:11 - 00:09:56:02
Dr. Jason Ransom
and now we're following up to see how they're doing, and we're finding them. So they're still out there in the world.

00:09:56:04 - 00:10:25:04
Mark Titus
That's that's so cool. Yeah, I, I guided for some time in Southeast Alaska and we had Martens, right around the lodge in the wintertime. And you, you could have little surprises from the Martens. come check on the lodge during the middle of the winter. And they would unbelievably, supernaturally, almost somehow crawl around the inside walls and leave their little marten surprises all over the inside of the cabins and, sounds right.

00:10:25:06 - 00:10:26:16
Mark Titus
Yeah. Sounds right. Okay, cool.

00:10:26:20 - 00:10:30:12
Dr. Jason Ransom
Yeah, it sounds like Fisher was just the larger cousin to the Marten man.

00:10:30:12 - 00:10:59:17
Mark Titus
And they're they're ferocious, you know, as you say, like a tree. Wolverine. Good lord. Well, the second thing that that struck me as you were telling us, your story, was about that feeling that you had you had a feeling, a longing to be closer to nature, to be connected more. But it wasn't until you went with crocodiles, critters that could actually kill you, eat you, consume you that you felt in your sweet spot.

00:10:59:19 - 00:11:13:05
Mark Titus
What do you think it is or was maybe currently still is about that feeling for you that that that brings that edge over to the other side where you need to be?

00:11:13:07 - 00:11:35:18
Dr. Jason Ransom
I think, you know, in short, it's it's wilderness, it's wildness. It's, you know, no point in human history have we, as a species, really been safe in the world until now, where we can build our houses, we can go places that feel comfortable and let our guard down and be vulnerable and not worry about what's happening out there.

00:11:35:18 - 00:12:08:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
Right. and I think it's hard to find those places, in nature that are so intact that you still feel like you're part of that system, that ecosystem at a core level. Not that I have some great need to feel in danger, but the fact that the world, is not really forgiving about you. You have to think, you have to be aware, you have to pay attention to the nuances of animals and plants and weather and geology and things that are happening around you.

00:12:08:11 - 00:12:14:12
Dr. Jason Ransom
and that just makes you feel more connected. For me, it's that's sort of the that's the call of the wilderness.

00:12:14:14 - 00:12:41:06
Mark Titus
Great. And I, I have a semblance of that, too, from that time I mentioned from guiding and being in brown bear country in southeast, where, you know, we went out one, day after Thanksgiving, deer hunting. And there was I mean, I'm holding my hands up here, listeners who can't see this, but, I mean, there was a print that was like the size of a dinner plate.

00:12:41:06 - 00:13:08:19
Mark Titus
I mean, it was just monstrous. And, it is a unique feeling, I think maybe akin to, meditation or when you are totally aware of being in the present moment. and it's a true feeling of being alive and, like you say, connected in that place that you are not in control of at all. So I identify with that a lot.

00:13:08:19 - 00:13:36:15
Mark Titus
I love that, main thrust of the conversation today is bears. And let's get right to it. I think here is a part of the collective consciousness I might be tapping into here with this next question, but grizzly bears are big, they're huge and can kill people and their livestock. Why reintroduce a critter like this into the North Cascades?

00:13:36:17 - 00:14:00:05
Dr. Jason Ransom
Sure. I think that's a that's a pretty common question. the decision to actually reintroduce bear or restore bears, somehow, was actually made back in 1991. back in the early days of the, grizzly bear recovery plan for the US. Or there's six different recovery areas designated, and the North Cascades got its own sort of formal chapter in 1997.

00:14:00:07 - 00:14:22:10
Dr. Jason Ransom
And that was we need to recover bears here. They used to be here. People killed them. you know, there's there's sort of that ecological picture. We did harm this is a protected area. We should recover them. That was made back then. And the decision we just got to was, how do we do that? Because at that time, there were still a couple of bears, probably left.

00:14:22:12 - 00:14:40:12
Dr. Jason Ransom
you know, the last bear detected in the US side of this ecosystem was in 1996. that was confirmed. That doesn't mean there haven't been other bears or that was the last bear, but that's the last one. Anybody confirmed? and before that, it was 1991 when there was actually the last female with the cub. So that's sort of important.

00:14:40:12 - 00:15:02:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
That's reproduction. That's obviously there's more than one bear. If you've if you've got babies. So that's right. Those are important thresholds. But I think what it's hard for us to wrap our brain around is that even then as, as they were, you know, my predecessors were coming up with this document, this recovery chapter saying we should record, we should restore bears here.

00:15:02:15 - 00:15:24:21
Dr. Jason Ransom
it was probably already too late. you know, second only to the muskox is the slowest reproducing land mammal in North America. Really slow reproduction rate, and they live a long time. They can live 30 years in the wild. So you could have a couple bears, you know, scattered across this vast ecosystem that just started, stopped finding each other over time.

00:15:24:21 - 00:15:43:12
Dr. Jason Ransom
You know, occasionally one might get killed by somebody. Natural causes, maybe cause of death here or there, but they could get scattered and fragmented it and start stop functioning as a population probably happened decades before we even saw that last bear. and so even blinking out. Right. And it's kind of our on our watch to do that.

00:15:43:12 - 00:16:01:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
And so we have sort of the legal mandate, you know, the Endangered Species Act says you will recover these things where they used to be. the Park Service has the Organic Act, which tells us we should recover these at risk species where they used to be. but it does get around to your. That's the core of your question, which is?

00:16:01:09 - 00:16:30:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
They're scary. We haven't lived with them in a long time. they can be dangerous. They certainly have killed people we know that, the, you know, chance of that happening is, is very, very small. but it's not zero. And so I think there's an important conversation. And you know what? I think we learned a lot, talking to people through the whole public process of this decision matrix of getting to this point, to say, to reintroduce bears.

00:16:30:15 - 00:16:57:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
it's not black and white, it's not linear. There's not we love bears, we hate bears, and there's nothing in between. There's very few people on those extremes. even people that are generally conservation minded, that are supportive of endangered species recovery, that are outdoors, people that generally like the idea of recovering bears or, you know, there's still plenty of people in that, that mind frame that are also worried about hiking around them.

00:16:57:13 - 00:17:25:15
Dr. Jason Ransom
Like, that's fair. and there's plenty of people on the other side that have a livelihood on this land that raised livestock or bees or orchards or anything that might be interesting to a bear. and they worry about that could impact their livelihood. Of course, that's a concern. But not all those people are firmly against bears. And we talked to we sat down and talked to ranchers individually who said they have a place, you know, bears have a place that's great in the park and the ecosystem.

00:17:25:17 - 00:17:47:19
Dr. Jason Ransom
What are you going to do when they come out? You know, that's the that's the real concern. How do we mitigate those edges? Because we have like 10,000mi², a place for bears to be. That's federally managed land that they shouldn't get into trouble. They still could run into hikers, recreational users, but there shouldn't be in somebody's pasture or chicken coop or community.

00:17:47:21 - 00:18:04:22
Dr. Jason Ransom
and that's where we sort of went through this process and said, you know, how do we do this? How do we best do this? And and in the end, Fish Wildlife Service essentially change the Rule around Endangered Species Act. And then instead of it being threatened with, you know, hard sideboards, don't touch this thing. Don't bother this thing.

00:18:05:00 - 00:18:25:06
Dr. Jason Ransom
Let's create a new set of rules. And we're the only ecosystem that gets that. because the bears aren't here anymore, you can only use that piece of the Native Species Act when the species is gone. If you're going to put them back, you can create new rules. And so we did that. Now we have a bigger toolbox to say how do we collect around this and help it work for everybody.

00:18:25:06 - 00:18:43:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
Because bears have a they have a right to be here. They have a place to be here ecologically. They were part of this ecosystem. you know, from a cultural perspective, there are some tribes that have been pretty outspoken saying this is a social justice issue. They should be here. They're part of our culture. other tribes are not so in favor of it.

00:18:43:09 - 00:18:47:05
Dr. Jason Ransom
And so it's it's complex. It's a really complex issue.

00:18:47:07 - 00:19:25:08
Mark Titus
Absolutely. I, I read a lot of, back and forth and in as much as I could on what was, out in the, you know, blogosphere and, and standard media on, on this issue. And I know folks, that are from rural communities and have interests like, like, ranching and livestock and and other, issues that might intersect with, with grizzly bear in their backyard, so to speak.

00:19:25:10 - 00:19:51:16
Mark Titus
A lot of those folks didn't feel like they were being heard, or they were being, tuned out. as you said, this is a long, long process, but just just to hit that one on the head before we move on from that, can you maybe, give a broader perspective of what all went into this process to maybe assuage some of those thoughts that, hey, they're just going to go for this anyways?

00:19:51:16 - 00:20:04:15
Mark Titus
This was a predetermined outcome. nobody was really listening to our concerns. they wanted the bears. They got their bears. Maybe. Could you give a little bit more of a 360 view of what went into this decision making process?

00:20:04:17 - 00:20:26:22
Dr. Jason Ransom
Sure. It's it's been a long time in the process. Right. We we originally started in 2014 with an effort that then stopped just with political administrations and priorities. And then the secretary said, stop, stop thinking about it. and we restarted that, but we took all the comments we got from that public process, which was over 140,000 comments.

00:20:27:00 - 00:20:44:22
Dr. Jason Ransom
wrapped all that up into the new idea, the new plan. And then we start. We we started over. So we had a scoping period where we and now to the public that we're going to start up this process again. What do you want us to think about? You know, high highest level because I don't have any details yet.

00:20:45:00 - 00:21:08:19
Dr. Jason Ransom
give us that sort of first, first round and we got comments from that. and then we went through and created this draft, this draft plan. I said, here's some different options to get bears back. There is the no action alternative. So it's always considered an no action alternative. But the reality is that as the bears have not naturally recolonize the North Cascades over decades and decades and decades, and we know why.

00:21:08:19 - 00:21:28:17
Dr. Jason Ransom
When you look north of the border, you know the ecosystem north of us is disconnected from farther north in British Columbia, where there are grizzly bears. so they can't get there. And occasionally maybe one gets there, but not a population. So we can't look at this natural integration as is solving the absence of our bears. And so then it what are the alternatives?

00:21:28:17 - 00:21:48:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
How could we actually get bears back here. And so we put that draft out and we had a bunch of public meetings. And honestly we talked to every group of people. There were citizens groups. There's recreational users. There's industry. There's everybody that said, hey, will you come talk to us? We'll come. We sat down, talk to them. We we'd send people all over the ecosystem to talk to folks.

00:21:48:15 - 00:22:09:02
Dr. Jason Ransom
you know, we engage with all the tribes. That's a government to government consultation and said, do you want to talk about this? Are you interested in this? And the ones that did, we sat down and talked to them. we met with city councils. We met with everybody that was interested in talking. That doesn't mean everybody got hurt or stepped up or even knew what was going on, because that's just the world we live in.

00:22:09:04 - 00:22:29:12
Dr. Jason Ransom
we took all of that stuff, all that information, roll it up, put out the final draft. and at the same time, in parallel, if you want the service, put out this tinge rule, this sort of changing the rule around how we can live with bears under the Endangered Species Act. So they were parallel government things, ones that federal rule ones, a decision making process.

00:22:29:13 - 00:22:48:14
Dr. Jason Ransom
and we're still talking with people, and we have lots and lots of, collaborators, partners, groups out there. They're like, how can we help? How can we help? and as long as we just keep feeding correct information, you know, they're they're out talking to people. and we're still we're still listening. We're still trying.

00:22:48:16 - 00:23:16:07
Dr. Jason Ransom
This is an ongoing process. Just because we got to here doesn't mean we're stopped. And, you know. Sorry. because the only way something like this, any restoration, it's the same ones Fisher succeeds is, everybody's heard. You know, we need to know what communities need to feel better about living with bears. and there's NGOs out there that do cost share programs with electric fencing for chicken coops or, livestock depredation programs.

00:23:16:07 - 00:23:41:04
Dr. Jason Ransom
There's all sorts of different ways, tools that we can live with the what ifs. because really, not too many people are concerned if they're just some bears way up north of the Picket Range, wandering around where no people are like, that's not really the concerns we hear. The concerns are what happens when bears move out. And that's that's where we have, you know, a lot of outreach and education still to do.

00:23:41:06 - 00:24:05:16
Dr. Jason Ransom
and then real time, you know, when we get to bears on the ground, how do we communicate that, how to what do people need to hear and know? what tools do they need? What workshops do they need about safe hiking, safe camping, safe chicken coops, you know, bear spray use anything like that, which, you know, quite frankly, is not very different than living with black bears, which we already do.

00:24:05:18 - 00:24:26:06
Mark Titus
Good point. That is a good point. I've. I've run into, black bears. I was just thinking about this the other day. it's not often you don't run into bears often, but I've had a once last summer and then again this summer, one time. And, I consider myself lucky, and that was a a cool experience.

00:24:26:06 - 00:24:58:14
Mark Titus
But you're right. It's not like that. That doesn't exist at all. so what I'm hearing is that definitely was deep listening all around the horn through all these various communities and stakeholders. And the prime objective here or the Prime Directive, as it were, were to listen to the ESA and repopulate a creature that is a integral part of a biased system.

00:24:58:16 - 00:25:12:09
Mark Titus
and that's the thing that's really driving it. Meanwhile, you're listening to, all folks concerned and ways to ameliorate the situation should there be conflict in the future. So that kind of way. Yeah.

00:25:12:09 - 00:25:31:05
Dr. Jason Ransom
No, I think that I think that about sums it up. You know, there's there's there's two parts. There's the we already live with black bears and we don't always do a great job of that. you know, there's certainly communities that are struggling with, trash sanitation management, things that attract bears, which is what brings bears into conflict.

00:25:31:06 - 00:25:50:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
you know, like in the park itself, we we do require, you know, proper food storage. We check out bear canisters for backcountry use when people need one. we take those steps to prevent bears from wanting to be near us because they don't want to be near us if there's not an attraction. but the attractants are once a bear.

00:25:50:09 - 00:26:11:20
Dr. Jason Ransom
Figures that out are incredibly compelling. It's hard to to beat that. I was I was just looking at this. the state has some a great chart on foods and whatnot, natural foods and human foods. And, you know, you know, one bird feeder, one bird feeder with black oil, sunflower seeds like a big bird feeders got like 7 pounds of seeds in it.

00:26:11:22 - 00:26:15:14
Dr. Jason Ransom
there was 70, 78 pounds of blueberries.

00:26:15:16 - 00:26:16:08
Mark Titus
Oh, God.

00:26:16:08 - 00:26:37:15
Dr. Jason Ransom
So if a bear just gets its mouth on that in one day, it just saved foraging 78 pounds of blueberries to get the same calories. Yeah. we have to control those attractants because that's a really strong attractant. If there's not an attraction, bears don't want to be near us. And that's true for grizzly bears, too. They don't want any part of our world if they can help, but they want to stay away from us.

00:26:37:17 - 00:26:57:05
Dr. Jason Ransom
yeah. We need to figure out how to do that. Right? Like how how do we live with them again? And we have lessons from Glacier National Park and that ecosystem, North Continental divide, the Yellowstone and Tetons ecosystem. We can look at all of the stuff that's worked and not worked in those grizzly bear food economies. Basically, those are interior bears.

00:26:57:05 - 00:27:16:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
Are not the fat bear weak salmon eating bears. they're the bears like we expect to have. And where we would source bears from, that are 90% plant based diet, right? They can and they will eat meat. Of course they're going to do that. We know grizzly bears can do that and they can take livestock. It's a very small number, but they certainly can.

00:27:16:14 - 00:27:39:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
We can't say no, that won't happen because it could happen. right. But when we look at those things and we look at the lessons, what are the complications? You know, a lot of that stuff we can get ahead of now with our new new set of rules, our new toolbox. and starting with the very small number of bears, you know, we're talking about 25 founder bears, over a ten year period.

00:27:39:09 - 00:28:01:10
Dr. Jason Ransom
Because it's just takes a long time to find the right bears and move them. but for that population to grow, you know, to 200 bears, we think, you know, modeling it out would be 60 to 100 years. You know, it's a long, long, long time over. You know, if you include the Canadian in the US in both portions of this ecosystem because the boundaries imaginary to bears.

00:28:01:12 - 00:28:23:18
Dr. Jason Ransom
Right? yeah. We're looking at over 13,000mi², right? I mean, we're we're, well, larger than the state of new Jersey, where bears can just be bears. you know, it's a small density. It's a low number. We're not expecting right out of the gate. We're going to have this booming population. But you look at, you know, over toward Yellowstone where you've got over a thousand grizzly bears.

00:28:23:18 - 00:28:27:23
Dr. Jason Ransom
And, you know, Yellowstone itself is well over 4 million visitors a year.

00:28:28:01 - 00:28:28:12
Mark Titus
Yeah.

00:28:28:14 - 00:28:47:15
Dr. Jason Ransom
You know, there the the chances of actually being injured by a grizzly bear in Yellowstone is 1 in 2 point 7 million. that's a high number of recreational users. It's a high number of people in the woods with a lot of bears. Yeah. and it's shocking. They don't have more issues than they do. More people die from drowning.

00:28:47:17 - 00:29:07:19
Dr. Jason Ransom
in 30 years, 125 people have died from drowning in Yellowstone, and another couple dozen have died from thermal pools. Right. And it's not grizzly bears that you should be worried about it. It should be nature. It should be the powers of nature. It's the same here, you know, hypothermia, waterfalls, landslides, glaciers, so many things to be worried about it.

00:29:07:19 - 00:29:36:23
Mark Titus
That's such a great perspective. just we forget that the the things that are out there in daily life. I mean, for crying out loud, you're much, much, much more likely, but at scale, more likely to get killed in a car accident than you are to have an encounter with a shark or a bear or, you know, any of these kind of imaginings, these stories we tell ourselves about the monster out in the woods, half time.

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Mark Titus
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00:30:55:11 - 00:31:27:01
Mark Titus
I wanted to go back, though. To you. You were right on the, button of what I was thinking about for the next question I had, based on feedback I've seen from other folks, and I think you partially answered it right off the get-Go. And certainly intuitively in my mind, you've you've answered it. But, just to put it right to you, some folks are postulating that there's not enough food for these grizzlies up in these 10,000, square miles of habitat.

00:31:27:03 - 00:31:33:03
Mark Titus
What? Oh, that that doesn't seem likely to me, but can you just address that right on the nose?

00:31:33:04 - 00:31:55:05
Dr. Jason Ransom
Sure. well, first off, the grizzly bear diet for an ecosystem like this is not appreciably different than black bear diet. Black bears are doing just fine here. We have lots of blues. I've watched black bears hunting deer ponds in the spring in the park right. They eat me too. grizzly bears can live in roughly the same kind of diet scenario.

00:31:55:07 - 00:32:25:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
It doesn't mean that it's all good all the time. We have good barriers and we have bad barriers, and we know and we have bad berry crop years. We see more bears in Leavenworth or or Snoqualmie or at places where you've got an urban wildland interface already. because those bears are looking for something else. Right? It's like I said, you fit one birdfeeder that somebody leaves out that's 78 pounds of blueberries, and if it's a bad barrier, they're going to go look at they're smart and they're adaptive.

00:32:25:11 - 00:32:48:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
you know, bears are generalists. Like they're really good at figuring out what to eat and how to find it. even even if they're transplanted here from someplace else. It's a similar food economy. A glacier lily is a glacier lily, a huckleberry is a huckleberry. And they will figure that out. we've done a lot of modeling, you know, and, you know, I'll preface that with this.

00:32:48:13 - 00:33:09:14
Dr. Jason Ransom
You know, I think it was George Fox quote, but all ecologists know it. That's that all models are wrong. Some are useful. Right. And so we've done our best to approximate nature with math, which of course is going to not be accurate. It's only good enough that we can see big trends. we've looked at bear foods, we've looked at habitat use.

00:33:09:14 - 00:33:34:21
Dr. Jason Ransom
We've projected it out through climate change modeling, which again, is another wild card from sort of bad to worse climate change models. and over and over, the carrying capacity for grizzly bears in this ecosystem is at least 300 bears. it could be more than that. So could a small population make a start, find food? Yeah. their home range tends to be larger when food, quality or quantity is smaller.

00:33:35:02 - 00:33:51:19
Dr. Jason Ransom
So they have to go farther to find that food. That's. We understand that, that's why you see the fat bear weeks, like, parked in one section of river that have a home range this big because they just travel all the time, right. Our bears are probably going to wander a lot farther, but there's room for them. and those foods are out there.

00:33:51:21 - 00:34:15:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
we have no reason to think there won't be food for bears seasonally. There could be. It could be tough. Spring is hard. Spring is a hard season for bears. that's when they tend to eat more meat. when they can get it. carcasses, you know, they, they certainly are known to to take avalanche killed, you know, goats and deer and things like that, that they find when they first we thought the world's still pretty icy out there.

00:34:15:11 - 00:34:35:14
Dr. Jason Ransom
but they eat a lot of roots there. And then we for grass and, and cow parsnip and things that are green that start popping up. That's the hardest time for bears. and, you know, we'll have to see what springs are like, you know. Yeah, we're looking at probably, earlier warmer springs looking in the future, bears might come out earlier.

00:34:35:15 - 00:34:42:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
so that's a different dynamic. That's if bears are out earlier or stay up later in the year. What does that mean in their food model.

00:34:42:11 - 00:34:44:06
Mark Titus
Right. exactly.

00:34:44:08 - 00:35:09:04
Dr. Jason Ransom
Yeah. And we also know that it's not the same world that it was when bears were here. And nobody's really trying to say that. Right? You know, if they were wiped out, you know, generations ago, the North Cascades is not ecologically the same place. It was. Right. Communities changed, animal communities change, people infrastructure changes, all that stuff. and so they're going to find a new place here.

00:35:09:04 - 00:35:15:20
Dr. Jason Ransom
They're going to refine their spot in the ecosystem. It may not look exactly like it used to, but we don't have data on what it used to look like.

00:35:15:22 - 00:35:16:14
Mark Titus
Well, this.

00:35:16:20 - 00:35:17:18
Dr. Jason Ransom
Is just another here.

00:35:17:20 - 00:35:41:03
Mark Titus
Wonderful segue actually into into what I was thinking about next, which was, my friend Scott Schuyler with the Upper Skagit tribe has told me, you know, he this was something they were, highly supportive, of and, you know, I know that their, their, their ancestors go back thousands of years. 8000, 10,000 years. Yeah.

00:35:41:05 - 00:36:15:14
Mark Titus
in this in this region, North Cascades, the Upper Skagit. And they were all in favor of this. how important was it to garner traditional knowledge from indigenous folks? And what were you able to learn, especially in the face of what we were just talking about a changing climate where there are so many unknowns that were there things through that traditional knowledge that were, important and, lights for you to kind of help shine the way in this, this darkness of the opacity of what we're facing in the future?

00:36:15:16 - 00:36:40:17
Dr. Jason Ransom
to some degree, I think that's still a work in progress. Right? I mean, it's it takes, a lot of time to rebuild relationships. obviously, the relationship between the U.S government and our indigenous people is, is not historically good. and so working through that, I know, Scott, you know, we are working on, coach codes, stewardship plans for wildlife, in this ecosystem.

00:36:40:18 - 00:36:57:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
we sat and when we looked at, you know, early in the days of this restoration planning, we looked back at the history of bears here. And what do we know? And what do we not know? and we actually, we we gathered a lot of information from tribes and First Nations that were willing to share things.

00:36:57:13 - 00:37:13:23
Dr. Jason Ransom
I mean, that's how traditional knowledge has to be given. We can't just go say, hey, tell us what you know. Right. you know, you develop these relationships, these partnerships in this trust, and you know, if and when the time is right, that information is shared with us that are planning. But really what we want to do is be integrated moving forward.

00:37:13:23 - 00:37:39:02
Dr. Jason Ransom
You know, how do we do this restoration, with people that have a history on this land? so they also have ownership. And in this healing process that's really important. but, well, we did learn it through that, which was pretty interesting. Is that, you know, the little bits of data about we know, you know, Hudson's Bay company shipped out over 3000 grizzly bear hides over whatever a three decade period in the 1800s, which is mind boggling.

00:37:39:04 - 00:38:16:21
Dr. Jason Ransom
Yes. obviously decimated this whole region, all sorts of species. But that's a big number of grizzly bears. and so we have those data points of somebody killed a bear somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, and it went through some fort. And so we know that there was somebody alive back then that died. but with First Nations and tribes, and we learned some other things about where bears used to be, or so especially down like near the Columbia, you know, and historically, even then, there's, there's record, some written, some verbal record of how much bears really didn't want to be near people.

00:38:16:23 - 00:38:41:22
Dr. Jason Ransom
and so when people were fishing along the Columbia back in the day, indigenous people were fishing, okay. You know, the bears weren't piled in on top of them. The bears were like, all right, people are there. So we're going over here. and so there's sort of this, you know, millennia of history of bears and people sharing the landscape and the bears, you know, largely sticking to the high country up and sort of where the park is now.

00:38:41:22 - 00:39:07:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
The records are. Yeah. Those are the bears up in the high country. not the bears down down here and where people tend to live in the lower elevations. So we learned some things like that. I think there's still much more to learn and integrate. we spent a lot of time. I spent a lot of time speaking with my colleagues across the border, you know, First Nations that are, working on the same process up there to restore grizzly bears on the north part of our ecosystem.

00:39:07:15 - 00:39:27:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
and what that means, you know, what that means to nations, how to navigate that, how to navigate some of the social part of this, which is, you know, we learned this from the Fisher restoration, which I didn't know and I didn't expect, but it was a really good process, which was, you know, in Fishers, we were getting them from places where the Canadians were trapping fish or fur.

00:39:27:13 - 00:39:50:10
Dr. Jason Ransom
Right. So they're killing fishers. We didn't think at the time. Well, if we want to, you know, catch some and bring them south, that's mortality for the ecosystem, right? It's the same as losing one. It's just going somewhere. It's not dying. And, you know, on paper that looks equitable. Right. but in talking to the nations, it's not equitable.

00:39:50:11 - 00:40:03:00
Dr. Jason Ransom
because what it brought it to them was, you know, when the Canadian government actually sent indigenous people to resident schools, they took them out of their community, sent them to schools. So take their culture from them.

00:40:03:00 - 00:40:03:14
Mark Titus
Yeah, it's.

00:40:03:14 - 00:40:22:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
True. It's a parallel process. And so we did a lot of work with nations up around Williams Lake and such, and tribes down here in the Squali tribe hosted and some of the elders from North came and brought fisheries down with us to see where they were going and have ceremony and sort of bring that full circle.

00:40:22:15 - 00:40:39:00
Dr. Jason Ransom
And it was a healing process, and it worked. and the rest of the project was really successful. But, you know, we should be thinking about that. And the grizzly bear, well, it's the same idea. It's the same idea. Well, and that's the hard part of restoration. Those animals have to come from somewhere.

00:40:39:02 - 00:41:24:11
Mark Titus
That's really well said. And that's something I didn't even think about. That cultural tie, that you're you're pulling an animal out of a place that's a part of that place culturally, spiritually, socially. and it changes things. And that's that's exactly what I was thinking about. in the bigger scheme of things, we know historically, every time we as a species mess and tinker and manage things in air quotes, you know, primarily for our own benefit, like with salmon, wild salmon and putting in hatcheries, just giving ourselves a free license to log where we want mine, where we want build dams, where we want, because we'll just make, quote, make more fish.

00:41:24:13 - 00:42:06:20
Mark Titus
You know, that's that's one prime example. What are some other historical examples, maybe, maybe even thinking about, oh, out on the Olympic Peninsula where all the predators were were eliminated or a lot of them. And, and then, goats went rampant and deer went rampant. And can you, can you give maybe even a bigger picture, historical perspective of what happens when we remove a keystone species that may not be convenient at the time for human interests, but just again, yeah, that bigger kind of hundred thousand foot view of like when we mess with an ecosystem, even if it's something that is not preferable to us because it's scary or it's it's harming our livestock

00:42:06:20 - 00:42:11:09
Mark Titus
or whatever. What generally happens when we do that?

00:42:11:11 - 00:42:13:22
Dr. Jason Ransom
I'll give you the ecologist answer. It depends.

00:42:14:00 - 00:42:15:13
Mark Titus

00:42:15:15 - 00:42:38:10
Dr. Jason Ransom
You know it. You know, I get starting with the idea of a keystone species, right? I mean, you know, ecologically, traditionally a keystone species is something that if you remove it, the ecosystem collapses. It's propping the ecosystem up. I don't think grizzly bears are in that category here. You know, we talk about them as having an outsized effect, which is almost certainly true.

00:42:38:12 - 00:43:03:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
They influence their environment around them in a, in a, in a bigger way than other species. Yeah. this ecosystem still here, it didn't collapse when grizzly bears disappeared. but some of those ecosystem services they provided certainly went away. Right? I mean, grizzly bears are one of the only species that really till soil, like, really turned soil over, that allows a lot of plants that, like disturbed soil to thrive.

00:43:03:15 - 00:43:24:16
Dr. Jason Ransom
and it just so happens that grizzly bears are eating those plants, and they're pooping out seeds up and down elevations, turning over soil like they're doing something that other species don't do. A lot of that that happens. You get an avalanche slope. You see different. You can see that in the fall when the colors change, you can see the avalanche slopes changing color because of what's actually colonize that disturbed soil.

00:43:24:18 - 00:43:44:10
Dr. Jason Ransom
And grizzly bears do a similar thing. And so, you know, we don't know how that's going to play out. we don't have empirical data on exactly what believers ate and did when they lived here before. we know what they do in places like North Continental Divide or the Selkirk's or the cabinet yaks or other places with interior areas.

00:43:44:14 - 00:44:05:19
Dr. Jason Ransom
We have an idea. Again, all models are wrong. Some are useful. We think we have useful models that'll tell us what that looks like. But until we actually see nature unfold, we can't fathom the complexity of it. You look at the Yellowstone example of wolves, right? And that's pretty well known example. They brought many parts of reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone.

00:44:05:21 - 00:44:28:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
next thing you know, beavers are doing really well and they're like, what happened? You know, how how did those dots connect? You know, well, it happens that when you have carnivores and straight carnivores like wolves, they scatter the ungulates a little bit more. And those elk and moose are not parked on the riparian zones, hammering all the all the willow trees down to nothing right now.

00:44:28:09 - 00:44:32:23
Dr. Jason Ransom
Those trees had a chance with height release, and they got to grow. And you know what likes that?

00:44:32:23 - 00:44:34:17
Mark Titus
Beaver beavers.

00:44:34:19 - 00:44:57:03
Dr. Jason Ransom
and so you see these complex, relationships, and we just can't we can't even imagine, you know, we have ideas, we have models, we have examples. but this hasn't really been done. Nobody has really ever reintroduced grizzly bears. here's why I services augmented the cabinet yak population, which was down to a small number of animals, and that's been successful.

00:44:57:05 - 00:45:11:17
Dr. Jason Ransom
but going from zero is, is is tough and and the world has changed without them. So now we need to see how this ecosystem remembers them, how they fit back in. and it's a slow process. So, you know, I think we'll see it unfold here.

00:45:11:23 - 00:45:50:07
Mark Titus
Well, heating your models, models are useless. or all models are broken. wrong. And some are, but some are useful. understanding that you can't, you know, have a crystal ball and see, because this is a brand new thing, but what would you imagine as far as, better outcome, what are some of the things that grizzly bears would bring to an ecosystem in, in your you don't know, but in your mind's eye, what what could we imagine that some of those, those benefits that grizzly bears would bring to the the by region?

00:45:50:09 - 00:46:14:23
Dr. Jason Ransom
I think the number one and most important one is biodiversity. that's something that, you know, we've spoken up quite a bit. and biodiverse ecosystems are resilient ecosystems. Right. And we know climate is changing and we know that some species are not going to do well, and we know other species might thrive or they might expand their range that things will change.

00:46:15:01 - 00:46:36:19
Dr. Jason Ransom
but the more species you have in there that, you know, historically evolved in this ecosystem, the better chance you have of the ecosystem as a whole being resilient to change. And so adding this big, big player, this big, you know, or as we said, Keystone. But this outsized sort of role species is important. It's really important for biodiversity.

00:46:36:21 - 00:46:58:16
Dr. Jason Ransom
that's a big change. That's a that's a big change we're adding in this this big player. Right. other than that, as I mentioned, I think, you know, the seed dispersal, the this, the soil, disruption type, things, those, those could, this could change things. And you know how, how exactly that changes? I don't know.

00:46:58:16 - 00:47:23:07
Dr. Jason Ransom
I know that we're going to see, you know, I think the models are right in climate and seeing that stratification moving up slopes. and it just so happens that a lot of that shrub is vaccini, it's blueberry huckleberry, berry producing plants that bears love. and we're going to probably see them engage in that upper elevation shrub ification process in some way.

00:47:23:09 - 00:47:44:00
Dr. Jason Ransom
how that speeds up or slows down or changes the mosaic, I don't know. and we're also going to see I think, we're going to see more fires. We're going to see more frequent fliers with climate change. and that's catastrophic for whoever lives at Ground Zero, right? Those animals flee or they die in the process.

00:47:44:02 - 00:48:09:05
Dr. Jason Ransom
most animals are, like, bears are pretty good about getting out of the way. but then that habitat's not so great after it burns. but it happens that some of the first things that come back that start that early successional wave, after fires are really good bare foods. And so I think, you know, when you look at the bigger climate models, the bigger timescales like that, those fires actually bode well for grizzly bears.

00:48:09:06 - 00:48:25:18
Dr. Jason Ransom
they don't they're not good. And at a point in time, but over a long time span. So I think that there's going to be more foods there. And then those bears are going to eat those foods and disperse them. And so I think, you know, there's a there's an ecosystem engineering role there, that grizzly bears will contribute to.

00:48:25:20 - 00:48:34:09
Mark Titus
So interesting contemplate the bigger mosaic. And we're talking decades, centuries, decades. Yeah.

00:48:34:09 - 00:48:35:16
Dr. Jason Ransom
Probably not our lifetime.

00:48:35:18 - 00:48:40:09
Mark Titus
Yeah. Yeah, certainly.

00:48:40:11 - 00:49:04:20
Mark Titus
I want to switch gears here again. But, first, in the work that you've done prior to this, do you have examples, like, for instance, with fishers of what, what a system is look like before, and the dearth of a particular species that had been eradicated, and then the inclusion of, of that species coming back in recovery.

00:49:04:21 - 00:49:12:22
Mark Titus
any other thoughts about or examples that come to mind, what the landscape has looked like afterwards?

00:49:13:00 - 00:49:35:01
Dr. Jason Ransom
like for fishers, I think we're still too early to tell. we've been doing a bunch of studies on, ecological niche partitioning, sort of how animals fit with each other's diet and overlap. So Martens and fishers have a lot of overlap in their diet. but then there's some elevational trade off, right? Where, where maybe they separate out a little bit.

00:49:35:02 - 00:50:01:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
but we're just starting to sort of just dip our toe in that pond and see what's happening out there. and fishers are unique, too, because they're they're a predator, but they're also a prey species. And so, you know, some of our founding animals got taken out by cougars and bobcats. and that part of the cycle, which was unfortunate for colonizing species, but, so I think there's, there's, there's bits of that puzzle that we just we have to wait and see.

00:50:01:09 - 00:50:33:12
Dr. Jason Ransom
And again, it could take generations and generations. So maybe it's too early to know, you know, we will globally and other species. you certainly see, you know, Europe's been pretty, successful at large ungulates like, you know, European bio something was just in the news first. First time in history they've had bison back in Portugal. you know, those kind of things, those those speak to a different, a different aspect, which is what's what's the goal?

00:50:33:12 - 00:50:54:10
Dr. Jason Ransom
What's the goal of a reintroduction? Right. And, and we tend to default to thinking, well, that's to have a population, the self-sustaining population of whatever species out there, on the landscape. But that may not be the goal, like in Europe in smaller, you know, smaller areas, but not this, this size of ecosystem. The goal might be vegetation management.

00:50:54:11 - 00:51:18:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
It might be to have grazers back in there that keep in check things that maybe would be fuels for fires. Right. And that's something bison can do or wild horses could do or whatever. yeah. We're hoping we'll get a self-sustaining grizzly bear population that'll persist into the future. you know, I think it's just going to it's going to take generations to know for sure.

00:51:18:09 - 00:51:39:20
Mark Titus
Fair enough. one last question specifically on the on the Grizzlies here in the territory. They're coming into it. what what happens if there are instances of bears harming people or livestock? What is that process look like? Is that is that a, partnership with Fish and Wildlife or like, how does that work?

00:51:39:22 - 00:51:59:17
Dr. Jason Ransom
Yeah. I mean, I mean, a couple things that we know for sure from any translocation kind of effort is that all bears are not going to stay where you put them. Yeah. And they're probably not all going to live because that's just nature and things are going to happen. So in that first piece bears don't stay where they put them.

00:51:59:18 - 00:52:15:15
Dr. Jason Ransom
You know, they have a lot of room to go like they can they can go where they want and do what they want sooner or later. At some point, maybe it's when there's 200 bears here, or maybe it's the first bear that just goes on a walkabout. We don't know. It shows up in, you know, near a rural community.

00:52:15:15 - 00:52:36:11
Dr. Jason Ransom
So, you know, out of the gate, you know, we have more tools, I think because every bear we release will have a radio collar, a GPS collar, and we're going to know where they are, you know, every day, you know, maybe a couple times a day, depending on the color settings. Yeah. if we see them moving toward, you know, a community, we might be able to get in front of that.

00:52:36:13 - 00:52:58:02
Dr. Jason Ransom
but that's just now, if those bears reproduce, you know, there's going to be uncolored bears out there. We don't know what all those bears are doing. the biggest things, the important things right now is to get ahead of that. Prevention is worth everything. again, it's about attractants. It's about, electric fencing around chicken coops. It's around those things that sort of just make bears not want to be near us.

00:52:58:04 - 00:53:15:16
Dr. Jason Ransom
Let's say they still show up and they still get dog food out of somebody's back porch or, somebody who's got sheep or something that a bear gets into. Then we turn to the actual ten year rule, which spells out, what can you do? You know, we can catch that bear, we can tolerate it. We can move it back somewhere.

00:53:15:16 - 00:53:35:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
We can haz that bear. And the rule and included deliberately included the whole spectrum all the way up to the Fish and Wildlife Service can issue a permit to a landowner, under specific conditions, to kill that bear. if it's a threat, you know, to to what's going on in their world. So there's there's that whole spectrum and it's a high bar.

00:53:35:09 - 00:53:54:16
Dr. Jason Ransom
I mean, so you don't want people going out and shooting these animals that we're taking so much effort to restore. but the point is, we can have all those tools which wouldn't be available if they were just listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, which is hands off. and so I think we have that. And like I said, other ecosystems with grizzly bears, you know, pretty successfully.

00:53:54:18 - 00:54:17:11
Dr. Jason Ransom
There's a pretty good I think the interagency Grizzly Bear Commission has a pretty good sort of playbook on navigating conflict and what tools work and don't work and what you can't do and can't do. there's a whole spectrum of things, you know, for us now with black bears, like, right now, I just heard, oh, there was a bear out near New Haven Campground this morning.

00:54:17:13 - 00:54:36:14
Dr. Jason Ransom
Just being a bear, not getting into anything, but we've sort of designated certain spots that are people spots, like just bears are. It's not going to end well at bears go in there. And so at this point we would go and haze that bear out. So we'll go chase that bear away. if it hasn't gotten any reward, the bear, I'll say, all right, I was right.

00:54:36:14 - 00:54:56:08
Dr. Jason Ransom
I don't want to be around people, and it's fine if the bear gotten a reward has gotten something. You get it the first time. Often that's enough to retrain it. The bear was, like, not worth it. But if the bear's gotten over and over and over, if it's gotten chicken after chicken after chicken, you know, or something like that, it's much harder to retrain.

00:54:56:08 - 00:55:10:09
Dr. Jason Ransom
And you can try translocation, you can try aversive conditioning, you can try a bunch of things. And, you know, it's a mixed bag on how well it works depends on the individual bear and what it's gotten and the reward, the payoff it's gotten.

00:55:10:11 - 00:55:13:15
Mark Titus
Folks don't feed the bears.

00:55:13:17 - 00:55:16:12
Dr. Jason Ransom
You know, I feed the bears or any animals for that matter.

00:55:16:14 - 00:55:34:21
Mark Titus
Yes, please leave him, leave him, leave him be. well, moving on here, looking a little bit toward the future. And as we start to wrap up, to what level have you engaged in and how important is it for young people to get informed and involved in this kind of work?

00:55:34:23 - 00:55:58:14
Dr. Jason Ransom
I think it's critically important. You know, on the Fisher Project, we had school kids released every single Fisher. they had a stake in it. They had a stake, and they learned what a fisher was. They got out in the woods physically, out in the rain, usually. sometimes. Now, they've got to watch these, you know, really mysterious, shy animals for a millisecond as they ran off into the woods.

00:55:58:16 - 00:56:16:02
Dr. Jason Ransom
So they have ownership in it. They have ownership in that conservation. And, you know, I got cards from schools and one school that, schools get play singing about fishers. Like, you know, those kids are going to grow up knowing what a fisher is. And that's something that that older generations here haven't lived with. I think it's everything.

00:56:16:02 - 00:56:34:11
Dr. Jason Ransom
It's getting ahead of that curve. the prevention part is huge, you know, and I think, I think the kids are great because they hold parents accountable. you know, people leave a cooler out or something like that. If you've got a message to kids, they're going to call the parents out on it. And and parents are going to respond.

00:56:34:13 - 00:56:52:01
Dr. Jason Ransom
So I think that's it's great to get them involved. There will not be kids releasing any grizzly bears. I can say that for sure. you know, we'll do that with a remote opener away from everybody. but I think it's important. And I think it's gets back to the all the voices in the community piece. You know, I think everybody has to be at the table.

00:56:52:01 - 00:57:02:11
Dr. Jason Ransom
And we need to continue talking to as many groups as want to learn about living with bears. I think you know that it's going to take the community to, to to make it work.

00:57:02:13 - 00:57:28:17
Mark Titus
That's great. Are you hopeful with all the steep challenges we face here ahead with with our own species and the damage we've done inflicted on our natural world that sustains us? I think I think I know the answer to this, but it seems like the work that you get to do leaves you in a place where, by being proactive, you possibly can see hope.

00:57:28:17 - 00:57:31:02
Mark Titus
Is that is that true?

00:57:31:04 - 00:57:49:04
Dr. Jason Ransom
I think yeah, I think that's what you have to hold on to. I think, yeah. When you, when you, when you dare to, to look away from that light and think, wow, everything is falling apart. And, you know, we, we we can't keep bears out of trouble everywhere. We can't keep bears out of communities if they're not secure in their garbage.

00:57:49:04 - 00:57:58:04
Dr. Jason Ransom
Like all those things, it can get overwhelming. but I think. Yeah, I think when you get out in nature and you see what what's worth fighting for?

00:57:58:10 - 00:57:59:02
Mark Titus
Yeah.

00:57:59:04 - 00:58:01:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
It gives you hope. Yeah. It does.

00:58:01:15 - 00:58:37:15
Mark Titus
You know, I found, in the salmon work that I've done that, even though we have a very siloed culture right now, politically, across the United States, this is one of those issues that, like food, because food is an inarguable need and. Right. salmon and and being in the outdoors even more generally are something that bridge that divide.

00:58:37:17 - 00:59:05:20
Mark Titus
And obviously there's there's this is an intense issue here with bears, because of the heightened nature of what these creatures are. But have you found that this, this unity that we have in our wild home, which we truly are a part of as much as we've tried to separate ourselves, do you feel like that's helpful in bridging some of these divides in this fractured society we find ourselves in?

00:59:05:22 - 00:59:31:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
I think absolutely. I think that there's a lot more common ground than there is divided ground when we talk about even grizzly bears. You know, I, I was talking to so many ranchers that have have generations of ranching, you know, you know, raising beef cattle or all different things that are genuinely, you know, they don't want bears in their pasture or in their cabin yard or whatever it is, I get it.

00:59:31:15 - 01:00:03:20
Dr. Jason Ransom
But those same people or, you know, they've spoken on how important it is to let nature be nature and have wild places out there, you know, and I think, you know, they all have different reasons for that. I don't know what those are. that's their voice. but I think it is a bridge. I think there's a bridge because no matter how disconnected we as a society are from nature in our everyday life or our food sources, which come from nature, you know, no matter how desperate we are, we can't be disconnected.

01:00:03:20 - 01:00:22:20
Dr. Jason Ransom
We're part of this ecosystem, whether we know it or not. We're part of this ecosystem. you know, the Pacific Northwest here. We feel that every November when the rivers are flooding and roads are closing and you can't get away from it, like when you're part of it. And so when you turn toward it, instead of fighting it, then it's a matter of how do we live with it?

01:00:22:20 - 01:00:46:19
Dr. Jason Ransom
How do we how do we adjust our lifestyles, our decision making, to flow with this ecosystem instead of combat against it? And it's hard in a civilization where so many people are living in cities and they, you know, maybe have a park somewhere and a little green space, they can walk out it at lunch, but they're not out in a place where they might see a bear.

01:00:46:20 - 01:01:06:17
Dr. Jason Ransom
it's hard to rebuild that connection, and I think people crave it, you know, I think, I mean, you can look all over social media and people are yearning, to be closer to nature. so how do we do that? In a way that's fair to all the other animals and nature and still give them space and still let them be what they need to be out there?

01:01:06:17 - 01:01:11:13
Dr. Jason Ransom
But for us to connect in a in a more organic way, I guess.

01:01:11:15 - 01:01:30:15
Mark Titus
What a fascinating conversation. I'm so grateful. Thank you. And, one last question before the bonus round. Nobody escapes the bonus round. what is the timeline? Obviously, this is a long process, but what is the timeline we're looking at for next steps on this incredible venture that you're involved with?

01:01:30:17 - 01:01:51:17
Dr. Jason Ransom
I can honestly say we don't know. And that's not a government answer. It's not a we're not telling anybody is a big secret. what we know is the process. You know, we need to get all the planning exactly right. we need to have all that education, outreach, community conversations. We need to get all of that done and done right.

01:01:51:17 - 01:02:12:04
Dr. Jason Ransom
To be fair to this process, none of us take moving a bear lightly at all. It's, It's the hardest part of the job. I think it's a heavy, heavy burden to take an animal, whether it's a fisher or a bear or anything else into our hands, and say, I'm responsible for your care in the short time, the short window of time, and I'm going to move you to a new place.

01:02:12:06 - 01:02:30:05
Dr. Jason Ransom
That's a hard, awful thing to do. Yeah. it's the worst part of the process. But when an animal is extra petted and that's the only option you've got left, you've got to do it right. You got to do it right. And, you know, we're working with panels of veterinarians to go through the protocol, cross all the T's, dot all the I's.

01:02:30:05 - 01:02:52:17
Dr. Jason Ransom
Is this exactly? And then what if what if, what if decision trees? it just takes time. And I don't have a timeline yet. I mean, we we're we're working on that. We're working on agreements with tribes and First Nations and other agencies. You know, the Fish Wildlife Service needs to work on those ten agreements, sort of giving that authority to do these management actions to various agencies.

01:02:52:19 - 01:03:02:01
Dr. Jason Ransom
all that takes time. it's not going to be next week. I can say that, you know, but we're, we're we'll we'll do it when we've got it. Right.

01:03:02:03 - 01:03:24:23
Mark Titus
That's excellent. That's an excellent answer. And I think it's a great place to park it for today. And I know your mind is just spinning of curiosity about what the bonus round is. If you listen to this show before you've heard it, but we're going to just do a little mind play here with, well, we're we're in the time of wildfires, you know, sadly the way things have, have changed here with climate.

01:03:25:01 - 01:03:43:04
Mark Titus
Let's just pretend for a moment you got a wildfire bearing down on you and you obviously get out your pup and your your loved ones out of the house. But if you could only take one and save one thing while you're fleeing out the door, what would that one physical thing be?

01:03:43:05 - 01:03:49:16
Dr. Jason Ransom
Just one. Just one that doesn't it doesn't count. Doesn't count. Living members of the household.

01:03:49:18 - 01:03:57:06
Mark Titus
Living members are out. You've got them. At first, clearly clear out.

01:03:57:07 - 01:04:00:05
Dr. Jason Ransom
It has to be my have my hard drive of photos.

01:04:00:07 - 01:04:01:02
Mark Titus

01:04:01:12 - 01:04:13:00
Dr. Jason Ransom
they're all, like, all those wonderful moments that bring back good memories of friends, family, nature, animals. these days, it's it's packed in a little thing you can put in your pocket, right?

01:04:13:00 - 01:04:31:15
Mark Titus
Yeah. That is true. That is true. And that's such a wonderful thing about the, sort of less warm than analog bit of digital. But, you know, I think about this and I'm like, oh, I know, of course I'd have to grab my journals, but my journals, you know, they weigh. Yeah, at 100 pounds now for over the years.

01:04:31:15 - 01:04:47:13
Mark Titus
So that that is a fine and practical and an excellent answer. Now, one last step. If you could only take one attribute about you, one thing that makes Jason. Jason, what would that be?

01:04:47:15 - 01:04:49:08
Dr. Jason Ransom
it's what I started with. Curiosity.

01:04:49:10 - 01:05:07:06
Mark Titus
I knew you were going to go there because it's such a great answer, and it's very apparent you're a great speaker. And it's. I could listen to you all day. I'm so grateful for your time and your wisdom, and especially your dedication in doing the work that, is out in front of all, all of us, saving the things we love.

01:05:07:06 - 01:05:17:03
Mark Titus
So, Doctor Jason, I appreciate you. And, please, you know, let's let's do this again when we have another update somewhere down the line.

01:05:17:05 - 01:05:18:21
Dr. Jason Ransom
Thank you. Appreciate it. It's been fun chatting.

01:05:18:23 - 01:05:21:21
Mark Titus
Great. Will take care. And, we'll see you down the trail.

01:05:21:23 - 01:05:24:20
Dr. Jason Ransom
You too. Right.

01:05:24:22 - 01:05:56:04
Music
How do you say what you love?
How do you say what you love?
How do you say what you love?
How do you say what you love?

01:05:56:06 - 01:06:20:07
Mark Titus
Thank you for listening. To Save What You Love. If you like what you're hearing, you can help keep these conversations coming your way by giving us a rating on whatever platform you're listening from and leaving a comment on Apple Podcasts. It really helps get the word out. Check out photos on our Instagram feed. We're at Save What You Love podcast, and you can get links from today's featured guest in the show notes of this episode.

01:06:20:09 - 01:06:49:05
Mark Titus
Join our growing community by subscribing to our newsletter at evaswild.com, and then clicking on Connect in the upper corner. You'll get exclusive offers on wild salmon shipped to your door, and notifications about upcoming guests and more. Great content on the way. That's at evaswild.com. The word save spelled backwards wild.com. This episode was produced by Emilie Firn and edited by Patrick Troll.

01:06:49:07 - 01:06:55:03
Mark Titus
Original music was created by Whiskey Class. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you all down the trail.